Tibet and Central Asia Emerged in the 12th century and crystallized into its current form around the 14th century. Anonymous The Epic of King Gesar Widely regarded as the Tibetan national epic, the Gesar epic was presented at UNESCO’s 31st...
China 8th century CE The Legend of Darkness The Legend of Darkness is an amalgamated creation story passed down orally through untold generations among the Han people in China and likely first written down during the Tang Dynasty. Traditionally sung during funerary...
Japan Oldest extant variant: 1309 (Engyōbon) Tale of the Heike The Tale of the Heike, often called “Japan’s epic,” is a long narrative describing the Genpei War (1180-1185), a civil conflict that rent Japan’s political structure and ushered in its medieval period, an...
China Written: ca. 1315-1400First published: 1522 Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi) Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi) can be read as a study of values in conflict, such as righteousness (yi) against loyalty (zhong), and filial piety (xiao) against brotherhood (xiongdi). In a...
China 1633 Yuan Yuling, The Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao from Forgotten Tales of the Sui (Sui shi yiwen 隋史遺文) The translated Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao (2025) constitutes the bulk of the narrative in a seventeenth-century Chinese novel, Yuan...
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