Heer

When a wealthy landowner dies in the village of Takht Hazara, his older sons bribe the local assembly to seize the family's fertile estate. They drive their youngest brother, Ranjha, from his home. Wandering the banks of the river Chenab, he crosses paths with Heer.

Ranjha trades his proud upbringing to become a cowherd for Heer's father, Chuchak. The two begin meeting in secret in the forest, receiving the blessings of local Sufi saints. But when Heer’s uncle Kaidu catches them together, a scandal erupts across the village. Dragged before the Qazi and the elders, Heer refuses to renounce Ranjha, setting their defiance against the strictures of her family and the looming threat of a forced marriage to another man.

Written in the eighteenth century, Waris Shah's epic poem formalized an oral Punjabi folk romance into a definitive work of Sufi literature. Translated by Charles Frederick Usborne.