Gesar is a great heroic epic created collectively by Tibetans. For thousands of years, it has been circulating far and wide within Tibetan areas and has been loved by Tibetans. Gesar represents an historical pinnacle of ancient Tibetan culture. As not only a crystallization of Tibetan's intelligence, but also a cultural treasure house, Gesar is of high academic and aesthetic value.

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Gesar reflects the significant historical stages and basic social structure in the development of the Tibetan nationality, and it expresses people's lofty aspirations and ideals; it is a history of Tibet in living form and image. Gesar is a great work of encyclopaedic volume, serving research on ancient Tibetan society, history, religious beliefs, communications, moral concepts, customs, habits and folk culture. This great epic has been handed down from generation to generation and has been recited and sung from ancient times to now. It seems the epic may never stop circulating.

Gesar's creation, propagation and development have evolved over a very long time, which is a rare cultural phenomenon in the history of Tibet, in the literary history of our great motherland, and even in the world history of literature. Gesar has had a long time span from its creation and spread to its evolution and development, which demonstrates the epic's great artistic vitality Several important stages of development in the history of Tibetan society influenced Gesar's evolution, The great changes of different historical stages are refleeted in this epic, which makes it even richer. In turn, Gesar has played an important role in pushing forward Tibetan culture of each period. So we can say that Gesar has had a deep and lasting influence on Tibetan culture. Compared with the ancient Greek Epics of Homer, the Indian Epics and other epics in the world, Gesar bears two unique characteristics: first, it has been handed down from generation to generation and widely spread among masses of Tibetans, especially among farmers and herdsman, and is a heroic epic in a living form; second, Gesar is the longest heroic epic in the world, and includes more than 120 sections, one million lines and 20 million words. Gesar is longer than the Ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, the ancient Greek Iliad and Odyssey, and the ancient Indian Ramayana and Mahabhrata. Gesar's two unique features are related to the folk artists who still sing and recite the classic. These excellent artists are real innovators, successors and propagandists, so Gesar can be spread widely beyond the "Roof of the World."

Gesar has flooded landlocked Tibet in a special way How can an illiterate farmer or herdsman living in a remote village or pastoral area tell more than 100,000 epic stories and recite millions of lines of poetry? If these epic lyrics were recorded in entirety, they would make up several dozen thick books . How do cmmon Tibetans learn to sing and remember the lines? Such an artistic gift is amazing. Furthermore, researchers are puzzled by the mystery of their memory However, so far, we haven't found a scientific and believable explanation for the phenomenon . As for their amazing memories, someone has called these Tibetan bards "magic men." The existence of cross-generational artistic groups, likewise, is a very special culture feature of Tibetan history The puzzle of the memory of these Tibetan singers and their process of succession remains an important subject that needs further research.

Due to historical reasons, this great epic has never been collected and collated in a systematic and planned way; a complete edition of the work has not come out yet. So many readers can't fully understand Gesar's profound and colorful content or appreciate its unique artistic charm. Many experts and scholars can only explore the epic and research it from different angles and at different levels.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large-scale plan to collect and arrange works on Gesar was carried out in an organized way from the 1950s t0 tne 19905. The work was done with the support and care of the government and the active participation of various nationalities. As a cultural project spanning the new century, this work will continue. Since 1983, the arrangement ofGesar and its academic research has been listed as a key national scientific research item three times, during the sixth "Five-Year Plan," the seventh "Five-Year Plan" and the eighth "Five-Year Plan." During the ninth "Five-Year Plan," the editing and publishing of 40 selected volumes were considered important tasks and key to promoting comprehensive research on Gesar.

This work involves a vast array of materials and in depth arrangement, a long period of research and large numbers of participants, and has gained influence and obvious achievements. It is also a rare phenomenon in the development of national culture and folk literature in China.

Many theoretical, academic and practical issues have been put forward in this work that have lasted for half a century. These issues, in turn, have inspired us to deepen our research.

We possess rich and vivid first-hand materials that other countries do not have access to. Our academic research is built on a solid foundation, so in this field, we should make our due contribution to the development of world epics.

During our research on and publishing of Gesar, we have also carried out various academic activities, encouraged artists to give performances and, since 1989, have held four international symposiums on Gesar. Gesar's influence on international academic circles is expanding and selected sections and stories ofGesar have been translated into English, Russian, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Indian and Finn. Research on Gesar is now an international subject and will continue developing.

