DOI 10.31554/978-5-7925-0594-0-2020-10-12
GESER IN ENGLISH: A SHORT HISTORY OF TRANSLATION
Ratcliffe J.
Australian National University Canberra, Australia u5522230@anu.edu.au
In 1995 to mark the thousand-year anniversary of the Buryat Geser, the Kray Gesera (Land of Geser) ethnographic park was opened in the Okinskiy region of Buryatia. At the opening ceremony, the American Daniel Plumley [1996: 20-21], who had played an integral part in the park’s creation, was compelled to admit that he knew almost nothing about the figure of Geser. He just could not find anything about him “in European books”. As we celebrate another anniversary for Geser in 2020, one must ask whether much has changed during this past quarter century in which the rise of the internet has revolutionised study by granting access to all manner of texts once obscure and difficult to obtain. In this paper I undertake a short survey of what there is now readily available on the Mongolic Geser in English, both forgotten gems and new exciting treasures.
