Summary
Sāvitrī is a princess of the Mahābhārata who followed Yama, king of the dead, as he carried off her husband's life, and kept speaking to him until he gave it back. The sage Mārkaṇḍeya tells her story to Yudhiṣṭhira, eldest of the Pāṇḍavas, when he asks whether he has ever seen a woman like Draupadī. Mahābhārata, Vana Parva 291, Ganguli's translation.
Aśvapati, king of the Madras, had no child; he fasted and offered ten thousand oblations to the fire every day for eighteen years, reciting the verses of the goddess Sāvitrī, until she came out of the fire and promised him a daughter, and when the girl was born he named her after the goddess. When she grew up no one asked for her, so he sent her to choose her own husband, and she chose Satyavān, son of a blind king whose kingdom had been taken and who lived as an ascetic in the forest. The sage Nārada said: he has one defect that outweighs all his virtues; he will die a year from today. Her father said: choose another; she answered: death falls once, a daughter is given once, and I have chosen once; I will not choose twice. So she was married, put off her ornaments, dressed in bark, and counted the days.
With three days left she fasted for three nights, and on the last day went with him into the forest. As he cut wood his head ached, and he slept with his head in her lap; she saw a man in red, dark of hue, a noose in his hand, who said: I am Yama, and your husband's days are done. He drew out of the body a person the size of a thumb, bound it in the noose, and went south. She followed, and he said: go back; she said: where my husband is carried, I go, and spoke of friendship and right. Pleased with her words, he granted her a boon, anything but her husband's life; she asked for her father-in-law's sight, then his kingdom, then a hundred sons for her own father. She kept walking and speaking, and he said: ask a fourth; she asked for a hundred sons of her own by Satyavān. Then she said: you have given me a hundred sons and you take my husband; your word will be true only if he lives. So Yama untied the noose, gave him back, and promised him four hundred years.
Satyavān woke like a man from a long sleep; she carried his axe and supported him through the dark to the hermitage, where his father had regained his sight. She told the sages the five boons Yama had given her, and they said: through you the house of this king, which was sinking in an ocean of darkness, has been saved.
The idea their story turns on is that death is overcome by speech, not by force. Sāvitrī neither fights Yama nor tricks him; she walks beside him saying what pleases him, and each time he gives her something, until with the fourth boon she holds what cannot stand unless her husband lives, and he is bound by his own word. Her first decision, to choose only once, is what carries her to the end of the road.
We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, a reading proposed on the method, since the project's Hindu essay reads Yama's name but not theirs. Sāvitrī is the feminine "of Savitṛ", the sun-god who rouses and gives life, whose verse in the Ṛgveda is the verse the goddess Sāvitrī embodies. Savitṛ comes from the verb sū, to beget, bring forth, impel, with the agent suffix -tṛ. We read sū as Arabic sawwā: in Lane sawwāhu is he made it, formed it, completed its make and proportioned it, as in "then He fashioned him" of the making of man. So Sāvitrī is "she of the one who completes the making and gives life", and the story makes her that: born from the sacrificial fire by a boon, she brings her husband back to life and wins children for her father and herself. Satyavān is "possessed of truth", from satya, truth, and Nārada says the Brahmins named him so because his father and mother were truthful. We read it ṣadaqa, he spoke truly: ṣ answers s and d answers t.
Linguistic Root
| Form | Pronunciation | Meaning | Witness |
|---|---|---|---|
| सावित्री Sāvitrī | SAH-vi-tree | belonging to Savitṛ; the verse Ṛgveda 3.62.10 | Monier-Williams |
| सवितृ Savitṛ | SA-vi-tri | impeller, rouser, vivifier; the sun-god | Monier-Williams |
| सू sū | soo | beget, bring forth, enliven, impel | Monier-Williams |
| सत्यवत् Satyavat | SAT-ya-vat | truthful, possessed of truth | Monier-Williams |
Monier-Williams gives Sāvitrī as the famous verse of Ṛgveda 3.62.10, also called Gāyatrī, then as a daughter of Savitṛ, the wife of Brahmā, and the wife of Satyavān, "a type of conjugal love". The Mahābhārata says the goddess Sāvitrī came out of the sacrificial fire, and the king named his daughter after her because she came by her boon.
The Arabic reading of Sāvitrī reads the verbal root alone: sū, with s and w, answers sawwā, with s and w and a final weak letter. The t, r and final ī are suffixes: -tṛ for the agent, -ī for the feminine and the relation. Lane's sawwā is making, forming and completing, close to sū, "beget, bring forth", but it lacks the sense of rousing and impelling that Savitṛ carries. For Satyavān, ṣadaqa: ṣ and d answer the s and t of satya, and the q is left without a counterpart. The limit here is that Monier-Williams derives satya from sat, the participle of as, "to be", so the t is a suffix and only the s is root.
The Hindu essay reads Yama's name as al-yamm, the sea whose bottom is never reached, and yawm, the day of reckoning. In the story Sāvitrī tells Yama he is called Yama because he takes creatures by his decree, not by his whim, and calls him "lord of justice", so the story itself explains the name by judgment and decree.
Key Mythic Narratives
Sāvitrī in the Brāhmaṇas
The name is older than the story. Monier-Williams gives Sāvitrī in the Atharvaveda and the Brāhmaṇas as the name of Sūryā, daughter of Savitṛ, and notes that the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa calls Sītā, the furrow, "Sāvitrī". So the name of the princess who brought her husband back from death was first the name of the sun's daughter and of the ploughed earth.
Symbolic Reading
The story keeps an account of time: Nārada gives a year, Sāvitrī counts the days, fasts the three nights, and waits for "the hour and the moment"; death comes in the forest as the wood is cut, and the husband wakes when "the night deepens". Satyavān goes for wood "for the sake of the sacrificial fire", and Sāvitrī was born from the sacrificial fire. The story begins with fire and ends with the fire she means to light in the forest to see the way home.
The story also holds a picture of justice: for Sāvitrī, Yama is "the lord of justice" who gives every creature its due, so she does not ask him to break his decree; she asks for just things, and then shows him that what he has given cannot be done unless her husband lives.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Among the Greeks Orpheus goes down to the house of the dead with his lyre to bring back his wife Eurydice; the king of the dead is moved and gives her back on condition that he not look back until he is out; he looks, and she returns to death. Sāvitrī follows Yama with words, under no condition, and comes back with her husband. Both are the story of a spouse who follows the other into death and wins them back by art or by speech; in one the dead is lost again, in the other restored.
In Japan Izanagi follows his wife Izanami to the land of the dead; she tells him she has eaten its food and asks him not to look at her; he looks, sees her body rotting, flees and blocks the road with a rock.
Also among the Greeks, Alcestis dies in her husband Admetus's place, and Heracles wrestles Thanatos at her tomb and brings her back. In the story of Alcestis the wife ransoms her husband with her life; in Sāvitrī's, with her words.
In Sumer Inanna goes down to her sister Ereshkigal's house and dies, then returns, but may leave only with a substitute, and her husband Dumuzi is taken in her place. Sāvitrī does not enter the house, only walks the road towards it, and comes back with her husband and no substitute. All of these are forms of the descent to the underworld. Inanna's Descent.