The Punjabi
qissa genre arose due to the influence of
Sufi poetry and is a fundamental aspect of
Punjabiyat ("Punjabi-ness"). The qissa tradition of Punjab was not the only literary genre of this type in India and the Islamic word, with there also existing the
masnavi in Persian literature and the
premakhyana in
Braj literature. While the Sufi works were lyrical-based, the qissas became narrative-based, with them being accompanied by musical tunes. Each qissa had a particular musical tune associated with it that was chosen by the poet, such as the qissas of Mirza Sahiban, Heer Ranjha, and Sohni Mahiwal. Particular tunes would become associated with a certain story where it was employed. Most of the qissas involve romance between men and women, as this kind of love was viewed as a primitive form of spiritual love between mankind and the divine.
Gurus and
sants were seen as symbolizing the love involving
jivatma and
paramatma, which the genre likens to the romantic love a man and woman share for one another.
Farid put forth the idea that from birth, mankind is wedded to God, a type of "bridal mysticism". This viewpoint is what kicked-off the desire by authors to produce a qissa, involving spiritual and sensual love together, sourcing their stories from the corpus of Punjab's indigenous
folk-tales, but also stories from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Pali literature. The authors of the qissas used three types of metres:
doha,
baint, and
dawayya, which was also used by the Sufis. The stories all involve the main hero being a homeless character, who had either migrated away from their ancestral home or been kicked-out. According to Harbhajan Singh, the homelessness motif was due to the demographic situation in the contemporary Punjabi society at the time, where many foreigners had settled in and intermingled with the indigenous population. The youth advocated for an intermingling of culture and blood, while the elders opposed such an affair, leading to a conflict. It may be possible that the qissas about Heer, Sohni, and Sassi may be about actual historical events that occurred, where there was a widespread unconscious acceptance of the dynamics involved but society still disciplined such occurrences, a dynamic of the conflict between desire/personal freedom and societal/social pressure, which makes the Punjabi qissas differ from other traditions outside of Punjab, particularly the
premakhyans, which lack this motif. Rather than being purely love stories, all the Punjabi qissas fundamentally are about spiritual love, as the Sufis taught the idea that love was the basis for creation and the
heterodoxical idea that worldly love led one to divine love. In-fact, many of the main characters in the qissas become part of religious traditions, such as the
fakirs,
jogis, even a
prophet, or they adopt their garbs and practices, especially mendicants. Therefore, the qissas were able to become accepted in Punjabi society at-large despite social sanction. The ending of the plot of qissas is open-ended despite being romantic stories, so they lack a hypothetical final plot with a marriage between the lovers. This is an allusion to the Sufi belief that no matter how much a person may love God, even at the highest possible level, they can never possess God. Rather, they can only become one with God, known as
wahadatul wajud, a type of non-dualism or existential-monism, destroying any sense of individualism in the process. That is why in the qissa tales, the characters both meet their end and end up destroyed. They find spiritual intimacy by rising above their physical confines. Thus, to truly comprehend the message of the qisse, one needs to consider the underlying spiritual message being told. Thus, the qisse and the Sufi
kafis are comparable to one another. ==Qisse and the Punjabi culture==