At the beginning of the Mahabharata
War Arjuna suddenly develops cold feet and throws away his weapon of conquest, the
mighty Gandiva bow. This conduct of his would never be acceptable to
The day of Satyavan’s death comes with a golden dawn. Savitri gets ready early
in the morning and worships Durga whose image was carved on a forest stone by
Satyavan himself. In fact it is her living presence there that had the power to
protect the place fully, the place where death was to occur. In Savitri
we have the following description of it: (p. 561)
Now it was here in this great
golden dawn
By her still sleeping husband lain
she gazed
Into her past as one about to die
Looks back upon the sunlit fields
of life
Where he too ran and sported with
the rest,
Lifting his head above the huge
dark stream
Into whose depths he must for ever
plunge.
All she had been and done she lived
again.
The whole year in a swift and
eddying race
Of memories swept through her and
fled away
Into the irrecoverable past.
Then silently she rose and, service
done,
Bowed down to the great goddess
simply carved
By Satyavan upon a forest stone.
What prayer she breathed her soul
and Durga knew.
Perhaps she felt in the dim forest
huge
The infinite Mother watching over
her child,
Perhaps the shrouded Voice spoke
some still word.
What prayer Savitri breathed at that crucial moment, when the world’s
evolutionary history itself was hanging in the balance, her soul and Durga only
knew. But about the power of the Stone Goddess we have in one of Sri
Aurobindo’s sonnets the following:
In a town of gods, housed in a
little shrine,
From
sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me,—
A living Presence deathless and
divine,
A Form
that harboured all infinity.
The great World-Mother and her
mighty will
Inhabited
the earth’s abysmal sleep,
Voiceless, omnipotent, inscrutable,
Mute in
the desert and the sky and deep.
Now veiled with mind she dwells and
speaks no word,
Voiceless,
inscrutable, omniscient,
Hiding until our soul has seen, has
heard
The
secret of her strange embodiment,
One in the worshipper and the
immobile shape,
A beauty and mystery flesh or stone
can drape.
The sonnet was written on 13 September 1939 just at the beginning of the Second
World War and is noteworthy in that regard also, when Sri Aurobindo had to
enter into it yogically, enter to alter the course of events in favour of the
Divine’s work. The poem is a vivid transcription of an experience the swift and
insightful poet had on an earlier occasion,—long ago when Sri Aurobindo was
still in
Such is the mighty living Goddess we see at work in the forest where Satyavan
is to die on the destined day, on the fateful, the epoch-ushering day which began
with the arrival of the golden dawn. Here is the crucial event of the day:
The sky was crowded with a throng
of gods
And golden Durga with sword in her
hand
Guarded the kingly tree since the
early dawn
And Satyavan and Savitri moved in
the peace
Of that rich forest, destiny’s
rendezvous.
Year is the body and Satyavan must
die
And three great times he uttered
the mantric name.
The noon was filled with the
creator’s shadow
And the still river watched the
motionless crane,
As if eternity had come to its end.
In the campanile of death tolled
the hour
And no more was there Savitri’s
Satyavan.
Eventually, at the noon hour, in that signal moment, Savitri won Durga’s
victory and
Happy life rushed in bird and beast
and tree
And on diamond haste ran dreaming
joys of men
And the rishis in the forest felt a
change
As though the past had vanished into
fire
Of the yajna kindled to make wide
the world.
Satyavan and Savitri tended the
flames,
Flames whose tongues would bear
expression of the true,
Hold in their leaping zest newborn
greatnesses.
Moon-lotuses bloomed for the
crimson bright
And Soma and Indra and Agni and
Vayu
Came in their auspicious forms to
celebrate
The birth of Savitr ̣in this
creation.