The Founder-Ācārya

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, the Founder-Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, was born Abhay Charan De in 1896 in Calcutta, India, into a Vaiṣṇava family. From the very beginning of his childhood, he was educated in a devotional way of life and learned how to see everything in relation to the Supreme Lord. He first met his spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, in 1922, and eleven years latter became his initiated disciple and received his new name, Abhay Charanaravinda. At their first meeting, in 1922, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta had requested Abhay Charan to broadcast Vedic knowledge through the English language. Thus, in the years that followed, his disciple wrote an English commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā and in 1944, without assistance, started a fortnightly magazine, Back to Godhead. Recognizing his philosophical learning and devotion, the Gauḍiyā Vaiṣṇava Society honored him in 1947 with the title "Bhaktivedanta." In 1950, at the age of fifty-four, A. C. Bhaktivedanta retired from married life and four years latter adopted the vānaprastha (retired) order to devote more time to his studies and writing. He traveled to the holy city of Vṛndāvana, where he lived in very humble circumstances in the historic medieval temple of Radha-Damodara. There he engaged for several years in deep study and writing. He accepted the renounced order of life (sannyāsa) an the title “Swami” in 1959. At Radha-Damodara, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami began work on his life's masterpiece: a multivolume translation and commentary on the 18,000-verse, 12canto Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Bhāgavata Purāṇa). After publishing the First Canto in three volumes, he came to the United States, in 1965, to fulfill the mission of his spiritual master. After almost a year of great difficulty he established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in July of 1966 in New York. Under his careful guidance, the Society grew within a decade to a worldwide confederation of almost one hundred ashrams, schools, temples, institutes and farm communities. Śrīla Prabhupāda also inspired the construction of a large international center at Mayapur in West Bengal, India, which is also the site “The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium”. A similar project is the magnificent Krishna-Balaram Temple and International Guest House in Vṛndāvana, India. These are centers where Westerners can live to gain firsthand experience of Vedic culture.

Prabhupāda's most significant contribution, however, is his books. Highly respected by the academic community for their authoritativeness, depth and clarity, they are used as standard textbooks in numerous universities. His writings have been translated into over eighty languages. The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, established in 1972 to publish the works of His Divine Grace, has thus become the world's largest publisher of books in the field of Indian religion and philosophy. In the last ten years of his life (1967-1977), in spite of his advanced age, Prabhupāda circled the globe twelve times on lecture tours that took him to six continents. In spite of such a vigorous schedule, he continued to write prolifically. The writings of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda constitute a veritable library of Vedic philosophy, religion, literature and culture.