Savitri and the Lord of Death

In the Kamyaka forest, in the bitter middle years of the exile, the Pandavas sat one evening with the deathless sage Markandeya - the rishi who had outlived ages of the world and seen universes fold and unfold like cloth on a weaver's loom. The fire burned low between the great trees, and the talk had turned, as it so often did in those years, to sorrow.

Yudhishthira's grief that evening was for his wife. Draupadi had been staked and lost in a rigged game of dice, dragged by the hair into the assembly hall at Hastinapura before kings and elders who said nothing, and mocked while her own husbands sat bound by their vows and could not move. And when the exile was pronounced, she had not asked to be left behind. She had wound up her hair, put on the bark and ochre of a forest-dweller, and walked into the wilderness beside them without a single word of complaint.

"Tell me, holy one," Yudhishthira said, and his voice was low. "In all the long roll of your years, has there ever been a woman to match Panchali in devotion? Has any wife ever borne so much for husbands who could do so little to shield her - and borne it without bitterness?"

Markandeya was quiet for a moment, watching the embers. Then he smiled the smile of an old man who has been waiting a long while for exactly this question.

"Listen, son of Kunti," he said. "I will tell you of a princess who did not merely endure her husband's fate. She unmade it. She walked behind Death himself, down the one road that nothing living is meant to walk, and she argued with the Lord of the Dead until he set her husband's soul back into his body with his own hands. Her name was Savitri. As long as men and women tell stories around fires such as this one, her name will be the word for what a faithful, clear-eyed heart can accomplish."

Draupadi came and sat near the fire as the sage settled into the telling. The brothers leaned in. And the great forest went still in the way that forests do when a true story is about to begin.

There was once (Markandeya began) a king of the Madra country named Ashvapati - a ruler famed for his self-restraint, his charity, and his unfailing kindness to his people. He was a king any land would have prized. But the years passed, and his hair began to silver, and he had no child. No son to follow him, no daughter to brighten his halls. The lack of an heir sat upon him like a sickness no physician could name.

So Ashvapati turned to penance. He took strict vows, ate little, kept the fasts, and morning and evening for long years made offerings into the sacred fire with the gayatri prayer upon his lips, calling upon the radiant goddess Savitri, she who is the power and splendor of the Sun. Eighteen years he did this, without slackening and without despair.

At last, pleased by so steadfast a worshipper, the goddess Savitri rose shining out of the sacrificial flames and stood before the king in a body of light. "Ashvapati," she said, "I have watched your discipline and your purity, and I am content. Ask of me the boon your heart has carried all these years."

The king bowed to the ground. "Goddess, I have wished for nothing in all this time but children - many sons to continue my line and serve the law, for that is a man's debt to his ancestors."

The goddess regarded him with a kindness that held something else folded inside it. "I have already spoken of this matter to Brahma, the Grandfather of the worlds," she said. "By his word and my grace, a daughter shall be born to you - a daughter of surpassing splendor. Do not grieve that it is not the host of sons you asked for. Receive her gladly. She is my gift."

The king pressed his palms together and said, "Let it be soon, goddess." And the light withdrew into the fire, and the boon was sealed.

In time the eldest of Ashvapati's queens conceived, and a girl was born, lotus-eyed and luminous as the dawn. Because she came by the grace of the goddess of the Sun, and because the king had won her through that goddess, he named the child Savitri.

The girl grew, and as she grew it became plain that she was no ordinary princess. She was beautiful past the common measure - so beautiful that people said a goddess had come down to walk among them. But more than her beauty, it was her bearing that struck those who met her: a stillness, a clarity, a strength of mind that seemed to look straight through the small vanities of the court. She was learned in the scriptures, generous to the poor, fearless before her elders' questions, and entirely her own.

And that was precisely the trouble. The princes who by rights should have courted her did not come. They looked at her splendor and her composure and felt themselves grow small, and they stayed away. The seasons of her youth went by, and Ashvapati, watching his radiant daughter sit unmarried, grew uneasy, for a father owes it to dharma to see his daughter wedded.

At last the king did a thing seldom done. He called Savitri to him and spoke gently. "Daughter, the time for your marriage has come and gone, and no man has asked for you. The fault is not yours - it is that your light dazzles them. So I give the choice to you yourself. Go out into the world with a fitting escort. Travel to the forests and the hermitages and the courts of kings. Look upon men with your own clear eyes, and choose for yourself a husband worthy of you. Whomever your heart settles upon, I will honor your choice."

