Savitri and Satyavan, the wife who overcame the god of death

In the Indian tradition there is no more famous example of married love than that of Savitri. The princess who defies the god of death to win back her husband has become the model of the devoted wife, and her story is still told during a festival dedicated to her. Unlike Orpheus, however, Savitri does not use music: she wins with words and with wisdom.

A tale within the Mahabharata

The story is found in the Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit epic composed and expanded over many centuries, roughly between the middle of the 1st millennium BC and the first centuries of our era. It is set in the third book, the Book of the Forest, where the Pandava brothers live in exile. King Yudhishthira asks the sage Markandeya whether there has ever been a woman as devoted as their wife Draupadi.

Markandeya replies by telling the story of Savitri. She was the daughter of Ashvapati, king of Madra, who had obtained her after long years of prayer to the goddess Savitri, from whom she took her name. When she grew up, the girl was so radiant that no prince dared to ask for her hand. Her father then allowed her to set out and choose a husband herself.

The choice and the prophecy

Savitri returned announcing that she had chosen Satyavan, son of Dyumatsena, a king who had gone blind and lost his kingdom and lived in poverty in a forest hermitage. The sage Narada, present at court, revealed that the young man was full of virtues but would die within exactly one year. The king begged his daughter to change her mind.

Savitri refused: a maiden, she said, chooses her husband only once. The marriage was celebrated and she went to live in the hermitage, serving her parents-in-law with humility. Without revealing the prophecy to anyone, she counted the days. When three days remained before the fatal date, she undertook a vow of fasting and vigil, and on the appointed day asked to accompany her husband into the forest.

The dialogue with Yama

While cutting wood, Satyavan was seized by a sharp pain in his head and lay down with his head in his wife's lap. Then Yama, the god of the dead, appeared, dressed in red, with a noose in his hand. He drew out of the body the soul of Satyavan, which the poem describes as the size of a thumb, and set off towards his realm. Savitri followed him.

Yama ordered her to turn back, but she kept walking and speaking to him of virtue, friendship and justice. Struck by her words, the god granted her gifts, provided she did not ask for her husband's life. Savitri obtained sight and kingdom for her father-in-law, a hundred sons for her father, and finally a hundred sons for herself by Satyavan. To keep his promise, Yama had to give her husband back.

A festival for wives

The story lies at the origin of Vat Savitri, an observance kept by many married women in various regions of India, above all in the month of Jyeshtha. According to tradition Satyavan died and came back to life beneath a banyan tree, and for this reason the tree is at the centre of the festival, during which women pray for the long life of their husbands.

Savitri's fascination lies in the combination of firmness and intelligence. She defies death neither with force nor with trickery, but with a dialogue in which she shows that she knows dharma, the moral order, better than the god himself. That is why her figure has been read not only as an example of devotion, but also as the image of a female wisdom able to bend fate.