Text · Sindhi poetic compilation
Shāh Jo Risālo
The collected poetry of Shāh Abdul Latīf Bhittāī, arranged not by subject but into surs named after the musical modes they are sung in — so the table of contents of the central book of Sindhi is a list of ragas. Through those surs run the Sindhi folk romances: Sassui Punhūn, Umar Mārui, Nūri Jam Tamāchi, Sohnī Mehār, Momal Rāno. Latīf uses their women, not their men, as the figures of the soul making its way toward God.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
It is sung nightly at his shrine at Bhit Shah on the five-stringed tamburo in the Latīf raag, a mode kept for this text alone; Ernest Trumpp printed the first edition in Leipzig in 1866.
Connections (4)
- Canonised by textMiri Qalat / Sassi Punnun's fort
A fourth-millennium mound in the Kech valley is known locally not by its archaeology but as the fort of Punnun, from the Balochi story of Sassi the washerman's daughter of Bhambore and Punnun of Kech, who is carried off by his brothers and whom she dies crossing the desert to reach. Shāh Abdul Latīf made the tale one of the surs of the Shāh Jo Risālo, and it is sung in Sindhi and Balochi alike. The oldest settlement in the valley therefore carries the name of its saddest narrative rather than its earliest one.
- Canonised by textKeenjhar Lake
The tomb out in the water at Keenjhar is Noori's, the fisherwoman whom Jam Tamāchi of the Samma dynasty is said to have married against his court's advice, and whom he buried in the lake. Shāh Abdul Latīf made it Sur Kamod of the Shāh Jo Risālo, which turns a story about rank into one about the soul being chosen without deserving it. Boatmen take pilgrims out to the tomb and sing the sur on the way, so the poem is performed on the water it is about.
- Canonised by textShāh Abdul Latīf Bhittāī
The Risālo is not a book Shāh Abdul Latīf wrote so much as the compiled record of what he sang, gathered after his death in 1752 and arranged into surs named after the musical modes rather than the subjects. Its organising decision is his: the Sindhi folk romances supply the material, and their women — Sassui walking into the desert, Sohnī swimming the river, Mārui refusing the king — carry the mystical argument, while the men are mostly what the women are moving toward. Ernest Trumpp printed the first edition at Leipzig in 1866.
- Devotional corpus onBhit Shah
The Risālo is still sung nightly at Bhit Shah, at the shrine Latīf built for himself on a sandhill, in the Latīf raag and on the five-stringed tamburo that he is credited with designing for it. The singers are a hereditary group attached to the shrine, and the mode is kept for this text alone — it is not used for anything else in Sindhi music. The book is therefore not primarily read: it survives as a nightly performance at the grave of the man who assembled it.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Shah Jo Risalo”. Shāh Jo Risālo, Sindhi Adabi Board edition; Ernest Trumpp, Shah Jo Risalo (Leipzig, 1866); Annemarie Schimmel, Pearls from the Indus.
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