Jagat

Now recalling these things that happened it really has bizarre feeling about it. At that time also one very friendly and good-hearted godbrother was Patita Pavan as he like to call himself but his real name was Patita Uddharan Prabhu. He told me he wanted to be known as Patita Pavan as he was so very fallen. He was an old India hand -- someone who had spent years there. Patit, as we all called him, came to me on my first day in India to help me buy dhotis and show me around. "Oh you have just come, I always like to take the ones who have just arrived on a tour." We went to a school that made homespun khadi dhotis that he knew of and purchased a few pieces and then he took me to many small temples of demigods and goddesses. Many, many temples of god and goddesses. “Here is the goddess of smallpox,” Patit showed me. "You come here if you get smallpox and ask her to hid them from you." I’ll remember that one Patit!!! Thanks. Patit was also studying astrology and today is still doing this as his career in San Francisco. Patit did a very long chart on my life which was really very clear. He seemed to go over everything that had happened and would happen and from that chart everything he told me has actually happened, except for one -- a major war in which I wouldn’t die. It was to take place in the United States when I was in Asia. I’m very happy that part of his prediction never came true. He told me what my relationship with ISKCON would become which he put very simply as I would always be within the outer circle. At the time I could not see or understand what he meant. He knew of the physical problems I had and of the history of my father and his difficulties in life. He told me that he saw me surrounded by people of low birth and that I would be working with them in some regard and trying to uplift them but that they would not be devotees. I have been working with fifty artists here in China continuously for over ten years now. He told me he saw that I would be confined for many years and he thought I would have to go to prison. When I first started my work here in China I stayed within a house hardly ever leaving for four yrs. And he told me I would always have nice places to live in, but that they would be taken away from me and destroyed. My last house here was a very nice Chinese stone house, but the city came one day and sprayed the Chinese character on the wall which means "cut" I was informed that this meant we were to make room for the new loop city road that house is now within the road completely gone. So Patita Pavan Prabhu was quite accurate. Patita was also full of wonderful stories of how when he first saw George Harrison at the Bury place temple he was so awe-struck of him and the service he was doing for Srila Prabhupada he bowed down to him in the mud. George didn’t like that too much. And then he told me very proudly that when there were no flowers left to shower on Srila Prabhupada when he was departing the temple he went and pulled up grass and showered Srila Prabhupada with this. “Srila Prabhupada then called me excentric! I through if no flowers then we should offers leaves and as there were no leaves I offered grass." Patita Pavana Prabhu Ji Jaya Patit also wrote a very nice introduction for pilgrims to Vrindaban guide which he had printed there always Patit gloried the qualities of Srila Prabhupada. Another very memorable Bombay devotee was Raghava Chaitanya Das, who was over 90 yrs old. He lived in the ashram like just one of the prabhus. We were told that Raghava Chaitanya was the first life member in ISKCON and that he had come to spend his last days within Srila Prabhupada’s ashram. I often quote Raghava’s words here on the Dharma Mela and if ever there was a siksha guru to worship I worship him. He blessed me with the statement one day as he singled me out near the ashram and looked into my eyes with, "Even if the whole world turns its back on you, never give up the Lotus Feet of your Guru Maharaja." Raghava Chaitanya Prabhu Ki Jaya! Srila Prabhupada Ki Jaya! Then last but certainly not least, there was our godbrother Sridhar Maharaja who is a very different and wonderful soul, always very kind and jolly and full of enthusiastic ways to serve somehow, some way, through all kinds of ups and downs. When the godbrothers started setting on the big chairs in the temple room one day Sridhar Maharaja was given a pillow cushion to set on during prasad, His Holiness said, “Oh, what is this? An “ass sana”? For me too?” As I was about to leave Bombay to collect for the BBT in Europe, Sridhar was asked to leave the temple he had served for years because he was disturbing the mood of the person giving initiations with his disciples. How to tell my story without bringing in the bad guys? As this story goes, on they get in very close. I will try to pass by and let them fade.

Now recalling these things that happened it really has bizarre feeling about it. At that time also one very friendly and good-hearted godbrother was Patita Pavan as he like to call himself but his real name was Patita Uddharan Prabhu. He told me he wanted to be known as Patita Pavan as he was so very fallen. He was an old India hand -- someone who had spent years there. Patit, as we all called him, came to me on my first day in India to help me buy dhotis and show me around. "Oh you have just come, I always like to take the ones who have just arrived on a tour." We went to a school that made homespun khadi dhotis that he knew of and purchased a few pieces and then he took me to many small temples of demigods and goddesses. Many, many temples of god and goddesses. “Here is the goddess of smallpox,” Patit showed me. "You come here if you get smallpox and ask her to hid them from you." I’ll remember that one Patit!!! Thanks. Patit was also studying astrology and today is still doing this as his career in San Francisco. Patit did a very long chart on my life which was really very clear. He seemed to go over everything that had happened and would happen and from that chart everything he told me has actually happened, except for one -- a major war in which I wouldn’t die. It was to take place in the United States when I was in Asia. I’m very happy that part of his prediction never came true. He told me what my relationship with ISKCON would become which he put very simply as I would always be within the outer circle. At the time I could not see or understand what he meant. He knew of the physical problems I had and of the history of my father and his difficulties in life. He told me that he saw me surrounded by people of low birth and that I would be working with them in some regard and trying to uplift them but that they would not be devotees. I have been working with fifty artists here in China continuously for over ten years now. He told me he saw that I would be confined for many years and he thought I would have to go to prison. When I first started my work here in China I stayed within a house hardly ever leaving for four yrs. And he told me I would always have nice places to live in, but that they would be taken away from me and destroyed. My last house here was a very nice Chinese stone house, but the city came one day and sprayed the Chinese character on the wall which means "cut" I was informed that this meant we were to make room for the new loop city road that house is now within the road completely gone. So Patita Pavan Prabhu was quite accurate. Patita was also full of wonderful stories of how when he first saw George Harrison at the Bury place temple he was so awe-struck of him and the service he was doing for Srila Prabhupada he bowed down to him in the mud. George didn’t like that too much. And then he told me very proudly that when there were no flowers left to shower on Srila Prabhupada when he was departing the temple he went and pulled up grass and showered Srila Prabhupada with this. “Srila Prabhupada then called me excentric! I through if no flowers then we should offers leaves and as there were no leaves I offered grass." Patita Pavana Prabhu Ji Jaya Patit also wrote a very nice introduction for pilgrims to Vrindaban guide which he had printed there always Patit gloried the qualities of Srila Prabhupada. Another very memorable Bombay devotee was Raghava Chaitanya Das, who was over 90 yrs old. He lived in the ashram like just one of the prabhus. We were told that Raghava Chaitanya was the first life member in ISKCON and that he had come to spend his last days within Srila Prabhupada’s ashram. I often quote Raghava’s words here on the Dharma Mela and if ever there was a siksha guru to worship I worship him. He blessed me with the statement one day as he singled me out near the ashram and looked into my eyes with, "Even if the whole world turns its back on you, never give up the Lotus Feet of your Guru Maharaja." Raghava Chaitanya Prabhu Ki Jaya! Srila Prabhupada Ki Jaya! Then last but certainly not least, there was our godbrother Sridhar Maharaja who is a very different and wonderful soul, always very kind and jolly and full of enthusiastic ways to serve somehow, some way, through all kinds of ups and downs. When the godbrothers started setting on the big chairs in the temple room one day Sridhar Maharaja was given a pillow cushion to set on during prasad, His Holiness said, “Oh, what is this? An “ass sana”? For me too?” As I was about to leave Bombay to collect for the BBT in Europe, Sridhar was asked to leave the temple he had served for years because he was disturbing the mood of the person giving initiations with his disciples. How to tell my story without bringing in the bad guys? As this story goes, on they get in very close. I will try to pass by and let them fade.

I decided to check this rather laughable attempt by Bhutabhavana to quote the Bible with obvious political intent. There are basically two versions of this verse: (Authorized version, King James, etc.) "A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left." The one BB uses is close to the Revised Standard Version: "A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left." In either case, however, to think that left and right can be interpreted according to modern political categories is sheer nonsense. See how the word "left" is used in the Gospel according to Matthew: <blockquote>36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.</blockquote>