Currently, a work group on Gesar bringing together the mature, the middle-aged and the young has been established in China. Most people in this group are Tibetan, along with other nationalities, such as the Hans, Mongolian, Tu and Hui. Their research field covers singing and reciting, collecting, arranging, translating and publishing King Gesar and other academic studies. Many domestic and foreign scholars believe that this work has been developing so fast that it has become one of the most active projects in China's Tibet studies circles and even in folk literature circles. A scientific research system for Gesar with China's characteristics has been formed and will continue to develop. People have come to realize Gesar's great potential as a subject and its rich cultural connotation. So it will play an important role and exert profound influence in the course of expanding and developing Tibet's outstanding cultural tradition and in constructing a new national culture.

The collecting and arrangement of Gesar continues. Parts of Gesar have been preserved in handwritten copies, wood-carved editions or oral versions passed down from previous generations, so varying editions have emerged, each of these "variant editions" bears its own characteristics and has its own audience. Furthermore, each is worthy of being handed down for its unique meaning and values, and can not be replaced. Folk artists say the stories of the hero King Gesar are as "colorful as the hairs of a variegated horse". There are hundreds of volumes in sections and variant editions of Gesar extant in Tibet. No epic in the world has had such magnificent momentum. Gesar, rich in content, has circulated widely, and is deeply loved by the people. However, great difficulties exist in reading and appreciating this great epic, because no reader can grasp and absorb such an enormous amount of material, even professional researchers. Because such a large amount of vivid firsthand materials, and variant editions are now scattered across Tibet, it's very important to select excellent and essential sections and to publish selected volumes that reflect Gesar's theme, basic contents, major plot, artisty and overall style and features.

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This selected edition should bear the cultural elegance and distinctive characteristics of the nationality, region and times. It should embody inherent thought, social meaning and artistic charm in a centralized, prominent, and strong way, becoming an encyclopaedia of ancient Tibetan society and history It should focus on showing the great achievments and academic research in this field of the 20th century, especially since the founding of the People's Republic of China. This is our contribution to the new century and new millennium. Today, due to profound social reform in Tibetan society and rapid development of science and technology, the ancient epic Gesar has been preserved in complete form. Gesar will be inherited, propagated and enlarged under new historical conditions, so that it will radiate new and brilliant rays in the construction of new Tibetan culture.

This work has caught the attention of various social circles: in 1988 and 1990, representatives of the National People's Congress and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference put forward proposals that our country should give great support to the Gesar work, allocate special funding for the publication of selected editions of Gesar and make it a formal national-level edition. These proposals were approved by some departments concerned; the plan was formally adopted in 1995 and got special national financial support.

The editing of Gesar requires us not only to retain the innate style and characteristics of folk literature and ofGesar's romantic charm, but also to extract and refine the work to make it more outstanding, strong, appealing and charming. From oral transmission to literary record, Gesar has become an arranged work, making it more convenient to be kept and spread. This is a common rule of all great epics and excellent worldclass folk literary epics with wide popularity. Works such as Homer's Epics, the Indian Epic and the Finish epic Kalvala have basically gone through this process.

We plan to edit and publish forty volumes of Gesar, including the total content of The Heavenly Realm to the Reassuring Three Realms. There are about 20,000 lines of poetry with 400,000 words in each volume. One volume may be divided into two or three sections, amounting to 800,000 lines of poetry with 16 million words. This shows that in spite of our cautious selection, the length of this edition is still very large, and naturally it will be rich in content. As a great epic by nature, Gesar was created through the collective effort of many Tibetans over the course of its development. During Gesar's evolution, many cultural intellectuals, especially scholar monks, participated in its collection, arranging, recording and printing. They made an indelible contribution to Gesar's preservation and propogation. But if we analyze Tibetan society, history, and unique culture, we can see that Gesar emerged by the singing of bards, not by the writing of intellectuals. So over the course of publishing Gesar, we should remember this fundamental characteristic.

An elderly singer we had the fortune to come upon, Grags-pa, turned out to be the most outstanding con- temporary bard of Gesar. He made a remarkable contribution to our collection of Gesar. Before he died, Grags-pa sang 25 volumes, amounting to 600,000 lines of poetry and more than 6 million words. Grags-pa and his extensive knowledge of Gesar represented a valuable cultural heritage and a huge spiritual treasure house. His was the most systematic and complete compilation of Gesar; this fantastic contribution not only reflected people's artist Grags-pa's intelligence and artisftic gift, but also was a crystallization of his life.

