Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Vana · 20 of 50
20. Sāvitrī
Vana (वन)
This story comes later than the next sitting. Arjuna is back. Jayadratha has tried to take Draupadī, and Mārkaṇḍeya has told the story of Rāma. Then Yudhiṣṭhira asks whether any woman was ever as faithful as Draupadī. Mārkaṇḍeya tells this one in answer. Sāvitrī is a princess who chooses her own husband, and she chooses Satyavan knowing he has a year to live. Her father tells her. She does not unchoose him. She goes to the forest with him and his blind parents and lives the year as a wife, not as a mourner in advance.
On the day, he goes to cut wood and she goes with him, against custom. He lays his head in her lap and dies. Yama himself comes, which the poem reserves for this death, and takes the soul. She follows. Yama tells her to turn back. She talks. She talks about dharma, about hospitality, about what a friend is, and she does not beg as a child begs. He is pleased, and he offers boons, and he tells her not to ask for the life. She asks for her father-in-law's sight, and for their lost kingdom, and for a hundred sons of her own father, and then, carefully, for a hundred sons of herself.
The last boon cannot be had from a dead husband, and Yama is just enough to see that he has been brought to his own law. He gives Satyavan back. They return. The sight returns, the kingdom returns, the children come. Yudhiṣṭhira is meant to hear a woman whose intelligence is a form of fidelity. The page does not turn her sentences into a spell. The power, inside the story, is that she would not go home.
नेपालीमा
यो कथा अर्को बैठकपछि आउँछ। अर्जुन फर्किसकेका छन्। जयद्रथले द्रौपदीलाई लैजान खोजिसकेको छ, र मार्कण्डेयले रामको कथा भनिसक्नुभएको छ। युधिष्ठिरले द्रौपदीजस्ती पतिव्रता स्त्री कहिल्यै थिइन् कि भनेर सोधे। जवाफमा मार्कण्डेयले सावित्रीको कथा भन्नुभयो। सावित्रीले सत्यवानलाई रोजेकी थिइन्, उनको एक वर्ष मात्र आयु बाँकी छ भन्ने जान्दाजान्दै। त्यस दिन यम आफैँ आउनुभयो। सावित्रीले पछ्याइन्। उनले मागेको वर जीवन होइन। उनले ससुराको आँखा, राज्य, बाबुका सय छोरा, अनि अन्त्यमा आफ्ना सय छोरा मागिन्। अन्तिम वर मरेको पतिबाट हुँदैन। यमले सत्यवान फर्काइदिनुभयो। कथाको शक्ति मन्त्र होइन; उनी घर फर्किन मानिनन्।