The Bombay temple opening commenced in January of 1978. The then Prime Minster of India Morarji Desai was rumored to be the chief guest and because of that every international news service was there for the event. There were news reporters from the BBC, UPI and even Japan. We library party members were given the service of escorting them around the temple. I was in charge of the UPI reporters, all Americans. I remember saying to them, "It must be a real hardship service for you here in India!" One of them answered, "Yes it is -- no hamburgers here. That's what we really miss!" Then he said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have said that." I just told them, remembering Srila Prabhupada’s words while he lived with the American family in Butler, PA, "Think nothing of it. Let me show you more of the temple.” My very sweet and kind godbrother Jagat Purusha Prabhu had organized what he called Bhakti Kala Kshetra. In our Bombay temple we have a first class stage and theater. It was like Broadway and able to seat about 500 people, with the stage placed below all the seating. Jagat Purusha cultivated all the famous Indian movie stars, singers and dancers, who make Bombay their center. Each week, very famous Indian singers, musicians and dancers would come to perform at the temple. I saw most of the performances during those days: Kathakali, Bharata Natyam, and dancers from Manipur and Assam. Big name bhajan singers would often come and all were there for the temple opening. One very memorable performance was of two dancers playing Radha and Krishna in a swing type dance, which was really like seeing the Divine Couple performing Their Jhulan Yatra pastimes. Morarji Desai never came but he sent another big minister named Raj Narayan to take his place. This man always appeared with a bandana tied around his head like a sadhu baba or a present day rap singer. I did not hear the speech he gave. And then there were the professional Brahmins who were hired to perform the fire sacrifice. I was told that this had to be done or no one would accept that Westerners could actually invoke the Lord’s presence, even under the instructions of such a great acharya as Srila Prabhupada. After all, it was not as though Srila Prabhupada was listened to very widely, as it is usually after their disappearance that people like Srila Prabhupada become truly famous. This is because while they are still present, they will correct those who approach him directly, so few were really interested in doing so. Afterwards, however, the worshipers flood in and so they did at the Bombay opening. We continued to serve there assisting in whatever service we could until the 1978 Mayapur Gaura Purnima Festival. That year there was a lunar eclipse on the Gaura Purnima. We were told that this had not occurred since the Lord birth and so all the devotee spent the entire eclipse bathing in the Ganga, but none of the other residents joined us. It seems that the tradition of taking shelter of the Ganga during a lunar eclipse had been lost. Formerly, people would bathe in the Ganges and chant Hare Krishna to ward off the inauspiciousness of the eclipse and it was while all the residents of Mayapur and Nabadwip were doing so that the Lord took His birth. We arrived late for the festival, but it had already been decided by the leaders of the Indian GBC that the Library party would be disbanded. The party was completely broken up and the Indian BBT has never since sold Srila Prabhupada books in that way. That party made us very independent, but at the same time we were all surrendered to Srila Prabhupada and his movement. Our service was taken away mostly because the leaders hated Garga Muni and didn’t want anything he had created to continue on. Many people were angry with him. They would tell us how horrible he had been to us and how Srila Prabhupada used to protect him. I had to think about what service to take up and concluded that if I could somehow be given second initiation I would be able to take up pujari service. During that 1978 Mayapur festival, the leading godbrothers made or prepared all of their political moves. My life within ISKCON also changed at this point as I adopted a wrong conception of how things were to be organized, as did most of us. At that time, I considered that I would not be able to avoid accepting a godbrother as guru, as a result of my understanding of what Srila Prabhupada had said in his room the last two weeks about carrying on initiations after his disappearance. I thought about whom to approach for second initiation. I looked for someone who was more or less permanently situated within India and decided to ask him. The moment I entered the room he was staying in at Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir, he was having a talk with his old cronies and I knew what they were discussing. It was a “will the devotees accept them as initiating gurus” discussion. My understanding was this person my godbrother was a proxy of His Divine Grace now that he has left this planet. I was unconcerned that they were speaking about whether the devotees accept this or not. And I knew very well what was being spoken about before I entered the room, as I had to wait for at least ten minutes to gain entrance. When I was allowed in to speak to the person I was approaching, I told him in front of everyone that a sacred thread had been sent to Ramesvara from Srila Prabhupada for my second diksha, but that it has not yet been given to me. That person told me it is impossible now because Srila Prabhupada has left the planet and cannot accept you as there had been no fire sacrifice. So I told him, “Then I request you to give me second initiation.” The other men in the room looked at each other as if to say, “See, it is going to work.” I told him that I knew him from Radha Damodara TSKP of which I had been a member and that is why I was asking him. As he had been given or had taken Bombay as his next place to serve or rule, it was planned that on Ram Navami there would be initiations. From this point on, fire raced through the math. There was one just one offense after the next. The whole nature of ISKCON changed to small islands of more or less bogus deviations from the teachings of Srila Prabhupada. I now truly feel that there are for there are as many different interpretations of Srila Prabhupada’s message as there are preachers in ISKCON. I really feel it is just a great disservice to the poor newcomers to give them these greatly diluted versions of His Divine Grace. Such are the rages of time and Durga Devi on us. I often remember Srila Prabhupada final warnings to us in Vrindavan: "You boys are just children. You do not understand how serious Maya is in her service to Krishna. If you don’t become completely 100% Krishna conscious, she will crush you." So I left Mayapur and traveled back to Bombay. After a few days, there was the first incident, which was a very interesting one indeed. There was a very serious devotee by the name of Amogha Lila Prabhu in Bombay. One day Amogha told everyone he had seen Srila Prabhupada appear before him. Prabhupada told him that what was happening with the society was displeasing him. Then other devotees said that they had also seen Srila Prabhupada appear again and this time His Divine Grace was speaking with three or four other prabhus and not just Amogha Lila A small revolution erupted, but the leaders managed to put it down by convincing everyone that neither Amogha Lila nor the other devotees were close enough to His Divine Grace to be blessed with such apparitions. After all, he wasn’t a GBC or an initiating guru; he was just a prabhu, a brahmachari. Come now -- get real! It was very strange Very soon after that, Amogha left Bombay and went to preach in Pakistan, a place where devotees were hated by all. Srila Prabhupada once told us, “I take the dust from the feet of anyone who goes and preaches in Pakistan and I place it on my head.” Amogha stayed there to preach for many years, but I have no idea what has become of him now. After that time another very inauspicious incident took place. One godbrother had left the temple to marry a Hindu girl whose mother was a Shakti worshipper of Durga. This woman wanted to take over the temple and she made a plan to do so through her son-in-law, our godbrother. She told him that if he went and stood in the ocean all night, chanting mantras to Durga, everything in the temple would be just given to him when he returned there. This crazy fellow followed his witch mother-in-law’s instructions, but when he came into the temple grounds, he was carrying a straight razor that he started to use to slash the devotees. He slashed Karandhar very deeply across the stomach and Jagat Purusha across the arm. He then walked into the temple room, laid the razor at the feet of the devotee giving Srimad Bhagavatam class and started to listen to the lecture like nothing had happened. He was arrested, but was released from jail just a few weeks later. I met him on the bus and he told me that all the devotees were mere neophytes. His mother-in-law wasn’t finished yet, however. She then sent a Tantric priest to put a curse on Maha Buddhi, who had taken over when Karandhar gave up his post after the attack. Karandhar felt that he was being cursed for returning to the temple after spending many years away from it and so he quit. So one day, as Maha Buddhi told us later, this sadhu came to the temple asking to meet him. Maha Buddhi came to greet him and asked him to please be seated in the guesthouse lobby where they could talk. The man, who was dressed in priestly clothes, at once took out a achaman cup and different article of puja paraphernalia and quickly started chanting and doing a puja. As the priest took some hair from him, Maha understood that he was not doing an ordinary puja, but putting a hex on him and so had him thrown out. After that, many brahmacharis started complaining of nightmares where they would be walking with other devotees and would say, “I know you are my friend, but I am sure you want to kill me, so I must kill you first.” The strange thing was that about ten persons in the room that night all had exactly the same nightmare. I myself, though, did not and slept well, even though many more strange things occurred, of which I will tell you later.

