Story of Savana

General.

Son of Priyavrata who was the son of Svāyambhuva Manu, by his wife, Surūpā. Surūpā had ten sons including Savana. (Devī Bhāgavata, Skandha 8).

Birth of son.

Savana married Suvedā, daughter of Sunābha; but he expired before children were born to him. According to the Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapter 72, seven children were born from the dead Savana. The story about it is as follows:—

Suvedā, heart-broken at the death of Savana, did not permit the dead body to be burnt, herself holding it in embrace. Then a celestial voice said to her: "Cry not. If you are really chaste and true, enter the funeral pyre along with your husband." To this Suvedā answered thus: "I cry because of grief that he died before making me the mother of a son." The celestial voice said to her again: "You enter the pyre without weeping. Your husband will have seven sons."

Sudevā now permitted her dead husband to be cremated and meditating upon her chastity she jumped into the funeral pyre. But within minutes Savana came alive out of the fire with his wife and rose to the sky with her. He stayed in the sky for another five days and on the sixth day had the sexual act again with her. His semen dropped on earth from the sky. The King then with his wife went to Brahmaloka.

Samādā, Nalinī, Puṣyati, Citrā, Viśālā, Haritā and Alinīlā, all of them wives of munis saw the semen in the sky and when it fell into the water they thought it was amṛta, which conferred eternal youth, and with the permission of their husbands swallowed it. As soon as they swallowed it their divine effulgence was diminished and their husbands, therefore, abandoned them. Those women delivered seven children, who cried fiercely and that sound filled the entire universe. Then Brahmā appeared and asked the children not to cry and also told them that they would come to be called Maruts. Brahmā himself called them Maruts. They were the Maruts of the first Svāyambhuva Manuvantara.