At
http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/
Barry Pittard has posted his article:
Sai Baba Researchers’
Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel
Permanent Link:
http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/sai-baba-researchers-huge-debt-to-scholar-brian-d-steel/
The Australian academic
linguist Brian Steel has posted his Research on
Sathya Sai Baba and the Sathya Sai Organisation. New Factors for
Researchers to Consider, December 2007. The 'New
Factors' is an integrated part of an extensive 3-part
bibliography, which included succinct comments on certain works.
Steel refers to:
‘An Annotated Bibliography for
Research on Sathya Sai Baba in Three Parts. Part 1: Sources
of public information, including items of a scholarly or
academic nature or provenance, with an
Appendix
on entries in works of reference, surveys and textbooks
An Annotated
Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba
Part 2:
Alternative Sources of Information and Opinion about Sathya Sai
Baba and his Mission
An Annotated Bibliography for Research on
Sathya Sai Baba
Part 3:
A
Bibliography of Apologetic Writing about Sathya Sai Baba.
Presenting Sathya Sai Baba to the World Sections 1-5.
Sathya Sai Baba’s Teachings, etc.
Section 6.
New Factors for Researchers to
Consider’
Subheaders to Barry
Pittard's article:
Brian D. Steel’s Huge Project
Steel’s overview
Continuum of Sai Scholarship Which Now Includes Dissent
William ‘Bill’ Aitken - A Non-hagiographic Hagiographer?
Aitken
Accepted By Top Sai Baba Official
Serious Omissions and Commissions?
Note: More on Brian
Steel’s work shortly!
Quotes
"Many
readers look to Brian Steel’s work which, with its habits of a
lifetime of scholarship, shows cool appraisal and lays great
emphasis on care over detail, close textual comparison,
verification of sources, and so forth"
"I think
that there will be no independent scholars or other
investigators of merit who will be able to find serious fault
with his project. He will nevertheless be targeted, I think, by
fervent pro Sai Baba polemicists, who increasingly undo
themselves wherever there are attentive, sober critical readers"
"I shall shortly review a section of Part 3 (See, link above) of
this December 2007 series, which analyses the book William McKay
Aitken’s book ‘Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life’ (New Delhi, Penguin
Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006)"
"‘Bill’ Aitken is extolled as an authoritative intellectual by
Dr G. Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s deputy world chairman and head of
Sai Global Radio (via WorldSpace International Satellite Radio
Service)"
"In his endnote to ‘New Factors', he examines the efforts of an
individual of extreme zeal who, assisted by some of Sai Baba’s
servitors in various countries, has spearheaded Internet
attempts to discredit those who have publicly presented
evidence which openly conflicts with Sathya Sai Baba’s Divine
Claims"