The Bombay temple opening commenced in January of 1978. The then Prime Minster of India Morarji Desai was rumored to be the chief guest and because of that every international news service was there for the event. There were news reporters from the BBC, UPI and even Japan. We library party members were given the service of escorting them around the temple. I was in charge of the UPI reporters, all Americans. I remember saying to them, "It must be a real hardship service for you here in India!" One of them answered, "Yes it is -- no hamburgers here. That's what we really miss!" Then he said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have said that." I just told them, remembering Srila Prabhupada’s words while he lived with the American family in Butler, PA, "Think nothing of it. Let me show you more of the temple.” My very sweet and kind godbrother Jagat Purusha Prabhu had organized what he called Bhakti Kala Kshetra. In our Bombay temple we have a first class stage and theater. It was like Broadway and able to seat about 500 people, with the stage placed below all the seating. Jagat Purusha cultivated all the famous Indian movie stars, singers and dancers, who make Bombay their center. Each week, very famous Indian singers, musicians and dancers would come to perform at the temple. I saw most of the performances during those days: Kathakali, Bharata Natyam, and dancers from Manipur and Assam. Big name bhajan singers would often come and all were there for the temple opening. One very memorable performance was of two dancers playing Radha and Krishna in a swing type dance, which was really like seeing the Divine Couple performing Their Jhulan Yatra pastimes. Morarji Desai never came but he sent another big minister named Raj Narayan to take his place. This man always appeared with a bandana tied around his head like a sadhu baba or a present day rap singer. I did not hear the speech he gave. And then there were the professional Brahmins who were hired to perform the fire sacrifice. I was told that this had to be done or no one would accept that Westerners could actually invoke the Lord’s presence, even under the instructions of such a great acharya as Srila Prabhupada. After all, it was not as though Srila Prabhupada was listened to very widely, as it is usually after their disappearance that people like Srila Prabhupada become truly famous. This is because while they are still present, they will correct those who approach him directly, so few were really interested in doing so. Afterwards, however, the worshipers flood in and so they did at the Bombay opening. We continued to serve there assisting in whatever service we could until the 1978 Mayapur Gaura Purnima Festival. That year there was a lunar eclipse on the Gaura Purnima. We were told that this had not occurred since the Lord birth and so all the devotee spent the entire eclipse bathing in the Ganga, but none of the other residents joined us. It seems that the tradition of taking shelter of the Ganga during a lunar eclipse had been lost. Formerly, people would bathe in the Ganges and chant Hare Krishna to ward off the inauspiciousness of the eclipse and it was while all the residents of Mayapur and Nabadwip were doing so that the Lord took His birth. We arrived late for the festival, but it had already been decided by the leaders of the Indian GBC that the Library party would be disbanded. The party was completely broken up and the Indian BBT has never since sold Srila Prabhupada books in that way. That party made us very independent, but at the same time we were all surrendered to Srila Prabhupada and his movement. Our service was taken away mostly because the leaders hated Garga Muni and didn’t want anything he had created to continue on. Many people were angry with him. They would tell us how horrible he had been to us and how Srila Prabhupada used to protect him. I had to think about what service to take up and concluded that if I could somehow be given second initiation I would be able to take up pujari service. During that 1978 Mayapur festival, the leading godbrothers made or prepared all of their political moves. My life within ISKCON also changed at this point as I adopted a wrong conception of how things were to be organized, as did most of us. At that time, I considered that I would not be able to avoid accepting a godbrother as guru, as a result of my understanding of what Srila Prabhupada had said in his room the last two weeks about carrying on initiations after his disappearance. I thought about whom to approach for second initiation. I looked for someone who was more or less permanently situated within India and decided to ask him. The moment I entered the room he was staying in at Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir, he was having a talk with his old cronies and I knew what they were discussing. It was a “will the devotees accept them as initiating gurus” discussion. My understanding was this person my godbrother was a proxy of His Divine Grace now that he has left this planet. I was unconcerned that they were speaking about whether the devotees accept this or not. And I knew very well what was being spoken about before I entered the room, as I had to wait for at least ten minutes to gain entrance. When I was allowed in to speak to the person I was approaching, I told him in front of everyone that a sacred thread had been sent to Ramesvara from Srila Prabhupada for my second diksha, but that it has not yet been given to me. That person told me it is impossible now because Srila Prabhupada has left the planet and cannot accept you as there had been no fire sacrifice. So I told him, “Then I request you to give me second initiation.” The other men in the room looked at each other as if to say, “See, it is going to work.” I told him that I knew him from Radha Damodara TSKP of which I had been a member and that is why I was asking him. As he had been given or had taken Bombay as his next place to serve or rule, it was planned that on Ram Navami there would be initiations. From this point on, fire raced through the math. There was one just one offense after the next. The whole nature of ISKCON changed to small islands of more or less bogus deviations from the teachings of Srila Prabhupada. I now truly feel that there are for there are as many different interpretations of Srila Prabhupada’s message as there are preachers in ISKCON. I really feel it is just a great disservice to the poor newcomers to give them these greatly diluted versions of His Divine Grace. Such are the rages of time and Durga Devi on us. I often remember Srila Prabhupada final warnings to us in Vrindavan: "You boys are just children. You do not understand how serious Maya is in her service to Krishna. If you don’t become completely 100% Krishna conscious, she will crush you." So I left Mayapur and traveled back to Bombay. After a few days, there was the first incident, which was a very interesting one indeed. There was a very serious devotee by the name of Amogha Lila Prabhu in Bombay. One day Amogha told everyone he had seen Srila Prabhupada appear before him. Prabhupada told him that what was happening with the society was displeasing him. Then other devotees said that they had also seen Srila Prabhupada appear again and this time His Divine Grace was speaking with three or four other prabhus and not just Amogha Lila A small revolution erupted, but the leaders managed to put it down by convincing everyone that neither Amogha Lila nor the other devotees were close enough to His Divine Grace to be blessed with such apparitions. After all, he wasn’t a GBC or an initiating guru; he was just a prabhu, a brahmachari. Come now -- get real! It was very strange Very soon after that, Amogha left Bombay and went to preach in Pakistan, a place where devotees were hated by all. Srila Prabhupada once told us, “I take the dust from the feet of anyone who goes and preaches in Pakistan and I place it on my head.” Amogha stayed there to preach for many years, but I have no idea what has become of him now. After that time another very inauspicious incident took place. One godbrother had left the temple to marry a Hindu girl whose mother was a Shakti worshipper of Durga. This woman wanted to take over the temple and she made a plan to do so through her son-in-law, our godbrother. She told him that if he went and stood in the ocean all night, chanting mantras to Durga, everything in the temple would be just given to him when he returned there. This crazy fellow followed his witch mother-in-law’s instructions, but when he came into the temple grounds, he was carrying a straight razor that he started to use to slash the devotees. He slashed Karandhar very deeply across the stomach and Jagat Purusha across the arm. He then walked into the temple room, laid the razor at the feet of the devotee giving Srimad Bhagavatam class and started to listen to the lecture like nothing had happened. He was arrested, but was released from jail just a few weeks later. I met him on the bus and he told me that all the devotees were mere neophytes. His mother-in-law wasn’t finished yet, however. She then sent a Tantric priest to put a curse on Maha Buddhi, who had taken over when Karandhar gave up his post after the attack. Karandhar felt that he was being cursed for returning to the temple after spending many years away from it and so he quit. So one day, as Maha Buddhi told us later, this sadhu came to the temple asking to meet him. Maha Buddhi came to greet him and asked him to please be seated in the guesthouse lobby where they could talk. The man, who was dressed in priestly clothes, at once took out a achaman cup and different article of puja paraphernalia and quickly started chanting and doing a puja. As the priest took some hair from him, Maha understood that he was not doing an ordinary puja, but putting a hex on him and so had him thrown out. After that, many brahmacharis started complaining of nightmares where they would be walking with other devotees and would say, “I know you are my friend, but I am sure you want to kill me, so I must kill you first.” The strange thing was that about ten persons in the room that night all had exactly the same nightmare. I myself, though, did not and slept well, even though many more strange things occurred, of which I will tell you later.

