Introduction
The story of Savitri is an ancient story. Perhaps it belongs to the early Vedic times. Perhaps it may go back even to a yet deeper past. It is both myth and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale the story has several connotations and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite suggestive of the issue involved in this mortal creation, mrityuloka, the creation to which we belong. The issue is of divine manifestation in an evolutionary way, evolution that has its beginning in Inconscience.
Ours is not a typal world. A typal world is a world of fixed forms and possibilities,-- as is, for instance, the world of the gods. The world of the great gods, the Overmind world, is no doubt splendid; but it stays as it is, is tied to its own kind. From it no other aspects of the multifold Transcendent can emerge, no change or progress is possible in it. In fact, if the gods should wish to get out of it and go to higher worlds, make progress, they must be willing and prepared to be born in the mortal world. In that sense this world of ours, this earth, is unique; it is a place where progress is continuous and interminable. The story of Savitri has such an occult basis as its background and therefore it distinctly foresees the prospects of enlarging consciousness in the splendour of love, beauty, joy, knowledge, power, sweetness, harmony, the creative working of the Truth-Idea in the richly effulgent and ever-growing dimensions of the Infinite. Though not expressly stated so, the suggestions in the story are unmistakable. There is a long spiritual tradition which carries in its experience the esoteric sense purported by the story. That it has occult-mystical bearings is pretty obvious from its very tone. Actually this implied meaning is written on its face in bright and bold characters. It is perhaps for this reason that its essential core has endured the long passage of time. But thick coats of unregenerate times have also accumulated over it. The living spirit of the story has got buried under the dense layers of ethical-moralistic ideas and notions. Sri Aurobindo himself says that originally the Mahabharata story was symbolic, but later it became socio-religious. Now the story is narrated to project Savitri as a role-model of an ideal woman, with fidelity in conjugal relations as its chief and foremost concern. The Savitri-tale appears early in the Mahabharata, in the third of the 18 parts of the monumental work. It is placed in the Vana Parva and is called Savitri Upakhyana, a Minor Episode in the Book of the Forest. It has also a subtitle, Pativrata Mahatmya, indicating the nature of the story. The Sanskrit word mähätmya means greatness, grandeur, glory, majesty; it also means a narration of heroic or marvellous deeds, a legend, a romance, an epic. We may quite justifiably say that the Upakhyana is both: it is a noble mini-epic. It describes in great and dignified style the marvellous deeds of a married woman who is faithful and chaste, who observes virtuous rites and rituals, performs diligently the acts of ascetic sacrifices and offerings. Indeed, such a pativratä sees the very presence of divinity in her husband. The story is thus significantly charged with the resplendent and creative dynamism of the Dharma, the path of active and living Righteousness. The word dharma has the sense of the inner law of conduct natural to one’s soul and one’s spiritual build-up, one’s swabhäva. It promotes superior and richer values, gracious merits which the soul cherishes and carries with itself from life to life. That is the true basis of the Upakhyana. When did Vyasa compose his Savitri-story? Sri Aurobindo remarks that it belongs to the poet’s early days, still fresh “with the glow of the youth and grace over it”. It looks as though the later compilers of the Mahabharata neatly incorporated the tale in the main sequel of the Great Epic. It does certainly fit in very well in one of the story-sessions we have in the Book of the Forest when the Pandavas stayed as exiles in the woods. The metre in which the poem is composed is mostly Anusthtubha and there are exactly 300 shlokas or 600 hemistichs covering the entire story. A shloka is an unrhymed Sanskrit couplet, of 32 syllables in 4 equal divisions, and is the most common form used for a narrative. Vyasa’s recitation of Savitri in this metre moves forward with epic grace and swiftness, rushing from event to event with confident ease. Divided in seven sections, the little heroic poem has metrical power to win back the Word of Truth from the inconsiderate and suffocating darkness of Death. Savitri the Princess of Madra is of course the most important character in the story. The other persons present are: Savitri’s parents Aswapati and Malawi; then, there is the heavenly sage Narad who pays a purposeful visit to Aswapati at a most crucial juncture in the life of Savitri. This happens when she is about to disclose to her parents her choice of marrying Satyavan; Satyavan, his mother Shaibya and blind father Dyumatsena, once the ruler of the Shalwa country, are staying as exiles in the forest. In the forest there are sages and learned ascetics engaged in holy spiritual practices, one prominent and well-respected among them being the sage Gautama. Yama or the God of Death is at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious in the benignity of the Upholder of the Order of the Worlds. Princess Savitri’s own birth was in response to Aswapati’s prayer to the goddess Savitri who incarnated herself as his daughter in fulfilment of the exceptional boon granted to him, through her, by the Creator-Father Brahma himself. A cosmic-transcendental dimension is thus already set in the story narrated as a simple human tale belonging to early times. The Pandavas have lost the game of dice and have been ordered to live for twelve years in a forest. This is to be followed by one year of living incognito. It is towards the end of this twelve-year period that Rishi Markandeya visits the Pandavas again and in response to the query of Yudhishthira narrates to him the story of Savitri. Yudhishthira’s puzzlement is simple. He knows that noble Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas, is chaste and virtuous, -- born as she was in the purity of the sacrificial flame. Yet in life she is seen to face most difficult hardships and suffer humiliation at the hand of the evil-minded. Virtue always seems to be helpless against the harshness of life and is ever afflicted, as if it were incompatible with it. But the Rishi assures the desolate that, in the manner of Savitri, the disgraced shall, by her great womanly power, the power of chastity, prove to be a fortune-bringer to them. Savitri had suffered greatly for her husband’s sake and won from Yama, the King-Father Lord himself, noble boons including the exceptional boon of winning back Satyavan’s life. Through the Savitri-example which he prefers to give to Yudhishthira, Markandeya is actually holding out a splendid promise for the Pandavas. With this preliminary background begins the remarkable narration. But does the story speak of the ideal of womanhood only in the context of building up a healthy society? Is such a woman just a desirable and genial archetype, a beau idéal? Has the whole concept been put forward particularly as an ethical self-righteous view to emphasise upon the laity and the common people to adopt and follow a fixed set of rules of conduct, a set of commandments to govern their daily life? In the face of life’s severe contradictions, where often virtue not only goes unrewarded but seems to be punished, does it merely try to din into our ears the efficacy of the dharma in spite of these thousand evils which we have to encounter every day? Is the alleviation of grief and suffering the main intention behind the narration? Are the examples of Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti, proclaimed and upheld by Vivekananda even today, any more relevant, appropriate enough in the modern unavoidable circumstances? Are they secular in character? But if Markandeya is a Rishi with high spiritual attainments and an immortal, chiranjeeva, it is quite inconceivable that he would come down to the level of the ordinary and provide such a superficial consolation to the afflicted who himself is a man of great accomplishments. Nor would the seer-poet indulge in this quick luxury to squander away his poetry on the routine and the common-place. If Savitri and Draupadi were born from the sacrificial flames, we must immediately recognise that in this secular garb we have in fact something deep, something that is luminously mysterious if not profoundly esoteric. The Savitri-tale is not a mere pious holy tale meant for the God-fearing and the credulous, for small minds, for young simple housewives; but it is actually a strong effective symbol charged with the high potency of the supernatural, even that of the transcendental which is pressing forth to establish itself in this world of suffering and grief and death. Savitri herself was a highly proficient and skillful young woman, with the knowledge of both the worldly and the spiritual; she was a tapasvini of exceptional merit. This we ought to remember in understanding the text which is very terse and compact in its presentation. It is a Yogic-spiritual document indeed. It is a revelation. Therefore looking at the Savitri-tale as a revelation will perhaps be the best way to profit from it. This knowledge in the tradition was always there in its background, but it had got lost in the course of time. Sri Aurobindo has renewed it, putting his own Yogic-spiritual power into it: he has put the fire of his own soul in its body and in its spirit. We must bear in mind, and recognise, that the tale is an occult-spiritual tale involving cosmic powers and personalities with a concern for the evolutionary manifestation upon the earth. We should take the story accordingly, in the know of its occult connotation, which is suggestively clear from the intention and mode of its narration. Hence we may say that the characters in the story are much more than even some exceptional human figures, howsoever these human figures in their glorious proportions may appeal to us in their nobility and stature. They are more than that; they are incarnations. If so we can well appreciate why Sri Aurobindo treats the Savitri-story both as a legend and as a symbol. No wonder also that his elaborate presentation of the theme in his epic should essentially focus itself on occult-supernatural actions and eventualities. This may prove to be a great stumbling block to both the modern and the traditional sets of thinking. Modern man very often adjudges it as a narrative in some rarefied abstruse and obscure domain, with one steep rock of abstraction climbing to another; he starts wondering if anything is happening in any definite manner or all is simply a dubious play of words with high-sounding appellatives like Infinity, Eternity, Inconscience, Non-being, Void, Nature, Spirit, Matter and so on. Frequently his charge is that, apart from the names of some Gods and Goddesses, there are only five proper names in the whole epic which runs to about twenty-four thousand lines: Satyavan, Savitri, Aswapati, Dyumatsena and Narad. The required support for thought and imagination, support in the form of characters of flesh and blood, is not available in this epic. The complaint is that the human framework is too thin for the story to remain even as a legend, the entire thrust being theoretic-metaphysical. Quite knowledgeable critics refuse even to call it a poem. But this is patently a limitation of the professionals who ought to come out of their academic preconceptions and allegiances. We have to be in tune at least with the intuitive perception and suggestiveness that the aesthesis of Savitri gives to us in rich and radiant plenty. Take an example. Aswapati the Yogi has explored the eighteen worlds of Consciousness, eighteen universal and transcendental lokas, in eighteen cantos of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, and found the true meaning of this Creation. He has now discovered the nature of the problem and the difficulty that stands in the way of a happy manifestation here in the fulfilment of this great and godly endeavour with which all began in Time. The exeptional Yogi has, after a long and arduous tapasya, gathered in his spirit that strength by which a totally new and effective process can be set into motion. It is then that he becomes the Lord of Life, becomes Aswapati: Ashwa, the Horse, is a Vedic symbol of Life-Energy, the Consciousness-Force in its defeatless dynamism. It is therefore very appropriate that the poet should have identified and named him only after his getting this most remarkable siddhi, the power by which he can shape the course of events. This takes about ten thousand lines of the epic and even then one at times gets an impression as if the poet was hurrying through. In contrast to this the traditionalist has a tendency to see the Savitri-tale as a tale of a faithful and chaste woman without recognising the fact that it is an episode of a very rare and singular spiritual personality who has met and triumphed over the God of Death. Vyasa was fully aware of the profound and mystical contents of the story and what he wrote with the èlan of an inspired Rishi has the luminous power to lend to the legend symbolic and supernatural substance and meaning. To an apparently household event taking place in the Vedic times he has given a measure of the cosmic-transcendent. The Savitri-tale is much more than a dharmic illustration of holy and pious living meant for devout and faithful creatures. When Vyasa says that Aswapati engaged himself in the worship of Goddess Savitri for eighteen years, or that his radiant daughter was of gentle birth and virtuous, or was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, was accomplished in scriptural and secular learning, or that Satyavan was such an ocean of noble qualities that Yama himself had to come to snatch his soul, then he as the narrator of a simple-looking tale has already spoken of many details of the science and philosophy of spiritual practices. His language is compact and pointed, suggestive of every aspect of a deeper life lived in the splendour of the spirit. The traditional religious mind totally misses this aspect. It is with this background that we should read the ancient tale of Savitri as given to us by Vyasa and adapted by Sri Aurobindo for his epic bearing appropriately the name of its heroine. Doing so, we begin to appreciate its sweet transformative power. The Story King Aswapati is an ardent follower of the dharma and is firmly established in the truth. He rules over his kingdom with love and concern for its citizens. He is a performer of Yajnas and keeps the holy company of the learned and the virtuous. But he is issueless. With the passing of time, and with the advancing of his age, this causes him great affliction. Therefore, with the intention of getting a son, he engages himself in arduous tapasya. He retires to a forest and for eighteen years worships goddess Savitri. Observing the strictest rules of conduct and of worship, he offers every day a hundred-thousand oblations to her. Pleased with his sincerity and devotion, the goddess emerges out of the sacrificial flames and grants him the boon of a daughter. She assures him that she had approached Brahma the Creator himself and it is actually he who has bestowed this boon upon him. She adds that a beautiful and effulgent daughter will be soon born to