Tsering Phuntsok, director of the Ethnic Institute of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences. [Photo by Palden Nyima/China Daily]

Another project, the Gesar Music Collection, which Tsering directed, also has been completed. The first of its kind and 11 hours in length, it consists of five videos and features 118 tunes sung in the voices of 76 of the epic's characters. Six pre-eminent King Gesar artists of Tibet's Nagqu prefecture were selected as performers.

"Nagqu is a place with the richest tunes for King Gesar," Tsering said.

Among the preservationist's proudest achievements is a collection of tales recorded by Samdrub, a legend among King Gesar storytellers, who died in 2011.

Recognized as the most complete collection of an individual storyteller's catalog in Tibet, Samdrub's King Gesar stories are amassed in 45 unbound manuscripts. They have more than 500,000 lines, much longer than the lauded Mahabharata, the epic Sanskrit poem of ancient India, which has 200,000 verses.

Tsering has spent 16 years working to make the collection readable, listenable, and available for later generations.

Interest in The Epic of King Gesar is a global affair. National and international seminars on King Gesar studies have been held in China for many years. Tibet was the host of the National Seminar on King Gesar Studies in 2009. The seventh International Seminar on King Gesar was held in Sichuan province last September.

In addition to international seminars, workshops on King Gesar have been held in Qinghai's prefectures of Golok and Yushul, Gansu's Machu county, and Sichuan's Garze prefecture.

The Epic of King Gesar is sung widely throughout Central Asia, and has been found among China's ethnic groups of Tibetan, Mongolian, Bai, Naxi, Pumi, Lisu, and Yugur peoples, and in Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan, India and Russia.

The epic was listed as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage item by UNESCO in 2009.

"Making documentaries of other King Gesar storytellers is the key work my team will tackle next as other storytellers have asked us to record their songs," Tsering said. "Besides translating the collected epics into Chinese, English is our next big plan."