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Author's Note On The Poem
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 |
