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| The pages of the Tibetan manuscript of "Geser" |
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| The Tibetan cursive manuscript of "Geser" |
The Tibetan versions were for the most part studied by the foreign scholars who did not dispose of the sufficient material. The Russian scholars though agreeing that there was the Tibetan variant were not concerned with the comparative analysis of the Mongolian and Buryat variants.
As for the Tibetan epic of Geser there is no unique opinion among the scholars. The majoirity of the foreign scholars were inclined to think the Mongolian version to be borrowed from the Tibetan one. Meanwhile those supporting that view among them J. Schmidt, A, Francke, A. Shifner, R.-A. Stein, I. Schubert did not get a clear idea of at least the contents of the Tibetan variant of “Geser”, its connections with the Mongolian and Buryat versions.
There is still another point of view, for example, that of the German scholar B. Schott who spoke against the view of the Tibetan origin of the history of Geser. The Mongolian tribes at different times travelled far into Tibet but they preserved the tales of Geser and got quite irritated if indicated was some other place of its origin. The Mongols living in Tibet were to preserve their own versions of Geser both in the oral and written form.
Of the same opinion was B. Laufer in his review of A. Francke’s records, he supposed that the fragments of the Ladak version of “Geser” written down by him are brief, unconnected, jerky, non-uniform and hence on the basis of those brief passages it was too risky to ascribe the Tibetan origin to the Mongolian version”- B. Laufer wrote. This fair conclusion has not found support with the Mongolists. It is the problem of interconnections of the Mongolian and the Tibetan versions that remains a blank spot in the Mongolian studies.
The first to inform of the existence of the Tibetan version of “Geser” was the Hungarian scholar Alexander Choma de Koreshi. Then the Russian academicians V.P.Vasiliyev and Ya. I.Schmidt started looking for the Tibetan version in Peking and Mongolia but with no success. It was academician Schifner who succeeded in the end of the XIX century managed to get a copy of the Tibetan story of Geser with the help of missionary Yeshke who lived in Ladakh.
One more Tibetan variant of “Geser” was written down by missionary A. Francke in the Ladakhi dialect and published in a few issues with a short retelling in the English and German languages. The record presents the fragments of the stories given by a few persons from the various villages in Ladakh. The author calls them the winter and spring myths or fairy-tales connecting them with the solar themes.
Francke’s publications were appreciated by the researchers fairly well although it was known the the texts were written down not from true storytellers. There are the following sections in those publications:
1) Geser’s struggle with a giant, the khor tsar
2) Geser’s travel to China, his marriage to the Chinese tsar’s daughter
3) Prologue to the story of Geser
4) Glorifying Geser’s victory over the enemy
5) Marriage rites
Upon the whole A. Francke’s records do not correspond to the corresponding gragments of the Mongolian version. The fact of some literary treatment of the text is of no doubt. Besides A. Francke noted that the work reflected the pre-Buddhist period in the history of Tibet.
The French traveler Alexandra David-Neel and lama Yongden published in 1931 in French a brief rendering of the Kam version of “Geser”. A. David-Neel as well as her predecessors – the Mongolian scholar Sumba-Khambo, the Indian scholar Sarat-Chandra Das, the Russian scholar Ya.I. Schmidt, the Englishmen Charles Bell and Joseph Rock think Geser to be a historical personality who was celebrated as a military leader.
The first serious study of the Tibetan “Geser” and its ties with the Mongolian version belongs to Yu.N. Roerich. His article on the topic given was published in 1942 in Calcutta in English.
To the number of most well-known researchers of the Tibrtan “Geser” belongs the French scholar R.-A. Stein who published in 1956 in Paris the Tibetan version of “Lin Geser”.
In 1959 the Chinese scholar Shiui Khuve Chiun collected and published a tibetan version having named it “The Tibetan Poem”. Published in 1966 in Khukhe-Khoto was “A brief collection of the literary works of the Tibetan people”, prepared by the chair of the Chinese language of the highest national school. In this edition there are the following versions of the Tibetan “Geser”: “Khii Di debter”, “Lin Geser”, “The Ladakhi Geser”, “Tsan geser”.
One should give peculiar attention to the monograph by Mongolian scholar Ts. Damdinsuren “The historical roots of the Geseriade” (1957). In it the author paid great attention to the “Lin Geser” which has according to the researcher the author who is Norbo Choibeb, a tantrist lama who lived in the XI-XII centuries in North-East Tibet (Amdo).
No doubt Norbo Choibeb created his writing under the greatest influence of the religious writings. In A.I/. Ulanov’s view one cannot deny the fact that the author made some use of the oral tradition of the Geseriade that was spread among the Monholian-Tibatan tribes of Amdo and Kukunor.
