Description
In offering these few Indian tales to the public, the author cannot refrain from adding a few words at the beginning to express to Pandit Natesa Sastri his gratitude for the great assistance he has given him in collecting them, assistance without which they would never have seen the light in the shape of a complete volume. When he began writing down these tales, his only means of collecting them was through his native servants, who used to get them from the old women in the bazaars; but the fables they brought him were as full of corruptions and foreign adaptations as the miscellaneous ingredients that find their way into a dish of their own curry and rice, and had it not been for Sastri?s timely aid, his small work would have gone forth to the world laden with inaccuracies. The book?s foreword addresses how she was fascinated that folklorists from across the world saw so many countries have the same stories told in new ways, and she especially liked how the tales of India involved magic, gods and other elements. Pa??it Nat??a S?str?, a scholar of 18 languages and a former government worker in the Department of Art and Sculpture Archaeology, helped her gather the true and authentic stories for Tales of the Sun. The fantasy and allure of the stories the duo gathered is nothing compared to the life Kingscote was living in the pages of the British papers.
