By Madhava Smullen
In the late 1990s, a BBT conference handling questions from translators sparked a renewed interest in the history of Srila Prabhupada’s books.
To give satisfactory answers, BBT staff found they often had to go back to early manuscripts, Prabhupada’s dictated tapes, or original Sanskrit or Bengali texts.
This wasn’t new to Govinda Madhava Dasa, who’d served with the BBT since 1980 and as North European production manager had overseen book production in forty languages.
He decided it was worth further investigation. “When I began investigating and documenting the history of Prabhupada’s books in 2003, it seemed more important than ever,” he says.
“The BBT was increasingly under fire from within ISKCON for their editorial changes, defending themselves from criticisms which had little or nothing to do with reality.”
By 2004, Govinda Madhava’s project had found its home. The Editorial Audit Trail’s website accessible to BBT translators and editors as a tool for their work will house original manuscripts, various stages of production, and careful comparisons between the earliest and latest editions of all Prabhupada’s major works.
“It will also include resources such as handwritten corrections and references that Prabhupada used, such as Sridhara Swami’s Srimad-Bhagavatam commentaries and Dr. Radhakrishnan’s Gita,” Govinda Madhava says.
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