Medieval Rajput courts in the Thar were home to some of the richest poetic and prose traditions in Sanskrit, Dingal and Braj Bhasha. However, as discussed in earlier chapters, these traditions were instrumental in reiterating Rajput norms of kingship and fostering the idea of Rajput exclusivity. Even as Rajput claims to kingship were contested by groups exercising control on the frontiers, Rajput literary traditions focusing on Rajput heroism and sacrifice, completely glossed over claims of other groups. Therefore, though a range of mobile groups continuously traversed the Thar, they often failed to find space in the written accounts and histories of the region, which based themselves on Rajput narrative traditions. However, the existence of a rich body of oral folk traditions in Rajasthan, ranging from lore dedicated to folk deities to songs of separation, preserve narratives that are lost in written traditions. The mobility of such groups often gives an impression of narratives of lost in movements, but in my understanding they are narratives of movement over time and space.

The networks of pastoral and commercial circulation in the Thar region were also the very networks on which the oral traditions of the region traveled. Social groups continually on the move in the Thar preserved their history through bards, not just the legendary Charans but also genealogists, storytellers and musicians of various kinds like Bhats, Motisars, Nayaks, Bhopas, Langas, Mirasis and Manganiyars. These bards put genealogies together, created the corpus of oral accounts that were transmitted across the wide space of the Thar and also across generations as well as nurtured rich musical traditions in the region. The transmission of these traditions recreated them over space and time at multiple levels and led to several interpretations of these traditions by the communities themselves. Ambulatory bards traveled around the vast Thar Desert connecting hamlets and populations spatially and temporally.