Sai Baba

Interesting information about Sai Baba that I was reminded of in my daily Meher Baba newsletter (link). 

On June 5th 1927, Baba went with a few of the mandali to Aurangabad, and from there proceeded to the Ellora Caves and the area called Khuldabad. While drinking tea at Khuldabad, Baba disclosed, “The tomb of Sai Baba’s Master Zarzari Bakhsh is in Khuldabad.” When asked how this could be since Zarzari Bakhsh actually lived hundreds of years prior to Sai Baba, Meher Baba answered, “You have no idea of how great is the grace of the Perfect Master. While Zarzari Bakhsh was alive, Sai, in a previous incarnation, was his disciple. The Master’s grace descended upon him at that time; however, it carried over and made him perfect after seven hundred years. Zarzari Bakhsh means Giver of the Wealth of Wealth. This he gave to Sai.” The group returned to Meherabad the same day. Sai Baba of Shirdi had physical contact with other Masters — Gopal Rao and the Swami of Akalkot. However, it was Zarzari Baksh who bestowed Realization upon Sai while he was in a cave at Khuldabad. The Swami of Akalkot brought Sai down and made him a Perfect Master.

Thus the connection between a Perfect Master and his disciple can extend over lifetimes and Realisation can be bestowed in the physical absence of the Master, although I surmise that this is not the norm. I've been to the Ellora Caves and even to the cave at Khuldabad (about four miles away) were Sai Baba received Enlightenment.

Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) had this to say about Khuldabad:

The name 'Khuldabad' translates to 'Abode of Eternity'. It is derived from the posthumous title of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, 'khuld-makan' (lit. 'Dwelling in Paradise'); the name came into currency following Aurangzeb's interment in the city. Priorly, the city was known as 'Rauza' (lit. 'Garden of Paradise'), a common term used to describe Sufi shrines in South Asia.

This made me realise how little I know about the Mughal Empire and reference to Sufi shrines I found quite intriguing. I downloaded "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple from the Internet Archive and transferred it to my Kindle. It looks like an interesting read.

On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, “No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.” 

Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history.

Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company’s own Indian troops, thereby transforming an army mutiny into the largest uprising any empire had to face in the entire course of the nineteenth century. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj’s Stalingrad: one of the most horrific events in the history of Empire, in which thousands on both sides died. And when the British took the city—securing their hold on the subcontinent for the next ninety years—tens of thousands more Indians were executed, including all but two of Zafar’s sixteen sons. By the end of the four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was sentenced to exile in Burma. There he died, the last Mughal ruler in a line that stretched back to the sixteenth century.

Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work—the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi—and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.