Text · Punjabi qissa
Heer (Wāris Shāh)
Wāris Shāh's qissa of 1766, some six hundred and thirty stanzas on the love of Heer of the Sials and Dheedo Ranjhā, and the text Punjabi is measured by. It is a romance carrying an argument: the qazi who rules against the lovers, the brother who poisons, the panchayat that decides for property are all drawn precisely, and the poem's sympathy is entirely with the two people the institutions defeat. It is sung, not recited, in a metre that every Punjabi singer knows.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
Ranjhā leaves for Tillā Jogiān in the Salt Range to have his ears split and return as a jogi, so the poem sends its hero to a real Nath monastery whose ruins can still be walked through.
Connections (4)
- Canonised by textTillā Jogiān
Ranjhā goes to Tillā Jogiān in Wāris Shāh's Heer to have his ears split, take the ochre and come back as a jogi, which is how he reaches Heer after she has been married away. The poem therefore sends its hero to a real Nath monastery on the highest hill of the eastern Salt Range, whose tanks and cells can still be walked through. Punjabi audiences knew the place as a functioning establishment, so the disguise had an address, and the episode is the pivot on which the qissa turns.
- Canonised by textWāris Shāh
Wāris Shāh finished the Heer in 1766, some six hundred and thirty stanzas in a metre built for singing, and the poem settled the shape of Punjabi literature. He did not invent the story — Damodar had written it before him and others after — but his version displaced them all, because of what he put into it: an exact, unsparing account of village authority, and a contempt for the qazi, the panchayat and the brother who poisons that the romance is the vehicle for rather than the point of.
- Contemporary capital withBulleh Shāh
Wāris Shāh trained at Kasur under Hāfiz Ghulām Murtazā, in the town where Bulleh Shāh had lived and was buried a few years before the Heer was written. The two men are the Punjabi eighteenth century's pair: Bulleh Shāh in the kāfi, short and direct and aimed at the orthodox from inside a Sufi position; Wāris Shāh in the long qissa, arriving at much the same contempt for the clergy through narrative instead. Both are sung far more than they are read, and often by the same singers.
- BirthplaceJandiāla Sher Khān
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, “Heer Ranjha”. Wāris Shāh, Heer, Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Punjabi Adabi Board editions; Christopher Shackle, “Transition and Transformation in Varis Shah's Hir”.
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