Savitri as a perfect shrine for the
God of Love is an extremely powerful metaphor, but it should not be taken in a
Johnsonian manner, lifeless and an algebraic equivalent, not even as a
descriptive simulacrum frozen in space and time. It should be taken, if at all,
as an architectural metaphor for the universe and the process of creation, as
is done in the case of ancient temples of
Savitri is not some phantom of delight, a moment's ornament, her eyes as stars
of twilight. She is far beyond what Wordsworth would see, “A Spirit, yet a
Woman too!”
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
She is beyond the Romantist’s imagination. Wordsworth should have just stopped
after the first line in the above.
Savitri is not Eve, though fairest of Creation, last and best of all God's
works, Milton’s Creature in whom excelled whatever can to sight or thought be
formed, holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet—because she can get lost,
defaced, deflowered, to death become devote!
She is beyond any epic description, classical or religious.
Savitri is not Sri or Lakshmi, goddess fair and beautiful, Vishnu’s consort.
She is not that hiraņya-varņā,
golden-hued, wearing silver and gold ornaments, resplendent, full of bliss, who
is of pleasant smile on her face. She is not Lakshmi who shines like gold, is
brilliant like the sun, who is powerfully fragrant, who wields the rod of
suzerainty, who is the form of supreme rulership, who is radiant and is the
goddess of wealth.
She is the Creator’s power of dynamism in the earthly world to bring
immortality to it.
Savitri is not a typal Goddess, but she is one who accepts mortal birth, who
undertakes and endures the travail of the evolutionary soul.
She is supreme Grace incarnate who comes here to establish divinity in the
terrestrial phenomenon. She is one who brings that creative power to the mortal
world, to this creation presently governed by death.
She comes here as the Observer of the Vow of the Lord. She comes as pativratā. In the story of the
Mahabharata narrated by Vyasa, Savitri is committed to the joyous husbanding of
the Truth, that in the evolutionary way this mortal creation be an expression
of multifold divinity.
She takes human birth in the tapasya of Aswapati, the king of Madra land. He is
issueless and retires to a forest and engages himself in the worship of Goddess
Savitri. Devout in nature and firmly established in the truth, everyday he
offers one hundred thousand oblations to the Goddess. Living a strict life and
observing all the vows of the sacrifice, he does arduous tapasya for eighteen
long years.
Goddess Savitri is pleased with Aswapati’s great devotion, by his
single-pointed dedication to the Truth. She grants him a boon. She tells him
that soon a radiant daughter will be born to him. She also tells him that the
boon has the sanction of Creator-Father Brahma himself. The birth of the
radiant daughter is therefore already marked by a high intention. It carries in
it the Will of the Supreme himself.
In the epic by Sri Aurobindo, Savitri comes to live with grief, to share the
mortal’s lot, to stay the wheels of doom, to confront death. This was the great
divine task she was engaged in. For that she made the sacrifice of her
suffering to the presiding Deity, surrendered herself completely to the Will of
the Supreme. Indeed, in it she attempted all and achieved all. In it she
received the most wondrous boon of divine life on earth.
Who is this Savitri? What is her role, what is her business? Tradition makes
her an unusual princess who wins back the soul of her dead husband from the God
of Death. We already have in her story a supernatural element describing the
most extraordinary event in the spiritual history of the earth. It therefore
becomes obvious that it is a significant myth reciting the prophetic
achievement of a woman in this death-dominated creation. If she is one who
bears in her womb the secret birth of divinity, if she is jananī, then surely she can’t accept the sorrowful infliction of
the death of her own child. She must become death-victorious, mrityu-vijayinī. Her one concern is
indeed to establish immortal birth in this mortality. The root sense of the
name ‘Savitri’ itself makes it clear to us so.
The Sanskrit word savitŗ means the
Sun-God, who is also the creator of the world. The descendent of savitŗ is therefore sāvitŗ, or as feminine sāvitrī.
In gracious answer to the invocation, is the incarnation of Sāvitrī. She brings
with her the dynamism of Truth and Light which no darkness can dim. There is
the infallibility of success in her action, an action in the high Will itself.
That shows how charged with spiritual connotations the word savitŗ is.
If the Sun-God or savitŗ is the
creator of this entire universe, we have then to understand why this world is
beset by the presence of Death. Which implies that the operative veil savitŗ has put on himself in the
pregnant circumstance of this Inconscience has to be removed by his own power
of illumination. After all, Death is also his descendent and therefore it
becomes his concern to deal with him. For that to happen, his power, who is the
Sun-Word, should come as Sāvitrī. But this happens only when the ground for her
descent is well prepared.
But how does it become the Sun-Word? Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter: “Savitri
is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This
incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past time when the whole
thing had to be opened out, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality.’ ”
This spiritually eventful story shows Savitri not only firm-minded. She is
shown as one having exceptional qualities, qualities which put her apart from
everybody around. In Vyasa’s narrative, Savitri is presented as a radiant
daughter, kanyā tejasvinī; she is
beautiful like a damsel of heaven, devarūpinī;
she is dhyānayogaparāyaņā, an adept
in the Yoga of Meditation; she is one who is learned in the lore of the
tradition, is fully conversant with the shastras, is an observer of difficult
vows.
It is obvious that the Story of Savitri is not just a social episode designed
to declare moral values. It actually enshrines the greatness of a woman’s love
for her husband even in the circumstance of death. It is even more than
that,—the Triumph of Love over Death.
It was this power that was brought down by Aswapati, the Lord of Life, the Lord
of Tapasya. He persuaded her, rather compelled her to take a mortal birth. She
condescended.