Читать книгу Geser. The Вuryat heroic epic - Ye. Khundaeva - Страница 3

In 1906 one of variants of the Buryat epic “Geser” was recorded by Ts. Zh. Zhamtsarano from a well-known Buryat rhapsode Manshud Imegenov (Emegenov) in the Kukunut ulus (now the Ekhirit-Bulagat district, Irkutsk province). The epic shows how Geser was sent to the Earth by the Tengris – the celestial deities. He performs his heroic deeds for the people’s happiness and peace. The epic depicts the mythological level of consciousness. One of the best folklore traditions of the Buryat people, the heroic epic of the mighty hero-bator and liberator of the whole world from all evil is a wonderful creation of the gifted epic-tellers – uligershins who came from the common people and partook of the rich spiritual and world view heritage of their people and expressed it with help of the magic of word.

Many people have the fascinating tales narrating of the ideals of kindness and fairness.These are the following: the Uzbek “Alpamysh”, the Kyrgiz “Manas”, the Turkmen Gyor-ogly; the Kalmyck “Jangar”, the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf”, the French knights’ novel ‘Tristan and Isolda’, the Karel and Finnish ‘Kalevala’, the Evenki Nimngakans, the Sakha-yakut ‘Nyurgun-bootur’, ‘Meldiu the Mighty, etc. All of them sing glory to life and beauty, kindness and fairness, common sense and wisdom of men, their struggle for the highest ideals, happiness, love and prosperity. The Buryat Geseriade is a unique creation of the Buryat people, it’s very big and surpasses in size the epics of many other peoples. It is sometimes called the Iliade of Central Asia. The Geseriade is spread on the vast territory from the tropical Ganges, a river in North India and Bangladesh flowing from the Himalayas into the cape of Bengal, to the cold Amur in North-East Asia; from the sunlit Yellow river in East China to the cool Lena in East Siberia.