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75-467: The Epic of King Gesar ( Tibetan : གླིང་གེ་སར། , Wylie : gling ge sar ), also spelled Kesar ( / ˈ k ɛ z ər , ˈ k ɛ s -/ ) or Geser (especially in Mongolian contexts), is an epic from Tibet and Central Asia . It originally developed between 200 or 300 BCE and about 600 CE. Following this, folk balladeers continued to pass on the story orally; this enriched the plot and embellished

150-564: A comprehensive survey of the literature of Gesar (Roerich 1942; 277–315) In the 20th century, other Mongolian Geser texts were edited by scientists like Nicholas Poppe and Walther Heissig . The first three volumes of the version known as the Lingtsang-Dege woodblock, which was composed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were published with a very faithful though incomplete French translation by Rolf Stein in 1956. Stein followed this publication with his 600-page magnum opus on

225-563: A female tutelary spirit ( Manene /grandmother) who rides an animal, like the Turkic shamaness kara Chach . (d) Like kara Chach, Gesar's tutelary spirit helps him against a host of monstrous foes in the underworld. (e) Like Bolot, Gesar returns in triumph to the world, bearing the food of immortality and the water of life. (f) Like the Altai shamans, Gesar is borne heavenward on the back of a bird to obtain herbs to heal his people. They conclude that

300-495: A foundation for creating the character Gesar, also known as Sgrung in early history. After further polishing by the oral poets, especially the ballad singers, Gesar became a great epic" (1986:51). Many performers recite episodes from memory or books, while others chant the legendary tales in a state of trance . This last mode bears strong similarities with shamanic practitioners like the pawo mediums and mig mthong diviners . As an heroic song composed or recited by oral bards,

375-768: A historical figure is rarely questioned. ( Samuel 1993 , p. 365) ( Li Lianrong 2001 , p. 334) Some scholars there argued he was born in 1027, on the basis of a note in a 19th-century chronicle, the Mdo smad chos 'byung by Brag dgon pa dkon mchog bstan pa rab. Certain core episodes seem to reflect events recorded at the dawn of Tibetan history: the marriage to a Chinese princess is reminiscent of legends concerning king Songtsän Gampo 's alliance marriage with Princess Wencheng in 641, for example. Legends variously place him in Golok , between Dotō and Domé, or in Markham , Tanak, Öyuk or

450-471: A kind of religious practitioner. Orgyen Tobgyal explained that in the Nyingma perspective, "the real nature of the manifestation we know as Ling Gesar is actually that of Guru Rinpoche himself appearing in the form of a drala " (Wylie: dgra bla, "protective warrior spirit"). Chögyam Trungpa , who represented both Kagyu and Nyingma lineages and founded Shambhala Buddhism in the diaspora , inspired by

525-543: A major spiritual force are performed. Given the central role the epic played over the centuries in Tibetan folk culture, Tibetan Buddhism has incorporated elements from it and interpreted them in religious terms. The Gelug school disapproved of the epic, while the Kagyu and Nyingma schools generally favoured it, seeing it as an expression of the activity of Padmasambhava and as a vehicle for Buddhist teachings, especially of

600-425: A miraculous birth, a despised and neglected childhood, and then becomes ruler and wins his (first) wife 'Brug-mo through a series of marvellous feats. In subsequent episodes he defends his people against various external aggressors, human and superhuman. Instead of dying a normal death he departs into a hidden realm from which he may return at some time in the future to save his people from their enemies. For Samuels,

675-650: A more accessible and contemporary voice was rendered by David Shapiro and published in 2019 as Gesar of Ling: A Bardic Tale from the Snow Land of Tibet. The fourth volume of the epic, generally known as The Battle of Düd and Ling was translated by Jane Hawes, David Shapiro and Lama Chonam and published as The Taming of the Demons: From the Epic of Gesar in 2021 (Shambhala 2021) Another version has been translated into German by Matthias Hermanns (1965). This translation

750-406: A number of magic attributes: white horse, saddle, horseshoe, sword and lock. Tibetan script The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali , Nepali and Old Turkic . The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system

825-518: A ruler. In some Tibetan versions of the epic, a king named Phrom Ge-sar or Khrom Ge-sar figures as one of the kings of the four directions – the name is attested in the 10th century and this Phrom / Khrom preserves an Iranian form (* frōm-hrōm ) for Rūm / Rome . This eastern Iranian word lies behind the Middle Chinese word for (Eastern) Rome ( 拂菻 , Fólín ), namely Byzantium ( phrōm-from<*phywət-lyəm> ). A. H. Francke thought

