Serving the Words of His Predecessors

A look at one of Śrīla Prabhupāda's purports to the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam reveals his loyalty to the Vaiṣṅava tradition of scriptural commentary.

By Gopīparāṅadhana Dāsa

ŚRĪLA A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda was the founder and organizer of a large worldwide religious movement; that he developed it in just twelve years, all after his sixty-ninth birthday, shows that he was not only practical, innovative, and determined but also spiritually empowered. Although these are valid reasons to think highly of Śrīla Prabhupāda, he always de-emphasized his own abilities, preferring to be judged on the more objective grounds of his bona fide allegiance to the teachings of the Vaiṣṅava tradition he represented. He did not credit his preaching success to any special abilities of his own. As he once said, “I don’t claim that I am a pure devotee or perfect, but my only qualification is that I am trying to follow the instruction of the perfect.”

In any case, spiritual realization is essentially a private matter, not open to objective evaluation. There are too many false saints who allow their disciples to fanatically advertise them as much greater than they really are. In the opinion of orthodox Vaiṣṅavas, the saintliness of a person can be known only by someone just as saintly. To publicly establish spiritual authority, then, a teacher, rather than making an open spectacle of his intimate ecstasies, should simply speak philosophically on the basis of what previous authorities have said in scripture and on reputable commentaries of scripture. Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted his own authority to be accepted according to how faithfully he lived up to that standard.

The Gauḍīya school of Vaiṣṅavism to which Śrīla Prabhupāda belongs was founded by Caitanya Mahāprabhu in Bengal five centuries ago. This Gauḍīya sampradāya is officially connected with the Vaiṣṅava school established by Madhva in the thirteenth century and also has strong philosophical and cultural bonds with the even older Śrī Vaiṣṅava school of Rāmānuja.

Although the founding teachers of other Vaiṣṅava schools each wrote major commentaries on Bādarāyaṅa Vyāsa’s Vedānta-sūtra and their followers carried on debate with Advaita impersonalists and others on the basis of their theistic interpretation of Vedānta, Caitanya Mahāprabhu chose not to busy His own followers in the same way. He proposed that the ancient Bhāgavata Purāṅa (known also as Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam) served perfectly well as a natural commentary on the Vedānta-sūtra, having been written by the same Veda-vyāsa. Lord Caitanya advised His associates that since the Bhāgavatam was already available and easily understandable, there was no need for them to compose new commentaries and sub-commentaries on Vedānta.

Another Purāṅa, the Garuḍa Purāṅa, corroborates Lord Caitanya’s reliance on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam:

pūrnaḥ so ’yam atiśayaḥ artho ’yam brahma-sūtrāṅām bhāratārtha-vinirṅayaḥ gāyatrī-bhāṣya-rūpo ’sau vedārtha-paribṛṁhitaḥ

purāṅānāṁ sāma-rūpaḥ sākṣād bhagavatoditaḥ dvādaśa-skandha-yukto ’yam śata-viccheda-saṁyutaḥ grantho ’ṣṭādaśa-sāhasraṁ śrī-bhāgavatābhidhaḥ

“This [Purāṅa] is perfectly complete. It is the purport of the Vedānta-sūtra, establishes the meaning of the Mahābhārata, is a commentary on Gāyatrī, and completes the message of the Vedas. It is the Sāma Veda among the Purāṅas, spoken directly by an incarnation of God [Vyāsa]. This work, consisting of twelve cantos, hundreds of chapters, and eighteen thousand verses, is called Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda considered the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, along with the Bhagavad-gītā, the substantial foundation of his International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He created ISKCON primarily for making the theology of the Gītā and Bhāgavatam universally accessible, and he directed his disciples to give priority to the work of publishing and distributing these two scriptures, in English and many other languages.

Śrīla Prabhupāda's opus magnum, a multi-volume English translation of and commentary on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, was unfortunately left incomplete when he passed away in 1977; it was finished, however, ten years later by the collaborative effort of a few of his disciples. Having served as an editor of this entire series of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and participated in its posthumous completion, I have gathered some insights into Śrīla Prabhupāda's hermeneutic methodology. In this essay, I will examine Śrīla Prabhupāda's translation and commentary on one verse from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, with the aim of showing how he based his own presentation largely on the commentaries of previous authorities.

Nārada's Allegory

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is presented as literal, albeit very ancient, history. A few narrations in this Purāṅa, however, are intended to be understood as fiction—most of them allegories devised by one of the most frequent speakers in the Bhāgavatam, the itinerant preacher Nārada. The text we are going to look at belongs to one of these allegorical passages, the story of King Purañjana told by Nārada to Mahārāja Prācīnabarhi in Chapters 25–29 of the Fourth Canto.

