- Title
- Sohni Swims to Meet Her Lover Mahinwal
- Date Made
- circa 1780
- Period
- 18th century
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 11 1/8 x 7 7/8 in. (28.26 x 20.0 cm); Image: 10 1/4 x 7 in. (26.034 x 17.78 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.72.2.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
Sohni and Mahinwal were two ill-fated young lovers who are said to have lived during the early 17th century. According to the legend, Mahinwal, whose given name was Mirza Izzat Beg, was the son of a wealthy ruler in Turkestan who was traveling with a merchant caravan. It stopped near the Panjabi town of Gujrat, where Izzat Beg chanced upon a young woman named Sohni (Beautiful) minding her father's pottery shop. Izzat Beg was so smitten by her loveliness that he abandoned the caravan to remain with Sohni, who soon came to reciprocate his ardor. Izzat Beg then managed to be hired by Sohni's father to tend the family's buffaloes across the river. Hence, his epithet, Mahinwal (Buffalo Herder). Their clandestine affair was soon discovered and Sohni was quickly married to a fellow potter's son. The distraught Mahinwal went to live with an ascetic near the river. The couple later resumed their illicit relationship and every night Sohni visited Mahinwal by swimming across the river using a large baked earthenware pot as a float. But Sohni's sister-in-law learned of their deceit and replaced Sohni’s baked pot with an unfired one. It dissolved at midstream and Mahinwal leaped into the river to save his beloved, but the current was too strong and the lovers sank into legend.
Here, Sohni is shown floating across a river on the overturned pot for her tryst with Mahinwal, who tends his buffaloes on the far bank. The ascetic sits in front of his cave smoking a hookah. See also AC1999.127.3.
- Selected Bibliography
- Pal, Pratapaditya, ed. A Pot-pourri of Indian Art. Bombay: Marg Publications, 1988.
