My review of Project Gutenberg's "A Study Of The Bhagavata Purana or Esoteric Hinduism

A Study of the Bhagavata Purana or Esoteric Hinduism by Purnendu Narayana Sinha

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the only public domain English translation of the Bhagavata Purana in existence. Because it is in the public domain there is no need to buy the Kessenger edition to read it. You have two choices to read it for free:

1). On Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39442

2). The original page images at the Internet Archive:

http://archive.org/details/astudyofthebhaga00sinhuoft

The PG version is preferable unless you need to cite page numbers. The proofreaders of the original book, published in 1901, did such a horrible job that I feel that they and the typesetters are working off their karma in the hellish planets, or possibly have been reborn as one of the lower animals. The PG version, which I transcribed myself, fixes most if not all of that. I don't know that Krishna will necessarily reward me for the months I spent cleaning up the text, but I won't go to hell for it.

Once you get past the lousy proofreading you have a pretty good translation of the Bhagavata Purana. True, Sinha does leave a lot of stuff out, but this is somewhat balanced out by including parts of Sridhara Swami's commentary plus excerpts from other scriptures, including one memorable one which describes how Arjuna (the prince who heard Arjuna speak the Bhagavad Gita) temporarily becomes a woman so he can experience loving Krishna as a Gopi. We never got to hear that one in the Hare Krishna movement!

Other interesting parts are Sinha's belief in the lost continent of Atlantis (not part of Hare Krishna dogma, but considering some of the other things we were asked to believe I wonder how we missed it.) and the dedication of the book to a woman, Annie Besant, who was quite an interesting character herself.

This book will be interesting to anyone who enjoys mythology, high fantasy, philosophy, comparative religion, etc. It is largely the story of Krishna, the Supreme Lord Himself, who came to earth five thousand years ago and brought the kingdom of God with Him. I find it a far more convincing description of that kingdom than what you will find in the Left Behind books, to give a ridiculous example.

As I am writing this the book has been downloaded 28 times, which is more books than I managed to sell when I was in the Hare Krishna movement.




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