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900-433: A satisfactory conclusion about the epic's origins cannot be drawn based on the lifespans of historical heroic figures. Jiangbian pointed out that the foundation for the origin of epic is ethnic folk culture. He conjectured that before epics came into being, the Tibetan people "already had a corpus of stories that described the formation of the heavens and the earth, their ethnic origin, and ethnic heroes; these stories provided

975-403: A space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other Indic scripts , each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel ; in the Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal , the language had no tone at the time of

1050-496: A written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it was first initiated by Christian missionaries. In the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as

1125-634: Is a Persian pronunciation of "Rome (Byzantium) Caesar", in overwhelming an intrusive Arab army in Gandhara sometime between 739 and 745, may have formed the historic core behind the Gesar epic in Tibet. In the records of the earliest rulers of Ladakh, Baltistan, and Gilgit, whose countries were later overrun by Tibetans, royal ancestry is connected to the Bactrian Gesar. In its distinctive Tibetan form,

1200-410: Is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance,

1275-608: Is based on manuscripts collected by Hermanns in Amdo . This book also contains extensive study by Hermanns explaining the epic as the product of the Heroic Age of the nomads of North-eastern Tibet and their interactions with the many other peoples of the Inner Asian steppe. Hermanns believed the epic to pre-date Buddhism in Tibet, and saw in it an expression of the ancient Tibetan archetype of the "heaven-sent king", as found also in

1350-666: Is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since

1425-517: Is not quite clear. Distinctive features of these versions of the Gesar epic have led some scholars to the view that the Buryat and Mongolian versions are not directly dependent on a Tibetan original. Setsenmunkh has argued, and the idea was shared by C. Damdinsuren and B. Vladimirtsev, that the written Mongolian versions stem from one source which has not survived. This version contains the following seven episodes: Chadwick and Zhirmunsky consider that

1500-528: Is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/). The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while

1575-560: Is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The head ( མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo ) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/. The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags , IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ , which

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1650-578: Is used across the Himalayas and Tibet . The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India , Nepal , Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha , Marchen and the multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography,

1725-507: The Dzogchen school. Consequentially, the question of whether babdrung (visionary Gesar bards) should be regarded as religious practitioners ( Wylie : chos pa ) will be answered differently by those who favor and those who oppose the epic; the babdrung themselves, however, generally emphasize the connection of the epic with the Dharma ( Wylie : chos , THL : chö ) and see themselves as

1800-898: The Latin script . Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan , others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL). The first version of Microsoft Windows to support

1875-571: The 15th century at the latest as shown by the mentions in the rLangs-kyi Po-ti bSe-ru by Byang chub rgyal mtshan. Despite the age of the tradition, the oldest extant text of the epic is actually the Mongolian woodblock print commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor of Qing China in 1716. None of the Tibetan texts that have come down to us are earlier than the 18th century, although they are likely based on older texts that have not survived. In

1950-518: The 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform , to write Tibetan as it is pronounced ; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud . The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and the western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that,

2025-499: The Buryat he is known as Abai Geser Khubun . The Khalkha oral version calls him Altan Bogdo khan. An Altai version calls him Sädängkäi Käsär and Sartaktai Käsär . Among the Balti and Ladakhi people he is most famously known as Gyalpo Kaiserr. The epic has a vast number of variants in plot and motifs, but while there is little point in looking for a consistent picture, the core of the story, similar to that of many legendary cycles, has been summed up as follows: King Ge-sar has

2100-591: The Byzantines . Numismatic evidence and some accounts speak of a Bactrian ruler Phrom-kesar , specifically the Kabul Shahi of Gandhara , which was ruled by the Turkic king Fromo Kesaro ("Caesar of Rome"), who was father-in-law of the king of the Kingdom of Khotan around the middle of the 8th century CE. In early Bon sources, From Kesar is always a place name, and never refers, as it does later, to

2175-685: The Gesar belt of China. Tibetan , Mongolian , Buryat , Balti , Ladakhi , and Monguor singers maintain the oral tradition, and the epic has attracted intense scholarly curiosity as one of the few oral epic traditions to survive as a performing art. Yugur and Salar versions of the epic are also recorded among the Balti of Baltistan , the Burusho people of Hunza and Gilgit , and the Kalmyk and Ladakhi people in Nepal , and among various Altai , Turkic , and Tungus tribes. The first printed version

2250-461: The Gesar epic lies towards the shamanic pole in the continuum of Tibetan culture and religion, which he sees as evincing a constant tension between 'clerical' and 'shamanic' Buddhism, the latter grounded in its earlier Bon substrate. (( Samuel 1993 , pp. 7–23); ( Samuel 2005 , p. 166)) The received versions of the Ge-sar cycle are thickly overlaid with Buddhist ideas and motifs, and detecting

