Let us look at the following passage again:

As in a many-hued flaming inner dawn,

Her life's broad highways and its sweet bypaths

Lay mapped to her sun-clear recording view,

From the bright country of her childhood's days

And the blue mountains of her soaring youth

And the paradise groves and peacock wings of Love

To joy clutched under the silent shadow of doom

In a last turn where heaven raced with hell.

Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.

“Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.” There is a remarkable coincidence of this line appearing as the 365th line of Savitri: 12 months, one year, 365 days, 365 lines to exactly come to this point.

The last line of the previous canto, Canto One, The Symbol Dawn, is “This was the day when Satyavan must die.” The divine Savitri has awoken to the reality of this prophecy and the human Savitri has now to get ready to meet the eventuality. She will do yoga and prepare herself to achieve what heavenly and wise Necessity has imposed upon her to achieve. This last line of the Canto is the 341st line in the Centenary Edition of Savitri. The line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” becomes 365th line in Canto Two, The Issue. That is, the destined day is the 365th day of the year, the last day. A Year is the body of Man and hence he having 365 days to live is notable, he passing through all the seasons of time, indicating the completeness of life at present.

Which means that, each line of Savitri is a day. The death is going to occur at the end of 365 days, at 365th lines of Savitri: “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.”

But there is a problem. This line is 366th line in the Revised Edition, interpretatively perhaps suggesting us that the Savitri-episode occurred in a leap year, making a leap in evolution. Possibly so. Could it be so? Can we pursue the issue further?

But the entire thing happened in a single ‘day’,—Savitri woke up, met love, met death, came back with the boons at its end. The ‘day’ is the ‘year’—from Dawn to Dawn. That is the time-frame of the epic, starting with the current Dawn and ending with the Dawn heralding the everlasting Day. The whole evolutionary episode of the past is set in the day that is setting; what is dawning is its future.

Numerologists should be interested in this wonderful ‘coincidence’ of 365 days and 365 lines. But the yogi-poet does not count and calculate to put lines in an arranged deliberate sequence, with the intention of bringing about such ‘coincidences’ in any planned manner. In a yogi’s hand things happen so, kind of naturally, automatically, even as there is the universal relationship between the objects and events in a deep occult way, a living harmony in its universal play and display.

If each line is a day to complete a year of 365 days, and if each ‘day’ is a ‘year’, then the 24,000 lines in Savitri will mean that the evolutionary process has been going on over a period of 24,000 days in terms of years. Does it entail something?

The creative movement in the Truth-Consciousness, the truth-rhythm, the Vedic ŗtam, is described by the Gayatri metre, having 24 syllables. So each syllable of the Gayatri Mantra corresponds to 1000 lines of Savitri, one-thousand being the figure of fullness, completeness. In it is the power of making actual that which it holds in its charge.

Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra, invoking the Light of the Supreme, parasya jyotih, is its representation in terms of the “auspicious form, varam rūpam” that must appear.

Can a competent numerologist throw more light, proper light than what is attempted here? It might be rewarding in its own way.

Apropos of this way of looking at “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate”, we have to first ask under what circumstanced did the editors change the line count in the Revised Edition of Savitri that came out in 1993? Is there any compelling reason for doing so? Specifically, why this critically important line, "Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate", became the 366th rather than the 365th line as in the Centenary Edition? Was this an editorial decision they made on their own, or was it the result of new research regarding Sri Aurobindo's actual intention?

But this is an awkward question to handle, landing one in a difficult situation! A dangerous question also! But let us trace the sequence. In Canto One, The Symbol Dawn of Savitri, we have the following text on p. 7 of the Revised Edition:

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,

Hoping her greater being to implant

And in their body's lives acclimatise

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:

It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;

It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

It trembles at its naked power of Truth

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

The 5th line here—“And in their body's lives acclimatise”—is the additional line which occurs in the Revised Edition of Savitri; with it the total number of lines in the first Canto becomes 342, as against 341 in the earlier editions. That would make our line—the line from Canto Two, The Issue we have been discussing, “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate”, as the 366th line of Savitri.

There is a reason to feel somewhat disappointed with it, with this change of count; the question “...why they changed the line count in the Revised Edition?” becomes pertinent. What should be 365, has become 366. Why? rather how?

The answer is simple and straightforward: No, their intention was not to change the line count. They have restored what was missed or dropped in the earlier editions; the new editors found a line that was missed by the earlier versions, including those which came out before the publication of Part One consisting of the first three Books of Savitri in September 1950, before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away on 5 December of that year; the remaining nine Books came out as Part II and Part III in a single volume in May 1951. This absence—of the relatable line in The Symbol Dawn—continued through the Centenary Edition, 1972, and its subsequent reproductions, until the Revised Edition reinstated it in 1993. So, unfortunately, that upsets our line count. But is that important? But if there is an occult-hermeneutic connection between 365 days of the year and the appearance of the line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” as the 365th line of the poem, if there is acceptable numerology pertaining to the deeper working of things, then our sensibility has reason to feel disappointed.

The second part of the question that has been raised here is more complex, with a complexity which could also include official as well as editorial approaches. It is asking “…why this critically important line, ‘Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate’, became the 366th rather than the 365th line as in the Centenary Edition? Was this an editorial decision they made on their own, or was it the result of new research regarding Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention?”

A part of the answer is already present in what is just said. Regarding “Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention”—what can anyone really say, or should say about it? His “intentions” belong to another domain altogether and his instruments of knowledge are of a different order. There are ranges of faculties beyond our mind or manas or Buddhi and they come into play when one leaves behind the limited faculty of reason so dear to us, dear to such an extent that it makes us unreasoning and unreasonable. We have to understand our limitations and the small scope of the possibilities vis-à-vis our post-human destinies. Therefore instead of talking about Sri Aurobindo’s “intentions”, it is preferable to observe not dumb but deep and respectful silence as far as the aspect of revising Savitri is concerned; revising Savitri is beyond our capacity, altogether beyond us. But if the line was simply missed by the earlier team, and yet what was printed during Sri Aurobindo’s time as the text was a result of having been read out to him at every stage of its composition and publication, then would that not amount to his tacit approval of things as they were presented to him? What does one really do in such a situation? Does one go by what Sri Aurobindo heard and passed, or go by what he wrote or dictated but got left out by others? Each has its own set of uncertainties, and we become helpless with our mental or so-called objective-rational approaches. But one thing is certain. Absolutely no background is given about the present passage as it existed in earlier draft or drafts. About how this passage developed through different stages we have no indication, no idea, no background—we are simply told the line was “omitted”. In fact this hush-hush manner of doing things makes the whole Revised Edition decidedly suspect. Instead of introducing changes in such a terrific hurry, giving no chance for others to look into these matters, the archival team should have compiled its findings in a systematic way and made them available to the researchers of the epic. By mixing up the roles of researchers and editors it has done great disservice to the cause of Savitri. The saddest part of the whole affair is, there is presently no scope if a new set of editors should wish to have another look at the composition of Savitri. The doors for them are effectively shut which, it is hoped, will not be so for ever. But immediate prospects seem to be rather dim. We do not know in what way the doors will be opened tomorrow.

In the absence of authentic factual details, the best for us is to go by the Centenary Edition and take “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” as the 365th line.