Sai Baba of Shirdi

Nothing about his origin is known. He appeared at Shirdi as a young man, left, returned some years later with a wedding party, and stayed for around sixty years. He lived in a ruined mosque, kept a dhuni burning in it, begged for food from a handful of houses, and gave away what he received. He performed acts his devotees recorded as miraculous - lighting lamps with water when the oil-sellers refused him, healing, knowing what had not been told him - and the accounts of these are the Sai Satcharita's substance. His teaching was compressed into two Urdu phrases he repeated: Sabka Malik Ek, one master of all, and Allah Malik. He took the ash from the fire and gave it as udi, and that ash remains the central offering of the tradition. He died on 15 October 1918, Vijayadashami, and the disputes over his burial that followed - whether he was to be buried as a Muslim or cremated as a Hindu - were resolved by burial at the site now called the Samadhi Mandir.

His birth, parentage and religion are unknown and every account that states them confidently is constructing rather than reporting. The claim that he was born a Brahmin and raised by a fakir appears in some traditions and is not established. Whether he was a Sufi, a Nath yogi, both or neither is argued and the evidence supports no clean answer. The relationship to Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, who claimed to be his reincarnation, is a separate and contested matter and the two followings are distinct - conflating them is the commonest error about him. The Sai Satcharita, written by Govind Raghunath Dabholkar in the 1920s, is a devotee's account rather than a biography and is treated as scripture by the tradition.

The standard image is the marble statue at the Samadhi Mandir - seated on a stone, right leg crossed over the left, in a white or ochre kafni robe with a cloth wound round the head, one hand raised. That statue, carved in 1954, is what almost every Sai image in India reproduces, and the photographs taken during his lifetime - of which a handful exist and show a thinner, more austere figure - look notably different. The dhuni fire, the udi ash, and the leaning posture against the mosque wall are the other associated images. Anyone commissioning a Sai design will almost certainly want the 1954 statue's form, because that is what devotion has settled on.

Shirdi Sai Baba Samadhi Mandir — Ahilyanagar (formerly Ahmednagar), Maharashtra. Built over his burial place. Among the most visited shrines in India, with tens of thousands daily. Dwarkamai, the mosque he lived in, and the dhuni still burning are within the complex. Ram Navami, Guru Purnima and Vijayadashami - the three great festivals. Thursdays. Shirdi, Ahilyanagar (formerly Ahmednagar) district. Delivery cities: Shirdi, Nashik, Ahilyanagar (formerly Ahmednagar), Mumbai, Pune.

Dwarkamai — Ahilyanagar (formerly Ahmednagar), Maharashtra. The disused mosque he lived in for sixty years, with the dhuni he lit still burning. The udi comes from it. With the Shirdi visit. Within the Shirdi complex.

Sai temples across India — all, nationwide. Thousands, built largely in the last fifty years as the following has spread. Most reproduce the Shirdi statue's form. Thursdays. Everywhere. Delivery cities: Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad.

Thursday is his day and Sai temples everywhere fill on it. The udi - ash from the dhuni at Dwarkamai - is the characteristic prasad and is taken home, applied to the forehead and in some families taken internally in water, following the practice he himself established. The Sai Satcharita is read in a weekly parayan, a chapter or a set of chapters a day over seven days, and completing a parayan for a specific intention is a standard vow. The four aartis at Shirdi - Kakad in the early morning, Madhyan at noon, Dhoop at sunset and Shej at night - are performed daily and are reproduced in Sai temples across India. Offerings are simple. Many devotees keep a photograph rather than a murti.

• Ram Navami — Chaitra, Mar-Apr — One of the three great Shirdi festivals; the urs was historically held at the same time.
• Guru Purnima — Ashadha, Jul — The second of the three; he is approached as guru.
• Vijayadashami — Ashwin, Sep-Oct — The day of his death in 1918; the third of the three.
• Thursdays — weekly — His day.

Silver Sai images and pendants are among the most widely made religious objects in India today, reflecting the following's size and its urban character. The udi container - a small silver box for carrying the ash - is a specific and common object. At Shirdi the offering economy is very large and the temple is among the wealthiest in India, with a substantial gold and silver ornament collection built entirely from devotees' giving over a century. Thursday is the giving day. Because the following is not caste-bound, the giving pattern is individual rather than lineage-based.

Sai Baba's following was regional and Marathi for the first half-century after his death and became national in the second half of the twentieth century, with a particular density in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and among urban populations everywhere. The Telugu following is very large and Shirdi's pilgrim traffic reflects it. What distinguishes his devotion socially is that it sits outside the caste and sect structures entirely: he has no lineage, no sampradaya in the formal sense, no caste association, and his devotees include Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis - which is the direct consequence of his own refusal to be placed. That openness has occasionally drawn objection from orthodox quarters, and a dispute in Dwarka in 2014 over whether he should be worshipped as a deity was a visible instance of it.

• That Sai Baba was Hindu, or was Muslim. He refused throughout his life to say, kept a fire in a mosque, quoted the Quran and the Gita, and left no statement resolving it. Any confident claim is constructing rather than reporting.
• That Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi are the same. They are different people; the latter claimed to be the former's reincarnation, which is a contested claim, and the two followings are distinct.
• That the standard image is a portrait. It is the marble statue carved in 1954. The handful of photographs taken during his lifetime show a notably different figure.
• That the Sai Satcharita is a biography. It is a devotee's account written in the 1920s and is treated as scripture by the tradition, which is not the same thing.
• That his teaching was elaborate. He left two Urdu phrases - Sabka Malik Ek, and Allah Malik - and that is the whole of what he stated.

• Dattatreya - with whom the Maharashtrian tradition associates him.
• Swami Samarth of Akkalkot and Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon - the other great Maharashtrian saints, often worshipped alongside him.
• Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi - a separate figure whose claim of reincarnation is contested.
• The Sufi and Nath traditions - both of which his practice resembles without belonging to either.

Sai is a Persian and Marathi term of respect for a holy man, and baba is father. The name was given to him on arrival at Shirdi by a temple priest who greeted him with it, and he kept it. He never gave another.

• Shri Sai Satcharita of Govind Raghunath Dabholkar (Hemadpant), completed 1929 - the principal text, read in a weekly parayan cycle.
• Contemporary accounts and letters of devotees who knew him, including Das Ganu and B. V. Narasimhaswami's collections.
• Shirdi Sansthan records from the early twentieth century.
• The two Urdu phrases he repeated, which constitute the whole of his stated teaching.