"[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discovered this unpublished collection in the archive of the Folklore Society,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.