The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hindusim vol 2

Shishtachara
formed, made, or fashioned. In the context
of art and architecture, the term
shilpa shastra is most often associated
with two specific areas, which by the
medieval era had had their conventions
strictly fixed. One of these governed the
creation of sculptural images, according
to which the images of the deities had to
be carved to exactly defined proportions,
along with their identifying attributes.
The other area was in regard
to buildings, whether individual structures
such as temples, or collections
of buildings in city planning. The layout
of temples was modeled after the
human body (and thus mirrored the
sculptor’s precision regarding the
images of the divine); entire towns
were similarly modeled to create a
harmonious urban environment.
Shipra River
A distant tributary of the Yamuna River,
which has its headwaters in the
Vindhya Mountains in Madhya Pradesh.
The Shipra is considered a holy river
because it flows through Ujjain, a central
Indian city with great religious and
historical significance.
Shirdi
Small town in the state of Maharashtra,
about 120 miles northeast of
Bombay. It is famous as the home of
the modern saint Shirdi Sai Baba, who
appeared there as an adolescent boy in
1872 and lived there until his death in
1918. He was greatly esteemed by people
from all religious communities,
and the shrine built in the place in
which he lived receives considerable
traffic even today.
Shirdi Sai Baba
(d. 1918) Hindu ascetic and religious
teacher whose disciples came from
many different religious communities—
Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, and Christian. His
origins are mysterious, for in 1872 he
simply appeared in the town of Shirdi in
Maharashtra, as a boy of about sixteen.
He was dressed in the manner of a
Muslim faqir (religious mendicant, or
beggar), but claimed to have forgotten
his birthplace and his family. Because of
his dress a local priest forbade him from
staying at a Hindu temple, so he moved
into a small, unused mosque, where he
lived for the rest of his life. He kept a perpetual
fire burning in a fire pit, and for
religious rituals performed both Muslim
prayers and Hindu worship. He was
most famous for his supernatural powers:
healing (for which he often gave
people ash from his fire pit to eat), foretelling
the future, multilocation (the
ability to be in two places at the same
time), and appearing in dreams to guide
his followers. His response to people’s
immediate needs made him famous
through much of India, but he always
maintained that his purpose in performing
miracles was to attract people
to spiritual life. He gradually attracted
disciples, and in the time since his death
the town of Shirdi has become an
important regional pilgrimage place
(tirtha). Although he referred to himself
as Sai Baba, he is now usually called
Shirdi Sai Baba, to distinguish him from
Sathya Sai Baba, another religious
leader who claims to be Shirdi Sai Baba’s
reincarnated form.
Shishtachara
The “practice of learned [people],”
which was one of the traditional sources
for determining religious duty (dharma)
for matters not discussed in the dharma
literature, or for cases in which the literature
itself gave conflicting opinions.
Although Shishtachara was the least
authoritative source of dharma, after the
Vedic scriptures and the dharma literature,
making it an authority recognizes
that life has many ambiguities and
uncertainties and at the same time provides
a resource for determining the
appropriate action by taking as a model
the practice of established and knowledgeable
people. Another term to designate
this sort of authority was sadachara,
the “practice of good [people].”
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