Manasology

The scientific investigation of the epic began in the second half of the 19th century by C. Valikhanov and V. Radlov . Valikhanov recorded one of the episodes (“Kyokyotu Wake”) in 1856 and partially translated it into Russian. The texts published by Radlov in 1885 in St. Petersburg (in Kyrgyz and German) occupy 12,454 lines (including 9,449 lines of the Manas proper) ^[1] . The complete recording of the texts of the Manas trilogy has been carried out since 1920, however, the fixation of the versions of Manaschi and the more so their complete publication is still far from complete.

Peru of the Kazakh writer M.O. Auezov owns the first monograph after the works of Chokan Valikhanov on the Kyrgyz epos "Manas", the creation of a free version of his texts. Monuments were erected to both Kazakh researchers in Bishkek . Among the Russian scientists involved in the study of the epic, it should be noted V. Radlov (the author of the first Russian translation of fragments of the epic), P. Falev (the author of the first Soviet study on "Manas" - the article "How the Kara-Kyrgyz epic is built ") and S. Malov .

The 1952 All-Union Scientific Conference in Frunze came to the conclusion that the epos "is fundamentally popular" ^[2] .

Among the translators of the epic into Russian are S. Lipkin , L. Penkovsky , M. Tarlovsky and others. The largest Russian translation (prosaic) in volume has been made in 4 volumes by A. S. Mirbadaleva and N. V. Kidysh-Pokrovskaya for a bilingual publication in the series “Epic of the Peoples of the USSR” (1984-1995) and covers about 50 thousand lines (according to S. Orozbakov).

The first person to performed the epic "Manas" in Russian was translated by E. Polivanov , L. Penkovsky , M. Tarlovsky and S. Lipkin, People's Artist of Kyrgyzstan Valery Rovinsky .

Abridged versions of the epic exist in Kazakh (4 volumes as presented by M. Auezov, including 2 parts about Manas and parts about Semetei and Seytek) and Uzbek (poet Mirtemir); individual episodes were translated into German, Hungarian and other languages.

The first two parts of the epic (according to S. Orozbakov) were translated into English by the British translator Walter May and published in Bishkek in 1995 by Turkestan publishing house (reprinted by Raritet publishing house in 2004) ^[3] . There are other translations of varying degrees of completeness.

The main center of manasology is the National Center for Manasology and Art Culture of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic (director - Akmataliev, Abdyldazhan Amanturovich ).