Legend of Manas is adapted from China’s Kyrgyz Nationality’s heroic epic “Manas.” The original version of the epic tells of hundreds of interesting stories about the ethnic group’s great Manas Khan and those other outstanding members of his later seven generations. Therein lies a splendid career of several centuries. We carefully chose the cream from such a full-length masterpiece for our readers. The contents of such an abridged version account for around two or three per cent of the whole stuff. In order to present our readers a panorama of the features of the whole voluminous epic, I wish to avail myself of this opportunity to write a brief introduction to the history of the ethnic group. And this is the obvious reason why I prepare the preface for our readers.
1) Nationality That Makes Such a Heroic Epic
As early as 2005, Kyrgyz Nationality’s heroic epic “Manas” had already been categorized into China’s first batch of national-level lists of “Representative Works of Intangible Cultural Heritage.” In 2009, it was also placed into the “List of Representative Works of Humankind’s Intangible Cultural Heritage” by the Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Committee of Safeguarding the
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Intangible Cultural Heritage under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The epic is widely celebrated as the invaluable treasure the Kyrgyz people created for human beings. And it is a great contribution made by Kyrgyz people to the humankind!
As one of the three China’s epics, “Manas” is widely acknowledged as a great literary masterpiece, which is supposed to come down through the ages. Tens of thousands of people’s literary creation and subsequent co-editing spanned several centuries and have made considerable headway in the end. It is no mean the result of the whole ethnic group’s wisdom.
An epic is not history itself. But it is closely related to history. If we know the history of Kyrgyz people, we can get a comprehensive understanding of such an epic. Let’s take a look at the verses about the nationality written by numerous poets first of all: