find influential adherents.2 However after 1947, regional interests surged, creating political and economic difficulties far from resolution in the sub-continent, but also stimulating interest in cultural differences. The anchalik or regional movement, for example, involved the incorporation of folklore elements and local dialects into experimental literary forms. Institutes for the preservation of regional folk culture sprang up, and many an Indian dissertation has explored the ever-multiplying lore being "discovered" in villages, towns, and even communities within cities. The folkloric fascination seems tied to a post-colonial awareness of India's distinctive identity. As in other Third World countries, the richness of indigenous traditions stimulates a feeling of pride and acts as a source of strength in combating the domination of Western cultural influences. While folklore as a field of study has made strides in South Asia and the West, the situation for Urdu is complicated by the peculiar relationship of this language to its community. First of all, the community has no geographic focus; the former concentration of speakers in the northwest of greater India was dispersed by Partition, and so far a distinctive regional identity associated with Urdu has not developed in either India or Pakistan. Second, Urdu has been tied to courts and an aristocratic lifestyle more than most South Asian languages, and even in its 20th century phase, its literature remains close to the experience of the upper and middle classes of urban Muslims. However, it would be misleading to identify Urdu exclusively with those practicing Islam. Urdu is neither the language of a nation, nor of a religion, or of a region—and insofar as it defines a literary tradition, its distinguishing sign is its script; but in the case of folklore, much of which is orally communicated, even this is lacking. For these reasons, Urdu folklore is still largely invisible. I have encountered English-language books on Pakistani folklore and Bangladeshi folklore, but none on that of Urdu.3 Nonetheless, if we accept Roger Abrahams' definition of folklore as "a collective term for those traditional items of knowledge that arise in recurring performances,"4 I believe it would be possible to identify verbal traditions belonging to the Urdu-identified community that are outside of the at-present rather narrowly defined range of classical and modern genres. By "Urdu-identified" I imply a cultural grouping not necessarily coterminous with language usage. To pursue folklore, one must go beyond the standard definition of Urdu as a literary language and consider its presence as a spoken medium of communication among various groups in the multilayered Indo-Islamic social structure. Among less-educated speakers, the language of Urdu folklore may be mixed with regional languages such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Punjabi, Gujarati, or Marathi, and yet retain a sociolinguistically distinct character, especially when related to the context of speech or performance. 2See for instance Kapila Vatsyayan's major study. Traditional Indian Theatre: Multiple Streams (New Delhi: National Book Trust,! 980). ^or example, Masud-ul-Hasan, Famous Folktales of Pakistan (Karachi :Ferozsos Ltd.,n.d.); Ashraf Siddiqui, Folkloric Bangladesh (Dacca:Bangla Academy, 1976). ''Roger D. Abrahams, "The Complex Relations of Simple Forms, in Folklore Genres, ed. Dan Ben-Amos (Austin:University of Texas Press, 1976), 195. Annual of Urdu Studies, #7 ^->