In a cadence specific to Manas narrating, they recount of the deeds of Manas, his suffering, his mistakes, his victories. They spend a few hours in the yurt-shaped venue to listen to the tales of Manas and his companions. On the final day of the recital marathon, the sponsor of the event, a traditional dress company, presents the narrators with an expensive laptop computer. As he hands them over on stage, the prime minister announces that from this day on, the 4th of December will be an official national holiday: Manas Day.
Each Manas narration is an act of commemoration. The old ways of living become almost palpable, the trials and tribulations tangible, the heroic acts a source of pride, the defeat and treason a source of grief, shame and anger. Through the tales of Manas and his companions, narrator and audience become emotionally engaged in a nomadic past in all its complexities — without having to live the tribulations themselves. In sharing these emotions, the audience experiences a connectedness in which the past is romanticised and alternative ways of living are juxtaposed to the present, and actually experienced, tribulations.
Not surprisingly, political elites have attempted to harness this connective potential for political purposes. In the history of the Manas epic, political actors ranging from nomadic manap s, to Soviet Party leaders, to post-Soviet politicians, have incorporated the Manas epic into their political discourses. As a heroic tale, however, the Manas epic has a dynamic of its own. A story cannot survive for centuries if it does not speak of evil as well as good, of discord as well as community, of failure as well as success.
Whereas in political rhetoric, the good must always conquer the bad, a good story surpasses this good-and-bad divide and portrays the complexities involved in surviving in a social world. As history has shown, however, the dynamics of the tale cannot be controlled and the multiplicity of social meanings awarded to the epic always catches up with the political player.
In Kyrgyzstan today, many consider the Manas epic to be more than just a tale. Manas narration is surrounded with mystique. There are many tales of people in the audience being healed after listening to Manas narration. The idea of transcendence through storytelling is not particular to the Manas epic.
Meyer , p. In Manas narration we can discern a similar dialectical relationship between dreams and stories, as narrators and audiences find the extraordinary made imaginable when these images link up to their inner imaginations. The tale was written down starting in the s, and the first complete version was published in the s.
The Epic of Manas has since been translated into many different languages, and published in the Soviet Union and abroad.
The poem starts with Manas, a warrior reputedly born in Talas Region. His efforts to unite warring tribes and create a homeland for his people form the center of the tale.
Kanykei, his wise and noble wife from Samarkand, and Bakai, his counsellor, are also main parts of the tale. The epic trilogy narrates the story of Manas and his descendants, Semetey and Seytek, as they battle against their Khitan and Oirat enemies, struggling to unite the disparate tribes of Kyrgyz people into a single nation and reclaim their ancestral lands.
The longest recorded version of the trilogy is , lines long. It is performed at many public occasions, from village festivals to national holidays.
Recitals of the poem can take up to 13 hours, and many Kyrgyz historians claim the poem is the longest oral epic in the world. The exact origins of the epic are somewhat controversial — Kyrgyz claim that the epic dates to the ninth or 10th century, and the Kyrgyz Republic officially celebrated the th anniversary of Manas in However, the oldest extant mention of the epic dates back to only , and the epic's plot closely corresponds to political events in the region that occurred during the 17th century, leading many Western historians to claim that the epic was written much later.
Regardless of its exact provenance, Manas has been rapidly embraced as a national hero by the Kyrgyz people and has become an important keystone of national identity since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Once discouraged under communism, the Epic of Manas is now a centerpiece of Kyrgyz culture and literature. Most historians agree however that the poem is most likely from the very late s and that the first time the disparate nomadic tribes of Kyrgyzstan were identified as a single group of people were when the Soviets came.
In fact, the first place called Kyrgyzstan was actually in modern-day Kazakhstan, while modern-day Kyrgyzstan was in a completely different country called Turkestan not to be confused with Turkmenistan.
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