Mirza Sahiban
The darkest of the legends: the Kharal archer Mirza rides off with Sahiban, who breaks his arrows while he sleeps.
Mirza is a Kharal of Danabad in the bar country, and Sahiban is the daughter of Khiva Khan of the Sials. They grow up together at school and fall in love. When Sahiban's family arranges her marriage to Tahir Khan, she sends word to Mirza, who rides through the night on his mare Bakki and carries her off from the wedding house.
Tired from the ride, Mirza lies down to sleep under a jand tree. Sahiban, fearing that he will kill her brothers when they come after them, breaks his arrows and hangs his quiver in the tree. Her brothers arrive; Mirza, with no weapon, is cut down, and in most tellings Sahiban dies with him. Whether she betrayed him or tried to save everyone is the question the story leaves to its listeners, and Punjab has argued it for four hundred years.
The poet Peelu, of the seventeenth century, gave the tale its classic form in the vaar style, short and violent. It became a favourite of the dhadi and the akhara singer, and the line about the jand tree is one of the best known in the language. Kuldeep Manak and others made their reputations singing Mirza, and the story is still told as the counter-legend to Heer: love not as patient devotion but as a fatal gallop.
In their words
Famous linesਮੰਦਾ ਕੀਤੋਈ ਸਾਹਿਬਾਂ, ਮੇਰਾ ਤਰਕਸ਼ ਟੰਗਿਆ ਜੰਡ।
مندا کیتوئی ساہباں، میرا ترکش ٹنگیا جنڈ۔
You did me wrong, Sahiban: you hung my quiver on the jand tree.
Mirza's lament, from the Mirza of Peelu (17th century), as it is still sung
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