“Savitri and Satyvan”
Once a king and queen had a daughter, Savitri.
She was good and strong, gentle and pious.
She used to keep her word, and stood by those who were in need.
Then one day her father began to feel that it was time to think of her marriage.
She was now seventeen.
Savitri herself wanted to go to a pilgrimage to get directions as to who to marry.
Preparations were made. Grey-headed old courtiers were told off to watch over the princess, and she was to drive in a gilded carriage, surrounded by curtains of scarlet silk, through which she could see everything without being seen. A long row of men and elephants were to follow, carrying tents and furniture and food and a palanquin for Savitri to use when travelling in the forest. She was taken well care of.
They started early one starlit night. After daybreak they reached the edge of a forest beside a stream. There Savitri could bathe and stay the rest of that day. Next day they went on. At times they would encamp for a whole week at a place, and young Savitri would enter her palanquin every morning and have herself carried.
One day in the forest she saw a tall, strong young man. There was something about him that made her hold her breath. Savitri felt that he was just the right one for her; he might be a forester or he might be a king. In any case she wanted him for her husband.
She sped home to her father, and he bade her speak freely before him. “Have you determined where you will bestow yourself?” he asked. Savitri flushed crimson as she replied.
“Tell me all about this youth,” said her father.
“In a certain woodland,” said the princess, “we met a young man who is living the life of a forester. His father is a blind king who has been driven from his throne in his old age, and is living in the forests in great poverty. His son’s name is Satyavan.”
A councellor who was sitting there, at once held up one hand suddenly saying,
“Oh no! not he!”
The king looked at him anxiously.
“Why not?” he said.
“My daughter has wealth enough for two.”
“Well, it is not that,” said the sitting councellor; “but if Savitri marries him she will certainly become a widow, for Satyavan is under a curse, and twelve months from this day he is doomed to die.”
The princess turned very pale, and her father said to her,
“This is sad news, you must choose again.”
She said,
“No, dear father.
One gives one’s faith but once.
Having chosen Satyavan, I must face whatever comes to me with this man of my choice.”
Both the king and Narada felt that her words were true, so they sent for the young man and his father in the forest and announced the wedding.
After the wedding ceremonies the couple went away into the forest to live, and Savitri put away all the robes and jewels of a princess, and set herself to be a faithful and loving daughter to her new parents. But she could not forget the terrible doom that had been pronounced on her husband, and the date of his death. The dreadful moment drew nearer and nearer. At last, when only three days remained, the young wife thought she had best stay awake, and pray for her husband.
At last the fourth morning dawned. She went into the jungle with her husband,. As the hour drew near she suggested that they should stop in a shady spot. Satyavan gathered grass and made a seat for her. Then he filled her lap with wild fruit; and turned to his work of hewing wood. But very soon Satyavan came tottering up to her, saying, “Oh, how my head pains! ” Then he lay down with his head on her lap, and passed into a heavy swoon.
At this moment she became aware of a stately personage who was carrying a piece of rope with a noose at the end. He smiled kindly at Savitri. “My errand is not for you, child,” he said to her, stooping at the same time and fixing his loop of rope around the soul of Satyavan, that he might thus drag him bound behind him.
Savitri trembled all over as he did this, but when the soul of her husband stood up to follow, then she trembled no longer. She also stood up, with her eyes shining and her hands clasped, prepared to go with Satyavan.
“Farewell, child,” said the man with the noose, turning to go and looking over his shoulder; “do not grieve overmuch.”
Away he went, down the forest-glades. But as he went, he could distinctly hear the patter of feet behind him. Was she following him? He decided to soothe her grief by gifts. “Savitri,” said the strange figure, suddenly turning round on her, “ask anything you like, except the life of your husband, and it shall be yours. Then go home.”
Savitri bent low. “Grant his sight once more to my father-in-law!” she said.
“Easily granted!” said the man with the noose.
“Now, good-bye! This is not the place for you.”
But still she followed him.
“Another wish shall be yours!” said Yama.
“But you must go!”
Savitri then said,
“I ask for the return of my father-in-law’s wealth and kingdom.”
“OK,” said the man with the noose, turning his back.
But he could not shake her off. Boon after boon was granted her, and each time she added something to the joy of her new home, where she had lived for less than a year.
The man with the noose noticed it and said,
“This time ask something for yourself. Anything but your husband’s life shall be yours. But when this last request is given, that’s it.”
“Grant me, then, that I may have many sons, and see their children happy before I die!” said Savitri.
The man with the noose was delighted when she agreed to his term.
“Of course! Of course! A very good wish!” he said.
Savitri raised her head and smiled,
“A widow does not remarry!”
The man with the noose looked at her for a moment.
First he hesitated.
Then he stooped and undid the noose, saying, “It is a brave heart that follows the husband even to the grave and recovers his life from death itself.”
An hour later Prince Satyavan woke up with his head on Savitri’s knee, under the same tree where he had swooned. “I had a strange dream,” he murmured feebly, “and thought I was dead.”
“It was no dream, “said his wife, comforting.
“But the night falls. Let us hasten home.
” And so they did.
Very soon the father of the prince got back his old kingdom, and all of them could live well.
The man with the noose is the King of death. And Savitri means ‘inspiration’. By heeding forewarnings and doing her best, the newly wed woman could prolong the life of her darling husband.
