About this book
Sixteen stories passed down through three generations of one family — a grandfather who knew Mahendra Bābā, a father who heard the stories, and a son who finally wrote them down.
- Told by
- Harikishan Sharma, as told to his son Ramakant Sharma
- Length
- Sixteen stories, one continuous account · about 5,400 words
- Source
- Family memory, going back to Lohvan around 1930
- Read here in
- English only
Most accounts of Mahendra Mahārāj on this shelf come from his own writing, or from formal memorial volumes. This one is different in kind: it is family memory, carried across three generations before it was written down. Harikishan Sharma’s father, Badriprasad Sharma — known as “Prem Kavi” — was an early devotee of Mahendra Bābā at Lohvan; Harikishan heard these stories from him directly, and his own son Ramakant finally set them down in writing.
What is inside
There is no chapter division — sixteen stories told as one continuous account, opening with Badriprasad’s first meeting with Mahendra Bābā around 1930, and Badriprasad taking guru-dakṣiṇā (a disciple’s offering to his teacher) from him in 1957. Among the stories:
- Mahendra Bābā starting the Rāmalīlā drama for the first time at Lohvan, with Badriprasad and his cousin among the players.
- A “call letter” episode — Badriprasad anxious about his own father’s anger, and Mahendra Bābā telling him plainly: “If your father is angry with you, it is because he wants to teach you how to live your life… When you go home, everything will be all right.”
- An account of a gathering convened by Ānandmayī Mā in Vṛndāvan on the question “Who is God,” attended by saints of the standing of Nīm Karolī Bābā, Hathī Bābā and Harinām Dās jī — at which Mahendra Bābā gave his own answer: that knowing past, present and future does not by itself make someone God, since such knowledge can be a siddhi — a spiritual attainment — possessed by one who is not.
Why this account is unusual
Most of what survives of Mahendra Mahārāj comes from disciples close to his own religious circle. This book places him instead among the wider constellation of early-to-mid-twentieth-century Indian saints — figures like Ānandmayī Mā and Nīm Karolī Bābā are widely known outside this tradition, and their respect for Mahendra Bābā, recorded here, is a rare outside vantage point on a man this library otherwise knows mostly from his own hand.
Who told it
Harikishan Sharma is the son of Badriprasad Sharma, an early Lohvan devotee of Mahendra Mahārāj; the stories were set down in writing by Harikishan’s own son, Ramakant Sharma. The book preserves that chain explicitly, crediting each teller.
What you are actually reading
- Gathered whole from the Tara Bianca website, where it was published in English, and lightly edited here for readability.
- A collected item, reproduced rather than translated by this library.
- Offered as a PDF and as a web reading edition.
If you are deciding where to start
Read this if you want Mahendra Mahārāj seen from outside — through family memory and through his standing among other saints of his era — rather than through his own writing.
Read Parichayāmṛt first if you have not yet met Mahendra Mahārāj at all; that book introduces him properly, and this one assumes you already know roughly who he was.