Savana
Savana
Savana was a king of the line of Svāyambhuva Manu: the son of Priyavrata, who was the son of Svāyambhuva Manu, and honoured in the three worlds. His wife was Sudevā, the daughter of Sunābha. The Vāmana Purāṇa tells that Savana died without a son, and that Sudevā, true in her devotion to her husband, entered his funeral fire at the word of a voice from the sky. Within a muhūrta (a short span of time) the king rose up alive with his wife and flew into the sky, and from there the two went to Brahmaloka, the world of Brahmā. The seed he let fall in the sky was drunk by the wives of the seven ṛshis, and the seven sons they bore were named Maruts by Brahmā: the first Maruts, of the Svāyambhuva manvantara (the age of the first Manu).
How the account is told
Nārada Maharshi asked Pulastya Maharshi: “You told me that the sons of Diti became the Maruts. But why do they move on the path of the wind? And who were the Maruts in the earlier manvantaras?” Pulastya answered with the births of the Maruts in each manvantara, from Svāyambhuva Manu to the Manu of the present time, and he began with Savana.
Sudevā and the voice from the sky
Savana died without a son (aputraka). His wife Sudevā, stricken with grief, would not let her husband’s body be burned. She embraced it and sat holding it, crying, “Nātha! Nātha!” (My lord!)
Then a bodiless voice (aśarīra-vāṇī) spoke from the sky: “O Kalyāṇī! Do not weep. If your devotion to your husband is true, fall into the fire with your husband.”
The princess turned towards the voice and said: “I am not weeping for myself. I grieve because my husband is without a son.”
The voice spoke again: “O Viśālākshī! Do not weep. Climb the pyre at once. You will have seven sons by your husband. This is true. Trust my word and enter the fire at once.”
As soon as she heard it, the young woman placed her husband’s sacred body on the pyre, sat on it meditating on her husband, and was burned.
Savana rises and goes to Brahmaloka
Within a muhūrta King Savana rose up with his wife and flew into the sky. As he moved there at will with Sudevā, she became ṛtumatī (in her season). By his divine power the king stayed in the sky with his wife for five days. On the sixth day, after her bath at the end of the season, knowing that the season should not go to waste, the king united with her, and his seed slipped and fell down to the earth. As soon as the seed had fallen, the king and his wife went by divine motion to Brahmaloka.
The first Maruts
The seed, of the colour of the sky, fell into a lotus. The wives of the seven ṛshis, Samānā, Naḷinī, Vapushmatī, Citrā, Viśālā, Haritā and Aḷinī, saw it, and wishing to stay young for ever, they took it for amṛta (the nectar of immortality). They told their husbands, and with their permission they bathed according to rule, worshipped their husbands, and all seven drank the seed that lay in the lotus.
As soon as they drank the seed of that lord of the earth, the wives of the tapasvins lost their brahma-tejas (the radiance of brāhmaṇas), and the seven ṛshis left them. The seven wives bore seven sons, and the infants cried so terribly that the whole world was filled with the sound. Then Brahmā, the Lokapitāmaha (grandsire of the worlds), came there and said to the crying boys: “O mighty ones! Do not cry, do not cry. You will be sky-goers by the name Maruts.” He took them with him and proclaimed them Maruts. “They, Nārada,” says Pulastya Maharshi, “are the first Maruts who appeared in the Svāyambhuva manvantara.”
Source: Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapter 46
Sources
- Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapter 46