“Rustamxon”: characters and kinds of dastan

According to the textbook, a dastan is the largest genre of folk oral literature: a large lyrico-epic work that broadly describes events of heroic, romantic-adventure and fantastic content. It reflects the popular mind of its age and keeps being enriched with new themes over time. The first creator of a dastan is often forgotten while the work, passing from generation to generation, becomes the people’s property. By theme, dastans fall into three kinds: heroic, romantic (adventure-love) and historical. “Alpomish” is classed as a heroic dastan, while “Go‘ro‘g‘li”, “Ravshan”, “Rustamxon” and “Oshiq G‘arib va Shohsanam” are among the romantic-adventure ones. Bards (baxshis) perform many thousands of lines from memory.