162 Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo

12
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn
The Four Boons

Vladimir

THE story of Sàvitrã, as we first find it, is narrated in Vana

Parva of Mahàbhàrata by Màrkaõóeya in answer to
Yudhiùñhira's question about Draupadã: ßwas there any other
woman in the history of men who being dedicated to her
husband suffered so much as Draupadã?,û and the ùi says:
ßYes, there was one. It was Sàvitrã.û
It is interesting to note that »ùi Màrkaõóeya, according to
the Puràõas, himself had gained the boon of immortality from
Mahàdeva in the first manvantara of this kalpa. Having become
immortal, he went into a deep trance lasting for six
manvantaras, awaking only now in the seventh one of our time,
called vaivasvata. He is also known as the author of the
Màrkaõóeya Puràõa, which consists of the most magnificent and
profound mantras dedicated to the Divine Mother, called Devã
Màhàtmya. Màrkaõóeya, the immortal worshipper of øiva-
øakti, narrates here in Mahàbhàrata the story about Sàvitrã, the
incarnation of the Divine Mother, who conquers Death.
The story is about a princess of Madra, Sàvitrã, who was
born as an incarnation of the Goddess Sàvitrã, as a result of
her father, king A÷vapati, performing a severe penance over
18 years, wanting to have progeny. Being pleased with his
tapasyà, the Goddess bestowed upon him a boon of a birth of
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn 163

one daughter instead of his request for many (a hundred)

sons.
Sàvitrã was so beautiful in her youth that none could
approach her for marriage, being afraid of her splendour as
of a supernatural power, devakanyeti. So the girl had to find a
husband for herself. The svaya§varam was announced and she
went around the world in a golden chariot in search of her
mate. She travelled through all the kingdoms, lands and
forests, but there was none to match her divine qualities, except
Satyavàn.
When Sàvitrã announces that she has chosen Satyavàn,
Nàrad exclaims that she has made a wrong choice, a big
mistake, doùa. ßAlthough he is the best among men,û says
Nàrad, ßhe will die in one year from now, and nothing can be
done about it.û After hearing such shocking news, King
A÷vapati asks Sàvitrã to find another person to marry. But
Sàvitrã refuses, saying that she cannot choose twice, when her
heart and mind have once decided.
Thus she marries Satyavàn and moves into his house in
the forest. She serves him and his parents in every way without
complaint, remembering the words of Nàrad and counting
the days of his life. Neither Satyavàn nor his parents know
about it. The time goes by very quickly, and three days before
the destined day, Sàvitrã performs a mahàvrata tapasyà, standing
for three days and nights without sleep or food, like a pillar
in deep meditation. On the morning of the fourth day, after
completing the vow, she notices that Satyavàn is going to the
forest to cut wood. She also goes with him, after some debate
with him and his parents who want her to take rest after
performing such a difficult vrata, but she requests them to let
her go with Satyavàn and they cannot resist her will.
In the woods Satyavàn suddenly feels dizzy and lies down
with his head on her lap. He feels as if thousands of knives
are piercing his body and falls unconscious. Then she feels the
164 Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo

presence of someone else. She sees a dark figure with red

eyes approaching them. It is Yama, the God of Death, who
comes to fetch Satyavàn. He takes his soul out of his body
and goes away into his kingdom. But Sàvitrã follows him
without delay. She speaks to him in a perfect poetic Sanskrit,
surprising him with her high knowledge and deep
understanding of dharma. So the Lord of Death, being at the
same time the Lord of dharma, is immensely impressed with
Sàvitrã and bestows upon her four boons:
1. return of sight for Satyavàn's father, Dyumatsena and
return of the kingdom which he once lost,
2. one hundred sons for her father A÷vapati, which he
was aspiring for,
3. one hundred sons for Sàvitrã and Satyavàn,
4. and finally the life of Satyavàn.
In the morning Sàvitrã and Satyavàn return home and see that
the king Dyumatsena has got both his sight and his kingdom
back. Neither Satyavàn nor his parents knew what has
actually happened. Only ùis were aware, praising Sàvitrã
for her Divine Power of Love and Truth. This is briefly the
story, where a destiny predicted as inevitable was changed
by the determination of her will.

Sri Aurobindo's Interpretation of the Myth

Sri Aurobindo in the preface to his epic poem Sàvitrã gives us
a brief introduction to the legend as it was narrated in
Mahàbhàrata.
The tale of Satyavàn and Sàvitrã is recited in the Mahàbhàrata
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. Satyavàn is the
soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but
descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Sàvitrã is
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn 165

the Divine word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the

supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save;
A÷vapati; the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the
Lord of tapasyà, 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 Satyavàn, 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 and show him the way from his mortal
state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.

