Savitri Study

VOLUMES 33 and 34

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO

© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997

Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department

Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry

PRINTED IN INDIA

Savitri

a Legend and a Symbol

The Tale of Satyavan and Savitri

                    THE tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata 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. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, 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 Satyavan, 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.
– Sri Aurobindo  

Publisher’s Note

The writing of Savitri extended over much of the later part of Sri Aurobindo’s life. The earliest known manuscript is dated 1916. The original narrative poem was recast several times in the first phase of composition. By around 1930, Sri Aurobindo had begun to turn it into an epic with a larger scope and deeper significance.

Transformed into “A Legend and a Symbol”, Savitri became his major literary work which he continued to expand and perfect until his last days. In the late 1940s, when his eyesight was failing, he took the help of a scribe and dictated the extensive final stages of revision.

Separate cantos started to appear in print in 1946. Part One of the first edition was published in 1950. The next year, after Sri Aurobindo’s passing, the rest of the poem was brought out in a second volume.

In the second edition (1954), Sri Aurobindo’s letters on Savitri were added. They are omitted from the present edition and included in Letters on Poetry and Art.

The present text is that of the fourth (“revised”) edition which came out in 1993. Each line has been checked to eliminate any unintentional discrepancies between the final manuscript or dictation and the printed form of the poem.