The historic India comprises, in addition to the modern nation that bears its name, the countries and peoples of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. If a single word could describe this ancient place, it would certainly be "diversity." India's variety, both cultural and linguistic, is such that it is more akin to a continent like Europe than to any single country. With scores of living languages to support it, India's tradition of storytelling has grown to subtend a body of literature as potent and as relevant as any collection of classical European fairytales.
Unlike Europe, however, India still benefits from the rural purity of village life, an existence that describes 80% of its population. As its literacy rate is quite low compared to Western countries, and its citizens' access to electronic and print media limited, India's tradition of oral storytelling, so important to the development of mass communication in Europe, thrives in almost pristine condition to this day.
In 1919, scholar W. Norman Brown estimated that there were about 3000 oral tales available in India. Given the lesser extent of Western scholarly penetration in that era, Brown's was probably an underestimation. India's vast panoply of religions and movements has compelled the creation of countless myths and aphorisms to support those beliefs; it is from there that this great fountain of narrative erupts. Mythologies of all human cultures embody philosophies, while folktales present personal paradigms and themes, and impart a sort of common wisdom that serves as a single brick in the grand monolith of mythology.
In the Indian case, it is entirely possible that many instances of folk literature arose from a need of priests to convey, in accessible terms, the more esoteric aspects of their philosophies --aspects that sweeping mythology seems unable to communicate. Yet, as in the case of European literature, the piety and pomp of Indian religions are often torn away by their folk brethren to reveal a ribald core as guttural as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This is doubtless a manifestation of the oral foundation of Indian folk literature, one in which folk must be entertained before they can be placated by the socializing influence of the aforementioned philosophies.
The oral tradition is a valued one in the Indian subcontinent where one's erudition is sometimes determined as much by articulateness as by the letters after one's name. The power of language to convey both idea and status is reflected in the need for Indian public figures to display outstanding eloquence, more so than their Western counterparts; the requirement of great feats of recitation from school children of all ages; the resounding global success of modern Indian literature; and in the demarcation of ethnic and political boundaries along linguistic lines.
To Western ears, the recitation of Indian folk tales is a strangely comforting experience, made so for its familiar reference points: monsters to be conquered, talking animals, vengeful gods, beautiful princesses, noble princes and rags-to-riches yarns of all variety. The continuum of Indo-European culture is one that allows for these commonalities, but not so much so that Indian folk tales cannot introduce a novel sense of entertainment and fulfilment for the casual reader.
These tales originate from an oral tradition where travellers or elders would gather a community together beneath the stars and engage in a soothing theatrical and lyrical presentation. With each re-telling, the stories gather additional narrative, becoming more circuitous to support the drama of the live recitation. Some tales are derived from the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and are therefore rife with moralization and deific references. Others may pre-date the Aryan influence and hearken to an older era.
Previous attempts to anthologize Indian folk tales have been of three varieties: the re-creation of the oral tale in its circuitous complexity, retaining a high degree of academic worth; the conveyance of Hindu philosophies, often using Biblical language and a Victorian ethic; or the modernization of the tales, carrying forward Aesopian lessons to all epochs and characterizations. The casual Western reader is perhaps most drawn to the latter category for its accessibility.
With this collection, I have endeavoured to adopt the oral storyteller's persona, wishing to entertain rather than educate, while hoping to do both. Toward this end, these stories have been stripped of all inappropriate and circuitous side-plots, and their core narratives further developed. Where other anthologizers would have some of these tales convey a moral, I have chosen instead to remove any sense of judgement where one is unimportant to the flavour of the story. Unnecessary references to India's vast pantheon of gods and goddesses have been pruned since, in my belief, such references were sometimes added by Vedic storytellers to make pre-Aryan stories palatable to Hindu tastes.
Lastly, I admit to having altered the plots of a few of these tales to preserve a greater sense of irony and denouement. As this is not meant to be a scholarly work accurately portraying the history of Indian folk literature, I make no apologies for exercising my literary licence in this manner. As pointed out by the great Indian folk anthologizer, A.K. Ramanujan, even the Grimm Brothers rewrote and "embroidered" their "household tales."