Savitriसावित्री

Savitri is two different people and one verse, and a reader who has arrived here looking for one of them should know which.

The princess. The Mahabharata's Savitri, daughter of King Ashvapati of Madra, who chose her own husband — Satyavan, a woodcutter's life in a forest hermitage, the exiled son of a blind king — and was told by Narada on the day she announced it that the man had exactly one year to live. She married him anyway. A year later she followed Yama out of the forest with her husband's soul in his noose, and would not stop walking, and talked to him, and at the end of the argument Yama gave Satyavan back.

She is the subject of Vat Savitri Vrat, kept every Jyeshtha by married women across north, western and eastern India, who fast and wind thread around a banyan. It is one of the most widely observed women's vows in the country.

The goddess. A different Savitri entirely: Brahma's first consort. At the great sacrifice at Pushkar she was late, and Brahma — needing a wife beside him at the appointed hour — married Gayatri instead. Savitri arrived, found another woman in her seat, and cursed him: that he would be worshipped nowhere. The Brahma page carries that curse as the principal explanation for why the creator of the universe has almost no temples in India, and the Pushkar temple is the exception the curse allows. Her own shrine stands on the Ratnagiri hill above it, higher than his.

And the verse. Rig Veda 3.62.10 is called the Savitri — after Savitr, the sun-god it addresses — and, from its metre, the Gayatri. It is not either woman. The Gayatri, Savitr and Vishvamitra pages carry it.

This page covers both women, keeps them apart, and gives most of its room to the princess, because what she does is the single most remarkable piece of argument in Hindu narrative: she does not pray, weep, bargain or invoke a god. She reasons with Death, on dharma, and wins on the merits.

The Pativrata Mahatmya, in the Mahabharata's Vana Parva, is the princess's source. Yudhishthira, in exile, asks whether any woman has ever been as devoted as Draupadi, and Markandeya — whose own page is here — tells him this story. It is a self-contained episode of some three hundred verses and is one of the most polished pieces of narrative in the epic.

Her birth. Ashvapati, childless, performs austerity to Savitr — the Vedic sun-god — for eighteen years, reciting the Savitri verse. The goddess Savitri appears and grants a daughter, and the child is named for her. So the princess is named after the goddess, who is named for the verse, which is named for the god. All three Savitris in this article are connected by that single chain, which is why they get confused.

The choice. Ashvapati sends his daughter out to choose her own husband, which the epic states without any apparent discomfort. She travels, returns, and names Satyavan.

Narada's warning and her answer — I have chosen once; I will not choose twice — is the moment the story turns on, and the epic gives it to her flatly, without ornament.

The goddess's source. The Pushkar story is Puranic — the Padma and Skanda Puranas carry versions — and is bound up with the question of why Brahma has so few temples. The Brahma page sets out the competing explanations, of which this curse is one and the Lingodbhava page's lie is another. The encyclopedia records that the tradition offers several reasons and has never settled on one.

Gayatri at Pushkar. In the Puranic account the woman Brahma marries in Savitri's place is a cowherd girl, Gayatri, elevated for the purpose — and in some tellings Savitri's curse falls on the priests and the place as well as on Brahma, and is then partly softened. The Gayatri page carries her side.

Vat Savitri. The vow is attested in the dharmanibandha literature and is kept on Jyeshtha Amavasya in much of north and western India and on Jyeshtha Purnima in Bihar, Bengal, Odisha and parts of Uttar Pradesh — a fortnight apart, both correct, and a standing source of confusion.

The princess is shown walking, and that is unusual.

Following Yama. The defining image: a dark figure with a noose and a small soul in it, walking ahead; a woman in a sari walking behind him, alone, in a forest. Indian religious art depicts a great many women in attitudes of petition — kneeling, folded hands, prostration. Savitri is shown upright and in motion, and nothing about the composition is submissive.

Under the banyan. With Satyavan's head in her lap, the tree above them. The subject of a great deal of popular print and calendar art, and of Vat Savitri imagery generally.

Winding the thread. Modern devotional illustration and photography: women circling a banyan trunk, thread passing hand to hand.

With Yama in conversation. The rarest and best version — the two of them simply talking, the god turned back toward her.

The goddess Savitri, at Pushkar, is a conventional seated four-armed goddess image; she is not iconographically distinct from a great many others and is identified by the shrine rather than by attributes.

