In late 19th century India, nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards and they toured villages to gather folk songs and legends. This was done to promote the traditional culture that had been corrupted and damaged by the Western forces. Nationalist thinkers believed that it was essential to preserve this folk tradition in order to discover one’s national identity and restore a sense of pride in one’s past. In Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore began collecting ballads, nursery rhymes and myths, and led the movement for the folk revival. In Tamil N adu, Natesa Sastri published a massive four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales, ‘The Folklore of Southern India’. He believed that the folklore was national literature, it was ‘the most trustworthy manifestation of people’s real thoughts and characteristics’.