Sassi Punnun
Sassi follows her kidnapped husband Punnun barefoot across the desert of Thal until the sand swallows her.
Sassi is born to the Brahmin raja of Bhambhore, and the astrologers warn that she will bring disgrace. She is set adrift on the river in a box, found by a washerman and raised in his house. Grown, she is so beautiful that Punnun, a Baloch prince from Kech in Makran, comes to see her, falls in love, and stays to marry her.
Punnun's brothers, ashamed that he has married a washerman's daughter, get him drunk on the wedding night and carry him off on camels towards Kech. Sassi wakes to find him gone and runs after the camel tracks barefoot into the desert. She cries his name until her feet are torn and her throat is dry; a shepherd who tries to seize her is put to shame when, at her prayer, the earth opens and takes her in. Punnun, escaping his brothers and running back along the same road, finds her grave and dies there.
Hashim Shah's version, written around 1800 in the dohra form, is the one sung in Punjab; Shah Abdul Latif's Sindhi verses made her a saint in Sindh. For the Sufis the desert is the soul's path and Sassi's thirst the longing for God; for village audiences she is simply the bravest woman in the old stories.
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