If there is one mistake, you murder the book

[A letter from Pradyumna Dasa Adhikari to Jayadvaita Dasa Brahmacari]

September 19, 1972

Dear Jayadvaita,

Please accept my humble obeisances. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of September 10 which was received by me here in Los Angeles after being forwarded from Dallas. . . .

Here's an important point: Srila Prabhupada was looking at the new edition of Second Canto the other day and he called me up because he had found some mistakes. The first mistake was in the first verse of the Third Chapter. There the first line of the Devanagari script is placed last, and the last line is placed first. I don't know how this mistake has occurred; in the Second Canto chapter books there is no mistake, so this must have occurred during layout sometime. The second mistake is in the Second Canto, Fifth Chapter, 24th verse. There, in both the old edition and the new edition, the middle line of Devanagari script is missing.

Prabhupada said that if there is one mistake in one book, then you spoil the whole book. Murder the whole book. So also besides Sanskrit errors, there have been many, many English errors also, which are very obvious, just like these two above-mentioned errors, so Prabhupada has been emphasizing lately about the great need for making our books free from errors. "What's done has been done,"* [Pradyumna's footnote: * Srila Prabhupada.] but now we should try to do two things: make sure that errors like these won't occur again, and start a listing of past mistakes in each book so that we can correct them when they are reprinted. . . .

Hoping to hear from you about this. I hope you are receiving everything in order and that the pages aren't too messy. I try to keep everything as neat as possible. Hope everything is going well. Give my obeisances to everyone. I am your most fallen servant.

Pradyumna das Adhikari