Folklore materials such as tales, songs etc. are as old as human society, the systematic study of these materials in the spirit of modern academics is of relatively recent origin. The beginning of modern folklore studies can be traced back in the nineteenth century’s Europe, especially in Germany, when scholars and intellectuals started giving serious interests in the collection and study of the folklore materials in various forms, such as, folk tales, folk songs, traditional customs, etc.that existed in their surrounding societies.

However, it is important to know that such interests on folklore resources, initially in Europe and later in other parts of the world, were triggered by diverse motivations that arose out of different social, political and historical contexts. Unlike the cases in more stable disciplines such as history and natural sciences, the growth and development of folklore studies as an academic subject had to pass through considerable differences and confusions. Such differences were primarily regarding the meaning of the term ‘folklore’ itself, as the same term, i.e. ‘folklore’, was used to mean both the study and the materials of the subject. Besides that, different countries followed different practices to label a diverse set of cultural resources as folklore materials.

In some parts of Europe and South America, the term ‘folklore’