Epic of King Gesar
work of epic literature of Tibet and greater Central Asia
The Epic of King Gesar (Tibetan: གླིང་གེ་སར།, Wylie: gling ge sar), also spelled Kesar () or Geser (especially in Mongolian contexts), is a traditional epic originating from Tibet and Central Asia. Folk balladeers continued to transmit the story orally, enriching its plot and embellished its language over time. The narrative reached its "final" form and peak popularity in the early 12th century.
The epic recounts the heroic deeds of the culture hero Gesar, the fearless lord of the legendary kingdom of Ling (Wylie: gling). It is preserved in both poetry and prose, primarily through oral poetic performance, and is widely sung across Central Asia and South Asia. Its classic version originates in central Tibet.
Approximately 100 bards of this epic (Wylie: sgrung, "tale") remain active today in the Gesar belt of China. Tibetan, Mongolian, Buryat, Balti, Ladakhi, and Monguor singers continue to uphold the oral tradition, and the epic has drawn significant scholarly interest as one of the few surviving oral epic traditions still performed as a living art. Versions of the epic among the Yugur and Salar peoples have also been recorded among the Balti of Baltistan, the Burusho people of Hunza and Gilgit, and the Kalmyk and Ladakhi people in Nepal, and various Altai, Turkic, and Tungus tribes. The first printed version was a Mongolian text published in Beijing in 1716.
The public source identifies “Epic of King Gesar” as work of epic literature of Tibet and greater Central Asia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Epic, King and Gesar.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q842370. VIAF identifies the subject as 185892898. The Library of Congress control number is n2015230499. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1716.
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This entry incorporates text from “Epic of King Gesar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.