The Authorial Other in Folktale Collections in colonial India: Tracing Narration and its Dis/Continuities

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1920, a staggering number of collections of Indian folklore was published by British administrators, missionaries, wives and daughters of officials, and Indian scholars. Rich in local detail, these collections of folklore contain copious prefaces, notes and explanatory appendixes. I examine the prefatory material of two folktale collections - Mary Frere's Old Deccan Days (1868), and Georgiana A. Kingscote and S.M. Natea Sastri's Tales of the Sun (1890) - for their display of multiple levels of engagement between co-authors, informants, and representatives of colonial authority, calling into question the concept of a stable authorial center. I argue that these collections comment on how collectors of folklore delineated alterity and subjectivity while themselves experiencing shifting subaltern positions.