This week’s Pournima is significant because of its association with the Savitri, who with her intellect, made Yama, bring her husband Satyavan, back to life.

Even though, Yama is God of death, he still has to stay within laws of nature or karma, right.. Then how did he bring Satyavan back to life? Also, even after being saved by Yama, why did Satyavan die later in the life?

To answer these questions, we need to understand death in little more details. 

Like many other things, death is also categorized in three types, namely Adhi-Bhautik, Adhi-Daivik and Aadhyatmik, with Adhi-Bhautik, Adhi-Daivik being premature deaths, which can be avoided.

1. Adhi-Bhautik, is a pre-mature death related to physical ailments, which can be avoided by taking appropriate treatment from an expert physician.

2. Adhi-Daivik, is a pre-mature death where medicines alone will not help. To avoid these kinds of death, one needs some sort of supernatural/daivik intervention. 

For example, sometimes, we see doctors giving-up on patient, but the patient still survives. Why did the patient survive is hard to explain just by medical knowledge. This is where they say it was daivik intervention, like some sort blessings which avoided the death. 

3. Aadhyatmik, is the most powerful, which means this is the actual end of the life that not be avoided. It is not necessary that it would happen only in the old age, there are many people meant to live only a short life due to prarabdha karma, and their death is not premature, even though it happened earlier in the life. 

For example, we can not forgot even Krishna could not save Abhimanyu, even though he was very young. 

Now coming back to Savitri-Satyavan question, even though the astrologers had predicted him to die early, that was probably adhi-daivik type, which Yama could avoid, due to relentless efforts by Savitri. Eventually, when the time came for Adhyatmik-death, even Satyavan had to die.