In brief, the imaginary Purañjana is equivalent to the Everyman figure in medieval European morality plays. He represents the illusioned soul suffering from misidentification with his temporary embodiment in material life. Purañjana tries for years to enjoy with his consort, the female personification of his material intelligence; he finally succumbs to old age, disease, and death, and then, because of too much attachment to his wife, takes his next birth as a woman. This female reincarnation of Purañjana marries a pious king who dies young, leaving his wife bewildered in lamentation.

Our text occurs at this point in the narration, as the fifty-first verse of Chapter 28. It describes an unexpected visit by an old, forgotten friend. Here are the original Sanskrit text and Śrīla Prabhupāda's translation:

tatra pūrvataraḥ kaścit sakhā brāhmaṅa ātmavān sāntvayan valgunā sāmnā tām āha rudatīṁ prabho

“My dear King, one brāhmaṅa, who was an old friend of King Purañjana, came to that place and began to pacify the Queen with sweet words.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda's explanation of this verse, his “purport,” fills two pages. It is based on the short commentaries, each only a few lines long, by two standard Vaiṣṅava teachers, Śrīdhara Svāmī and Viśvanātha Cakravartī. We will first describe these commentaries and then analyze how Śrīla Prabhupāda used them.

Śrīdhara's Commentary

The oldest extant commentary on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam was written by Śrīdhara Svāmī; older commentaries are known only by name or by isolated fragments. No solid evidence supports his exact life span; Karl Potter has tentatively assigned his birth to the beginning of the fifteenth century, though Śrīdhara Svāmī may have lived earlier than that, since less than a century later Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu described Śrīdhara as being a venerable authority. In India, more than one century is usually needed for a commentator on traditional literature to become established as an authority.

As far as is known, Śrīdhara Svāmī did not belong to any of the major Vaiṣṅava schools, but was probably an initiated member of Śaṅkara’s Advaita sampradāya. Nonetheless, the opinions he expressed in his commentaries on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and the Viṣṅu Purāṅa were staunchly Vaiṣṅava. Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s cutting comments to Vallabhācārya, a prominent Vaiṣṅava, testify to the great respect Caitanya had for Śrīdhara’s opinions, as Lord Caitanya’s biographer Kṛṣṅadāsa Kavirāja recounts:

Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu smilingly replied, “One who does not accept the svāmī [husband] as an authority I consider a prostitute. ...You have dared criticize Śrīdhara Svāmī, and you have begun your own commentary on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, not accepting his authority. That is your false pride. Śrīdhara Svāmī is the spiritual master of the entire world because by his mercy we can understand the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. I therefore accept him as a spiritual master. Whatever you might write due to false pride, trying to surpass Śrīdhara Svāmī, would carry a contrary purport. Therefore no one would pay attention to it. One who comments on the Bhāgavatam following in the footsteps of Śrīdhara Svāmī will be honored and accepted by everyone.” (Śri Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Antya-līlā 7.115 and 132–136)

The two-sentence commentary of Śrīdhara Svāmī on the verse we are considering reads: “The friend who is ’very old’ in the sense of being eternal without origin is the Supreme Lord, in accordance with the statement of revealed scripture beginning ’Two birds...’ He addressed her with sweet words of consolation.”

In the first sentence, Śrīdhara Svāmī identifies the old friend of the queen as every soul’s original friend, the supreme controller (īśvara). He supports this opinion by proposing that this verse of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam alludes to one of the oldest Vedic hymns. Although it is well known that the verse beginning dvā suparṅā occurs in both the Muṅḍaka and Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣads, less well-known is that the verse is originally found, verbatim, in the First Maṅḍala of the Ṛg Veda, the most archaic of scriptural sources:

dvā suparṅā sayujā sakhāyā samānaṁ vṛkṣaṁ pariṣasvajāte tayor anyaḥ pippalaṁ svādv atty anaśnann anyo ’bhicākaśīti

“Two friendly companion birds together reside on one tree. One of them is eating the tree’s fruits while the other does not eat but simply watches His friend.”

Vaiṣṅava commentators explain that this verse refers to God in His accompanying of the finite soul in all the soul’s incarnations in material existence. In every form of life, the finite soul and Supreme Soul sit together in the heart, one of them trying to enjoy material life and the other simply waiting for His eternal friend to remember Him.

Viśvanātha's Commentary

The second commentary drawn upon by Śrīla Prabhupāda in his purport to the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 4.28.51 is the one written by Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura in the second half of the seventeenth century. Śrī Viśvanātha Cakravartī was the most prominent spiritual master of sixth-generation Vaiṣṅavas in Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s sampradāya. Śrīla Viśvanātha led the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṅava community in Vṛndāvana during the time of the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb, who persecuted the Vaiṣṅavas. Viśvanātha’s own predecessor was the celebrated devotional poet Narottama Dāsa, and among his disciples was Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṅa, author of the Govinda-bhāṣya commentary on Vedānta-sūtra.

Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s commentary on this verse is four sentences long. The first sentence suggests a deep meaning to the allegory of Queen Purañjanī’s lamentation: “[This verse] implies that in such a mood of distress as is suffered when one’s spiritual master has departed from this world, a disciple can experience the direct presence of God.”

In this realization of Viśvanātha Cakravartī, Everyman has been replaced with a rare, special soul—the surrendered disciple of a pure Vaiṣṅava. Without any other qualifications of his own, a sincere disciple earns the right to see God simply by his attachment to his spiritual master. After the guru has passed away, the serious disciple does not lose his spiritual strength but continues to advance by remembering and executing the guru’s instructions. The intense devotional mood of separation can develop into direct vision of the Supreme Person.

Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s second sentence is a near exact repeat of Śrīdhara Svāmī’s first sentence: “In this context, the friend who is ’very old’ in the sense of being eternal without origin is the Supreme Lord, in accordance with such statements of revealed scripture as the one beginning ’Two birds...’”

In the tradition of Sanskrit commentary, this sort of “plagiarism” is considered ethical. It is appropriate to simply repeat the statements of one’s predecessors when further explanation for one’s own generation is not required. To pretend to be original, furthermore, is frowned upon. Most of Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s contemporaries who could read Sanskrit were probably acquainted with Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary and would have recognized this citation; for those unfamiliar with Śrīdhara, Viśvanātha was being considerate by passing on the past master’s words.

The third sentence explains why the old friend in the allegory appears as a brāhmaṅa: “He [the Supreme Lord in the heart] is a brāhmaṅa, or in other words, he is in the guise of a brāhmaṅa; by this [the present verse] means to inform us that without pure love of God one can never have direct realization of God’s true, original form.”

The sincere disciple represented by Queen Purañjanī is not prepared to fully realize God’s personality, but even in His disguised form the Lord kindly gives the soul instructions that enable him to gradually achieve perfection.

Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s fourth sentence explains another word in the verse, the adjective ātma-vān (literally, “self-possessed” or “self-realized”), which further characterizes the brāhmaṅa: “’Self-possessed’ here means also having His original form, which He kept hidden within Himself.”

Ordinarily, God, who sits silently within every person’s heart, limits His functions to being a witness, sanctioner, and facilitator of the living being’s endeavors. In the case of the rare soul who has become purified from material desires, God advises the soul directly from within the heart how to progress toward liberation. Besides being the Supersoul, however, He is simultaneously nondifferent from God in His full personal form. Those who progress beyond liberation to pure devotion thus realize their own personal relationship with God.

Śrīla Prabhupāda's Purport

Now we can look at Śrīla Prabhupāda's purport. He begins by retelling Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s second sentence, which, as we have seen, is Śrīdhara Svāmī’s first sentence and refers to the Upaniṣads and the Ṛg Veda. Viśvanātha Cakravartī had said: “In this context, the friend who is ’very old’ in the sense of being eternal without origin is the Supreme Lord, in accordance with such statements of revealed scripture as the one beginning ’Two birds...’”

Śrīla Prabhupāda writes:

The appearance of an old friend in the form of a brāhmaṅa is very significant. In His Paramātmā feature, Kṛṣṅa is the old friend of everyone. According to Vedic injunction, Kṛṣṅa is sitting with the living entity side by side. According to the śruti-mantra (dvā suparṅā sayujā sakhāyāḥ), the Lord is sitting within the heart of every living entity as suhṛt, the best friend. The Lord is always eager to have the living entity come home, back to Godhead. Sitting with the living entity as witness, the Lord gives him all chances to enjoy himself materially, but whenever there is an opportunity, the Lord gives good counsel and advises the living entity to abandon trying to become happy through material adjustment and instead turn his face toward the Supreme Personality of Godhead and surrender unto Him.

Śrīla Prabhupāda next presents the idea of Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s first sentence, which reads: “[This verse] implies that in such a mood of distress as is suffered when one’s spiritual master has departed from this world, a disciple can experience the direct presence of God.”

From this, Śrīla Prabhupāda's derives the following:

When one becomes serious to follow the mission of the spiritual master, his resolution is tantamount to seeing the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As explained before, this means meeting the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the instruction of the spiritual master. This is technically called vāṅī-sevā.

