Book Review: "The Song Of King Gesar" By Alai

Translated by Howard Goldblatt and
Sylvia Li-chun Li, Edinburgh:
Canongate, 2013

The train is crowded but most of the time I’m early enough to secure a seat. Then I pull out a book because the confined time among strangers turned out to be a perfect slot for undisrupted, non-work related study. That’s also how I read “The Song of King Gesar” by Alai. It made the daily commute to work an exciting journey from the heavenly abodes where Buddhas and Bodhisattvas dwell to the troubled land of Gling where people can’t tell right from wrong.

Constantly deluded by inner and outer “demons”, the people of Gling are caught up in power struggles over land and possessions. It is to this raw place that Buddhist saints send an emissary to help establish law and order. The divine child, later to become King Gesar of Gling, shows extraordinary abilities from the beginning. Already at birth he can walk and talk like a three-year old, and at age thirteen, he is a grown man winning the throne in a horserace and the hand in marriage of Gling’s most beautiful woman.

Even though the people accept Gesar’s divine origin they are still misled time and again by the evil Khrotung, Gesar’s paternal uncle who, vying for the throne, conspires against his nephew using black magic. Khrotung is the enemy from within while Gesar fights wars against demonic powers that threaten Gling from without. In the end, Gesar defeats them all. When he finally confronts Khrotung over his deeds of darkness, the latter pretends to be very sick and fakes his death by leaving his body using his supernatural powers.

Khrotung’s trick doesn’t work out as planned though and the people burn his corpse. With no body to return to, his “soul” becomes homeless but due to his remorse at the time of death he is able to take a favourable rebirth in a “Pure White Land in the West”. Gesar meanwhile ascends to heaven at the human age of eighty-one, leaving behind a pacified Gling. That’s the plot in a nutshell.

The translators note they left out a couple of chapters in the English edition to make the story more compact. To a reader like me who is neither very familiar with the Tibetan original nor with Alai’s Chinese version, it doesn’t make a difference: From a coherency point of view the abbreviated story reads fine and feels complete.

A new element I particularly liked is the sheepherder who has dreams of Gesar and eventually becomes a famous Gesar bard before loosing it all again. By interspersing chapters with a contemporary bard the author adds a modern twist connecting an ancient story to our times. There are still bards today who sing Gesar’s praise and it is a common claim that the king personally appeared to them in a dream and inspired them. It certainly sounds more impressive than saying they memorised the lyrics based on intellectual effort.

For my taste the author could have gone a step further and also given the traditional characters in the story more individuality. They lack in the breadth of human emotion and come across rather flat including Gesar and especially so the women: They are all stereotypical beauties with stereotypical personality flaws. I don’t know how “personality” was dealt with in the Tibetan original. I would guess the main focus was more on the action. Since Alai’s Gesar is contemporary and contrary to its claim it is not the first English version either, one way to make the story more compelling could have been to represent the characters with more emotional depth.

While the author deserves praise for bringing an old story to modern readers in an entertaining way, it should be remembered that Gesar is not just a fantasy tale. For Tibetans Gesar portrays their national character and psyche in its archetype before the advent of Buddhism. It is probably also the only piece of secular literature from the past. Gesar symbolises a golden era of martial prowess and great freedom. The idea therefore suggests itself: Does Alai’s Gesar account for it? Do Tibetans recognise their epic and can general readers relate to it?

Some may argue that writing the Tibetan national epic in Chinese and then translate that into English can’t produce any sensible result to begin with because it is as crazy as writing the Iliad in Turkish and translating that into English as the Greek national epic. While this comparison helps to hint at the seminal imprecision in an approach that goes through three languages, taking the original flavour farther and farther away, it has been done with Alai’s Gesar and now the question is: Has the author succeeded in making the story sound Tibetan enough?

I believe it’s possible but for that a writer would also need a deep understanding of Tibet and a feel for sensitivities. After reading “The Song of King Gesar” I am not totally convinced Alai has this kind of understanding. He is keen to portray his culture realistically and also favourably to the outside world and he is thoughtful when he writes lines such as these on page three:

“Then the demons began to wonder why they had changed only into wicked figures. Why not assume human form? So they did, and then there was no telling them from the real thing. For centuries humans and deities pursued them relentlessly, until they found the perfect hiding-place: the human heart.”

