Foward to Final Volume of the Srimad Bhagavatam

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
By His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Tenth Canto, Part Three

Foward

This is the final Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam volume translated by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder-acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. It is smaller than the earlier volumes because it ends where the renowned author stopped translating just before his departure from this mortal world on November 14, 1977, at the Krsna-Balarama Mandira in Vrndavana, India.

The first part of this volume was produced in the usual fashion. Srila Prabhupada would sit and read silently from the Sanskrit text and then speak the translation and commentary into his dictaphone. Later, due to illness, it became necessary for his disciples to assist him personally.

In these last days Srila Prabhupada was gravely ill. Unable to eat for weeks, his health had deteriorated, making even the slightest movement excruciatingly painful.

As he lay still, a devotee would softly read the Sanskrit to him. Another disciple, sitting on his bed, held the microphone to him, nearly touching his mouth. And then Srila Prabhupada would speak, voice sometimes barely audible.

These recordings, made in his quarters at the temple, constitute the balance of this book.

In these final moments, the physician attending His Divine Grace confided that an ordinary man in such critical condition would have been crying out from the intense pain. Srila Prabhupada’s disciples were awestruck as they watched their spiritual master work quietly, undisturbed.

In the last part of the book we find Srila Prabhupada’s usual clarity of thought, constant scriptural references, scrupulous attention to detail, and rigorous philosophical exposition fully intact, just as they were in the preceding twenty-nine volumes of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Srila Prabhpada’s last days and this translation will stands an inspiring reminder that even the severest material circumstances cannot impede the activities of a pure devotee of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

-The Publishers