________________
should be devoted to the different socio-cultural contexts within which different versions of a folk tale type or motif arose : How the tale was understood and interpreted by the community at a particular period, what was perceived as its significance, point or purport - this consideration should be of vital concern with the student of the folk-tale (or mutatis mutandis with the students of other domain of folkliterature and folk-lore). All the caution and circumspection is requisite to guard against anachronistic or modernistic interpretations.
Again when a novel approach is felt to be promising fresh theoretical insights, it also usully involves the risk of misinterpreting the tale, which cannot be understood properly in disregard of its tradition, time and space contexts and its related functions. I would like to refer in this regard to a typical instance which I think pointedly shows how some modern approaches involve the risk of misinterprétation.
We know that the late Professor A. R. Ramanujan, besides being an illustrious poet, and perceptive translator of devotional poems, was an eminent folkorist. Now under the impact of the psychoanalytical approach, which accepted Freud's view that the Oedipus Complex is universal (experiencing incestuous feeling for the mother and am