From Porbandar we drove to Shree Dwarka Dham. As you enter Dwarka, there is a temple to Rukmini Devi on the right side of the road, standing in the stark sands of the beach. We only saw two major temples in Dwarka: this one and that of Dwarkadhish, within the city itself. On the beaches near Dwarka we saw he ruins of temples which had once been decorated with elaborate stone carvings, but these had been erased by the winds and sands of time. Just a few walls were left where the carvings had not been eroded and could still be admired. All of Dwarka is gupta, “covered.” Only someone with spiritual vision can understand that this place was once the kingdom of Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, on Earth. There is an island near Dwarka that the residents call “Old Dwarka,” as it is considered by some to be the original site of Krishna’s city, but we knew that it could not be so, as Lord Krishna's city floated on the sea and was not just an island. This old Dwarka Island is very small and bare, with very few persons living on it. Mostly only pilgrims visit; they stay a few moments and then return again across the short stretch of sea. While in Dwarka Dham, we spent many days at the Dwarkadhish Temple. Lord Dwarkadhish appears on the cover of Srila Prabhupada’s volume 3 of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The pujaris allowed the devotees to watch the morning puja and dressing of Lord Dwarkadhish, which like in our temples took place behind curtains and was closed to the public. The beautiful temple is similar in style to Lord Jagannath’s Temple in Puri, all carved from stone. In the evening, we showed His Lordship the movie "The Hare Krishna People" in the nat mandir in front of Lord Dwarkadhish, and it was also enjoyed by all the devotees who had gathered for darshan that evening. We soon finished our travels and proceeded to return to Bombay. Two Prabhus though, Chanurai and Mathura, left to first visit Nathdwar, a fair distance away in Rajastan, to take darshan of Gopal Shree Nathji, the beloved Deity of Madhavendra Puri. While there, they saw Jayatirtha Prabhu, who blasted them for visiting Nathdwar independently -- as he himself was doing, alone. He told them, “You just wait. At Mayapur we will dismantle your BBT Library party.” When we all met back at Bombay temple, we were told what Jayatirtha had said to these prabhus and the heat was turned up on the party a bit more. We knew that ever since Garga Muni had left, the other leaders wanted the many successful preachers on our BBT Library party to stop their service and work with them. We all remained in Bombay from January to Gaura Purina that year, serving Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari. The temple was nearing completion and so was the time for its opening. The devotees had promised Srila Prabhupada to open the temple by a certain date and we were all trying to assist in making the deadline. The temple construction had been going on for many years with most of the devotees spending almost the full time there in service to complete the temple. Every day, one would also see many men and women laborers working to finish the construction. All of the marble carvers were Muslim and it was very common to see the men sitting on the side of the roads between the buildings saying their five-time daily prayers. One day as I chanted my rounds I watched one of the marble carvers praying just as a huge rainstorm suddenly came upon us. The man never broke his prayers and continued on saying them in the pouring rain. Many ladies also worked on the construction site, carrying large loads of sand and cement on their heads. Some of them had very small babies that they placed at their feet next to them in the sand. There were a whole new group of devotees serving at Hare Krishna Land at that time. First there was Surabhirabhipalayantam Swami, whom we all called Surabhi Swami, of course. Surabhi Maharaj was the architect of the temple and the person in charge of the construction. He engaged me in finishing up the dioramas within the temple. Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhu had come from Vrindavan and together we finished up the work of the Indian artists. The dolls were not really dolls of the kind we had been making before in New Dwarka, but the finishing up was the same. The temple had invited a very upper class British gentleman named Mr Michael Lord to open the temple restaurant. Mr Lord was the former valet of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. After the British had left India, Mr Lord ran a health spa for the Royal Family in London, but had now retired and become a lay member of the London temple. He had now taken a chance to return to India to run the temple restaurant as a retired gentleman. He was given a room in the guesthouse to stay. Mr Lord was full of stories of when Mr Gandhi would come and see Mountbatten: "He would shiver in the air conditioning waiting to see him and they would make him wait. I would bring him a blanket. Poor Mr Gandhi, he always got so cold!” When the television people came to report on the opening, they were always directed to Mr Lord for interviews. He was very good at this and the Indian TV liked interviewing him. Though Mr Lord wasn’t interested in actually taking up devotee life himself, he did try to perform service and, for a short while, was able to do so. There was Narottamananda Prabhu, the main pujari for Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari. Narottam was always engaged in serving the deities and working with Mother Visba (?) in designing Their Lordships’ outfits. Then there was Gopal Krishna Prabhu, the main person overseeing the whole temple management. I would observe Gopal Krishna finishing up his daily rounds late in the evening in the temple while I was painting Lord Nrisingha Deva's diorama. For the few weeks I worked to finish the Lord’s painting, it seemed that Gopal was there every night, chanting. I have never ever known Gopal Krishna not be fully engaged in Srila Prabhupada’s service. I am sure at this very moment he is pushing to get some deadline finished somewhere, arranging for some kind of festival or gathering the devotees together to glorify Srila Prabhupada, always under great pressure and stress. At that time, however, the older devotees didn’t seem to like him very much and they were always picking on him. He had quirks that some of his godbrothers found annoying and they would test his tolerance, which is a bit of an understatement. One night, the older godbrothers decided to play a trick on him. As Gopal was usually the last person to take rest, he sometimes disturbed the other devotees sleeping in the BBT offices. Gopal slept in the same room with Surabhi Swami, Achyutananda Swami and Bali Mardan, who knew that he was very afraid of the Bombay rats that sometimes came into the room through the windows at night. These godbrothers tied pieces of string to various objects all around the room. They pretended to be asleep when Gopal came back to take rest. We were sleeping in the next room and were suddenly awakened by Gopal Krishna screaming, "What's that? What's that?" We heard the others answer, "It’s nothing, go back to sleep." Then, after twenty minutes or so they started pulling their strings all around the room again. This would wake Gopal Krishna up and he would scream, "What’s that? What’s that? The room’s full of rats!" The others pretended to calm him down: "No, it’s nothing. Go back to sleep." They kept poor Gopal up all night, or at least for a few more hours than necessary. The Bombay temple, like Los Angeles, was a large community of devotees. We were also engaged in making members for the temple going out and collecting alms for the Guru. I enjoyed going in the city to see these businessmen and request them to become members of the temple, but I did not like going alone. When I went together with another godbrother, I would never get tired, but alone I would quickly burn out. Around this time I remembered something I had read many years before. My father used to have this red encyclopedia he was quite proud of. He would tell me anything I wanted to know was in that encyclopedia. It did have many points of information I would see later in my life. There was a listing for bhakti yoga that I remember reading as a child, but there were only a few lines like: <blockquote>BHAKTI YOGA: a practice where the disciples goes out to collect donations on behalf of the teacher and gives his whole life to his service, in exchange the teacher teaches the disciple to understand God. </blockquote> I had been living in the temple for a few years already when I suddenly remembered what I had read in that encyclopedia one day, after going out collecting for Srila Prabhupada. At the time, Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari were still residing in a temple made of bamboo, plywood and tin. During Bhagavatam class, I would watch small rats sneak out of holes and eat the marigolds hanging from the altar doors. Soon the temple was ready to open, however. Karandhar Prabhu arrived just before that and became our temple president. I remember it was Karandhar Prabhu who carried Rasa Bihari in his arms from that shack of a temple into the marble palace where He lives today. A promise made by Srila Prabhupada to Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari was finally fulfilled by the strong arms of Karandharji.

From Porbandar we drove to Shree Dwarka Dham. As you enter Dwarka, there is a temple to Rukmini Devi on the right side of the road, standing in the stark sands of the beach. We only saw two major temples in Dwarka: this one and that of Dwarkadhish, within the city itself. On the beaches near Dwarka we saw he ruins of temples which had once been decorated with elaborate stone carvings, but these had been erased by the winds and sands of time. Just a few walls were left where the carvings had not been eroded and could still be admired. All of Dwarka is gupta, “covered.” Only someone with spiritual vision can understand that this place was once the kingdom of Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, on Earth. There is an island near Dwarka that the residents call “Old Dwarka,” as it is considered by some to be the original site of Krishna’s city, but we knew that it could not be so, as Lord Krishna's city floated on the sea and was not just an island. This old Dwarka Island is very small and bare, with very few persons living on it. Mostly only pilgrims visit; they stay a few moments and then return again across the short stretch of sea. While in Dwarka Dham, we spent many days at the Dwarkadhish Temple. Lord Dwarkadhish appears on the cover of Srila Prabhupada’s volume 3 of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The pujaris allowed the devotees to watch the morning puja and dressing of Lord Dwarkadhish, which like in our temples took place behind curtains and was closed to the public. The beautiful temple is similar in style to Lord Jagannath’s Temple in Puri, all carved from stone. In the evening, we showed His Lordship the movie "The Hare Krishna People" in the nat mandir in front of Lord Dwarkadhish, and it was also enjoyed by all the devotees who had gathered for darshan that evening. We soon finished our travels and proceeded to return to Bombay. Two Prabhus though, Chanurai and Mathura, left to first visit Nathdwar, a fair distance away in Rajastan, to take darshan of Gopal Shree Nathji, the beloved Deity of Madhavendra Puri. While there, they saw Jayatirtha Prabhu, who blasted them for visiting Nathdwar independently -- as he himself was doing, alone. He told them, “You just wait. At Mayapur we will dismantle your BBT Library party.” When we all met back at Bombay temple, we were told what Jayatirtha had said to these prabhus and the heat was turned up on the party a bit more. We knew that ever since Garga Muni had left, the other leaders wanted the many successful preachers on our BBT Library party to stop their service and work with them. We all remained in Bombay from January to Gaura Purina that year, serving Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari. The temple was nearing completion and so was the time for its opening. The devotees had promised Srila Prabhupada to open the temple by a certain date and we were all trying to assist in making the deadline. The temple construction had been going on for many years with most of the devotees spending almost the full time there in service to complete the temple. Every day, one would also see many men and women laborers working to finish the construction. All of the marble carvers were Muslim and it was very common to see the men sitting on the side of the roads between the buildings saying their five-time daily prayers. One day as I chanted my rounds I watched one of the marble carvers praying just as a huge rainstorm suddenly came upon us. The man never broke his prayers and continued on saying them in the pouring rain. Many ladies also worked on the construction site, carrying large loads of sand and cement on their heads. Some of them had very small babies that they placed at their feet next to them in the sand. There were a whole new group of devotees serving at Hare Krishna Land at that time. First there was Surabhirabhipalayantam Swami, whom we all called Surabhi Swami, of course. Surabhi Maharaj was the architect of the temple and the person in charge of the construction. He engaged me in finishing up the dioramas within the temple. Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhu had come from Vrindavan and together we finished up the work of the Indian artists. The dolls were not really dolls of the kind we had been making before in New Dwarka, but the finishing up was the same. The temple had invited a very upper class British gentleman named Mr Michael Lord to open the temple restaurant. Mr Lord was the former valet of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. After the British had left India, Mr Lord ran a health spa for the Royal Family in London, but had now retired and become a lay member of the London temple. He had now taken a chance to return to India to run the temple restaurant as a retired gentleman. He was given a room in the guesthouse to stay. Mr Lord was full of stories of when Mr Gandhi would come and see Mountbatten: "He would shiver in the air conditioning waiting to see him and they would make him wait. I would bring him a blanket. Poor Mr Gandhi, he always got so cold!” When the television people came to report on the opening, they were always directed to Mr Lord for interviews. He was very good at this and the Indian TV liked interviewing him. Though Mr Lord wasn’t interested in actually taking up devotee life himself, he did try to perform service and, for a short while, was able to do so. There was Narottamananda Prabhu, the main pujari for Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari. Narottam was always engaged in serving the deities and working with Mother Visba (?) in designing Their Lordships’ outfits. Then there was Gopal Krishna Prabhu, the main person overseeing the whole temple management. I would observe Gopal Krishna finishing up his daily rounds late in the evening in the temple while I was painting Lord Nrisingha Deva's diorama. For the few weeks I worked to finish the Lord’s painting, it seemed that Gopal was there every night, chanting. I have never ever known Gopal Krishna not be fully engaged in Srila Prabhupada’s service. I am sure at this very moment he is pushing to get some deadline finished somewhere, arranging for some kind of festival or gathering the devotees together to glorify Srila Prabhupada, always under great pressure and stress. At that time, however, the older devotees didn’t seem to like him very much and they were always picking on him. He had quirks that some of his godbrothers found annoying and they would test his tolerance, which is a bit of an understatement. One night, the older godbrothers decided to play a trick on him. As Gopal was usually the last person to take rest, he sometimes disturbed the other devotees sleeping in the BBT offices. Gopal slept in the same room with Surabhi Swami, Achyutananda Swami and Bali Mardan, who knew that he was very afraid of the Bombay rats that sometimes came into the room through the windows at night. These godbrothers tied pieces of string to various objects all around the room. They pretended to be asleep when Gopal came back to take rest. We were sleeping in the next room and were suddenly awakened by Gopal Krishna screaming, "What's that? What's that?" We heard the others answer, "It’s nothing, go back to sleep." Then, after twenty minutes or so they started pulling their strings all around the room again. This would wake Gopal Krishna up and he would scream, "What’s that? What’s that? The room’s full of rats!" The others pretended to calm him down: "No, it’s nothing. Go back to sleep." They kept poor Gopal up all night, or at least for a few more hours than necessary. The Bombay temple, like Los Angeles, was a large community of devotees. We were also engaged in making members for the temple going out and collecting alms for the Guru. I enjoyed going in the city to see these businessmen and request them to become members of the temple, but I did not like going alone. When I went together with another godbrother, I would never get tired, but alone I would quickly burn out. Around this time I remembered something I had read many years before. My father used to have this red encyclopedia he was quite proud of. He would tell me anything I wanted to know was in that encyclopedia. It did have many points of information I would see later in my life. There was a listing for bhakti yoga that I remember reading as a child, but there were only a few lines like: <blockquote>BHAKTI YOGA: a practice where the disciples goes out to collect donations on behalf of the teacher and gives his whole life to his service, in exchange the teacher teaches the disciple to understand God. </blockquote> I had been living in the temple for a few years already when I suddenly remembered what I had read in that encyclopedia one day, after going out collecting for Srila Prabhupada. At the time, Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari were still residing in a temple made of bamboo, plywood and tin. During Bhagavatam class, I would watch small rats sneak out of holes and eat the marigolds hanging from the altar doors. Soon the temple was ready to open, however. Karandhar Prabhu arrived just before that and became our temple president. I remember it was Karandhar Prabhu who carried Rasa Bihari in his arms from that shack of a temple into the marble palace where He lives today. A promise made by Srila Prabhupada to Shree Shree Radha Rasa Bihari was finally fulfilled by the strong arms of Karandharji.

