Heroic Epic: King Gesar of the Tibetan
( 2005-09-13 )

(2) Rhetoric

King Gesar originated from ancient Tibet's ordinary society and had a deep grounding in ancient Tibetan literature, especially folk tales. Before the epic emerged, Tibetan literature boasted a numerous variety of richly woven works, especially folk and fairy tales, legends, traditional stories and poems. King Gesar drew much from previous literary works and carried forward the tradition of excellence via plot development, evolution, materials, and forms of expression, as well as ideology, religion and customs. The epic also borrowed a number of Tibetan proverbs that were cited in the original work or adapted later in the epic.

King Gesar has also preserved various traditional odes, such as the "Ode to Wine," "Ode to the Mountains," "Ode to Tea," "Ode to Horses," "Ode to Swords and Knives," "Ode to Dress," and "Ode to Armor."

The epic also combines many prose and verse styles. Its poetry links the ancient past with the modern age of Tibet's literary development. It reflects the importance of ideological and rhetorical methods, especially in terms of poetic rules and forms. Poems of this style are common in King Gesar: Not only do they follow a multiple paragraph pattern and a circular style characteristic of the Tubo period, but they also create a new style that uses eight-word stanzas instead of the former six-word stanzas (in the original Tibetan language). The rules and forms were basically fixed by the 11th century and have remained unchanged. This form is widely used in Tibetan folk songs, narrative poems, poems in lyrical stories, and Tibetan dramas, as well as in the works of scholars and poets. They have become the most influential and important rules and forms in Tibetan poetry.
By using verse, prose, lyrics and narration, the epic combines real stories, myths, poems, fables, proverbs and mottoes, making it an eclectic collection of Tibetan folk culture.

(More sources: http://en.tibet.cn/culture/kig/index.htm)