From Vikramaditya’s legendary throne and the riddles of Betaal to stories from the Deccan and folk wisdom gathered from across the country, HarperCollins Children’s Books’ four-volume boxset celebrates the extraordinary range of India’s oral storytelling traditions.

Long before children encountered stories on screens, tales travelled from one generation to another through grandparents, wandering storytellers, village gatherings and bedtime conversations. They changed slightly with every telling, picked up local flavours and travelled across regions, but continued to carry with them questions of courage, justice, wisdom, greed, loyalty and human nature.

Roots of India: Great Folktales of India, a new boxset from HarperCollins Children’s Books, returns to this tradition with four collections that approach Indian folklore from very different directions. Bringing together Singhasan Battisi by Deepa Agarwal and Sonali Agarwal, Betaal Pachisi by Mario Coelho, Folktales from the Deccan by Cheryl Rao and Witty and Wondrous Folktales by Dr Sunanda Kulkarni, the set attempts something both simple and increasingly valuable: putting old stories back into the hands of young readers.

The strength of the collection lies in its variety. These are not four books telling variations of the same kind of tale. One revolves around the legendary reputation of Raja Vikramaditya, another turns the famous Vikram-Betaal stories into verse, a third draws upon the cultural landscape of the Deccan, while the fourth gathers stories of wit and folk wisdom from across the Indian subcontinent.

Together, they demonstrate just how broad the term “Indian folktale” really is.

A throne, 32 statuettes and the meaning of good leadership

Singhasan Battisi, retold by Deepa Agarwal and Sonali Agarwal, centres on one of Indian folklore’s most enduring figures, Raja Vikramaditya.

The premise immediately offers young readers a sense of mystery. Raja Bhoj is respected for his justice and generosity, but his reputation is tested when the legendary throne of Vikramaditya is discovered in his kingdom. It is no ordinary seat of power. The lion throne is guarded by thirty-two magical statuettes, each connected to stories of Vikramaditya’s extraordinary qualities and deeds.

The central question is not merely whether Raja Bhoj can physically sit upon the throne. It is whether he has earned the right to do so.

That gives these ancient stories a surprisingly contemporary relevance. Beneath their magical setting lies an examination of leadership, justice, responsibility and the standards by which those in authority should be judged.

Deepa Agarwal herself points to this aspect of the stories, describing their continuing relevance because of their emphasis on justice and “the duties of the ruler”. That is perhaps what allows Singhasan Battisi to move beyond nostalgia. Children can enjoy the magic, adventure and extraordinary feats, while older readers may notice the political and ethical questions beneath them.

There is also an appealing story behind the retelling itself. Deepa Agarwal collaborated with her daughter, Sonali Agarwal, to revisit all thirty-two tales. That intergenerational partnership feels particularly appropriate for a book rooted in a tradition in which stories themselves are passed from one generation to another.

Deepa Agarwal brings considerable experience as an author, poet and translator with more than sixty books for children and adults, while Sonali Agarwal comes to the project from a very different professional background. Their collaboration reinforces one of the boxset’s larger themes: folklore remains alive precisely because each generation finds its own way of retelling it.

Vikram and Betaal return — this time in verse

If Singhasan Battisi draws on the reputation of Vikramaditya as the ideal ruler, Betaal Pachisi places him in one of Indian folklore’s strangest and most memorable partnerships.

On a dark, moonless night, Vikramaditya sets out to capture Betaal, an elusive spirit that has already outwitted warriors and wise men. What follows is not simply a chase between a king and a supernatural being. Their encounters become a sequence of stories, questions, moral puzzles and tests of intelligence.

Mario Coelho gives the twenty-five Vikram-Betaal tales a poetic treatment. This is an intriguing choice because the original appeal of these stories lies as much in rhythm, repetition and oral narration as in plot. Verse therefore has the potential to reconnect the stories with the performative quality of traditional storytelling.

The material describes the collection as retaining the wit, humour and eeriness associated with Vikram and Betaal while offering a new way of encountering one of Indian folklore’s best-known pairings.

Coelho seems particularly suited to the task. His writing ranges from children’s stories to darker tales involving ghosts, werewolves, vampires and other unsettling creatures. That familiarity with both humour and the macabre could work well in a collection where riddles and morality are frequently accompanied by graveyards, spirits and supernatural mischief.

For younger readers, the attraction is obvious: there is suspense, a clever supernatural antagonist and a hero repeatedly forced to think his way through difficult situations. But the enduring appeal of Vikram-Betaal stories comes from the fact that their puzzles rarely offer simplistic answers. They ask readers to judge motives, choices and consequences.