Distinguishing them. A woman walking behind Yama is the princess. A goddess enthroned on a hill above Pushkar is Brahma's consort. A five-faced goddess on a swan or lotus with the verse is Gayatri, who is neither.

And the tree. Ficus benghalensis, the banyan — the single most reproduced element of her imagery, and the only tree in this encyclopedia with a vow attached to it in its own right.

Savitri the princess. Daughter of Ashvapati of Madra, wife of Satyavan. The Mahabharata's, and the subject of the vow.

Savitri the goddess. Brahma's first consort; Pushkar; the curse.

The Savitri verse. Rig Veda 3.62.10, addressed to Savitr and called the Gayatri from its metre. Not a person at all, and the source of most of the confusion on this page.

Savitr. The Vedic sun-god, masculine, with his own page. Savitri is the feminine of his name, which is how all of this started.

Gayatri. The goddess, the metre, and Brahma's second wife at Pushkar. Her own page.

Vat Savitri / Vata Savitri / Savitri Amavasya / Savitri Brata. The vow, under its regional names — the last being the Odia form, where it is a major observance.

Satyavan. Her husband, who has no page here and no independent cult.

Not Savitribai Phule (1831–1897), the social reformer and educationist who, with Jyotirao Phule, opened one of India's first schools for girls. A real historical person, named after the goddess, and the encyclopedia mentions her because search conflates them constantly — and because her work is considerably better documented than anything else on this page.

The year. She marries knowing the date. The epic says she keeps the knowledge to herself for a year, tells nobody, and counts. In the last three days she takes a standing fast — the triratra — and on the fourth morning she asks to go with Satyavan into the forest for the first time.

He cuts wood; his head aches; he lies down with his head in her lap; and Yama comes himself, which he does only for the most virtuous.

The walk. He takes the soul and goes south, and she follows. He tells her to turn back; she keeps walking. And then she begins to talk — and the Mahabharata gives her five exchanges, each a short discourse on dharma, and each ending with Yama so pleased by what she has said that he offers her a boon, any boon except her husband's life.

She takes them in order, and this is the part worth reading carefully:

— First she asks for her father-in-law's eyesight restored. — Then for his kingdom returned. — Then for her own father to have a hundred sons. — Then — having been granted that — she asks for a hundred sons of her own, by Satyavan.

And Yama grants it.

He has given a boon that cannot be fulfilled unless the man he is carrying is alive, and she has not asked for the forbidden thing, and she points this out. The epic lets her do it gently and completely. Yama, who is the lord of law, is caught by the law, and he releases the noose — and says, before he goes, that he has never been so pleased by anyone's speech.

What that is. There is no weapon, no god called in, no penance, no miracle, no appeal to a husband's merit. A woman walks after Death, talks to him for five rounds about what dharma requires, is listened to on the merits, and wins by setting a trap out of his own generosity. In the whole of Hindu literature there is nothing else quite like it, and the epic's framing — a story told to prove that women can be as devoted as Draupadi — is considerably narrower than what the story actually shows.

The other Savitri, and the curse. At Pushkar, Brahma's sacrifice could not wait; his first wife was late; a substitute was found. Savitri arrived, saw Gayatri seated in her place, and said that Brahma would be worshipped nowhere on earth. She then went up the hill and stayed there.

The curse's consequence is visible: Brahma, the creator, has almost no temples in India, while every town has one for Vishnu or Shiva. The Brahma page is careful to note that the tradition offers more than one explanation and that this is one of them.

And there is a detail the Pushkar guides are fond of and that is worth recording: her temple is on the hill, above his. Whatever the theology, the geography makes a point.

Vat Savitri Vrat is the living observance and it is very large.

Married women fast — in the strictest form without food or water — and gather at a banyan, circle it while winding raw cotton thread around the trunk, pour water at the roots, and hear the katha. It is kept on Jyeshtha Amavasya in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat and much of the north and west, and on Jyeshtha Purnima a fortnight later in Odisha, Bengal and parts of the east, where it is Savitri Brata. In Odisha it is among the principal women's observances of the year.

The stated intention is the long life and wellbeing of the husband. DharmSetu records this as religious practice and makes no claim of any kind about outcomes.

