Manas of the Kirghiz people is famous as one of the three greatest Chinese epics, together with Tibetan Gesar and Mongolian Jianggar . Manas also is the name of the epic's eponymous hero.

  About the Epic of Manas

The epic of Manas, with more than 210,000 lines, is one of the longest epics in the world, 20 times longer than Homer's Odyssey . It falls into eight episodes, totaling 20 million characters.

It is a patriotic work recounting the exploits of Manas and his descendants and followers, who fought against invaders in the ninth century to preserve Kirghiz independence. The epic dated back to the ninth and 10th centuries, but it was not set down in written form until 1885.

Manas is a trilogy, "a biographical cycle of three generations of heroes, including Manas , his son Semetei, and grandson Seitek."

The nomadic Kirgiz historically experienced many wars and battles with their traditional enemies and invaders. In difficult times when they were defeated by their enemies and exiled to far away lands, as it is the case in Manas , people longed for an ideal hero to reunite and protect them.

In traditional Kirgiz epic songs, the main hero should not die. If he dies, he leaves an heir behind to protect his people. Therefore, upon Manas' death, his son Semetei continues his legacy, and when Semetei dies, his heir Seitek is born to protect his people. However, the epic Manas does not end with Seitek.

Although some of the main stories in the epic deal with the 17th and 18th centuries, there are many archaic elements and themes that reflect its ancient origin. As time passed, the "primitive" plot as well as the archaic language of the epic went through many poetic transformations adapting to new historical, socio-economic and religious developments of each century or decade.

The epic Manas should not only be recognized for its vast size, but should also be equally valued for exceptionally poetic language and rich content.

  The hero Manas

The hero in the epic, Manas , is one of those legendary or ideal heroes who fights against external enemies and reunites all his scattered people. One of the fixed epithets in the epic describes him as "Chachilgandi jiinagan, chabilgandi kuragan (he united those who went astray and brought together those who were divided). The hero Manas is born with a clot of blood in his hand, which, according to ancient sayings, indicated the arrival or birth of a future hero and an intrepid warrior who would take over the entire land of Kirgiz.

Manas is not an ordinary man, but a hero of tremendous power and wrath. When filled with rage, his eyes turn red like fire. He was destined to "conquer the world" even before he was born. In addition, Manas was always accompanied and protected by the spirits of powerful animals such as a black-striped tiger. A lion is by his side, a giant black bird flies above him, and a dragon in front of him. Traditionally, Turkic epic heroes, like the Mongolian heroes, were lonely. They fought with ogres or giants alone. When a hero was alone, he had to have some supernatural powers to defeat the enemy. Physical descriptions of Manas reflect the supernatural image of the ancient hero.

  Historical significance

The nomadic Kirgiz did not have their own written language or leave written accounts about themselves. However, they excelled in oral composition, which they artistically employed in their traditional poetry and epic songs to express their worldview, pride and dignity, battles and their hope for the future.

Composed and sung entirely in oral form throughout the centuries, Manas is regarded as the epitome of oral creativity. Although as yet not widely known, for want of adequate translations, Manas is considered to be one of the greatest examples of epic poetry, whose importance is not inferior to that of the Homeric epic.

The epic of Manas contains a significant amount of historical and socio-cultural information not only about the Kirgiz, but also about their nomadic and sedentary neighbors, tribes, states, and empires with whom they historically had interacted. It is not only the history of the Kirgiz people, it is a true epic drama which widely reflects all the aspects of their life, including their ethnic composition, economy, traditions and customs, morals and values, aesthetics, codes of behavior, their relationship with their surroundings and nature, their religious worldview, their knowledge about astronomy and geography, and artistic oral poetry and language.

China has begun the preservation work of Manas since the 1960s, in which more than 80 manashc?s (singers of Manas) have been discovered. Today there are about 60 versions of the epic Manas recorded from various epic singers and oral poets. In Xinjiang Autonomous Region, one of the great living manashcis, Jusup Mamai, recites the epic Manas up to the 17th generation.

The epic is the classic centerpiece of Kirgiz literature, and parts of it are often recited at Kirghiz festivities, in a melodic chant accompanied by a three-stringed komuz.