This selected edition uses Grags pa's performance of Gesar as its foundation, and consults the singing editions of bSam-grub, Tshe-ring dbang-vdus, gYumed, Ngam-ring, Gu-ru rgyal-mtshan and other bards. It also builds on the advantages of various script copies, carved copies and handwritten copies. As for Gesar's structure, in line with tradition, some sections like the Heavenly Realm, Birth of a Hero, and Winning the Title of a King through Horse Racing are used as a preface to describe the basic framework of the epic, followed by four Histories of Subduing Devils. The heroic deeds performed by Gesar in his subduing of four lords of devils constitute the main body of the epic. If the epic Gesar is regarded as an artistic palace, these four Histories of Subduig Devils are its pillars. And other parts are derived from this architecture. Thus emerged "eighteen larger Dzongs (state),""eighteen middle Dzongs,""eighteen smaller Dzongs", and the edition ends with "Saving Mother from Hell" and the successful reassuring three Realms.

When folk bards are singing and reciting Gesar, they usually summarize the epic with the following three sentences:"The Heavenly Realm sent an envoy to descend to the earthly world; various disputes existed in the middle world; the envoy finished his mission in hell. ""The Heavenly Realm sent an envoy to descend to the earthly world" refers to the idea that all deities discussed matters in the Heavenly Realm and decided to send the son of the Heavenly Deity Gesar to descend to the earthly world to subdue evil spirits. He helped the weak and constrained the strong to save the common people from the sea of bitterness.

The line "Various disputes existed in the middle world" goes through the whole process from Gesar's birth to his return to the Heavenly Realm. This history constitutes the entirety of his heroic deeds and serves as the main part of the epic. "The envoy finished his mission in hell" means that Gesar has finished his mission to save his mother and all suffering sentient creatures from hell, and then he returned to the Heavenly Realm.

This epic introduces the whole life of Gesar, who, regardless of brutal forces and hardships, performed heroic deeds using his amazing willpower and magical power. The work sings the praise of the struggles for justice and brightness to triumph over evil and darkness. And it embodies the themes of subduing evil spirits, punishing evil and praising good, helping the weak, constraining the strong, eliminating the cruel and pacifying the good people, maintaining truth and justice, removing bitterness, unfairness and violence, bringing benefit to common people, and promoting healthy tendencies. These themes run through the whole epic. Because Gesar reflects people's bitterness and strong desire for a beautiful happy life, it arouses strong sympathy. This is the main reason why Gesar has been handed down from generation to generation for such a long time.

This selected edition was compiled with the following artistic structure:the general principle was not only to select the excellent parts and the essence of Gesar while maintaining its original style and cultural details , but also to refine these qualities in order to make them more outstanding, striking and touching, shocking and artistically charming, and readable. This is in the best interests of Gesar's future, propogation and development.

While the China Folk Artist Association was editing Three Collected Sections, the group proposed that the work should be scientific and complete, use representative themes, plots and main characters, and the style of writing should remain unchanged. We should carefully study those principles and carry them out in practice. This selected edition will reflect the highest level and latest results of the contemporary work in this field in China and in the world. It will be tested by time and practice and examined by the masses, as well as by foreign and domestic experts and scholars; it will be handed down forever.

In that case, as with all excellent national culture, the work must not and should not be owned by any one country; it should become part of the common spirit and wealth of future generations of all mankind. It can serve as a guide for translation into Chinese, minority scripts in China and various foreign languages, play an active role in cultural exchanges, and display the outstanding national culture of China to the world. It is our deep belief that Gesar will play a very important role in improving cross-nation cultural exchanges and in increasing friendly comunications and mutual understanding among peoples throughout the world. In this way, Gesar also show its strong artistic vitality.

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These selected volumes have six groups of exquisite illustrations, and contain 250 plates. They were painted in the traditional method of drawing "Thangka." As an important element of Tibetan art, the "Thang-ka"has a very long history. The Tibetan Thangka has close ties with murals: murals are drawn on walls, while the Thang-ka is pained on scrolls. "Thang" means "display" in the Tibetan language, and the contents of murals are displayed to more people in a Thang-ka style. In Lhasa of Tibet and in Gunbum (sKu vbum) Monastery of Qinghai Province, grand ceremonies of "sunning the Buddha" are held on important festivals every year. During this period, rare and large Thang kas collected in monasteries will be displayed to Buddhist monks, nuns and the masses.