A practical note, because the vow is physically demanding. The strictest form is a nirjala fast — without water — kept in Jyeshtha, which is the hottest part of the Indian year, often with travel and several hours outdoors. Heat exhaustion and dehydration are real risks, particularly for women who are pregnant, diabetic, elderly or unwell, and medical advice is worth taking first. A very large number of families already keep a modified form for exactly these reasons, and the tradition accommodates it without difficulty.

The banyan. Ficus benghalensis is long-lived, enormous and ecologically important, and the trees used for this vow are frequently old. Thread wound tightly year after year, nails driven in for decorations, and lamps lit against the trunk all damage them. Winding loosely, removing last year's thread, and keeping flame away from the bark costs nothing and keeps the tree — which, given that the whole observance is about longevity, is not a small point.

At Pushkar, the Savitri Mata temple on Ratnagiri hill, reached by a long stair or a ropeway, with the main offering at Kartik Purnima when the Pushkar fair is on.

In recitation. The Pativrata Mahatmya is read during the vow and in Mahabharata recitations.

A note on how the story is used. Savitri is invoked constantly in modern Indian discourse as the model wife, and the epic's own frame invites that. It is worth saying what the text actually depicts: a woman who chose her own husband against advice, kept a fatal secret from her family for a year, walked out of a forest after a god, and argued him down on points of law. Whatever else that is a model of, passivity is not it — and a reading that reduces her to obedience is not supported by the verses.

Savitri Mata Temple, Pushkar (Ajmer district, Rajasthan) — on the Ratnagiri hill above the town, reached by about 650 steps or by ropeway, and standing higher than the Brahma temple below. The Brahma page has Pushkar, the lake and the Kartik Purnima fair, which is one of the largest cattle fairs in the world.

Brahma Temple, Pushkar (Rajasthan) — his, and the exception to her curse. Gayatri's shrine is on the adjacent hill.

Banyan trees, everywhere, on Jyeshtha Amavasya and Jyeshtha Purnima — which is where the observance actually happens, and there is no central site.

Odisha, for Savitri Brata, kept very widely.

Madra — her father's kingdom, placed in the Sialkot region of present-day Punjab, Pakistan, and not identifiable as a site.

The forest of Satyavan's exile is unlocated; several places claim it, none convincingly.

Savitribai Phule Pune University and the Bhide Wada memorial, Pune (Maharashtra) — not hers, and listed because the name sends people there. The 1848 girls' school at Bhide Wada is a documented site of Indian educational history.

The pattern is the usual one for women in this encyclopedia: an enormous annual observance kept by tens of millions, one hill temple, and no great building anywhere with her name on it.

She wins an argument. That is the fact, and it is extraordinary. Hindu narrative resolves most impossible situations by devotion, austerity, divine intervention or a loophole in a boon. Savitri's method is none of these. She follows Death on foot, engages him in five rounds of discussion about what dharma requires, is heard on the merits, and then closes a trap built entirely out of his own granted boons — a hundred sons by a husband he is carrying away. She never asks for the forbidden thing. She makes it impossible to refuse.

Yama is the god of law. He is beaten by better legal reasoning, and he says so, and the tradition kept that.

And the frame is smaller than the story. The Mahabharata introduces her as an answer to the question of whether any woman was as devoted as Draupadi, and she has been invoked ever since as the model wife. What the verses actually show is a woman who chose her own husband against explicit warning, concealed a death-date from her family for a year, left a forest clearing to walk after a god, and out-argued him. The encyclopedia's position is that the frame is the tradition's, the text is also the tradition's, and readers should notice that the second is bigger than the first.

Two women, one name, and a confusion worth clearing. The princess, Brahma's first consort, and the Rig Veda verse are three things connected only by a chain of naming — the verse from the god Savitr, the goddess from the verse, the princess from the goddess. They are routinely merged in popular writing and occasionally in temple literature. Telling them apart is, honestly, most of what this page is for.

A curse you can see from the road. Brahma has essentially no temples in India, and one of the tradition's explanations is that his wife was late and he did not wait. At Pushkar the arrangement is literal: his temple below, hers on the hill above it. The theology may be contested; the hill is not.

A tree, every year. Of everything on this page, what has lasted is women winding thread around a banyan in the hottest month of the Indian year. The fast is for a husband's long life. The tree is chosen because it is the one that lives longest, under which she sat with his head in her lap. There is a neatness to that which no amount of commentary improves — and the kindest thing a reader can take from it is that the tree should outlive the thread.