Introduction
This book relates the story of the Lord and His Incarnations since the earliest records of Vedic history. It is verily the Krishna Bible of the Hindu universe. The Bhâgavad Gîtâ compares to it like the sermon on the mountain by Lord Jesus to the full Bible. It has 18.000 verses and consists of 12 books also called Cantos. These books tell the complete history of the Vedic culture with the essence of all its classical stories called Purânas and includes the cream of the Vedic knowledge compiled from all the literatures as well as the story of the life of Lord Krishna in full (Canto 10). It tells about His birth, His youth, all His wonderful proofs of His divine nature and His superhuman feats of defeating all kinds of demons up to the great Mahâbhârat war at Kurukshetra. It is a brilliant story that has been brought to the West by Swami Bhaktivedânta Prabhupâda, a Caitanya Vaishnava, a bhakti (devotional) monk of Lord Vishnu [the name for the transcendental form of Lord Krishna] who undertook the daring task of enlightening the materialist westerners as well as the advanced philosophers and theologians, in order to help them to overcome the perils and loneliness of impersonalism and the philosophy of emptiness.
For the translation the author of this internet version has consulted the translations of C.L Goswami. M.A., Sâstrî (from the Gîtâ Press, Gorakhpur) and the later version of this book by Swami Prabhupâda. The latter translator as an âcârya [guru teaching by example] from the age-old Indian Vaishnava tradition represents the reformation of the devotion for God the way it was practiced in India since the 16th century. This reformation contends that the false authority of the caste system and single dry book knowledge is to be rejected. Lord Krishna-Caitanya, the avatâra [an incarnation of the Lord] who heralded this reform, restored the original purpose of developing devotion to God and endeavored especially for the sacred scripture expounding on the devotion relating to Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This scripture is this Bhâgavata Purâna from which all the Vaishnava âcâryas derived their wisdom for the purpose of instruction and the shaping of their devotion. The word for word translations as well as the full text and commentaries of this book were studied within and without the Hare Krishna temples of learning in India, Europe and America. The purpose of the translation is first of all to make this glorious text available to a wider audience over the Internet. Since the Bible, the Koran and numerous other holy texts are readily available, the author meant that this book could not stay behind on the shelf of his own bookcase as a token of material possessiveness. Knowledge not shared is knowledge lost, and certainly this type of knowledge which stresses the yoga of non-possessiveness and devotion as one of its main values could not be left out. The version of Swami Prabhupâda is very extensive covering some 2400 pages of plain fine printed text including his commentaries. And that were only the first ten Cantos. The remaining two Cantos were posthumously published by his pupils in the full of his spirit. I thus was faced with two daring challenges: One was to make a readable running narrative of the book - that had been dissected to the single word - and second to put it into a language that would befit the 21th century with all its modern and postmodern experience and digital progress to the world order without losing anything of its original verses. Thus another verse to verse as-it-is translation came about in which Prabupâda's and Sâstrî's words were pruned, retranslated and set to the understanding and realization of today. This realization in my case originated directly from the disciplic line of succession of the Vaishnava line of âcâryas (teachers) as well as from a realization of the total field of indian philosophy of enlightenment and yoga discipline as was brought to the West by also non-Vaishnava gurus and maintained by their pupils. Therefore the author has to express his gratitude to all these great heroes who dared to face the adamantine of western philosophy with all its doubts, concreticism and skepticism. Especially the pupils of Prabhupâda, members of the renounced order (sannyâsîs) who instructed the author in the independence and maturity of the philosophy of the bhakti-yogis of Lord Caitanya need to be mentioned. I was already initiated in India by a non-Vaishnava guru and have been given the name of Swami Anand Aadhar ('teacher of the foundation of happiness'). That name the Krishna community converted into Anand Aadhar Prabhu ('master of the foundation of happiness') without further ceremonies of Vaishnava initiation (apart from a basic training). With the name Anand Aadhar I am a withdrawn devotee, a so-called vânaprashta, who does his devotional service independently in the silence and modesty of his local adaptations of the philosophy.
In most cases the word for word translations and grammatical directions of Prabhupâda/ISKCON (mainly taken from Sâstrî) have been followed as they were used in his translations and I have checked them with Sâstrî's original version and with the Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary. In footnotes and between square brackets [ ] sometimes a little comment and extra info is given to accommodate the reader when the original text is drawing from a more experienced approach. On the internetsite bhagavata.org to this book the text of Prabhupâda is linked up at each verse together with my own previous version so that it is possible to retrace at any moment what I have done with the text. This is in accord with the scientific tradition of the Vaishnava community.
For the copyright on this translation is settled for the so-called Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License copyright. This means that one is free to copy, distribute and alter the text on the condition of attribution (refer to name of Anand Aadhar and to my website address bhagavata.org), that the resulting work can only be distributed under the same or similar license to this one and that one cannot use the text for commercial purposes. For all other usage one will have to contact the author.
See also a discussion of the structure of the bhâgavatam.
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There is a download of the full concatenated translation canto 1-12 of Anand Aadhar: http://bhagavata.org/downloads/bhagavata-compl.html
For the full Hare Krishna version with purports and a Sanskrit database of the same translation one can go to: http://vedabase.net/sb/.
