Folklore studies emerged as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry in the nineteenth century, although the materials that constitute folklore—such as myths, legends, folk songs, rituals, proverbs, customs, and oral narratives—have existed for centuries across cultures. The development of folklore studies both abroad and in India reflects changing intellectual traditions, scholarly methods, and interdisciplinary approaches. Over time, folklore has moved from being treated merely as a collection of curious traditions to being understood as a dynamic cultural system that reflects collective knowledge, social practices, and community identity. The field today incorporates perspectives from anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literature, cultural studies, and media studies, demonstrating its canonical importance and its relevance to social epistemology and multimodality. The systematic study of folklore in Europe began during the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romantic scholars believed that the authentic spirit of a nation resided in the traditions and oral literature of the common people. Germany played a particularly important role in the early development of folklore studies. The Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, collected and published German folktales in their famous work *Kinder- und Hausmärchen* in the early nineteenth century. Their work was not merely literary but also philological and historical, aiming to trace the origins and transformations of stories across time. These collections helped establish folklore as a subject worthy of academic attention and contributed to the formation of national cultural identities. In England, the term “folklore” was first introduced by William J. Thoms in 1846. He used the word to describe the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of ordinary people. Following this conceptualization, folklore societies were established in several countries, including the Folklore