The Gita on VNN

by Dravida dasa

I would like to lodge a vociferous protest with whoever runs the Black Peacock download page, accessible on the VNN site within "Interactive Forums." And by extension I lodge a protest with the VNN operators themselves for allowing this travesty.

Among other books, the BP download page offers a Folio version of what they claim is Srila Prabhupada's Macmillan edition of Bhagavad Gita As It Is, but in truth it is no such thing. It contains all kinds of interpolated material from the 1983 BBT edition—many Sanskrit quotes within the purports, the number "seven" instead of "six" at the beginning of the second paragraph of the purport to 10.34, "a planet of Pitas" instead "a planet of trees" and, most horrendously, the BBT-edition purport to 18.32. The result of the latter addition is that 18.31 and 18.32 have almost identical purports, except 18.31 describes intelligence in the mode of passion, and 18.32 intelligence in the mode of ignorance. This gives the absurd impression that Prabhupada wrote almost identical purports for two verses and just plugged in "ignorance" in one of them. In this way the editors of this mishmash have offended Prabhupada by presenting nonsense as his words.

In fact, Prabhupada never wrote a purport for 18.31. The original editor of the Gita appended Prabhupada's purport for 18.32 onto 18.31 and changed the word "ignorance" to "passion." So the Macmillan Gita itself misrepresents Prabhupada's words, and the so-called Macmillan Gita from Black Peacock just compounds the misrepresentation.

This is why Srila Prabhupada entrusted his books to the BBT and his senior editor, Jayadvaita Swami—so unauthorized, distorted versions of his books would not be propagated.

Your servant,

Dravida dasa