Folktales from Northern India

The BookCollectors in the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s unearthed a wealth of stories from around the world and published them in English translations for the delight of general readers, young and old. Most of these anthologies have been long out of print.

The ABC-CLIO Classic Folk and Fairy Tales series brings back to life these key anthologies of traditional tales from the golden age of folklore discovery. Each volume provides a freshly typeset but otherwise virtually unaltered edition of a classic work and each is enhanced by an authoritative introduction by a top scholar. These insightful essays discuss the significance of the collection and its original collector; the original collector’s methodology and translation practices; and the original period context according to region or genre.

Certain to be of interest to folklorists, these classic collections are also meant to serve as sources for storytellers and for sheer reading pleasure, reviving as they do hundreds of folk stories, both reassuringly familiar and excitingly strange.

The AuthorDr. Sadhana Naithani is assistant professor at the Center of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis, “Politics of Love,” is a study of German folk songs. Her postdoctoral research and publication in the history of folklore research have focused on the interface between nineteenth-century European folkloristics and colonial folklore collections compiled in India By British colonial administrators. The postcolonial perspective in her writing has brought forth the role of native scholars in the compilation of those volumes. Folktales from Northern India is the first volume ever to be published under the joint authorship of a colonial administrator-scholar-William Crooke-and his Indian scholar-associate-Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube. Sadhana Naithani’s articles have been published in the Journal of Folklore Research and in Folklore.