Unfortunately there are verbal bumps popping up everywhere destroying the overall smoothness of the read that the author carefully built up. So even when the story is vividly told and the plot gripping, some of the author’s expression betray him and spoil his effort. Overall the suspicion arises that Alai is not completely at home in the Tibetan culture and perhaps also lacks a certain delicacy of feeling. Several factors account for this impression.

Firstly, there are frequent occurrences of distorted and inconsistent Romanisation of Tibetan proper names and expressions and also wrong grammar. “Let us go to the place where the story begins”, the author continues on page three, “It was called Gling, which is present-day Khampapa. To be more precise, the Gling of the past is now part of the immense land named Khampapa.”

Now there is the noun Kham for Eastern Tibet and there is the appertaining adjective Kham-pa as we would have in New York and New York-er, Paris and Paris-ian, Rome and Rom-an. However there is no such term as “Khampapa”. That’s like writing “the Gling of the past is now part of an immense land named New Yorkerer, Parisianian, Romanan.” – How absurd does that sound? Chinese texts regularly confuse Tibetan nouns and adjectives because that language makes no formal distinction. It is inexplicable however how a Tibetan author didn’t catch such a gross error in an important opening passage of the book where not only the word class is wrong but the wrong word, on top of everything, also has a wrong ending.

Secondly, it is mildly irritating when terms are explained rather superficially. That’s when overall doubt begins to creep in: If the author didn’t bother to pay attention to these details perhaps then he didn’t pay attention to other aspects either? The meaning of the common name Drolma on page 186 for instance, is succinctly given as “celestial fairy” when sgrol ma means “liberating mother”. It is the name of a popular female Buddha who is also the patroness of Tibet and the meaning goes much deeper. Drolma liberates faithful sentient beings from the Samsaric ocean of suffering. A lot of girls are named in her honour. If people wanted “fairies”, they would go to Walt Disney.

Thirdly, sometimes a Tibetan designation is entirely replaced by Chinese. The Buddha of Compassion, Chenrezig Avalokitesvara, is referred to as “Guanyin Bodhisattva” and the Drichu River becomes the Jinsha River. For Western readers it may all sound the same but for Tibetans the occurrence of Chinese terms makes the Tibetan national epic in part sound like another episode from a Chinese historical novel à la Xi You Ji or "Journey To The West".

So while the English translation of Alai’s Gesar brings the story to a wider audience it also reveals the author’s biggest handicap: Perfectly assimilated into the Chinese culture and probably writing with more self-confidence and creativity than many a mono-lingual native speaker, Alai seems to lack the same level of depth and familiarity when it comes to the Tibetan culture in which the Gesar epic is rooted.

Of course a writer should write in the language he is most comfortable in. And a reader should read with an open mind. But in my case an aftertaste remains. Perhaps this story should not have been translated as it’s really meant for Chinese consumption. That audience is educated to believe that Tibetans are Chinese. They won’t notice faulty language, shallow explanations or lack of sensitivities let alone complain about it. For Alai to become a great writer beyond the Chinese sphere therefore, he would have to transcend his Sino-centrically coloured view.

I read the author comes from a Tibetan town along the multi-ethnic frontier with China. Apparently he speaks a local dialect but doesn’t read Tibetan. That would explain the problems with Romanisation and Tibetan expressions in general. The growth of a person’s word pool is severely restricted when there is no access to the written word. How would we expand our vocabulary if we couldn’t read? To compensate for this deficit Alai relies on Chinese. He employs an outside language to paint an inside frame of mind. And to make things more complicated that outside language is then used as the basis for translation into a third language.

It’s not clear to me whether the author is aware of the problematic nature in his approach. In an interview with CCTV in 2008 Alai stated that he writing in Chinese about Tibet is like Pablo Neruda writing in Spanish about Latin America. The nonchalant comparison made me feel very uneasy. Neruda’s poetic fame aside, has Alai the awareness of whether the indigenous groups in Latin America also feel represented by Neruda’s writing?