Savitri bowed to her father's feet, neither shy nor eager, only grave. A golden chariot was prepared, and aged counselors of the court were sent with her. And so the princess of Madra set out, passing through pleasant woodlands and along sacred rivers, visiting the ashrams of the great rishis and the seats of kings, searching not for the richest crown or the handsomest face, but for the one man her settled, deliberate heart would name as its own.

While Savitri was still abroad on her search, it happened that the divine sage Narada came to the court of Madra and sat in conversation with King Ashvapati. They were speaking together when the dust of a returning chariot rose on the road, and Savitri herself came in, bowed to the feet of the heaven-wandering sage and to her father, and stood before them.

"She has been searching for a husband," the king explained to Narada. "Daughter, tell us. Whom have you chosen?"

Savitri answered without hesitation, her voice level and sure. "In the forest country there was once a king of the Shalvas named Dyumatsena. In his old age a sickness took his eyes, and while he was blind and helpless an old enemy seized his kingdom from him. So the blind king went into the wilderness with his faithful wife and their infant son, and there in a hermitage among the ascetics he has raised the boy in truth and discipline. That son is now grown. His name is Satyavan - the truthful one - and him I have chosen in my heart for my husband, and no other man living."

Narada's face, which had been pleasant, grew suddenly grave, and a hush fell over the hall. "Alas," he said. "Alas, princess, you have done a thing in ignorance, and great is the misfortune of your choosing."

The king started forward. "Holy one - is there a fault in this Satyavan? Is he not generous? Not brave? Not handsome?"

"He is all of those," said Narada. "He is bright as the sun and patient as the earth; truthful, so that he was named for the truth; brave, learned, and beautiful, and he honors his blind father like a god. Search his character how you will - I can find no flaw in him."

"Then where lies the misfortune?"

Narada's voice dropped. "In one thing only, but it is the thing that undoes all the rest. I have seen the thread of his days. From this day, one year hence, Satyavan will give up his body and die. That is his fate, and it is fixed."

The whole court seemed to stop breathing. Ashvapati turned in anguish to his daughter. "Did you hear, child? You have given your heart to a man who has but one year left to live. For your own sake, set this choice aside. Go out again. Choose another."

Savitri did not flinch, and she did not weep. When at last she spoke, it was with the same composed certainty she had shown from the first, and her words silenced even the sage.

"Father," she said, "the lot of a daughter is to be given but once. A father gives her once; she chooses once; her hand is bestowed once. Once a thing is given, can it be taken back and given again? I have already chosen Satyavan in my heart. Whether his life proves long or short, whether he is full of virtue or empty of it - and he is full of it - I have made him mine, and I will not name him and then name another. Out of the heart the word comes once; after that the deed must follow."

Narada looked at the princess for a long moment, and the gravity in his face slowly gave way to something like wonder. "King Ashvapati," he said at last, "the mind of your daughter is firm. She will not be turned from Satyavan, and in truth there is no man more deserving of the merit that is in her. Let the marriage go forward. I withdraw my objection."

The king bowed his white head. "Whatever you, who see all paths, advise me to do, that I will do. I dare not refuse."

"May good attend the giving of your daughter," said Narada. "I take my leave." And rising into the air, the sage departed for the world of the gods, leaving the court of Madra to its preparations and its dread.

So King Ashvapati went in procession into the forest hermitage where the blind king Dyumatsena sat beneath an old tree. Dyumatsena said only, "I feared the hardship of our forest life would be too much for a king's daughter." But Savitri answered that hardship and ease are alike to one who has chosen her path with open eyes. And so, with the rites performed and the fire as witness, Savitri the princess of Madra was wed to Satyavan, son of the blind king of the forest.

When her father's retinue had returned to Madra, Savitri took off her silks and jewels with her own hands and gave them away. She put on the bark and ochre of the forest ascetics, and from that day she lived as one of the hermitage family - rising before dawn, tending the sacred fires, gathering and cooking the forest fare, and serving her blind father-in-law and mother-in-law as a true daughter serves, with patience that never frayed. By her gentleness she won the old king and queen, and by her tender heart she won Satyavan, who loved her more with each passing season.

