We were so eager to have Chaitanya-charitamrta
Govinda dasi : one of the things that happened there that's very nice, Prabhupada had started teaching us up in San Francisco...this is just after he returned to America...we had expressed a desire to learn Bengali and Sanskrit. So every day we would come into his room at a certain time and he would recite the alphabet and we would recite it after him, and then he would talk about it.
I really wanted to be able to read Chaitanya-charitamrta, but I couldn't because I didn't know the language. So Prabhupada taught me one verse from the Chaitanya-charitamrta, which by the way was not printed at this time. Remember, there was only his big Chaitanya-charitamrta, which was always open every morning when I cleaned his room. That's what he would read in the early morning times was his Chaitanya-charitamrta. I would find it open. It was beautiful. It just glowed. I would clean it very nicely, and I would wish that I could read it.
He knew that I had this affection for Chaitanya-charitamrta, and so he taught me a verse from it and he would ask me to sing it every day: sri-krsna-caitanya-nityanandau sahoditau, gaudodaye puspavantau citrau sandau tamo-nudau. And he explained the meaning of this verse is that normally the sun and the moon don't rise together. But in this case, both the sun and the moon have arisen over the land of Gauda and they are Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda, who are just like the sun and the moon and They are dispelling all the darkness of the world.
The books that Goursundar had gotten were the Chaitanya-charitamrta, they were done by an Indian. They were the only Chaitanya-charitamrta in English prior to Prabhupada's, seven skinny little books that Goursundar had bought at some Indian store in New York. It wasn't Gaudiya Math, it was a translation by some scholar, but they were nice. They were better than nothing. And so I used to sit on the floor and read them while Prabhupada was resting because we didn't have any books. Just remember, the Gita hadn't been printed, there was only the three volumes of Srimad-Bhagavatam.
So I would sit and read them and Prabhupada could see how much we liked them, and that was when he decided that he would translate Chaitanya-charitamrta. And Goursundar was learning Bengali, so he would do the transliteration. He would give me a tape every day, and I would transcribe it. If you look in the front part of Chaitanya-charitamrta, "Some of my friends have requested me to do..." It's because we were so eager to have Chaitanya-charitamrta.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada - Yadubara Dasa
Recently Added
Trending Today