chapter 4

HEER RANJHA

Afte a few weeks, the couple planned their escape. Sehti asked to go with them, and begged Ranjha to help her find Murad. Ranjha blew on his conch. The sound reached out, far and wide, and Murad heard it as he slept. He dreamt that Sehti called him, asking him to come to her. When he woke, Murad set out at once for Rangpur.

On a Sunday night in June, the three escaped. They met Murad, who put Sehti on his camel. The two of them escaped over the River Chenab, while Heer and Ranjha fled to Qabula, the city where Raja Adali ruled.

The next morning one of Heer's maids told the family what had happened, and the Khera men set off to find them. They caught up to Murad and Sehti, but the couple had made it safely back to Murad's people, and the Balochi forces drove back the Khera pursuers. Heer and Ranjha weren't so lucky. The Kheras captured them and beat Ranjha unmercifully, then brought him before Raja Adali, demanding that Ranjha be put to death. Heer's uncle Kaidu also came to testify against Ranjha.

But Chuchak testified that he had betrothed Heer to Ranjha.

In the Court said Chuchak: "I tell no lies.

Before 70 Khans and 72 nobles I gave Heer to Ranjha.

Ranjha grazed my buffaloes for 12 years and took no pay at all from me.

My brethren thrust him away, and seizing Heer married her to the Kheras.

If there be a lie in this ask Heer: she is in thy Court.

If there be a lie in this may I be punished in the Court of God."

So Adali called Heer in to testify. When she walked into the court, unveiled, Adali saw how beautiful she was and lost his head.



Said Adali to Ranjha : "Thou too art a liar: Heer was first of all betrothed to me!"

And he took Heer away to his palace.

Heer prayed to God for protection, and when Adali tried to come to her bed that night, he burst into flames! Luckily, he managed to douse himself with water and save himself. Ranjha also called out to Heaven, playing his flute. Heaven heard.

The sound of the flute reached to Mecca and a company of 70 saints came up.

The sound of the flute reached to Multan and the Five Saints came in majesty.

The sound of the flute brought the Mother, the Goddess Durga, on her lion to Ranhja.

At the sound of the flute came Sakhi Sarwar the Warrior, galloping up on his mare Kakki.

At the sound of the flute came Hanuman, the leader, with his army.

The army cut down the garden of Adali and left not a tree remaining….

All the saints collected took burning logs and set fire to Adali's city.

Burning went Adali into the reservoirs and water was thrown over the people.

And when the water reached the fire it blazed forth twofold!

The Raja's advisors told him to restore Heer to Ranjha, to save the city. So Raja Adali sent for Ranjha and agreed to marry him to Heer. Then Ranjha blew on his conch.

When Ranjha sounded his conch, Indra caused rain;

And all the people in Adali's city lived in happiness.

Ranjha and Heer came together, for God favoured them.

Raja Adali did justice and turned away his face from bribes.

In this version of the story, Raja Adali himself gave Heer away to Ranjha, and the entire city attended the wedding. Then the two lovers rode away into the sunrise, and (like Sehti and Murad) lived happily ever after.

The most famous version of Heer Ranjha — the "official" version, you might say — is the epic 18th century poem by Waris Shah. My version, and one of my source versions, ends with Heer and Ranjha's marriage; from what I've read older folk versions of the story had a happy ending. Waris Shah added a tragic ending to his literary adaptation:



Humiliated at their loss of face, Kaidu and his kinsmen plot to kill Heer. The family talks the couple into having a proper wedding, in Jhang (Heer's hometown).Ranjha returns to Takht Hazara to fetch his family for the Baraat. The Sayals bring Heer back to Jhang, ostensibly for the wedding. Instead, they quietly poison her. One version says they gave her poison laddu, a sticky sweet dessert often served at weddings. When Ranjha realizes that Heer is dead, he eats the rest of the poison laddu, and dies, too.

This Romeo and Juliet style ending is now used in modern retellings of the story.

My retelling is based on what seems to be a fairly complete prose synopsis of Shah's poem, in English, by Umer Munir. I combined it with a more folkloric version (it seems to be a transcription of an oral rendition) collected by R.C. Temple, "as related by some Jatts from the Patiala State", and published in the second volume of Legends of the Punjab in the 1880s. You can find this version here (starting on page 529; marked page 507 in the text), in Punjabi with English translation. I also consulted two shorter retellings (also based on Shah's version), at Folk Love Stories of Pakistan and All Things Pakistan.

There is also another version that I didn't find until after I wrote this, from the 1903 Romantic Tales from the Panjab, collected by Charles Swynnerton. I only skimmed this one. It looks extremely fanciful, with references to "Ranjha's magic flute", and the lovers carried away by djinns (!!) to Arabia at the end of the story.

Temple's version is clearly aimed at people who already know the tale: it skips a lot of narrative details, jumps around in time a bit, and embellishes the story with characters from other famous Punjabi folktales. It's hard to follow if you don't know the story, so I'd suggest reading Umer Munir's version first, which includes many details that I skipped over.

Temple's version also has many fairytale-ish elements that aren't in the Shah version, like Gorakh Nath's conch and crow. The bit about Raja Adali trying to steal Heer is also from Temple. I used a lot of these elements, since I liked them. I also liked how the storyteller of Temple's version freely mixed Islamic and Hindu cultural references together.

Incidentally, the Temple version ends with Heer and Ranjha going off to Mecca, but I preferred to interpret that metaphorically, since the storyteller often used Mecca as a symbol for "far away." For instance, when Ranjha blew his conch to summon Murad (Sehti's lover), the sound of the conch is said to reach to Mecca.

In Umer Munir's version, and so I assume also in Waris Shah's poem, Heer's mother promises Heer to Ranjha, to get him to return to being their buffalo herder. This is just a convenient lie to quiet down the scandal of having dismissed Ranjha without wages. In Temple's version, when Chuchak betroths Heer to Ranjha, he seems to mean it — he defends the couple twice after that.

I picked this version because it reminded me of many of the loving, liberal-minded fathers in Rabindranath Tagore's short stories: fathers who "spoil" their daughters by educating them, and generally treating them like human beings rather than chattel. Unfortunately, these fathers are also usually too weak to protect their daughters from the oppressive expectations of the patriarchal society of the time. Like Chuchak, they give in to the pressure from the rest of the family and marry off their daughters into unsuitable, unhappy marriages. So my version isn't just a victory for the two pairs of lovers; it's a victory for these fathers, as well.

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The "quotes" in the story are from the several versions that I consulted, but mostly Temple's. Sometimes I mixed lines from multiple versions together, if it suited the story. I also unified the spelling of names, and a few places I tweaked Temple's translations. But (as I mentioned) the mixing of Islamic and Hindu references is really there, in the passages from Temple.

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