Folk tales of Sind and Guzarat — Themes and Context

A Collector's Voice and Purpose

Kincaid's preface is brief but revealing. He thanks the editors of two newspapers and acknowledges Mr. Amritlal Chunilal for the Gujarati originals. He does not claim scholarly depth, but rather hopes to 'lead others more competent' into Sind's folklore. This modesty is undercut by the foreword's lyrical, possessive tone: Webb insists that Sind's 'beauties are not for the stranger' and lists what the casual visitor misses—'moonlight on the great desert,' 'sunrise from the Indus delta.' The reader is thus introduced to a double perspective: the collector as journalist and the province as a place of hidden romance.

History Embedded in Landscape

The longest excerpt moves from a duck-hunting scene to a detailed survey of tombs on Makli Hill. Kincaid describes the tombs of Sayad Ali Shirazi, Makli, Jam Nindo, and Jam Tamachi, weaving in the story of Akbar's birth—how Humayun cut the baby's first garment from the Sayad's coat. The narrative jumps from a 1542 event to the tomb's inscription date of 1752, showing how local legend and recorded history are layered. The author's voice is that of a guide: 'let us take the tombs from north to south and put down what we know about them.' This section exemplifies the book's method—using physical sites as anchors for tales.

The Sindhi Setting as Character

Throughout the excerpts, the landscape is not mere backdrop but a source of meaning. The foreword personifies Sind as having an 'atmosphere of romance' that 'meets one on every side.' The Makli Hill passage mentions a 'ridge known as the Makli Hill' and offers two derivations of the name—one from a pious woman, another from 'Maka laali' or 'threshold of Mecca.' This uncertainty is left unresolved, typical of oral tradition. The reader is invited to see the land as a palimpsest of stories, where every tomb, lake, or hill carries multiple explanations.

Gaps and Glimpses: What the Excerpts Omit

The excerpts provide no actual folk tale text—only the preface, foreword, and a historical digression. The catalog lists 18 text sections and a word count of 38,849, but the sample stops before any story begins. This means a first reader must approach the book trusting that the tales themselves will match the promise of the framing. The four Gujarati stories are mentioned but not excerpted. The reader should note that the book's structure may be uneven: some sections are historical essays, others are tales. The preface's admission that the pieces were 'reprinted' from newspapers hints at a miscellany rather than a unified collection.

Given that the excerpts are all paratext, the best approach is to read the tales first, then return to the preface and foreword. Kincaid's voice is that of an enthusiast, not a folklorist, and his historical asides may enrich or distract. The book's value lies in its preservation of stories from two regions rarely anthologized together. Treat the framing as a period piece—a window into how a British civil servant saw Sind's folklore in 1925.

I keep thinking about Kincaid’s fondness for the tombs on Makli Hill, how his affection softened the edges of his colonial gaze. There’s a similar quiet ache in The perverse Erse — Context and Discussion, that tension between loving a place and the stories we tell over it. The feeling lingers, like dust on a windowsill, long after the reading ends. I found myself returning to certain pages, just to sit with that discomfort.