On Savitri
THEME/S
The story of Savitri narrated by Rishi Markandeya to Yudhishthira appears as a minor episode or upākhyāna in seven cantos of the Book of the Forest in the Mahabharata (Pativrata Mahatmya, Chapters 293-299, Vana Parva, Gita Press, Gorakhpur). The immediate purpose of the narration seems to be the alleviation of grief of the eldest of the Pandavas, afflicted as he was by the sad helpless plight of his brothers and more so by the plight of their common wife Draupadi. This virtuous daughter of Drupada, the king of Panchala Desh, was bom in the purity of a sacrificial flame and was radiant and beautiful like a damsel who had come from the city of the gods. Warrior princes and heroes from far and near lands were attracted by her bewitching charm, but among the suitors who had come to claim her hand only Arjuna in his shining valour could win her. Noble as she was, she always remained chaste and faithful in her conduct; she was learned and intelligent, she observed the sacred vows, she respected the elders and the wise, and she was a lady of great determination. Fate had in many ways humiliated her in life, and its wretched ignominy she had to suffer almost without end; the cousins of the Pandavas were merely instruments in that cruel working. Even after the Eighteen-day War all her five sons, one each from her five husbands, were treacherously butchered by Aswatthama. But she, by her sacrifices for the righteous cause, was going to prove for the Pandavas a saviour and fortune-bringer. Issues far deeper than battles and kingdoms were involved in which human merits and misdemeanours were superficialities; in these Draupadi was a player who had accepted her lot with the strength of will that is bom of a flaming life-instinct. Eventually the overmastering agents of evil and falsehood were exterminated and the rule of fair law established, though at a very high price. If she had emerged from the Fire-Altar, as is said to be, it is in it that the Past had to be consumed, the old Karmas of ages and all the Samskaras put to flame. The Princess's sufferings were therefore poignantly characteristic of the great upheavals that shake up a society on the eve of a coming Era. In it a new Yuga, a new world-order was ushered in. Rishi Markandeya holds the same promise, perhaps even a more splendid promise, in the Savitri-example he prefers to give to
Yudhishthira. The Princess of Madra, King Aswapati's daughter, had suffered greatly for her husband's sake and had won noble satisfying boons, including the exceptional boon of Satyavan's life, from Yama the King-Father Lord himself. Occult-symbolically, the God became the sun-bright giver of immortality to the Soul of Man on the Earth.
The Rishi begins the narration with Aswapati's worship of Goddess Savitri for eighteen years. He is issueless and his concern is to beget children for the continuance of his ancestral line engaged in performance of the sacred dharma; hence he decides to undertake this long and arduous tapasya. Every day a hundred-thousand oblations he offers to Savitri even while observing the strictest ritual-vowsduring the entire period. The Goddess is immensely pleased by his devotion to her and approaches the Father-Creator Brahma to grant a son to him. But he is to get the gift of a radiant daughter and he is told not to have any uneasy feeling in accepting what has been sanctioned. When a baby-girl was bom, she was appropriately named Savitri, given to him as she was by the Goddess Savitri herself. In course of time she enters into youthful maidenhood but, because of her fiery splendour, no one approaches her and woos her to marry. The father suggests to the daughter, as was the custom in those days, to seek a husband of her own choice. Accompanied by the elderly counsellors of the royal court she sets out on the missioned task. Savitri travels to distant lands in her unknown search and visits proud capital cities on riverbanks, and holy shrines, and several penance-groves of the kingly sages. She offers her prayers to the deities in pilgrim-centers and gives away great charities to the learned and worthy ones as she moves in her quest from place to place. In the meanwhile sage Narad visits Aswapati and, as they are engaged in conversation, returns Savitri to the palace. She pays her respects to the elders and, on being asked by her father, discloses that in the forest of the Shalwa country she met Satyavan and it is in him that she had made her choice of a husband. But Narad, without a moment's pause, declares the choice of Savitri to be something accursed, and hence blameworthy. When solicited, the sage describes the wonderful qualities of Satyavan and also tells that the only blemish in him is that he is destined to die one year after the marriage. Aswapati suggests to his daughter to go on another quest, but she is firm in her resolve. She asserts that she has chosen him as her husband and that she would not choose again. Narad sees in it a fine luminous understanding and discernment, in conformity with the dharma, and recommends the marriage. In fact, he blesses it and wishes it to pass
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off without any ill-happening. Then Aswapati, following the age-old tradition, makes a formal proposal to Satyavan's father Dyumatsena and the wedding of Savitri and Satyavan is solemnised in the presence of the Rishis of the sacred Forest. One year is about to end and Savitri is greatly afflicted when only four days are left in the life of her husband. She decides to undertake an austere vow of standing for three days and three nights continuously at a given place, without taking food. On arrival of that fated day she worships the Fire-God and, after receiving the blessings from the elders, accompanies Satyavan to the wood where he has to go for his usual work. But, while engaged in cutting a tree-branch, he suddenly feels very tired and exhausted and begins to perspire profusely. Savitri takes him in her lap and reckons the coming of the moment foretold by Narad. Not too long thence, she sees standing there a bright God with blood-red eyes and with a noose in his hand. When Savitri asks as to who he is, he introduces himself to be Yama and tells her that, as Satyavan's life here is expended, he has come to take away his soul. He then pulls out the soul forcibly from his body and, carrying it with him, starts moving in the southerly direction. Savitri follows him determinedly and offers him high and truthful eulogies in the strength of eternal values. In the process she receives several boons from him, including finally the release of Satyavan from the noose of death. On their return to the earth, they realise that the forest has already grown dark in the evening and that they must make haste to go back to the hermitage where the elders must be waiting for them with all the anxiety in their heart. Actually, Dyumatsena is very much disturbed and almost becomes unconsolable. But then the Brahmins and Rishis of the holy Forest assuage his fears and help him recover his composure by giving him comforting assurances. In a short while Satyavan and Savitri arrive at the premises and there is great jubilation. Sage Gautama, asserting Savitri to be the effulgence of the Goddess herself, possessing the knowledge of all that happens in the divisions of space and time, and beyond, requests her to tell the secret of their coming late, when it had grown so dark in the night; he knows that something unusual, something supernatural, must have happened in the woods during the day. Savitri reveals to them the several details, beginning with the prophecy of Narad about the death of Satyavan on that particular day, the purpose of her accompanying him when he went for the work, Yama's arrival and taking away his soul, and his granting her five boons including a long life of four hundred years for Satyavan to live with her and their begetting a rich
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progeny. Markandeya concludes the narration by saying that in course of time all the boons got fulfilled. In a like manner, he assures Yudhishthira, Draupadi too will carry the Pandavas across the shore.
