Sri Aurobindo Ghosh is one of the greatest
personalities in modern India. He is a multifaceted genius. He
was a profound thinker and a prolific writer. He was essentially a nationalist, a yogi, a guru a scholar, a
philosopher, and above all, a great poet. He
gained a deep insight into Indian culture and civilization. His
creativity and inspiration came from his practice of yoga. He began his
public life as a political activist. It was he who pushed the agenda of
complete Independence of India from British rule. He was one of the most
distinguished spiritual leaders of India. As
a spiritual reformer, he introduced his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.
Savitri, an epic poem in blank verse, is
Aurobindo’s masterpiece. It is based on the story of the
Mahabharata. Here Ghosh expresses his mystic experiences. It is a means of
ascension. Its richness of imagery, beauty of expression, and sheer number of
memorable lines remind us of Shakespeare. But in terms of depth and width
of spiritual experience, it has no equal in the English language. Savitri is
the most valuable text ever composed. Sri Aurobindo tried to lift the
level of the poem higher and higher and that’s why Savitri was
published only after he left his physical body.
The story woven in this epic is based on the Mahabharata. This is
the story- There was a king named Aswapathy. He was the king of Madra. He was
childless. To have a child he worshiped gods and goddesses for
eighteen years. Simultaneously he performed a hundred thousand sacrifices. The
goddess Savitri became happy with him. She appeared before him out of
the sacrificial fire. She declared herself pleased. She said that his
desire to have an issue would be satisfied. She bestowed upon him a
daughter. As she was a gift of the goddess Savitri, Aswapathy gave her the name
of Savitri. She was beautiful like Laxmi. She was of golden colour and she had
heavenly beauty.
Over time, she became young. Her parents became anxious about her
marriage. But it was very difficult for them. She had so strong and brilliant
personality that no prince dared to come forward to ask for her hand. Aswapathy
was pained at this. And thus he asked her to go around the country and
choose her own partner. He sent her out to travel with an old minister as an
escort. Savitri wandered here and there for more than two years.
After completing her journey, she returned to her father's place. At that
time the great seer Narad was there. She disclosed her choice of Satyavan who
was the son of King Dyumatsen. Dyumatsen was living in exile because his
enemies had taken advantage of his blindness and driven him out of his
kingdom. Satyavan along with his family was living in a hermitage in the
forest. The young prince Satyavan was brave, intelligent, generous, and forgiving.
The parents therefore approved of her choice. But Narad disapproved of the
choice because he knew that Satyavan was fated to die after one year. But
Savitri was adamant. She said that one makes the choice once only. The parents
consented to her choice and she was accordingly married to Satyavan.
Immediately after marriage, she betook to the simple and hard life
of the hermitage where Satyavan lived. She was extremely happy to find Satyavan
as her husband, the man of her choice. But she could not for a moment
forget the dire prophecy of the great sage, Narad. She was preparing herself
for the great crisis.
On the fateful morning, Satyavan wanted to go to the forest to bring
fuel for the sacrificial fire. Savitri insisted on accompanying him to the
forest. In fact, she did not want to undertake the risk of letting him go
alone to face his death. She got permission. She argued that she wanted to see
the forest. They reached a certain place well known to Satyavan and stopped
there to cut wood. After cutting some wood, Satyavan complained of severe
pain in the head and Savitri offered her lap for him to rest his head.
After a short time, Satyavan fell asleep, and Savitri saw the God of Death
standing before her. He declared that he had come to take the life of Satyavan
and accordingly took it. Savitri followed the spirit of Satyavan separated from
his physical body and captured in the noose of the God of Death. She conversed
with Yama, the God of Death. Her conversation so pleased him that
he granted her several boons, the last of which was the restoration of the
life of Satyavan. Thus Savitri triumphed over Death as well as Fate and
returned to her hermitage.
