So far, nearly 6,000 hours of the “Epic of King Gesar” in more than 100 volumes chanted by over 10 folk artists have been recorded on tapes, Xinhua reported.

Tsering Phuntsok, head of the Nationalities Research Institute of Tibet Social Sciences Academy said, since the 1980s Tibet has been trying to locate artists of the epic to record their chanting. It will fill a historical blank that one artist chants the “Epic of King Gesar” from start to finish.

An elderly man named Sendrup had created a record before he died since he chanted an average of 50 hours for each volume, accumulating more than 2,000 hours in his own recording, almost covering the complete story of the “Epic of King Gesar”.

Since the 1980s, Tibet has also bit by bit collected a series of handwritten copies of the “Epic of King Gesar” and has officially published 33 volumes so far. Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has focused on rescuing the chanting of the epic. As of today, it has already published 45 volumes of the epic from Sendrup as well as 10 volumes of other chanters.