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| Author's Preface | |
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| Foreword | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Historical personality of Gesar | |
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| Bards and manuscripts | |
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| Supposed miraculous effects of the songs of the Gesar Epic | |
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| Tibetan legenda concerning the Buddha | |
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| Concentration of thought viewed as determinant cause of rebirth: Japanese and Tibetan opinions | |
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| Personages figuring in the poem, their antecedents | |
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| The paradise of the coppercoloured mountain | |
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| The monster Tamdrin; his origin, his exploits, his extraordinary end | |
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| The fantastic character of the Epic justified by the Tibetan belief in the subjectivity of the world | |
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| How I became acquainted with Gesar and his Epic | |
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| Interview with a descendant of the hero at the Castle of Ling | |
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| A bard held to be a reincarnated relation of Gesar and a little monk thought to be the reincarnation of his enemy, the King of Hor | |
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| I receive a flower, not in season, supposed to be sent by Gesar | |
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| A strange prediction, which comes true | |
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| The Warrior Messiah of the Tibetans | |
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| Traditions and prophecies concerning the return of Gesar | |
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| Chang Shambala, the mysterious country of the North | |
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| Origin of the demons, the destruction of whom forms the theme of the Gesar Epic | |
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| The Bodhisattva, the pious mother, and the impious daughter | |
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| Padma Sambhava tries to prevent the demons from incarnating | |
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| His plans miscarry | |
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| The gods take counsel | |
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| One of them consents to incarnate as Gesar and to destroy the demons | |
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| He lays down conditions | |
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| Padma Sambhava goes under the ocean to the country of the Nagas to look for the future mother of Gesar | |
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| Her arrival on earth | |
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| She becomes a servant in the tent of the King of Ling | |
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| He falls in love with her | |
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| Jealousy of the Queen | |
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| She seeks to kill the nagi | |
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| The gods descend to the nagi and make her drink a magic potion | |
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| Miraculous birth of many deities and of Gesar | |
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| Todong and the Queen try to kill the Hero from his birth | |
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| The sorcery of a great magician | |
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| How Gesar, as child, victoriously protects himself against it | |
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| The sorcerer is immured in his retreat | |
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| Gesar and his mother are exiled in the desert | |
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| Padma Sambhava rouses Gesar's memory and commands him to get himself elected King of Ling | |
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| Ruse employed by the Hero to attain this end | |
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| Todong is duped by him | |
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| Gesar's marriage | |
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| He takes possession of the treasures hidden at Magyalpumra | |
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| Extraordinary adventures in the land of the Mutegspa magicians | |
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| Gesar exterminates them and secures the precious medicines that they were withholding | |
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| He miraculously saves their Chief's daughter and gives her in marriage to an Indian king | |
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| Gesar goes to the 'North Country' to kill King Lutzen | |
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| Lutzen's wife betrays her husband in order to help Gesar | |
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| Murder of Lutzen | |
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| His wife falls in love with Gesar | |
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| Gesar is bewitched | |
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| Chenrezigs dissipates the effect of the spells that were keeping Gesar in the 'North Country' | |
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| He starts for Ling | |
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| Meeting with the ghost of his friend Gyatza, who had been killed by the Horpas | |
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| The Hero learns of the invasion of Ling by the Horpas, of Todong's treachery and the carrying away of Sechang Dugmo | |
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| He finds Singlen and his mother, the Nagi, reduced to slavery by the traitor Todong | |
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| Gesar leaves for Hor in order to destroy the three demon-kings and avenge the defeat of Ling | |
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| Gesar and his horsemen reach Hor territory | |
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| With the help of several gods, the Hero kills a demon-bull that bars his way | |
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| Infidelity of Gesar's wife | |
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| Todong gives way to his greediness and is captured by a demon | |
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| Gesar drowns a hundred and twenty-eight boatmen | |
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| The phantom caravan | |
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| The phantom caravan disappears | |
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| Discovery of a little boy in a heap of tea leaves | |
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| He is adopted by a master-smith | |
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| The child's extraordinary behaviour | |
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| The magic dolls | |
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| Gesar destroys the patron gods of Hor | |
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| Tragic ending to a sports fete | |
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| The smith's daughter detects Gesar in the person of her father's apprentice | |
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| The Hero shows himself to her for a second under his natural form | |
