They say he had a miraculous birth, a miraculous childhood, and a miraculous awakening. Twenty-three small towns near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, claim he was born there. They don’t know the year. Sometime, they say, in the fourteenth century, or maybe in the thirteenth. Scholars have calculated eleven birthdates, and twenty-one baptismal dates. Were his people Hindu, Muslim, Sufi, Sikh, Buddhist, or Christian? They don’t know. Maybe all of the above.
Saint Caṇḍa Ānanda