Dear Gaurachandra, I think that this is an inevitable and necessary step for the eventual propagation of Krishna consciousness. It will be interesting to see how and when it happens. You may know that there was a lot of artistic activity in the movement during Prabhupada's time on the planet, but in a letter to Sankarshan he nixed anyone who wasn't a pure devotee writing bhajans. The crushing of the Road Show was another backward step for such developments. There are always going to be divided opinions on the question of using the vernacular. Just recently I heard a French Canadian comedian joke about how everyone stopped going to church when the mass changed from Latin to the vernacular. The foreignness of the "sacred language" adds a certain "otherness" to the rituals that helps the devotee go outside himself into another space, making it easy for him to forget his identification with his body. I tend to belong to this school, to be honest with you. I always like my religion in foreign languages... A perfectly banal statement, if made in Sanskrit, suddenly sounds profound and quotable. The problem is that once you learn Sanskrit, you penetrate its mystery and it might sound completely banal again! (You might want to read Jeffrey Masson's autobiography "My Father's Guru" for a case in point.) Still, I think it is inevitable that essential concepts of Krishna consciousness will need to be artistically presented in vernacular languages and sung congregationally in order for Krishna consciousness to be spread more widely. Perhaps a hybrid style of Indian and western music will catch on. Remember that Bengali songs about Radha and Krishna were the medium through which Krishna consciousness spread in Bengal. Historically, bhakti movements have always been vernacular-based, starting with the Alvars. These "home-grown" saints tended not to be Brahmins, who preserved their status by their ownership of the sacred language and texts. Making the religion vernacular-based was another way of empowering the people and democratizing religious experience. Nevertheless, I imagine that the language of the vernacular hymns to come will contain many Bengali and Sanskrit words, the ones that have become a part of every western Vaishnava's vocabulary -- bhakti, prem, raga, etc, a kind of "mani-pravala" or combination of pearls and coral, as the Sri Vaishnavas call it. Haribol, Jagat

Since you love Canadians so much, Bhutabhavana, I thought I'd pass this article on to you. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. <hr> <h3>We're just a bunch of losers</h3> By MICHAEL VALPY Monday, July 30, 2001 – Globe and Mail. Canada is a nation of losers, a notion attributed most recently to historian Desmond Morton. While the fact is not in doubt -- most of us come from backgrounds of defeat -- no one is sure what it means. This remains a mythological work in progress. The First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples were the first -- and biggest -- losers. Most have lost lands and culture, dignity, well-being. They lost the Red River and North-West Rebellions. The Beothuks have disappeared. Even when they win, as with the Nisga'a in British Columbia, they can never be sure the government won't try to make them lose again. The French have lost twice -- three times, if you count the expulsion of the Acadians. They lost at Quebec City in 1759 to Wolfe's British army. They lost again four years later, when the colonial government of New France and most of the colony's educated elites abandoned them to return to France. The native peoples and the French lost on home ice, in full view of everyone. Other Canadians and their ancestors first lost some place else. The first big wave of English settlers were losers: the Loyalists from the losing side in the American Revolutionary War. The Scots were losers. There were so many Scottish immigrants that, for a while, Gaelic became the third most common European language in Canada. The Scots fled from the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highland clearances, from high rents, bad harvests and overpopulation. Thus, as novelist Hugh MacLennan wrote in The Psychology of Canadian Nationalism: "The three original settling groups became Canadian because nations or factions to which they belonged had suffered total defeat in war." The 19th-century Irish immigrants were double losers, escaping from oppression, crop failures and famine at home and meeting class resentment, discrimination and disease when they arrived in Canada. The Chinese, too, were double losers, escaping poverty and political instability at home and encountering ugly discrimination in Canada -- among other things, denied the vote until 1947 along with other Southeast Asians. And the list goes on. Whatever the group -- Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Somalis, South Africans, Latin Americans, Vietnamese -- they came to Canada to escape bad economic, religious and political conditions. Even the new investor class of immigrants, Prof. Morton points out, are coming here out of fear for their money. Poet Al Purdy wrote: Simple desperation to belong somewhere no longer alien and outlawed from the land of their birth. So what does it mean? Prof. Morton suggests that people with the experience of having been losers may be more sympathetic to other losers, more tolerant of them. Maybe. The jury is still out on Canadians' tolerance for one another. Maybe it accounts for our reputed self-effacement, our humility, our conviction that we apologize to everyone and everything, including doors we walk into. Then again, maybe -- more darkly -- it explains the lobster joke and the mythology that Canadians loathe each other's success. John Robert Colombo, Canadiana collector extraordinaire, first heard the lobster joke in Manhattan 15 years ago. Two tanks of lobsters are in a restaurant. The first has a cover to stop the lobsters from climbing up the sides and escaping. These are American lobsters. The second -- the Canadian tank -- doesn't need a cover. Every time a lobster tries to climb over the top, the other lobsters pull him down.

There is definitely a small minority of very right wing Canadians who are having wet dreams about joining the United States. Then there are those of us who know that the U.S. is full of people like you. But as I said once before, the U.S. would probably never let Canada in, especially not your bunch. Al Gore would have beat your man 10-1 north of the border. The Democrats would be ahead in both houses forever after. Bye-bye Jesse Helms. Haribol. Jagat

Dream on.

Dear Pitaji, If I have missed any later installments, please let me know. Jagat

Dear Pitaji, If I have missed any later installments, please let me know. Jagat

<a herf=http://keshava.ctnassau.com/bus/>I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of these beautiful young people.</a>

Dear Tarunji, Please excuse the delay in answering. I have been unable to spend much time on the Internet lately. For those who are interested in the three threads I had been working on, I will be back. Your questions are good. Quite right, I did miss verses 7-9. Sorry about that. Spaced out... I'll get back to them. 1) for drupada putreNa tava ziSyena dhImatA, shouldn't it be drupadasya putreNa = by son of Drupada? How do we know Drupada and putra are connected? Compound words are like that. Some thing in English in certain circumstances. We deduce relations between juxtaposed words. Some of it comes from intonation in speech. In this case, our only alternative would be to assume that "drupada" is a vocative, but since no Drupada is being addressed here, the only alternative is to assume the relation with the following word. 2) gerund and present participle sound same. tyaktvA is gerund? Present participle = "doing" (agrees with subject in number and gender) e.g. zRNvan "hearing." Use this when the action is going on simultaneously with the action of the main verb. Gerund = "having done" (in Sanskrit indeclinable) e.g. zrutvA "having heard." Use this when the action went on prior the action of the main verb. But whereas in English we would say, "I came, I saw and I conquered", in Sanskrit we would say, "Agatya dRSTvA ajayam." There are also "verbal nouns" like "zravaNam" which also come out in English as "doing" ("hearing"), but they are used as nouns. tyaktvA tUrNam azeSa-maNDala-pati-zreNiM sadA tucchavat Having given up... exactly. What about bhUtvA bhUtvA pralIyate. Similar gerund? Yes. The repetition of bhUtvA indicates repeated action. We would translate "comes into being and is destroyed, again and again." 3) dadhmau looks like a dual ending. It does, doesn't it? But it's not. There are several things ending in -au. (locative singular of nouns ending in -i or -u, for example). You have to have sufficient knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to be able to recognize them. And you say it's stem is duplicated. da is similar, though not = to dhma Where's the stem? Where the duplication? There are complex rules for reduplication. I didn't want to get into all the explanations above. Basically, all compound consonants are reduced to their first member's unaspirated form. All aspirated (i.e., with the "h" included) consonants are reduplicated by their unaspirated form. That explains why dhma is reduplicated by simply "da". zrU is reduplicated with zu. So for the perfect, you have zuzrAva, for the desiderative, you have zuzrUSayati, etc.

