Meher Baba came from a Zoroastrian family, His parents having previously emigrated from Persia to India. He was born in the city of Poona (now called Pune), located in central India about a hundred miles east of Bombay. At His birth—on the 25th of February, 1894—he was given the name Merwan Sheriar Irani, the surname indicating that His family was ‘from Iran.’ Merwan’s younger years were not, in most respects, out of the ordinary, yet all noticed that something quite intangible marked him as unique. Interested in poetry and literature—from Shakespeare to the Persian Perfect Master Hafiz—and adept at sports, he shone out as a boy of unusual character and rare attractiveness. Having attended a Roman Catholic high school, young Merwan then entered Deccan College, the most respected in West India. It was in his second year at college, at the age of nineteen, that Merwan had the experience which revealed to him his identity as the Avatar of the Age and inaugurated his spiritual mission in the world. >>>
