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Biography
Family Background and Childhood
Krishnamurti came from a family of Telugu-speaking Brahmins.His father, Narianiah
Jiddu, was employed as an official of the then colonial British administration. Krishnamurti wasvery fond of his mother, Sanjeevamma, who died when he was ten.
His parents were secondcousins, having a total of eleven children, only six of whom survived childhood. They were strictvegetarians,and were known to throw away any food that the
"shadow of an Englishman had crossed"
He was born on May 12, 1895 (May 11 according to the Brahminical calendar), in the smalltown of Madanapalle in Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh,about 150 miles (250 km) west of
Madras (now Chennai). As the eighth child, who happened to be a boy, he was, in accordancewith common Hindu practice, named after Sri Krishna.
In 1903, the family settled in Cudappah,where Krishnamurti during a previous stay had
contracted malaria,a disease with which he would suffer recurrent bouts over many years. He
was a sensitive and sickly child;
"vague and dreamy"
, he was often taken to be mentallyretarded, and was beaten regularly at school by his teachers and at home by his father.
Severaldecades later, Krishnamurti reminisced about his state of mind during childhood:
"No thought entered his mind. He was watching and listening and nothing else. Thought with its associationsnever arose. There was no image-making. He often attempted to think but no thought would come."
Writing about his childhood and early adolescence in memoirs he composed when hewas eighteen years old, Krishnamurti described psychic experiences, such as "
seeing
" his sister,who had died in 1904, and also his mother, who had passed away in 1905.
Another aspect of his childhood was his bond with nature that continued throughout his life. He wrote: "He alwayshad this strange lack of distance between himself and the trees, rivers and mountains. It wasn'tcultivated."
Krishnamurti's father Narianiah retired at the end of 1907, and, being of limited means, wrote toAnnie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, seeking employment at theTheosophical headquarters estate at Adyar. (Even though an observant orthodox Brahmin,Narianiah had been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1882).
He was eventuallyhired by the Society as a clerk, and he moved his family there in January, 1909.
Narianiah andhis sons were at first assigned to live in a small cottage that lacked adequate sanitation and whichwas located just outside the Theosophical compound. As a result of poor living conditions,Krishnamurti and his brothers were soon undernourished and infested with lice.
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