<h3>The killing of India's Bandit Queen </h3> Derek Brown (The Guardian) Wednesday July 25, 2001 Phoolan Devi, an illiterate country girl who became the most famous woman in India, has been murdered. She died in a hail of bullets fired by three men outside her Delhi home. The assassins abandoned their car and fled the scene in a three-wheeled autorickshaw. Devi's bodyguard was severely wounded. Devi, known to an adoring public as the Bandit Queen - also the title of a 1994 movie about her extraordinary life - was killed instantly. She was 43. News of the murder flashed around India, causing a storm of grief and sensation. Proceedings in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament in Delhi, were halted for 40 minutes after home minister L K Advani broke the news to shocked members. Perhaps the most remarkable phase of Devi's life was the last five years, for she too was a member of parliament - an astonishing achievement for an uneducated, lower-caste woman with a reputation for mass murder. The facts of Devi's career have long been shrouded in mystery, not least by herself. By common consent, she was a fantasist with a chameleon ability to reinvent herself at regular intervals. She was also formidably intelligent. What is generally accepted is that she was born into a dirt-poor family in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and married off to a widower when she was just 11. She left her husband when she turned 12, and drifted into the violent world of dacoits - armed gangsters. Several times, according to her biographers, she was brutally raped, and at least one of her several paramours was shot dead by rivals as he lay next to her. While still in her teens, Devi formed her own gang, and quickly achieved local notoriety as the "beautiful dacoit". She first burst into the nation's consciousness in 1981, when 22 men of the Thakur caste - often rich landowners - were massacred at Behmai village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. It was the home village of two brothers who had raped and tortured Devi. After the Behmai murders Devi, then just 22, became for some a detested public enemy number one. For others, she was a heroine; a symbol of the struggle against caste oppression and injustice. After two years dodging the police in the wild ravines of Chambal, she surrendered to police in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh. Her reputation soared to new heights, for it was a lavish and colourful ceremony, witnessed by some 8000 wildly cheering people. Devi had negotiated stiff terms for her surrender, including immunity from prosecution for the Behmai murders - she always denied having ordered the massacre. Nevertheless, she spent the next 11 years in prison. She emerged in 1994 to a blare of publicity, which she handled with the same gutsy aplomb with which she had led her dacoits. She roundly denounced the Bandit Queen movie and for a time it was banned in India. Next, she hurled herself into politics, with the Samajwadi party which champions the lower castes. She was first elected an MP in 1996, lost her seat in 1998, and won it back again in 1999. Nothing is known as yet about the motive for the sensational murder. It could have been politically connected, for Devi was a leading vote winner for the Samajwadi, which threatens to wrest power in coming elections for the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh. It is also possible that the Thakur caste members who lost relatives in the 1981 Behmai killings and who have long campaigned for the Bandit Queen to be brought to justice, have at long last had their revenge.

<center><h3>How many ways can you skin a cow?</h3> <h4>In Hindu India, there are plenty </h4> India is one of the world's largest leather producers By Daniel Pearl THE WALL STREET JOURNAL </center> Thursday, July 19, 2001 Erode, India, July 19 - To Western companies operating in India, the cow is a sacred cow. McDonald's avoids selling beef here. Berlitz International warns its cross-cultural training clients to avoid giving Indians leather gifts, because most Indians are Hindu and Hindus revere cows. [it is not true that "most Indians are Hindu". There are no mmore than about 30 million true Hindus among the billion people in the country. - Jai Maharaj] But nothing is so straightforward in India. On a Sunday morning at the Perunderai market, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, traders haggle as bloody hides of freshly slaughtered cows are slapped onto a cement slab and unfolded like Persian rugs. "The quality depends on the wounds and the germs," explains R. Raja, a veteran hide- buyer who is Hindu, like many traders here. (He and other southerners in India often use single names, sometimes with an initial.) India is actually a major producer and consumer of leather, and only some of it comes from goat, sheep and buffalo. With a population that is an estimated 80% Hindu, India slaughters 14 million cattle a year, making it the world's fifth most active cattle killer, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Government tax breaks have helped make leather of all kinds one of India's biggest exports. But it takes some effort to accommodate business and religion when it comes to cowhide. The Hindu religion forbids eating beef and slaughtering cows, but permits taking the hide of a "fallen" cow, or one that has died naturally. Muslims, who can slaughter cows, work in slaughterhouses and butcher shops. But in the case of "fallen" cows, a low-caste Hindu does the work, because it is against Islamic belief to skin an animal that has died naturally. [...] This is only an excerpt -- read the complete news at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/602296.asp?cp1=1 news@interactive.wsj.com via MSNBC, via News Plus http://www.mantra.com/newsplus

Haribol Prabhus, Does anyone know the Iskcon Hyderabad temple's email address, or the personal email address of Rasananda Swami? Thank you very much, Jagadananda Das

Dear Pitaji, Your servant, Jagat

Dear Pitaji, Your servant, Jagat

This is weird. The entire thread appears to have been truncated, starting with the Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha post. Anyway, Puru, we're going round in circles. Accepting sabda doesn't mean that we have to reject pratyaksha and abhimana out of hand. Ultimately, we ourselves are the only measure of whether something is true or not. If someone tells me a snake is a rope and then it bites me, I am not likely to trust that person a second time. To elaborate on my fundamental point once again: Prabhupada supposedly "built a house in which the entire world can live." If this is to be true, then rather than narrowing our vision, we have to expand it. This means that there has to be a place for people who believe that Prabodhananda is Prakashananda. Scripture normally has two kinds of statement: expansive and narrow. I rather liked the example Satyaraj posted recently about the Gaudiya (!) saying that one Holy Name uttered purely will take one to Krishna, and the Vallabhi answering, one Holy Name uttered impurely will lead one to samsara. These nicely illustrate the expansive and narrow extremes. A true world religion has to be able to incorporate both extremes. It has to be generous in spirit and yet preserve the purity of its highest ideals. You can't expect to create a homogenous human being who will fit the expected mold of a devotee according to the Iskcon 1970's model or the Gaudiya Math 1930's model. In sociological parlance, this is called the transformation from sect to church. This is why Prabhupada was farsighted enough to think of Varnashram Dharma. There are basically five kinds of people in relation to the Krishna consciousness movement: (1) Those who will never join as devotees. (the "demons") (2) Those who will never join, but are sympathizers. (mostly Indians) (3) Those who may join as devotees. (The "innocent") (4) Those who have joined. (5) Those who have joined and left. Most devotees as preachers have traditionally concentrated on those in the third group, trying to persuade them to become full-time devotees. These are seen as a source of manpower. A few devotees "cultivate" the sympathizers because they are an important source of revenue. A few other devotees are concerned with the large mass of "demons" because of public relations concerns. The fourth category, those who are in the temple, are of course subcategorized according to their status in the hierarchy as advanced or less advanced. Traditionally, in Iskcon, those in the lower echelons are treated rather poorly as free labor and are left to sink or swim as the case may be. Considering the investment in getting these people to join in the first place, the neglect afterwards is pretty foolish. Here is the first place that dogmatism makes its appearance. With the "karmis", it is necessary to put on a liberal face; one cannot irritate the sympathizers too extravagantly or the income source will dry up; new converts are usually attracted by a vigorous approach so here absolutism is not a problem, but an asset. However, a rigid philosophical approach often is accompanied by a rigid social approach. This alienates certain devotees who then leave. Of those who leave, there are again several subcategories -- potential sympathizers, potential "demons" and potential rejoiners. Unfortunately, there are far fewer sympathizers than there should be, and of those who are sympathizers, far fewer are involved in actively supporting the movement than should be. There are various further subdivisions of the person who has left the movement: those who are just too weak to handle the discipline of temple life and often harbor resentments of a personal kind against individuals they had to deal with inside the movement; others who have come to have philosophical differences. The first may be more likely to be potential rejoiners or sympathizers. The latter are more likely to become "demons." Strangely enough, these are often likely to be devotees from the higher echelons, those who have blooped after a long time in the movement rather than those who have left after a short stint. Since I belong to the last group, I am interested in finding out if there is not an expansive approach that might accomodate them. Your servant, Jagadananda Das.<small><font color=#f7f7f7> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 07-20-2001).]

