Thomas William Rhys Davids was born in Colchester, Essex, 12 May 1843. He was educated at Brighton School and Breslau University, where he studied Greek and Sanskrit. He held a number of posts in the Ceylon Civil Service, including District Judge and Archaeological Commissioner, 1866-72. He returned to England and became a barrister in 1877 before being appointed Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature at University College, London, a position he held from 1882-1904. He subsequently became Professor of Comparative Religion at Manchester University in 1905.
Rhys Davids married Caroline Foley in 1894. She was also a Pali scholar. He was a founder and President of the Pali Text Society from 1881-1922, and a founder of the British Academy, 1901. He served as Secretary and Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1887-1905, and he established the Indian Text Series.
In his retirement, Rhys Davids wrote for the Manchester Guardian and worked on the preparation of a Pali dictionary. He died in Chipstead, Surrey, on 27 December 1922.
Ram Gharib Chaube was probably born in the late 1850s into the traditional learned Chaube family. He graduated from the Presidency College, Calcutta, and was learned in both Indian tradition and the British colonial system of education, being fluent in dialects of Awadhi and Bhojpuri, as well as Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit and English. He became Mirzapur's distirct collector of revenues and whilst there met William Crooke, who was keen to document Indian folklore. Impressed with Chaube's abilities, Crooke asked that Chaube help in his work. Chaube probably continued to work with Crooke until Crooke's departure for England in 1896. The material in these papers, therefore most likely dates from this time. Crooke continued to correspond with Chaube after his return to England. However he does not seem to have acknowledged Chaube's contribution to his work.
After Crooke's departure Chaube also worked for V.A. Smith, and G.A. Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India. However he constantly struggled to earn enough money and satisfy his academic interests. He died in 1914 in Gopalpur.
The life of Crooke and Rame Gharib Chaube has been well documented in In Quest of Indian Folktales: Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke by Sadhana Naithani (Indian University Press, 2006) from which these biographical details have been obtained.