him, kanyä tejasvini. Given as she was by Savitri, who was pleased by the Savitri-oblations, the father and the wise ones named her too Savitri. [Note 1] (shloka 1:24) Fair and beautiful like the goddess Fortune Sri, the adorable princess soon grows into proper maidenhood. She looks like a heavenly damsel, devakanyä, who has taken birth as Aswapati’s daughter. And, indeed, because of the beauty and fiery splendour of her youth, no prince dares to approach her, extending his hand in marriage. Once on an auspicious day, parvani, at the turning of the lunar fortnight, Savitri takes a holy bath, goes to the temple, and offers prayers to the gods, and gives ritual oblations to Agni. The wise ones recite the hymns of benediction, swasti-mantras. Worship done, she takes some flowers and a portion of food-offerings to the deities, prasäd, and goes to give them to her father. She touches his feet in obeisance and, after giving him the flowers and prasäd, stands respectfully with folded hands by his side. Seeing his daughter grown to full youth, and beautiful like a goddess, devarupini, and yet unmarried, Aswapati is very much distressed. He tells her that she should go out in search of a young man of her choice to espouse, one endowed with qualities like her own. It is quite appropriate for her to do so, he explains, as none has come as a suitor asking for her hand. He also mentions to her that a father becomes open to reproach when, according to the dharma, he fails to give his daughter, of the right age, in marriage. [Note 2] Savitri sets out on her search and travels to different kingdoms and lands. On her way she visits palaces and holy places, and offers worship to the deities; also, she gives away great wealth to the learned. In the course of her journey, as she passes through the green wooded regions, she makes respectful obeisances to the sages and Rishis staying in the sacred hermitages. [Note 3] In the meanwhile on a particular day the revered sage Narad and king Aswapati are in council in the royal palace. [Note 4] About the same time, as if by coincidence, Savitri returns to her father’s house. There she sees her father in the company of the heavenly sage. She, bright and graceful like a bride, bows down to them, touches their feet, and offers worshipping respects. Narad looks at her and immediately makes several inquiries about her. He asks Aswapati on what mission his daughter had gone, and why he has not yet given her in marriage. Aswapati explains to the sage that it was precisely with this intention that he sent her abroad, to find a suitable prince to marry, as none had come seeking her hand. He also surmises that she must be now returning after having successfully accomplished her mission. He asks her to recount the details of her journey and to reveal the name of the one whom she must have chosen for a husband. Savitri narrates the sequence of her journey. She tells that she had gone to the far Shalwa country, once ruled by the noble and righteous king Dyumatsena. But, then, as fate would have it, he becomes blind. A neighbouring king, his past enemy, takes advantage of this situation and invades his kingdom. Dyumatsena is defeated and driven out. With his wife and child-son he retires to the forest and engages himself in tapasya. The child, named Satyavan, grows in the hermitage under the tutorship of the sages and Rishis of the forest. Savitri discloses that it is Satyavan whom she has chosen as her life’s partner. But Narad at once rings a note of alarm, even of deep regret. He tells Aswapati about the grave nature of the choice made by his daughter. It is a matter of serious concern that Savitri should have chosen Satyavan for a husband, he forewarns. Alas! Savitri has, O King, done something accursed, that forebodes a great evil; unknowingly she has made the choice of Satyavan, taking him to be one of high merit. (shloka 2:11) True, born as he was of noble parents, he was named Satyavan, the Truthful. As a lad he was fond of painting, and drew figures of horses, and therefore he is also often called the Painter of Horses, Chitrashwa. Narad further says that Satyavan is bright like the sun, has a sharp intellect like that of Brihaspati, is munificent like Rantideva, the son of Sankriti, and like Yayati is exceedingly bounteous; in the manner of Shibi, the son of Ushinar, he is respectful to the learned and always speaks the truth; he is handsome like the moon and people often wonder whether he is one of the Ashwinikumars. He has mastered the senses and subdued passions, is a youth of heroic deeds, and is yet soft-natured and friendly to everybody. The forest sages are endeared to him and speak highly about his qualities. But, at Aswapati’s insistence to know also if Satyavan has any defects, Narad tells him that there is one blemish, that one year after the marriage Satyavan is to die on that very day. Savitri’s choice of Satyavan therefore becomes accursed. Aswapati advises his daughter to proceed again on her quest. He tells her how nullified all his virtues and all his noble qualities stand; she should not, counsels he, accept what is blameworthy, particularly when made known well in time. Savitri is, however, firm in her resolve. She asserts that it is her inner being who has actually made the choice. She further adds that that alone will govern her in every respect. It is the entire judge and authority for her, pramänam me manastatah, as Vyasa puts it. She argues that only once can the family wealth be divided between the brothers and not a second time; only once can a father give his daughter in marriage and not again; and once only does a philanthropist speak the word of charity and abide by it. It matters not for her if Satyavan has a long life or a short one, has virtuous qualities or is without them; because only once will she make her choice and not a second time. She elaborates her point by invoking a greater truth of the higher life. By perception does one first come to a certain conclusion and then one holds it by speech; only afterwards is it put into action. That perception of mine for me is the one single authority here. (shloka 2:28) Savitri reiterates that this is exactly what she has done and firmly adheres to her choice. Narad sees in Savitri’s resolve a wholesome as well as profound and elevating sense of perception. He further recognises that she is determinedly treading the path of dharma from which none can take her away. Considering also that the qualities of Satyavan cannot be matched in anybody else, he recommends their marriage. He blesses them and wishes the marriage to proceed unhindered, without any ill-happening. [Note 5] Then invoking propitious things of life, and good fortune for all, he leaves the Palace for his home in Paradise. (shloka 2:32) Aswapati attends to the details of the marriage and proceeds to the forest-hermitage where presently lives Dyumatsena. Following the tradition of proposing a marriage, he requests Dyumatsena to accept Savitri as a bride for his son Satyavan. Dyumatsena is somewhat hesitant in the beginning and also has apprehension whether the young princess would adjust herself to the cloistral life and bear hardships. But Aswapati assuages his fears. Finally, Dyumatsena accepts the offer and the marriage is duly solemnised. Satyavan is happy that in Savitri he has a beautiful wife with all the exquisite qualities of a high-born virgin; Savitri too is joyous that her heart’s desire has been so well fulfilled. (shloka 3:17) The marriage-party leaves for Madra and Savitri adapts herself to the life of the hermitage. She looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their public life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of her time goes by. But, within, the virtuous woman suffers greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembers Narad’s words and feels the cruel day approaching closer. When she counts that only four days are left, and Satyavan will be living no more afterwards, she resolves to perform the three-night vow, trirätra vrata, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. [Note 6] Dyumatsena dissuades her from carrying out the difficult vow. Savitri, however, tells him that he need not have any apprehension in her fulfilling it. Remaining erect like a stick, without moving from the chosen spot, and without taking any food for three days Savitri, by the power of her strong will and a woman’s strength to suffer, completes the vow. On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, she gets ready well before sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes offerings to the gods. [Note 7] Then she goes to the parents-in-law and to the various hermitages around and makes obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious things dear to a young devout wife. Savitri, accomplished as she is in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyänayogaparäyanä, wills in her heart for their blessings to come true. On returning to the cottage she sees Satyavan, with his axe on his shoulder, leaving for the forest; she halts him and tells him that, on that particular day, she will accompany him to the forest. But he advises her to get the permission from his father. Dyumatsena, recollecting the past one year, notes that ever since her father had left her in his charge never for anything did Savitri make any request to him. But then counselling Savitri not to be inattentive in duty, he permits her to go with Satyavan to the woods. The young couple set out happily, hand in hand. Satyavan shows to Savitri the sacred rivers and trees laden with flowers. In the lovely and delightful forests, with the flocks of peacocks dancing there joyously, they hear all around a soft lyrical note of gladness. In that gladness Satyavan speaks to her in honey-sweet words. And Savitri too, delighted by the beauty of the surroundings, and in the company of her lover, responds with equal sweetness. But she is constantly watching her husband in all his movements and does not allow him to go out of her sight. Remembering Narad’s words, she knows that his life is now in hours and he will die with the arrival of the Time-Person, käla-purusha. Within, she is in great agony all the while. Yet, accomplished in austerities as she is, and reckoning the swift-approaching fatal moment, she remains calm. Satyavan, lustrous in his strength, collects a basketful of fruits with the help of Savitri. Then he starts cutting the firewood. He wants to complete the day’s task quickly and spend the rest of the time with his beloved. But, due to overwork, he suddenly feels exhausted and begins perspiring profusely. He suffers from a severe headache, a pain in the limbs and an intense burning sensation in the heart. He lies down. Savitri immediately goes closer to him and takes his head in her lap. She knows that the foretold moment has arrived and that the käla-purusha will soon appear. Presently, Savitri sees a bright Person standing in front of her. He is luminous, is beautiful in his red attire, and is wearing a splendid crown over his head; it seems to her that the Sun-God himself has come there. His body though dark is lustrous in hue and through his red eyes he is looking steadily at Satyavan. He is carrying a noose in his hand which inspires great dread. On seeing him, Savitri lays aside her husband’s head and stands up with folded hands. Her heart is trembling but she asks that Person who he is and why he has come. That Person introduces himself as Yama and avers that he could converse with Savitri because she is a devout and chaste woman, a practitioner of difficult austerities. Yama praises the soul of Satyavan; but now as his life here is over he has to take it away with him, the soul that is no bigger than a thumb, angushthamätrah purusham. He throws the noose around it, pulls it out and starts moving towards the South. Satyavan’s lifeless corpse appears very dull and frightful. Savitri, afflicted with agony, follows Yama. A little later Yama looks back and notices Savitri following him. He advises her to return, as she has paid the debt to her husband by accompanying him over the permitted distance. He further reminds her that she has to attend to the funeral rites of the deceased. Savitri does not accept Yama’s advice. She has walked with the God seven steps and therefore a friendly relationship is established between the two. She tells him so and argues extensively with him on fundamental issues, he being the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-God, knower and upholder of the Law of Truth obtaining in the mortal creation. You are the mighty son of Vivasvan and that is why the learned call you Vaivasvat; to all creatures you are fair and you uphold the dharma. For that reason you are, O Lord, also known as Dharmaraj. (shloka 5:41) Her speech is perfect, observing the rules of grammar and syntax, complete in knowledge of etymology, prosodically well-structured; also her reasoning is flawless and logically impeccable. She tells him that her own place lies near her husband and she will not go back without him, firmly fixed as she is in the dharma. By the merit of austerity, devotion to the preceptor, love for the husband, observance of the sacred vows, and by the grace of Yama himself there is nothing, she tells him, which cannot be accomplished by a woman. Further, she asserts that holy people always abide in virtuous conduct, and never have they sorrow, nor are they any time afflicted. Greatly rewarding is indeed the company of such pious ones and therefore one should be ever close to them. In the fellowship of the saints and sages, without a doubt, all fear disappears. For this reason, more than himself does a man trust holy persons, and so does he give more of his love and respect to them. Then, in a tremendous moment of mantric utterance, of revelation, she discloses that ... it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun; by askesis the saints uphold the earth; in the saints all the three divisions of Time find their refuge; noble persons in the midst of the saints have never any grief. (shloka 5:48) The illustrious and the excellent help each other in the conduct of the dharma and do not do hurt to others. Therefore they prove to be the protectors of the entire world. Immensely pleased with the sublimity of these utterances Yama grants her boon after boon. Indeed, the more she speaks the well-adorned and well-cherished lofty things of the dharma, acceptable always in the conduct of life in every circumstance, to the same extent his admiration for her grows. By the first two boons she desires eyesight for her blind father-in-law and his lost kingdom; in the third boon she asks for a hundred sons for her father Aswapati, true and heroic brothers to her. By the fourth boon she would have got a hundred sons for herself, but she argues that this boon is of a different kind than the other three. It cannot be fulfilled without proper matrimony. She therefore reiterates her request for the life of Satyavan. Without him, she tells Yama, she herself would be dead; she would abstain from any pleasure, even that of entering heaven. Without Satyavan the boon would thus lie waste. Then, in a kind of dialectics, she points out the strange anomaly in Yama’s words and actions: You have given me the boon of a hundred sons and you yourself are taking my husband away; for that reason I again ask the boon of life for Satyavan, by which your words shall come true. (shloka 5:54) Yama, gladdened by Savitri’s Words of Dharma, says ‘Let it be so,’ and releases the noose from around the soul of the dead. He tells her