Author's note on the poem
The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a
story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown
by many features of the human tale, one of the many symbolic myths of
the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of
being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;
Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme
Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the
Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated
energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal
to the immortal planes; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts,
father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its
celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of
glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not
personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and
conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and
they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way
from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.
Sri Aurobindo