Savitri and Satyavan

Savitri (सावित्री ) and Satyavan (सत्यवान) are a legendary couple in Hinduism. Savitri is a princess who marries an exiled prince named Satyavan, who is prophesied to die early. She saves her husband from the god of death, Yama, persuading the deity to restore his life. The oldest known version of the story of Savitri and Satyavan is found in Vana Parva (The Book of the Forest) of the Mahabharata. The story occurs as a multiply-embedded narrative in the Mahabharata as told by sage Markandeya. When Yudhishthira asks Markandeya whether there has ever been a woman whose devotion matched Draupadi's, Markandeya replies by relating this story. The childless king of the Madra Kingdom, Ashvapati, engaged in a penance for eighteen years and offered a hundred thousand oblations to propitiate Savitri, a consort of Brahma. Pleased, the goddess Savitri appeared to him and asked him to choose a boon. Ashvapati sought the boon of having many sons to extend his dynastic line. The goddess, however, informed him that he would be blessed with a daughter instead. After some time, the king's first queen, the princess of Malava, became pregnant, and gave birth to a girl. She was named Savitri by her father, in honour of the goddess. Savitri grew to become a beautiful woman, brimming with such energy that she was often regarded to be a celestial maiden. No man dared to ask for her hand in marriage. On an auspicious day, after she had offered her respects, her father told her to choose a husband with suitable qualities on her own. Accompanied by ministers, she embarked on a quest on her golden chariot, visiting a number of hermitages and forests. Upon her return to Madra, Savitri found her father seated with the sage-divinity, Narada. She informed her father that she had chosen an exiled prince named Satyavan as her husband, the son of a blind king named Dyumatsena of the Shalva kingdom; Dyumatsena had been driven out of his kingdom by a foe and led a life of exile as a forest-dweller with his wife and son.