The message the author is sending to young Tibetans is: “It’s okay not to study your own language. There are other languages better suited to understand and express your culture.” – Here we have a leading Tibetan creative artist willingly or unwillingly undermining the efforts of all those who are sincerely working to develop and secure the relevance of the Tibetan language. To some that’s unforgiveable.

But then I guess Tibetans like Alai who grew up in a multi-ethnic environment at the edge of Tibetan culture along old trade routes, where there were always various languages spoken and all kinds of people went in and out, may have a somewhat different mentality. They carry the notion of the frontier as the civilising dynamic in them. Their advantage is that they are more adaptive and flexible than other Tibetans. They have an easier time to part with old things, accept new things and start over because their focus has always been directed towards the future: Whatever it brings is good.

Tibetans from the central areas on the other hand tend to carry the vision of a happy country of their forefathers in their hearts. They are content among themselves, far away from the world’s rulers and cities, free and independent. They seek refuge in a golden past and may find the future threatening because whatever it brings is bad.

The disadvantage of frontier Tibetans like Alai is that they inevitably retain an isolated, peripheral view of their heritage as long as they don’t expose themselves to the larger culture. It is only through this exposure and by appropriating the written language that they develop an awareness of the extent and depth of their Tibetandom.

My dad’s hometown happens to be located on the frontier as well. There is a noticeable difference in people who have been exposed to the larger Tibetan culture alongside acculturation to the Chinese realm, and those who have never moved beyond their little phayul exclusively focussing on assimilating into the Chinese culture. The former emit an air of self-confidence and cosmopolitanism. They fit in wherever they go because they are firmly grounded. The latter are always a bit anxious even when they are decorated with doctorates from universities in China because their roots don’t run as deep.

Enough psychologising. My subjective feeling is that as long as Alai writes about topics where he has some personal experience his voice can sound convincing. In “Red Poppies” he told the story of a local chieftain along the Sino-Tibetan border in the dying days of the Old Tibet. That story was also translated from Chinese but somehow it sounded more Tibetan than the “Song of King Gesar”, probably also because a Tibetan proof-reader was employed for the English version.

Unlike Red Poppies, Gesar is not an isolated story happening somewhere on the plateau. This is the national epic of the Tibetan people as a whole. It holds an important place in people’s memory. By venturing on this quintessential subject I’m afraid the author may have bitten off more than he can chew. My conviction is that, in whatever language, only a writer who is also intimately, deeply and extensively familiar with the Tibetan culture and has an awareness of the sensitivities can tell this kind of story with an authoritative and authentic voice.

For fans of the mythical genre the good news is that this won’t have been the last attempt to introduce the king of Gling to a wider audience. And perhaps someone will come up with English lyrics in the near future? I imagine the story gets its real drama and flamboyance from being acted out in song anyway – and not from being sandwiched between two book covers.

Mountain Phoenix Over Tibet

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The Return Of The King

The Return Of The King

Sershul, Photo: seseg_h's photostream

There was this tune lingering at the back of my head, a song I heard my dad sing when I was little. When he burst into this song, I knew it was a special day marked by great happiness, humour and laughter. In all these years, with so much music coming out of Tibet, I have heard no other Tibetan near or far sing this song.  The melody is peculiar, yet so easy to remember. If prompted, I’m confident, I could reproduce it right here and now.

I never got to ask my dad what the song was about while he was alive. It lay dormant for years until the other day, when I suddenly heard it and couldn’t believe my ears: My Pala’s song was on Youtube! And the interpreter was – ruffle, ruffle – folksinger Riga! You know, the rustic Amdo guy in Chupa with the long, carefully styled “because-I’m-worth-it” hair and the mandolin. He is in a whole lot of videos but check out this specific one: 

So that’s what my dad’s song was about: the fabled Gesar of Ling, superhero of the Tibetans! Not that I’m too familiar with the epic or anything. The only thing I know about the man is that he fought countless battles and won them all. Boy, if the stories were ever true, those must have been the glory days, when the Tibetans were in control.

