The Sabdan Baatir Codex
Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History
Brill (Publisher)
Published on 23. November 2012
Book
Hardback
484 pages
978-90-04-23040-8 (ISBN)
Description
In The Sabdan Baatir Codex, Daniel Prior presents the first complete edition, translation, and interpretation of a unique manuscript of early twentieth-century Kirghiz poetry, which includes detailed accounts of nineteenth-century warfare. Dedicated to the chief Sabdan Baatir, the Codex occupies an illuminating position in a network of oral and written genres that encompassed epic poetry and genealogy, panegyric and steppe oral historiography; that echoed oral performance and aspired to print publishing. The Codex's fresh articulation of concepts of Kirghiz self-identification was incipiently national, yet remained couched in traditional forms. The Codex thus bridges the interval, often glossed over in cultural histories, between a supposedly archaic state of oral epic tradition and the "afterlife" of epics in modern ethno-nationalist projects.
Reviews / Votes
'Dr Prior in fact deals with his subject with extreme thoroughness. Not only does this book include a complete facsimile of the manuscript, it also contains a transcription into Roman script of the full text in the original language, with a translation and extensive commentary. A quite lengthy introduction gives the background to its text and its contents, including very useful information about the complex history of eastern Central Asia during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, (...) He has dealt very thoroughly with the ms and produced an impressive work of very high quality.'Stephen G. Haw, independent Mongolist, The Central Asiatic Journal, 56 (2013)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic libraries and institutes, researchers, and students of 18th - 20th Central and Inner Asian history, heroic epic poetry, and Steppe Turkic traditions of historiography.
Product notice
Laminated cover
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
853 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-23040-8 (9789004230408)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Daniel Prior, Ph.D. (2002), Indiana University, is Assistant Professor of History at Miami University. His publications include The Semetey of Kenje Kara: A Kirghiz Epic Performance on Phonograph (Harrassowitz, 2006).
Musa Chagataev (fl. ca. 1910), was the main author of the Codex.
Belek Soltonoev, d. 1938 (scribe).
Shabdan Dzhantaev, ca. 1839 - 1912 (patron).
Musa Chagataev (fl. ca. 1910), was the main author of the Codex.
Belek Soltonoev, d. 1938 (scribe).
Shabdan Dzhantaev, ca. 1839 - 1912 (patron).