Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/424

 THE FOLKLORE IN THE LEGENDS OF THE PANJAB.

BY LIEUT-COL. R. C. TEMPLE, CLE.

These notes are the outcome of some lectures delivered before the Folk-Lore Society and elsewhere, and have been contributed to this Journal at the request of the President of the Society. But ever since I undertook to discourse on a subject connected with Indian folklore, I have felt that the promise was a rash one, because my official avocations have long been so absorbing and so material in their nature, that I have been unable to keep pace with the advance made of late years in the knowledge of such matters for study as folklore, and I cannot help feeling how much the special investigations of the Folk-Lore Society have gone forward since I last had the honour of addressing it some fourteen years ago, and how little qualified I can now be to show the further way. However, in finally deciding to select one of the few subjects on which I think I may still discourse to good purpose to my more learned colleagues, and throw a useful light on things Indian, I have felt emboldened to discuss it, because, speaking under correction, it does appear to me that English students might make more use than they apparently do of the work of their contemporaries in the British Eastern possessions. So much does it seem to be unknown or ignored that it is quite rarely quoted — even theEncyclopcedta Britannica makes no mention of it — and so I have resolved to bring to notice in some fulness one of five large works with which I might claim a real acquaintance : The Legends of the Punjab, The Devil- Worship of the Tuluvas of South Canara on the Malabar Coast, The Dictionary of Hindu- stani Proverbs, The Punjab and Indian Notes and Queries, and the folklore in the Indian Antiquary. And I may mention here that this last journal, though scarcely noticed in thatof the Folk-Lore Society, has steadily published folklore, acquired at first hand, from its opening volume in 1872, in a quantity probably surpassing that of the publications of the Society itself. Of the above-mentioned works I have