The Sisters of the Spinning Wheel

About the book

The Sisters of the Spinning Wheel and Other Sikh Poems was published in 1921 by J. M. Dent and Sons, London — Puran Singh's earliest book in English, and a landmark: in those years it was a rare distinction for an Indian author to be published in England. Ernest Rhys, the Welsh writer and editor of the Everyman's Library, wrote the introduction.

Puran Singh chose the title from the trinjan — the familiar institution of village girls spinning together and singing as they turned the wheel, a sight still common in rural Punjab in those days. The book presents, in his words, the best poetry of the Punjab in English: poems on the great romances — Sohni and Mahiwal, Sassi and Punnun — and poems based on the poetry of the Granth Sahib, the Bible of the Sikh religion.

Plot & themes

The collection moves between two poles: the folk romances of Punjab and Sikh devotional poetry. The romance poems retell the tragic love stories in English verse; the devotional poems carry over the ecstasy of the Gurus — Nanak become Amar Das, the succession of the Masters — for the Western reader. It was, as one early reader noted, the first book in English to give an idea of the power and beauty of Sikh devotional poetry and an insight into the profound depths of Punjabi poetry.

Rhys's introduction makes the famous comparison: 'It was Rabindranath Tagore who carried over into the English tongue with a new power and melody the first convincing strains of Bengali poetry. Puran Singh has fortunately something of the same gift, and his music too freely naturalises itself in the English medium.' The book glows, Rhys wrote, 'with a spiritual warmth which is infectious.'

The author

Puran Singh (1881–1931) was a scientist, poet and philosopher — the founder of the chemistry of forest products in India, and simultaneously one of the most original voices in Punjabi and English letters. His English books include An Afternoon with Self (1922), At His Feet (1922), Unstrung Beads (1923), Bride of the Sky (1924), The Story of Swami Rama Tirtha (1924), The Book of Ten Masters (1926) and The Spirit of Oriental Poetry (1926); his Punjabi poetry — Khulhe Maidan, Khulhe Ghund, Khulhe Asmani Rang — was composed in free verse about villagers, peasants and the poor. He died in 1931 at fifty.

Reception & legacy

The book was followed in 1923 by Unstrung Beads, again from Dent, and established Puran Singh as the English voice of Sikh spirituality between the wars — a counterpart, in his own stranger key, to Tagore's Gitanjali moment. It has been reprinted in facsimile editions and remains the starting point for English readers approaching Sikh devotional poetry. The image of the trinjan — sisters at the spinning wheel, singing — has become one of the most quoted emblems of Punjabi culture, and it starts here.

Read it if...

you want Sikh devotional poetry and Punjabi romance in English from a writer who lived inside both traditions; you are interested in the Indian writers who published in London between the wars; or you want to see what Tagore's English moment looked like from Punjab.