India on the Map of ‘Hard Science’ Folkloristics

SINCE the science of folk literature came into being, India has been one of the main sources of its subject matter. As it became known in the last century, the wealth and colourfulness of Indian folk literature and the very age of its sources overwhelmed the Western centres of scholarship. The first to pay attention to the lore of the simple folk in India were the well-educated British ladies and gentlemen of the colonial adminstration in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of this century. Indian intellectuals joined this stream later and in smaller numbers. That is the very period during which the collecting of popular antiquities and folklore blossomed in England and on the Continent, borne by the wave of the romantic and nationalistic trends and movements. While, however, the tide of 19thcentury nationalism brought with it the development of the main social and academic tools and institutions (associations, archives, museums, publishing enterprises, university chairs) for folklore research in Europe, India did not join in. The rising Indian modern national consciousness had no need to seek support by reference to its folk culture. Like the Greek and Jewish national movements, the Indian movement could build on its extremely rich national classical heritage, featuring great works in all arts and humanities, a basis which the young, just awakening European nations could not boast of. In India, the interest in folk culture arose mainly after attaining national statehood. The interest developed from two directions: anthropologists trained in part abroad (first in England, and after independence, mainly in the U.S.A.) included in their interests also folk literature of the tribes they happened to investigate;' this, however, did not usually include an interest in the folk literature of the main Hindu groups. The interest in these groups was to be developed by philologists and linguists. A decade and a half after the attaining of independence, Upadhyaya's review2 had still to report only of collecting activities, made by both native philologists and by foreign missionaries and colonial officials. The first systematizations of Indian folk literature, ancient and modern, came from the West.3 The attitude changed rapidly in recent years. The beginning of an independent interest in folk literature as such in the Indian public is signalled by the publication by a private publisher of the impressive series of 21 volumes of folktales, each from a different province of India.4 And now, new people are coming to the Indian scholarly scene. As in the West, the main impetus has come from linguistics. Under the patronage of linguistic institutions, folklore institutions and publications begin to appear, and linguistically trained scholars turn to the investigation of folk literature.5 From being a side-concern of philologists and anthropologists, the investigation of folk literature develops into an independent field. Collection for the sake of preservation is now being coupled with the search for understanding, a turn towards theory. As with most countries, developed and developing, the theory is being taken over from the few

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  Sadhana Naithani•Journal of Folklore Research•2002

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• A Bibliography of Indian Folk Literature

  Ernest Bender, Jawaharlal Handoo•Journal of the American Oriental…•1979

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• Types of Indic Oral Tales

  M B Emeneau, Stith Thompson et al.•Journal of American Folklore•1962

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