To better understand the symbolism of the story, we should

take a brief look into the Vedic metaphysics and especially
cosmogony, and to explore the symbolism of this story in
terms of Evolution as the ßdivine Event.û According to Sri
Aurobindo the Night of our consciousness, which is to be
illumined, is ßnot our beginning nor our end.û It was the
outcome of the Supreme's Involution as a gradual withdrawal
of His Aspect of Knowledge from His Aspect of Power. The
Night which lay ßacross the path of the divine Eventû is to be
crossed by the evolution of consciousness, building up the
consciousness of Another, as it were Þ the consciousness of
Individual.
The Myth of Sàvitrã is about the Event in the Evolution of
Consciousness which should end the time of Night and Death
and Suffering, and bring mankind out of Darkness into Light,
from Non-being into Being, from Death to Immortality. Sàvitrã
is the Saviour, the Divine Mother, who by herself plunging
into the Darkness brings the four Creator's emanations back
to the Knowledge of the Supreme in themselves, and, what is
even more important, a birth of a new being: the Divine Child,
the Supreme Individual.
166 Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo

The Vedic Cosmology

(øatapatha Bràhmaõa, Taittirãya âraõyaka, Bhadàraõyaka Upaniùad)

BEGINNING
ßAt the beginning was the Self (àtman). He was Alone. He
looked around and didn't find anybody else except himself.
He said: ßI Am . . . û But there was no other name to say, for
he was alone. . . . So He felt lonely. He wanted Another.û Þ
Bhadàraõyaka Upaniùad 1.4.1-3.

THE FIRST INVOLUTION

ßSo out of Himself, as it were, he cast all these worlds, sa imàn
lokàn asjata.û (Aitareya Upaniùad 1.1, etc.) It is only by denying
Himself and fully forgetting Himself, that He could start a
new life of Another. The Supreme Knowledge-Power appears
in this Creation as a gradual disappearance of knowledge
whereas the aspect of power continues to be present and
carries out the Creation. This was his first Involution. We call
it involution because it was out of him, where he didn't know
about himself anymore, outside his self-awareness, so to say.
According to the Mother's story, at the beginning of
Creation there were four Beings emanated from the Supreme:
Consciousness in Light, Bliss, Truth and Life. After refusing
to be one with the Supreme and deciding to be independent,
they fell into their opposites. So, there was a degradation from
Light to complete Darkness, from Bliss to Suffering, from
Truth to Falsehood, from Life to Death.
Death is therefore nothing but Life, Falsehood is Truth
and suffering is Bliss carried.

THE SECOND INVOLUTION

When the first Creation was done, it became as if unsteady,
adhruvam iva, says Taittirãya âraõyaka (1.23.8-9); so, in order to
make it stable, the Supreme had to enter it. He has penetrated
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn 167

Himself by Himself àtmanàtmànam abhisamvive÷a, and the

Creation became steady. From this point the Evolution takes
place.
What is evolving then?
1. It is He who has penetrated Himself by Himself and
is growing through His own Denial of Himself in order
to become Supreme Another. He is becoming an
Individual Supreme, a Prince Satyavàn. And this is the
aim of all Creation. So if this prince Satyavàn is to die,
then the creation will lose its meaning and purpose.
2. It is also He, who has become his first Cosmic Creation,
Nature (from his first Involution), which now is to
become the Manifestation of his immortal mind, vital
and body.
In the Mother's story, in order to repair the fall of these four
beings, so to say, the Supreme Mother, Aditi, delegated out
of herself the force of Love which has plunged into darkness
and thus has entered the first Creation. In the Vedas it is Agni,
the first avatàra, who lay down and hid himself within the
darkness. It is because of his presence within the Creation
that every creature is seeking after Knowledge and evolving
towards the Supreme.

Vedic Symbolism of the Story

Here I would like to briefly elaborate on the main characters
of the story, in the light of Vedic symbolism given by Sri
Aurobindo.
There are two Kings, representing the two kingdoms of
Knowledge and Power.
1. Dyumatsena Þ the Lord of the Shining Hosts, (lit. ßwith
the army of rays or luminous beingsû), the King of
Knowledge (the rays of light, gàvaþ, usràþ, in the Vedas
are the symbols of Consciousness in its aspect of
168 Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo

Knowledge) here, in the lower hemisphere, falls blind,

and thus loses his Kingdom. He has a son, Satyavàn, a
growing Soul of Man, a prince, a king to be, who
cannot live without the support of light and truth in
the Darkness of this Creation and therefore is to die
within a year. Nor as a prince has he any future, for
his father has already lost his kingdom.
2. A÷vapati is the Lord of Horse (a÷va, horse, in the Vedas
is a symbol of power, energy, force in opposition to
gauþ, cow or ray of light, as a symbol of knowledge:
the cow is to be in front of the horse, the Knowledge
is to rule the Power, according to the Vedic Vision).
Here in the lower hemisphere A÷vapati is involved in
tapasyà, concentrated spiritual efforts, dedicated to the
Divine Mother, Sàvitrã, ßgoddess of the supreme
Truth,û calling for Her to support his spiritual work
on earth with heirs. Otherwise his work has no future,
since he has no son to continue it.
3. Satyavàn is true but powerless in this darkness, for
Truth has lost its power and he needs support from
above.
4. The Goddess Sàvitrã, promising A÷vapati any boon he
likes, does not give him the progeny he asks (100 sons),
because she knows that without Dyumatsena first
regaining his sight and kingdom there would be no
future for A÷vapati, and all his endeavour would be
fruitless. The goddess actually fulfils his wish by giving
him a daughter Sàvitrã, who, by saving Dyumatsena
and his Kingdom of Knowledge, opens the opportunity
for A÷vapati, the King of Power, to have hundred sons.
Once this is achieved, she asks Yama a boon of 100
children for herself and Satyavàn (the symbol of the
Divine Race on earth), which is granted by Yama
without questioning, as inevitable after she has gained
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn 169

