Savitri

II

'The Growth of the Flame'

      Vyasa is succinctness itself when he records in the Mahabharata: "And, in course of time, the girl (Savitri) attained maidenhood". Just that. But Sri Aurobindo is nothing if not elaborate, richly yet relevantly elaborate. The child grows into the girl, and the girl becomes a young woman. A common enough occurrence though always compact of wonder and romance; how much more so when the girl is Savitri!

      Savitri is a king's daughter. Her father Aswapati rules over the land of Madra, as rich and variegated in its landscape as in its spiritual 'inscape', the home of beauty and grace, of reverie and trance. An ideal background for the fostering of the "incarnate Flame" that is Savitri:

      Over her watched millennial influences

      And the deep godheads of a grandiose past

      Looked on her and saw the future's godheads come

      As if this magnet drew their powers unseen.¹⁶⁵

      The more immediate influences, however, are the usual educative and human forces that help to foster the growth of a child in a properly adjusted society. Beauty in art and Nature, "the harmony of a rich culture's tones", the discipline of ethics and philosophy, the climb of the mind to eagle heights, the leaps of thought "crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond", all play their part in Savitri's mental and spiritual evolution. Sculpture and painting, music and architecture, dance and poetry, the many arts and crafts, these are pressed into service too, and Savitri masters them, and is moulded by them. Nor are the intellectual disciplines and knowledges ignored—astronomy, mathematics and physics that make a "theorized diagram of mind and life". Yet Savitri thirsts for something vaster still, for the knowledge that exceeds the knowledges, for the "art and wisdom of the Gods". Something of this obscurely stirs within her;

      ...waiting as yet for form,

      It asked for objects around which to grow

      And natures strong to bear without recoil

      The splendour of her native royalty,...¹⁶⁶

She still needs the cause and field of action, the human media that can both receive and give and thus create "a transcendent action's sphere".

      It is but natural that growing Savitri should turn to human companionship and camaraderie—even love, perhaps, the love of universal sisterhood. She sees others as "her soul's reflections, complements, counterparts", which are bound to her own spirit "by ties divine". Cannot she clasp in one immense embrace the whole body of created things? But her friends and companions miss

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the main intent of her life or are put out by the fierce glare of her all consuming love:

      Only a few responded to her call:

      Still fewer felt the screened divinity...¹⁶⁷

 She is their leader more than a friend, she outpaces them, and when nearest to them she is yet "divine and far". Varied is the stream of humanity that passes her by—some are aloof and admire her, some approach her with desire and recoil in discomfiture, and some others still stand troubled and tantalised in the extreme,

      Inapt to meet divinity so close,

      Intolerant of a Force they could not house.¹⁶⁸

Although passing her days in this world and among these hearts, Savitri feels unengaged yet in the secret infinities of her heart and soul; none strikes a responsive chord within, and nowhere she finds "her partner of high tasks". Meantime the news of her rare beauty and power runs "murmuring on the lips of men/Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse".¹⁶⁹ But neither homage nor fame lessens her solitariness; like a goddess in a crowded temple, she is worshipped marvelously, but none dares to claim her; she must live amidst them awhile yet until "her hour of fate" projects before her, her God to claim and be claimed.

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