ShirdiSaiBaba

Till now, a bibliography containing a fair, full and faithful description of his life could not be found. In Marathi, the work that can be thought of when facts about Sai Baba are wanted is Hemad Pant’s alias Anna Saheb Dabolkar’s Sai Satcharitra. This is a brilliantly written poetical work extending to 53 chapters and over 1000 pages narrating incidents connected with Sai Baba’s life, and written in highly florid and resonant Marathi, serving excellently the purpose of Puranic study and daily parayana. Great as the merits of the book are from the standpoint of a Bhakta, it cannot be called a regular bibliography. It is rather a chronicle of reminiscences or anecdotes relating to him having no arrangement, not even chronological. There is a good adaptation of this Marathi work in an English garb by Sri Gunaji. Other small sketches or introduction to Baba’s life have been published in English and other languages, but these also are too tiny to deserve the name of a biography. Das Ganu Maharaj of Nanded issued sketches of a few early incidents in Baba’s life as poetic pieces during the lifetime of Baba in about 1906. He wrote 6 or 7 chapters on the whole about Sai Baba, and he published them as part of big books namely, Bhakta Leelamrutha, Santha Kathamurtha and Bakthi Saramrutha. These 7 chapters are printed in Marathi. H.S.Dixit wrote a short biographical preface to Mrs.&Mr.Tendulkar’s Sai Bhajan Mala in 1917.

Amidoss Mehta issued a very short sketch of Sai Baba’s life in Gujarathi. This was also before Baba’s Mahasamadhi in 1918. Subsequent to his mahasamadhi, there have appeared a few statement or sketches about Sai Baba, but they are scattered and do not deserve the name of a regular biography. Sai Samasthan itself published Rao Bahadur M. W.Pradhan’s book ‘A glimpse of Indian spirituality’ but it ran upto only about 25 to 30 pages and set out just handful of facts about Baba.

A faithful and full account of Sai Baba, based on a careful and critical study of the available material regarding his life and the incidents and anecdotes narrated about him by those who met him before and after 1918 is absolutely necessary. I am of the opinion that his innumerable devotees will appreciate it.