Sadhana Naithani

"[A] rare piece of scholarly detective work." —Margaret Mills, Ohio State University In Quest of Indian Folktales publishes for the first time a collection of northern Indian folktales from the late 19th century. Reputedly the work of William Crooke, a well-known folklorist and British colonial official, the tales were actually collected, selected, and translated by a certain Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube. In 1996, Sadhana Naithani discovered this unpublished collection in the archive of the Folklore Society, London. Since then, she has uncovered the identity of the mysterious Chaube and the details of his collaboration with the famous folklorist. In an extensive four-chapter introduction, Naithani describes Chaube’s relationship to Crooke and the essential role he played in Crooke’s work, as both a native informant and a trained scholar. By unearthing the fragmented story of Chaube’s life, Naithani gives voice to a new identity of an Indian folklore scholar in colonial India. The publication of these tales and the discovery of Chaube’s role in their collection reveal the complexity of the colonial intellectual world and problematize our own views of folklore in a postcolonial world.

Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke

In Quest of Indian Folktales

Cristina Bacchilega

Donald Haase

Robert Irwin

Noelani Arista

Geert Jan van Gelder

Lee Haring

Heinz Grotzfeld

Joseph Sadan

Francesca Maria Corrao

Margaret A. Mills

Hande A. Birkalan-Gedik

Sabir Badalkham

Suzanne Enderwitz

Hasan El-Shamy

Thomas Geider

Sylvette Larzul

The follow-up to The Arabian Nights Reader, this volume investigates the transnational features of the Arabian Nights.

The Arabian Nights in Transnational Perspective

In The Story-Time of the British Empire, author Sadhana Naithani examines folklore collections compiled by British colonial administrators, military men, missionaries, and women in the British colonies of Africa, Asia, and Australia between 1860 and 1950. Much of this work was accomplished in the context of colonial relations and done by non-folklorists, yet these oral narratives and poetic expressions of non-Europeans were transcribed, translated, published, and discussed internationally. Naithani analyzes the role of folklore scholarship in the construction of colonial cultural politics as well as in the conception of international folklore studies. Since most folklore scholarship and cultural history focuses exclusively on specific nations, there is little study of cross-cultural phenomena about empire and/or post-coloniality. Naithani argues that connecting cultural histories, especially in relation to previously colonized countries, is essential to understanding those countries' folklore, as these folk traditions result from both internal and European influence. The author also makes clear the role folklore and its study played in shaping intercultural perceptions that continue to exist in the academic and popular realms today. The Story-Time of the British Empireis a bold argument for a twenty-first-century vision of folklore studies that is international in scope and that understands folklore as a transnational entity.

Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics

The Story-Time of the British Empire

"[A] rare piece of scholarly detective work." -- Margaret Mills, Ohio State University In Quest of Indian Folktales publishes for the first time a collection of northern Indian folktales from the late 19th century. Reputedly the work of William Crooke, a well-known folklorist and British colonial official, the tales were actually collected, selected, and translated by a certain Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube. In 1996, Sadhana Naithani discovered this unpublished collection in the archive of the Folklore Society, London. Since then, she has uncovered the identity of the mysterious Chaube and the details of his collaboration with the famous folklorist. In an extensive four-chapter introduction, Naithani describes Chaube's relationship to Crooke and the essential role he played in Crooke's work, as both a native informant and a trained scholar. By unearthing the fragmented story of Chaube's life, Naithani gives voice to a new identity of an Indian folklore scholar in colonial India. The publication of these tales and the discovery of Chaube's role in their collection reveal the complexity of the colonial intellectual world and problematize our own views of folklore in a postcolonial world.

Sadhana Naithani

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