Family background and childhood[edit]

The date of birth of Jiddu Krishnamurti is a matter of dispute. Lutyens determines it to be May 12, 1895^[3] but Christine Williams notes the unreliability of birth registrations in that period and that statements claiming dates ranging from May 4, 1895 to May 25, 1896 exist. She uses calculations based on a published horoscope to derive a date of May 11, 1895 but "retains a measure of scepticism" about it.^[4] His birthplace was the small town of Madanapalle in Madras Presidency (modern-day Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh). He came from a family of pious^[5] Telugu-speaking Hindu Brahmins^[6] and his father, Jiddu Narayaniah, was employed as an official of the British colonial administration. Krishnamurti was fond of his mother Sanjeevamma, who died when he was ten.^[7] His parents had a total of eleven children, of whom six survived childhood.^[8]

In 1903, the family settled in Cudappah, where Krishnamurti had contracted malaria during a previous stay. He would suffer recurrent bouts of the disease over many years.^[9] A sensitive and sickly child, "vague and dreamy," he was often taken to be mentally retarded, and was beaten regularly at school by his teachers and at home by his father.^[10] In memoirs written when he was eighteen years old, Krishnamurti describedpsychic experiences, such as seeing his sister, who had died in 1904, and his late mother.^[11] During his childhood he developed a bond with nature that was to stay with him for the rest of his life.^[12]

Krishnamurti's father retired at the end of 1907, and, being of limited means, sought employment at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar. In addition to being a Brahmin, Narayaniah had been a theosophist since 1882. He was eventually hired by the Society as a clerk, moving there with his family in January 1909.^[13] Narianiah and his sons were at first assigned to live in a small cottage that lacked adequate sanitation and which was located just outside the society's compound. Krishnamurti and his brothers were soon undernourished and infested with lice.^[14]

Discovered[edit]

In April 1909, Krishnamurti first met Charles Webster Leadbeater, who claimed clairvoyance. Leadbeater had noticed Krishnamurti, on the Society's beach on the Adyar river, and was amazed by the "most wonderfulaura he had ever seen, without a particle of selfishness in it."^[a] By Ernest Wood, an adjutant of Leadbeaters at the time, who helped Krishnamurti with his homework, he was considered "particularly dim-witted".^[16]Leadbeater was convinced that the boy would become a spiritual teacher and a great orator; the likely "vehicle for the Lord Maitreya"—in Theosophical doctrine, an advanced spiritual entity periodically appearing on Earth as a World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind.^[16]