II         THE LEGEND    In the Mahabharata, the Savitri story is told in the course of seven cantos (291 to 297 in the Vana Parva). Aswapati, the King of the Madra, is pious, virtuous, high-souled, a good giver, the protector of his people, and therefore the well-beloved. But he is sorrow-stricken, being old and childless. For eighteen years he undergoes austerities, daily offering a hundred thousand oblations to the fire to the accompaniment of mantras in honour of the Goddess Savitri, who appears at last in her resplendent form and promises that a daughter of great beauty [kanyā tejasvinī) will be soon born to him.         Returning to his duties as a king, he lives as

        III         'THE WONDERFUL POEM'   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 Al

         XI         'THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER MIND'         Racing beyond the "circles of mortal mind" Aswapati heads towards "the far spiritual light". It is actually a glorious escape into freedom, for mortal mind, albeit it lords over its petty realms, is after all a prison. It may be that man's book of origins is in blissful Heaven, but his embroilment in Matter has been to his utter discomfiture:   Ourselves are citizens of that mother State, Adventurers, we have colonized Matter's night. But now our rights are barred, our passports void; We live self-exiled from our heavenlier home.104   Aswapati is determined to revi

III         'THE YOGA OF THE KING: THE YOGA OF THE SPIRIT'S FREEDOM AND GREATNESS'         Such is the 'Secret Knowledge' Aswapati has received from "timeborn men". He can attempt a bolder assay, a greater spiritual transformation, than the earlier movement of mere "soul's release" (Book I, canto 3). He knows now in fuller detail the long way to be traversed, the signposts, the turns, the clue. And so:         He found the occult cave, the mystic door       Near to the well of vision in the soul,       And entered where the Wings of Glory brood.. .24 He has cut the cord of limited mind that binds him to the earth-crust, and feels fre

  SECTION B   'THE BOOK OF LOVE'     I         'THE DESTINED MEETING PLACE'   The "destined spot and hour", however, draw close. Naught happens but has its time and setting in the preordained cosmic play. Savitri now approaches a region,         .. .of soft and delicate air       That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy,       A highland world of free and green delight       Where spring and summer lay together and strove       In indolent and amicable debate,       Inarmed, disputing with laughter who should rule.179   Sri Aurobindo's description of the 'other Eden', this 'demi-Paradise', recalls Milton's description of Para

      XI         SYMBOLISM IN SAVITRI   While Sri Aurobindo found the bardic story a piece of pure and austere sublimity, he felt that it could be rendered anew in the current idiom of our century in the light of his own spiritual quests, struggles and fulfilments. His basic thesis is that Felicity, if it is to come, must come here, here on earth, and even when the soul is undivorced from the body. If the many human instruments, mind, soul, emotions, works, could be god-inspired and god-directed, so could the body itself be. Mere asceticism is vain; inflicting on the body all sorts of punishment cannot lead to any easy escape. The body too is the house of the Spirit, and the body could

  VI         'NIRVANA AND THE DISCOVERY OF        THE ALL-NEGATING ABSOLUTE'         Even the self-finding of her secret soul and the joy, power and peace that well up in her as a result are but the first decisive stage in Savitri's Yoga. Two more trials, two more realisations, await her. She is yet to be shocked into—or seized of—the realisation that her sovereign secret soul has really a cosmic compenetration and comprehension, and also that it is at the same time supracosmic, beyond space and time, beyond all imaginable beyonds. Her secret soul is infinity, it is all infinities; lost in the transcendent, it is lost, and is still functioning here in phenomenal space-time; of the

  III         OVERHEAD AESTHESIS   Now all these overhead planes—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—can influence, each to the measure of its distinctive or sovereign power, our various activities or preoccupations at the mental or the below-mental—the vital and the material planes. If the resistance from the lower powers—matter, life (or the vital), mind is formidable, as it often is, the influence of the higher powers, the result of a chance or temporary descent of one of them to the lower planes, will be negligible or evanescent. But where the aspiration has been strong enough and sustained enough, the descent will yield more fruitful and lasting results. This is particu

II         'THE ISSUE'         In the second canto, entitled 'The Issue', we see Savitri very near to the mighty issue between Death ignominious and Life Eternal. Only a few hours, and the issue will be joined between Yama and Savitri. This is the crucial moment in her life. To draw back and leave Fate to its devastating work is out of the question. For, it is she in whom the Universal Mother has descended to save humanity from the blight of terrestrial bondage. To Savitri only one way is possible; that is, to go forward, to struggle, to dare Destiny, whatever the final outcome.         Sages have pronounced that Fate is inexorable; thus failure seems to be more likely tha