This article offers a comparative study of the multiplicity of folklore scholarship in Karnataka during the colonial period, revealing multiple layers of knowledge, experience and interculturality. It concentrates mainly on viewing three specific collections of Indian folklore by different agents, both colonialists and locals. The overarching aim is to achieve a deeper understanding of various research methodologies and their influence. This article also seeks to address some subsidiary questions regarding the prominence given to oral literature during the second half of the 19th century. It examines what relations, specifically in the eyes of the coloniser and the colonised, it shared with the classical/ancient works of literature of India and seeks to assess the nature of folklore knowledge produced in colonial Karnataka.
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