Maybe it was two days after His Divine Grace re-entered Shree Shree Radha and Krishna’s eternal pastimes that I was to understand what our godbrothers were planning. During the two weeks with Srila Prabhupada His Divine Grace had made it very clear that no one person was to be the Acharya of His ISKCON. I heard Srila Prabhupada tell them: “Of my disciples, no one has my qualities.” When he looked at this or that disciple, he could see some of his qualities and when he looked at them all together certainly there was some percentage, so he had SOME faith that the movement would go on. The test of our love would be shown how well we worked together. This was clearly the main instruction. The "I am not appointing any one person as acharya" announcement came maybe four days before His Divine Grace’s departure. There were many clearly unhappy godbrothers in the room after that talk. The air was thick with an anti-climactic crescendo. Even I, who was perhaps the least knowledgeable of anyone, could understand this. We had heard Srila Prabhupada previously tell our godbrothers during many long discussions that if they had philosophical questions about the process of accepting disciples after he had departed, they should approach Sridhar Maharaj and for answers on how to conduct his samadhi arrangements, they should approach Narayan Maharaj. Then two days after His Divine Grace’s Samadhi there was an ishtagoshti in the temple that was attended by HH Narayan Maharaja and Paramahamsa Akinchana Krishna Das Babaji. Jayadwaita asked a question of Narayan Maharaja, “How can we understand that our godbrothers are now nikunja-yuno rati-keli-siddhyai, intimately assisting the gopis in the pastimes of Radha Krishna's loving exchanges?” The answer was that godbrothers who were not accepting disciples would not see this, but that the disciples of these godbrothers had to. In my opinion, this was the exact instant that the flame was lit under the frog. A few days later, the temple authorities said that those devotees who had not received second intiation would have to accept a godbrother as Guru. I saw my old friend Jayadwaita on the side of the Krishna Balaram Temple and said, “This is crazy. What’s going on? How could anyone accept any one but Srila Prabhupada? I am His Divine Grace’s initiated disciple (A sacred thread chanted on by Srila Prabhupada had been sent to Ramesvara with my name on it.) Jayadwaita said to me, “This is the guru parampara.” “Could you do it?” I asked. “You know them. Now I must leave ISKCON and take shelter of Narayan Maharaj.” “No, no, you cannot do this. Prabhupada said we must show our love for him by working cooperatively.” It's very hard from this point not to be political, because from here on, practically day by day, the flame under the frog was turned up more and more. I will try to just recount the sweetest times. I stayed in Shree Vrindavan Dham for a month after Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi. I was assigned the libraries in the Mathura District to visit and each day I would hire a rickshaw to take me into Mathura and then drive me back afterwards. I remember one day as I was leaving a school a lady approached me to please come and speak some good lessons to her daughter. “Please convince her to join your Hare Krishna Hare Rama society.” I agreed and when we got to their very nice house here was this young lady, born in Mathura and stoned out. She had gone to school in New Delhi and had gotten into pills of some kind and many other kinds of drugs. And this was the only topic she was interested in talking about. What kind of drugs have you taken before? It was quite useless talking to her, but her mother kept pleading with me to please help her. She would plead with her daughter, “Darling, they were all like you. They were drug users and now they only want Krishna. Please go there.” But the girl had no interest in Vrindavan. As soon as her holiday was over, she was going back to Delhi to party. As soon as I left that house, my Rickshaw Prabhu and I were back in the Dham. Off we went to another university, singing Hare Krishna back and forth. If I sang an ISKCON tune, Rickshaw Prabhuji could not follow, but as soon as I remembered a Vrindavan one, we were very happily powered on Harinam all the way back to Raman Reti. In the evening we would visit the many temples in Shree Vrindavan and hear kirtan going on in so many places. Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhu, who had just arrived in Vrindavan that summer, knew a kirtan routine of the temples. He knew exactly where to be and at what time in the evening to hear the nicest kirtan. He took me to the Radha Raman temple at a certain time when very expert devotee would sing sweet bhajans at the back of the darshan area. We also went to the small Mira Bai temple, all covered in green vines inside, take darshan and hear more sweet nectar of the Holy Name. That month in Vrindavan I would often walk chanting japa down the cowherd path to the Yamuna. As I walked through the sandy trees and groves of the path, I would always see peacocks amongst the trees on either side of the path. One day I stopped and prayed to one peacock for his blessings to be born in Shree Vrindavan Dham to view the activities of Krishna and Balaram. I considered this peacock must be a great saintly personality and I was sure he did bless me. After this month in Vraja, our devotee group of book distributors was reformed and sent back across India to Gujarat, this time to Surashtra. We visited places where the people told us white persons hadn’t been there since the British left India and now we had returned in the dress of Sadhus!!! When we entered a town, it was like we were famous movie stars. A large crowd would surround the van every time we arrived, but when we went for sankirtan on rickshaw, no one took much notice. Every day it seemed we were in a different town. Some were wonderful and some not so nice, but we spent the same time in each place, as our only business was to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books and go on to the next town. Once we visited a very large and newly constructed temple of Lord Shiva. This temple was the main overpowering structure within the whole town and Lord Shiva was known as Somnath, as it was not so far from the famous Somnath temple. We entered Lord Shiva’s Temple and were given water to offer and I commented to one of the pujaris how large the Shiva linga was. It was about five feet tall and there was a large crack on the side. The pujari told us a story of the temple: <blockquote>A long while ago, the king of the land was nastika, an atheist. His queen, however, was a very great devotee of Lord Shiva. One day when walking in the woods the queen saw a cow and wondered what a cow was doing within the woods approached it only to see from her udder milk was pouring and dripping onto a small Shiva Lingam. The queen bowed down and began to worship the Shiva Lingam, returning each day until one day the king followed her. Seeing his wife worshipping Shiva Lingam he became enraged and drew his sword and smashed it. When he did this, the Lingam grew to this size and so we have now built this temple here. </blockquote> We all respectfully agreed that was an amazing story and very respectfully left the temple. After a few days, we also visited another temple about 20 kilometers away. This was a temple to Gopal Shree Nathaji. When the pujari came to greet us he also had a story of how Shree Nathji had been placed in that temple. His story went, “A long time ago, there was a king and he was a atheist, but his queen was a very good devotees of Shree Nathaji.” We heard this story in about ten places. After a while, we would laugh as soon as they started and say we had already heard the story, but the temple was very sweet anyway. In one temple we had kirtan in front of the Deities and many persons came into the temple to join us. After the kirtan they told us, “You danced in front of Krishna! One time many years ago an old sadhu came here and chanted and danced like this also.” Outside of Somnath we met a Brahmin Pujari who insisted we all go with him to his home and so the whole group of us did. This Brahmin wanted us to meet his older brother and it was a very special afternoon. Their family had lived in the same house for 700 years and in front of the house there was a small temple of Lakshmi Devi. This was their family temple, which was also the same age. Each day their family would distribute prasad from this temple to the poor and the older brother was a palmist and astrologer. He looked at each of our hands and told us you will all have good lives and nothing else. He then lead us in kirtan which lasted hours starting with Om na mo bha ga va te va su de va ya drawn out very long and slowly so we could hear and taste the transcendental sound vibration and very very gradually building the tempo to a ISKCON type speed and then back again and again and again. In 25 years I have never forgotten the melody. I am completely captivated by the tune even today. When in America leading kirtans in the home of our Gujarati members in Houston, I would sing this nice Brahmin tune and these devotees would tell me that that kind of method of kirtan was the traditional tunes that their grandfathers would sing. From this place we visited Porbandar, famous as Gandhi’s hometown. We visited his ashram in that city, but they would not take Srila Prabhupada’s books. They wanted us to join their ashram so they could teach us the teaching of Gandhi. Of Gandhi, Srila Prabhupada would say, “Among politicians he was a saint, and among saints he was a politician.” <small><font color=#f7f7f7> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 07-20-2001).]

