Abhay Caran De was born September 1, 1896 in Calcutta, India, under very favorable circumstances. His father, Gour Mohan De, was a pure devotee of Lord Caitanya and therefore gave Abhay a healthy, religious upbringing with God in the center. After performing his own eight-day Ratha-yâtrâ festival at the age of five, Abhay proceeded on the path of devotion not only by learning how to play devotional instruments such as the mrdangga, but also by memorizing certain traditional Bengali songs for the glorification of the Lord.

In 1916 Abhay entered Scottish Churches' College, one of the most prestigious colleges in Calcutta. Here he spent four years studying English, Sanskrit, philosophy, psychology, and economics. Since Bible study also was compulsory, Abhay gathered every morning with his fellow students for prayers, hymns, and scripture readings. In 1920, after his final B.A. examinations, Abhay went on a well-deserved, but short, pilgrimage to Jagannâtha Purî—the city where the original Ratha-yâtrâ festival has been annually held for more than two thousand years.

After meeting his spiritual mentor Bhaktisiddhânta Sarasvatî in Calcutta in 1922, and formally taking initiation from him in 1933, Abhay's seriousness gradually increased. Abhay now intensified his study of Lord Caitanya's monotheistic bhedâbheda philosophy. In 1939 the two prominent Godbrothers Bhaktisârangga Goswâmî and Šrîdhara Mahârâja officially acknowledged Abhay's extensive scriptural expertise by awarding him the title Bhaktivedanta.

The 1940s were a very productive period for Abhay, who now fixed his determination for the execution of the order of his spiritual master: to spread Lord Caitanya's teachings in the English language. Although Abhay still had household responsibilities throughout this period, he nevertheless managed to write a complete translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-gîtâ, which, unfortunately, mysteriously disappeared just before publication in 1948. In 1944 he also started Back to Godhead—a bi-weekly magazine that he single-handedly financed, composed, typed, edited, and distributed.

Abhay retired from family life in 1954. In September 1956 he moved to the Vamsî-gopâlajî temple in Vrndâvana, where he rented a room on the roof at five rupees a month. From there he often commuted to Delhi, in spite of his meagre finances, to distribute copies of Back to Godhead and to preach. After accepting the sannyâsa order of life, awarded to him by his Godbrother Bhaktiprajñâna Kešava Mahârâja on September 17, 1959 in Mathurâ's Kešavajî Gaudiya Math temple, Abhay again returned to the Vamsî-gopâlajî temple. Later, in July 1962, he transferred himself to the Râdhâ-Dâmodara temple, also in Vrndâvana, where he started one of his most ambitious projects: a multi-volume translation and commentary of Krsna Dvaipâyana Vyâsa's Šrîmad-Bhâgavatam—an eighteen-thousand-verse Sanskrit composition that elaborately explains an astounding amount of details about the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Šrî Krsna.

At the age of sixty-nine, with hundreds of copies of the first three published volumes of Šrîmad-Bhâgavatam packed in big trunks, but with only forty rupees in cash, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupâda crossed the Atlantic Ocean onboard the Jaladuta—a Scindia Steam Navigation Company cargo carrier, equipped with a passenger cabin. After a remarkably calm crossing, the Jaladuta, under the command of Captain Arun Pandia, reached Boston's Commonwealth Pier on September 17, 1965, and, two days later, the Brooklyn Pier at Seventeenth Street, New York. The stage was set for a spiritual revolution in the Western world.

Prabhupâda's first year in New York was tremendeously difficult. Although he sometimes sold a copy or two of his Šrîmad-Bhâgavatam, Prabhupâda was virtually without resources. And even if Dr. Ramamurti Mishra initially gave him shelter in his own apartment at 33 Riverside Drive, and, later, in room 501 in his yoga studio at 100 West 72nd Street, Dr. Mishra only occasionally and somewhat unwillingly allowed Prabhupâda to talk about Krsna before his yoga students. To be able to freely and regularly (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 7-9 p.m.) speak about the Lord to a small but increasing audience, Prabhupâda would have to move: first to room 307, a small, unfurnished office two floors below the yoga studio; then to a loft at 94 Bowery; and, finally, to a storefront at 26 Second Avenue, which would become his first temple. Here, on July 11, 1966, with financial and practical assistance from a handful of supporters, Prabhupâda formally registered ISKCON—the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—as a nonprofit, tax-exempt religious corporation; and two months later, on September 9, Prabhupâda initiated his first eleven Western disciples during a smoky, but ecstatic, Vedic fire sacrifice.

In the eleven years to come—up until his departure from this world on November 14, 1977 in Vrndâvana—Prabhupâda would initiate thousands of disciples. With their help, he would open and maintain more than one hundred asramas, schools, temples, institutes, and farm communities, all over the world, while he himself tirelessly traveled fourteen times around the globe to preach the glories of the Lord to professors, scientists, authors, and students. In spite of his pressing schedule, however, Prabhupâda never stopped writing: apart from thousands of private letters to disciples and others, his main literary contribution would be a collection of more than sixty volumes of authoritative translations and commentaries on India's most sacred works, such as the Šrîmad-Bhâgavatam, the Caitanya-caritâmrta and the Bhagavad-gîtâ. Prabhupâda's publishing house, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, has since its inception in 1972 continuously been engaged in republishing these priceless works—so far with over five hundred millon copies printed in more than fifty languages.

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS:

II. SECONDARY LITERATURE:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For viewing | For printing