No offense, brother Riga, but I liked my dad’s interpretation better. You will forgive a daughter for adoring her father. Not only was his voice more powerful, but also when he sang, his whole body would sway to the music with joy while you stand there rather tame and timid. But you do good job! You melodised the song, gave me the words. Now the amorphous tune in my head has a shape. Your song brought back memories of my old man and made me reflect on the story he adored more than any other story in the whole world.

My dad always kept a book on his night table – paperback, beige cover with light-bluish frame and in Tibetan script. Neither an aristocrat nor a cleric, he was lucky to belong to a small group of privileged people who received something like a modern education back in old Tibet. But he never went on to make anything out of it. The only books I saw him read were comics, and this Tibetan book at his night table. Either he reread the thing over and over again or he advanced at a snail’s pace because that book lay there for ages: It was the story of Ling Gesar Gyalpo.

According to my mom, growing up as a schoolboy in Lhasa with an older brother who was an important Buddhist reincarnate, he had to read the story in hiding. Apparently his teachers didn’t like to see him waste time reading useless stuff. For them, the Tibetan script was holy, taught exclusively with the aim to read Buddhist texts; using it for something as profane as a bellicose novel was a transgression. Gesar glorified violence, they said, and indulging in the story would turn people into Lalos (“barbarians”) and throw them back to the Dark Ages.

That’s a pretty extreme standpoint my dad’s teachers were taking. From my viewpoint, Gesar is just a story, what´s all the hype? But in hindsight, limiting the written language to Buddhism must have been the dominant view back then because we’ve never had much in terms of secular literature worth the name. The good news is it's gradually changing for the better. The bad news is change is really very slow. 

Care for an example?

Few years ago at a Tibetan gathering, I heard the Dalai Lama talk about the importance of the Tibetan language and he gave tips to youngsters on how to work on their Tibetan. He said: “If you want to improve your Tibetan, you should read Peja (Buddhist scriptures)”.

We can all imagine the youngsters jumping for joy on the inside exclaiming: “Yeah, Peja! Finally! So exciting”!

No, seriously, chances that Tibetan kids are eager to improve their grasp of the language by studying religious books are about as promising as telling kids here: “If you really want to improve your English, you should read the Bible”. - An absurd idea.

Amazingly though, in the Tibetan context, studying Buddhist texts to improve your literacy doesn’t sound absurd, it is plain common sense. I guess that shows not only do we have a gigantically gaping hole where other countries have a rich, exuberant secular literature, it also shows we’re so used to that huge hole we don’t take notice of it. Maybe that’s also the reason why the Gesar epic is so popular, because that’s all there is, because we simply have no other works worthy to be called a literary tradition?

Of course, technically one can learn a lot about the structure of the language and loads of new vocabulary from Pejas, it’s very true. But to be honest, the subject matter is dead boring if you’re not into Dharma. Can you seriously blame anyone if they went for Gesar over Peja or King Arthur over the Bible?

I am sure my dad found ways to keep reading Gesar as a boy. He always did what he wanted. Not because he was selfish but because he was someone who thought about things and stuck to his views even when others went the opposite way. Buddha knows we had our disagreements but when I look back, I must concede this is the one redeeming quality that distinguished him from the pack. It’s not an exaggeration when I say he didn’t give a damn. If there were any parallels between his superhero and him, maybe it’s this kind of audacity.

John Wayne

After Tibet opened up in the early 1980s he was among the first to return. After each visit, he would bring back books on Gesar. For some reason, which I haven’t understood, the Chinese are very fond of the epic. So my Pala always found enough material.


Fittingly, he also enjoyed watching Hollywood movies of the “epic film” genre. He was particularly fond of the ones that played during classical antiquity such as “Ben Hur” or “Quo Vadis”; and he loved war movies like “The Longest Day”, and of course Westerns. His heroes were actors like John Wayne, Charleton Heston, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, and Robert Mitchum. 


But he always remained a loyal fan of his indigenous Tibetan hero, Gesar of Ling, until his last days.

My old man never touched a Peja in all his life, if you ask me. Still I conclude from comments his surviving peers make that his Tibetan didn’t pale in comparison to some of the erudite clerics who used to live in our vicinity. Astonishing for a Tibetan of his generation, that he somehow managed to become “cultured” without cosing up to Buddhism.

