Jagat

Old photo of Jagannath Vallabh Garden in Puri. P.C. Iskcon Desire Tree. It was during his stay in Jagannath Puri [149-154] that Bhaktivinoda Thakur got the golden opportunity to observe Gaudiya Vaishnava culture from a very privileged position in one of its most prominent centers. As Deputy Magistrate, he had the great responsibility of overseeing the affairs of the great temple. "I blissfully served Lord Jagannath for almost five years," he writes. [154] This was the time when he was able to undertake an intense and comprehensive course of study in the bhakti shastras. Moreover, he himself became something of a teacher of Vaishnava scripture, even holding public Bhāgavata classes in the Jagannath Vallabh garden and on the Jagannath temple grounds, classes that were attended by many brahmins and Vaishnavas. The Thakur gave special attention to learning Sanskrit and made great strides, so much so that he even composed his first Sanskrit work, Datta-kaustubha , in 18...

A couple of decades ago I worked for Raoul Ramdas Goff of Mandala Press translating. Ramdas is a disciple of Srila Bhakti Pramode Puri Maharaj , the founder of the Gopinath Gaudiya Math , which is now headed by Sripad Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaj . My relationship with Mandala came to a sudden end when the company went through a period of financial difficulty and so many of the projects that I worked on never found their way to the printing presses. One of those projects, which was in an advanced state of completion, started out as a translation of Sri Kshetra by Sundarananda Vidyavinoda, but since Sundarananda's book was written near the end of the pre-Independence period (pre-1947) a lot of the information was out of date and required considerable supplementary research. We prepared maps and so on, but needed photography and I felt I needed to do some on the spot research. My relationship with Mandala was severed before that took place and the project was left in limbo. S...