2325-551: The Gesar epic was published in Beijing in 1716 in a Mongolian version. It was this text which formed the basis for the first Western-language translation, a Russian version published by the Moravian missionary Isaac Jacob Schmidt in 1836. A German translation followed in 1839. Another Moravian missionary, August Hermann Francke , collected and translated a version from Lower Ladakh between 1905 and 1909. In 1942 George Roerich made

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2400-509: The Greek philosophers of the polis , used the Gesar epic's detailed tales about an idealized nomadic government formed by the Mukpo clan, which constructed a nomadic confederation of imperial reach, to develop a model of a Tibetan polity. The government of China strongly supports the cult of Gesar and its practice among Han Chinese , according to some as a counter-force to Tibetan Buddhism. In

2475-482: The King which were afterward translated. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. A contemporary academic suggests that the script was instead developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to

2550-470: The Kingdom of Phyigling 'Jar were composed by 8th Khamthrül Rinpoche (1929–1980) , in which Gesar appears, according to some interpretations, to travel to Germany to vanquish the demon-king, perhaps alluding to Adolf Hitler . Tibetan history has often swung between centralized and stateless poles, and the epic of Gesar reflects the tensions between central authority, as embodied in religious orthodoxy, and

2625-711: The Post-Graduate Department of the University of Calcutta, which he held till 1919. He went abroad to study at the University of London where he studied Phonology , Indo-European Linguistics , Prakrit , Persian , Old Irish , Gothic and other languages. He then went to Paris and did research at the Sorbonne in Indo-Aryan, Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics, Greek and Latin. His teacher

2700-644: The Sanskrit word dvīpa , the secondary meaning of "continent". Ling was a petty kingdom located in Kham between the Yangtze and Yalong River . The Gsumge Mani Stone Castle located near the source of Yalong River houses a shrine dedicated to Gesar at its centre. A historical kingdom of Lingtsang ( Wylie : gling tshang ) existed until the 20th century. The success of the Turk Fromo Kesaro , whose name

2775-527: The Tibetan Epic entitled Recherches sur l'Epopee et le Barde au Tibet . This remains the most in-depth study of the Tibetan Gesar tradition. A literal translation of these same woodblocks into English was written by Kornman, Khandro, and Chonam and published by Shambhala in 2012 as The Epic of Gesar of Ling: Gesar's Magical Birth, Early Years, and Coronation as King. A retelling of these volumes in

2850-732: The Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista . The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows. Mac OS -X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani. The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme

2925-551: The Tibetan name Gesar derived from Sanskrit . S.K. Chatterji , introducing his work, noted that the Ladakh variant of Kesar, Kyesar , in Classical Tibetan Skye-gsar meant 'reborn/newly born', and that Gesar/Kesar in Tibetan, as in Sanskrit signifies the ' anther or pistil of a flower', corresponding to Sanskrit kēsara, whose root 'kēsa' (hair) is Indo-European . In Tibet, the existence of Gesar as

3000-490: The Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota , who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at the Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c.  620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by

3075-724: The Turkic invasion of Bengal in the thirteenth century, the Chatterji family left their ancestral village in West Bengal and took shelter in East Bengal . Later Professor Chatterji's great grandfather Sri Bhairab Chatterji, migrated to a village in the district of Hooghly from his ancestral village home in the district of Faridpur in East Bengal , now in Bangladesh . Bhairab Chatterji, like many other Kulin Brahmins of

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3150-509: The arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of XFree86 . Tibetan was originally one of

3225-407: The basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds. In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions. Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in

3300-566: The basis of phonetic similarities that the name Gesar reflects the Roman title Caesar , and that the intermediary for the transmission of this imperial title from Rome to Tibet may have been a Turkic language, since kaiser (emperor) entered Turkic through contact with the Byzantine Empire , where Caesar ( Καῖσαρ ) was an imperial title. The medium for this transmission may have been via Mongolian Kesar . The Mongols were allied with

3375-418: The consonants ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /a/ can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position

3450-404: The creation of the world and Tibet's cosmic origins. In other variants, Gautama Buddha is never mentioned, or a certain secular irony is voiced against the national religion. According to Samten Karmay , Gesar arose as the hero of a society still thinly permeated by Buddhism and the earlier myths associate him with pre-Buddhist beliefs like the mountain cult. In most episodes, Gesar fights against

