Epic of Manas

Epic of Manas
Statue of Manas in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Original title	Манас дастаны
Written	18th century
Language	Kyrgyz
Subject(s)	The interactions of a Kyrgyz warrior and his progeny with neighboring Turkic, Mongolic, and Chinese people
Genre(s)	Epic poem
Lines	Approximately 553,500

The Epic of Manas^[a] is a lengthy and traditional epic poem of the Kyrgyz people of East and Central Asia. Versions of the poem which date to the 19th century contain historical events of the 18th century, though Kyrgyz tradition holds it to be much older. Manas is said to be based on Bars Bek, the first khagan of the Kyrgyz Khaganate. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with other Turkic, Mongolic and Chinese peoples.

The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary from the moment it was documented in 1995. The mythic poem has evolved over many centuries,^[1] being kept alive by bards called manaschy or manaschi. The first written reference to the eponymous hero of Manas and his Oirat enemy Joloy is to be found in a Persian manuscript dated to 1792–93.^[2] In one of its dozens of iterations, the epic poem consists of approximately 500,000 lines.

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