The art of the Tibetan Thang-ka absorbs the essence and characteristics of painting from the ancient Central Plains and India. The Thang-ka borrows from styles of painting from all over the world, as well as from traditional Chinese painting. It differs not only from oil paintings, but also from traditional Chinese paintings and mural art. It is not simple imitation and duplicaton of murals, but a unique artistic form created by Tibetans. It combines Eastern and Western art and bears distinctive national and local characteristics, so it is loved deeply by Tibetans. In China and even in the world, the Thang-ka occupies a certain position in the history of painting. The Thangka is characterized by its approach, design and lines. The pigments used in its painting are also very special. For hundreds of years, Thangka art has been introduced to the world, and loved and praised by people of various nationalities at home and abroad.

Today, the best-known and influential museums and art galleries all preserve Tibetan Thang-kas and hold Thang-ka exhibitions. It has become in fashion to collect Thang-kas of different periods, schools and styles. In content, the traditional Thang-ka focuses Tibetan primitive and folk religion, and sings the praises of sacred mountains and lakes the, "Bon Religion" and Buddhism. Most painters of Thang-ka are common people; therefore the art of the Thang-ka is very closely related to colorful Tibetan folk culture.

The Thangka has close ties with Gesar. Before the appearance of handwritten and wood-carved copies of Gesar, the great heroic epic was circulated only by the singing and reciting of folk bards. In order to strengthen their performance, make the audience feel Gesar's appeal and attract more people, some clever bards drew paintings of characters and stories within Gesar. When they were singing and talking, they used pictures, as props. These were early Gesar Thang-ka, and have become a specialart form "Drum Tang (sgrung thang)." "Drum" means the story of Gesar; "Tang" means Thang-ka. "Drum Tang" has the meaning of Thang-ka paintings focused on Gesar.

In the beginning, the bards creations looked very rough. But with artistic practice, and maturing painting skills, many artisic masterpieces emerged.

As the best bard-painters emerged ,the common people began calling them "Lha-bri-ba" in Tibetan. They make a living by painting stories from Gesar and Buddhist scriptures. The epic Gesar and beautiful art ofThang-ka complement each other, creating a stronger artistic effect. Both are fine works and treasures of Tibetan art.

However, due to a long period of feudal serfdom, a time of confusion over political and religious affairs in Tibetan society, theocracy occupied a ruling position in the ideological field, and its negative influence permeated every type of art. So generally speaking, the traditional art ofThang-ka takes deities and Buddhist themes as its main body and content, mostly adopting from stories in Buddhist scriptures. When they go to monasteries to see Thang-ka and murals, they will feel constrained and awed rather than enjoying the beauty According to our design, we should innovate and develop painted illustrations of Gesar on the basis of traditional art. As to themes, we should transform from religions themes to secular ones. We should reform and create methods of expression by absorbing advantages of other painting forms and fusing modern sensibilities and the spirit of the times in order to embody the colorful content of Gesar.

Each illustration can express a certain plot in the Gesar story and the value and meaning of independent existence. However, the illustrations as a whole can also display basic thoughts and the major plot in Gesar and become a complete pictorial biography of Gesar.

Those who painted these illustrations are folk painters in the Tongren District ofHuangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in Qinghai Province, the birthplace of Tibetan "Rab-gong Art."

It is our hope that the old art of Thang-ka will be given a new artistic life because of the illustrations painted in this selected volume. It will embody the spirit of the times and shine brilliantly through the painting of illustrations.

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The process of collecting and arranging Gesar, and academic research, are connected in a systematic project. Like the Talking Textbooks on Gesar written by excellent artists in the eighth "Five-Year Plan/'the new edition serves as a link between the past and the future. It is a very important responsibility to edit and publish a 40-volume selected edition, which is a remarkable work that serves as a milestone in the field. But this selective edition does not include the whole work of Gesar; much other important work remains to be done. We should continue to collect, arrange and publish artists' singing and reciting. establish data centers, foster talented persons, engaged in academic studies, translation and cultural exchanges.

The publishing of the selected edition will not influence or hinder the existence oferlier editions, such as artists' sung, recited, handwritten and wood-carved copies. Our selected edition is only a part of the enormous academic work that needs to be done on Gesar. Given the right conditions, opportunity and I interest, we will publish other editions. This selected edition will push forward, not hinder, academic research on Gesar and the publication of other meaningful editions.