When the national conference on philosophy and social sciences was held in Guilin, Guangxi, in 1983, it was decided that efforts be made to gather and compile King Gesar as a national project during the Sixth Five-Year Plan.

With efforts made by dozens of NPC and CPPCC delegates, the State department concerned earmarke some 6 million Yuan for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to organize the work.

Compiling King Gesar was officially approved, and the first four volumes were published: The Birth of the Hero, Becoming the King by Winning Horse Race, Battle Between Mo and Ling, and Battle Between Hor and Ling.

The epic, King Gesar, is composed of some 120 volumes with over 1 million lines totalling over 20 million words. The plan was to publish 40 volumes, each volume composed of some 20,000 lines running to 400,000 words. The epic should have 800,000 lines totalling 16 million words. Each volume should have six illustrations, and the epic should have a total of 240 illustrations. These illustrations are tangka paintings showing stories included in King Gesar.

With regard to the structure of the epic, the traditioal understanding is to begin with The Birth of the Hero and Becoming the King by Winning Horse Race, and these should be followed by four volumes describing how Gesar subdue four demons - the major part of the epic. In the end are Saving the Mother From the Hell and Peace in the Three World.

King Gesar constitutes the latest research fruit which leads the world in King Gesar study. Publishing King Gesar is aimed at having the best of epic published, which could be translated into other languages for publication.