Place · poet's town & tomb · Pakistan
Jandiāla Sher Khān
A town in Sheikhupura district that is where Wāris Shāh was born about 1722 and where he is buried. His tomb, rebuilt in the 1970s in tiled Punjabi idiom, has become the place Punjabi singers come to before taking the Heer into performance, and the annual urs draws reciters rather than only pilgrims. The town matters for one book: the qissa written here in 1766 is the text against which every other telling of Heer and Ranjha is measured.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.817, 73.917
Worth knowing
Amrita Pritam's 1948 poem on Partition is addressed to this grave — “Aj aakhaan Waris Shah nu” asks the poet to rise and speak from it — so a tomb in Pakistan is the addressee of the best-known Punjabi poem written in India.
Connections (2)
- Samadhi atWāris Shāh
Wāris Shāh was born at Jandiāla Sher Khān about 1722 and is buried there; the tomb was rebuilt in tiled Punjabi idiom in the 1970s and its annual urs draws singers rather than only pilgrims, because the Heer is sung and not recited. Amrita Pritam addressed this grave in 1948 in “Aj aakhaan Wāris Shāh nu”, asking the poet to rise and speak from it about what the Punjab had just done to itself — so a tomb in Pakistan is the addressee of the best-known Punjabi poem written in India.
- BirthplaceHeer (Wāris Shāh)
The Heer was written here in 1766. Wāris Shāh was born in the town about 1722, trained at Kasur, and by tradition composed the qissa back at Jandiāla Sher Khān, where he is also buried — so the place of writing, the birthplace and the grave are one village in Sheikhupura district. Its annual urs is attended by singers because the poem is sung rather than recited, which makes the tomb a working reference point for a performance tradition rather than only a literary shrine.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Jandiala Sher Khan” and “Waris Shah”. Punjab auqaf records; Amrita Pritam, “Aj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” (1948).
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