In Sanskrit the word vāṅī means “the faculty of speech,” “words,” and “instructions.” Sevā means “service.” A disciple can serve his spiritual master’s body (vapuḥ) whenever opportunities arise, but more important is serving his vāṅī. Vāṅī-sevā is not limited by the absence of the person being served. Prabhupāda continues in his purport:

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura states in his Bhagavad-gītā commentary on the verse vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kuru-nandana (Bg. 2.41) that one should serve the words of the spiritual master. The disciple must stick to whatever the spiritual master orders. Simply by following on that line, one sees the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Then Śrīla Prabhupāda renders the third sentence of Viśvanātha Cakravartī: “He [the Supreme Lord in the heart] is a brāhmaṅa, or in other words, he is in the guise of a brāhmaṅa; by this [the present verse] means to inform us that without pure love of God one can never have direct realization of God’s true, original form.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda writes,

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Paramātmā, appeared before the Queen as a brāhmaṅa, but why didn’t He appear in His original form as Śrī Kṛṣṅa? Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura remarks that unless one is very highly elevated in loving the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one cannot see Him as He is.

Viśvanātha Cakravartī’s fourth sentence was “’Self-possessed’ here means also having His original form, which He kept hidden within Himself.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda's version of this is:

Nonetheless, if one sticks to the principles enunciated by the spiritual master, somehow or other he is in association with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Since the Lord is in the heart, He can advise a sincere disciple from within. This is also confirmed in Bhagavad-gītā (10.10):

teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam dadāmi buddhi-yogaṁ taṁ yena mām upayānti te

“To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda finishes his purport with a citation from another Vaiṣṅava authority:

In conclusion, if a disciple is very serious to execute the mission of the spiritual master, he immediately associates with the Supreme Personality of Godhead by vāṅī or vapuḥ. This is the only secret of success in seeing the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Instead of being eager to see the Lord in some bush of Vṛndāvana while at the same time engaging in sense gratification, if one instead sticks to the principle of following the words of the spiritual master, he will see the Supreme Lord without difficulty. Śrīla Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura has therefore said:

bhaktis tvayi sthiratarā bhagava yadi syād daivena naḥ phalati divya-kiśora-mūrtiḥ muktiḥ svayaṁ mukulitāñjali sevate ’smān dharmārtha-kāma-gatayaḥ samaya-pratīkṣāḥ

“If I am engaged in devotional service unto You, my dear Lord, then very easily can I perceive Your presence everywhere. And as far as liberation is concerned, I think that liberation stands at my door with folded hands, waiting to serve me—and all material conveniences of dharma [religiosity], artha [economic development], and kāma [sense gratification] stand with her.” (Kṛṣṅa-karṅāmṛta 107)

If one is very highly advanced in devotional service, he will have no difficulty in seeing the Supreme Personality of Godhead. If one engages in the service of the spiritual master, he not only sees the Supreme Personality of Godhead but attains liberation. As far as material conveniences are concerned, they automatically come, just as the maidservants of a queen follow the queen wherever she goes. Liberation is no problem for the pure devotee, and all material conveniences are simply awaiting him at all stages of life.

This single text, of course, is only a tiny sample of Śrīla Prabhupāda's purports. A much broader survey needs to be taken before a fair appraisal can be made of how he used his predecessor’s commentaries. The project of researching the sources of Śrīla Prabhupāda's purports in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and Bhagavad-gītā As It Is is only beginning, and requires the ongoing diligence of any number of disciples and scholars.

Śrīla Prabhupāda was firmly convinced of the relevance of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. In his view, the Bhāgavatam’s teachings were timeless, the perennial science of God consciousness. His own responsibility was simply to translate them without distortion. If the instructions of his authoritative predecessors were properly served, the whole world would surely benefit.

Admittedly, the ideas and images Śrīla Prabhupāda strove to convey in his purports are sometimes difficult for modern readers to comprehend, what to speak of assimilate. The original texts he translated are messages from a different world, ancient and foreign. But Prabhupāda felt the urgent need to deliver these messages as best he could. He was thus always concerned with how to make the Bhāgavatam’s enlightening instructions comprehensible to the average, contemporary public. Certainly not everyone would understand, but even if only a few readers received benefit from this transcendental knowledge, the endeavor could be counted as a great success.

Before Śrīla Prabhupāda came to America in 1965 with his first English volumes of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, a well-intentioned person could have questioned him, “Why present this work, which has a very small audience? Why not something else, easier and more popular?” Prabhupāda, however, did not think in such a way. To him it did not matter that there were no readers for the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam; he created his own readership. In a few years, thousands of disciples became serious students of the Bhāgavatam, and millions of other people around the world brought the book into their homes. This is the sign of a great author—that he creates an audience where there was none.

Gopīparāṅadhana Dāsa has been a Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT) Sanskrit editor and translator for more than twenty-five years. He is currently working on Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī’s Śrī Bṛhad-Bhāgavatāmṛta, the first volume of which is now available at the Krishna.com store (page 63).