Puran Bhagat

Puran is the son of Raja Salvahan of Sialkot. Kept in a cellar for the first twelve years of his life at an astrologer's warning, he emerges a grown and beautiful young man. His father's young wife Luna falls in love with him; when he refuses her, she accuses him of trying to seduce her. The raja, without hearing his son, orders his hands and feet cut off and his body thrown into a well.

The yogi Gorakhnath, passing by, draws him out alive, and Puran becomes a jogi, his limbs restored by grace. Years later he returns to Sialkot as a famous holy man; Luna comes to him to beg for a son, and Puran, forgiving her, grants it, and restores the sight of his blind mother Ichhran, who has wept herself sightless. The well where he was thrown, Puran da Khooh near Sialkot, has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries, especially for women hoping for children.

Qadir Yar, a Muslim poet of Gujranwala who also wrote of Hari Singh Nalwa, gave the story its most loved form in the siharfi, an acrostic in which each verse begins with the next letter of the alphabet. It is a story of injustice answered by forgiveness, and it shows how Hindu, Muslim and Nath traditions shared a single store of legends in old Punjab.