Savitri and Satyavan

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

This paper proposes to discuss the mythical tale of Savitri and Sat ya van on a magnanimous scale via symbols by the poet Sri Aurobindo in his magnum opus ' Savitri'.Quintessentially it is a tale of a wife so devoted that she brings back her husband from the clutches of death. However the poet transforms this folk lore into a saga of spiritual warfare where the light of divinity transcends the phenomena of death which has the element of time and karma under its fold. Covertly Sri Aurobindo's Savitri transcends the cycle of birth, life and death during the tryst with the latter.

-based on the Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana. We give a complete Sanskrit text with translation Archaeology, Astronomy , Philosophy Used Texts: Veda: Rig, Atharva , Sama Veda Brahmana: Tandya, Jaiminiya, Satapatha, Aitareya, Sankhayana, Taittiriya Aranyaka; Aitareya, Taittiriya , Sankhayana Samhita: Taittiriya Samhita Upanisad: Isa, Mundaka, Kausitaki Brahmana Upanisad, Taittiriya, Chandogya, Brhadaranyaka, Prasna Purana: Garuda, Brahmanda, Markandeya Mahabharata, Surya Siddhantha, Brhaddevata, Brahmasutra with commentaries of Sankara, Ramanuja + Nimbarka 489 pages 113 pictures and sky maps

Ribhu, 2011

Sri Aurobindo in his “Author’s Note” to his revelatory epic Savitri - a Legend and a Symbol says: "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.”

An exploration of the life and works of Dr Satyanand, an early Indian psychiatrist, and an interrogation of his contributions to thought in Indian psychiatry.

When it is darkest before dawn, the battle is the fiercest, the most acute and perilously precarious; such is the current world-scape during the turn of the next spiral-arc of cosmic movement. The various conflictual blood-baths we see smearing and tearing apart the world today in the political, social, religious, cultural and economic spheres, are but tell-tale signs of a colossal occult duel between the evolutionary and anti-evolutionary forces fighting for dominion in this watershed phase of human history. The evolutionary forces are warring for and on behalf of the Superlife or promise of heaven-on-earth, while the anti-evolutionary forces are waging a massive attack from the camp of death, in an Armageddon-like passage from the age of falsehood and suffering to the next age of Truth and Bliss. In Savitri, the apocalyptic Veda of the future, Sri Aurobindo uses the power of mantric poetry to detail the great conquest of Death by divine love through a mythological allegory, but which is also an epic wrestle underway in our inner psycho-spiritual spaces, whether we are conscious of it or not. This essay captures the broad contours of that dialectical-energetic interchange between the two sides which presages the new terrestrial creation. The unmasking of Death to divulge the immortal godhead in the subjective soul-soil of knowing is a necessary passage through 'hell as a short cut to heaven's gates.' Savitri's victorious ordeal offers pointers to the Sadhana that must be undertaken by spiritual soldiers who seek both direction and protection in this mortal combat, as also a direct wormhole to the Supreme Himself.

Hymns to Surya-Savitri in the Rigveda, 2014

Surya and Savitri are two Supramental Godheads in the Rigveda. One is seen as the Self of all that moves and moves not and the other as the Lord. These hymns are central in the conception of the Divine Manifestation in time and space.

Studies on the History of Śaivism 2, 2021

Śivadharmāṃrta, ‘The Nectar of Śiva’s Religion’, is a collection of articles that present some of the initial results of the research on the Śivadharma carried out by the SHIVADHARMA and DHARMA projects. All the contributions in this book are based on the study of primary sources and cover topics that range from specific aspects of the Sanskrit texts of the Śivadharma corpus to their broad network of influence and from considerations of the early historical context in which the Śivadharma might have arisen to the early modern Tamil adaptations of the Śivadharmottara. This book should be of interest to all scholars working on the religious traditions of South Asia, especially those focussing on textual sources.

Studies on the History of Śaivism, 1. University of Napoli L’Orientale Press., 2021

A Śaiva Utopia centers on the eleventh chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra, known as the Chapter on Śiva’s Discipline (Śivāśramādhyāya). A critical edition and annotated English translation of the Sanskrit text of this chapter is preceded by a comprehensive study of the Śivadharma’s revision of the Brahmanical ‘laws on class and discipline’ (varṇāśramadharma), tracing its utopian vision of a society bound by Śiva devotion. An edition and English translation of a Sanskrit commentary on the chapter, preserved on a unique palm leaf manuscript in Malayalam script, is included as well. The book concludes with an appendix, which addresses the revision of the Śivāśramādhyāya in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, where the Śivadharma has been turned into a Sauradharma ('religion of the Sun'). A Śaiva Utopia should be of interest to all historians of Indian religions.

Śivadharmāmṛta. Essays on the Śivadharma and its Network, 2021

Studia Orientalia Electronica, 2020

The problematic identity of the deity Savitṛ in early Vedic religion has sparked more than a century of discussion. Harry Falk, for instance, argued that this god, whose name literally means “Impeller”, can be identified with the Milky Way and associated with the rainy season. Others have suggested that he becomes visible in the zodiacal light or crepuscular rays. The aims of this paper are to review the most important theories about Savitṛ’s manifestations in nature in Ṛgvedic times and to reassess whether and in what ways different natural phenomena and celestial luminaries may have been associated with this deity. In discussing the theories proposed so far, I not only consider the Vedic sources but re-evaluate the archaeoastronomical arguments with modern software. As it turns out, there is no conclusive evidence that Savitṛ was associated with any single phenomenon or luminary at all. Rather, he was an anthropomorphic deification of what was perceived as a certain “cosmic” or “natural” force.