Such in brief is the structural outline of the Savitri-tale given to us by Vyasa, a short composition of three hundred shlokas, mostly in Anushtubha metre, a creation belonging to the poet's early period. Compared with his own narrative using the Nala-theme written "in the morning of his genius," it is a "maturer and nobler work, perfect and restrained in detail, with the glow of the same youth and grace over it." We already begin to see in it the Poet of the Mahabharata proper with his austere and unomamented features, the verses lifted up by a robust and unerring intellect and the substance carrying the quiet compact strength of his style and diction. Whatever is there is most often poetically functional, holding to the dictum of manner shaped and formed by matter. But very rarely is this taken note of while renarrating such a difficult author's work; even departures are made at times in textual details that give quite an un-Vyasian picture, almost falsifying what the creator meant to convey. This bane of the vernaculars is pretty frequently transferred to the English versions also. Severity of the classical Sanskrit language, further heightened by the "pale and marble Rishi's" mountain-poise, is conspicuous by its absence in these effusive renderings; these tend to forget, or ignore, that the packed density of Vyasa's thoughts is indeed the quintessential feature of his style and narrative. Bearing its full charge, the epic movement always courses with unhampered speed and momentum, reluctant to linger in purely lyrical descriptions. He alone, says Sri Aurobindo, could "paint the power of a woman's silent love rejecting everything which went beyond this... There has been only one who could have given us a Savitri." This tale has in it already the dimensions of a masterpiece, carrying the vision of a bright tapasvin who, though may appear seated far, is yet amidst us to impart the knowledge of the occult-mysterious. The seer-poet, with the impersonality of the Purusha, yet participates dynamically in the actions of the world, remaining "steadfast and unshaken by even the heaviest of storms." The calm and sober manner of the original has to enter into any rendering if we are really to get the delight of this detached poetry; its rasa is not in the thickness of the honey, but in the unconcerned matter-of-fact flow of felicity bearing some luminous sweetness in its current. Let us take a few
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examples to see in contrast the difference between the art of a supreme aesthete of non-emotional grandeur and the easy facile way of retelling the Savitri-tale by others.
The following version from the children's section of a daily has many merits and is worth presenting in full:
"Ashvapati means owner of horses. In the days when a man's wealth was measured by the number of horses, elephants and cattle he had, to be an Ashvapati meant to be rich. King Ashvapati was rich indeed. He was wise too. But he had no children. He and his wife practised penance and offered sacrifices in order to get a son. They meditated on Goddess Savitri.
The goddess was pleased with Ashvapati's devotion, but out of the sacrificial fire came not the son he had hoped for, but a lustrous girl child. Ashvapati named her Savitri. This girl was to be the redeemer of two households—her father's as well her father-in-law's.
When Savitri grew up, so great was her beauty, wisdom and accomplishment, that no man felt himself to be her equal. Satio one came to ask for her hand. Her father suggested that she could indicate her choice. 'Father, why don't you let me go on a long pilgrimage?' she asked. It was a discreet way of finding eligible men, and her father agreed.
Accompanied by a sober retinue, she travelled far and wide. Finally in a forest she saw a young man hewing wood. The lustre of his body was such that she knew he was not bom to that occupation. Enquiries revealed he was the son of a blind king whose enemies had driven him out of his kingdom with his wife and infant son. The grown-up prince Satyavan was the woodcutter Savitri saw.
She returned to her father and told him she had found the young man she wished to marry. At that time, sage Narada was present in the court. He was horrified at her choice. Ashvapati wondered if there were any shortcomings in the young man's character. 'No,' Narada assured him, 'he has all the virtues a young man should have.' What was the objection then? Narada revealed that Satyavan had only one year more to live. One can imagine Ashvapati's anxiety and confusion. Not only had his daughter chosen a man without wealth or power or prospects, but one without even the gift of long life. But Savitri's mind was made up. 'A woman gives her heart only once,' she declared.
The marriage took place. The royal princess went to live in the forest hut and looked after her husband and her parents-in-law with
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great devotion. Every one was pleased with her but no one realised the burden she carried in her heart. A couple of days before the appointed day of Satyavan's death she started observing a fast. On the fateful day, weak though she was, she sought permission to accompany her husband when he went to work.
In the afternoon Satyavan suddenly took ill and lay down with his head on her lap. Ominously the moments ticked away. Suddenly Savitri became aware of the presence of Yama. He whom nobody had ever seen was visible to her because of the power of her virtue. He politely told her that her husband's time was up and dragged his soul away. Savitri followed him through dense gloomy forests and refused to turn back though he repeatedly told her 'Child, go back. Your time has not come yet.'
Finally he offered her three boons but not the life of her husband. She asked for restored sight and restored kingdom for her father-in-law and heirs for her father. Yama agreed but she still did not turn back. Yama offered one last boon for herself as all her wishes had been for others, but not the life of her husband. She said she wished to see the happy and prosperous life of her sons. 'So be it,' said Yama unthinkingly. Savitri pointed out she could not have children without her husband. So Yama was tricked into restoring life to Satyavan.
Savitri's is a cherished name in India. Women observe fasts in her honour and pray for long life for their husbands. But as with all accomplished women in India, it is only her 'Pativrata' aspect that gets highlighted. This does not do justice to Savitri's many-sided personality.
She had the courage to be unconventional when she went out to seek her husband. She showed high spiritedness in opposing her father's will with her own. She showed fearlessness when she met Yama. She displayed generosity and large-heartedness in the boons she asked for. She gave so much to the household in which she had spent less than a year. She was the embodiment of all that men desire for themselves when they chant the Savitri or the Gayatri Mantra. She personified 'Dhi' or higher intelligence which in turn brings everything else—knowledge, material and transcendental, courage, fearlessness. All this Ashvapati's daughter had. After all, the element she came out of was fire."
The narration is not only simple and absorbing but is also pretty faithful, though the shades and emphases at times are unacceptable because of their extra-textual irrelevances; in it we immediately
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notice that the dharmic dignity is more of an ethical-religious kind than spiritual—an element of preaching has entered in, which does not permit the revelatory truth in its dynamics to emerge. In any case, this is a much better presentation than Kamala Subramanian's hurried assessment in her digested Mahabharata wherein she depicts Savitri as someone "who was able to outwit Yama the god of death by her wise talk and her devotion to her husband." Poor Yama! Nor does this make Savitri great. But why indeed ignore Savitri the tapasvini accomplished as she was in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānanyogaparāyaṇā, as the seer-poet tells us? People have made Savitri a social model. We may perhaps pardon Arthur Macdonell and John Dowson for this sin of theirs but not a good well-versed Indian. But first let us see how these Western authors give the Savitri-account in their brief introductions.
In A History of Sanskrit Literature MacDonell writes: "In the story of Savitri we have one of the finest of the many ideal female characters which the older epic-poetry of India has created. Savitri, daughter of Asvapati, king of Madra, chooses as her husband Satyavan, the handsome and noble son of a blind and exiled king, who dwells in a forest hermitage. Though warned by the sage Narada that the prince is fated to live but a single year, she persists in her choice, and after the wedding departs with her husband to his father's forest retreat. Here she lives happily till she begins to be tortured with anxiety on the approach of the fatal day. When it arrives, she follows her husband on his way to cut wood in the forest. After a time he lies down exhausted. Yama, the god of death, appears, and taking Satyavan's soul, departs. As Savitri persistently follows him, Yama grants her various boons, always excepting the life of her husband, but yielding at last to her importunities, he restores the soul to the lifeless body. Satyavan recovers, and lives happily for many years with his faithful Savitri." The entry under "Savitri" in Dowson's Hindu Mythology and Religion has the following relevant material: "Daughter of King Aswapati, and lover of Satyavan, whom she insisted on marrying, although she was warned by a seer that he had only one year to live. When the fatal day arrived, Satyavan went out to cut wood, and she followed him. There he fell, dying, to the earth, and she, as she supported him, saw a figure, who told her that he was Yama, king of the dead, and that he had come for her husband's spirit. Yama carried off the spirit towards the shades, but Savitri followed him. Her devotion pleased Yama, and he offered her any boon except the life of her husband. She extorted three such boons from Yama, but still
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she followed him, and he was finally constrained to restore her husband to life." If Savitri had claimed back from Yama Satyavan's spirit, it seems necessary to get back from these authors the spirit of Savitri in its multifold richness given to us by Vyasa. This is particularly important if we have to live in the splendour of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which is at once a legend and a symbol.
