India
c. 1840
The tragic romance of Mirza and Sahiban is one of the best-loved love stories of Punjabi oral and literary traditions. With Heer–Ranjha, Sohni–Mahiwal and Sassi–Punnu it forms the group of four celebrated Punjabi tragic romances, and like them it belongs to the qissa, a narrative form that explores love, honour and the conflict between personal desire and family authority.¹
Mirza was the son of Wanjhal Khan, chief of the Kharal Jats of Danabad; Sahiban was the daughter of the Sial chief of Khewa in Jhang. They fell in love as cousins and companions when Mirza was sent to study at Khewa. When her family arranged her marriage to another man, Sahiban sent word to Mirza through a Brahmin messenger, Kammu, asking him to come and apply the henna at her wedding. Mirza rode to Khewa on his mare Bakki and carried her off on the eve of the ceremony.
Pursued by her brothers, the lovers halted to rest beneath a tree. Mirza, a renowned archer, fell asleep with his head in Sahiban’s lap. When she saw her brothers approaching, Sahiban, fearing that he would kill her own kin, broke or hid his arrows, and Mirza was killed defenceless. Sahiban was killed beside him by her brothers in most tellings, although some versions have her die by her own sword.²
The scene illustrated here is the moment before the catastrophe. Mirza sleeps on a mat with his head in Sahiban's lap, and she points to the horsemen, her brothers, closing in from the right. The quiver hangs in the tree with its arrows apparently intact, so the painter has chosen the instant of greatest irony, in which the viewer knows what is about to happen and the sleeper does not.
Mirza, in a long translucent white jama with a fine pink lattice pattern and a blue-striped sash, lies asleep on a chequered blue-and-white mat, his yellow-turbaned head in Sahiban’s lap. Sahiban sits in pink and green with a pinkish-orange veil, nose ring, necklaces and gold bangles, her fingertips hennaed, and points to the horsemen at upper right. Behind her stands a white mare, presumably Bakki, with a pink-dyed mane and orange-tinted legs. A red quiver of arrows and a round black shield hang from the tree, and a red bow, or perhaps a broken arrow, lies along Mirza’s body. Five bearded riders in turbans of light blue, pink, red and white gallop in from the right on chestnut, white, bluegrey and buff horses, with matchlocks levelled and spears and bows in hand, and two dogs run ahead of them. White birds perch in the tree and shrubs.
The composition is built from two opposed groups divided by a pale mound with a thin red contour. The couple, the tree and the white mare form a compact, vertical mass at lower left, and the riders a diagonal rush at upper right, linked by Sahiban's arm, the mare's turned head, the dogs and the levelled matchlocks. The horizon is high and the sky a narrow band of blue and cream, so that the riders sit above rather than behind the couple. The palette is warm and saturated, with vermilion, magenta and yellow against emerald and olive greens and broad areas of white. The foliage is built from stippled masses with fine whitened branches, the meadow is ruled in horizontal bands with scattered white blossoms, and the figures are drawn in profile with long eyes and light modelling. A dark border with white flowers and small gold scrolls is set within a red margin ruled in white. The pursuers' lean, long-necked horses are of the Persian or Central Asian type prized at Lahore.⁸
The painting is attributed to the Punjab plains or Jammu, circa 1840–60, since the two styles cannot be cleanly separated in this period. Khandalawala noted that the Sikh style of painting prevailed in Jammu from 1812, and hill painters worked at Lahore and, probably, at Jammu once the Dogras rose to power (as cited in Navjot Kour).³
¹ "Pilu (16th–17th Century)", The Sikh Encyclopedia; "Mirza Sahiban".
² "Mirza Sahiban", SikhiWiki; "Revisiting Mirza Sahiban", The Sikh Encyclopedia; Danabad and Kharal,
³ Navjot Kour, “Social, Cultural and Political Undertones in the Temple Murals at Jammu”, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, issue 5 (2024), citing Karl J. Khandalawala, Pahari Miniature Painting (1958); and Sukhdev Singh Charak, Jammu Ragamala Paintings.