Sohni’s tomb, Shahdadpur

The girl who crossed the river every night on a clay pot

Sohni Mahiwal, or Suhni Mehar as Sindh tells it, is a folk tragedy shared by the Punjab and Sindh, set by one telling in the north of the Punjab and by another in central Sindh. In the Punjab it is one of the four great romances, best known in the version of Fazal Shah of Lahore; in Sindh it is one of the seven, with Sassui Punnhun, Umar Marvi, Momal Rano, Lilan Chanesar, Sorath Rai Diyach and Noori Jam Tamachi. Sohni, unhappily married to a man she despises, swims across the river every night to the bank where her beloved herds his buffaloes, keeping herself afloat with an earthenware pot. One night her sister-in-law swaps the pot for a vessel of unbaked clay, which melts in the water, and Sohni drowns in the whirling river. In the Sindhi telling she was married to Dam of the Wahucho clan, and when her body was found her lover Mehar buried her himself and built a tomb over the grave, which people still visit at Shahdadpur. The pin marks the town.