Indian Folklorists
The scientific study of Indian folklore was slow to begin: early collectors felt far freer to creatively reinterpret source material, and collected their material with a view to the picturesque rather than the representative.
A. K. Ramanujan's theoretical and aesthetic contributions span several disciplinary areas. Context-sensitivity is a theme that appears not only in Ramanujan's cultural essays, but also appears in his writing about Indian folklore and classic poetry. In "Where Mirrors are Windows," (1989) and in "Three Hundred Ramayanas" (1991), for example, he discusses the "intertextual" nature of Indian literature, written and oral...He says, "What is merely suggested in one poem may become central in a 'repetition' or an 'imitation' of it. His essay "Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology of Reflections" (1989), and his commentaries in The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967) and Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages (1991) are good examples of his work in Indian folklore studies.
Rudyard Kipling was interested in folklore, dealing with English folklore in works such as Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies; his experiences in India led him to also create similar works with Indian themes. Kipling spent a great deal of his life in India, and was familiar with the Hindi language. His works such as the two Jungle Books contain a great deal of stories that are written after the manner of traditional folktales. Indian themes also appear in his Just So Stories, and many of the characters bear recognisable names from Indian languages. During the same period, Helen Bannerman penned the now notorious Indian-themed tale of Little Black Sambo, which represented itself to be an Indian folktale.
After independence, disciplines and methods from anthropology began to be used in the creation of more in- depth surveys of Indian folklore.
Folklorists of India can be broadly divided in to three phases. Phase I were the British Administrators who collected the local knowledge and folklore to understand the subjects they want to rule. next were the missionaries who wanted to acquire the language of the people to recreate their religious literature for evangelical purpose. Third phase was the post independent period in the country where many universities, institutes and individuals started studying the folklore . the purpose was to search the national identity through legends, myths, and epics. In course of time Academic institutions and universities in the country started opening departments on folklore in their respective regions, more in south India to maintain their cultural identity and also maintain language and culture.
After independence, scholars like Dr Satyendra, Devendra Satyarthi, Krishnadev Upadhayaya, Jhaberchand Meghani, Prafulla Dutta Goswami, Ashutosh Bhattacharya, Kunja Bihari Dash, Chitrasen Pasayat, Somnath Dhar, Ramgarib choube, jagadish Chandra Trigunayan and many more were the pioneer in working on folklore. Of course, the trend was more literary than analytical. It was during 1980s that the central Institute of Indian Languages and the American Institute of Indian Studies started their systemic study on Folklore any after that many western as well as eastern scholars pursued their studies on folklore as a discipline.
The pioneer of the folklorists in contemporary India are Jawaharlal Handoo, Chitrasen Pasayat, Sadhana Naithani,Kishore Bhattacharjee, Anjali Padhi, Kailash Patnaik, VA Vivek Rai,late Komal Kothari,Raghavan Payanad, M Ramakrishnan, Nandini Sahu and many more. An emerging trens of new folklorists have emerged who are committed to understand folklore from Indian point of view than to see the whole subjects from the western model. Some of them are better prefer to understand folklore from the folklore provider and consultants who are the creator and consumers of folklore.User of folklore know what folklore is since their use folklore with purpose and meaning. But theoreticians see folklore from their theoritical angle.Ethcs point of view, folklorist should learn from the folk as practicable as possible and folk should give the hidden meaning of folklore to the folklorist, so that both of their interpretation can help giving a new meaning to the item of folklore and explore the possibility of use of folklore in new socio-cultural domain.
Now National Folklore support Center, Chennai since last ten years has created a space for the new scholars who are pursuing the study of folklore with their commitment. One important breakthrough in the field of folklore is that it is no more confiled to the study in the four wall of academic domain, rather, it has again found its space within and among the folk to get their true meaning.
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