In approaching Sāvitrī as a poem we must take note of the possible difficulty likely to be encountered by foreigners who are not accustomed to certain ideas of Indian culture. It is natural that having a different background of culture they would find it difficult to enter into the spirit of a poem which has been called "a legend and a symbol".[1] In fact, since JH Cousins's book New Ways in English Literature and even before it, there had already begun to collect a considerable body of literature, including poetry, written in English by Indians. For some time it was called "Indo-English literature" but since the popularity and the great triumph of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali which earned him world-recognition, the course of English literature has been more and more influenced—especially after the two world wars—by other cultural currents, from the East and from the new world of America. Today the result is that Englishmen can no longer claim English as the exclusive language of British Islanders. In the words of an eminent Englishman, Ronald Nixon, alias, Sri Krishna Prem, "The English language has been given to the world and its usages and limits can now no longer be determined exclusively by the ears of the Islanders whose tongue it originally was. Those who would remain sole rulers of their language must abjure empire". If an integral world culture is to arise and if English is to be the medium of its expression, then it will have to widen its cultural horizon and include the currents of different cultures in the forms of its literary expression. English has already become the chief language of the commercial world and it has a great chance of becoming a world language on condition that it abjures its linguistic empire and does not want to impose its present limits to prevent its natural growth into a wider sphere.

The foregoing remarks become necessary in the present unsettled state of poetical literature in which it is very difficult to find generally acceptable standards of literary criticism. For instance, here is what Ronald Nixon says about Sāvitrī: "It is an omen of the utmost significance and hope that in these years of darkness and despair such a poem as Sāvitrī should have appeared. Let us salute the Dawn". And here is another estimate,—if it can be so called—by an American Journalist, "Sri Aurobindo is also engaged upon one of the longest and worst epic poems of all time called Sāvitrī". These two opinions indicate how very difficult is the task of evaluating so great a poem.

Sāvitrī has an Indian legendary background. But this background is merely the starting point for the poet's inspiration… This legend has been kept almost intact in its story-part by the poet. But the legend itself can be interpreted as a symbol and the poet has not only interpreted it but, in fact, has transformed it into a living symbol. There are, for instance, portions like the first Canto of the first Book and Canto III, IV and V of the same Book which contain the poet's own experience of the origin of the world and his conception of Aswapati's character. The life of the childless king Aswapati performing tapasyā in order to have a child has been entirely changed by the poet into a symbol of human soul descended on earth from divine heights trying to acquire knowledge of the Self and the world. The entire second Book is, in fact, Aswapati's travel over worlds heaped upon worlds in a complex cosmogony mounting from the plinth of the plane of Matter right up to levels of Higher Mind and the plane of the Cosmic Being leading to worlds of greater knowledge. Aswapati represents the aspiring human soul down the millenniums of evolution in his search for the truth of himself, of the world and of God. He acquires by his tapasyā immense knowledge of the possibilities of the human consciousness, its deeper depths and its higher and the highest heights. In his heart bums the flame of aspiration to create here on earth an image of the perfection which his soul feels is possible for man and earth to attain. The third Book describes Aswapati's entry into and his experience of supracosmic planes of consciousness and his meeting face to face with the Supreme Creatrix, the power of the omnipotent Divine. At the end of his spiritual efforts he thus enters not a featureless Infinite and a void Absolute but a divine world of the Spirit—what the poet calls the House of the Spirit—where Truth and Knowledge, Power and Consciousness, divine Delight and Harmony are the constituent elements. And he feels the possibility of bringing this Truth-world into the earth so that a new creation, the kingdom of the Divine, would be manifested here. He receives from this Divine Power the direct inspiration to continue his spiritual efforts and struggles for bringing the Truth-world in the midst of human ignorance and against the opposition of the Powers of Darkness, suffering, inertia and Death. She holds out the promise to Aswapati of the ultimate victory of the Divine in spite of all difficulties and oppositions. But Aswapati feels that his mere human spirit would find the task very hard and unless the Divine Mother herself comes down on earth, or sends her representative emanation on earth in a human form, it would be impossible to create the world of Truth here, life divine in the midst of life human. The supreme Mother in her infinite grace gives Aswapati a boon that a human manifestation of her Grace would be born on earth. "A new light shall break upon the earth, a new world shall be born, things that were promised shall be fulfilled." (The Mother)

Thus, Savitri was born in answer to Aswapati's intense aspiration for the Divine's help in creating divine perfection here. How far this is from the childless king of the legend performing austerities and sacrifices for a child!! The whole period of Aswapati's austerities as reported in the legend has been transformed by the poet into an epic climb of human soul in its journey from the Inconscient to the very gates of the Superconscient and the whole symbol becomes full of a tremendous cosmic significance. Aswapati's penances are here the trials and tribulations of the evolving Soul of Humanity and his gains are the gains of the human race during its long struggles for attainment of the Truth.

Savitri also ceases to be a mere accomplished princess and becomes the manifestation of the Grace of the Supreme coming down to humanity to share in its burden of suffering and ignorance in order to enable it to achieve the victory over forces of Darkness and Death. Savitri achieved this by facing Yama, the God of Death, at the time when he came to take the life of Satyavan. It is by the extension of her protection, of her own Infinity and Immortality, that she saved Satyavan from the God of Death. The rest of the story,—her growth from childhood to age, her going out to choose the partner for life, her selection of Satyavan in the hermitage, her return to her parents and meeting the sage, Narad,—has been kept intact by the poet with the difference that Savitri, throughout, is treated as one conscious of her Divinity and at the same time conscious of her humanity. The episode of Narad's declaration of fate has been raised to a very high pitch of spirituality wherein cosmic purposes and intentions, the destiny of the human being, are brought into play. The delineation of Savitri's character in Books IV, V, and VI maintains the dignity of the boon of the Supreme Mother given to Aswapati in Book I Canto IV. In the original legend, as also in the symbol, Savitri faces Yama, the God of Death. But in the legend the conversation which takes place between Savitri and Yama is rather conventional and is only religio-ethical in its manner; where as here, in this epic, Savitri clearly stands not merely as the representative of the race but also as the embodiment of the supreme Grace. Yama, on the other side, puts before her all the opposition that the subtlety, ingenuity and cunning that Ignorance can devise. The whole dialogue moves on a very high plane of inspiration in which brilliant flashes of revelation and overmental lightning occasionally break forth. Here also one sees how far the poet has enriched the original legend,—how far, in fact, he has heightened the Indian myth by turning it into a rich episode full of significance for the human soul and its destiny. He has turned a local legend into a tremendous psychological fact full of significance for the human evolution. It is this transforming power which is the alchemy of the great Master. The originality of the poet scintillates when he deals with the life of Savitri and Satyavan after the conquest, of Death. In the legend, they return to the earth and Satyavan regains his father's kingdom and rules it for many years and is happy ever after. But, in the poet's symbol both Savitri and Satyavan rise from the kingdom of Death to the region of Eternal Day where the Sun of Troth never sets, where Ignorance is unknown and Death has no place. After staying in this region of Truth for some time, they look upon the earth and return to it in order to accomplish their Divine Work—the creation of a new humanity. Thus the legend is completely transformed by the creative vision of the great Master into a cosmic symbol.