Gesar is a heroic epic collectively created by China's Tibetans. Originating in the folk oral traditions, Gesar passed down through Tibetan generations in a combination of song and narration for over 1,000 years. So far, Gesar has been collected as a work composed of more than 120 volumes, with more than 1 million verses, altogether over 20 million words , 25 times the length of the Iliad. Gesar, is the greatest work of Tibetan literature, Gesar is easily the lengthiest epic in the world, and also became popular in ballads among the Mongols and Tus .

King Gesar was born a son of supreme god Indira. In the youth, he was mischievous to the point of wickedness, unruly, but divine by nature and possessing supernature. His great antagonist was his paternal uncle, cowardly, vain and pretentious, who hoped to rule the country. The hero was banished with his mother, but his exile enabled him to build up hidden strength. He came out victorious in a horse race, whose winner was to become the country's king. Then he started to conquer the kingdom of demons, the Jiang kingdom and the Hor (northern people, Mongolian) kingdom. The war between `Ling' and Hor kingdoms was one of the central pieces in the story. The war between `Ling' and Hor started with a beautiful girl, Qomu, the queen of king Gesar. The Hor king, `white tent king', heard about her beauty, and sent a message to `Ling' king for her. Upon the refusal, Hor king sent troops to attack `Ling' kingdom. After several battles, another girl was sent to Hor king in the place of Qomu. The trickery was discovered, and battle renewed. The capital of `Ling' was captured by Hor troop with queen Qomu. King Gesar summarized all his troops and with the help of an important Hor general, captured the capital of Hor, killed the `white tent king' and rescued Qomu.

In Tibetan-inhabited areas Gesar has been known as the king of the ancient Tibetan kingdom of Ling. The great hero and his brave army are kept alive in the richly imaginative retelling of the epic. From early times the epic was passed on orally . Today a small number of woodblock preserving sections of the epic can be found in Lhasa, Xigaze and Dege County in Sichuan Province and some handwritten copies in the homes of families high and low. The Potala Palace still has a statue of Gesar, drawing pilgrims every day. Gesar was the king of Ling in the 11th century, and more of his deeds were recorded in the Kangba region than anywhere else. Handwritten and printed versions of Gesar from Dege are considered the most authoritative works, and in Dege, people still argue that the village of Ngaxu in northern Dege County was the birthplace of Gesar.

Gesar's image and story are still reborn in carvings, paintings, murals, woodcuts, embroideries, songs, dances and plays . Tibet has a research institute specializing in the study of the epic. Its research projects are listed as key state projects. Since 1979, the institute has collected more than 180 different combined song and narration versions of the epic, 55 woodblock and mimeographed editions and recorded 70 performances of the epic, filling more than 3,000 recording tapes. Since liberation, our research institutes concerned have been working on this monumental portion of world literature, gathering, sorting out, collecting, studying and publishing the material on a large scale.