Savitri
Princess Savitri chooses to marry Satyavan, though she knows he is fated to die within a year. When Yama, the god of death, comes for him, she follows. Toru Dutt's ballad, in five parts. By Toru Dutt (1882). A public-domain classic, from Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan.
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हिन्दी में पढ़ेंसावित्री और सत्यवान · वही कहानी How it begins Savitri was the only child / Of Madra's wise and mighty king; / Stern warriors, when they saw her, smiled, / As mountains smile to see the spring. / Fair as a lotus when the moon / Kisses its opening petals red, / After sweet showers in sultry June! / With happier heart, and lighter tread, / Chance strangers, having met her, past, / And often would they turn the head / A lingering second look to cast, / And bless the vision ere it fled.What was her own peculiar charm? / The soft black eyes, the raven hair, / The curving neck, the rounded arm, / All these are common everywhere. / Her charm was this--upon her face / Childlike and innocent and fair, / No man with thought impure or base / Could ever look;--the glory there, / The sweet simplicity and grace, / Abashed the boldest; but the good / God's purity there loved to trace, / Mirrored in dawning womanhood. Keep reading →About this story
Princess Savitri chooses to marry Satyavan, though she knows he is fated to die within a year. When Yama, the god of death, comes for him, she follows. The poem is in five parts and tells how she argues with Death.
Toru Dutt, a young Indian poet who wrote in English and died at twenty-one, wrote it for Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, which appeared in 1882, after her death. The story comes from the Mahabharata, and Savitri is one of India’s best-known examples of a wife whose love and wit are stronger than fate.
- Themes
- Love against death, a wife’s wit, devotion
- Good for
- Readers who like narrative poems and Indian legends
- Worth noticing
- How Savitri wins the boons from Yama, one by one.