Mahavatar Babaji is the name given to an India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n saint

Saint

A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

 by Lahiri Mahasaya

Lahiri Mahasaya

Shyama Charan Lahiri , , best known as Lahiri Mahasaya, was an Indian yogi and a disciple of Mahavatar Babaji. He was also popularly known as Yogiraj and Kashi Baba. He revived the yogic science of Kriya Yoga when he learned it from Mahavatar Babaji in 1861...

 and several of his disciples who met Mahavatar Babaji between 1861 and 1935. Some of these meetings were described by Paramhansa Yogananda in his book Autobiography of a Yogi

Autobiography of a Yogi

In 1946, Paramahansa Yogananda , published his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, which introduced many westerners to meditation and yoga...

(1946), including a first hand telling of Yogananda’s own meeting with Mahavatar Babaji. Another first hand account was given by Sri Yukteswar Giri

Sri Yukteswar Giri

Sri Yukteshwar Giri is the monastic name of Priyanath Karar , the guru of Swami Satyananda Giri and Paramahansa Yogananda. Sri Yukteshwar was an educator, astronomer, a Jyotisha , a yogi, and a believer in the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible...

 in his book The Holy Science

The Holy Science

The Holy Science is a book written by Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri in 1894 under the title Kaivalya Darsanam. Sri Yukteswar states that he wrote The Holy Science at the request of Mahavatar Babaji...

. All of these accounts, along with additional meetings with Mahavatar Babaji, are described in various biographies of those mentioned by Yogananda.

Mahavatar Babaji’s given name and date of birth are not known, so those who met him during that period all called him by the title first given to him by Lahiri Mahasaya.