But it is unfortunate that some scholars, though knowing its dignity well, should have freely romanticised the tale while narrating it to audiences in the West. Let us read, for instance, a passage from one such lecture to see how amusing it can be: "...Savitri didn't find anyone she thought was worth her attention until she came to a forest. In the forest there were some huts, and in one of them was a King who was dispossessed of his kingdom on account of his enemies getting the upper hand. He lost his sight and became blind, and, dispossessed of his kingdom and driven out of his territory, he was living in the forest outside his kingdom. The King and the Queen were, so to say, living in exile and their son was looking after them. Savitri thought that this young man was really an ideal young man, so she decided in her mind to select him as her future companion. She came back from her travel to report to her father. And when she came back, Narada, the great divine sage, was sitting with the King and Queen. They were talking when Savitri came. When the King asked her about her choice, she declared her choice and said that Satyavan living in the forest was the person whom she had selected. The King thought that it was quite right because it was her choice. But he asked the divine sage Narada: 'Cast this horoscope and see the position of the constellations in their future life and see whether this is happy.' So Narada cast the horoscope and said, 'Yes, it is all right. But there is one catch: this young man will die after one year. He is going to die after one year.' ...Savitri insisted that she was going to stick to her decision and take the consequences. The result was that they were married, and after one year the God of Death came and Satyavan died. But Savitri pursued the God of Death to his home in the upper regions or in whichever regions the dead go. And she persuaded him to release the soul of Satyavan. Satyavan was revived and they went back home." This may be a good story but it is not Vyasa's story as present in the original Mahabharata. It seems that the lecturer did not use the Sanskrit text but went by some secondary source when he introduced the legend to his American audience. Similarly, let us hear a part of another such version of the Savitri-myth. Yama has taken away the soul of Satyavan. "Savitri pursues
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the god of death and entreats him to return her husband; but he is adamant. As she follows, they come to a zone where there is a large river which no human being can cross. But by the sheer force of her purity of character she crosses the river, confronts the god of death, and prevails upon him to return her husband." Surely, these are not the versions used by Sri Aurobindo for his magnum opus.
It is true that there are any number of editions of the Savitri-legend, recounted differently in different regions, with local nuances adding to the confusion of interpretations. Poets of lesser caliber down the ages have often allowed fancy to run loose. The result is not very famous. If in one part of the country the day of Satyavan's death is observed to be the no-moon night, in another it is the full-moon. These free-hand exercises are often casual and Prakritic without the elevating sublimity of the Sanskritic and make the tale a puerile and insipid document of decadent practices. But when we are chiefly concerned with Sri Aurobindo's Savitri the safest thing to do is at least to follow Vyasa's original text. It has the dignity of substance, dignity of style, dignity of delight—it has throughout a general overhead atmosphere. In it the idea-seeds of the spiritual perception and truth-knowledge are golden and bright. Even if the tale is to be taken as a kind of précis of universal metaphysics put figuratively in the language of a myth, it is also a sufficiently elaborate symbol carrying in its living and expressive details the power of occult workings of the transcendental in the mortal world. The flame-charge of the symbol is too esoteric, too sacred to be profanised. About it Sri Aurobindo writes: "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 many 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 bom to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human farther, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; 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
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and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life." This mystic symbolism of the tale gets further corroborated by his remark made during a conversation of 3 January 1939: "I believe that originally the Mahabharata story was also symbolic, but it has been made into a tale of conjugal fidehty...Satyavan whom Savitri marries is the symbol of the soul descended into the Kingdom of Death; and Savitri, who is, as you know, the Goddess of Divine Light and Knowledge, comes down to redeem Satyavan from Death's grasp. Asvapati, the father of Savitri, is the Lord of Energy. Dyumatsena is 'one who has the shining hosts.' It is all inner movement, nothing much as regards outward action. The poem [Savitri] opens with the Dawn. Savitri awakes on the day of destiny, the day when Satyavan has to die. The birth of Savitri is a boon of the Supreme Goddess given to Asvapati. Asvapati is the Yogi who seeks the means to deliver the world out of ignorance." Because it is the boon of the supreme Goddess, it has the sanction of the Supreme. It only means that great issues are presently involved in the creation and that they have to be dealt with by the transcendent Power acting in a decisive way. The operative phrase is "the day when Satyavan has to die."
Sri Aurobindo has revealed the importance of the Savitri-myth by saying that it belongs to the Vedic cycle. It is not just a great tribute, but is an assertion of the Divine Word expressing itself in a new manifestive glory here. The fact that its structural outline can hold the profundity and the wideness, the twofold infinity of his spirituality, is itself a recognition of the substantiality of its splendour. We must understand that, although it is a symbol, people moving in it are not algebraic substitutions of abstract characters, cartoon pictures jerkily portraying a cinematographic sequence; but they are dynamic personalities in flesh and blood shaping and fulfilling the drama of life: they are "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..." The legend has therefore a certain historical basis as well, though may be not at one single point of space and time but spread over events in larger dimensions, yet all of them together unfolding the secret destiny. This is the Savitri we must accept and present and not the goody-goody stuff that is often given to us by the pious sentiment. It appears that the title of the poem as Pativrata Mahatmya was provided by the compilers-authors
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of the Mahabharata when they neatly incorporated it as a tale in the huge and cumbersome body of the Epic; it should actually be called Savitri Mahatmya to bring out the glory of the Vedic cycle it recreates in a new milieu to recreate that milieu itself in its spirit. The Word of the Rishi has that power and its object is to set out the universal Truth in the working of man and his soul, to achieve through its mantric utterance a concreteness of reality triumphing over all that opposes it in the worldly affairs, that it be the vehicle of the highest dharma, of the inner movement finding its way in cosmic modalities. Savitri Mahatmya can therefore be appropriately proclaimed as the tale of a decisive divine action in this evolutionary unfoldment. If it is to be considered as a book, then it would qualify to be the precious life-blood of a master-spirit.
When the poet becomes the seer and hearer of the Truth-Word, kavayaḥ satyaśrutaḥ, then through his creation we experience aesthetic delight of the spirit, we receive supreme revelation in a flame-body of the symbol he gives to us, a symbol that is more than an image. A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul—says Leonardo da Vinci. A good poet adds to it the expressive power of the ineffable transcendent, coming in rhythms of its calm and silent delight. Such indeed is the Savitri given to us by the Rishi. Nowhere in English literature is to be seen such restrained dignity and such poetic completeness as we have in this little episode. The theme is universal, the poetry is epic, the style is impersonal and bare, the diction is simple and direct, hardly anywhere an uncommon simile or epithet; no rancour against fate, no mad elation in the victory; the self-confidence of the heroine giving a solidity to the narrative; brief phrases packed with contents that at once summarise the achievements of a whole life; everywhere and through the subtle nerves flow quiet streams that sing of the nobility and grandeur of imperishable values, death-triumphant in their assertion; looks as though a well-faceted diamond were stuffed with a rare splendour, sometimes blue-shimmering, sometimes creamy bright with an orange tinge, shining in its natural brilliance, as does the sun spreading its gold of radiance; no fetish of poetry offering "criticism of life", no abstraction of l'art pour l'art, no cerebration through a discovered objective correlative, nor any gushing of uncontrolled spontaneous feelings; its substance is spirit and its ethereality is material; the ends and the means fuse in one gleamingly suggestive manner; it has gains which need not be set against losses; death and life move in one fulfilment. Death indeed occupies a very
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large space in life, perhaps a disproportionately large space at the moment. That could be the entire meaning of things in this purposeful mortal creation, not a fixed settled unevolving glory or a spectrum of typal existences, but a quest to newer infinities that may come here and work themselves out in the unending Time's process. Death is truly an aspect of life, for it to become deathless life. That would remind us of Francis Thompson's lines from his Ode to the Setting Sun:
The fairest things in life are Death and Birth,
And of these two the fairer thing is Death.
