A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) is widely regarded as the foremost Vedic scholar, translator and spiritual teacher of the modern era. He is especially respected as the world’s most prominent contemporary authority on bhakti-yoga, devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna, as taught by the ancient Vedic writings of India. He is also the Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Srila Prabhupada, as he is known to his followers, translated and commented on over eighty volumes of the most important sacred bhakti texts of the Vedas, including the Bhagavad-gita, the multi-volume Srimad-Bhagavatam, The Nectar of Devotion (Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu) and Sri Caitanya Caritamrta. The latter being the most authoritative biography on the life and precepts of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the divine incarnation of Lord Krishna who revived Krishna-bhakti all over India in the 1500s.

Srila Prabhupada met his spiritual master Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura for the first time in 1922. During that meeting Bhaktisiddhanta instructed him to preach Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings throughout the English-speaking world.

While maintaining family and business responsibilities, Srila Prabhupada struggled for forty years within India to carry out the order of his guru. Then in his latter years, he boarded a steamship bound from Kolkata to New York City in 1965. At the age of sixty-nine, with forty rupees and a trunk of his Bhagavatam with his profound English commentaries, his aim was to introduce Krishna consciousness to the Western world.

During the last twelve years of his life, Srila Prabhupada inspired thousands of people from West and East alike to devote their lives to Krishna consciousness, launching one of the fastest-growing spiritual movements in the history of the world.

Many scholars and professors who met him and became familiar with his work continue to use Srila Prabhupada’s books as standard university texts, and regard him as a genuine, realised, and scholarly teacher of the bhakti tradition. 

In July 1966 he founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) popularly known as the “Hare Krishna” movement. In this way he fulfilled his spiritual master’s instruction and the desire of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu that the holy name of the Lord be spread in every town and village all around the world.