![]() He never used his own name but was referred to by others as "Sai Baba." Rigopoulos suggests that Sai means "holy one" or "saint," while Baba literally means "father" (1993, p. He sat in front of a sacred fire (dhuni) to ward off the cold. He stayed for three years in Shirdi, then disappeared, only to return in 1858 when he began to reside in a dilapidated mosque, his belongings limited to a pipe, tobacco, a tin pot, a long white robe, and a staff. The majority of the population there were Hindu peasants, and Muslims worked mainly as artisans or agricultural laborers. The authoritative account of Shirdi Sai Baba's life, Shri Sai Satcharita, states that he arrived as a tall lad of about sixteen in Shirdi, a small village in Maharashtra, India (Gunaji, 1972, p. While the miracles of both Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba (healing appearing in dreams to foretell the future or provide guidance producing substances, such as ash, that have sacred and salutary effects etc.) are certainly significant, this entry examines specific institutions, processes, texts, and practices in the growth of the Sai Baba movement. An early ethnographic study of the Sathya Sai Baba movement by Lawrence Babb (1986) focuses on miracles as central moments that make the world of the devotee seem like an enchanted place. Datt ātreya's "interreligious eclecticism" is found in the Sai Baba movement: Shirdi Sai Baba was believed by his devotees to be an incarnation of Datt ātreya, and Sathya Sai Baba has presented himself as an incarnation of the same figure (Rigopoulos, 1998, p. 305), and that on one occasion Shirdi Sai Baba stated that his "religion" was Kab īr. Rigopoulos points out that the "syncretistic quality of Kab īr's life and teachings" seems to have been Sai Baba's model (1993, p. In addition, Shirdi Sai Baba has been identified with certain Ṣ ūf ī orders in Maharashtra and Karnataka (Shepherd, 1985), the medieval figure of Kab īr (Rigopoulos, 1993), and the protean Indian deity, Datt ātreya (Rigopoulos, 1998). ![]() ![]() While most of the available literature is hagiographical in nature, scholars have studied some aspects of the movement, including the figures of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba, the middle-class constituency of Sathya Sai Baba, and the movement's pedagogical innovations. ![]() 1926), the movement became a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century. Through one of the inheritors of his charisma, Sathya Sai Baba (b. It owes its origin to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. The Sai Baba movement is perhaps the most popular modern South Asian religious movement. ![]()
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