1. The description of the princess Nautanki and synopsis of her story is a composite of verses from Chiranjilal and Natharam, Sangit nautanki (1904), later known as Sangit nautanki shahzadi urf, phul simh panjabi (e.g., 1975 ed.); Muralidhar, Sangit nautanki shahzadi (1909); Govind Ram, Sangit nautanki (1915).

2. Govind Rajnish, Rajasthan ke purvi anchal ka lok-sahitya , 130-134. Phulan De is also the subject of two Rajasthani folk plays, Khyal raja kesar simh rani phulan de ka (1924) and Raja kesar simh ko khyal (1926), both in the British Museum collection. In these khyals her suitor's name is Kesar Singh.

3. Frances W. Pritchett, "Sit Basant: Oral Tale, Sangit and Kissa," Asian Folklore Studies 42, no. 1 (1983): 53. See also Frances W. Pritchett, Marvelous Encounters , appendix B, 191-192, for versions of the Sit Basant story from all over India. Phulvanti's story is also contained in Sangit phulvanti ka (1877), a Marwari folk play in the India Office collection.

4. Charles Augustus Kincaid, "Rupsinh and the Queen of the Anardes," in Folk Tales of Sind and Guzarat , 90-101.

5. Mary Frere, ed., "Panch-Phul Ranee," as told by Anna Liberata de Souza, in Hindoo Fairy Legends , 95-141. In this tale she is sought by a prince exiled by his stepmother. William Crooke, "The Tale of Panchphula Rani," in Indian Antiquary (Sept. 1895): 272-274. Here she lives in the land of China and is wooed by the youngest of seven brothers. Several khyals also exist on Panchphula Rani: Krishnalal, Khyal asa dabi arthat pachphula ka (1923) in the British Museum, and perhaps by the same author, but catalogued as Kishanlal Nasirabadi in the India Office Library, Khyal pachaphula (1923, 1928, 1931).

6. In "A Survey of the Incidents in Modern Indian Aryan Folk-tales," the "delicate heroine" type is characterized as "ordinary form: five-flower princess: heroine weighs five flowers only." See Flora Annie Steel and R. C. Temple, Tales of the Punjab , 302. The Miyan Bhunga (''Sir Buzz'') story is in the same volume, 9-15. Here her suitor is a poor soldier's son.

7. The earliest known manuscript of the Nautanki drama in Hindi is Khushi Ram, Sangit rani nautanki ka (1882) in the British Library. Richard Carnac Temple in the preface to vol. 3 of Legends of the Panjab lists "Rani Nautanki and the Panjabi Lad" as one of the stories he had collected but not translated or published.

8. Passages describing the Nautanki performance at the fair and the interview with Master Surkhi are adapted from Surendra Sukumar, "Mele mem nautanki," Dharmyug , Aug. 28, 1977, 43-46. I am grateful to Bruce Pray for a copy of this article.

9. The interview with Gulab Bai was conducted by an anonymous interviewer and was published in the Hindi newspaper Navbharat Times , Delhi, May 8, 1985, 5. I am indebted to Ashok Aklujkar for a copy of this interview.

10. Malika Begam together with Pandit Kakkuji and Phakkar, all veteran Nautanki artists of Lucknow, were interviewed by Kathryn Hansen and Jugal Kishor on July 15, 1982. Sound recording was done by Kay Norton, transcription by Tara Sinha, and translation by Kathryn Hansen.

11. Excerpts from Phanishwarnath Renu's short story "Tisri kasam" are abridged from the translation by Kathryn Hansen in The Third Vow and Other Stories , 49-88. The original story was published in Thumri in 1959.

12. The various etymologies for the word nautanki are discussed by Ram Narayan Agraval in Sangit: ek loknatya parampara , 135-137.

13. The publication history of Sangit nautanki shahzadi reveals its expanding territory and continuous influence over a hundred-year period. I located a total of twenty versions of the drama in the British Museum, India Office Library, University of Chicago Regenstein Library, and the private collections of Frances Pritchett, Darius Swann, and Kathryn Hansen. Chronologically ordered, the texts were authored by Khushi Ram (Banaras: 1882), Chiranjilal Natharam (Kanpur: 1904), Muralidhar (Kanpur: 1907, 1909; Aligarh: 1912, 1923, 1924), Govind Ram (Kanpur: 1915), Chiranjilal (Mathura: 1922), Shrilal Upadhyay (Banaras: 1922, 1923, 1930), Natharam Sharma Gaur (Hathras: 1925, 1975, 1982), Shivdulare Shukla (Kanpur: 1926), Muhammad Ismail "Shauda" (Banaras: 1930), Dipchand (Muzaffarnagar: 1932), Shrikrishna Pahalvan (Kanpur: n.d.), and Lakhmi Chand (Delhi: n.d.).

14. Scholarly opinion as well as oral sources corroborate the transference of the heroine's name to the theatre. "Nautanki must originally have been the delicate heroine of a certain romance who weighed only nine tank . That story was presented as a musical drama and in this form became so prevalent that now every musical drama or svang has come to be called a nautanki ." Dhirendra Varma et al., eds., Hindi sahitya kosh , 1:358. See also Balwant Gargi, "Nautanki," in Folk Theater of India , 37; Mahendra Bhanavat, Lokrang , 319-320; Kapila Vatsyayan, Traditional Indian Theatre , 165. Several Nautanki performers told the same story to Surendra Sukumar in the interview, "Mele mem nautanki," 44.

15. Ved Prakash Vatuk, "Poetics and Genre-Typology in Indian Folklore," in Studies in Indian Folk Traditions , 38-47; George A. Grierson, introduction to The Lay of Alha , trans. William Waterfield, 9-25; Anil Santram, Kanauji lok-sahitya , 142-147.

16. Susan S. Wadley, "Dhola: A North Indian Folk Genre," Asian Folklore Studies 42, no. 1 (1983): 3-25.

17. Unlike alha and dhola nautanki does not denote a particular meter or song type. Chaubola is the metrical and musical signature of Nautanki performance, but a number of other meters including alha and dhola are also employed.

18. Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice , 4.

19. See appendix A for a detailed motif analysis.

20. The use of the dissuasion motif as a self-referencing device in a body of folklore is discussed by Stuart Blackburn, citing the Tamil bow-song tradition, in his introduction to Another Harmony , 22-23.

21. The Tamil ula is discussed in David Dean Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry , 312-324.

22. Brenda E. F. Beck, The Three Twins , 24.

23. "The Man Who Changed Sexes," in J. A. B. van Buitenen, trans., Tales of Ancient India , 25-32.

24. This behavior was considered an educational task, part of the male's necessary preparation and "warming up" for marriage, not viewed as sexual aggression on the part of the sister-in-law, according to my female Indian informant.

25. Kathryn Hansen, "The Virangana in North Indian History, Myth and Popular Culture," Economic and Political Weekly 23, no. 18 (Apr. 30, 1988), WS25-33.