Bhagavata Wiki - Srimad Bhagavatam

<FONT FACE="Georgia">In this wiki is maintained and discussed the<br><br>S'rīmad Bhāgavatam (the Bhāgavata Purāna)</Font>

<FONT FACE="Georgia">"The Story of the Fortunate One" </Font>

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         <P><FONT FACE="Georgia">The Book</Font></P>
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         <P><FONT FACE="Georgia">The writer</Font></P>
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         Welcome to the wiki of the S'rīmad Bhāgavatam (or the Bhāgavata Purāna). Here you will find the complete second version (2009)  in English and Dutch
         of this most important sacred book of stories of India (see also the up-to-date third version at bhagavata.org)
         India knows many purānas 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. It is that collection of stories which stresses the prime importance of the maintaining aspect of God personified by the transcendental form of Lord Vishnu.</P>
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         The writer of this book is named
         Krishna Dvaipāyana Vyāsadeva, also called
         Bādarāyana. He is the Lord, the bhagavān,
         (avatāra) amongst 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 as well wrote the Mahābhārata,
         which is the greatest epic poem in the world. It describes
         the history (itihāsa) of the great fall that the vedic
         culture once made. The Bhagavad Gītā is the most
         important part of it. Vyāsa also wrote the rest of the
         eighteen great Bibles (the purānas) of India as well
         as the Brahma-sūtra, his masterpiece on the Absolute
         Truth.</P>

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         <P><FONT FACE="Georgia">The person</Font></P>
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         <P><FONT FACE="Georgia">The culture</Font></P>
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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 Rāma 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
         bhāgavata when they are pure. Thus there is the Lord
         in His many appearances, the devotee with as many faces and
         the book. They are all called Fortunate. 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.</P>
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         Vyāsa 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 by the name of S'ukadeva who handed the message of this
         Bible down to another member of the family, Emperor
         Parīkchit, who had difficulty respecting the classical
         wisdom. This emperor is the model for us normal people who
         seek their stability in the wisdom. This knowledge was
         conveyed by S'uka in disciplic succession (paramparā),
         to those who teach by example (the ācāryas), 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 Prabhupāda.
         Together with his pupils (known as the Hare Krishnas of ISKCON, see videos 1 and 2) he realized a verse by verse
         commented series of books covering the entire
         Bhāgavatam. This site offers not all these
         commentaries (see for that purpose vedabase.net) but does
         offer the basic translation of the verses as well as a
         concatenated version, translated as-it-is which is regularly
         updated, being 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. (Proofreading and correcting manuscript by Sakhya devī dāsī]). His predecessor in this duty was
         S'rī Hayes'var das (Hendrik van Teylingen) who covered
         most of the translations into Dutch. The present
         responsibility for the culture of Vaishnavism in Holland
         lies with the ISKCON vaishnava-monk Kadamba Kānana
         Swami.</P>
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