3525-733: The day, subsisted mainly on polygamy. Bhairab had a few wives, but he lived with the one who had belonged to the village in Hooghly. Bhairab's son Isvarchandra, the grandfather of Chatterji, had served the East India Company in North India during the Mutiny. After retirement, he built a modest one storied house for himself in Calcutta and shifted there the residence of the family from the Hooghly village. Isvar's son Haridas Chatterji

3600-440: The enemies of dharma , an old warrior ethos, where physical power, courage, a combative spirit, and qualities such as cunning and deceit prevail. There is a 2017 version of this translated into English. Buryat versions of the epic focus mainly on Gesar's battles with various demons, rather than on military campaigns. They also contain a detailed and drastically different prologue to Gesar's exploits. According to these versions,

3675-460: The epic appears to date from the time of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet marked by the formation of the Sarma or "new schools" of Tibetan Buddhism, although the story includes early elements taken from Indian tantricism . The oral tradition of this epic is most prominent in the two remote areas associated with the pre-Buddhist ethnic religion known as Bon ( Ladakh and Zanskar in

3750-521: The epic of Gesar has been, for centuries, improvised on, and there is therefore no canonical or monumental version, as one finds in, for example, Greek epic. A given Gesar singer would know only his local version, which nonetheless would take weeks to recite. It has been responsive to regional culture and folklore, local conflicts, religious trends, and even political changes on the world stage. For example, in modern times, when news of World War II trickled into Tibet, additional episodes on how Gesar Conquers

3825-448: The far west of Tibet and Kham and Amdo in the east), strongly suggesting that the story has native roots. However, the oral versions known to us today are not, according to R. A. Stein, earlier than the written versions, but rather depend on them. As an oral tradition, a large number of variants have always existed, and no canonical text can be written. However, the epic narrative was certainly in something similar to its present form by

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3900-480: The first class in 1911. His childhood friend was the famous industrialist Nagendra Nath Das founder of Power Tools And Appliance Co. Ltd. In 1913, he completed his M.A. in English literature, again standing first. The same year, he was appointed lecturer in English at Vidyasagar College, Kolkata where his colleague was the thespian, Sisir Kumar Bhaduri . In 1914, Chatterji became assistant professor of English in

3975-592: The grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in the Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or to introduce

4050-488: The great Tengri Khormusta (Turmas, Khorbustu, Hormust) khan of the celestial tribes of the West waged war with Atai Ulan, khan of the malicious gods of the east. After his victory, Khormusta dismembers Atai Ulan to prevent his resurrection and throws his body parts to Earth, where they become demons and monsters. The act almost causes the extinction of humanity; the middle son of Khormusta ( Bukhe Belligte or Uile Butelegcji )

4125-452: The introduction of the script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota . The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date the c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate

4200-508: The language. The story reached its final form and height of popularity in the early 12th century. The epic relates the heroic deeds of the culture hero Gesar, the fearless lord of the legendary kingdom of Ling ( Wylie : gling ). It is recorded variously in poetry and prose, through oral poetry performance, and is sung widely throughout Central Asia and South Asia . Its classic version is found in central Tibet. Some 100 bards of this epic ( Wylie : sgrung , "tale") are still active today in

4275-461: The late 19th and early 20th centuries a woodblock printing of the story was compiled by a scholar-monk from Ling-tsang, a small kingdom northeast of Derge , with inspiration from the prolific Tibetan philosopher Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso . The wide variety of cultures in which the Gesar epic is encountered means that the name for the hero varies. In Tibetan legends Gesar is variously called Gesar of Ling , Ling Gesar , and Gesar Norbu Dradul . Among

4350-567: The main outlines of the cycle as we have it in Mongolia, Tibet and Ladakh show an outline that conforms to the pattern of heroic poetry among the Turkic peoples . (a) Like the Kirghiz hero Bolot, Gesar, as part of an initiation descends as a boy into the underworld. (b) The gateway to the underworld is through a rocky hole or cave on a mountain summit. (c) He is guided through the otherworld by

4425-760: The myths of the founders of the Yarlung Dynasty, who founded the Tibetan Empire (7th-9th centuries CE). The most accessible rendering of Gesar in English is by Alexandra David-Néel in her "Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling", published in French in 1933. In the occult system of Nicholas Roerich , Gesar is presented as a hero who is believed to accept his physicality in Shambhala . It's told that he would appear with an invincible army to set general justice. Thunderous arrows will be its weapon. Gesar also has

4500-540: The original 'heroic' form is difficult. Historical analysis to sift out an ancient core narrative winnows the archaic folkloric leitmotifs from features that show distinct and historically identifiable Buddhist influences. Samuel, comparing three Gesar traditions, Mongolian, Eastern Tibetan and Ladakhi, that developed relatively autonomously, postulates the following core narrative shared by all three: to which one might add Tibetan versions differ very greatly in details. Often Buddhist motifs are conspicuous, with episodes on