that Satyavan is now in good health and fit to return with her to the earth. Further, he grants a life of four hundred years for him to live with her and, for the welfare of the world, to perform the holy Yajnas. Then Yama, blessing Savitri and sending her back with the soul of Satyavan, returns to his own Abode deep in the South. [Note 8] Also, Savitri returns to the earth with the soul of Satyavan. After the departure of Yama, getting her husband back, as Vyasa puts it, Savitri comes to the place where his dead body has been lying. She again takes his head in her lap. By now Satyavan regains consciousness and looks affectionately at Savitri; he begins talking to her like one who has returned from a long journey. He feels that he is waking from some deep sleep; but then he also carries a faint recollection of the dark-hued and terrifying figure who has dragged him to some dreadful and unknown world. He asks Savitri whether she knows anything about him. She tells him that it was the great God Yama himself, the Ordainer of the Creatures, who had come there; she, however, quickly adds that it is now all over and that he has left the place. Satyavan wants to know more about the entire episode; but Savitri postpones it by saying that she will narrate it the next day, pointing out that a thick darkness is fast enveloping them in the forest. Satyavan looks around and realises that he has not returned to the hermitage yet. He is quite worried, lest his old and helpless parents get disturbed, not seeing him back in spite of the growing night. But Savitri is somewhat hesitant. She sees that Satyavan is still weak and doubts whether he is in a condition to walk the long distance back to the hermitage. Getting lost in the darkness can also be risky. Besides, she herself is somewhat scared and tells Satyavan to that effect: Those cruel-voiced prowlers of the night are moving freely now; and listen to the sound in the fallen leaves as the wild beasts go about in the forest. This fearsome howling of the she-jackals in the south, and in the west, is causing my mind and my heart to tremble greatly. (shlokas 5:75-76) But Satyavan insists on returning forthwith. He is unable to bear any longer the separation from his loving parents. He tells Savitri that his blind father and the old mother must be frantically looking for them, going from hermitage to hermitage, inquiring about him and about his welfare. He does not wish to delay their going back any further. Realising how true her husband is as a follower of the dharma, Savitri agrees to return at once. She gets up and knots her loose hair; then, holding both the hands of her husband, she helps him to stand. Then encircling his waist with her right arm, his left on her left shoulder, they start walking slowly. Satyavan chides her that she is a timid woman and assures her that he is quite familiar with all the paths in the forest and can tell the correct one simply by looking at the stars. He points out to her that they are actually on the same path they had taken in the morning while coming to the forest. Indicating that at the bifurcation near the group of paläsha-trees she should take the path leading to the north, he prompts her to quicken the pace that they may reach home as early as possible. In the meanwhile Dyumatsena receives his eyesight. But he is very much disturbed, since Satyavan has not yet returned home. His mind begins wandering wildly, thinking of ominous and untoward happenings. A great fear grips him. The worried parents go from cottage to cottage inquiring about their son and daughter-in-law. They are concerned to such an extent that they rave almost in madness. Seeing their distressed plight, tormented as they are by evil suggestions, the sages of the forest gather around them and console them. Suvarchasa, ever the speaker of the truth, assures them that as Savitri is a woman of exceptionally noble and virtuous qualities, and is fixed in dharma, and has made great progress in her tapasya, nothing injurious can happen to Satyavan. Bharadwaja also expresses the same conviction and holds that Satyavan is hale and living. Gautama asserts that he has studied all the six branches of the Vedas, accumulated great might of askesis, observed strict celibacy since his early age, and pleased his preceptors and the Fire-God well; by that power of austerity and by the concentration of his will, he contends, he knows all the movements of others. Stating so, he affirms that Satyavan is alive. Gautama’s disciple vouches that never a word uttered by his Guru has turned out to be untrue or wrong; therefore he feels confident that Satyavan must be living. Dalbhya points out that Dyumatsena’s getting his eyesight back in such an unexpected way augurs auspicious happenings; he also says that the way Savitri observed the very difficult three-night vow, and the fact that she accompanied her husband to the forest without breaking the long fast, means complete safety for Satyavan. Apastambha sees in the tranquil benign surrounding, and in the manner and movement of the dumb animals and birds, a secret presence of harmony, indicating that there is nothing which should really perturb them. He too is sure that Satyavan is alive. Dhaumya proclaims that Satyavan has the marks of a long life and hence he must be living. This way the great Rishis assuage the fears of the worried parents. Then, not too long afterwards, Satyavan and Savitri arrive at the hermitage, immensely happy. There is great jubilation amongst all present. Indeed, in the union of the father and the son, in the blind king’s receiving his sight, in Savitri they see agreeable portents of the future. Kindling a bright fire they all sit around it and throw a volley of questions at Satyavan. They wish to know why Savitri and he are late in returning home when the night has grown dark in the jungles. Quite understandably, they want to know everything in detail to their satisfaction. But Satyavan simply tells them that, while collecting the firewood, he suffered a severe headache and had suddenly become unconscious, without awareness of anything around. For the delay there is no other reason, he informs them. But Gautama is not quite convinced. Moreover, Dyumatsena’s regaining his eyesight so unexpectedly still remains a mystery. He therefore turns towards Savitri and expresses his eagerness to know the entire secret from her. He tells her that she alone can unravel it. O Savitri, I am eager to hear of it from you; you know, O Savitri, all that is far and near, that belongs to the past and to the future; you understand it, one like Goddess Savitri herself as you are, with her effulgence. Surely, you have the knowledge of its cause and its purpose, and therefore speak the truth of it; if there is nothing in it to hide from us, tell us all of it. (shlokas 6: 34-35) Savitri narrates everything in detail, right from the beginning, how Narad foretold the impending doom of Satyavan’s death, and the reason for her undertaking the three-night vow, and of accompanying her husband to the forest on that particular day. She tells them that at the noon hour Yama entered the forest to snatch the soul of Satyavan. As he was carrying it away with him, she too followed him and offered him high eulogies with the utterances of Truth. The mighty God, the Upholder of the Dharma, was immensely pleased, and had become happy with her beyond bound. She then narrates how she received the five boons and how Satyavan regained consciousness. The Rishis bless the young devout woman and in happiness depart to their cottages, hailing her as the Saviour of the House: The House of the King was plunging more and more into darkness, assailed by misfortunes; but you of noble birth and a virtuous wife, sweet and amiable in nature, and an observer of the vows, one given to meritorious conduct, redeemed the family from doom. (shloka 6:43) But the next day they all, rich in austerities, completing the morning fire-rituals, gather once again around Dyumatsena. They speak of the extreme good fortune, mahäbhägyam, of Savitri, and are not contented even though they repeatedly narrate it. While in wonderment they are talking thus, a group of citizens of the Shalwa kingdom unexpectedly arrive at the hermitage. Extending their greetings to Dyumatsena, they inform him that his enemy has been killed by his own minister. They also add that in the capital everyone has resolved that Dyumatsena should occupy the throne again, as he is its worthy and rightful heir. Thus, imploring him to return, they tell him that the army with all its four divisions is ready at his command. They are also happily surprised to see Dyumatsena with his eyesight regained. Dyumatsena worships the Rishis reverentially and, receiving their blessings, departs for the capital. Shaibya along with Savitri rides a richly decorated gold-panelled car and, escorted by the army, leaves the hermitage. At the capital the priests sprinkle the holy water and perform Dyumatsena’s coronation ceremony. Satyavan is also made the Crown-Prince. In the course of time all the boons of Yama given to Savitri get fulfilled. [Note 9] The Tale of Satyavan and Savitri -- Sri Aurobindo The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal plane; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life. Adaptations made by Sri Aurobindo -- Notes Note 1 (p. 5) In Vyasa’s Savitri the description of Aswapati’s entire tapasya and his getting the boon are covered in just about twenty shlokas. The king has no son and in order to get a child he sets himself upon the dharmic path of sacrificial worship, Yajna. The traditional issue is the continuation of the ancestral line for the welfare and maintenance of the order of the worlds, the order which is maintained by making to the gods appropriate offerings accompanied by the hymns of solicitation and praise. The gods grow by these offerings and in return give gifts to the devotees. The help of the gods is always for promoting Righteousness. If the society has a certain foundation based on it, then it is obligatory for the righteous to affirm it in everyday conduct and in every respect. One aspect of it is to see that in all its glory it is perpetuated from generation to generation. The Law of the Right, ritam, was the ancient Vedic ideal that prevailed in the dynamic Age of the Truth, Satya Yuga, and of it Aswapati was one ardent and devout votary. But then Aswapati’s tapasya was not just a part of the fulfilment of this social obligation of his. We must also look into the plausibility that the intention behind the narration was to present a deeper and truer issue through the medium of a story. It appears that, in this human tale, Vyasa quite meant it to be so. In spirituo-metaphysical terms it is the possibility of a divine creation arising out of the inconscience, out of the nonmanifest that has become the unmanifest. If by the Force of Concentration, Tapas-Shakti, the Supreme created the Void and became inconscient, did the Yoga of Self-Sacrifice, triumphantly chanted in the Veda as the Holocaust of the Supreme, then by another Force of Action he has to emerge out of this state, out of utter forgetfulness, and establish the unfailing and inexhaustible delight of existence everywhere. For this to happen, the Supreme has to do Yoga in the earth-consciousness itself. And this has to happen in the face of his own stubbornness; for he himself has become the Inconscient. One visible sign of this stubbornness of the inconscient Supreme is the presence of Death: the manifesting Supreme surprisingly encounters the obstacle of the antagonist Supreme as Death. In that sense the tale of Savitri also becomes the Epic of the Divine Creation. In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Aswapati comes to the world of birth and does the Yoga of the Supreme. This is necessary in order to tackle, through birth, the divine issue present in this world of birth, in the mortal creation, mrityuloka. He realises that the issue can be handled victoriously only if the divine Shakti would condescend to come down upon the earth and deal with the otherwise obstinate and intractable problem of mortality, presented in the Figure of Death. She agrees. Savitri comes down here as an incarnate force and espouses the cause of the evolutionary travail’s death-bound life in the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme himself. But this descending ocean of dynamic consciousness has to be upborne, lest it drown the very Void out of which it is intended to emerge, with the awareness of the multiple splendour, a manifestation with the growing richness of the being of delight. Aswapati’s tapasya is for this purpose, to prepare a safe base for the fiery power’s transforming action. The needed Yogic support for her arrival and for her action is provided by it. Aswapati climbs to the summit of this creation and meets her; he prays to her to take human birth and accomplish the glorious miracle. In response to it she comes down as his own daughter. Thus Aswapati’s eighteen-year tapasya presented in Vyasa’s brief narrative, already full of spiritual glow, becomes in Sri Aurobindo a glorious and laurel-crowned Odyssey of mounting the mighty steep World-Stair that rises from Matter’s inconscient base to the splendours of the superconscient Spirit. He goes yet beyond, crossing the triple Glory. Even as he approaches the Worlds of the Unknowable, the creative-executive power of the Supreme answers him and grants him the exceptional boon that one shall come and change everything. All shall be done for which this mortal world was created --he is told. In the legend of Savitri the issue, albeit briefly and indicatively stated, is yet well focused in the inescapable death of Savitri’s lover and husband Satyavan. This death indeed becomes a glorious occasion for the incarnate Power’s action to deal with the universal Adversary standing in the way of the intended divine manifestation. What was brief and suggestively succinct in Vyasa, given to us in just twenty swift shlokas, Sri Aurobindo elaborated in his epic to the great length of about ten-thousand lines. But it is not wholly a poetic or thematic elaboration or expansion to this disproportionate size, merely for the sake of self-blissful indulgence. The existence of the World-Stair is not entirely new to the Yogic experience. But Aswapati’s exploration of these worlds, his moving through them, putting upon their breast his footsteps is an occult action and has an occult meaning and purpose. It is not just the journey of an indifferent passerby, he leaves behind in them his dynamic and luminous Yogic presence itself. It is the presence of the Avatar left behind in those worlds which is going to prove beneficent to this world of our mortality. It is by this presence that these countless worlds are to participate gloriously in the process of the new creation for which Savitri is about to begin her work. Perhaps it was too early for the tradition to realise this, but it seems that it certainly had a distant intuition of it. Note 2 (p. 6) Sri Aurobindo describes the event in a somewhat different manner, with Aswapati as a Yogi in communion with the spiritual planes and forces that constantly exert their influence upon us, which govern and mould all our movements and actions. He has a sure intuition that a greater nobler destiny lies in wait for us though at present we strive only for little gains, though we are unable to receive the celestial gifts, hold them when they are given to us in God’s plenty. But Aswapati hears a heavenly voice and sees in the person of Savitri a bright promise, “a