Sheriar Mundegar Irani
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Sheriar Mundegar Irani or Shahr-yar Moondegar Irani (March 21, 1853 - April 30, 1932) was a mystic and the father of Meher Baba.
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[edit] Biography
Sheriar was born into a poor Zoroastrian family in Khuramshah, Khuzestan Province, Iran. His mother died when he was aged five, and he was then raised by his father Moondegar, caretaker of the local Zoroastrian funeral site. The tower of silence (dakhma) was a place where the dead were left exposed to the elements and to birds of prey, and Sheriar was often left in charge in these eerie surroundings while still a boy. Alienated from his peers by his occupation, oppressed by the Muslim majority because of his religion, unschooled and illiterate, he left his birthplace at the age of 13. For the next 8 years he adopted the life of a solitary wandering dervish. In 1874 he emigrated from Iran with his brother to India, in search of economic opportunities among the long-established Parsi community. After brief employment in Mumbai, he gave away most of the money he had saved and resumed his mystical quest. He wandered through Gujarat and Sindh among other places for another ten years, begging only when he was hungry. Disappointed that nearly two decades of dervishi had not led him to spiritual realization, he returned to Mumbai where his sister now lived. Slowly integrating into conventional life, he reluctantly became betrothed to a young girl, Shireen Khuramshahi, whose family had also immigrated from his birthplace. The marriage took place 8 years later in 1892 when Shireen came of age: she was 14 and Sheriar 39. To support his new lifestyle he became first a gardener and later the owner of a successful palm wine business in Poona (present-day Pune) where the couple moved in 1893. There they had five sons and one daughter.
In his spare time he learned to read and write his native Persian, as well as the Gujarati, Arabic and Marathi languages. This allowed him to continue his mystical studies in the textual realm, where he became recognized as an able scholar. He has been linked with the ishraqi tradition of Iranian illuminationist philosophy, as mediated by the 16th-century Iranian Zoroastrian sage Azar Kaivan (Shepherd 1988). The circle of savants associated with Kaivan combined Zoroastrian, Sufi, neo-Platonic and other gnostic beliefs with a nonsectarian approach to the study of comparative religion. Sheriar taught the odes of Hafez to his second (and 'favorite') son Merwan, later Meher Baba, but a possible connection between his Kaivani–ishraqi interests and Merwan's encounters with advanced Sufi teachers such as Hazrat Babajan and Shirdi Sai Baba was overlooked by Meher Baba's earlier biographers (e.g. Purdom 1964). More recent scholarship suggests that the polyglot Sheriar provided Merwan with a good education and a command of languages, and an ecumenical approach to mysticism. These advantages, and the unusual position of the Irani family – recently nested within the Parsi community, embedded in turn in the Indian social and religious context – may have prepared the ground for the inclusive syncretic teaching for which Meher Baba later became known.
[edit] The Enigma of Sheriar's religion and mysticism
It is admittedly an enigma that Sheriar is referred to both as a Zoroastrian and a Sufi dervish in some sources, as Sufism is a branch of Islam and not a part of Zoroastrianism. However, this fact is well explained in Bhau Kalchuri's Lord Meher and in Kevin Shepherd's From Oppression to Freedom: A Study of the Kaivani Gnostics. Sheriar's personal philosophy incorporated elements from both Zoroastrianism and Sufi mysticism, a characteristic that he adopted from his father Moondegar who was an enigma to his Iranian Muslim neighbors because as a Zoroastrian he participated in both Mohammedan and Zoroastrian festivals and was a devout follower of a Mohammedan saint – a wali-Allah (Kalchuri 1986). One might contemplate that it was because there are no mystic, mendicant, or ascetic traditions in Zoroastrianism that Sheriar chose to practice an Islamic mystic path such as that of the Sufi mendicant. However he never officially converted to Islam nor left his birth religion of Zoroastrianism. After his marriage, arranged by his sister to a Zoroastrian girl Shireen in India, Sheriar rejoined his Irani community in Pune, was a householder and followed all Zoroastrian practices. Thus he could be said to have returned to his Zoroastrian roots.
The assumption that his famous son Meher Baba likewise affirmed Sheriar's Zoroastrian religion is supported by the fact that Meher Baba wore the Zoroastrian sudra (a muslin undershirt) and the 72-thread kusti girdle all his life. 'Meher' is a Zoroastrian theophoric name that reflects his father's devotion to the Yazata Mithra. Also Meher Baba always signed his name 'M. S. Irani' and never 'Meher Baba'. Considering his teachings, which often included Sufi references, it seems plausible then that Meher Baba acknowledged both Zoroastrian and Sufi philosophies like his father.
[edit] Sheriar's surname
The surname 'Irani' was adopted by the Zoroastrian immigrants in the 18th century and later, and only by them, for legal and communal reasons. Sheriar was then not born with 'Irani' as a last name, and would originally have had his father's firstname as a surname; thus his birth name was probably Sheriar Moondegar. Inversely, in Indian Zoroastrian tradition, which goes back to the days before family names were introduced by the British colonial government, the middle name is always the father's first name, so if one knows a person's middle name, one knows the name of the father. For instance, Meher Baba's full legal name was Merwan Sheriar Irani.
[edit] Named in honor of Sheriar Irani
- Sheriar Books (Bookseller specializing in books by and about Meher Baba) [1]
- Sheriar Press (Winner of more Printing Industries of the Carolinas awards than any other printer in South Carolina) [2]
- Sheriar Foundation (Foundation dedicated to preserving the written works and films of Meher Baba) [3]
- Sheriar Gatehouse (Back gatehouse at the Meher Spiritual Center and home of artist Phyllis Ott) [4]
[edit] References
- Purdom, Charles Benjamin (1964) The God-Man: The Life, Journeys & Work of Meher Baba with an Interpretation of His Silence & Spiritual Teaching. London, George Allen & Unwin.
- Shepherd, Kevin R.D. (1988) From Oppression to Freedom: A Study of the Kaivani Gnostics. Cambridge, Anthropographia Publications. ISBN 0-9508680-4-3
- Kalchuri, Bhau (1986–) Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba. (20 vols). Asheville, NC, Manifestation, Inc. (cued to section)
- Kennedy, Maud (1985) Sheriarji: The Wandering Dervish. GLOW International; (Aug)13-15. (in three parts)
