Vata Savitri Purnima 1948

From the Skanda Purana

Lord Shiva told this story to the Goddess.

King Ashvapati of Madra was good, patient and self-controlled, but he had no children. On a pilgrimage to Prabhasa, he and his queen kept the vrata of the goddess Savitri. The goddess was pleased and appeared before him, and in time she was born as his daughter. Because she was the gift of the goddess Savitri, the Brahmins and her father named her Savitri.

When she grew up and no suitor came, the king told her to choose her own husband. Savitri travelled with the old ministers to hermitages and holy places. When she came home she found the sage Narada sitting with her father. She told them her choice: Satyavan, son of Dyumatsena, the blind king of Shalva, who had lost his kingdom to an old enemy named Rukmin and lived in the forest.

Narada praised Satyavan's goodness, but warned that he had one fault: his life would end within a year. Savitri answered that a daughter is given only once, and that she had chosen once and would not choose again. Narada blessed the match, and the wedding was held.

Savitri never forgot Narada's words. When she knew that only a few days were left, she kept a vrata for three days. On the last day Satyavan took his axe and went into the forest for fruit, flowers and firewood, and Savitri went with him. As he cut wood he was struck by a terrible headache. He leaned against a branch of a vata, a banyan tree, and said, "My head hurts. Let me sleep a little on your lap."

As he lay there, Savitri saw a dark, crowned figure, shining like the rising sun. It was Yama. He said Satyavan's time had come, and that he had come himself because his servants could not take a man away from so devoted a wife. With his noose he drew out Satyavan's life and set off on the path of the ancestors.

Savitri followed. Yama told her to turn back, but she said she felt no tiredness in following her husband, and spoke of how the good always seek the good. Yama was pleased and offered her boons. She asked that her father-in-law get back his sight and his kingdom, that her father have a hundred sons, that she herself have a hundred sons, that her husband live, and that she always keep to dharma. Yama granted them all, and Savitri returned to the hermitage with her husband.

It was on the Full Moon of Jyeshtha that she kept this vrata. Dyumatsena got back his sight and his kingdom, and both her father and Savitri were blessed with a hundred sons. The Purana says that in a home where this vrata is honoured, no woman is widowed.

Another story

The fuller story told in most homes comes from the Mahabharata, where the sage Markandeya tells it to Yudhishthira. There Savitri fasts for three days and nights, and when Satyavan wakes in her lap he thinks he has only slept. They walk home through the dark forest, where the blind king has already regained his sight. Soon messengers come to say the usurper is dead, and Dyumatsena returns to rule his kingdom. Yama also grants Satyavan a life of four hundred years.