Maybe it was two days after His Divine Grace re-entered Shree Shree Radha and Krishna’s eternal pastimes that I was to understand what our godbrothers were planning. During the two weeks with Srila Prabhupada His Divine Grace had made it very clear that no one person was to be the Acharya of His ISKCON. I heard Srila Prabhupada tell them: “Of my disciples, no one has my qualities.” When he looked at this or that disciple, he could see some of his qualities and when he looked at them all together certainly there was some percentage, so he had SOME faith that the movement would go on. The test of our love would be shown how well we worked together. This was clearly the main instruction. The "I am not appointing any one person as acharya" announcement came maybe four days before His Divine Grace’s departure. There were many clearly unhappy godbrothers in the room after that talk. The air was thick with an anti-climactic crescendo. Even I, who was perhaps the least knowledgeable of anyone, could understand this. We had heard Srila Prabhupada previously tell our godbrothers during many long discussions that if they had philosophical questions about the process of accepting disciples after he had departed, they should approach Sridhar Maharaj and for answers on how to conduct his samadhi arrangements, they should approach Narayan Maharaj. Then two days after His Divine Grace’s Samadhi there was an ishtagoshti in the temple that was attended by HH Narayan Maharaja and Paramahamsa Akinchana Krishna Das Babaji. Jayadwaita asked a question of Narayan Maharaja, “How can we understand that our godbrothers are now nikunja-yuno rati-keli-siddhyai, intimately assisting the gopis in the pastimes of Radha Krishna's loving exchanges?” The answer was that godbrothers who were not accepting disciples would not see this, but that the disciples of these godbrothers had to. In my opinion, this was the exact instant that the flame was lit under the frog. A few days later, the temple authorities said that those devotees who had not received second intiation would have to accept a godbrother as Guru. I saw my old friend Jayadwaita on the side of the Krishna Balaram Temple and said, “This is crazy. What’s going on? How could anyone accept any one but Srila Prabhupada? I am His Divine Grace’s initiated disciple (A sacred thread chanted on by Srila Prabhupada had been sent to Ramesvara with my name on it.) Jayadwaita said to me, “This is the guru parampara.” “Could you do it?” I asked. “You know them. Now I must leave ISKCON and take shelter of Narayan Maharaj.” “No, no, you cannot do this. Prabhupada said we must show our love for him by working cooperatively.” It's very hard from this point not to be political, because from here on, practically day by day, the flame under the frog was turned up more and more. I will try to just recount the sweetest times. I stayed in Shree Vrindavan Dham for a month after Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi. I was assigned the libraries in the Mathura District to visit and each day I would hire a rickshaw to take me into Mathura and then drive me back afterwards. I remember one day as I was leaving a school a lady approached me to please come and speak some good lessons to her daughter. “Please convince her to join your Hare Krishna Hare Rama society.” I agreed and when we got to their very nice house here was this young lady, born in Mathura and stoned out. She had gone to school in New Delhi and had gotten into pills of some kind and many other kinds of drugs. And this was the only topic she was interested in talking about. What kind of drugs have you taken before? It was quite useless talking to her, but her mother kept pleading with me to please help her. She would plead with her daughter, “Darling, they were all like you. They were drug users and now they only want Krishna. Please go there.” But the girl had no interest in Vrindavan. As soon as her holiday was over, she was going back to Delhi to party. As soon as I left that house, my Rickshaw Prabhu and I were back in the Dham. Off we went to another university, singing Hare Krishna back and forth. If I sang an ISKCON tune, Rickshaw Prabhuji could not follow, but as soon as I remembered a Vrindavan one, we were very happily powered on Harinam all the way back to Raman Reti. In the evening we would visit the many temples in Shree Vrindavan and hear kirtan going on in so many places. Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhu, who had just arrived in Vrindavan that summer, knew a kirtan routine of the temples. He knew exactly where to be and at what time in the evening to hear the nicest kirtan. He took me to the Radha Raman temple at a certain time when very expert devotee would sing sweet bhajans at the back of the darshan area. We also went to the small Mira Bai temple, all covered in green vines inside, take darshan and hear more sweet nectar of the Holy Name. That month in Vrindavan I would often walk chanting japa down the cowherd path to the Yamuna. As I walked through the sandy trees and groves of the path, I would always see peacocks amongst the trees on either side of the path. One day I stopped and prayed to one peacock for his blessings to be born in Shree Vrindavan Dham to view the activities of Krishna and Balaram. I considered this peacock must be a great saintly personality and I was sure he did bless me. After this month in Vraja, our devotee group of book distributors was reformed and sent back across India to Gujarat, this time to Surashtra. We visited places where the people told us white persons hadn’t been there since the British left India and now we had returned in the dress of Sadhus!!! When we entered a town, it was like we were famous movie stars. A large crowd would surround the van every time we arrived, but when we went for sankirtan on rickshaw, no one took much notice. Every day it seemed we were in a different town. Some were wonderful and some not so nice, but we spent the same time in each place, as our only business was to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books and go on to the next town. Once we visited a very large and newly constructed temple of Lord Shiva. This temple was the main overpowering structure within the whole town and Lord Shiva was known as Somnath, as it was not so far from the famous Somnath temple. We entered Lord Shiva’s Temple and were given water to offer and I commented to one of the pujaris how large the Shiva linga was. It was about five feet tall and there was a large crack on the side. The pujari told us a story of the temple: <blockquote>A long while ago, the king of the land was nastika, an atheist. His queen, however, was a very great devotee of Lord Shiva. One day when walking in the woods the queen saw a cow and wondered what a cow was doing within the woods approached it only to see from her udder milk was pouring and dripping onto a small Shiva Lingam. The queen bowed down and began to worship the Shiva Lingam, returning each day until one day the king followed her. Seeing his wife worshipping Shiva Lingam he became enraged and drew his sword and smashed it. When he did this, the Lingam grew to this size and so we have now built this temple here. </blockquote> We all respectfully agreed that was an amazing story and very respectfully left the temple. After a few days, we also visited another temple about 20 kilometers away. This was a temple to Gopal Shree Nathaji. When the pujari came to greet us he also had a story of how Shree Nathji had been placed in that temple. His story went, “A long time ago, there was a king and he was a atheist, but his queen was a very good devotees of Shree Nathaji.” We heard this story in about ten places. After a while, we would laugh as soon as they started and say we had already heard the story, but the temple was very sweet anyway. In one temple we had kirtan in front of the Deities and many persons came into the temple to join us. After the kirtan they told us, “You danced in front of Krishna! One time many years ago an old sadhu came here and chanted and danced like this also.” Outside of Somnath we met a Brahmin Pujari who insisted we all go with him to his home and so the whole group of us did. This Brahmin wanted us to meet his older brother and it was a very special afternoon. Their family had lived in the same house for 700 years and in front of the house there was a small temple of Lakshmi Devi. This was their family temple, which was also the same age. Each day their family would distribute prasad from this temple to the poor and the older brother was a palmist and astrologer. He looked at each of our hands and told us you will all have good lives and nothing else. He then lead us in kirtan which lasted hours starting with Om na mo bha ga va te va su de va ya drawn out very long and slowly so we could hear and taste the transcendental sound vibration and very very gradually building the tempo to a ISKCON type speed and then back again and again and again. In 25 years I have never forgotten the melody. I am completely captivated by the tune even today. When in America leading kirtans in the home of our Gujarati members in Houston, I would sing this nice Brahmin tune and these devotees would tell me that that kind of method of kirtan was the traditional tunes that their grandfathers would sing. From this place we visited Porbandar, famous as Gandhi’s hometown. We visited his ashram in that city, but they would not take Srila Prabhupada’s books. They wanted us to join their ashram so they could teach us the teaching of Gandhi. Of Gandhi, Srila Prabhupada would say, “Among politicians he was a saint, and among saints he was a politician.” <small><font color=#f7f7f7> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 07-20-2001).]

<center>LESSON EIGHT</center> <hr><font color=#0000FF>As with most verses so far, there is a little something new. In this verse we meet the passive voice for the first time (except for the past passive participle, of course). We also have two cases of the imperfect.</font><hr> <center>VERSE 13 tataH zankhAz ca bheryaz ca paNavAnaka-gomukhAH | sahasaivAbhyahanyanta sa zabdas tumulo 'bhavat ||13||</center> ANVAYA: tataH zankhAH ca bheryaH ca paNava-Anaka-gomukhAH sahasA eva abhyahanyanta | sa zabdas tumulaH abhavat ||12|| GRAMMATICAL COMMENTS <font color=#5F9F9F>1. tataH here means “then, next, after that.” 2. zankhAH ca bheryaH ca paNava-Anaka-gomukhAH . As you should know by now, these are nominative plurals. zankhAH is masculine. bheryaH is feminine (the singular is bherI) and paNava-Anaka-gomukhAH is a compound word where three items are listed. This is called a dvandva-samAsa and is quite common. A dvandva samAsa always takes the gender of the last item in the list. If you say “wife and husband”, it will take the masculine gender. In this case, all three nouns are masculine, so the question doesn’t really arise. 3. sahasA means “suddenly”. This is a pretty common adverb. It’s actually the instrumental of an adjective sahas. 4. abhyahanyanta. This is a verb in the passive voice. It is in the imperfect tense and has a third person plural ending. Some things to note about the imperfect tense. We already saw akurvata in verse 1, and abravIt in verse 2. We observed there that the imperfect tense is formed by taking the a- augment at the beginning of the verb stem before adding the imperfect endings. In abhyahanyanta, you will observe that this augment is tucked in between the prefix abhi and the verb stem han. Now this verb here is plural, but it has the passive ending –anta. I mentioned in passing in verse one that akurvata was a middle voice. There are three voices in Sanskrit: active, passive and middle. English has active and passive voices, but there are very few languages that still have a middle voice. It also existed in ancient Greek and is one of the clues that Greek and Sanskrit have common roots. In classical Sanskrit, the middle voice has already become somewhat archaic and is barely distinguishable from the active voice in usage. We will talk more about the middle voice later. But here it should be pointed out that middle voice and passive voice endings are exactly the same. The difference is that the passive voice adds a y in between the verb stem and the endings. That is the y after han here. As far as the ending is concerned: We already have seen that -nt- combination. abhirakSantu was a third person plural imperative. abhirakSanti would be the third person plural singular. The present tense endings of the passive are also similar in the third person singular and plural -- ate and ante. So in the present tense, abhyahanyanta would have been abhihanyante. At some point I am going to start giving entire conjugations and declensions. So try to get a grasp on some of this introductory material. It will make it easier when these come. In fact, third person singular and plural endings are far more common than any others, so it is a good idea to become familiar with these first. 4. abhavat is also an imperfect. This is the third person singular, “became”. “That sound became tumultuous.” So let’s just look at all those third person singular and plural endings, some of which we have already met.</font> <center><table border="5"><tr><td>tense<td>voice<td>singular<td>plural</tr><tr><td>present <td>active<td>-ati<td>-anti<td></tr><tr><td>present <td>middle<td>-ate<td>-ante<td></tr><tr><td>present <td>passive<td>-yate<td>-yante<td></tr><tr><td>imperative <td>active<td>-atu<td>-antu<td></tr><tr><td>imperative <td>middle<td>-atAm<td>-antAm<td></tr><tr><td>imperative <td>passive<td>-yatAm<td>-yantAm<td></tr><tr><td>imperfect<td>active<td>-at<td>-an<td></tr><tr><td>imperfect<td>middle<td>-ata<td>-anta<td></tr><tr><td>imperfect<td>passive<td>-yat a <td>-yanta<td></tr></table></center> Translation: Then the conchshells, trumpets, drums, kettledrums and bugles were suddenly sounded. That sound became tumultuous. <small><font color=#dedfdf> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 07-18-2001).]