Savitri is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful, and perfect cosmic
poem ever composed. Its range is vast - earth to heaven. It illuminates every
important concern of man. The theme is not merely Satyavan’s death; rather it
is the suffering, misery, and death. The death of Satyavan means the defeat of
Truth and the invasion of darkness. But Savitri armed by the power of her love,
struggles with Death and secures her husband. The Mother says that ‘…everything is there: mysticism, occultism,
philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of
creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what
destiny - all is there. All that nobody yet knows. You can find all the
answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained in clear words so
that spiritual adventurers may understand it more easily.’
Savitri is considered as a legend and a symbol. Sri Aurobindo exploited the
action for subtle and symbolic purposes. The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata
as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is one of the
many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Savitri is a goddess of the supreme. She
is a savior spirit. She is the light of love that defeats darkness and
achieves the recovery of Truth. She is the vanquisher of evil. She is the
symbol of power or shakti and love. Savitri
is the symbol of struggle, redemption, and the incarnation of the divine
mother. She is both the response and the resulting transformation. She
redeems the universe from the tyranny of Yama and restores to earth the
paradisal vision of life. But in her victory, there is an affirmation of the
spirit. There is the ascent from lower consciousness to the next higher level of
consciousness and this is a precondition for the progress of civilization.
There is continuous and upward progress in the human race.
Satyavan is the soul carrying
the divine truth of being within itself but descending into the grip of death
and ignorance. Aswapati is the Lord of Tapasya that helps us to rise from the
mortal to the immortal planes. Still, this is not a mere allegory. The
characters are not personified qualities but incarnations. They take human
bodies to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to divine consciousness and immortal life. The
symbolic significance of the poem is brought out by focusing on the development
of the inner life of Savitri. Commenting on the symbolic significance of the
poem, Sri Aurobindo remarked that “Savitri is an experiment in mystic poetry,
spiritual poetry cast into a symbolic figure.”
In Savitri, the central myth is the myth of freedom. This myth emphasizes the evolutionary view of human nature. It focuses on the soul’s ability to
experience infinitude and to attain freedom from a deterministic order of lower
nature. Thus the mythic conflict between Savitri and Yama not only reflects the
myth of individual freedom but also reflects the myth of social or
collective salvation. Savitri is also a cosmic epic as it denies private and
personal salvation as an end in itself. Aurobindo’s conception of evolutionary progress implies cosmic consciousness. Cosmic consciousness
concerns humanity as a whole.
Sri Aurobindo was one of the greatest mystics and visionaries of modern
history. It may be observed
that mysticism is embedded in Sri Aurobindo’s poems. He says that man should
transcend the conscious level and realize the super-conscious level through the
medium of yoga. The union with God can transform a person into a worthy human
being. Savitri is perhaps the
most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man’s mind towards
the Absolute. Like the two Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata,
Savitri, has a romantic inwardness and an insistent emphasis on the mystical. The marriage of Savitri and Satyavan
fits in with a definite stage in the spiritual evolution. Savitri is looking
for inward expansion of her spiritual energy. Satyavan is looking for transcendent power. They find the fulfillment of their quest in
each other. The two lovers were born to realize the words of the Divine
Mother. Together, they can assert the victory of love over death. His
mystical thought can illuminate the world and destroy ignorance and fanaticism.
It can also enhance the toleration level in an individual.
Sri Aurobindo revolutionized human thought and had a tremendous impact on people all over the world. He evolved a writing style
of his own that would be in line with his spiritual thought. Sri Aurobindo is a skillful craftsman in the use
of blank verse and felicity in poetic expression. He shows a
piercing and instantaneous insight into the heart of his subject. He
came under the influence of poetic movements of his time like Decadence and
Modernism. Sri Aurobindo’s monumental epic, Savitri, reflects the consummation
of the many poetic styles.
Savitri is an epic of
universal significance. In this context, he can be compared with Dante and
Milton. Like Goethe, he chose an ancient story from mythology and molded
it into a legend. It is concerned with the destiny of man and his relations
with the Divine. It is an inner drama, the inner epic of man. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar says that Aurobindo was not
merely a writer who happened to write in English but really an English writer.
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