Indian Folklore: Examining Marwari Specificity Through Translation and Anthologisation

This article examines how English translation, anthologisation, and classificatory practices mediate the cultural and regional specificity of Marwari folk narratives when they circulate under broader labels such as “Rajasthani” or “Indian” folklore. Focusing on Vishes Kothari’s English translations of Vijaydan Detha’s “The Truthful Thief” and “Mortgage of the Next Birth” in The Garden of Tales, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology grounded in Descriptive Translation Studies. It combines paratextual analysis of the translator’s note, title, cover, blurb, and footnotes with close reading of lexical retention, oral and performative markers, culturally embedded social structures, and setting. Rather than treating translation as a source-target fidelity problem, the article situates English translation within a longer process of classification, archival mediation, anthologisation, and reception. The analysis finds that cultural specificity is neither simply preserved nor erased, but redistributed across the translated text. Regional terminology, oral structures, caste and occupational markers, and culturally specific landscapes remain visible, while broader classificatory labels may obscure the contested relationship among Marwari, Rajasthani, and Hindi. The article therefore identifies a double movement within Anglophone circulation: translation can preserve local social and narrative textures even as paratextual and classificatory frameworks generalise the cultural identity of the tales. By separating these layers of mediation, the study contributes to debates on vernacularity, translation, folklore, and literary circulation in multilingual India, reframing homogenisation as a layered effect of circulation rather than an inevitable consequence of translation.