Book Description

This book provides an assessment of Shirdi Sai Baba, taking into account both the Muslim Sufi and Hindu components of his biography. The author has integrated the available materials without neglecting some frequently overlooked details and supporting data. Many people look at Shirdi Sai Baba as a unifying force between Hindus and Muslims, while others see him as representing only one religious identity. This book covers these points in great detail. In eighty chapters, the sources are analysed to portray diverse events of the saint's life, and to profile many of his devotees. Employing the accounts of Dabholkar, Narasimhaswami, and other key commentators, the treatment investigates numerous obscure situations, besides other more well known occurrences. The author maintains that, despite some hagiology appearing in the sources, there is sufficient evidence for realistic biographical dimensions, more especially during the last ten years of the saint's life, when a large number of visitors arrived at Shirdi. Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918) is one of the most important latter day Indian saints. He lived an ascetic existence as a faqir in a rural mosque. He is distinctive for a universalist attitude, bypassing religious dogma. The teachings of Sai Baba employed allusion and parable, and are not typical of the traditions associated with him. Some complexities of this matter are addressed in a separate chapter. The book is annotated and fully indexed.