"LIVING HOMER"
Yusup Mamai said he was able to sing the epic from beginning to end after a dream.
The Manaschi said he dreamed of five people riding horses in front of him one morning when he was 13. One of them told him the lead rider was Manas, the epic's hero. Yusup Mamai suddenly woke up and could fluently chant the lines of the epic carved in his memory.
"My parents slaughtered a sheep and warned me not to tell anyone abut the dream until I am 40 years old, as was the tradition for all Manaschi," he said.
In March 1983, he sang day and night for 21 days to finish the whole epic. He continued from sunset until dawn when he sang to the climax, drinking only buttered tea to keep his strength up. Staff with the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Federation of Literary and Art Circles worked in shifts to take down what he sang.
At 11 a.m. on March 20, Yusup Mamai sang the final line of the epic. Wild with joy, he lifted his youngest granddaughter over his head.
To date, he has recited the entire epic three times. The time he sang the entire epic during the Cultural Revolution was recorded on 17 cassette tapes. It wasn't until 1995 that edited text totalling 8 episodes and 18 volumes was published in the Kirgiz language. A new edition was published in 2007 in both Kirgiz and Mandarin.
The tapes and texts are now in the hands of Yusup Mamai's great-grandson Turuganal. He has been studying the epic for 11 years, and the young man carries the weight of Yusup Mamai's great expectations on his shoulders.
Every day he spends four-and-a-half hours reading Manas text aloud to his great-grandfather, who corrects his mistakes, takes out the wrong words and adds missing sentences. Yusup Mamai hopes Turuganal can work out a revised version on his own after Yusup Mamai passes away.
Turuganal is also writing Yusup Mamai's biography, describing in detail his childhood, marriage and suffering during the Cultural Revolution, as well as the achievements he has made in his 90s.
About 500 people celebrate Yusup Mamai's birthday every year in Akqi County in southwestern Xinjiang. His children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, family friends and neighbors all come to his house to wish him good health, a long life and happiness.
"It's a grand ceremony for all Kirgiz people. We celebrate his birthday as well as the birth and inheritance of our culture," said Turuganal.
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