But all the while, beneath the calm surface of her devotion, Savitri carried Narada's words alone. She had told no one - not the blind king, not his queen, and least of all Satyavan himself. She held the date inside her the way one holds a stone sewn secretly into the hem of a garment: invisible to everyone, but felt at every single step. She counted the days as they fell away. She measured the year as it thinned.

Satyavan never understood why his wife watched him as she did - why her eyes followed him to the edge of the clearing each morning and were waiting at the edge of the clearing each evening; why she seemed to be memorizing him: the swing of his axe, the sound of his voice carrying back through the trees, the shape of his shadow falling across the doorway at dusk. He took it for the fondness of a new wife, and he was tender with her in return. He was not wrong that it was love. He only did not know that it was love keeping a terrible accounting.

And so the seasons turned through the forest - the rains, the cool, the heat - and the year that Narada had measured drew steadily, silently, toward its close.

When Savitri's count told her that only four days remained before the appointed day - the day Narada had named for her husband's death - she undertook a vow of the utmost severity. It was called the Triratra, the vow of the three nights: three full days and nights she would stand fasting, taking neither food nor sleep, holding herself upright in penance and prayer, asking the gods for the life of her husband.

When the blind king Dyumatsena heard of it, he was troubled and protested. "Daughter, this is a hard and dangerous vow. To stand without food or rest for three days and nights is a terrible austerity. Why lay so heavy a burden on yourself?"

Savitri only joined her palms and answered softly, "I have set my heart on this vow, father. Please give me your blessing and do not forbid me, for a vow once resolved upon must be kept." And the old king, hearing the steadiness in her, relented. "I cannot tell you to break a vow," he said. "Do as your heart bids, and may it bring good."

So Savitri stood. Three days and three nights she remained on her feet, unmoving as a carved post, fasting and praying, her whole being bent upon the one petition. The household watched her in awe and in fear, for they could not understand what dread had taken hold of her. They did not know that she stood between her husband and his death, planting herself in the road of fate by the only means she had.

When the third night had passed and the morning of the fourth day - the appointed day itself - broke over the forest, Savitri completed her vow at last. She made the morning fire-offerings, and only then did she take a little food to break her long fast, for the rite required it. Then she went and bowed at the feet of the assembled brahmins and her elders, and they, seeing her devotion, blessed her and said, "May you never know the grief of widowhood." "So be it," Savitri answered in her heart, holding the blessing close, for that was the very thing for which she had starved and watched and prayed.

That morning Satyavan took up his axe and his basket, for it was his daily task to go into the deep forest to gather firewood and fruit for the hermitage. And Savitri, who in all the long months of their marriage had never once asked to go with him, came to him now and asked.

"Today let me come with you into the forest," she said. "Do not refuse me. I cannot bear to be parted from you today."

Satyavan laughed gently. "You have never come into the wild woods before, and the way is rough and the thickets are thorny. Besides, you have only just broken a three-day fast and your body must be weak. How will you walk so far?"

"I am not weak," she said, "and I am not tired, and my heart is set upon coming. Please do not deny me."

Then Satyavan said, "If your heart is set on it, then I will take you - but only with my parents' leave, for I will not do even a small thing without their permission." So he went to his blind father and mother and asked. Savitri added her own plea, saying she had served them faithfully for a year and had never asked any favor, and that she longed to see the blossoming groves of spring. The old king, moved, said, "Since the day her father gave her to us, I do not recall Savitri ever asking us for anything. Let her have her wish. Go, child, but take care of my son."

So the two of them set out into the forest, Savitri at her husband's side. To Satyavan's eyes the day was beautiful - trees in flower, streams running clear, peacocks calling among the green - and his face was full of an ordinary, unsuspecting joy. But Savitri walked as one cut in two. With one half of herself she smiled and answered him; with the other she watched the sun climb the sky and counted, and never let her husband out of her sight, for she remembered Narada's words, and knew that this road led to the place where her whole year had been pointing.

Deep in the forest Satyavan gathered fruit until his basket was heavy, and then he set himself to cutting wood. He chose a dead tree and swung the axe, and the steady ring of the blade carried through the trees while Savitri sat near him, watching, her heart tightening with each stroke as the morning wore toward noon.