shining answer from the gods” to all these thousand questions that baffle and torment life and belittle it. He tells her to proceed forthwith and put her “conquering foot on Chance and Time”. He has a feeling that the heavens guard her soul for some mighty work and that her fate and her work are kept somewhere afar which she must discover and attend to. She is bidden to ascend from Nature and meet a greater God, that together they shall tackle the issue of this mortal creation. The great commanding word from her Yogi-father is received by Savitri and she at once awakes to the mission of her spirit and her soul. Deep in her consciousness it sinks and begins to work with the full power and certainty of the mantric utterance itself. Note 3 (p. 6) At this point Sri Aurobindo brings out explicitly, and with sweet lyrical enthusiasm and enchantment, the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri in the Shalwa woods, of which in Vyasa no hint whatsoever is available. They meet, they fall in love with each other, they recognise the purpose of their union and the task they have together to attend to. In the acceptable tradition of the Gandharva marriage, and with Nature and the gods as its witnesses, they get indissolubly united. All this is absent in the upäkhyäna. But then what is absent in the Legend and Symbol is the traditional ritualistic marriage which is solemnised later, in spite of Narad’s frightful prophecy. Not on socio-religious or occult-dharmic aspect but on spiritual content, with its meaning and its value, is the important thrust put in the latter. Perhaps this emphasis, rather than the departure from the established norm and convention, is quite understandable. The marriage itself is an exceptional marriage, marriage of two exceptional incarnate beings. Note 4 (p. 6) Vyasa does not mention if the queen, Savitri’s mother Malawi, was also present during the meeting, although it is presumed that she was there. Even if actually present, she did not participate in the discussion. This seems to be the classical ideal in which the woman left all matters of deliberation and decision to her husband and accepted his word as final in every respect. She always remained in the background with her force of dynamism supporting her husband from behind. On the other hand, in Sri Aurobindo’s presentation the queen, though full of human frailty, plays a crucial role in the discussion and raises subtle points of fate and free will in human transactions. Note 5 (p. 7) In Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri we see Narad asserting the divine will behind this marriage and, though apparently tragic, makes it firm. There is no doubt that it was for this purpose that he had undertaken the long and arduous journey from his home in Paradise to Aswapati’s palace at Madra on the banks of the Alacananda, a difficult process by which the spiritual becomes the earthly substantial. Narad is one of those very few who can move freely in all the worlds and can also take a human form, of flesh and blood. He knows the occult secret by which this can be done and as an aspect of the divine working, and in the imperative of its purpose he participates whenever such crucial events are about to occur. Sri Aurobindo’s Narad has a mission to accomplish, -- to deliver the Word of Fate. It is the Word which is going to determine the entire course of the earthly future. On the other hand the Mahabharata story looks more like a homely narrative. In it Narad is taken as a household figure intimate to the inmates, with their concern in his heart. His present visit to Aswapati is therefore just a part of that extreme goodwill of his for them. Note 6 (p. 8) In general we may say that the mention of trirätra vrata in Vyasa has been fully utilised by Sri Aurobindo in his epic to describe the Shakti Yoga of Savitri, a description which runs to more than three thousand lines. In the entire Occult-Yogic literature this is undoubtedly unique, the most definite disclosure, indeed a revelation and an application accompanying its practice. We have here the true meaning and purport of the Tantrik sadhana, Shakti Upasana, as a means for the effective transformation of Nature from her inconscient mode of working in the dumb inconscient body into a luminous dynamism of her consciousness-force. It is only when this is carried out in the bodily existence that there is a possibility of conquering death and attaining earthly immortality in the light and splendour of the triple Divine. That would be the genuine and actual resolution of the issue of this mortal world, this mrityuloka. It is on that path Savitri has now set herself, so that this difficult missioned task be done. The cause of her husband’s death in the story is the immediate occasion for doing the Yoga of Transformation. Certainly this aspect of earthly immortality is not present in the tradition, nowhere has it been explicitly taken as a part of the spiritual sadhana. From death to immortality, mrityormamratm gamay, has all along been the ancient prayer. It is again in that context that we see in the Upakhyana of the Mahabharata Yama granting wonderful boons to Savitri; but then Yama as immortal Death still remains there, yet to carry on the work of upholding the worlds. We cannot therefore say that the trirätra vrata has the power of the Shakti Yoga to bring about a totally radical change in Nature, particularly in the stubborn inconscient aspect of Nature, to altogether displace death from her. And yet the benign figure of Yama has to find its full meaning and appurtenant significance in this mortal creation. The Vedic-Tantrik sadhana did not explore the possibilities of the Shakti Yoga in this transformative endeavour though it may have had an inkling of it. The fact that it was a three-night vow makes it symbolically weighty and consequential, the three nights of the physical, vital and mental ignorance that constitutes our existence. But the full implication of it, both Yogically and Occult-operationally, perhaps remained unexplored. Perhaps for good reasons too. Note 7 (p. 8) On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, Savitri gets ready well before the sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes ritual offerings to the gods. In Sri Aurobindo Savitri worships goddess Durga on the fated day before setting out to the forest with Satyavan. The image of the goddess was carved by him on a stone. In the Upakhyana Satyavan is presented as a painter of the horses whereas Savitri makes him a sculptor. But, more importantly, Durga is the Protectress of the Worlds and worshipping her is praying and asking for her protection in the most dire moment of life, the moment confronting death itself. Arjuna at the suggestion of Krishna had so worshipped her at the very beginning of the Mahabharata war. That was however for winning a victory over the enemy and not to conquer death. Therefore if Savitri is going to worship Durga, that goddess must be more powerful than Yama in order to prevail over him. She is the transcendental Shakti of Savitri herself and hence there is the inevitability of the result in her favour in the deep battle of life that is soon going to be waged against death. That such a living goddess was present in the rock sculpted by Satyavan adds yet another transcendental dimension to the story in the hands of Sri Aurobindo. Note 8 (p. 10) The parts dealing with the colloquy between Yama and Savitri are the most complex, most profound and occult in Sri Aurobindo’s epic. In it Yama, rather Death, the embodied Nothingness, is standing as a stubborn antagonist against God’s work in this mortal creation and has no mercy to show to anyone or to anything. He is learned, he is powerful, he is relentless and inexorable, and all that he knows is his Law. He sees things and beings as a “pitiful dream” and looks at the delight of Nature with utter disdain. In fact, he is the very incarnation of Inconscience. He derives all his power from the dark Abyss and he cannot accept any trespassing of his edict. Savitri’s following him and challenging him to claim the soul of Satyavan is an affront made by her to his sovereignty and he cannot brook it in the least manner. She must pay a heavy price for this transgression. The figure that finally stands in front of her is a huge terrifying mask, a “grandiose Darkness of the Infinite”. He has embodied in his shadow-self the entire might of God’s Nothing and, in the present process of evolution, defeating him is defeating that Nothing itself. Therefore he is standing there in all his formidable strength. But the great incarnate Goddess in the form of Savitri throws aside the veil and the Deity dwelling in her secret depths readies herself for the decisive assault. A mighty transformation comes upon the extraordinary Yogini and the Kundalini-force descends from above into her entire being. The Tantrik World-Yoga of the Divine, the Shakti Yoga of the Supreme, finds its culmination in this most decisive, and marvellous, action of the great incarnate Goddess. But then Yama in the role of Death yet resists. Finally, however, to her mastering Word he succumbs and gets dispossessed of his paled and defeated will. He takes refuge in the “retreating Night” unable as he is to withstand the lustre of the divine Immortal. But then he reappears as the Tempter of the Worlds and offers easy boons to Savitri. She at once sees the trap and does not fall into it, to live with Satyavan in the heavens of the deathless gods. Her concern is for the soul of man, Satyavan’s soul to do God’s work in the world of the mortals. Earth is the chosen place and it is this earth which in the splendour of the triple divinity must be fulfilled. Savitri is firm-willed and adheres to the choice of her soul and her spirit. It is then that in the benignity of her choice she receives the supreme gift from the Supreme, a gift to celebrate the arrival of the new creation with the soul of Satyavan at its forefront and as its initiator. Even the bright illusion that could have fallen over her sight and distracted her from her single purpose has now been dispelled and there is only the light of the everlasting day. The work of the incarnation has been accomplished and now things will unfold in the process of endless Time. Can we say that both these aspects, the aspect of the embodied Nothingness and the aspect of the bright Tempter, are present in Yama of the tradition, because Yama given to us by the tradition is unmistakably at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious? He inspires fear in us and also he is the giver of happy boons to us. We may therefore clearly see both these figures behind him, though perhaps not in their detailed operational bearing and sense. Even if we are to take it that way, it has never been made explicit and functionally meaningful in the ancient writings. It is very likely that they had the intuition of it, that behind this twofold Yama there is only one single Supreme, or rather it is the Supreme who himself is present in these two poises. But the point is not about the intuition of it. The Rishis of yore might have had that knowledge and that definite perception which had remained unrecorded in the annals of spirituality. We may even give them the benefit of the doubt that it was not to be inopportunely disclosed, very explicitly stated. Or else, perhaps more appropriately, the completeness of the experience was still very much wanting for it to have become in the evolutionary process operationally decisive. But for us what is necessary is to recognise the fact that Savitri’s entry into the very world of dense ignorance and death is an absolutely unique and unprecedented event. It was as if Satyavan’s death became a pretext for it to happen. With her Occult-Yogic might Savitri steps into the inconscient regions and establishes in them the expressive power of the supreme Word, the Word by which things take place and get luminously fixed. If Aswapati’s tapasya led him through the different worlds in which he left his presence behind, Savitri’s Battle in the field of Darkness is to eliminate the elemental forces from which arise the crookedness and the evil in the evolutionary manifestation. Therefore the Yama-Savitri debate is not a mere verbal duel, a logomachy, a metaphysical engagement, a conjuration of one-up-manship. Great powers are released even as they speak, the powers of opposition and negation and the powers of advancement and affirmation. Each utterance lets loose its charge with occult mights clashing against formidable occult mights. It is in their wake that things have to transpire, events founded in the future and not in the obscurity of the past to get organised and configured so that the new order of the world is born. Ultimately the Gnostic Word is established in those very suffocating and terrifying nether depths where lived uncompromising death and suffering and evil. Great is Truth and it does indeed prevail. Savitri has made it greater by making it prevail even in the absolute darkness of Inconscience. What was promised long ago now gets unconditionally fulfilled. Once for all the issue of the mortal creation is resolved and the path of ever-widening and everlasting progress opened out. Note 9 (p. 13) Sri Aurobindo’s epilogue does not have these details. Did he intentionally drop them, considering them as irrelevant to the main Yogic-spiritual message the epic is to give? Or did he sort of hurriedly round off the story keeping in regard the view that, after receiving the supreme Boon, there is really nothing more that need be wished or willed, need be said? After completing the final revision of the Book of Fate, in the middle of November 1950, just three weeks before his passing away, Sri Aurobindo had asked if something else was still remaining to be taken up for revision. When told that the Book of Death and the Epilogue were still to be attended to, he remarked: “Oh, that? We shall see about that later on.” That “later on” was never to be. Would Sri Aurobindo have incorporated in the Epilogue the gathering of the wise and the elders around Satyavan and Savitri when they returned late in the evening from the forest, recreated with his poetic genius the ancient scene of the hermitage and the dwellers gathering at the moment of concern and at the moment of jubilation? Possibly the sages and the Rishis would have told us about the nature of the new creation and about the divine life received as a boon by Savitri from the Supreme, the “life that has opened with divinity”. Similarly, the Book of Death, which presently has only Canto Three, entitled Death in the Forest, might have been taken up by him later, perhaps to indicate the difficulty of the cellular transformation, -- the difficulty of the inconscient will in the body to change and accept the Truth-Will in it. But these are possibilities about which nobody can say anything and it would be quite improper to even hazard a guess. Besides, it is likely that these are futuristic matters and it would be best to leave the future to determine its own course of progress and action when the future is going to be fully governed by the future and not by dead compulsions and constraints of the past. The story of the mortal world, mrityuloka, is an endless saga, and a glorious saga full of happy surprises, and it must be allowed to unfold in its own creatively glorious way, the Way of the Truth. Sri Aurobindo has set it into motion and the auspices of eternity’s Time will take it over to make dynamic divinity its executive in the endless delight of existence.