But this is not crucified Christ as a setting sun giving his beauty to death; it is another Satyavan, arising out of death, and luminous in the everlasting day, that we see emerging from the legend. It answers more than Nachiketa's query to Yama: "A man who has passed, does he exist or does he not?" If he exists, then Yama is not all that powerful; if he does not, then how is he there with him? This perplexing situation becomes clear only when we assert that he does exist but is bound by Yama, is under the sway of the Law of the mortal World. Death cannot dissolve him but can only cover him with a thick veil of darkness. As long as this death is there, thraldom is inescapable. Immortality of the soul is always incontingent, but its freedom or bondage, in life or after departure of the life-breath, depends upon the Yoga-Yajna performed on the earth. In the Aurobindonian interpretation of the Savitri-myth, even enlarging the original Vedic vision, this incontingency of soul's immortality has been fully claimed in life itself, thus making death dispensable, in fact as a starting prerequisite for the superconscient delight's existence here. That would make the operative phrase about the day when "Satyavan has to die" preciously significant.
To match with this mythic-symbolic substance is also its language. And the language of poetry has the supreme power to make that substance itself a living flame to set akindle in its splendour a rapturous heart. It bears with equal nobility the full sense of the aesthesis of the spirit. Not just the power of thought and artistic imagination but the power of a happy joyous expression, of saying what is at once seen and heard, the subtle truth-sight and truth-audition carrying together their power of giving to matter a bright-
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lustrous manner, to substance a lucid and apt style, harmoniously calling and echoing each other,— all that has come into dynamic play. In Vyasa's narrative we do not mark any climax or anticlimax, but there is a steady, almost unconcerned, flow from the source to its sea of calm emerald accomplishment. Where does this source of inspiration lie, this Hippocrene of the Mystic? In the overhead and not in the underheart, not in the secret region behind the throbbing center of emotions, not in the psychic, but somewhere on the northern slopes of Mount Helicon, somewhere in the luminous hierarchies above the mind. The Word he receives that itself possesses in its fulgent intensity the tapasvin's austerity, snow-white and sublime in its grandeur. His sublime snow-white appears in thought, in phrase, in figure, in image, in idiom that is direct and extraordinarily bare in description. Truth, beauty, power are the elements of the classical art whose one supreme creator he was. Universal theme, tightness of presentation, trans-Longinian loftiness filled with the light of the sun make the myth a perfect expressive vehicle for the charge of the spirit. His was not a "dim religious tight" in a Gothic cathedral, but a solar orb of golden mass spreading its radiance in the wideness of heaven. Alexander Pope's "there is a majesty and harmony in the Greek language, which greatly contribute to elevate and support the narration" is even more true for the ancient writers of India who used Sanskrit as the language of the gods, devabhāṣā. While this devabhāṣā lent itself to hymns and chants, to deep esoteric utterances, it also gave us revealing myths such as the victory of the Angirasas, or Indra's companionship with Kutsa, or the boons of Yama to Nachiketa, or the cosmic-transcendent strides of Vishnu. The very tongue is epic. Add to that epic majesty the power of mantra of the seer-poet and we have Vyasa's Savitri. All the attributes of the epic described in a textbook are present in this poetry: noble, heroic pathetic, remorseful, tragic, lofty and benign, carried out in the greatness and sweep of a mind open to wider movements of speech and thought, bearing the rhythm of a dynamic life lived in the spirit, all in an astonishing perfection of the form. Savitri is a masterpiece in miniature. The story unfolds with the relentless force of a narrative. Bare, simple, direct, without embellishments, to the point everywhere, with casual mention of several qualities of the persons it is presenting, be it Savitri, or Satyavan, or Yama, or the King, or the Rishis of the Forest, whatever is needed is given with minimum detail. The scenes stand out vividly in front of us. The swiftness of flow is of the nature of a streamline, without whirlpools or turbulent patterns. The story
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begins by introducing Aswapati just in a couple of shlokas and proceeds rapidly from event to event. The manner of introducing Aswapati makes it subtly clear that there is some issue involved about which we should be deeply concerned. From the very word "go!" the tone is set in Vyasa's Savitri:
Long ago in Madra there reigned a saintly king, devout and a follower of the dharma; he lived in the pious company of the Brahmins and of the great virtuous, and he was united with the truth, and had conquered the senses. Performer of Yajnas, presiding over charities, skilful in work, loved by the city-dwellers and by all the people of his kingdom, one who was absorbed in the welfare of everybody, there ruled the sovereign of the Earth, named Aswapati. Of a forgiving nature, one whose speech was truth, and who had subdued the senses, though he was so he had no issue; with the advancing of age this increased his affliction greatly.
With this confident ease the verses unroll and in their calm composed poise carry the poetry forward. The atmosphere is certainly not joyous-lyrical, but there is neither in it melancholy of the tragic though dealing with the theme of death in the blaze and youth of life. Its quiet gloom is filled with the warm shadow of the gods of heaven. There is everywhere the sense of sunlight diffusing in the darkness. The tears in mortal things gleam in the purity of a mountain-source and become pearl-drops aquiver with the life of the spirit. In the whole process the poet has accomplished an alchemic miracle. That is the power of mystic-spiritual poetry and Vyasa possesses it in full abundance. That is why the work endures across the spaces of time and does not get attenuated by exoteric considerations. When this power is absent, this power that comes from some deep and genuine fountain-head, also fails with it the creation, howsoever appealing it may look to a given temporal taste. The same substance, then, becomes pale and insipid, or turns into old wives' tale. This would immediately put in question Walter Pater's contention, though deserving a certain merit: "It is on the quality of the matter it informs or controls, its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the greatness of literary art depends." But poetry is written, a la Mallarm6, not with ideas but with words. Substance all right, but more than that the creative words. The same matter, the same sublime myth, when retold
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by different authors, always does not go home.
Take, for instance, Romesh Chunder Dutt's rendering of the Savitri-tale; by way of example, let us compare the passage of the original with the verses of Dutt pertaining to Narad's prophecy of Satyavan's death. (See Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. I, pp. 492-506.)
"Whence comes she," so Narad questioned, "whither was Savitri led,
Wherefore to a happy husband hath Savitri not been wed?"
"Nay, to choose her lord and husband," so the virtuous monarch said,
"Fair Savitri long hath wandered and in holy tirthas stayed.
Maiden! speak unto the rishi, and thy choice and secret tell."
Then a blush suffused her forehead, soft and slow her accents fell!
