Epic
Manas
Манас
Anonymous · 1885
Synopsis
Born to Jakyp, a rich old man long without children, Manas becomes from childhood the champion who gathers the Kyrgyz tribes scattered by their enemies. With his forty companions, among them his sworn brother Almambet, who came from the opposing camp, and mounted on his horse Akkula, he leads the great campaign against Beijing, while his wife Kanykey watches over the people; the following songs tell of his son Semetey and his grandson Seytek.
Context
The version of Sagymbay Orozbakov, written down between 1922 and 1926, runs to nearly five hundred thousand lines, far more than the Iliad or the Mahabharata; all the versions together exceed five hundred and fifty thousand. The manaschi, specialised reciters, say they received the text in a dream. The first episode written down was recorded in 1856, from the mouth of a reciter long left unnamed, by a Kazakh scholar on a journey; the notebook was lost and reappeared only in 1964, in an academy in Leningrad.
Who it is for
An immense epic, best approached through an anthology. Filmed recitations give an idea that the text alone does not.
Prizes and reception
Inscribed on the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2013, it gave rise in 1995 to celebrations of its supposed millennium.