Myths

Śrīla Prabhupāda ordered that after his departure not a word of his books should be changed.

There is no reliable evidence that such an order was ever given.

• The Folio VedaBase gives no record of it.
• None of his editors (who’d be the natural ones to receive such an order) recall having heard it, nor any of his secretaries.
• No one has ever said when, where, or to whom the supposed order was given.

Though the story often appears on the internet, no evidence has ever been produced for it. In short, the story appears inauthentic.

The only books by Srila Prabhupada that are authentic and reliable are the “unedited editions.”

There are no “unedited editions.” Before being printed, all of Srila Prabhupada’s books published during his lifetime were edited, extensively. The only “unedited editions” of his books are the works he published before he came to America, such as his original Delhi Bhagavatams.

“There is no precedent in our sampradaya for posthumous, unapproved changes to an acarya’s books. If a devotee needs to clarify a previous acarya’s work for the understanding of his contemporaries, he writes a separate tika and appends it to the original work, leaving the previous acaryas’ commentaries unchanged. This is the accepted practice in the Gaudiya-sampradaya.” (This, verbatim, from a critic on the internet.)

History shows that the critic is wrong.

The fourteenth chapter of the Bhakti-ratnakara contains four letters written by Sri Jiva Gosvami to Srinivasa Acarya. In the first letter, Jiva writes that he is still proofreading/correcting the Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu of Srila Rupa Gosvami, who by then had passed away.

Though the Bhakti-ratnakara contains some historical inaccuracies, these letters are accepted by all scholars as genuine. (The letters, though not translated in the Bhakti-ratnakara that circulates in ISKCON, appear on pages 632 and 633 in the Gaudiya Mission’s Bengali edition.)

Commentaries, of course, form an essential part of the Gaudiya tradition, and commentaries are always distinct from the original works. But editing too (even posthumous editing) has a distinguished place in the tradition. 

 “While it is not generally known, for two years Śrīla Prabhupāda sat with Hayagriva and patiently transformed His intimate realizations into a level of refined expression onto which He then comfortably placed His name. The resulting literary expression was the wondrous 1972 Bhagavad-Gita As It Is.”

Responding to this assertion, Brahmananda Prabhu, the president of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s first temple in America, said, “It’s out of the question.” The dates of letters in the Folio VedaBase show that during the period when Bhagavad-gita As It Is was being edited the total time Hayagriva and Śrīla Prabhupāda were even together in the same city, what to speak of sitting together working, was, at the most, less than five months. And, again according to Brahmananda Prabhu (and confirmed by Umapati Maharaja, another of the earliest devotees), Hayagriva mainly worked on his own.

The revised editions have been Bowdlerized—that is, softened to make them socially more acceptable.

The opposite is true. If anything, the revised editions have been “anti-Bowdlerized.”

To “Bowdlerize” a work is to expurgate it by removing or changing words or passages one consideres vulgar or objectionable. In 1818 one Dr. Thomas Bowdler published an edition of Shakespeare “in which those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.” And from his name we get the word.

The second edition of the Gita in fact restores several words and passages the original editor changed or omitted, apparently out of concern for the sensibilities of the modern reader.

Examples:

For 10.42 Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote, "There is a Mission that regularly propounds that worship of any demigod will lead one to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, or the supreme goal." In the first edition this was dropped, in the second restored.

For 11.52 he wrote, “A foolish person may deride Him, thinking Him an ordinary person, and may offer respect not to Him but to the impersonal ‘something’ within Him, but these are all nonsensical postures.” First edition, omitted; second edition, restored.

For 10.21 and 15.12 he wrote about the moon’s being one of the stars. First edition, omitted; second edition, restored. In 10.21 the restoration amounts to nearly a paragraph. (The striking out from Easy Journey to Other Planets of similar talk about the moon is what Śrīla Prabhupāda so strongly objected to in the conversation called “Rascal Editors.”)

The new editions restore Śrīla Prabhupāda’s words, full force.

Revising an author’s works after his departure is a shoddy, disreputable practice no respectable publisher would approve.

Not so. Restoring lost or mangled text to great works of literature is an endeavor scholars and educated readers highly value, and publishing houses with impeccable reputations for scholarly integrity have published posthumously edited works by such authors as Melville, Thoreau, Faulkner, Hemingway, Orwell, Joyce, Robert Frost, Mark Twain, and James Fenimore Cooper.

For an authentic look at high-quality scholarly publishing, please see the website of The Library of America.

By the way: Recent years have seen a new edition of J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic The Lord of the Rings, carefully revised in consultation with the author’s son. (Among other reasons: Tolkein’s typists made with the languages of Middle Earth the same sort of errors Śrīla Prabhupāda’s typists made with Sanskrit.)
 