"Listen, father! Salwa's monarch was of old a king of might,
Righteous-hearted Dyumat-sena, feeble now and void of sight.
Foemen robbed him of his kingdom when in age he lost his sight,
And from town and spacious empire was the monarch forced to flight
With his queen and with his infant did the feeble monarch stray,
And the jungle was his palace, darksome was his weary way.
Holy vows assumed the monarch and in penance passed his life,
In the wild woods nursed his infant and with wild fruits fed his wife.
Years have gone in rigid penance, and that child is now a youth,
Him I choose my lord and husband, Satyavan, the Soul of Truth!"
Thoughtful was the rishi Narad, doleful were the words he said:
"Sad disaster waits Savitri if this royal youth she wed.
Truth-beloving is his father, truthful is the royal dame,
Truth and virtue rule his actions, Satyavan his sacred name.
Steeds he loved in days of boyhood and to paint them was his joy,
Hence they called him young Chitraswa, art-beloving gallant boy.
But O pious-hearted monarch! fair Savitri hath in sooth
Courted Fate and sad disaster in that noble gallant youth!"
'Tell me," questioned Aswapati, "for I may not guess thy thought
Wherefore is my daughter's action with a sad disaster fraught
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Is the youth of noble lustre, gifted in the gifts of art,
Blest with wisdom and with prowess, patient in his dauntless heart?"
"Surya's lustre in him shineth," so the rishi Narad said,
"Brihaspati's wisdom dwelleth in the youthful prince's head.
Like Mahendra in his prowess, and in patience like the Earth,
Yet O king! a sad disaster marks the gentle youth from birth!"
'Tell me, rishi, then thy reason," so the anxious monarch cried,
"Why to youth so great and gifted may this maid be not allied,
Is he princely in his bounty, gentle-hearted in his grace,
Duly versed in sacred knowledge, fair in mind and fair in face?"
"Free in gifts like Rantideva," so the holy rishi said,
"Versed in lore like monarch Sivi who all ancient monarchs led.
Like Yayati open-hearted and like Chandra in his grace,
Like the handsome heavenly Asvins fair and radiant in his face,
Meek and graced with patient virtue he controls his noble mind,
Modest in his kindly actions, true to friends and ever kind,
And the hermits of the forest praise him for his righteous truth,
Nathless, king, thy daughter may not wed this noble-hearted youth!"
'Tell me, rishi," said the monarch, "for thy sense from me is hid.
Has this prince some fatal blemish, wherefore is this match forbid?"
"Fatal fault!" exclaimed the rishi, "fault that wipeth all his grace,
Fault that human power nor effort, rite nor penance can efface.
Fatal fault or destined sorrow! for it is decreed on high,
On this day, a twelve-month later, this ill-fated prince will die!"
Shook the startled king in terror and in fear and trembling cried:
"Unto short-lived, fated bridgroom ne'er my child shall be allied.
Come, Savitri, dear-loved maiden, choose another happier lord,
Rishi Narad speaketh wisdom, list unto his holy word!
Every grace and every virtue is effaced by cruel Fate,
On this day, a twelve-month later, leaves the prince his mortal state!"
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"Father!" answered thus the maiden, soft and sad her accents fell,
"I have heard thy honoured mandate, holy Narad counsels well.
Pardon witless maiden's fancy, but beneath the eye of Heaven,
Only once a maiden chooseth, twice her troth may not be given.
Long his life or be it narrow, and his virtues great or none,
Satyavan is still my husband he my heart and troth hath won.
What a maiden's heart hath chosen that a maiden's lips confess.
True to him thy poor Savitri goes into the wilderness!"
"Monarch!" uttered then the rishi, "fixed is she in mind and heart,
From her troth the true Savitri never, never will depart.
More than mortal's share of virtue unto Satyavan is given,
Let the true maid wed her chosen, leave the rest to gracious Heaven!"
"Rishi and preceptor holy!" so the weeping monarch prayed,
"Heaven avert all future evils, and thy mandate is obeyed!"
Narad wished Mm joy and gladness, blessed the loving youth and maid,
Forest hermits on their wedding every fervent blessing laid.
Creditable and impressive as these couplets are, in them we also at once see the difficulty of the translator to render the majestic Anushtubha of the Sanskrit, with its quantitative basis of word-music and rhythm, into accented language which is so alien to the expression and spirit of the ancient Seers and Rishis. Not only the substance and meaning, but also the measure and cadence of sound that is the soul of poetry defy translation from one medium into another. Romesh Dutt in this respect has succeeded in his endeavour in a way and it is no mean achievement to maintain it on such a long-sustained pitch and level. The song is vigorous and unstrained in its flow, with the natural ease of a streaming gusto. However, perfect as the verses are, they seem to roll out like well-made fiats from a modem factory, absolutely identical in shape and size and in performance, even their nose-colour and engine-throb repeating flawlessly. The translation is, as Enid Hamer would say, "spirited and musical, but the lines show the same tendency as Tennyson's to break after the fourth foot, and the whole technique is very similar" to Locksley Hall. The couplet, with curtailed eight-foot lines, can easily be broken up into an eight-
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seven-eight-seven syllabic stanza in trochaic metre with the falling rhythm as, for instance, in the last couplet of the above-quoted passage:
Narad wished him joy and gladness,
Blessed the loving youth and maid,
Forest hermits on their wedding
Every fervent blessing laid.
Sounds more like a ballad-run or a Marathi Lawani in its loud hilarious question-answer session, a folk-tale dealing through a social theme matters pertaining to men and gods and nature. The composition is more lyrical than epic and, like happy flying birds, cannot, by that very lightness, accommodate thought in its substance and in its dignity for it to deepen and strengthen those very feelings of the song. The coming of the calamitous event is made known quite cheerfully and quite bardically; to adapt a couplet from the above-quoted passage, we could say:
Ho! Ho! It is decreed on high,
Soon this ill-fated prince will die!
Not only are the reserves of sound absent, but even the contents robbed of their high genuineness, of their high purity and poise. The dhwani, the inner music of the language which gives to verses their poetry and which holds poetry together, is no more to be heard in it. We have to only listen to Vyasa and understand and appreciate what solid dense force he has put in that death-sentence. A whole world of meaning and mystery is packed in the sixteen-syllabled announcement: Satyavan will in one year from today abandon his body, his life here expended, saṁvatsareṇa kṣiṇāyurdehanyāsaṁ karisyati. The sentence is pronounced in the active voice and has the ring of authenticity of a marvellous power that judges and governs our life's many-wending ways, assuring that Satyavan has to die one year hence. It is brief and direct; there is no hue and cry, no sourness, no sentimentalism, no quarrel with anybody. Romesh Dutt gives us not Vyasa's Savitri but a Bengali Savitri; as Sri Aurobindo commented in a conversation, he portrayed her as weeping whereas in the original epic there is no trace of tears: "Even when her heart was being sawn in two, not a single tear came to her eyes. By making her weep, he took away the very strength on which Savitri was built." In his hand
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English has as if become another Indian vernacular. The moral is, the sixteen-syllabled Anushtubha cannot be converted into a trochaic fifteener howsoever close it may seem to the original. But, more importantly, it is the spiritual inspiration that here matters the most. Not that all great Sanskrit poetry is so, nor do all spiritual compositions give us such poetry; but Valmiki and Vyasa are at first poets as much as they are, unlike Kalidasa, Rishis and the underlying aesthesis of their poetry is overhead.
