The Central Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17th July 1969 with a view to assisting and co-coordinating the development f Indian languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary output from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research and developmental research in the fields of languages and linguistics in India.

The CIIL in collaboration with the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, organized a seminar on the Folklore of Rajasthan between May 1-3, 1976. About 40 institutions working in the State of Rajasthan in the field of folklore were contacted and a very useful dialogue among folklorists and other scholars took place. This is the first time that a systematic effort has been made to bring together persons working within a State boundary and focus attention in depth on the folkloristic material available within the State.

Many people dismiss folklore as traditional. Others pursue the study of folklore with traditional methods and approaches of investigation. Serious interdisciplinary study of folklore is yet to take root in the Indian soil. While a lot of attention has been given to collection very little effort has gone into systematic analysis and drawing cultural inferences from them.

I hope that the material presented here would set a model for similar studies in other regions of the country and would stimulate scholars of folklore in this country and abroad. I thank all con cerned responsible for the production of this volume.

**Contents and Sample Pages**