Then, in the midst of his labor, Satyavan paused. The axe slipped a little in his grip. He pressed the back of his hand to his brow. "Strange," he said. "All at once there are pains piercing my head, like needles driven into it. And my limbs have gone heavy. I feel a great weariness coming over me, and my heart is laboring. I think I must lie down a little while."

Savitri rose at once and came to him. She sat upon the ground and gathered him to her, and he laid his aching head in her lap and closed his eyes. And Savitri, holding him, knew with a terrible certainty that the hour Narada had foretold a full year before had come at last, here, in this dappled green clearing, with the basket of fruit beside them and the half-cut tree standing over them.

She felt his breathing slow and the warmth begin to leave him. And the ordinary sounds of the forest - the doves, the running water, the wind in the high leaves - went on exactly as before, indifferent, as though a good man were not dying with his head in his wife's lap on a bright spring morning. Savitri did not cry out, and she did not weep. She held her husband still, steadied her own breath, and waited, watching the air, for she remembered who Narada had said would come, and she meant to be ready.

Then Savitri saw what no living eyes are meant to see. Standing a little way off was a figure she had never beheld and yet knew at once - a being tall and of a dark, gleaming hue like a storm cloud, robed in red, a bright crown upon his brow and a small noose of light coiled in his hand. His eyes were red, and there was about him a stern and terrible majesty. He was looking down at Satyavan.

Savitri laid her husband's head softly upon the grass and rose to her feet, her hands joined, her heart shaking but her voice steady. "You are no ordinary being," she said. "You are some god, for so your form tells me. If you are willing, tell me who you are, and what you mean to do."

The dark figure regarded her with something almost like respect, for it is given only to the greatest in austerity to see him and to speak. "Savitri," he said, "you are devoted to your husband, and you are rich in penance, and so I will answer you, where to others I would say nothing. I am Yama, the Lord of the Dead, the king of justice. Your husband's allotted span is spent, and his life is ended. His soul is too righteous to be fetched by my servants, as ordinary souls are fetched. Therefore I have come for it myself."

And Yama bent over the body of Satyavan, and with a sure and gentle motion he drew forth from it the soul - a being no larger than a thumb, bound in the noose of light, fast in the Lord of Death's control. At once the breath left the body utterly; its warmth fled; the beloved frame that Savitri had served and loved for a year lay still and empty upon the forest floor, lovely no longer, only quiet.

Then Yama turned his face toward the south, the quarter of the dead, and began to walk away down the road that the living do not travel, carrying the soul of Satyavan with him. And Savitri, leaving her husband's empty body behind her on the grass, gathered up her courage and her resolve, and followed.

After a time Yama became aware of the soft footfall behind him, and he turned. "Go back, Savitri," he said, not unkindly. "You have come farther than the living are permitted. Turn around and go perform the funeral rites for your husband's body; that is the last duty a wife may do. You have followed me as far as devotion can follow. The rest of this road is his alone."

"Where my husband is taken, there I must go," Savitri answered. "That is the eternal law - it is older than this road of yours. But I will not quarrel with you, lord, who are the very Lord of Dharma. Let me say only this: the wise teach that to walk seven steps beside another is to become that one's friend, and friendship gives the right to speak. I have walked far more than seven steps with you. So speak I will - and you, who love righteousness, will surely not refuse to hear words spoken in righteousness."

And then Savitri spoke - not pleading, but reasoning: on the duty of the strong toward the weak, on the good who do good not for reward but because goodness is the very breath of their being, on how the righteous become a refuge even to strangers. Her words were so finely turned that Yama, the king of justice himself, was moved and delighted.

"That was beautifully and rightly spoken," said Yama. "For the wisdom of your words, ask any boon you wish - any boon at all, save only the life of Satyavan, which I cannot give."

"Then restore the sight of my husband's blind father, King Dyumatsena," said Savitri at once, "and let him be strong and radiant as fire again."

"Granted," said Yama. "It shall be as you say. Now you are weary; turn back." But Savitri did not turn back, and she spoke again, of how the company of the good is never wasted and never wearies, of friendship and the law. And again Yama, delighted, granted her a boon, and she asked that her father-in-law's lost kingdom be restored to him. "Granted," said Yama, "he shall have his throne again." Still she walked on, and still she spoke, of mercy and of dharma, until a third time the Lord of Death offered her a boon, and she asked that her own father Ashvapati, who had no sons, be given a hundred sons to continue his line. "It is granted," said Yama. "A hundred sons he shall have. Now surely you have enough; the way is long; turn home."