the three previous boons. And only now does she ask
for the Life of Satyavàn, which basically implies a
conversion of Death into its Origin: the Supreme Life.
We can understand these boons in terms of symbolic
action of the Divine Mother upon the four fallen Divine
Beings (according to the Mother's story of Creation):
(a) Return of sight and kingdom for Dyumatsena,
the Lord of Knowledge, could be seen as a symbol
of return of ßConsciousness in Lightû from the
state of Darkness;
(b) Hundred sons for A÷vapati, the Lord of Power,
is probably a symbol of a return of Bliss to its
Origin. In the story of Màrkaõóeya it is
mentioned that A÷vapati, being a perfect king,
loved by all his subjects, suffered a lot, sa§tàpam
upajagmivàn, from having no progeny, anàpatyam.
In order to recover from that suffering he
performed his tapasyà for 18 years. (It is interesting
to note that the world of bliss, ànandaloka, being
emanated from sat and cit is the world of the
multitude of souls, the world of eternal and
infinite becoming, we may say. In Puràõas it is
called mahar-loka or janar-loka, the world of Vast
or the world of Genesis.)
(c) Hundred sons of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn might be a
symbol of a conversion of the Falsehood into the
Truth. It is a symbol of the Supramental
Manifestation upon Earth, with all its multitude
of souls. Here Sàvitrã is becoming the Divine
Mother and all men are her children: psychic
beings.
(d) The Life of Satyavàn, the Soul of Man, will not
die; it is a symbol of conversion of Death into its
counterpart Þ the Divine Life.
170 Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother spoke about pre-Vedic and

pre-Chaldean tradition. The story of creation, for example,
told by the Mother is based on the knowledge of that pre-
historic tradition. The myth of Sàvitrã has also some of those
features, which cannot be fully understood within the Vedic
tradition. It is only within the most archaic images and symbols
of the oldest parts of the Veda that we can find a clue to these
symbols in Sàvitrã. Sri Aurobindo writes in the Secret of the
Veda: ßIn images of an energetic incongruity reminding us of
the sublime grotesque and strange figures that have survived
from the old mystic and symbolic art of the pre-historic world,
Vàmadeva describes the puruùa in the figure of a man-bull,
whose four horns are the four divine principles, . . .û (SV, 308)
ßFor all this creation has been, as it were, ejected into the
subconscient by the four-horned Bull, the divine Puruùa whose
horns are infinite Existence, Consciousness, Bliss and Truth.û
(SV, p. 307). We can clearly see the correspondence of these
four with sat-cit-ànanda-vij¤àna of the later Vedic and Vedàntic
tradition. These four horns of divine puruùa are perhaps the
pre-historic symbols of those four original divine beings,
mentioned by the Mother in her story of Creation. Infinite
Existence corresponds to Life in the Mother's story, and all
others follow the same order.
There are some interesting implications which follow from
this kind of identification. The order of these beings falling
into their opposites and the order of their recovery is the
same; it is: Consciousness, Bliss, Truth and Life. The Life or
infinite Existence (sat) is falling last, and it is being recovered
last. The Consciousness is falling first and is recovered first,
which is fully understood within the Vedic tradition.
The conundrum of the story regarding the third boon of
100 sons for her and Satyavàn is impossible to understand
unless we see a bigger picture. How could she ask for the
sons from Satyavàn, if the very life of his was not granted?
The Myth of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn 171

And how could He, the Lord of Death, give her such a boon,
if he refused to give her his life?
It is only when we know that the Existence, sat, is to be
recovered last, that we understand what has actually
happened. For, infinite Existence consists of all other aspects
of Consciousness, Bliss and Truth (Supermind) and cannot
come into existence without them being manifested first in
the world.
The Truth or Supermind, as the Divine Manifestation in
Matter (100 sons of Sàvitrã and Satyavàn), should be granted
before the infinite Existence can be effectuated. This was the
secret knowledge, which made the narration of Màrkaõóeya
seem irrational from the point of earthly wisdom. But from
the point of the Infinite it is a perfect account. It also suggests
that the whole Transformation will be fulfilled before it
becomes finally effective and visible. It is probably this which
makes Sri Aurobindo write about it in such a mysterious way:
A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind's inner character steal,
A charm and sweetness open life's closed doors,
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A Stealth of God compel the heart to bliss,
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.
In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a force of the Eternal's power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.
A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour,
And belief shall be not till the work is done. Þ Sàvitrã,
p. 55