The first quality of this Rishihood we recognise in Vyasa is his wonderful sense of detachment, even while remaining in the midst of life's activities. His art, says Sri Aurobindo, "is singularly disinterested, niṣkāma; he does not write with a view to sublimity or with a view to beauty, but because he has certain ideas to impart, certain events to describe, certain characters to portray. He has an image of these in his mind and his business is to find expression for it which will be scrupulously just to his conception. This is by no means so facile a task as the uninitiated might imagine; it is indeed considerably more difficult than to bathe the style in colour and grace and literary elegance, for it demands vigilant self-restraint, firm intellectual truthfulness and unsparing rejection, the three virtues most difficult to the gadding, inventive and self-indulgent spirit of man. The art of Vyasa is therefore a great, strenuous art; but it unfitted him, as a similar spirit unfitted the Greeks, to voice fully the outward beauty of Nature. For to delight infinitely in Nature one must be strongly possessed with the sense of colour and romantic beauty, and allow the fancy equal rights with the intellect." Romesh Dutt saw in Vyasa only that which is not in him and gave a vernacular version of it in a shout of sentiment.
Narad's proclamation of Satyavan's death is a great imponderable in the Savitri-myth. But what is clear is that it is Satyavan who is going to abandon his body and others are universal agents in the deep and occult play. There are conflicting forces, and there is fate, and there is the circumstance in the working of Time; yet the individual's free-will is the primary factor in moulding and shaping his destiny. Of course, very characteristically, Vyasa does not speak of these metaphysical factors in his little narrative, but it is neither the ill-fate nor the decree of the high that the sage is highlighting. He is making a very simple and plain statement, and true to the process of life, about Satyavan's own decision to leave this body. It is spoken
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of as dehanyāsa and not mṛtyu, not meeting or falling to death but giving up the body. There is no helplessness or succumbing but in it a self-mastery and choice in freedom of life are indicated by the seer-poet. In fact, the connotation of dehanyāsa, Relinquishing of Body, as a profound voluntary act is almost yogic and a great esoteric-mystic aspect of it is brought out through this fine truthful phrase. If we are to believe in the body-gestures, mudrās, nyāsas, as a part of the deistical worship, then giving up the body itself becomes a worshipping gesture in totality of renunciation.
If dehanyāsa is such a masterful phrase given to us by Vyasa, then we at once recognise the loftiness of his poetic conception achieved through a very highly developed art which becomes a vehicle for carrying the overhead inspiration. We have here an astounding result, a miracle indeed: not small or unworthy but large and serene and consistent in its quality is the idiomatic development suffused with and made enduring by another breath. In this creative and expressive aesthetic achievement not only inspiration and technique but the presence of things deep and wonderful, although at times seeming to be tragic and remorseful of life's failure, occupy a larger space in the poetry, giving to it its real value. In that way does the creator bring a satisfying completeness to Art, putting his own stamp of greatness on it. There is no doctrinaire approach, no fetish of a theory; but it is the work of a forceful artistic urge which finds the inevitable and inspired word to tell and assert the genuine experience it brings with it and embodies it in perfect form. A Johnsonian critic would be extremely happy with Vyasa, but Vyasa goes for beyond the Johnsonian canons and seizes in his line and metaphor the glowing intensity of a realised utterance. In him there is no tendency of massing of an effect; there is only the discovery of a dense word that releases from its warm rich womb multiple suggestions more in a vertical than horizontal direction. We may perhaps appreciate the merit of Vyasa's art better in terms of the values, and not mental conceptions, he upholds most. "Art is not only technique or form of Beauty," says Sri Aurobindo, "not only the discovery or the expression of Beauty—it is a self-expression of Consciousness under the conditions of aesthetic vision and a perfect execution. Or, to put it otherwise, there are not only aesthetic values, but life-values, mind-values, soul-values that enter into Art... In Valmiki and Vyasa there is the constant presence of great Idea-Forces and Ideals supporting life and its movements which were beyond the scope of Homer and Shakespeare..." Thus more appealing, even gripping, than the actual
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death of Satyavan in the Shalwa wilderness is the grim prophecy of death made by Narad in Aswapati's palace at Madra. The phrase saṁvatsareṇa kṣīṇādyurdehanyāsam kariṣyati—at the end of the year, life over, he will abandon his body—has the rhythm-movement of a wider world, coming from across the intuitive silences, which lends to the utterance itself a truth-force to effectuate what it says. But let us come to the death proper which is presented by the poet in a few quick and sharp matter-of-fact strokes, and all done in the bareness of colours that comes out of his niṣkāmabhāva, out of a sense of yogic aloofness; not empathy but an intimate understanding of the universal spirit in a vastness of its working gives him this superb verse in which the joy of noble association with men and events is not missed. Satyavan is working hard in the forest, meaning to finish his job soon so that he could give a larger part of the day to his beloved; but he suddenly feels exhausted and there is an unbearable ache, as if sharp steely spikes were being driven into his head. Yama appears on the spot exactly at the time as foretold by Narad, throws the noose, pulls out the soul of Satyavan and starts moving in the direction of the South. In the same steadfastness, Savitri follows Yama and accomplishes the miracle of gaining back her husband. There is no drama, no fuss, no tears, no fitfulness, no fury. What has to be has to be and is accepted in the life's abundant measure of fairness, carrying the hope and promise of its own rewards and boons. Assured possession of values makes the very calm of the poetry luminously powerful.
Compare this, for instance, with the death-scene of Cleopatra in which there is another kind of niṣkāmabhāva. A Roman has vanquished a Roman and the stage is set for a lifeful suicide; the pretty worm of Nilus has arrived and its biting shall prove immortal. Cleopatra must give it a royal reception:
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip...
...Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
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I give to baser life. - So, - have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips...
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts and is desir'd...
...Come, thou mortal wretch,
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once unite: poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and despatch.
There is nothing austere here; instead some imperial glow of life's passion illumines more than destroys the nobility that stands above death in death. There is tension and drama but it is so intense and so dramatic that it, by a strange mechanism, becomes totally impersonal. At once the breath of a tall life-god gathers into its oceanic lungs the power of a vibrant spirit, imperious in will and impatient in reaching the violent end, and yet acts in a sense of supreme abandonment. The poet in an exceptional moment of intuitive vitality has objectified the life of feelings without getting touched by those feelings. The subjective does not muddle up the objective. The song of saddest thought has in it the majesty of unconcern which makes it a song of sweetest cherishment. It is not the personality of the poet that we see in this poetry; what stands out is rather the great personality of a universal force that takes shape and emerges from this life-world in its unsurpassable creative urge. The purple anger is commanding, grand. Cleopatra had immortal longings and she fulfilled them through one life-stunning despatch of the infallible fool. But it was not Cleopatra who did it; it was some archetypal aspect of over life that embodied itself and accomplished the death-and-life transcending wonder. If we are to see it in the reverse, then it looks as though the remarkable queen had no emotion but possessed only the intent of doing and achieving something she had set out to do and achieve in the greatness of her queenhood, making that death too queenly great. She has immortalised a quintessential life-mood in concreteness of the terrestrial gain. To what we attune ourselves in this suicide-poetry is therefore the noble unconcern, niṣkāmabhdva, of the poet. He himself becomes impersonal, yet allowing the stream of some impetuous energy to flow through him. We do not get the joy, rasa, of the same detachment in, say, Duncan's murder in Macbeth's castle. Lady Macbeth wants to be unsexed and
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filled with direst cruelty, that with the help of murdering ministers, she would let a hell loose in her design of ghastly ambition. And the poet is true to the occasion, that the thick blood dripping from murderous hands could make a whole green sea red. Yet the dead body of Duncan, ugly and mutilated by infamous agents, would not really frighten us; instead, it is made more living by the power of poetry. Still, this power is not splendid enough to lift it up from the royal couch that it may wear a beauty's face. Even the simplicity with its richly suggestive compliment in
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well
makes us doubt if indeed he slept well enough when the fever had run down. Poetic identification-mark of a total detachment is still not very distinct on this corpse's forehead. In that respect the Cleopatra-passage stands far above the Macbethan incamadination. It is a supreme achievement of the poet becoming completely impersonal, a most difficult job in the riot and colour of life's million moods. The artist has portrayed a very violent event, but the unquietude does not seem to touch him. The object is not swallowed up by the subject and vice versa. He has taken hold of a skylark to pour all his unsung melodies and yet remained the grand witness Purusha of the ancient Indian psychology, a dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in a certain manner of speaking, we may say that no great art is possible without the sense of true detachment not only classical but also dramatic and even romantic. Not only poetry but every art perhaps. Then the statue of the Buddha carved in a rocky mountain loses itself and becomes some infinity of calm, as does the marble Radha-Krishna in the Brindavan of Bliss. Monet's painting of his dead wife still in the bed also greatly belongs to this superior class.
