author
Thomas Lambert Barlow
1831–1910
A longtime resident of Ghazi on the Indus, Thomas Lambert Barlow helped preserve the region’s oral storytelling traditions for English-speaking readers. His work captures the voices, beliefs, humor, and moral imagination of communities in the Punjab.
1 Audiobook
Oral tradition from the Indus : comprised in tales, to which are added explanatory notes
by John Frederick Adolphus McNair, Thomas Lambert Barlow
About the author
Thomas Lambert Barlow (1831–1910) is best known for his collaboration with Major J. F. A. McNair on Oral Tradition from the Indus, published in 1908. The collection brings together folk tales gathered around Ghazi, a village on the Indus roughly thirty miles above Attock, in what is now Pakistan.
Barlow was described by fellow folklorists as a hospitable host and a master of local dialects. He helped collect and translate stories told in Punjabi, and his home became a meeting place where village narrators shared tales of kings, fakirs, animals, heroes, and everyday human folly. He also assisted Charles Swynnerton with collections of Punjabi folklore, helping preserve stories that might otherwise have remained part of an entirely oral tradition.