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The story of Savitri is an ancient story. Perhaps it belongs to the early Vedic times. Perhaps it may go back even to a yet deeper past. It is both myth and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale the story has several connotations and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite suggestive of the issue involved in this mortal creation, mrityuloka, the creation to which we belong. The issue is of divine manifestation in an evolutionary way, evolution that has its beginning in Inconscience.
Ours is not a typal world. A typal world is a world of fixed forms and possibilities,-- as is, for instance, the world of the gods. The world of the great gods, the Overmind world, is no doubt splendid; but it stays as it is, is tied to its own kind. From it no other aspects of the multifold Transcendent can emerge, no change or progress is possible in it. In fact, if the gods should wish to get out of it and go to higher worlds, make progress, they must be willing and prepared to be born in the mortal world. In that sense this world of ours, this earth, is unique; it is a place where progress is continuous and interminable. The story of Savitri has such an occult basis as its background and therefore it distinctly foresees the prospects of enlarging consciousness in the splendour of love, beauty, joy, knowledge, power, sweetness, harmony, the creative working of the Truth-Idea in the richly effulgent and ever-growing dimensions of the Infinite. Though not expressly stated so, the suggestions in the story are unmistakable. There is a long spiritual tradition which carries in its experience the esoteric sense purported by the story. That it has occult-mystical bearings is pretty obvious from its very tone. Actually this implied meaning is written on its face in bright and bold characters. It is perhaps for this reason that its essential core has endured the long passage of time. But thick coats of unregenerate times have also accumulated over it. The living spirit of the story has got buried under the dense layers of ethical-moralistic ideas and notions. Sri Aurobindo himself says that originally the Mahabharata story was symbolic, but later it became socio-religious. Now the story is narrated to project Savitri as a role-model of an ideal woman, with fidelity in conjugal relations as its chief and foremost concern. The Savitri-tale appears early in the Mahabharata, in the third of the 18 parts of the monumental work. It is placed in the Vana Parva and is called Savitri Upakhyana, a Minor Episode in the Book of the Forest. It has also a subtitle, Pativrata Mahatmya, indicating the nature of the story. The Sanskrit word mähätmya means greatness, grandeur, glory, majesty; it also means a narration of heroic or marvellous deeds, a legend, a romance, an epic. We may quite justifiably say that the Upakhyana is both: it is a noble mini-epic. It describes in great and dignified style the marvellous deeds of a married woman who is faithful and chaste, who observes virtuous rites and rituals, performs diligently the acts of ascetic sacrifices and offerings. Indeed, such a pativratä sees the very presence of divinity in her husband. The story is thus significantly charged with the resplendent and creative dynamism of the Dharma, the path of active and living Righteousness. The word dharma has the sense of the inner law of conduct natural to one’s soul and one’s spiritual build-up, one’s swabhäva. It promotes superior and richer values, gracious merits which the soul cherishes and carries with itself from life to life. That is the true basis of the Upakhyana. When did Vyasa compose his Savitri-story? Sri Aurobindo remarks that it belongs to the poet’s early days, still fresh “with the glow of the youth and grace over it”. It looks as though the later compilers of the Mahabharata neatly incorporated the tale in the main sequel of the Great Epic. It does certainly fit in very well in one of the story-sessions we have in the Book of the Forest when the Pandavas stayed as exiles in the woods. The metre in which the poem is composed is mostly Anusthtubha and there are exactly 300 shlokas or 600 hemistichs covering the entire story. A shloka is an unrhymed Sanskrit couplet, of 32 syllables in 4 equal divisions, and is the most common form used for a narrative. Vyasa’s recitation of Savitri in this metre moves forward with epic grace and swiftness, rushing from event to event with confident ease. Divided in seven sections, the little heroic poem has metrical power to win back the Word of Truth from the inconsiderate and suffocating darkness of Death. Savitri the Princess of Madra is of course the most important character in the story. The other persons present are: Savitri’s parents Aswapati and Malawi; then, there is the heavenly sage Narad who pays a purposeful visit to Aswapati at a most crucial juncture in the life of Savitri. This happens when she is about to disclose to her parents her choice of marrying Satyavan; Satyavan, his mother Shaibya and blind father Dyumatsena, once the ruler of the Shalwa country, are staying as exiles in the forest. In the forest there are sages and learned ascetics engaged in holy spiritual practices, one prominent and well-respected among them being the sage Gautama. Yama or the God of Death is at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious in the benignity of the Upholder of the Order of the Worlds. Princess Savitri’s own birth was in response to Aswapati’s prayer to the goddess Savitri who incarnated herself as his daughter in fulfilment of the exceptional boon granted to him, through her, by the Creator-Father Brahma himself. A cosmic-transcendental dimension is thus already set in the story narrated as a simple human tale belonging to early times. The Pandavas have lost the game of dice and have been ordered to live for twelve years in a forest. This is to be followed by one year of living incognito. It is towards the end of this twelve-year period that Rishi Markandeya visits the Pandavas again and in response to the query of Yudhishthira narrates to him the story of Savitri. Yudhishthira’s puzzlement is simple. He knows that noble Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas, is chaste and virtuous, -- born as she was in the purity of the sacrificial flame. Yet in life she is seen to face most difficult hardships and suffer humiliation at the hand of the evil-minded. Virtue always seems to be helpless against the harshness of life and is ever afflicted, as if it were incompatible with it. But the Rishi assures the desolate that, in the manner of Savitri, the disgraced shall, by her great womanly power, the power of chastity, prove to be a fortune-bringer to them. Savitri had suffered greatly for her husband’s sake and won from Yama, the King-Father Lord himself, noble boons including the exceptional boon of winning back Satyavan’s life. Through the Savitri-example which he prefers to give to Yudhishthira, Markandeya is actually holding out a splendid promise for the Pandavas. With this preliminary background begins the remarkable narration. But does the story speak of the ideal of womanhood only in the context of building up a healthy society? Is such a woman just a desirable and genial archetype, a beau idéal? Has the whole concept been put forward particularly as an ethical self-righteous view to emphasise upon the laity and the common people to adopt and follow a fixed set of rules of conduct, a set of commandments to govern their daily life? In the face of life’s severe contradictions, where often virtue not only goes unrewarded but seems to be punished, does it merely try to din into our ears the efficacy of the dharma in spite of these thousand evils which we have to encounter every day? Is the alleviation of grief and suffering the main intention behind the narration? Are the examples of Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti, proclaimed and upheld by Vivekananda even today, any more relevant, appropriate enough in the modern unavoidable circumstances? Are they secular in character? But if Markandeya is a Rishi with high spiritual attainments and an immortal, chiranjeeva, it is quite inconceivable that he would come down to the level of the ordinary and provide such a superficial consolation to the afflicted who himself is a man of great accomplishments. Nor would the seer-poet indulge in this quick luxury to squander away his poetry on the routine and the common-place. If Savitri and Draupadi were born from the sacrificial flames, we must immediately recognise that in this secular garb we have in fact something deep, something that is luminously mysterious if not profoundly esoteric. The Savitri-tale is not a mere pious holy tale meant for the God-fearing and the credulous, for small minds, for young simple housewives; but it is actually a strong effective symbol charged with the high potency of the supernatural, even that of the transcendental which is pressing forth to establish itself in this world of suffering and grief and death. Savitri herself was a highly proficient and skillful young woman, with the knowledge of both the worldly and the spiritual; she was a tapasvini of exceptional merit. This we ought to remember in understanding the text which is very terse and compact in its presentation. It is a Yogic-spiritual document indeed. It is a revelation. Therefore looking at the Savitri-tale as a revelation will perhaps be the best way to profit from it. This knowledge in the tradition was always there in its background, but it had got lost in the course of time. Sri Aurobindo has renewed it, putting his own Yogic-spiritual power into it: he has put the fire of his own soul in its body and in its spirit. We must bear in mind, and recognise, that the tale is an occult-spiritual tale involving cosmic powers and personalities with a concern for the evolutionary manifestation upon the earth. We should take the story accordingly, in the know of its occult connotation, which is suggestively clear from the intention and mode of its narration. Hence we may say that the characters in the story are much more than even some exceptional human figures, howsoever these human figures in their glorious proportions may appeal to us in their nobility and stature. They are more than that; they are incarnations. If so we can well appreciate why Sri Aurobindo treats the Savitri-story both as a legend and as a symbol. No wonder also that his elaborate presentation of the theme in his epic should essentially focus itself on occult-supernatural actions and eventualities. This may prove to be a great stumbling block to both the modern and the traditional sets of thinking. Modern man very often adjudges it as a narrative in some rarefied abstruse and obscure domain, with one steep rock of abstraction climbing to another; he starts wondering if anything is happening in any definite manner or all is simply a dubious play of words with high-sounding appellatives like Infinity, Eternity, Inconscience, Non-being, Void, Nature, Spirit, Matter and so on. Frequently his charge is that, apart from the names of some Gods and Goddesses, there are only five proper names in the whole epic which runs to about twenty-four thousand lines: Satyavan, Savitri, Aswapati, Dyumatsena and Narad. The required support for thought and imagination, support in the form of characters of flesh and blood, is not available in this epic. The complaint is that the human framework is too thin for the story to remain even as a legend, the entire thrust being theoretic-metaphysical. Quite knowledgeable critics refuse even to call it a poem. But this is patently a limitation of the professionals who ought to come out of their academic preconceptions and allegiances. We have to be in tune at least with the intuitive perception and suggestiveness that the aesthesis of Savitri gives to us in rich and radiant plenty. Take an example. Aswapati the Yogi has explored the eighteen worlds of Consciousness, eighteen universal and transcendental lokas, in eighteen cantos of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, and found the true meaning of this Creation. He has now discovered the nature of the problem and the difficulty that stands in the way of a happy manifestation here in the fulfilment of this great and godly endeavour with which all began in Time. The exeptional Yogi has, after a long and arduous tapasya, gathered in his spirit that strength by which a totally new and effective process can be set into motion. It is then that he becomes the Lord of Life, becomes Aswapati: Ashwa, the Horse, is a Vedic symbol of Life-Energy, the Consciousness-Force in its defeatless dynamism. It is therefore very appropriate that the poet should have identified and named him only after his getting this most remarkable siddhi, the power by which he can shape the course of events. This takes about ten thousand lines of the epic and even then one at times gets an impression as if the poet was hurrying through. In contrast to this the traditionalist has a tendency to see the Savitri-tale as a tale of a faithful and chaste woman without recognising the fact that it is an episode of a very rare and singular spiritual personality who has met and triumphed over the God of Death. Vyasa was fully aware of the profound and mystical contents of the story and what he wrote with the èlan of an inspired Rishi has the luminous power to lend to the legend symbolic and supernatural substance and meaning. To an apparently household event taking place in the Vedic times he has given a measure of the cosmic-transcendent. The Savitri-tale is much more than a dharmic illustration of holy and pious living meant for devout and faithful creatures. When Vyasa says that Aswapati engaged himself in the worship of Goddess Savitri for eighteen years, or that his radiant daughter was of gentle birth and virtuous, or was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, was accomplished in scriptural and secular learning, or that Satyavan was such an ocean of noble qualities that Yama himself had to come to snatch his soul, then he as the narrator of a simple-looking tale has already spoken of many details of the science and philosophy of spiritual practices. His language is compact and pointed, suggestive of every aspect of a deeper life lived in the splendour of the spirit. The traditional religious mind totally misses this aspect. It is with this background that we should read the ancient tale of Savitri as given to us by Vyasa and adapted by Sri Aurobindo for his epic bearing appropriately the name of its heroine. Doing so, we begin to appreciate its sweet transformative power. The Story King Aswapati is an ardent follower of the dharma and is firmly established in the truth. He rules over his kingdom with love and concern for its citizens. He is a performer of Yajnas and keeps the holy company of the learned and the virtuous. But he is issueless. With the passing of time, and with the advancing of his age, this causes him great affliction. Therefore, with the intention of getting a son, he engages himself in arduous tapasya. He retires to a forest and for eighteen years worships goddess Savitri. Observing the strictest rules of conduct and of worship, he offers every day a hundred-thousand oblations to her. Pleased with his sincerity and devotion, the goddess emerges out of the sacrificial flames and grants him the boon of a daughter. She assures him that she had approached Brahma the Creator himself and it is actually he who has bestowed this boon upon him. She adds that a beautiful and effulgent daughter