If you’re going to revise a book, the only way to do it with integrity is to include a footnote for every change.

For books meant for scholars concerned with textual criticism, yes. For books meant for the general reader, no. For the general reader, such footnotes are just a distraction.

Comprehensive footnotes or addenda are meant for scholarly editions where a main purpose is to point out the differences between various versions of a text. For Bhagavad-gita As It Is that might be useful for critics and scholars, but for the general public—worse than useless.

Speaking about this type of scholarly apparatus, one scholar says, “The more detailed and complete an edition is, the more cumbersome it becomes for lay readers, and by lay readers I mean those who are trained to read scholarly texts if need be but who also simply wish to have a readable yet reliable edition.” (Richard Exner, from “Editing Hofmannsthal,” in Editing Twentieth Century Texts, p. 54)

Hridayananda Maharaja, sometimes cited as an advocate of adding footnotes, wrote in February of 2003, “I agree that the general public doesn't need a lot of notes. If both editions are available or if there is a ‘scholarly’ edition available, apart from public distribution, then reasonable people should be satisfied.”

Going beyond a mere scholarly edition, the BBT has begun a project to extensively document the editorial history of each of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, tracking the details of the text from manuscript to the most recent printing.
 

The GBC members were never made aware of the extent of the changes. All they received was a list of changes to the translations, and these were presented in a cryptic form, hard for anyone to understand. No one but the editor knew the magnitude of the changes.

Jayadvaita Swami made sure the GBC members were fully informed. A letter sent to every GBC man in 1982, before the book was published, explained clearly that revisions had been made to translations, purports, and word-for-word meanings.

Along with the letter came a full list of all the revisions made to the translations, showing the revisions in a clear, easily understood form.

In 2003 Balavanta Prabhu wrote about the GBC, “I don't believe anyone knew the extent to which [the editing] would be taken.” Balavanta Prabhu later retracted that statement.

After seeing again the 1982 package sent to the GBC, in March 2004 Balavanta Prabhu wrote, “I stand corrected as to whether the GBC knew the extent of the changes which were proposed. Information was circulated and made available to the GBC members, who certainly had access to it.”

Jayadvaita Swami’s letter had been sent not only to every GBC man but to every sannyasi and every ISKCON temple in the English-speaking world, and to many other senior devotees as well. Jayadvaita Swami wrote, “I want you to see the changes, to understand what’s behind them, to have a chance to raise questions or make suggestions about them—and, finally, to satisfy yourself that the changes are prudent, legitimate, and worthwhile.”

In May of 1982, Jayadvaita Swami met in Detroit with a committee of five GBC members deputed by the GBC body to review his work for the second edition. Sitting together, they examined every translation revised for the second edition (and the GBC members made various suggestions).

In India on March 19, 1983, the BBT trustees resolved:

5. Bhagavad-Gita:
a) HDG Gopal Krsna, HDG Bhagavan Goswami, and HDG Ramesvar will submit to HH Jayadvaita Swami their responses to the Detroit questionaire [sic] before leaving India.
b) HH Jayadvaita Swami will send a complete set of the edited Bhagavad-gita to all the Trustees upon arrival to the U.S.
c) The Trustees will mail him back their points by the end of April so that they can be considered for the final version.
d) HH Jayadvaita Swami will mail out the final version in early May.

Before the second edition was published, the BBT trustees and the GBC were indeed well informed and involved, and a sincere and vigorous effort was made to inform and consult the larger community of ISKCON devotees.

The GBC approved the second edition only by a razor-thin majority. (The usual story is “by only one vote.”)

Though all the GBC men were well informed about the second edition, the BBT did not ask them to vote on whether they approved. Asking the GBC’s formal approval in editorial affairs had never been part of the BBT’s usual way of working.

Nonetheless, Jayadvaita Swami did inform all the GBC members of the proposed revisions and ask for comments. And at the 1982 annual GBC meeting Kirtananada Swami (rather than respond to Jayadvaita Swami directly) proposed to the GBC that the planned second edition be rejected. The proposal failed, and therefore no record was kept either of the proposal or of the number of votes for and against it. Who then could remember, years later, the number of votes?

In 2004 Balavanta Prabhu recalled, “The vote was close.” But since he’d forgotten that the GBC had even been informed, his memory of the vote (taken more than twenty years earlier) may understandably be less than dependable.

Turning to Google, the earliest version of the “one vote” myth turns up in 2002, when Govinda Devi Dasi posted a letter on Chakra.org saying “the GBC did approve by a one-vote margin Jayadvaita Maharaja’s editing proposal.” (Govinda Dasi had not, of course, attended the 1982 GBC meeting.) Gupta Dasa, in a letter posted in January of 2003, repeated the “one vote” story, citing Govinda Dasi. And the internet did the rest.