Shakespeare of Punjabi Language
Waris Shah is also called Shakespeare of the Punjabi language because of his great poetic love story, Heer Ranjha. Some critics say that through this story of romantic love, he tried to portray the love of man for God (the quintessential subject of Sufi literature).
He was a consummate artiste, deeply learned in Sufi and domestic cultural lore. His verse is a treasure-trove of Punjabi phrases, idioms and sayings. His minute and realistic depiction of each detail of Punjabi life and the political situation in the 18th century, remains unique. Waris Shah also sublimated his own unrequited love for a girl (Bhag Bhari) in writing romance.
Many verses of Waris Shah are widely used in Punjab in a moral context. One of the more popular is
"Waris Shah; Naa adataan jaandiyan ne, Bhavein katiye poriyan poriyan ji"
(Waris Shah says: A man never abandons his habits, even if he is hacked to pieces)
Read more about this topic: Waris Shah
Famous quotes containing the words shakespeare and/or language:
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)