But still Savitri followed, and still she would not turn back, and still her words came - on truth, on patience, on the friendship of the righteous, each saying truer and finer than the last - until at length Yama, more pleased than he had ever been by any mortal, said, "Your speech grows ever more pleasing to me, and ever more in keeping with the law. Ask now a fourth boon, daughter, an unequaled boon - anything you desire - and then return."

This time, in his pleasure, the Lord of Death set no exception upon his offer.

"Then I ask this," said Savitri, and her voice was perfectly calm. "Let there be born to me a hundred strong sons of my own body, to continue my husband's line and mine."

And Yama, in the warmth of his goodwill, answered, "You shall have a hundred mighty sons, who will be your joy. Now, daughter, turn back; you have come too far."

But Savitri stood still upon the road of the dead and did not move, and a small smile touched her lips. "How shall I bear a hundred sons," she said softly, "when you have taken from me the husband by whom alone I could bear them? You have granted that I shall have sons of my own body, born of Satyavan. I ask no new boon. I ask only that you make true the boon you have already given. Restore my husband to me, for without him your gift is empty, and the king of justice does not give an empty gift."

The road went very quiet. Yama looked at the princess of Madra and understood that he had been led, step by gentle step and word by righteous word, into a place from which there was only one way out. For a truthful god cannot unsay a boon once spoken, and a chaste wife cannot bear sons to a husband who is dead. The accounting had but one solution, and Savitri had built it herself, beam by beam, while seeming only to converse.

Then Yama laughed - a sound that the silent road of the dead had perhaps never heard before - and there was no anger in it, only a deep and astonished delight. "So be it, you best and most steadfast of women," he said. And he loosened the noose of light and set the soul of Satyavan free with his own hands.

"Here, blessed lady, is your husband, released," said Yama. "Take him. He shall recover and be well. Together you shall live four hundred years; you shall have your hundred sons, mighty kings and the fathers of kings, and they shall bear your name down the generations. Your father too shall have a hundred sons. You have conquered me, Savitri - not by force, for none can, but by truth and devotion and the law, which are the only things that can. Go now in joy." And the Lord of Death bowed his dark head to the faithful wife and went his way to his own city, and the road of the dead was empty again.

Savitri turned and went back swiftly through the forest to the clearing where her husband's body lay upon the grass. She sat down and lifted his head once more into her lap. And as she held him, the warmth came stealing back into his limbs, and his breath returned, and Satyavan opened his eyes as a man waking from a long and heavy sleep. He looked up at her and said, "I have slept too long. Why did you not wake me? And there was a dark person - a being who seemed to be drawing me away with him. Was it a dream, or was it real?"

"You have slept long indeed, in my lap," Savitri said gently, "and the lord who came for you has gone away again. You are well now. Rest a little, and then let us go home, for the night is coming." She did not yet tell him all that had passed; that was for later. She helped him to his feet, and supporting him, the two of them walked back through the darkening forest, the moon rising to light their way.

Meanwhile, in the hermitage, a wonder had occurred. The blind king Dyumatsena had suddenly recovered his sight, seeing his wife's face for the first time in long years. And before the night was out, messengers came from the Shalva country: the usurper who had seized the throne was dead, and the people were calling for their rightful king to return. The boons of Yama were unfolding one upon another, exactly as he had spoken them.

When Satyavan and Savitri came into the firelight, alive and together, and Savitri told the whole story, the hermitage that had been heavy with dread broke into joy. In time Dyumatsena reclaimed his kingdom; Savitri bore her hundred sons and her father his; and the couple lived out their long, full span together. So a single woman, by her steadfast love and her clear, righteous mind, lifted up her husband, her two families, and two kingdoms, and won back life itself from the hand of Death.

Markandeya let the fire's silence settle, then looked across the embers at Draupadi, sitting among her five husbands in the Kamyaka woods. "That, son of Kunti," he said, "is the measure of a devoted wife - one who does not merely suffer her husband's fate but goes out to meet it and turns it back. Looking upon this lady here, who has followed you into the forest and borne what no queen should bear, I will not say Savitri stands alone among women. As she once delivered all her kin by her virtue, so shall this princess of Panchala one day deliver all of you." And the brothers were comforted, and the night closed over the forest, and the old story rested.