Purchasing Mayapur land

Gopal Dasa: At this time Srila Prabhupada was still in Los Angeles and we had collected our money. We had left from the east coast and we went to Brussels and then in Brussels we met up with Shyamasundara, Gurudasa, Yamuna, Malati and Saraswati. Saraswati was Shyamasundar’s and Malati’s little baby and we all began our journey to Bombay, India. 

At the same time, Srila Prabhupada left America and he went to Tokyo, Japan. So at that time, already 1970, we had a temple in Tokyo and he went to get the Krishna Book printed. There is a big printing company in Japan called 'Dai Nippon Insatsu.' 'Dai' means big, 'Nippon' means Japan, and 'Insatsu' means printer, in Japanese. Prabhupada went to this printing company and he negotiated the printing of the Krishna Book which had been financed by George Harrison who was very favorable to us. 

Once this was done, Srila Prabhupada left from Tokyo and he flew to Calcutta and in Calcutta we opened a small temple. In Calcutta there was Jayapataka Swami and Achyutananda. They both were brahmacaris and Prabhupada gave them sannyasa at that time - both of them Achyutananda Swami and Jayapataka Swami. He also went to Sridham Mayapur and he purchased a piece of land which was, at that time, we were only allowed to own seven bighas. You know how much a bigha is. Translated into hectares or square feet, I’m not sure. But you are only allowed seven bighas of land, and so he bought that land and Srila Prabhupada’s little bhajana-kutira was erected there.