King Asvapati, though an honest, virtuous, pious man, was not blessed with offspring, and this made him unhappy.[278] He curbed all his appetites and for eighteen years lived a life of devotion to his religious duties.  At the expiration of these years Savitri, the daughter of the sun-god, appeared to him and offered to reward him by granting a favor.  “Sons I crave, many sons, O goddess, sons to preserve my family,” he answered.  But Savitri promised him a daughter; and she was born to him by his oldest wife and was named after the goddess Savitri.  She grew up to be so beautiful, so broad-hipped, like a golden statue, that she seemed of divine origin, and, abashed, none of the men came to choose her as his wife.  This saddened her father and he said: 

“Daughter, it is time for you to marry, but no one comes to ask me for you.  Go and seek your own husband, a man your equal in worth.  And when you have chosen, you must let me know.  Then I will consider him, and betroth you.  For, according to the laws, a father who does not give his daughter in marriage is blameworthy.”

And Savitri went on a golden chariot with a royal retinue, and she visited all the groves of the saints and at last found a man after her heart, whose name was Satyavant.  Then she returned to her father—­who was just conversing with the divine sage Narada—­and told him of her choice.  But Narada exclaimed:  “Woe and alas, you have chosen one who is, indeed, endowed with all the virtues, but who is doomed to die a year from this day.”  Thereupon the king begged Savitri to choose another for her husband, but she replied:  “May his life be long or short, may he have merits or no merits, I have selected him as my husband, and a second I shall not choose.”  Then the king and Narada agreed not to oppose her, and she went with her father to the grove where she had seen Satyavant, the man of her choice.  The king spoke to this man’s father and said:  “Here, O royal saint, is my lovely daughter, Savitri; take her as your daughter-in-law in accordance with your duty as friend.”  And the saint replied:  “Long have I desired such a bond of relationship; but I have lost my royal dignity, and how could your daughter endure the hardships of life in the forest?” But the king replied that they heeded not such things and their mind was made up.  So all the Brahmans were called together and the king gave his daughter to Satyavant, who was pleased to win a wife endowed with so many virtues.

When her father had departed, Savitri put away all her ornaments and assumed the plain garb of the saints.  She was modest, self-contained, and strove to make herself useful and to fulfil the wishes of all.  But she counted the days, and the time came when she had to say to herself, “In three days he must die.”  And she made a vow and stood in one place three days and nights; on the following day he was to die.  In the afternoon her husband took his axe on his shoulder and went into the primeval