Who is Warris Shah

[BoxerBunty]

Who is this Warris Shah whom the poets of Punjab have beckoned for the last 200 years? Why is he a household name in the subcontinent? If Punjabi poetry is to be conceived as a story of moral and spiritual values, Warris Shah occupies the same place as Milton did in English literature and Walt Whitman did in American literature. Heer-Ranjha is both history and poetry. As history it is unread; as poetry it is exquisite. Bulle Shah made these 600 stanzas of Heer immortal by singing it in Kaafi style. Heer has been sung in a dozen styles but the most lyrical is Kaafi. It is said, when it was first sung in Soviet Union people went wild in ecstasy. The Urdu poet Sauda in one of his couplets says,
Suna jo raat woh qissa HeerRanjha ka
To ahl - dard ko Punjabiyon ne loot liya

(Last night when I heard the story of Heer Ranjha I felt that the Punjabis took away my heart).
Warris lived through the invasions of Nadir Shah (1739) and Ahmed Shah (1761). There are references in his Heer about these invasions and the devastation they wrought in Punjab: .
Khade peeta lahe da
Baki Ahmed Shahe da
(Whatever you eat is yours, the rest belongs to Ahmed Shah)