will be soon born to him, kanyä tejasvini. Given as she was by Savitri, who was pleased by the Savitri-oblations, the father and the wise ones named her too Savitri. [Note 1] (shloka 1:24) Fair and beautiful like the goddess Fortune Sri, the adorable princess soon grows into proper maidenhood. She looks like a heavenly damsel, devakanyä, who has taken birth as Aswapati’s daughter. And, indeed, because of the beauty and fiery splendour of her youth, no prince dares to approach her, extending his hand in marriage. Once on an auspicious day, parvani, at the turning of the lunar fortnight, Savitri takes a holy bath, goes to the temple, and offers prayers to the gods, and gives ritual oblations to Agni. The wise ones recite the hymns of benediction, swasti-mantras. Worship done, she takes some flowers and a portion of food-offerings to the deities, prasäd, and goes to give them to her father. She touches his feet in obeisance and, after giving him the flowers and prasäd, stands respectfully with folded hands by his side. Seeing his daughter grown to full youth, and beautiful like a goddess, devarupini, and yet unmarried, Aswapati is very much distressed. He tells her that she should go out in search of a young man of her choice to espouse, one endowed with qualities like her own. It is quite appropriate for her to do so, he explains, as none has come as a suitor asking for her hand. He also mentions to her that a father becomes open to reproach when, according to the dharma, he fails to give his daughter, of the right age, in marriage. [Note 2] Savitri sets out on her search and travels to different kingdoms and lands. On her way she visits palaces and holy places, and offers worship to the deities; also, she gives away great wealth to the learned. In the course of her journey, as she passes through the green wooded regions, she makes respectful obeisances to the sages and Rishis staying in the sacred hermitages. [Note 3] In the meanwhile on a particular day the revered sage Narad and king Aswapati are in council in the royal palace. [Note 4] About the same time, as if by coincidence, Savitri returns to her father’s house. There she sees her father in the company of the heavenly sage. She, bright and graceful like a bride, bows down to them, touches their feet, and offers worshipping respects. Narad looks at her and immediately makes several inquiries about her. He asks Aswapati on what mission his daughter had gone, and why he has not yet given her in marriage. Aswapati explains to the sage that it was precisely with this intention that he sent her abroad, to find a suitable prince to marry, as none had come seeking her hand. He also surmises that she must be now returning after having successfully accomplished her mission. He asks her to recount the details of her journey and to reveal the name of the one whom she must have chosen for a husband. Savitri narrates the sequence of her journey. She tells that she had gone to the far Shalwa country, once ruled by the noble and righteous king Dyumatsena. But, then, as fate would have it, he becomes blind. A neighbouring king, his past enemy, takes advantage of this situation and invades his kingdom. Dyumatsena is defeated and driven out. With his wife and child-son he retires to the forest and engages himself in tapasya. The child, named Satyavan, grows in the hermitage under the tutorship of the sages and Rishis of the forest. Savitri discloses that it is Satyavan whom she has chosen as her life’s partner. But Narad at once rings a note of alarm, even of deep regret. He tells Aswapati about the grave nature of the choice made by his daughter. It is a matter of serious concern that Savitri should have chosen Satyavan for a husband, he forewarns. Alas! Savitri has, O King, done something accursed, that forebodes a great evil; unknowingly she has made the choice of Satyavan, taking him to be one of high merit. (shloka 2:11) True, born as he was of noble parents, he was named Satyavan, the Truthful. As a lad he was fond of painting, and drew figures of horses, and therefore he is also often called the Painter of Horses, Chitrashwa. Narad further says that Satyavan is bright like the sun, has a sharp intellect like that of Brihaspati, is munificent like Rantideva, the son of Sankriti, and like Yayati is exceedingly bounteous; in the manner of Shibi, the son of Ushinar, he is respectful to the learned and always speaks the truth; he is handsome like the moon and people often wonder whether he is one of the Ashwinikumars. He has mastered the senses and subdued passions, is a youth of heroic deeds, and is yet soft-natured and friendly to everybody. The forest sages are endeared to him and speak highly about his qualities. But, at Aswapati’s insistence to know also if Satyavan has any defects, Narad tells him that there is one blemish, that one year after the marriage Satyavan is to die on that very day. Savitri’s choice of Satyavan therefore becomes accursed. Aswapati advises his daughter to proceed again on her quest. He tells her how nullified all his virtues and all his noble qualities stand; she should not, counsels he, accept what is blameworthy, particularly when made known well in time. Savitri is, however, firm in her resolve. She asserts that it is her inner being who has actually made the choice. She further adds that that alone will govern her in every respect. It is the entire judge and authority for her, pramänam me manastatah, as Vyasa puts it. She argues that only once can the family wealth be divided between the brothers and not a second time; only once can a father give his daughter in marriage and not again; and once only does a philanthropist speak the word of charity and abide by it. It matters not for her if Satyavan has a long life or a short one, has virtuous qualities or is without them; because only once will she make her choice and not a second time. She elaborates her point by invoking a greater truth of the higher life. By perception does one first come to a certain conclusion and then one holds it by speech; only afterwards is it put into action. That perception of mine for me is the one single authority here. (shloka 2:28) Savitri reiterates that this is exactly what she has done and firmly adheres to her choice. Narad sees in Savitri’s resolve a wholesome as well as profound and elevating sense of perception. He further recognises that she is determinedly treading the path of dharma from which none can take her away. Considering also that the qualities of Satyavan cannot be matched in anybody else, he recommends their marriage. He blesses them and wishes the marriage to proceed unhindered, without any ill-happening. [Note 5] Then invoking propitious things of life, and good fortune for all, he leaves the Palace for his home in Paradise. (shloka 2:32) Aswapati attends to the details of the marriage and proceeds to the forest-hermitage where presently lives Dyumatsena. Following the tradition of proposing a marriage, he requests Dyumatsena to accept Savitri as a bride for his son Satyavan. Dyumatsena is somewhat hesitant in the beginning and also has apprehension whether the young princess would adjust herself to the cloistral life and bear hardships. But Aswapati assuages his fears. Finally, Dyumatsena accepts the offer and the marriage is duly solemnised. Satyavan is happy that in Savitri he has a beautiful wife with all the exquisite qualities of a high-born virgin; Savitri too is joyous that her heart’s desire has been so well fulfilled. (shloka 3:17) The marriage-party leaves for Madra and Savitri adapts herself to the life of the hermitage. She looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their public life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of her time goes by. But, within, the virtuous woman suffers greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembers Narad’s words and feels the cruel day approaching closer. When she counts that only four days are left, and Satyavan will be living no more afterwards, she resolves to perform the three-night vow, trirätra vrata, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. [Note 6] Dyumatsena dissuades her from carrying out the difficult vow. Savitri, however, tells him that he need not have any apprehension in her fulfilling it. Remaining erect like a stick, without moving from the chosen spot, and without taking any food for three days Savitri, by the power of her strong will and a woman’s strength to suffer, completes the vow. On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, she gets ready well before sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes offerings to the gods. [Note 7] Then she goes to the parents-in-law and to the various hermitages around and makes obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious things dear to a young devout wife. Savitri, accomplished as she is in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyänayogaparäyanä, wills in her heart for their blessings to come true. On returning to the cottage she sees Satyavan, with his axe on his shoulder, leaving for the forest; she halts him and tells him that, on that particular day, she will accompany him to the forest. But he advises her to get the permission from his father. Dyumatsena, recollecting the past one year, notes that ever since her father had left her in his charge never for anything did Savitri make any request to him. But then counselling Savitri not to be inattentive in duty, he permits her to go with Satyavan to the woods. The young couple set out happily, hand in hand. Satyavan shows to Savitri the sacred rivers and trees laden with flowers. In the lovely and delightful forests, with the flocks of peacocks dancing there joyously, they hear all around a soft lyrical note of gladness. In that gladness Satyavan speaks to her in honey-sweet words. And Savitri too, delighted by the beauty of the surroundings, and in the company of her lover, responds with equal sweetness. But she is constantly watching her husband in all his movements and does not allow him to go out of her sight. Remembering Narad’s words, she knows that his life is now in hours and he will die with the arrival of the Time-Person, käla-purusha. Within, she is in great agony all the while. Yet, accomplished in austerities as she is, and reckoning the swift-approaching fatal moment, she remains calm. Satyavan, lustrous in his strength, collects a basketful of fruits with the help of Savitri. Then he starts cutting the firewood. He wants to complete the day’s task quickly and spend the rest of the time with his beloved. But, due to overwork, he suddenly feels exhausted and begins perspiring profusely. He suffers from a severe headache, a pain in the limbs and an intense burning sensation in the heart. He lies down. Savitri immediately goes closer to him and takes his head in her lap. She knows that the foretold moment has arrived and that the käla-purusha will soon appear. Presently, Savitri sees a bright Person standing in front of her. He is luminous, is beautiful in his red attire, and is wearing a splendid crown over his head; it seems to her that the Sun-God himself has come there. His body though dark is lustrous in hue and through his red eyes he is looking steadily at Satyavan. He is carrying a noose in his hand which inspires great dread. On seeing him, Savitri lays aside her husband’s head and stands up with folded hands. Her heart is trembling but she asks that Person who he is and why he has come. That Person introduces himself as Yama and avers that he could converse with Savitri because she is a devout and chaste woman, a practitioner of difficult austerities. Yama praises the soul of Satyavan; but now as his life here is over he has to take it away with him, the soul that is no bigger than a thumb, angushthamätrah purusham. He throws the noose around it, pulls it out and starts moving towards the South. Satyavan’s lifeless corpse appears very dull and frightful. Savitri, afflicted with agony, follows Yama. A little later Yama looks back and notices Savitri following him. He advises her to return, as she has paid the debt to her husband by accompanying him over the permitted distance. He further reminds her that she has to attend to the funeral rites of the deceased. Savitri does not accept Yama’s advice. She has walked with the God seven steps and therefore a friendly relationship is established between the two. She tells him so and argues extensively with him on fundamental issues, he being the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-God, knower and upholder of the Law of Truth obtaining in the mortal creation. You are the mighty son of Vivasvan and that is why the learned call you Vaivasvat; to all creatures you are fair and you uphold the dharma. For that reason you are, O Lord, also known as Dharmaraj. (shloka 5:41) Her speech is perfect, observing the rules of grammar and syntax, complete in knowledge of etymology, prosodically well-structured; also her reasoning is flawless and logically impeccable. She tells him that her own place lies near her husband and she will not go back without him, firmly fixed as she is in the dharma. By the merit of austerity, devotion to the preceptor, love for the husband, observance of the sacred vows, and by the grace of Yama himself there is nothing, she tells him, which cannot be accomplished by a woman. Further, she asserts that holy people always abide in virtuous conduct, and never have they sorrow, nor are they any time afflicted. Greatly rewarding is indeed the company of such pious ones and therefore one should be ever close to them. In the fellowship of the saints and sages, without a doubt, all fear disappears. For this reason, more than himself does a man trust holy persons, and so does he give more of his love and respect to them. Then, in a tremendous moment of mantric utterance, of revelation, she discloses that ... it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun; by askesis the saints uphold the earth; in the saints all the three divisions of Time find their refuge; noble persons in the midst of the saints have never any grief. (shloka 5:48) The illustrious and the excellent help each other in the conduct of the dharma and do not do hurt to others. Therefore they prove to be the protectors of the entire world. Immensely pleased with the sublimity of these utterances Yama grants her boon after boon. Indeed, the more she speaks the well-adorned and well-cherished lofty things of the dharma, acceptable always in the conduct of life in every circumstance, to the same extent his admiration for her grows. By the first two boons she desires eyesight for her blind father-in-law and his lost kingdom; in the third boon she asks for a hundred sons for her father Aswapati, true and heroic brothers to her. By the fourth boon she would have got a hundred sons for herself, but she argues that this boon is of a different kind than the other three. It cannot be fulfilled without proper matrimony. She therefore reiterates her request for the life of Satyavan. Without him, she tells Yama, she herself would be dead; she would abstain from any pleasure, even that of entering heaven. Without Satyavan the boon would thus lie waste. Then, in a kind of dialectics, she points out the strange anomaly in Yama’s words and actions: You have given me the boon of a hundred sons and you yourself are taking my husband away; for that reason I again ask the boon of life for Satyavan, by which your words shall come true. (shloka 5:54) Yama, gladdened by Savitri’s Words of Dharma, says ‘Let it be so,’ and releases the noose from around the soul of the