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| By Kurkar's order, the young smith brings him a live tiger, which he has captured in the forest | |
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| Commotion in the royal household caused by the animal | |
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| It devours the prime minister | |
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| Kurkar commands the apprentice to take the beast back into the forest | |
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| Kurkar appeals to a Lama diviner | |
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| Gesar, disguised, tests the Lama's powers | |
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| Being recognized by him, the Hero kills him | |
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| Taking on the appearance of the diviner, Gesar goes to Kurkar and misleads him by false prophecies | |
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| He directs the King to have Gyatza's head, which hangs on the palace wall as a trophy, taken away | |
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| Believing to ensure himself a long life, Kurkar sacrifices a talisman that protected him | |
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| Gesar's celestial friends become smiths in order to help him | |
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| The master-smith, Chuta, falling a victim to his own curiosity, loses an eye | |
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| The Horpas who are given the task of entombing Gyatza's head are buried under a landslip | |
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| Tobchen is nailed to a rock by demons. Some Indian jugglers tell Dugmo that Gesar is dead, she rejoices | |
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| Supposed apparition of the Hor gods | |
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| The marvellous dance of the gods on the mountains | |
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| Gesar kills Kurkar | |
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| Dugmo, the unfaithful wife, and Dikchen go to Ling to appeal for Gesar's clemency | |
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| The Hero sends them back to Hor there to serve his designs | |
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| Festival of the Hor gods on the mountain; priests and faithful are struck by lightning | |
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| Gesar spares Kurnag and his companions | |
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| They live to this day | |
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| Gesar kills Dugmo's son whom she had by her lover Kurkar | |
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| Dikchen and Todong quarrel and fight | |
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| Dikchen does penance | |
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| Gesar establishes him King of Hor | |
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| King Satham's dream | |
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| He wishes to conquer a dependency of Ling | |
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| Misfortunes attributed to a conch statute | |
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| The favourite Queen is hurled from the roof terrace during a hurricane | |
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| Satham shuts himself up with the corpse, hoping for its resuscitation | |
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| Dikchen carries off Satham's eldest son | |
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| The magic sticks that give invisibility | |
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| Satham's brother is lifted into the air and killed by flying horses | |
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| Gesar, in the form of a bee with iron wings, enters into Satham's body and kills him | |
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| The Hero meets an adversary of his own strength and fights with him on the bank of a poison-lake | |
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| The taking of Satham's citadel, massacre of all those in it | |
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| Gesar establishes Satham's eldest son as King of Jang | |
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| Gesar goes into retreat for a period of thirteen years | |
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| Gesar enters upon a campaign against King Shingti | |
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| Minister Kula is flayed alive | |
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| Gesar's soldiers set fire to Shingti's citadel | |
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| Shingti tries to scale the heavens by means of a magic ladder | |
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| Gesar breaks it with an arrow | |
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| Shingti falls into the flames | |
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| His daughter miraculously escapes by flying over the burning fortress | |
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| Gesar takes possession of Shingti's treasures | |
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| He gives the young princess in marriage to Todong's son | |
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| Notwithstanding his ninety-three years Todong desires a young wife | |
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| In order to obtain her, he gets King Tazig's blue horses stolen for him | |
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| This King's spies come to Todong's house during the nuptial banquet | |
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| Todong, who is drunk, boasts of the theft | |
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| Tazig sends soldiers to punish him | |
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| The coward hides himself under an overturned cauldron | |
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| He is discovered, beaten, and sentenced to be cut in pieces | |
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| He obtains his pardon by offering to betray Gesar for Tazig's benefit | |
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| The Ling warriors refuse to fight for an unjust cause | |
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| The support promised by the gods and the lust of gain make them change their minds | |
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| A hermit is transformed into an incandescent mass | |
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| The fire escapes from his cave and surrounds Tazig's fortress with a lake of flames | |
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| Gesar extinguishes it by the magic skin of Kula, whom he had had flayed alive | |
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| Gesar's victory and massacre of Tazig's troops | |
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| Gesar goes to the mountain palace where Tazig's treasures are kept | |
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| On the way there, Todong pursues some maidens who are female demons | |
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| Seized by their parents, he is imprisoned in a salt-box preparatory to being devoured | |
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| Gesar rescues him | |
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| The Hero establishes Tazig's widow as Queen | |
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| He brings Tazig's treasures to Ling and divides them among all those who have participated in the campaign | |
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| The End of Gesar | |
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| A Conversation in the Tibetan Desert | |