On the full moon day of the month of Margashirah,
Datta-jayanti is celebrated every year. It was celebrated on the 6th of
December this year. Shri Datta is the son of Atri and Anasuya and is supposed
to be the incarnation of the three Gods Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh.
In the Puranas,
ten incarnations of God have been described along with their achievements. In
the Bhagavadgeeta, which is a part of Mahabharat, the idea of incarnation is
described by Lord Krishna himself in the following manner :-
Out of the two
great epics of India viz, Ramayan and Mahabharata, the former was composed
first and the latter was composed in the Dwapar yug. The authors, who composed
the Puranas, mainly in the first eight centuries of the Christian era, caught
this thread of the incarnation of God, described in the Mahabharata and wrote
the biographies of these incarnations. The chronological order of the
incarnations (Awatars) is as follows :-
1) Matsya (fish), 2) Koorma (Tortoise), 3)
Varaha (hog), 4) Narsimha (Man with the lion's head), 5) Waman (A pigmi), 6)
Parashuram, 7) Ram, 8) Krishna, 9) Budha and 10) Kalanki.
Darvin's theory of
evolution says that, ages before there was no life on the earth. The first
appearance of life then took place in water and various types of living beings,
living entirely in water were born. Thereafter a few species were born, who
remained partly in water and partly on land. This was followed by the species
that started living fully on land and used water only for drinking, for taking
bath and for washing utensils etc. It is very strange to know that this same
order is followed in our Awatars as described in the Puranas. The first
incarnation was a fish, that could not remain out of water for a moment. The
tortoise was a species that remained partly in water and partly on the land.
The hog, which was the next incarnation, remained entirely on land. These were
the species which were other than the human beings. In the Narsimha
incarnation, we see a being who is a beast in part and a human being''in the
other part. The next Awatar is no doubt a full human being;' but he is not a
man of average height. He is a pigmi. All the Awatars after Waman are fully
grown up men. Darvin also has stated that the process of evolution continued for
ages and the monkey ultimately developed into a man Darvin's theory was
published many centuries after the composition of the Puranas. So we have to
conclude that though, the authors of the Puranas did not put forward any theory
in plane words, still they knew it fully and they put it in the form of a
story.
Leaving aside the
theory of the incarnations, the object of the incarnations, the purpose for
which God felt like being born as a human being, has been described in plain
words in the two shlokas from Bhagawadgeeta referred to earlier in this
article. The first shloka says that the lord takes birth on the earth, when the
religion is on the decline. He further says that the purpose of his birth is to
set the things right by removing the unrighteousness. In the second shloka
(4/8) the purpose of the incarnation is made clear still further. The lord says
that in order to protect the good people, to destroy the bad element and to put
the religion on a sound footing, He takes birth from time to time.
In this
behalf, "Allah Malik" were the words constantly in the mouth of Shri
Sai Baba. It is therefore very clear that He thought "Allah" to be
the master of everything. He also mentioned on several occasions that He was
the humble servant of God and not God himself.
He is also stated to have said that the supreme power of doing and
undoing things lies with God and He is only an instrument or a tool in His
hand.
One more thing is notable about
Shri Sai Baba that different people considered him as an incarnation of
different Gods. Why Shri Sai Baba
appeared to these people in different forms is also worth considering. He knew that faith cannot be generated in
a person by outside agency by advice,
howsoever authoritative the
person giving the advice may b. It is a
very common knowledge that most of the families in this country have
got some family deity or God,
who is supposed to be the guardian of the family and who is supposed to protect
the family through thick and thin. Hence the practice of worshipping that deity is a tradition of
that family and the natural faith of every member of that family is in that
God. To change that faith
overnight is not an easy matter
and hence in order to convince that
person that Shri Baba is none else than that deity itself, Shri
Sai Baba appeared before that person in the form of that deity.
Shri
Sai Baba had also to show to the people at large that all Gods were alike and as He could manifest Himself in all different forms, the several Gods that
people think about and worship are not
different; but there is only one God
who appears in different forms. It was
because of this deep rooted faith of a person in a particular God, that Shri
Baba always used to advise that person,
who came to him, to continue the worship of his family God and not to
change to any other God overnight.
The idea of incarnation of God exists in all religions in some form or the other. Shri Sai devotees have a record that Shri Sai Baba appeared to them in the form of Shri Vitthal and Shri Ram. The remarkable incident of Shri Moolay Shastri from Nasik to whom Shri Sai Baba appeared as his Guru Gholap-swami is particularly noteworthy. There Shri Baba showed that by His yogic power, He not only could take the form of other Gods, but He could also appear like other human beings revered by others. Certain class of devotees believe that Shri Baba was an incarnation of Shri Datta. Shri Sai Baba may thus be considered by different people as an incarnation of different Gods, still He is to us as our reverred Sai Baba and as the great English dramatist Shakespeare has said in his famous play, Romeo Juliet. ''What is there in a name. For that which we call rose will smell as sweet by any other name". Similarly Shri Sai Baba may be supposed to be an incarnation of any deity, still He will continue to shower His favours on all His devotees and hence we have to continue our faith in Him wholeheartedly and without any doubt in our mind.