Assuming Riga and my dad used the same lyrics, I was really surprised to learn from the video that the Gesar song is actually a prayer in the form of a glu (“mountain tune”).

Looking at the structure of the Gesar song through my Western lens, it appears to be a tercet with Dactylus as the metrical foot, but no clue if that’s a popular form. The Tibetan folk songs I’ve seen are mostly fourliners with three stanzas and a lot of repeated lines. The Gesar song in contrast has 15 stanzas in total, grouped into 3 parts with five stanzas each and a break after parts one and two and no repeated lines whatsoever.

What's the core message of the Gesar song?


I am guessing from the ultra-short title mngags.bcol that this is about Gesar being sent down to earth by Buddha (mngags) with the mission to subdue or convert enemies to Buddhism, but I am not sure. At least it would match the content.

It begins with Gesar intimidating his enemies by announcing he is no other than Padmasambhava,  sometimes referred to by Tibetans as “second Buddha”; that he was the Dharma-King Trisong Detsen in an earlier life; in this life, he descended to earth into the land of Ling as the divine child Thoepaga (“the one who likes to listen (to Dharma)") who later becomes Gesar with the goal to subdue darkness and spread Buddhism. It’s established from the beginning that he is supernatural and the enemies have no chance – it’s basically saying: “Don’t even think about it” :--)

In the second part, Gesar names his adversaries: the Hor, the Mon, the Djang and another group spelled bdud in Tibetan, which is the way "devil" is written. 


Except for the Djang, who are still known under the same name to modern Tibetans (Naxi in Chinese with their centre in Lijiang/Yunnan; Tibetan: Sadam), the other names don’t ring a bell. “Hor” is a very unspecific term. It could be anyone “from the north” irrespective of ethnicity or religion. The term is also used to refer to Mongolic groups. “Mon” is not clear either. Since the song locates them in the south, my guess is they were tribal, jungle people on the border to Burma or India (as in the verbal relict “Mon Tamang”?). No idea who is meant by the last group, "devils". Maybe a Muslim group to the West?

Gesar defeats all these nobodies but conspicuously there is no mention of the Rgya - the Chinese. If they are also left out in the epic that might explain why the Chinese are so fond of the Gesar: Political reasons.

Gesar then continues to awe his enemies by revealing that he is also a great sorcerer, enjoys divine support from his wife who is an emanation of Tara, and receives guidance from another supposedly powerful female, perhaps his Madam Grandmother, called “Manene” (Ma as in “mother”, Nene as in some eastern Tibetan dialects for “granny”, from the Chinese nainai?).

In the last part, Gesar lists even more divine helpers such as 80 Mahasiddhas, troops from every Dzong small and large, and so on. This funny enumeration reflects the spirit of the time nicely and what was considered “powerful” back then in that kind of environment.

Giant Gesar statue in Kyegu/Yushul

I wonder though, how his battles took place logistically. Gesar’s supposed homeland around Dzachukha –Nangchen- Sershul- Kyegu, where northern Kham and western Amdo converge, is basically an empty country - nomad ground. Presuming the man Gesar is historical and his homeland was really in the area of what is present-day Sershul County in the north of the Kardze Prefecture/Sichuan and the Yushul Prefecture/Qinghai, how do we have to imagine that worked?

The last stanza wraps up the goal of the song: It’s Gesar’s appeal to follow him: “Hearing this tune is balm for the soul”, he begins (literally he seems to say “it’s caramel for the mind”, very funny), and he goes on to warn the listeners: “Not hearing this tune is none of my business” meaning: If you don’t listen to what I say, you can’t be helped. And the last line goes: “You! Remember Thoepagawa” meaning: Don’t forget what an important person I am, and better believe in the things I teach - or something to that effect.

The use of direct speech, imperatives, conditional clauses and waiving of honourific language give the Gesar song a haunting and forceful flavor. There is real drama resonating from the words.

