Invocation 08 - Auroville

expanded 18 times, or more. But this particular canto has 108 lines that are
exactly the same as Sri Aurobindo first wrote them down in 1916. He
subsequently changed 25 lines and added 44 new ones. We know from
Nirod-da's reminiscences that during the last year when they were working
on Savitri, after Sri Aurobindo had finished dictating the long passage which
comes before the concluding paragraph of Canto Two of Book Six, he looked
at Nirodbaran and asked, "What now remains to be done, any other parts?"
Nirod-da answered, "Yes, the Book of Death and the Epilogue". And Sri
Aurobindo seems to have said, "We'll see about that later." Well, that 'later'
didn't come, and there are all kinds of speculations about why it didn't come,
but there is so much in Savitri that there is no point in speculating about
things which are not there. I think we will concentrate on what is there, and
as you see this is called Canto Three. Here the editors have given a helpful
note: "The Book of Death was taken from Canto Three of an early
version of Savitri which had only six cantos and an epilogue. ..." In that
early version this part was Canto Three. So they have retained this title to
highlight the fact that this book has not received much subsequent revision
at Sri Aurobindo's hands. They say: "It was slightly revised at a late stage
and a number of new lines were added, but it was never fully worked
into the final version of the poem. Its original designation, 'Canto Three'
has been retained as a reminder of this."
And of course there are other reasons too. As you know, the action that
is described in Savitri takes place within one day, within 24 hours. This was
the day when Satyavan was to die, and the dawn of that day is described in
Book One, Canto One. The time span between about 6am and 9am is
described in Canto Two of Book One. After that comes the flashback of
Ashwapati and his yoga, Savitri's birth and growing up, etc. - and we are
still waiting at the time of Book One, Canto Two for the flashback to finish.
So now here, in Book Eight, the flashback is over, and we are ready to
continue the story from where we left it at the end of Canto Two of Book
One. Now comes the narration that describes what happens between about
10 am and noon of that day. And therefore naturally this would be Canto
Three, because it continues where we left off at Canto Two. So there are
various ways in which we can understand why this is Canto Three.
As we will see, this is a brief canto and what happens in it is very simple
and straightforward: that day in the morning Savitri approaches Satyavan's
31