4575-438: The outlying regions of Kham and Amdo. His wars are campaigns of defence against hostile powers intent on subduing the kingdom of gLing, which are often construed as anti-Buddhist. But his vanquishing of the dzongs or fortresses preserves an ambiguity, since these were potential outposts of the state. Until recently, the tale was forbidden reading in many Tibetan monasteries. In some monasteries, however, rituals invoking Gesar as

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4650-404: The radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/ is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it

4725-573: The region of Baltistan the King Kesar's saga was told in homes, especially in winter, but now it is at the verge of distinction due to availability of the media devices. The region being inhabited by 100% Muslim population, the story was told only for recreational purposes and people would consider that the Kesar was not a human being but "hla hlu", special creatures of God who are given special command and ability by God. The first printed edition of

4800-453: The script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. One aspect of the Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals or they can be written in other forms, such as subscript and superscript forming consonant clusters . To understand how this works, one can look at

4875-816: The scripts in the first version of the Unicode Standard in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts: Suniti Kumar Chatterji Suniti Kumar Chatterji FRS (26 November 1890 – 29 May 1977)

4950-404: The stories of the Gesar cycle were well known in the territory of the Uyghur Khaganate . According to Li Lianrong ( 李連榮 ), By narrowing the period of its creation to the tenth and eleventh centuries, the dynamic of literary composition is erroneously attributed to an oral epic. Furthermore, the epic reflects Tibetan society during the sixth to ninth centuries rather than the tenth century. Thus

5025-401: The translation of Buddhist scriptures emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters . As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa , there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects

5100-456: The village of Panam on the Nyang River . Given that the mythological and allegorical elements of the story defy place and time, the historicity of figures in the cycle is indeterminate. Though the epic was sung all over Tibetan-speaking regions, with Kham and Amdo long regarded as the centres for its diffusion, traditions do connect Gesar with the former Kingdom of Ling ( Wylie : gling ). In Tibetan, gling means "island" but can have, as with

5175-457: The vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords , especially transcribed from the Sanskrit . The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti , Chinese and Sanskrit , often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from

5250-410: The wild, nomadic forces of the autarkic periphery. There are versions that adopt Gesar as a lama showing him as a tamer of the wild, but, in so far as his epic retains his old lineaments as a maverick master of shamanic powers, he represents the stateless, anarchic dimension of Tibet's margins, and is rather a tamer of corrupt monastic clerics and, thus, it is not coincidental that the epic flourished on

5325-492: Was a Mongolian text published in Beijing in 1716. There is a very large body of versions, each with many variants, reputed by some to be the longest in the world. Although there is no one definitive text, the Chinese compilation of its Tibetan versions so far has filled some 120 volumes; it consists of more than one million verses divided into 29 "chapters". Western calculations speak of more than 50 different books edited so far in China, India, and Tibet. It has been proposed on

5400-605: Was an Indian linguist, educationist and litterateur. He was a recipient of the second-highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Vibhushan . Chatterji was born on 26 November 1890, at Shibpur in Howrah . He was the son of Haridas Chattopadhyay, an affluent Bengali Kulin Brahmin . According to the family history, their ancestors were originally residents of a village named chatuti in the Rarh region of present-day West Bengal . During

5475-487: Was sent from the realm of heaven to undo the damage. The Buryat version contains 9 branches or song episodes ( uliger ), each devoted to tell how Gesar defeats an enemy. There are a number of stories not connected with the foregoing nine branches described above; for example, a story in which Gesar shames Gume-Khan of China , or one in which he exterminates the Four Recklings of Evil, demonic beings whose nature

5550-567: Was the father of Suniti Kumar Chatterji. Chatterji was a meritorious student, and passed the Entrance (school leaving) examination from the Mutty Lal Seal 's Free School (1907), ranking sixth, and the FA (pre-university examination) from the renowned Scottish Church College , standing third. He did his Major (Honours) in English literature from Presidency College, Kolkata, standing first in

5625-633: Was the internationally acclaimed linguist, Jules Bloch . After returning to India in 1922, he joined the University of Calcutta as the Khaira Professor of Indian Linguistics and Phonetics. After retirement in 1952, he was made Professor Emeritus and later in 1965, the National Research Professor of India for Humanities. Suniti Kumar accompanied Rabindranath Tagore to Malaya , Siam , Sumatra , Java , and Bali , where he delivered lectures on Indian art and culture. He

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