dead. He tells her that Satyavan is now in good health and fit to return with her to the earth. Further, he grants a life of four hundred years for him to live with her and, for the welfare of the world, to perform the holy Yajnas. Then Yama, blessing Savitri and sending her back with the soul of Satyavan, returns to his own Abode deep in the South. [Note 8] Also, Savitri returns to the earth with the soul of Satyavan. After the departure of Yama, getting her husband back, as Vyasa puts it, Savitri comes to the place where his dead body has been lying. She again takes his head in her lap. By now Satyavan regains consciousness and looks affectionately at Savitri; he begins talking to her like one who has returned from a long journey. He feels that he is waking from some deep sleep; but then he also carries a faint recollection of the dark-hued and terrifying figure who has dragged him to some dreadful and unknown world. He asks Savitri whether she knows anything about him. She tells him that it was the great God Yama himself, the Ordainer of the Creatures, who had come there; she, however, quickly adds that it is now all over and that he has left the place. Satyavan wants to know more about the entire episode; but Savitri postpones it by saying that she will narrate it the next day, pointing out that a thick darkness is fast enveloping them in the forest. Satyavan looks around and realises that he has not returned to the hermitage yet. He is quite worried, lest his old and helpless parents get disturbed, not seeing him back in spite of the growing night. But Savitri is somewhat hesitant. She sees that Satyavan is still weak and doubts whether he is in a condition to walk the long distance back to the hermitage. Getting lost in the darkness can also be risky. Besides, she herself is somewhat scared and tells Satyavan to that effect: Those cruel-voiced prowlers of the night are moving freely now; and listen to the sound in the fallen leaves as the wild beasts go about in the forest. This fearsome howling of the she-jackals in the south, and in the west, is causing my mind and my heart to tremble greatly. (shlokas 5:75-76) But Satyavan insists on returning forthwith. He is unable to bear any longer the separation from his loving parents. He tells Savitri that his blind father and the old mother must be frantically looking for them, going from hermitage to hermitage, inquiring about him and about his welfare. He does not wish to delay their going back any further. Realising how true her husband is as a follower of the dharma, Savitri agrees to return at once. She gets up and knots her loose hair; then, holding both the hands of her husband, she helps him to stand. Then encircling his waist with her right arm, his left on her left shoulder, they start walking slowly. Satyavan chides her that she is a timid woman and assures her that he is quite familiar with all the paths in the forest and can tell the correct one simply by looking at the stars. He points out to her that they are actually on the same path they had taken in the morning while coming to the forest. Indicating that at the bifurcation near the group of paläsha-trees she should take the path leading to the north, he prompts her to quicken the pace that they may reach home as early as possible. In the meanwhile Dyumatsena receives his eyesight. But he is very much disturbed, since Satyavan has not yet returned home. His mind begins wandering wildly, thinking of ominous and untoward happenings. A great fear grips him. The worried parents go from cottage to cottage inquiring about their son and daughter-in-law. They are concerned to such an extent that they rave almost in madness. Seeing their distressed plight, tormented as they are by evil suggestions, the sages of the forest gather around them and console them. Suvarchasa, ever the speaker of the truth, assures them that as Savitri is a woman of exceptionally noble and virtuous qualities, and is fixed in dharma, and has made great progress in her tapasya, nothing injurious can happen to Satyavan. Bharadwaja also expresses the same conviction and holds that Satyavan is hale and living. Gautama asserts that he has studied all the six branches of the Vedas, accumulated great might of askesis, observed strict celibacy since his early age, and pleased his preceptors and the Fire-God well; by that power of austerity and by the concentration of his will, he contends, he knows all the movements of others. Stating so, he affirms that Satyavan is alive. Gautama’s disciple vouches that never a word uttered by his Guru has turned out to be untrue or wrong; therefore he feels confident that Satyavan must be living. Dalbhya points out that Dyumatsena’s getting his eyesight back in such an unexpected way augurs auspicious happenings; he also says that the way Savitri observed the very difficult three-night vow, and the fact that she accompanied her husband to the forest without breaking the long fast, means complete safety for Satyavan. Apastambha sees in the tranquil benign surrounding, and in the manner and movement of the dumb animals and birds, a secret presence of harmony, indicating that there is nothing which should really perturb them. He too is sure that Satyavan is alive. Dhaumya proclaims that Satyavan has the marks of a long life and hence he must be living. This way the great Rishis assuage the fears of the worried parents. Then, not too long afterwards, Satyavan and Savitri arrive at the hermitage, immensely happy. There is great jubilation amongst all present. Indeed, in the union of the father and the son, in the blind king’s receiving his sight, in Savitri they see agreeable portents of the future. Kindling a bright fire they all sit around it and throw a volley of questions at Satyavan. They wish to know why Savitri and he are late in returning home when the night has grown dark in the jungles. Quite understandably, they want to know everything in detail to their satisfaction. But Satyavan simply tells them that, while collecting the firewood, he suffered a severe headache and had suddenly become unconscious, without awareness of anything around. For the delay there is no other reason, he informs them. But Gautama is not quite convinced. Moreover, Dyumatsena’s regaining his eyesight so unexpectedly still remains a mystery. He therefore turns towards Savitri and expresses his eagerness to know the entire secret from her. He tells her that she alone can unravel it. O Savitri, I am eager to hear of it from you; you know, O Savitri, all that is far and near, that belongs to the past and to the future; you understand it, one like Goddess Savitri herself as you are, with her effulgence. Surely, you have the knowledge of its cause and its purpose, and therefore speak the truth of it; if there is nothing in it to hide from us, tell us all of it. (shlokas 6: 34-35) Savitri narrates everything in detail, right from the beginning, how Narad foretold the impending doom of Satyavan’s death, and the reason for her undertaking the three-night vow, and of accompanying her husband to the forest on that particular day. She tells them that at the noon hour Yama entered the forest to snatch the soul of Satyavan. As he was carrying it away with him, she too followed him and offered him high eulogies with the utterances of Truth. The mighty God, the Upholder of the Dharma, was immensely pleased, and had become happy with her beyond bound. She then narrates how she received the five boons and how Satyavan regained consciousness. The Rishis bless the young devout woman and in happiness depart to their cottages, hailing her as the Saviour of the House: The House of the King was plunging more and more into darkness, assailed by misfortunes; but you of noble birth and a virtuous wife, sweet and amiable in nature, and an observer of the vows, one given to meritorious conduct, redeemed the family from doom. (shloka 6:43) But the next day they all, rich in austerities, completing the morning fire-rituals, gather once again around Dyumatsena. They speak of the extreme good fortune, mahäbhägyam, of Savitri, and are not contented even though they repeatedly narrate it. While in wonderment they are talking thus, a group of citizens of the Shalwa kingdom unexpectedly arrive at the hermitage. Extending their greetings to Dyumatsena, they inform him that his enemy has been killed by his own minister. They also add that in the capital everyone has resolved that Dyumatsena should occupy the throne again, as he is its worthy and rightful heir. Thus, imploring him to return, they tell him that the army with all its four divisions is ready at his command. They are also happily surprised to see Dyumatsena with his eyesight regained. Dyumatsena worships the Rishis reverentially and, receiving their blessings, departs for the capital. Shaibya along with Savitri rides a richly decorated gold-panelled car and, escorted by the army, leaves the hermitage. At the capital the priests sprinkle the holy water and perform Dyumatsena’s coronation ceremony. Satyavan is also made the Crown-Prince. In the course of time all the boons of Yama given to Savitri get fulfilled. [Note 9] The Tale of Satyavan and Savitri -- Sri Aurobindo The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal plane; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life. Adaptations made by Sri Aurobindo -- Notes Note 1 (p. 5) In Vyasa’s Savitri the description of Aswapati’s entire tapasya and his getting the boon are covered in just about twenty shlokas. The king has no son and in order to get a child he sets himself upon the dharmic path of sacrificial worship, Yajna. The traditional issue is the continuation of the ancestral line for the welfare and maintenance of the order of the worlds, the order which is maintained by making to the gods appropriate offerings accompanied by the hymns of solicitation and praise. The gods grow by these offerings and in return give gifts to the devotees. The help of the gods is always for promoting Righteousness. If the society has a certain foundation based on it, then it is obligatory for the righteous to affirm it in everyday conduct and in every respect. One aspect of it is to see that in all its glory it is perpetuated from generation to generation. The Law of the Right, ritam, was the ancient Vedic ideal that prevailed in the dynamic Age of the Truth, Satya Yuga, and of it Aswapati was one ardent and devout votary. But then Aswapati’s tapasya was not just a part of the fulfilment of this social obligation of his. We must also look into the plausibility that the intention behind the narration was to present a deeper and truer issue through the medium of a story. It appears that, in this human tale, Vyasa quite meant it to be so. In spirituo-metaphysical terms it is the possibility of a divine creation arising out of the inconscience, out of the nonmanifest that has become the unmanifest. If by the Force of Concentration, Tapas-Shakti, the Supreme created the Void and became inconscient, did the Yoga of Self-Sacrifice, triumphantly chanted in the Veda as the Holocaust of the Supreme, then by another Force of Action he has to emerge out of this state, out of utter forgetfulness, and establish the unfailing and inexhaustible delight of existence everywhere. For this to happen, the Supreme has to do Yoga in the earth-consciousness itself. And this has to happen in the face of his own stubbornness; for he himself has become the Inconscient. One visible sign of this stubbornness of the inconscient Supreme is the presence of Death: the manifesting Supreme surprisingly encounters the obstacle of the antagonist Supreme as Death. In that sense the tale of Savitri also becomes the Epic of the Divine Creation. In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Aswapati comes to the world of birth and does the Yoga of the Supreme. This is necessary in order to tackle, through birth, the divine issue present in this world of birth, in the mortal creation, mrityuloka. He realises that the issue can be handled victoriously only if the divine Shakti would condescend to come down upon the earth and deal with the otherwise obstinate and intractable problem of mortality, presented in the Figure of Death. She agrees. Savitri comes down here as an incarnate force and espouses the cause of the evolutionary travail’s death-bound life in the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme himself. But this descending ocean of dynamic consciousness has to be upborne, lest it drown the very Void out of which it is intended to emerge, with the awareness of the multiple splendour, a manifestation with the growing richness of the being of delight. Aswapati’s tapasya is for this purpose, to prepare a safe base for the fiery power’s transforming action. The needed Yogic support for her arrival and for her action is provided by it. Aswapati climbs to the summit of this creation and meets her; he prays to her to take human birth and accomplish the glorious miracle. In response to it she comes down as his own daughter. Thus Aswapati’s eighteen-year tapasya presented in Vyasa’s brief narrative, already full of spiritual glow, becomes in Sri Aurobindo a glorious and laurel-crowned Odyssey of mounting the mighty steep World-Stair that rises from Matter’s inconscient base to the splendours of the superconscient Spirit. He goes yet beyond, crossing the triple Glory. Even as he approaches the Worlds of the Unknowable, the creative-executive power of the Supreme answers him and grants him the exceptional boon that one shall come and change everything. All shall be done for which this mortal world was created --he is told. In the legend of Savitri the issue, albeit briefly and indicatively stated, is yet well focused in the inescapable death of Savitri’s lover and husband Satyavan. This death indeed becomes a glorious occasion for the incarnate Power’s action to deal with the universal Adversary standing in the way of the intended divine manifestation. What was brief and suggestively succinct in Vyasa, given to us in just twenty swift shlokas, Sri Aurobindo elaborated in his epic to the great length of about ten-thousand lines. But it is not wholly a poetic or thematic elaboration or expansion to this disproportionate size, merely for the sake of self-blissful indulgence. The existence of the World-Stair is not entirely new to the Yogic experience. But Aswapati’s exploration of these worlds, his moving through them, putting upon their breast his footsteps is an occult action and has an occult meaning and purpose. It is not just the journey of an indifferent passerby, he leaves behind in them his dynamic and luminous Yogic presence itself. It is the presence of the Avatar left behind in those worlds which is going to prove beneficent to this world of our mortality. It is by this presence that these countless worlds are to participate gloriously in the process of the new creation for which Savitri is about to begin her work. Perhaps it was too early for the tradition to realise this, but it seems that it certainly had a distant intuition of it. Note 2 (p. 6) Sri Aurobindo describes the event in a somewhat different manner, with Aswapati as a Yogi in communion with the spiritual planes and forces that constantly exert their influence upon us, which govern and mould all our movements and actions. He has a sure intuition that a greater nobler destiny lies in wait for us though at present we strive only for little gains, though we are unable to receive the celestial gifts, hold them when they are given to us in God’s plenty. But Aswapati hears a heavenly voice and sees in the person of Savitri a