But the niṣkāmabhāva of Vyasa is altogether of a different quality than that of Shakespeare. He is a poet of men and empires and is seated in the midst of warring heroes and hears the loud deafening battle-cries; yet even in this rough-and-tumble his Rishihood remains rooted in the strength of the spirit's dynamic silence. The bright lustre of a steady fire glows in him everywhere, even while participating energetically in the dramatic action of the world: but he has the detachment of a true spiritual aesthete, "being steadfast and unshaken by even the heaviest of storms," as the Gita would say. That is why we see in Vyasa a constant presence of great Idea-Forces and Ideals supporting life and its movements. With that power he can become a
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moulder of a society and of a nation, things which are unquestionably beyond the capacity of Shakespeare. To put it in other words: Vyasa's sense of detachment is a Rishi's whereas Shakespeare's aesthetic-vital; in the one niṣkāmabhāva has brought out soul-values and in the other, by a kind of channellisation, life-aspects.
In fact Vyasa's Savitri is a tria juncta in uno, written on three levels —as a piece of poetic composition narrating a tale, the tale used to illustrate and establish truth-values in life, the legend and the myth taken on an occult-cosmic scale. A great luminous power of revelation is released by poetry when it becomes paradoxically the speech of sight and the image of sound seen and heard with subtle senses attuned to invisible and inaudible perceptions of things that are eager to take form of some flaming beauty in a body of truth borne by the authentic delight of a splendorous urge. In the tranquil receptive blank of the seer-poet the Word arrives from distant shores and delivers its riches that are carried to deeper interiors making them rich with its own wonders. When Vyasa speaks of Savitri (see Vyasa's Savitri) as dhyānyogaparāyaṇā - Adept in the Yoga of Meditation - Satyavan as guṇasāgara - Ocean of Merit - an epithet of Brahma himself -Yama as pitrarājastāṃ bhagavān — King-Father Lord - the saints guiding the sun, upholding the earth, giving refuge to the three divisions of Time, and protecting the world, or the incantatory verses about the divine Savitri, or Savitri's growing like Goddess Fortune -śrīrvyavardhata - or the epic details like the bifurcation of the path in the forest at the group of palāśa trees, or Savitri's trembling with fear on hearing the cruel howling of the she-jackals, or the repeated assurance of the Rishis to the afflicted Dyumatsena, or the aphoristic utterances that abound throughout the narrative—in all these not only do we perceive the overhead atmosphere pervading the poetry, making it also classically sublime, but there is as well the pure-white solidity of substance elevated to calm poised dharmic heights. Charged with several minute particulars as the tale is, a whole system of social philosophy can be, without much effort, gleaned from it. Take, for example, Aswapati as a king and as a father: he was saintly in nature, devout, and a follower of the dharma, lived in pious company of the Brahmins and the virtuous; he was engaged in performance of Yajnas, gave away great charities, ruled over his kingdom wisely and with skill and hard work and had the welfare of the state at his heart; he respected the elders and the learned; always
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accepted and followed, even in the extreme situations of life, the advice of the high-souled; considered as a part of his duty the continuance of the ancestral line important, basically for the performance of the dharmic sacrifices; attended to the upbringing of his daughter and arranged for her all-round development, thus fulfilling the fatherly responsibility; that Savitri was well-versed in the sacred lore and was highly qualified in logic, reason, speech and the rules of grammar, and was one who did all her actions in the serene poise even while holding the excellent tenets of life firmly, indeed certify how properly her parents had brought her up; Aswapati was of a forgiving nature, always spoke the truth and strictly observed self-control and good abstinence and gave himself to moderation; even when Narad made the prophecy of Satyavan's death, he remained unperturbed and accepted it as will of the Supreme. Many other incidents that have come in the course of narration in this small tale also drive home well the nobility in which the ancients lived and pursued their high goals, not only on the earth but in life beyond too. And everywhere the master-touch is "infinite that lends a yonder to all ends"—to use Meredith's phrase. In the vision and work of a Rishi man's twofold need always finds satisfaction in a most complete way. He maintains the harmony between the life of an ascetic and of a householder, each fulfilling the other. The aim is to achieve perfection in the world as much as in the state after death. The claim of the spirit and the claim of matter present no conflict to him. That was the Idea-Force which had urged Vyasa in this great creative endeavour; in it he did business with men and gods. To uphold dharma and social order is a working translation of the Gita's conception of lokasamgraha for the individual developing self-consciousness in the dynamics of the day-to-day. Even though noble souls may suffer in the process, that itself, on participation in the endeavour, becomes their reward. The gods and the sages help mankind grow in the dharma, which is in fact the law of the inner being in perfect accord with spiritual truths. That is the work of supreme sacrifice, of the offering of the will-to-be, of the bright Yajna dear to the creator and to the builder of society cherishing enduring values. The foundation-stone is laid high above and it is on it that here the entire edifice is built downward. Of this temple-tower Vyasa was one luminous builder. It was because he could possess the total sense of detachment, niṣkāmabhāva, that the impelling force came to him from the inherent potency of the Word which is not only descriptive but also injunctive and revelatory.
We may appreciate the significance of the injunctive aspect of the tale better from what Sri Aurobindo has written in a larger context
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regarding the old Vedic tradition that was carried forward by the poets of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. "The poets...wrote with a sense of their function as architects and sculptors of life, creative exponents, fashioners of significant form of the national thought and religion and ethics and culture. A profound stress of thought on life, a large and vital view of religion and society, a certain strain of philosophic idea runs through these poems and the whole ancient culture of India is embodied in them with a great force of intellectual conception and living presentation. The Mahabharata has been spoken of as a fifth Veda, it has been said of both these poems that they are not only great poems but Dharmashastras...That which was for the cultured classes contained in Veda and Upanishad, shut into profound philosophic aphorism and treatise or inculcated in Dharmashastra and Arthashastra, was put here into creative and living figures, associated with familiar story and legend, fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence." The Savitri-tale is also written entirely in the same epic spirit and bears witness everywhere to the mission it purports to accomplish as a fine document of Dharmashastric ideals in moulding a social philosophy.
