Indian Nights' Entertainment or Folktales from the Upper Indus (1892)

These stories are translations from the Panjabi of the Upper Indus, they are as literal as idiom and freedom of expression would permit. As folktales, they claim the highest possible antiquity, being older than the Jatakas, older than the Mahabharata, older than history itself. From age to age and generation to generation, they have been faithfully handed down by a people rude and unlearned, who have preserved them through all the vicissitudes of devastating wars, changes of rule and faith, and centuries of oppression. They are essentially tales of the people. They are truly representative of the quaint legends and stories which form the delight of the village hujra or guesthouse on winter nights, when icy winds are blowing over mountain and plain; when the young men of the village community gather round the blazing logs to be charmed by the voice of some wandering minstrel.