About Srila Prabhupada
His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada was born in 1896 in Calcutta, India. He first met his spiritual
master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami, in Calcutta in 1922.
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, a prominent devotional scholar and the
founder of sixty-four branches of Gaudiya Mathas (Vedic institutes),
liked this educated young man and convinced him to dedicate his life
to teaching Vedic knowledge in the Western world. Srila Prabhupada
became his student, and eleven years later (1933) at Allahabad, he
became his formally initiated disciple.
At their first meeting, in 1922, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura
requested Srila Prabhupada to broadcast Vedic knowledge through the
English language. In the years that followed, Srila Prabhupada wrote
a commentary on the Bhagavad-gita and in 1944, without assistance,
started an English fortnightly magazine.
Recognizing Srila Prabhupada's philosophical learning and devotion,
the Gaudiya Vaisnava Society honored him in 1947 with the title "Bhaktivedanta."
In 1950, at the age of fifty-four, Srila Prabhupada retired from married
life, and four years later he adopted the vanaprastha (retired) order
to devote more time to his studies and writing. Srila Prabhupada traveled
to the holy city of Vrndavana, where he lived in very humble circumstances
in the historic medieval temple of Radha-Damodara. There he engaged
for several years in deep study and writing. He accepted the renounced
order of life (sannyasa) in 1959. At Radha-Damodara, Srila Prabhupada
began work on his life's masterpiece: a multivolume translation and
commentary on the 18,000-verse Srimad-Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana).
He also wrote Easy Journey to Other Planets.
After publishing three volumes of Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada came
to the United States, in 1965, to fulfill the mission of his spiritual
master. Since that time, His Divine Grace has written over sixty volumes
of authoritative translations, commentaries and summary studies of
the philosophical and religious classics of India.
In 1965, when he first arrived by freighter in New York City, Srila
Prabhupada was practically penniless. It was after almost a year of
great difficulty that he established the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness in July of 1966. Under his careful guidance,
the Society has grew within a decade to a worldwide confederation
of almost one hundred asramas, schools, temples, institutes and farm
communities.
In 1968, Srila Prabhupada created New Vrndavana, an experimental Vedic
community in the hills of West Virginia. Inspired by the success of
New Vrndavana, then a thriving farm community of more than one thousand
acres, his students founded several similar communities in the United
States and abroad.
In 1972, His Divine Grace introduced the Vedic system of primary and
secondary education in the West by founding the Gurukula school in
Dallas, Texas. The school began with three children in 1972, and by
the beginning of 1975 the enrollment had grown to one hundred fifty.
Srila Prabhupada also inspired the construction of a large international
center at Sridhama Mayapur in West Bengal, India, which is also the
site for a planned Institute of Vedic Studies. A similar project is
the magnificent Krsna-Balarama Temple and International Guest House
in Vrndavana, India. These are centers where Westerners can live to
gain firsthand experience of Vedic culture.
Srila Prabhupada's most significant contribution, however, is his
books. Highly respected by the academic community for their authoritativeness,
depth and clarity, they are used as standard textbooks in numerous
college courses. His writings have been translated into eleven languages.
The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, established in 1972 exclusively to publish
the works of His Divine Grace, has thus become the world's largest
publisher of books in the field of Indian religion and philosophy.
In the last ten years of his life, in spite of his advanced age, Srila
Prabhupada circled the globe twelve times on lecture tours that have
took him to six continents. In spite of such a vigorous schedule,
Srila Prabhupada continued to write prolifically. His writings constitute
a veritable library of Vedic philosophy, religion, literature and
culture.
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