Savitri

  III

'The Call to the Quest'

      In the splendour of her radiant beauty, Savitri strikes her beholders as a being verily divine; and so men are content to worship, and are afraid to ask her hand in marriage. Such is the simple statement in the old legendary narrative. Vyasa adds further that king Aswapati, finding that there are no suitors for Savitri, becomes sad in consequence. He accordingly asks her to look for herself and choose a husband who may be worthy of her. This essential situation is retained by Sri Aurobindo, though he elaborates and embellishes it so as to fill the canvas of the vast symbol drama that is superimposed on the simple legendary one.

      While Savitri dwells "apart in herself" though circling humanity with her love and comprehending with, "her spirit's large and free delight...the ardent-hued magnificent lives of animal and bird and flower and tree",¹⁷⁰ a day dawns that is like other dawns, yet burdened with a special destiny; a trembling expectancy fills the air, a lyric coil cries "among the leaves"; and King Aswapati's awakened ear catches the accents of earth's "wordless hymn to the Ineffable" and the answering word that leaps from "some far sky of thought". The word of accusation and exhortation, heard so often before, is heard again. Why would man tread this dolorous way of ignorance and misery when the way of knowledge and happiness is there before him?

      O petty adventurers in an infinite world

      And prisoners of a dwarf humanity,

      How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind

      Around your little self and petty things? ¹⁷¹

The lesser tasks engage us, the greater remain unattempted, unachieved. Mortal mind obscures these greater tasks and the veils must needs be pierced and broken through. Earth is potentially the kin-soil of heaven, and deserves to be cultivated as such. Invisible immortal visitants flame past our doors, but we do not recognise them, nor align ourselves with them. The trapped divinity seeks release in vain. The race of seers, the sages and the poets, have exhorted us in vain. The great illusion has us still in thrall, and we wriggle helplessly, plan purposelessly, and fail.

      As the stern voice of admonition and compassion is stilled at last, there advances towards Aswapati, "like a shining answer from the gods", his darling daughter, Savitri. It is a preordained concatenation:

      There came the gift of a revealing hour:...

      A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;

      As in a golden vase's poignant line

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      They seemed to carry the rhythmic sob of bliss

      Of earth's mute adoration towards heaven

      Released in beauty's cry of living form

      Towards the perfection of eternal things.¹⁷²

It is his child still, he sees the familiar face and limbs, he meets the eyes lighted up with love, but he now sees them as the vessel of the immortal spirit, as Yasoda sees Krishna when he opens his mouth and reveals all the worlds to her. Savitri is no mere girl, but the "traveller of eternity"; she sojourns amidst ordinary humanity, yet is also "armed for the splendid hazard" of her life; but even she cannot abide alone any longer "missalled in aureate virginity". She shall now go out into the world and choose the Lord of her life:

      Depart where love and destiny call your charm.

      Venture through the deep world to find thy mate...

      The lyrist of thy soul's most intimate chords

      Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute...

      Ascend from Nature to divinity's heights;

      Face the high gods, crowned with felicity,

      Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.¹⁷³

      As Savitri receives the full impact of these words, it is as though the mantra, slowly sinking in the yogin ear, starts rhythmic strains and induces "an ecstasy and an immortal change"; a "greatness in her life" is sown, the seed of the great ecstasy and change that are to come. Savitri spends the day and night in a hushed fullness of anticipation, and when another day dawns, she has already left her father's roof, and the palace wakes "to its own emptiness".

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