bright promise, “a shining answer from the gods” to all these thousand questions that baffle and torment life and belittle it. He tells her to proceed forthwith and put her “conquering foot on Chance and Time”. He has a feeling that the heavens guard her soul for some mighty work and that her fate and her work are kept somewhere afar which she must discover and attend to. She is bidden to ascend from Nature and meet a greater God, that together they shall tackle the issue of this mortal creation. The great commanding word from her Yogi-father is received by Savitri and she at once awakes to the mission of her spirit and her soul. Deep in her consciousness it sinks and begins to work with the full power and certainty of the mantric utterance itself. Note 3 (p. 6) At this point Sri Aurobindo brings out explicitly, and with sweet lyrical enthusiasm and enchantment, the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri in the Shalwa woods, of which in Vyasa no hint whatsoever is available. They meet, they fall in love with each other, they recognise the purpose of their union and the task they have together to attend to. In the acceptable tradition of the Gandharva marriage, and with Nature and the gods as its witnesses, they get indissolubly united. All this is absent in the upäkhyäna. But then what is absent in the Legend and Symbol is the traditional ritualistic marriage which is solemnised later, in spite of Narad’s frightful prophecy. Not on socio-religious or occult-dharmic aspect but on spiritual content, with its meaning and its value, is the important thrust put in the latter. Perhaps this emphasis, rather than the departure from the established norm and convention, is quite understandable. The marriage itself is an exceptional marriage, marriage of two exceptional incarnate beings. Note 4 (p. 6) Vyasa does not mention if the queen, Savitri’s mother Malawi, was also present during the meeting, although it is presumed that she was there. Even if actually present, she did not participate in the discussion. This seems to be the classical ideal in which the woman left all matters of deliberation and decision to her husband and accepted his word as final in every respect. She always remained in the background with her force of dynamism supporting her husband from behind. On the other hand, in Sri Aurobindo’s presentation the queen, though full of human frailty, plays a crucial role in the discussion and raises subtle points of fate and free will in human transactions. Note 5 (p. 7) In Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri we see Narad asserting the divine will behind this marriage and, though apparently tragic, makes it firm. There is no doubt that it was for this purpose that he had undertaken the long and arduous journey from his home in Paradise to Aswapati’s palace at Madra on the banks of the Alacananda, a difficult process by which the spiritual becomes the earthly substantial. Narad is one of those very few who can move freely in all the worlds and can also take a human form, of flesh and blood. He knows the occult secret by which this can be done and as an aspect of the divine working, and in the imperative of its purpose he participates whenever such crucial events are about to occur. Sri Aurobindo’s Narad has a mission to accomplish, -- to deliver the Word of Fate. It is the Word which is going to determine the entire course of the earthly future. On the other hand the Mahabharata story looks more like a homely narrative. In it Narad is taken as a household figure intimate to the inmates, with their concern in his heart. His present visit to Aswapati is therefore just a part of that extreme goodwill of his for them. Note 6 (p. 8) In general we may say that the mention of trirätra vrata in Vyasa has been fully utilised by Sri Aurobindo in his epic to describe the Shakti Yoga of Savitri, a description which runs to more than three thousand lines. In the entire Occult-Yogic literature this is undoubtedly unique, the most definite disclosure, indeed a revelation and an application accompanying its practice. We have here the true meaning and purport of the Tantrik sadhana, Shakti Upasana, as a means for the effective transformation of Nature from her inconscient mode of working in the dumb inconscient body into a luminous dynamism of her consciousness-force. It is only when this is carried out in the bodily existence that there is a possibility of conquering death and attaining earthly immortality in the light and splendour of the triple Divine. That would be the genuine and actual resolution of the issue of this mortal world, this mrityuloka. It is on that path Savitri has now set herself, so that this difficult missioned task be done. The cause of her husband’s death in the story is the immediate occasion for doing the Yoga of Transformation. Certainly this aspect of earthly immortality is not present in the tradition, nowhere has it been explicitly taken as a part of the spiritual sadhana. From death to immortality, mrityormamratm gamay, has all along been the ancient prayer. It is again in that context that we see in the Upakhyana of the Mahabharata Yama granting wonderful boons to Savitri; but then Yama as immortal Death still remains there, yet to carry on the work of upholding the worlds. We cannot therefore say that the trirätra vrata has the power of the Shakti Yoga to bring about a totally radical change in Nature, particularly in the stubborn inconscient aspect of Nature, to altogether displace death from her. And yet the benign figure of Yama has to find its full meaning and appurtenant significance in this mortal creation. The Vedic-Tantrik sadhana did not explore the possibilities of the Shakti Yoga in this transformative endeavour though it may have had an inkling of it. The fact that it was a three-night vow makes it symbolically weighty and consequential, the three nights of the physical, vital and mental ignorance that constitutes our existence. But the full implication of it, both Yogically and Occult-operationally, perhaps remained unexplored. Perhaps for good reasons too. Note 7 (p. 8) On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, Savitri gets ready well before the sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes ritual offerings to the gods. In Sri Aurobindo Savitri worships goddess Durga on the fated day before setting out to the forest with Satyavan. The image of the goddess was carved by him on a stone. In the Upakhyana Satyavan is presented as a painter of the horses whereas Savitri makes him a sculptor. But, more importantly, Durga is the Protectress of the Worlds and worshipping her is praying and asking for her protection in the most dire moment of life, the moment confronting death itself. Arjuna at the suggestion of Krishna had so worshipped her at the very beginning of the Mahabharata war. That was however for winning a victory over the enemy and not to conquer death. Therefore if Savitri is going to worship Durga, that goddess must be more powerful than Yama in order to prevail over him. She is the transcendental Shakti of Savitri herself and hence there is the inevitability of the result in her favour in the deep battle of life that is soon going to be waged against death. That such a living goddess was present in the rock sculpted by Satyavan adds yet another transcendental dimension to the story in the hands of Sri Aurobindo. Note 8 (p. 10) The parts dealing with the colloquy between Yama and Savitri are the most complex, most profound and occult in Sri Aurobindo’s epic. In it Yama, rather Death, the embodied Nothingness, is standing as a stubborn antagonist against God’s work in this mortal creation and has no mercy to show to anyone or to anything. He is learned, he is powerful, he is relentless and inexorable, and all that he knows is his Law. He sees things and beings as a “pitiful dream” and looks at the delight of Nature with utter disdain. In fact, he is the very incarnation of Inconscience. He derives all his power from the dark Abyss and he cannot accept any trespassing of his edict. Savitri’s following him and challenging him to claim the soul of Satyavan is an affront made by her to his sovereignty and he cannot brook it in the least manner. She must pay a heavy price for this transgression. The figure that finally stands in front of her is a huge terrifying mask, a “grandiose Darkness of the Infinite”. He has embodied in his shadow-self the entire might of God’s Nothing and, in the present process of evolution, defeating him is defeating that Nothing itself. Therefore he is standing there in all his formidable strength. But the great incarnate Goddess in the form of Savitri throws aside the veil and the Deity dwelling in her secret depths readies herself for the decisive assault. A mighty transformation comes upon the extraordinary Yogini and the Kundalini-force descends from above into her entire being. The Tantrik World-Yoga of the Divine, the Shakti Yoga of the Supreme, finds its culmination in this most decisive, and marvellous, action of the great incarnate Goddess. But then Yama in the role of Death yet resists. Finally, however, to her mastering Word he succumbs and gets dispossessed of his paled and defeated will. He takes refuge in the “retreating Night” unable as he is to withstand the lustre of the divine Immortal. But then he reappears as the Tempter of the Worlds and offers easy boons to Savitri. She at once sees the trap and does not fall into it, to live with Satyavan in the heavens of the deathless gods. Her concern is for the soul of man, Satyavan’s soul to do God’s work in the world of the mortals. Earth is the chosen place and it is this earth which in the splendour of the triple divinity must be fulfilled. Savitri is firm-willed and adheres to the choice of her soul and her spirit. It is then that in the benignity of her choice she receives the supreme gift from the Supreme, a gift to celebrate the arrival of the new creation with the soul of Satyavan at its forefront and as its initiator. Even the bright illusion that could have fallen over her sight and distracted her from her single purpose has now been dispelled and there is only the light of the everlasting day. The work of the incarnation has been accomplished and now things will unfold in the process of endless Time. Can we say that both these aspects, the aspect of the embodied Nothingness and the aspect of the bright Tempter, are present in Yama of the tradition, because Yama given to us by the tradition is unmistakably at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious? He inspires fear in us and also he is the giver of happy boons to us. We may therefore clearly see both these figures behind him, though perhaps not in their detailed operational bearing and sense. Even if we are to take it that way, it has never been made explicit and functionally meaningful in the ancient writings. It is very likely that they had the intuition of it, that behind this twofold Yama there is only one single Supreme, or rather it is the Supreme who himself is present in these two poises. But the point is not about the intuition of it. The Rishis of yore might have had that knowledge and that definite perception which had remained unrecorded in the annals of spirituality. We may even give them the benefit of the doubt that it was not to be inopportunely disclosed, very explicitly stated. Or else, perhaps more appropriately, the completeness of the experience was still very much wanting for it to have become in the evolutionary process operationally decisive. But for us what is necessary is to recognise the fact that Savitri’s entry into the very world of dense ignorance and death is an absolutely unique and unprecedented event. It was as if Satyavan’s death became a pretext for it to happen. With her Occult-Yogic might Savitri steps into the inconscient regions and establishes in them the expressive power of the supreme Word, the Word by which things take place and get luminously fixed. If Aswapati’s tapasya led him through the different worlds in which he left his presence behind, Savitri’s Battle in the field of Darkness is to eliminate the elemental forces from which arise the crookedness and the evil in the evolutionary manifestation. Therefore the Yama-Savitri debate is not a mere verbal duel, a logomachy, a metaphysical engagement, a conjuration of one-up-manship. Great powers are released even as they speak, the powers of opposition and negation and the powers of advancement and affirmation. Each utterance lets loose its charge with occult mights clashing against formidable occult mights. It is in their wake that things have to transpire, events founded in the future and not in the obscurity of the past to get organised and configured so that the new order of the world is born. Ultimately the Gnostic Word is established in those very suffocating and terrifying nether depths where lived uncompromising death and suffering and evil. Great is Truth and it does indeed prevail. Savitri has made it greater by making it prevail even in the absolute darkness of Inconscience. What was promised long ago now gets unconditionally fulfilled. Once for all the issue of the mortal creation is resolved and the path of ever-widening and everlasting progress opened out. Note 9 (p. 13) Sri Aurobindo’s epilogue does not have these details. Did he intentionally drop them, considering them as irrelevant to the main Yogic-spiritual message the epic is to give? Or did he sort of hurriedly round off the story keeping in regard the view that, after receiving the supreme Boon, there is really nothing more that need be wished or willed, need be said? After completing the final revision of the Book of Fate, in the middle of November 1950, just three weeks before his passing away, Sri Aurobindo had asked if something else was still remaining to be taken up for revision. When told that the Book of Death and the Epilogue were still to be attended to, he remarked: “Oh, that? We shall see about that later on.” That “later on” was never to be. Would Sri Aurobindo have incorporated in the Epilogue the gathering of the wise and the elders around Satyavan and Savitri when they returned late in the evening from the forest, recreated with his poetic genius the ancient scene of the hermitage and the dwellers gathering at the moment of concern and at the moment of jubilation? Possibly the sages and the Rishis would have told us about the nature of the new creation and about the divine life received as a boon by Savitri from the Supreme, the “life that has opened with divinity”. Similarly, the Book of Death, which presently has only Canto Three, entitled Death in the Forest, might have been taken up by him later, perhaps to indicate the difficulty of the cellular transformation, -- the difficulty of the inconscient will in the body to change and accept the Truth-Will in it. But these are possibilities about which nobody can say anything and it would be quite improper to even hazard a guess. Besides, it is likely that these are futuristic matters and it would be best to leave the future to determine its own course of progress and action when the future is going to be fully governed by the future and not by dead compulsions and constraints of the past. The story of the mortal world, mrityuloka, is an endless saga, and a glorious saga full of happy surprises, and it must be allowed to unfold in its own creatively glorious way, the Way of the Truth. Sri Aurobindo has set it into motion and the auspices of eternity’s Time will take it over to make dynamic divinity its executive in the endless delight of existence.
