September/October 2019

WELCOME  Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, the guru of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, wanted Krishna consciousness to be spread from India to the English-speaking world, and the first time Srila Bhaktisiddhanta met Srila Prabhupada (then Abhay Charan De), he asked him to do it. That was in 1922. Prabhupada was a young family man then, but he carried his guru’s request within his heart and finally sailed to America in 1965.

In the few years before his voyage, he lived in a section of Old Delhi called Chippiwada, in the city’s publishing district. He endured extremely austere conditions for one purpose: to publish three volumes of his Srimad-Bhagavatam translation and commentary before traveling to the West. The books were essential to his plan to introduce Krishna consciousness to intelligent Americans. In this issue, Hladini Devi Dasi tells of Srila Prabhupada’s Delhi days in “Retracing Srila Prabhupada’s Steps in Chippiwada.”

In writing his Srimad-Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada was adding to an extensive library of literature written by spiritual teachers in the Gaudiya Vaishnava line, beginning with direct disciples of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Since the 1970s, Srila Prabhupada disciples and others have been collecting and preserving old manuscripts by these esteemed authors. Satyaraja Dasa relates some of the history and current projects of this endeavor in “The Bhaktivedanta Research Centre: Preserving Gaudiya Vaishnavism’s Literary Tradition.”

Hare Krishna. – Nagaraja Dasa, Editor

Departments

From the Editor

Srila Prabhupada Speaks Out

Vedic Thoughts