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Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol is the poetic main work of Sri Aurobindo, composed in nearly 24000 lines in blank verse. It is based on the legend of Savitri and Satyavan in the Mahabharata, which was given a symbolic significance by Sri Aurobindo. In his epic poem he deals with numerous subjects and describes especially the spiritual paths of Savitri and her father Aswapati, striving to reach a higher stage of evolution. [1]
Sri Aurobindo composed his poem over a long period of time. At first he worked on the narrative of Savitri as such, with the first manuscript dating back to 1916. Around 1930 he began turning it into an epic with a larger scope and deeper meaning. It now became his major literary work and he continued to expand and perfect it until his last days. In 1946 some Cantos started to appear in print in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and in 1950 the First Part of the first edition was published. The remaining parts were brought out the next year, after Sri Aurobindo's passing. [2] Sri Aurobindo's disciple and secretary, the physician Nirodbaran, gives a detailed account on the genesis of Savitri in his title Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo. He describes the poet's long work on the epic and reports that there were “many versions, plenty of revisions, additions, subtractions, emendations from which the final version was made.” Referring to a letter from Sri Aurobindo, Nirodbaran also mentions that he used Savitri as “a means of ascension” by recording his personal experiences which went on developing and resulted in all those revisions. [3]
The underlying legend of Savitri and Satyavan is told in the Mahabharata where it has a length of 300 verses. Taking up this relatively short episode, Sri Aurobindo develops it into an epic poem of nearly 24000 lines with 12 Books and 49 Cantos. Thus, the original tale of conjugal fidelity is changed into a story of human liberation from Ignorance, Unconsciousness and Death through the divine grace descending on Earth in the form of Savitri. According to his own testimony, Sri Aurobindo is describing here his own spiritual odyssey and his efforts to reach a new, higher stage of evolution.
In the process he refers to a large number of subjects from the fields of history, geography, science, poetry and philosophy or treats the origin of the universe and humans. Moreover, he treats all kinds of yogic practices and especially the path of integral yoga. While the First Part (Books I-III) mainly focusses on the Yoga of King Aswapati, the Second and Third Parts especially deal with the meeting of Savitri and Satyavan, their intense love and Savitri's battle with Yama, the God of Death, when he comes to take Satyavan's soul and faces her indomitable resistance. [4]
There are various differences between the original story and Sri Aurobindo's version, which can be illustrated by the following examples:
In the legend Savitri is described as an exceptional girl of great beauty, like Shrī, the Goddess of Fortune herself, but she is not presented as a divine incarnation. In contrast, in Sri Aurobindo's epic King Aswapati prays to the Divine Mother that she may embody herself on earth, and Savitri, her incarnation, is described as a girl not only of rare beauty, but is also said to acquire comprehensive knowledge of many philosophies, sciences, arts and crafts.
Furthermore, in the legend it says that Aswapati feels distressed when he sees that his exceptional daughter remains unmarried since no prince dares to approach her because of her radiance. Therefore, the king asks his daughter to go out and seek a suitable companion herself. In comparison, Sri Aurobindo presents Aswapati as an accomplished yogi with a strong aspiration for a perfect life on earth, envisioning his daughter as the one who will realize this fulfilment. The king senses by intuition that she has not come alone, but that there must be a companion somewhere, destined to help her carrying out that mission, and for this specific purpose he sends her out. She spends a whole year on this journey, having manifold experiences and meeting various kinds of Rishis and seekers, until she finally discovers Satyavan in a forest grove. [5]
Sri Aurobindo believed that even the original tale had some deeper significance, although it got lost over time. He was convinced that some names give a clue to the true meaning of the story as revealed in his epic. Thus, Satyavan is derived from Sanskrit satya-vān, that is to say “one who carries the Truth”. As such he descends on earth, encountering its darkness. Sāvitrī means “the daughter of Savitṛ”, the Creator and creative splendour, the divine Grace in human form. Aswapati stands for aśva-pati, lit. the “Lord of the Horse”, which in Sri Aurobindo's interpretation means “Lord of the Force”, master of spiritual power, light and strength. Satyavan's father is Dyumatsena, from Sanskrit dyumat-sena, “the shining host”, which Sri Aurobindo interprets as the divine mind full of the rays of light. In the legend, the king is a blind man, exiled from his own kingdom due to certain circumstances, which in Sri Aurobindo's opinion refers to Dyumatsena's mind being temporarily exiled from his own kingdom of light and coming to the earth, blinded by Ignorance. In this way, Sri Aurobindo arrived at his own conclusions regarding the meaning of the legend and called his new creation “Savitri – A Legend and a Symbol”. [6]
Sri Aurobindo has written his epic poem in blank verse, which is a very flexible metre allowing manifold variations of cadence and rhythm. But K.D. Sethna, a poet and disciple of Sri Aurobindo, notes that the freedom of this metre “does not cut any modernistic zigzag of irregularity”. Sri Aurobindo would reject any kind of free verse without underlying and unifying rhythm. He further explains that Savitri adopts, with some adaptations, the iambic five-foot line of English blank verse as the most apt and plastic medium for this specific type of inspiration. He adds that independent text blocks with a kind of self-sufficient structure are characteristic of Sri Aurobindo's style, and states that his verses get a special sound and "mantric" force, because he is writing from intuitive planes beyond the mind. [7]
Sri Aurobindo's original text has been brought out as vols. 33 and 34 of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA) as well as various one-volume editions:
Auroville is an experimental township in Viluppuram district, mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, with some parts in the Union Territory of Pondicherry in India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa and designed by architect Roger Anger.
