A Living Archive
At sixty-nine, with almost no money and no contacts, he sailed alone to America to fulfill a promise made forty years earlier. By the time he passed away in 1977, that promise had become a movement spanning six continents. This archive holds the record of that life — year by year, and a place to still ask about it.
The full record lives on the Timeline. Here is the shape of it.
Born in Calcutta, married, and set on his path by a single instruction from his spiritual master in 1922. Nearly forty years of writing, translating, and waiting followed before he ever left India.
At sixty-nine, he sailed to America alone. A storefront in New York became ISKCON; a handful of young Americans became the first disciples of a movement that spread to San Francisco, London, and beyond within five years.
Temples, books, and disciples multiplied across six continents. By his passing in 1977, what began with two followers and $200 had grown into over 100 centers worldwide.
Historical photographs preserved from the living archive of His Divine Grace.
How his work was received, beyond his own movement.
Poet Allen Ginsberg, an early observer of the storefront temple, described his Bhagavad-gita translation as unusually clear and thoroughly grounded in scholarship.
— Allen Ginsberg, poet
Religious studies scholars including J. Stillson Judah and Thomas Hopkins defended his translations as serious scholarship, pushing back against media portrayals of the movement as a cult.
— Religious studies scholars
By 1977, the movement he'd started alone in a rented storefront had grown into more than 100 temples and centers on six continents.
— ISKCON historical record
Ask about a moment, a year, or a teaching — the archive draws its answers from the full record of Srila Prabhupada's life and lectures.
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