Yoga University of the Americas

The immortal siddha we now know as Babaji was born in 203 AD in the coastal village of Swythan Nathapuram, in Tamil Nadu, South India, later called Porto Nova and today known as Parangipettai. His parents, Jnanambal and Vedaranya Iyer, named him Nagaraj. Little is known of his first few years, but in 208, while playing at the local Muruga Temple, he was kidnapped by a seafaring Pathan with the intention of selling him into servitude.

Roughly two years later, while passing through Calcutta, he was purchased by a wealthy benefactor named Ramananda who soon set him free. Nagaraj travelled to Kasi and lived there for about three years, studying Sanskrit and Vedanta and becoming widely known as a protégé and child scholar. Unsatisfied, however, with the accumulation of knowledge and acclaim, in 214 he traveled to Prayag and joined a group of Palkudi Baba (saints that live only on milk). In 217, he traveled with them to Karthirigama, a Muruga shrine at the southern end of Sri Lanka.