Now I can also see why my dad enjoyed this song so much: Whoever sings the song slips into the role of Gesar since it is sung from his perspective. All those “divine vibes” are transferred to the singer, so to speak, and in your mind’s eye you become one with the victorious king who is so overpowering that everyone immediately has to surrender. Since he says he is Padmasambhava, Buddhists could even claim singing the song is a form of Guru Yoga :--)

Kidding aside, the massive Buddhist overtones in the song come as a surprise.

Is this authentic given that Gesar supposedly precedes the advent of Buddhism in Tibet? Is the song perhaps a more recent invention? And how does it compare to the epic in terms of content?

Even though personally I’m definitely more into Dharma than fanciful super-hero stories – sorry Pala, another disagreement:--) – the one thing I’ve always adored about the Gesar story was its indigenously Tibetan, heathen origins. I found its non-Buddhist origin thrilling although it’s not clear to me what the pre-Buddhist culture was really like. Gesar is one of the very, very few examples I associated with a genuinely Tibetan creation. I am therefore a bit taken aback that the song is so thickly covered with a sugar-sweet Buddhist frosting.

                 

Gesar depicted as Padmasambhava surrounded by 

Buddhist symbols, holding a Vajra in his right 

hand

Perhaps being Gesar wasn't considered being good enough and so he was turned into a Buddhist God? I would have preferred if they had left him be Gesar, even if that means he was merely a petty tribal king. At least he would have been our petty tribal king.

Amalgamating Gesar into Buddhism, making him Padmasambhava, plus Trisong Deutsen, plus a powerful sorcerer, plus a brilliant commander-in-chief, plus giving him a Buddhist deity for a wife, in my eyes is not subtle at all. It’s taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut - plain overkill. As if the Tibetans were ashamed of their own creations as parochial and then clumsily tried to soak everything in Buddhism thinking that would make it "better".

Why wasn't the good story left unchanged?

In a way it points to the intolerant side of Tibetan Buddhism. Even though outwardly it is portrayed as the creed that promotes peace, tolerance and compassion, inwardly non-conformist elements were simply absorbed.

Bon too, seeemd to have shared Gesar’s fate. Bon is said to be Tibet’s original creed but all explanations make Bon sound like a version of Tibetan Buddhism. Today Bon represents one of the five official schools that make up Tibetan Buddhism. It is so completely assimilated into the Buddhist fold that its own adherents could get offended when someone drops a hint at their "unkosher" Buddhists origins. So sad. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Maybe one day, Tibetans will be self-confident enough to welcome a Bon revival movement à la "Back to Roots" without feeling threatened as Buddhists.

The tendency to absorb non-conformist elements into Buddhism seems to have a long tradition. Usually we find nothing wrong with it because Buddhism has enriched our culture so much. But it also came at a cost: The way we adopted Buddhism left no space for indigenous Tibetan creativity. We turned the very creed known for its tolerance and compassion into an ideological straightjacket which gave us tunnel vision and in the end also cultural impoverishment: That’s why Tibetans have no secular literature to inherit, few old histories recorded, hardly any accounts from earlier Tibetans, no novels, no biographies, etc.

One could say Buddhism spread to many other countries in Asia and everywhere it led to this process of absorption and assimilation of local creeds. But I wonder whether it has been this extreme as in the Tibetan case where it just gobbled up the the entire indigenous culture? Buddhism is really all we have. Take away Buddhism and what is left that would constitute our “Tibetanness”? It’s very sad. It feels as if we sold our souls over the new creed - when that wasn’t required. When you see how Tibetan society responds to new ideas differing from the majority in more recent times, it makes you wonder whether we have become any better over time.

What would my dad think of the idea that Buddhism kidnapped his superhero?


Maybe he didn’t even care. Maybe he thought it’s still a good story. Maybe he thought Gesar is whatever you believe he is. He is the container of our projections: Whatever you put in comes back smiling at you.


At least, that's what I like to believe!

So as a gesture of respect for the King of Ling – whether he is divine or not - and as tribute to my old man, I am now going to memorise the lyrics so I will be able to sing the Gesar song to my kids with all due kingliness, just like I heard my dad do many years ago.

“Lu alla, alla, alla….” 

Mountain Phoenix

Gesar and his queen Drugmo, Gesar 

festival somewhere in the highlands

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