Humour as a competence inherent in all human beings defies description and its huge variety, forms and faces have always engendered curiosity. For centuries people have attempted to pinpoint the essence of humour. The contributors to this volume, however, restrict their study of humour to the written and oral literatures of South Asia. They approach the problems not only intutively, from their own sense of humour, but go beyond that out of a recognition that ...
