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| P. Stepanov |
“Abai Geser khubun”. Inv. No 1480.
It is written down from P. Stepanov by a folklore expert S. P. Baldaev in August 1940 in the village of Nygda, the Alar district, the Irkutsk region. The volume is 2240 lines in verse, 78 typewritten pages.
Preserved in P. Stepanov’s variant on the whole is the ancient plot line and the main motives that are as follows: Geser’s descent on the Earth, his uncommon second birth on the Earth, the heroic marriage proposal and marriage, war campaigns and battles and Geser’s struggle with the mangadkhais and alien enemies. However the contents is given in a more laconic way as compared with the variants.
The plot line
I. Geser’s descent on the Earth and his second birth. On the Earth the evil Sharablin khans and three hundred shulmases (devils) cause suffering, distress and calamity. Dying and suffering are very many people.
At the council of the tengries (deities) the decision is taken to send onto the Earth with the mission of saving the people Erkhe Manzan-khubun (future bator Geser), Khan Khurmas’s son. Having descended on the Earth the deities’ envoy is again born by the earthly parents – Sengel-khan and Sengelen-khatan. The parents give their son the name of Nyukhata Sura (Snotnose Sura).
II. The first victories of the baby-bogatyr. Nyukhata Sura kills the elder devil who assumed the aspect of lama. Then he having turned into a lama goes to the three hundred shulmases-devils. He manages to drive them into the sea bottom and bury under the ice.
III. Geser’s marriage. Nyukhata Sura goes out for a trip. He meets a beauty, the daughter of Manzan Khitad-khan aand marries her. The girl agrees to get married to him because she is in an awkward position for Nyukhata Sura put under her a puppy assuring that she as if gave birth to it. Then Nyukhata Sura takes part in the bridegroom’s contests, wins victory over all the rivals and gets married to the beautiful daughter of Erjen Bayan-khan.
Both the wives are surprised at the strange conduct of the husband who disappears at night. Having suspected that something goes wrong they follow him seized the tie-strings of his coat-degel. Nyukhata Sura comes to the sacred hill Segte Sumer wher he addresses his celestial patrons and obtains the fighting equipment, the clothes and the prophetic horse from the elder deity Esege Malan-tengri. After this Nyukhata Sura assumes the bogatyr aspect of Geser.
IV. Geser’s marriage to Ana Mergen. Geser goes hunting to the taiga. There he meets Ana Mergen, the daughter of the Dalai Lama-aqai who had taken the aspect of a young hunter. The bogatyr marries her.
V. The turning of Geser in a donkey and saving him by his sister. Geser sets out for a battle against one hundred and five headed Yekhe-mangadkhai who with the help of her magic power having dissacrated Geser turns him in a donkey. In the absence of the bogatyr the three sharablin khans attack his lands in order to get hold of his wife Ana Mergen.
Geser’s younger sister looks for him everywhere and finally finds him at the nine hundred five-headed mangadkhai’s place. She purifies him from dirt with water and juniper and gets back his bogatur’s form. In the look of Olzoboi (Foundling) he comes to the sharablin khans. Here he kills Gal Nurma-khan, catches and destroys the the souls of the sharablin khans. He kills Gal Nurma-khan, catches and does away with the souls of the sharablin khans, who came in the form of white and grey butterfly; then he does away with the two babies that were in the belly of the wife of Shaji Nomon-khan and were born at the moment when the mother died away.