But of supreme importance beyond poetry and the concerns of society is the third term of tria juncta in uno bringing with it the revelatory power of the Word. It is said oftentimes that in the Veda the Word itself is the speaker and that it alone explains itself. We have to hear its sound in the deep hush of the heart and allow the meaning to emerge in the wideness of silent mind. If the tale of Savitri belongs to the glory of that Vedic attainment then, surely, it too must be received in that very special way by which it was given. It possesses in its secret and esoteric symbolism the gleaming contents of a transcendental truth that has formulated itself by occult means seeking self-expression here. It is a pregnant legend delivering to us the profound mystery of existence in the world of death; it bears the breath of a superconscient wakened life that from every limb of the mortal creature may radiate the same immortality which it carries with it. But even if the tale is to be taken as a simple narration of a historical event which might have happened somewhere and sometime in the far legendary past, it yet escapes all association of space and time and assumes a permanent universal significance without losing touch
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with them in its and in their dynamics. The pragmatism is a recognition of the Law of Life by Death through which Life sans Death should be possible. The dark riddle of the world may be complex but is certainly not insoluble and is waiting for the conscious light to brighten it from within and from above. If in the enigmatic unforeseen there is a meaning, perhaps it has to be discovered in this possibility of an adventurous experiment in delight. Vedic parables are always rich in several hues of a basic truth-principle operating in the play of forces and have the power to actualise the realisable. Savitri belongs to these. And there is always the benign hand leading and guiding a true aspirant to his goal of sunlit immortality. Take, for instance, Rishi Kutsa who by his tapasya had become Indra's companion and favourite and had acquired such similarity with him that only a luminous perception could distinguish between them. About it Sri Aurobindo writes: "The human soul is Kutsa, he who constantly seeks the seer-knowledge, as his name implies, and he is the son of Arjuna or Arjuni, the White One, child of Switra the White Mother; he is, that is to say, the sattwic or purified and light-filled soul which is open to unbroken glories of the divine knowledge. And when the chariot reaches the end of its journey, the own home of Indra, the human Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is 'truth-conscious'. The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge." The Lady of the Rik, nāri, who could not distinguish between the God and the human Aspirant as they had grown one in likeness, sarūpā, has been suggested by Griffith to be Kutsa's wife; this interpretation can stand but hardly does it add anything spiritual to the contents and Vamadeva, the Rishi of the Hymn, would not have bothered to mention it. However, it is an interpretation which is far superior to Sayana's suggestion in which this Lady is taken to be Sachi; but that would immediately deprive her of the native truth-consciousness she always possesses. Indeed, though the human soul may grow in the likeness of the divine soul the two yet remain distinct, though one in identity yet separate. The individuality of the individual in the infinity of manifestation is a fundamental fact and, unless the soul decides to merge and go out of existence, ever remains so. Kutsa's taking a seat in Indra's chariot and accompanying him was in the pursuit of immortality and not for disappearance. The Kutsa-Indra parable belongs to the set of the two Vedic-Upanishadic birds
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on the same tree, or of Nara and Narayana of the Puranas, or of the later-day Aitihasic human Warrior and the divine Avatar on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Everywhere the soul, instead of losing itself in the oversoul, gets enriched in a shining and superior oneness as the first basis for carrying out its role in the divinity of manifestion to enjoy Truth and Light and Life's incontingent immortality. But if that immortality has to be functional in the wide terrestrial scheme, another cosmic-transcendental dimension of the infinite has to emerge. The Satyavan-Savitri myth has that suggestion in its lustrous Vedic symbolism. Satyavan's death is the death of the Immortal in this mortal creation whose travail he had come to bear that, through it, it be got changed into fullness of the fourfold beatitude. The arrival of the process of Time at the precise moment, the presence of Savitri as the executive Will behind this transformative action, and the granting of the boons as a sanction of the Supreme have as if designedly come together to accomplish this exceptional miracle. The birth of Savitri as Aswapati's daughter in response to his ardent prayer born out of intense tapasya of eighteen years, Narad's prophecy of Satyavan's death at the end of one year of the marriage, getting back the soul of Satyavan fit to do her work on the earth,—as Yama had told Savitri, —and their taking the path towards the north at the bifurcation near the group of palāśa trees are greatly connotative of momentous happenings. There is no doubt that, in his far-reaching intuitive vision, the Rishi saw all these as a clear image of the sun in a tranquil lotus-pond at the foot of the ancient Hill. That also makes the poetry as marvellous.
Aswapati had offered every day a hundred-thousand oblations to divine Savitri with the objective of receiving a boon from her to have several sons for the continuance of the holy Yajna. The boon is granted, but he is told that he would get an effulgent daughter and that he should not have any hesitation in accepting it. Already a high intention is seeded in the tale and the events have to develop with assured rapidity towards the unrevealed purpose and end. Again, most unexpectedly, Narad comes and makes an announcement of Satyavan's death exactly one year since then: saṁvatsareṇa kṣīṇāyurdehanyāsaṁ kariṣyati. A luminous imponderable has appeared on the scene and Narad, perhaps "concealing the truth with truth," declares of it in a very definite way. He does not cast the horoscopes of the two young souls and mark the conjuction of the stars to foretell their future. Instead, carrying the knowledge that only one year is given to them, a mighty force is put by him in the decision
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Savitri has already arrived at; he had come to "steel" her will. But why one year? Is it a mystery to the sage as well as to the seer-poet? Or do they have the sure intuition of a higher working which prompts them to state it so? The period of one year, namely, one full cycle of seasons in the earthly time, is very pertinent for the great purpose of the story; so also the exact hour and moment of death which Savitri reckons when Satyavan is about to die in the forest. But the year is symbolic and the hour is symbolic. About it Sri Aurobindo tells: "...in the Puranas the Yugas, moments, months etc. are all symbolic and it is stated that the body of man is the year." Therefore abandonment of the body, dehanyāsa, at the end of the year, saṁvatsara, is the abondonment of the year itself. Satyavan leaves the scales of time and steps into some larger dimension where death would have no hold on him. If this is true, then we begin to see the power of spiritual poetry with its occult and living symbolism; we also begin to appreciate how the poet is consistent everywhere in his descriptions and notations—obviously because it is not by the method of ratiocination that he reaches it, but it is by direct spiritual contact, by the truth-sight that he sees the whole thing in one single wide glance. Equally significant is the mention of the group of palāśa trees; again, the poet is not simply luxuriating here in epic details for the satisfaction of some aesthetic demands. The point d'appui is the significance of the flower of this tree, not the botanical Butea Frondosa, not even the very poetic and appealing Flame of the Forest, but what the Mother sees as the Beginning of the Supramental Realisation. Satyavan asks Savitri to take the path turning towards the north at the group of palāśa trees, north, uttara, conveying again not only the northern but also the upward direction, superior, surpassing, excelling in every merit:
Near the group of palāśa trees the path bifurcates and moves in two different directions, take the one which leads to the north, but now speed up —
tells Satyavan to his timid as well as pretty and bright wife, bhīrū, śubhā, asking her to hasten the pace for reaching the hermitage without further delay, to join the parents and the Rishis.
R.Y. DESHPANDE
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