is a district 4800 sq. miles in area, lying
about 150 miles north of Calcutta, and was formed into a separate
administration after the Santals had risen in rebellion in 1856. The
Santals at present form about one-third of the population.

The stories and legends which are here translated have been collected
by the Rev. O. Bodding, D.D. of the Scandinavian Mission to the
Santals. To be perfectly sure that neither language nor ideas should in
any way be influenced by contact with a European mind he arranged for
most of them to be written out in Santali, principally by a Christian
convert named Sagram Murmu, at present living at Mohulpahari in the
Santal Parganas.

Santali is an agglutinative language of great regularity and complexity
but when the Santals come in contact with races speaking an Aryan
language it is apt to become corrupted with foreign idioms. The
language in which these stories have been written is beautifully
pure, and the purity of language may be accepted as an index that
the ideas have not been affected, as is often the case, by contact
with Europeans.

My translation though somewhat condensed is very literal, and the
stories have perhaps thereby an added interest as shewing the way in
which a very primitive people look at things. The Santals are great
story tellers; the old folk of the village gather the young people
round them in the evening and tell them stories, and the men when
watching the crops on the threshing floor will often sit up all night
telling stories.

There is however, no doubt that at the present time the knowledge of
these stories tends to die out. Under the peace which British rule
brings there is more intercourse between the different communities
and castes, a considerable, degree of assimilation takes place,
and old customs and traditions tend to be obliterated.

Several collections of Indian stories have been made, _e.g._ Stokes,
Indian Fairy Tales; Frere, Old Deccan Days; Day, Folk Tales of
Bengal; and Knowles' Folk Tales of Kashmir, and it will be seen
that all the stories in the present collection are by no means of
pure Santal origin. Incidents which form part of the common stock of
Indian folklore abound, and many of the stories professedly relate
to characters of various Hindu castes, others again deal with such
essentially Santal beliefs as the dealings of men and _bongas_.

The Rev. Dr. Campbell of Gobindpore published in 1891 a collection
of Santal Folk Tales.