Savitri

X

      ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF

THE LEGEND

The Mahabharata version has, no doubt, provoked divers allegorical interpretations. There is the simple, obvious, and in its own way satisfactory view that it is an allegory of Love triumphant over Death. A more ingenious view has been offered by Narayan Aiyangar:

To say that there was but a swoon and that the fancies of a

zealous and imaginative wife were portrayed as real truths, would

be doing but poor justice to the ancient Vedantic poet of the

Purana. I would take Satyavan, meaning 'he who has Satyam',

one of the well known names of Brahman, to be the enlightened

soul of a knower. He at first plays with the horses, the senses; but

finding out by experience that the pleasures they give are insipid

and unreal, he converts them into lifeless pictures. His father is

probably the personification of Kama, Desire, having at first for

his fulfilment the dyumat, shining, sena, troop, of the phenomenal

forms or objects of the selfish world. In their pursuit he is at last

worsted by stronger selfish men and finds himself to be really

poor and blind, not having yet realised the all loving Self...So

in the wilderness of samsara, he repents and cries: When will I

see Light?...In this state he has his own enlightened self as the

son of support. That son is self-sacrifice, as he devotes his life to

support by hard manual labour his poor parents. So, the sacred

Gayatri alias Savitri, the personification of Brahma-vidya, the

heroine of disinterested love, elects him as the only fit husband

for her. Her father Aswapati, the lord of horses, may be taken

to signify one who has subdued the senses...Wedded to her,

Satyavan lays down his life in the service of his distressed parents

and thus completes his self-sacrifice.⁵⁵

This brings fulfilment to Dyumatsena, for he gets his eyesight back and can see his real son, his atman, raised by Yama-Dharma-Raja to immortality. The same writer has also given a phenomenal interpretation of the legend: Satyavan is the moon wedded to Rohini, daughter of the Sun or Savitar; the star helps the moon through his winter and rough samsāric weather; on the new moon day, Satyavan (the moon) dies on the lap of Savitri (Rohini), "not far from Yama, the regent of the asterism Bharani"; and Satyavan's resurrection is merely "the elevated state of the moon as the regent of Mrigasirsas, so near the Rohini."⁵⁶

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           Such interpretations are more fanciful than otherwise. The old legend is very clear on two points: Satyavan first dies, and there is then—after an interval—a resurrection. Yama being also Dharma feels compelled by the impact of Savitri's personality to grant a renewal of Satyavan's life. The gods are gods, after all, and they can amend inexorable fate itself. And men and women, too, could rise to—or be accorded—a divine status: Pururavas exceeded the human bounds, Rishi Vishvamitra's austerities enabled him to work wonders, including the creation of a new heaven, and Savitri was also able to effect a "change of heart" in Yama and obtain her heart's desire. The gods and men do verily belong to one world, and they do come together sometimes, and out of their partnership great things do happen. Such was the faith of the ancients, and it must have been sustained by their own unique experiences. Even a modern writer like Henry Miller asserts:

I say the whole world, fanning out in every direction from this

spot, was once alive in a way that no man ever dreamed of. I say

there were gods who roamed everywhere, men like us in form

and substance, but free, electrically free.⁵⁷

There is thus no need to impose on the original legendary story of Savitri and Satyavan any elaborate or ingenious interpretation. The death and the resurrection are both meant to be accepted unquestioningly. The esoteric meaning, which in no way cancels the validity of the human story, is equally clear, since the very names of characters carry, to people familiar with the Veda, symbolic meanings impossible to miss. The bardic story is explicit that Satyavan was so named because both his parents were given to speaking the truth; Savitri was so named because she was the gift of the Goddess Savitri. Satyavan had another name too, Chitrasva, he who has beautiful horses, because as a child he apparently loved horses and made clay-horses and also drew pictures of horses. Satyavan, the possessor of the higher Truth, has "espoused" and is in a way held by the "lower creative power which works through the limited mind and body"; this is 'bondage', and the wages of such bondage is death. But Satyavan is himself espoused by Savitri, Surya Savitri the Creator, and he is ultimately "delivered from this subjection by the force of the divine or illumined Mind", a power that can break the bars of the cage, purify what is impure, raise what is low, divinise what is human.

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