Between Oral And Written: "gesar Epic Vulgarness Through Manifold Of Dual Cultural Dimensions

For thousands of years, the Tibetan epic Gesar has been mainly circulated from mouth to mouth.Gesar singers, especially those who are called “divine singers”, are brought up in an oral-orientedcontext, and thus play Gesar epic in an oral way. As written-oriented culture begins to prevail overoral tradition, the textualization of Gesar is inevitable and thus the appearance of Gesar singerswho can both write and sing the epic is unsurprising. With the wide spread of the standardeducation which emphasizes literacy, however, an increased number of Gesar singers are influenceby written-oriented culture, some of whom has been sent to school since they were children. SitarDorje, born in1990, is the first Gesar singer who has received higher education. In November2011, the author went to Tibet University and carried out an interview which lasted for two weekswith him and consequently found it a thought-provoking question that whether and how does thewritten-oriented education influence Sitar Dorje’s mentality and his way of performing Gesar.Many questions concerning orality and literacy are thus concerned. For example, the difference ofand interaction between oral performance and text, the relationship between rationality cultured bystandard education and the poetic wisdom nurtured by epic tradition, how the epic singers areinfluence and reshaped by modern education, and the advantages and disadvantages of theeducational institutes’ safeguarding of the epic singers.This dissertation, taking Sitar Dorje as a case, tries to respond to the question through theinteraction of literacy and orality and to further discuss the living transmission of Gesar and thesafeguarding of Gesar singers. By carefully analyzing Sitar Dorje’s education background, hiswritten ability and his repertoire in the dimension of “tradition”,“performance” and “text”, thisdissertation illustrates how this young Gesar singer is influenced by the modern standardeducation, reveals his special mentality nurtured by standard education and shows the character ofhis performing as “retrospective”. Many anthropological methods are employed during thewriting of the dissertation, such as documentation, comparison, participant observation andin-depth interview. The essence of oral poetics, performance theory, athnopoetics and poeticwisdom are also highlighted.