The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Fairy Tales, by Anonymous

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Title: Indian Fairy Tales

Author: Anonymous

Commentator: Mary Stokes
W. R. S. Ralston

Editor: Maive Stokes

Release Date: February 7, 2010 [EBook #31209]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note

There are some characters with diacritical marks in this text, which
are represented as follows:

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concerned.

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character set, are shown as ['x].

INDIAN FAIRY TALES

COLLECTED AND TRANSLATED

BY

MAIVE STOKES.

_WITH NOTES BY MARY STOKES,_

_AND AN INTRODUCTION BY W. R. S. RALSTON, M.A._

London:
ELLIS & WHITE, NEW BOND STREET.
1880.

[_All Rights reserved._]

To my dear Grannie, Susan Bazely.

[Decoration]

PREFACE.

The first twenty-five stories in this book were told me at Calcutta
and Simla by two Ayahs, Dunkni and Muniya, and by Karim, a Khidmatgar.
The last five were told Mother by Muniya. At first the servants would
only tell their stories to me, because I was a child and would not
laugh at them, but afterwards the Ayahs lost their shyness and told
almost all their stories over again to Mother when they were passing
through the press. Karim would never tell his to her or before her.
The stories were all told in Hindustani, which is the only language
that these servants know.

Dunkni is a young woman, and was born and brought up in Calcutta. She
got the stories, she told me, from her husband, Mochi, who was born in
Calcutta and brought up at Benares.

Muniya is a very old, white-haired woman. She has
great-grandchildren. She was born at P