by Sunity Devee
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| Savitri talking to Yama about her husband. Source: Wikipedia Commons. |
For Part A of this reading, I got to read about Savitri and Damayanti.
I especially loved the story about Savitri because I finally got to understand the Hindi term "Sati Savitri" because of this story. Indian women are called sati savitris if they're considered to be a good wife. That never really made sense to me until I read this story and figured out the origin of it.
Savitri is the daughter of King Ashwapati of Abanti. Being the daughter of a king, she got the best education, good friends, and basically a happy life. She would go with her parents when they visited topobans/ashrams which are hermitages. One day when she went to stream when she saw a man coming out from the forest and it was like love at first sight. He was the son of an exiled King and had a destiny of dying soon so her father didn't want her to get married to him but Savitri still was like "no, I love him and will only marry him." So her father eventually agreed and let her marry him. And then when the day came for her husband to die, she fought with the god of death, Yama, to save him.
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