The Šabdan Baatir Codex : epic and the writing of northern Kirghiz history : edition, translation and interpretations, with a facsimile of the unique manuscript / / edition, translation and interpretatios, with a facsimile of the unique manuscript by Daniel Prior.

• Superior document: Brill's Inner Asian library ; 28
• Author: Prior, Daniel.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's Inner Asian library ; v. 28.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (484 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.
• Other title: Front Matter /; General Introduction /; Text and Translation /; Commentary /; Appendices /; Maps /; Genealogical Chart /; Bibliography /; 36 /; Facsimile /
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• ISBN: 1283855151; 9004237275
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: edition, translation and interpretatios, with a facsimile of the unique manuscript by Daniel Prior.

In The Šabdan Baatır 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 Šabdan Baatır, 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.