Savitri in Sri Aurobindo's epic is much more ennobled and enhanced character than that of the Mahabharata legend. She is both human and divine. She is one of those great martyrs who are born from time to time on this blighted planet of ours to suffer and die for the good of mankind. She is an incarnation of the divine, the only female Avatar in the whole range of history and mythology. For example, the following lines emphasize divinity in her:
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| Aurobindo’s Savitri: Her Character and Personality |
Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,
Her nature felt all Nature as its own,
Apart living, within all lives she bore;
Aloof, she carried in herself the world;
Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,
Her strength was founded on the cosmic might:
The universal Mother's love was hers.
Against the evil at life's afflicted roots,
Her own calamity its private sign.
In Srinivas Iyengar's words she is “like Ganga coming to the parched earth from Heaven.” She has radiant and majestic personality, having been brought up in beautiful nature - surroundings; she imbibed some of the dignity and majesty of nature herself. She grew up into a maiden, radiant, beautiful, dignified, calm and self - possessed. The poet vexes eloquent in praise of her radiant personality:
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time - born steps:
Her look, her smile, awoke celestial sense
Even in earth stuff, and their intense delight,
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
Narad Muni too is struck by her radiant beauty and speaks of her in the following manner:
Who is this that comes, the bride,
The flame - born, and round her illumined head
Pouring their lights, hymeneal pomps
Move flashing about her?
From what green glimmer of glades
Retreating into dewy silences
Or half - seen verge of waters moon- betrayed
Brings thus this glory of enchanted eyes?
Her struggle against Death is heroic and super - human. This gives her the stature of the epic heroine and of the female avatar. She is a super - human saviour:
To win or lose the godlike game for man,
Was her soul's issue thrown with destiny's dice.
But not to submit and suffer was she born;
To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.
Thus she is the leader of humanity. She does not compromise with the laws of Ignorance, darkness and Death. She symbolizes the power of love and of life, of mortality and eternity.