The folklore of the European Roma and mythologies of the Indian tribal world

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to define the nature of puzzling texts published at the end of the nineteenth century by H. von Wlislocki. Are they fruits of his creative fantasy, a mystification, or some non-Gypsy texts disguised as Gypsy tales? Can it be that they represent authentic Romani folklore and have links with Indian culture, as Wlislocki suggested? In the paper, two myths and a folktale from Wlislocki’s collection are analyzed against the wide background of world folklore. Parallels to these texts have been found in India, though not in the Sanskrit literature where Wlislocki looked for them, but in the mythologies of Indian tribes. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .