Such is the Mahabharata 'legend'.
No summary or paraphrase, no attempt at translation, can do adequate justice to
the bareness and strength and utter self-sufficiency of the original. Not a
word is wasted, and as one reads the poem one feels that what needs to be said
has been said; one accepts the story as something primordial and permanently
significant like the Sun itself. There are other 'episodes'—the Nala and the Sakuntala,
for example—in the Mahabharata that have also won the
affections of many generations of men, but the Savitri stands apart even among
them, verily a star. "The 'story of Savitri' is the gem of the whole
poem", wrote Alfred Wallace, "and I cannot recall anything in
poetry more beautiful, or any higher teaching as to the sanctity of love and
marriage. We have really not advanced one step beyond this old-world people in
our ethical standards."
Savitri is presented by
the ancient poet as beauty, truth, goodness, and, above all, power incarnate.
She is the gift of the Goddess Savitri and the fruit of eighteen years' severe
austerities. She is so beautiful that like the Sun itself she keeps at a
distance would-be wooers. She doesn't speak an untrue word even in small
matters. She radiates goodness as a matter of course, and all benefit by it.
But shakti or power is what makes Savitri unique among the
heroines of legend and history. It is characteristic of her that she never
weeps. Satyavan weeps aloud thinking of his parents, Dyumatsena weeps thinking
of his son; Savitri does not weep—not when Narad speaks the cruel words, not
when Satyavan dies, nor when, after coming back to life, he breaks down at the
thought of his parents. Neither is it callousness, indifference, or want of
feeling; rather is it the measure of her stern purpose, her poised readiness to
face any eventuality whatsoever, her tranquil consciousness of her own
strength.
(Excerpt from
chapter ‘The Wonderful Poem’, Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri – A study of the cosmic
epic, Dr. Prema Nandakumar)
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