An excerpt from the foreword to the forthcoming BBT publication of Tattva Sandarbha - translation and commentary by Gopiparanadhana Dasa Adhikari

“In the vicinity of Govardhana you can meet sincere pilgrims from all over the world, come to absorb the spiritually charged atmosphere. The devout circumambulate the hill as an act of recollection known as parikrama. During the fourteen mile journey, they visit many of the more than sixty sacred sites in the environs. If you spent some time there, you might well be privileged to meet Gopiparanadhana Dasa Adhikari, an American scholar of Sanskrit and long-time follower of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the “Hare Krishna” movement. Gopiparanadhana would likely tell you, if you were not already aware, that the Hare Krishna movement—more formally identified with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON—is much more than a relic of the 60s. He would rightly say that it is a still vibrant, international religious movement of considerable size that traces its roots back at least five centuries to the divine inspiration of Śrῑ Caitanya. It maintains sophisticated traditions of ritual and spiritual practice and a rich legacy of theological thought and scholarship that go back to the Gosvāmῑs who made this sacred region their home in the sixteenth century. As the conversation progressed, Gopiparanadhana Dasa might also tell you that, if you were to see a herd of white cows without a cowherd wandering on Govardhan Hill, you should pay reverent attention. They would be—according to local lore—the cows of Kṛṣṇa and his companion Balarāma, not actually without their herders because the divine pair would be present there also in spiritual form.

Gopiparanadhana Dasa lives in Govardhan in a humble cottage of bricks and mud, with his wife, his son, and several cows. He is the founding preceptor and guiding light of a new educational institution in Govardhan, the Srimad Bhagavata Vidyapitha. This “seat (pῑṭha) of knowledge (vidyā)” is dedicated to training young scholars in the highest traditions of brahmanical, Sanskrit learning, with an emphasis on the theological texts of the Caitanya tradition and, most especially, the systematic study of the works of the Gosvāmῑs and the Śrῑmad Bhāgavatam and its commentaries. Here, something quite remarkable is going on. As the ISKCON tradition of Caitanya, or Gauḍῑya Vaiṣṇavism matures, it has begun to train scholars and theologians of its own to carry on and extend into the future the work of Prabhupada, its founder. As Joseph O’Connell has noted, the publication in English in 2002-2006 of the Sanātana Gosvāmῑ's Śrῑ Bṛhad Bhāgavatāmṛta, as translated by Gopiparanadhana Dasa, was “the first publication by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust of a major Caitanya Vaiṣṇava text which the followers of the late Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada . . . accomplished without his immediate presence.” This new stage in the institutional and theological development of the movement is now centered at the vidyāpῑṭha in Govardhan, and is being overseen by Gopiparanadhana Dasa.

The students of the school, who pay no tuition, lead a demanding life of study, discipline, and celibacy, enfolded in a routine of devotion and spiritual practice. The day begins with worship at 4:30 a.m. and has no slack in it. In addition to their hours of rigorous study of Sanskrit grammar, literary theory, scripture, and Vaiṣṇava theology, students engage in serious devotional practice and are expected, following the ancient āśrama tradition of Indian education, to perform many of the daily chores that keep the institution running. The object, according to Gopiparanadhana, is to give the students not only technical expertise and scholarly mastery—in terms of Sanskrit learning no mean task—but also to foster in them the spiritual discipline and depth of religious experience that will enable them to teach and translate the spiritual masterworks of their tradition in as authentic a manner as possible. The students of this school, under the tutelage of Gopiparanadhana Dasa, seem likely to play a major role in the future of ISKCON and the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava movement as a whole.

The translator/commentator is in fact a highly respected figure in the ISKCON movement. Having received spiritual initiation from A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1973, Gopiparanadhana Dasa began a serious study of Sanskrit and a now more than thirty-five year career as editor and translator with the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, the official publisher of Prabhupada’s books. He was one of the editors of Prabhupada’s monumental translation and commentary on the Śrῑmad-Bhagavatam, in the process gaining valuable insight into his master’s method of textual interpretation. Following Prabhupada’s passing in 1977, he helped complete cantos 10-12 of that work. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to bring out, via translation and commentary, a number of seminal works of Vaiṣṇava theology and spirituality, perhaps the most important prior to the present work being his three volume, 1800-plus page translation of Sanātana Gosvāmῑ’s Śrῑ Bṛhad Bhāgavatāmṛta (2002-2006), which includes a rendition of the Sanātana’s own Dig-darśanῑ commentary. More recently (2007), Gopiparanadhana’s translation of Sanātana’s Śrῑ Kṛṣṇa-lῑlā-stava has been published.

The publication by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust of this translation of Jῑva Gosvāmῑ’s Tattva-sandarbha is an important milestone in the history of ISKCON and indeed in the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava movement as a whole. Few would doubt that Jῑva was “the most brilliant theologian” of this tradition. Jῑva’s Bhāgavata-sandarbha, of which the Tattva-sandarbha is the first volume, is—to reiterate—the preeminent systematization of Gauḍῑya Vaiṣṇava theology. With the assistance of his students at the Srimad Bhagavata Vidyapitha in Govardhan, Gopiparanadhana Dasa is currently engaged in a multi-year project to produce authentic and careful translations of all six of the Sandarbhas. If the clarity and sensitivity of this, the first outcome of that work, is any indication, devotees and scholars alike have a lot to look forward to in the coming years.

Lance E. Nelson, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of San Diego