Satprem was a French author and a disciple of Mirra Alfassa.
Rod Hemsell is an educator and an author who lived in Auroville and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1968 to 1983. During this time he also travelled widely and spoke about Auroville and Sri Aurobindo's philosophy at centers and universities in India, as well as publishing articles and essays.
Kaikhosru Dhunjibhoy Sethna was an Indian poet, scholar, writer, philosopher, and cultural critic. He published more than 50 books. He was known by the diminutive Kekoo, but wrote his poetry under nom de plume of Amal Kiran.
Mother India is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram's originally fortnightly, now monthly, cultural review. It was started in 1948, the founding editor being K. D. Sethna, who continues as editor for over fifty years.
Nirodbaran or "Nirod" for short, was the personal physician and scribe of Sri Aurobindo, and senior member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Nolini Kanta Gupta was a revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and yogi, and the most senior of Sri Aurobindo's disciples. He was born in Faridpur, East Bengal, to a cultured and prosperous Vaidya-Brahmin family. While in his teens, he came under the influence of Sri Aurobindo, then a well known revolutionary fighting for independence against the British. When in his fourth year at Presidency College, Calcutta, he left a promising academic career and rejected a lucrative government job to join a small revolutionary group under Sri Aurobindo. In May 1908 he was among those arrested for conspiracy in the Alipore bomb case. Acquitted a year later, after having spent a year in jail, he worked as a sub-editor for the Dharma and the Karmayogin, two of Sri Aurobindo's Nationalist newspapers, in 1909 and 1910.
M. P. Pandit was a spiritual author, teacher and Sanskrit scholar. For several decades, he was a secretary of the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He wrote numerous books and articles on the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, on social and political thought, science, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and the classical texts and spiritual traditions of India.
The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a spiritual community (ashram) located in Pondicherry, in the Indian territory of Puducherry. The ashram grew out of a small community of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On 24 November 1926, after a major spiritual realization, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the sadhaks and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, "The Mother or La Mère", earlier known as Mirra Alfassa. This date is therefore generally known as the founding-day of the ashram, though, as Sri Aurobindo himself wrote, it had "less been created than grown around him as its centre."
Savitri or Savithri may refer to:
Savitri and Satyavan are a legendary couple in Hinduism. Savitri is a princess who marries an exiled prince named Satyavan, who is prophesied to die early. She saves her husband from the god of death, Yama, persuading the deity to restore his life.
The Advent is a quarterly magazine produced by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and is "Dedicated to the Exposition of Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future".
Sri Aurobindo Circle is an annual periodical of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram that was originally published in Bombay, but later from the Pondicherry ashram. It was established in 1945. During 1947 instalments of Savitri were published in it. As with other ashram journals it contained, besides the writings of Sri Aurobindo, essays and poems written by his disciples and devotees and by students of his thought.
Ambulal Balkrishna Purani was an Indian writer. He was a prominent disciple and biographer of Sri Aurobindo.
Mangesh Vithal Nadkarni (1933–2007) was a professor of English literature, and a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. He lectured on Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and vision
Mirra Alfassa, known to her followers as The Mother or La Mère, was a French-Indian spiritual guru, occultist and yoga teacher, and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name "The Mother". She founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and established the town of Auroville; she was influential on the subject of Integral Yoga.
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, world federalist, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers such as Vande Mataram. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British colonial rule, until 1910 was one of its influential leaders, and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.
Sati Savitri is a 1933 Indian telugu language mythological film directed by C. Pullayya. It was based on a popular stage play of Mylavaram Bala Bharati Samajam. It was the first film produced by East India Film Company with an estimated budget of ₹75,000 in Calcutta. The blockbuster film has received an honorary diploma at the 2nd Venice International Film Festival. The story is about Savitri and Satyavan from Mahabharata. According to the legend, Princess Savitri marries Prince Satyavan despite a curse that foretells his death within a year. She manages to get Yama, the God of death, to restore her husband to life.
Pondicherry is the capital city of The Union Territory of Puducherry and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in South India.
T.V. Kapali Sastry was an eminent Sanskrit scholar, author, translator and disciple of Sri Aurobindo.
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