That makes them entertainment with an intellectual edge.

Discovering the Deccan through its stories

The third book, Cheryl Rao’s Folktales from the Deccan, shifts attention away from legendary kings and supernatural riddles towards place, memory and regional culture.

The collection includes stories of a golden nugget whose real worth is greater than it first appears, one of India’s early freedom fighters and a prince who built a magnificent city out of love. The tales are rooted in the history, monuments, people, customs and landscapes of the Deccan.

Rao’s description of her approach captures the essence of folklore particularly well: stories, she says, can exist everywhere — around people, places, monuments, customs, animals and even inanimate objects — and they continue to grow with every retelling.

That observation is central to understanding why folklore matters.

A monument may be studied as architecture, a ruler through conventional history and a landscape through geography. A folktale, however, tells us how communities remembered those things. The facts and legends may intermingle, but the story reveals something equally significant: the emotional and cultural meaning a place acquired over generations.

For young readers, Folktales from the Deccan can therefore act as an invitation to look at their surroundings differently. A fort, street, river, monument or old building may no longer appear simply as an object. It might contain a story waiting to be discovered.

Rao’s hope that children will eventually seek out more such stories themselves is perhaps one of the most attractive ideas behind the volume. A good collection of folktales should not merely finish with its final page. It should make the reader curious about the stories that were not included.

Twenty-two stories and a storehouse of folk wisdom

Dr Sunanda Kulkarni’s Witty and Wondrous Folktales broadens the geographical canvas further.

Its twenty-two tales span different parts of the Indian subcontinent and include a crow seeking revenge, a ruthless king who abandons war for a game and three thieves capable of troubling an entire kingdom.

The emphasis here appears to be on wit, unpredictability and the kind of practical wisdom that gives folktales their staying power.

Folklore often performs several functions at once. It entertains, certainly, but it can also warn, question authority, reward cleverness, ridicule arrogance and suggest ways to negotiate difficult situations. Animals may behave like humans, fools may expose the supposedly wise, and people without obvious power can prevail through intelligence.

Kulkarni stresses another important role of such stories in childhood. Reading and listening to folklore, she notes, can help children develop vocabulary while exposing them to different cultures and encouraging curiosity, imagination and creativity.

Her own background makes the book an interesting addition to the set. A doctor, academic and writer widely published in Kannada, Kulkarni brings together seemingly different worlds of medicine, literature and children’s storytelling. Her belief in the continuing pleasure of reading a physical book “word-by-word from the cover page to back cover” also captures something of the spirit behind the entire collection.

More than nostalgia

It would be easy to market a collection such as Great Folktales of India primarily through nostalgia — stories parents remember from their childhood, now repackaged for their children.

But that would undersell what folklore can do.

These tales matter not because they are old but because they contain ideas that continue to invite debate. What makes a ruler just? Is intelligence more powerful than strength? What happens when greed takes over? When should loyalty be rewarded? How do people respond to injustice? Can humour challenge authority? What do communities choose to remember about themselves?

The answers given by traditional stories may belong to another age, and contemporary readers need not accept every inherited moral unquestioningly. But the questions remain surprisingly durable.

The four books also offer different routes into India itself. Singhasan Battisi explores ideals of kingship through legend. Betaal Pachisi combines the supernatural with moral reasoning. Folktales from the Deccan links stories with regional history and landscape. Witty and Wondrous Folktales foregrounds the humour, imagination and accumulated wisdom of folk traditions from a wider geographical canvas.

The result is less a single unified collection than a small library of storytelling traditions.

Keeping stories alive

Tina Narang, Executive Publisher at HarperCollins Children’s Books, describes the boxset as a collection of some of the most “charming, intriguing and fascinating” folktales from across India and positions it as an addition to the publisher’s Roots of India series.

The title of that series is apt.

Roots are not museum objects. They survive by continuing to nourish what grows above them. Folktales operate in much the same way. A story does not stay alive because it is preserved untouched; it survives because somebody tells it again and somebody new wants to hear it.

That is ultimately the appeal of Roots of India: Great Folktales of India. It does not merely gather familiar stories into four attractive categories. It gives a new generation an entry point into a storytelling tradition that predates the modern children’s publishing industry by centuries.

Some readers will come for Vikram and Betaal. Others may be fascinated by the magical throne of Vikramaditya, intrigued by tales from the Deccan or amused by clever animals, thieves and kings. Parents may recognise stories they once heard themselves.

But perhaps the most valuable outcome would be if young readers close these books and begin asking a question that has kept folklore alive for generations:

What other stories are out there?

That curiosity is where the next retelling begins.