In 1996, Sadhana Naithani, pursuing research at London's Folklore Society, came across a cache of previously unpublished documents from the archived papers of William Crooke, a colonial administrator in British India and an avid folklorist. In Quest of Indian Folktales is a twofold exposition of this rich material. In part I, “The Quest” (chapters 1–4), the author examines the relationship between Crooke and his Indian assistant, Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube, an ambitious and highly educated scholar frustrated by the strictures of colonialism. The volume's second section is an anthology of North Indian folktales collected by Crooke and Chaube during the mid-nineteenth century.
While William Crooke has long been a respected name in folklore scholarship, the vital role of his assistant has until now remained essentially unacknowledged. Through careful exploration of letters, diaries, academic manuscripts, and oral interviews, Naithani has done an admirable job of illuminating, through the particular case study...
