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The
Book
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The
writer
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Welcome to the site of the S'rîmad
Bhâgavatam (or the Bhâgavata Purâna). Here you will find the complete and up-to-date
version
maintained in Sanskrit, English and Dutch of this most important sacred
book of stories of India. India knows many purânas or storybooks, but this collection of
stories is generally accepted as being the most complete and important.
The book, arranged in twelve so-called cantos, comprises 335 chapters with about 18000 verses. Truly
a bible thus [a so-called samhitâ]. It
is this collection of stories that stresses the prime
importance of the maintaining aspect of God personified by the
transcendental form of Lord Vishnu.
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The writer of this book is named Krishna Dvaipâyana
Vyâsadeva, also called
Bâdarâyana. He is the Lord, the bhagavân, among the philosophers, who in India
assembled all the holy texts. He compiled the Vedas, also known
as s'ruti, containing the basic wisdom, the
mantras for the rituals and the hymns. He also wrote the Mahâbhârata, which is the greatest epic poem in the
world. It describes the history (itihâsa) of the great fall that the Vedic culture
once made. The Bhagavad Gîtâ is the most important part of it.
Vyâsa also wrote the rest of the eighteen great story books (the purânas) of India as also the Brahma-sûtra, his masterpiece on the
Absolute Truth.
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The
person
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The
culture
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The representative of Vishnu on earth is
named the Fortunate One in this book. We know Him specifically by the
names of Lord
Râma and Lord Krishna.
The Fortunate One is thus the Lord who is known in different forms or
incarnations, but also the devotees are part of His reality and are
also called bhâgavata when they are of pure devotion. Thus
there is the Lord
in His many appearances, the devotee with as many faces and the book.
They are all called Fortunate. To be fortunate means to be of the
opulence,
or to carry, or live by, the fullness of God's riches, beauty, fame,
power, knowledge and detachment.
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Vyâsa was a grandfather of the Kuru dynasty. He
lived a very long time. His long duration of life enabled him to write
the story of the Fortunate One and all the other books. He had a son
called S'ukadeva who handed the message of this bible down to
another member of the family, Emperor Parîkchit, who had difficulty respecting the classical
wisdom. This emperor is there as a model for us normal people who seek
their
stability in the wisdom. This knowledge was conveyed by S'uka in
disciplic succession (paramparâ),
to
those
who
teach
by
example
(the
âcâryas) the science of devotional service (bhakti). This book, and it's culture, was brought
to the West by the Vaishnava,
the
Vishnu-monk, Swami
A.
C.
Bhaktivedanta
Prabhupâda.
Together with his pupils (known as the Hare
Krishnas of ISKCON) he realized a
verse by verse commented series of books
covering the entire Bhâgavatam. This site offers not all these
texts (see for that purpose vedabase.net)
but
does offer under the Creative Commons
copyright
an as-it-is translation of the verses in a concatenated form complete
with the previous version. This text is regularly updated and
maintained
by Anand Aadhar Prabhu (René P. B. A. Meijer), a dutch psychologist converted to the
philosophy of yoga
who received instruction in the temples of ISKCON and elsewhere. His predecessor in
this duty was S'rî
Hayes'var
das
(Hendrik van Teylingen) who covered most of
the translations into Dutch.
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Quote of the day:
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The Bhâgavatam
centers around the love
of Lord Krishna
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The Uddhava Gitâ

in e-book pdf format
and in
epub
format.
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The Summum Bonum
(tenth Canto)

in
e-book pdf format.
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