Preserving the Vani of Srila Prabhupada
by Madhava Smullen
On February 2, 1966, before he founded ISKCON or initiated any Western disciples, Srila Prabhupada purchased a reel-to-reel tape recorder and brought it back to his apartment on New York’s West 72nd street. At $54.02, it cost almost as much as his rent for a month, but it was an invaluable investment; for as he sat down to record his “Introduction toGeetopanisad,” he was leaving us his legacy The Bhaktivedanta Archives.
More than ten years later in 1977, his disciple Parama-rupa dasa moved hundreds of reel-to-reel audio tapes from the front room of Los Angeles, Golden Avatar Studios to a location where they would be watched over for safe keeping. “The ‘safe’ location was a converted kitchen in the local brahmachari ashrama,” recalls Parama-rupa, now preservation director of the Archives, “but it was a beginning.”
When Srila Prabhupada passed away the next year, an official archive was established to collect and preserve all of his recorded instructions, history, images, correspondence, and Paraphernalia. Parama-rupa began to travel around the world collecting these items.
“It was quite an adventure,” he says. “In 1979, Amogha Prabhu and I were looking for someone in Australia who had moved away from the devotee community, and was reported to have many original slides and photos of Prabhupada. After a long search, Amogha found the man who agreed to meet him in the middle of the night and hand over three hundred slides and two hundred photographs in exchange for a pile of curd pakoras.”
Other less dramatic, but equally fruitful searches yielded philosophical discussions recorded by Hayagriva Dasa, tape and photo collections from early Prabhupada disciples; Govinda Dasi and Hamsaduta Dasa, and photos from Yamuna Devi including some of Prabhupada with George Harrison while recording the album, The Radha Krishna Temple. Many devotees also gave their personal letters received from Prabhupada, and in one case a devotee willed his personal collection of Prabhupada items when he passed away.
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