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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[APRIL, 1921
Hir's death the river was still flowing in this old bed, and that Hir appeared in a vision to a merchant who was travelling past in a boat, telling him to build her tomb in this place, and to build it so that the rain of hen von should always fall on it. This was done after Hir's body had been placed in the tomb; but before it was closed, Ranjha appeared, and, entoring the tomb alive, was buried with her. This is not in accordance with the poem, but is the account given by BhnţtA Vais, an old Jatt in charge of the tomb. A meld, or fair, of some local celebrity, is held at the tomb in the month of Magh (February). Hir and Ranjhå are commonly said to have flourished 700 or 800 years ago, but others assign them to Akbar's time (16th century A.D.) and the architecture of the tomb is in accordance with this supposition.
“The first poem in their honour is said to have been composed by Namodar PaswÅr of Jhang, but the most celebrated is the poem of Waris Shah, a native of Takht Hazara in Gujranwala, Ranjha's native place. It even now forms & favourite subject for local bards."
I printed the story of Isma'il Khan's Grandmother because of its close relationship to that of Hir and Ranjha. It was evidently meant to account for the care taken of the tomb of Hir and Ranjha, near Jhang, by the grandmother of the then Siyâl Rais (Chief), Muhammad Isma'il Khân of Jhang, an act against the tradition of her tribe. The object of the story of The Bracelet-Maker of Jhang was to glorify the shrine or tomb of Hîr and Ranjha. The last of my legends, The Marriage of Hfr and Ranjhâ, related only half of the whole tale and stopped at the point where Ranjhâ gets possession of Hir, omitting the latter half relating to the murder of Hir, though this was the most important part of it, and was the portion which has given it such fame. The object of this tale was to bestow a fictitious value on Ranjhå by making him out to be a wonder-working faqir of the type of the greater saints and rendering his doings as fabulous as possible. No doubt the existence of the shrine to Hir and Ranjhå at Jhang accounted for this legend.
My remarks on the story of Mirza and Såhibân may be of interest in connection with those made above.
"This is a very celebrated in the Jhang and Montgomery Districts, and thence throughout the Panjab, because of the feuds which the elopement of the heroine, Sahibân, with her cousin Mirzê led to between the Mahnis (Syâls) and the Chadhars of Khiwa in the Jhang District and the Khayals of Dânâbâd in the Montgomery District. The story generally told is as follows: Mirzê was sent to his relative the Mahni chief of Khfwa, who had a daughter Sahiban. Sahiban was betrothed to a youth of the Chadhar tribe, but before she could be married to him she eloped with Mirza towards Dankbåd. Before they reached this place, however, their purguers, the Mahnis and the Chadhars, overtook them, killed MirzÀ and strangled Sahiban. The Khasals thereupon attacked the Mahnis and the Chadhars, defeated them and recovered the corpses of Mirza and Sahibån which they buried at Danabad. The feuds, however, lasted a long while so that it became to be considered unlucky to possess daughters, and thus they lod to extensive female infanticide by strangulation, in memory of the manner of Sahib&n's death. As regards the Khasals, this was only put down by the English within the last forty years. The SyAls to the present day resent reference to Sahibên as they do to Hir, the heroine of the tale of Hir and Ranjha given in the previous volume."
Mr. Usborne in a short note prefixed to his M8.writing from Battle, Sussex. August 1917, says: "I was proposing to combine with it a roprint of some verse trans. lations of Panjabi Lyrics published in 1906 in India. No circulation in England, though well reviewed in Spectator and Atheneum. I could also arrange with the Art School, Lahore, for about 6 or 12 illustrations in old Mogul Style."
This arrangement oan alas ! never be made now.
