Reviving Varnasrama

In this blog I am going to present some Chanakya niti and I was thinking about explaining them. Then I thought who could be a better person to explain than Srila Prabhupada. So I searched for Srila Prabhupada’s explanations of Chanakya niti. There are many wonderful explanations of Srila Prabhupada in his lectures and books. I chose one such to present in this blog. When you hear the explanations from Srila Prabhupada they are very very sweet; giving his own personal experiences into it. We will be able to appreciate the subject in a much better way. I am going to present one sloka of Chanakya niti quoted by Srila Prabhupada which I really laughed to myself when I read the explanation of Prabhupada on it.  rsi sraddha aja yuddhe prabhate megha garjane dampatya kalahe caiva bahvarambhe laghu kriya TRANSLATION “The funeral ceremony of a sage who died in the forest, a fight between two goats, a thunder clap in the morning, a quarrel between husband and w...

The other day being interested to read, I downloaded a copy of Chanakya-niti-sastra from ISKCON desire tree. It is a very nice translation by one of ISKCON devotees, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada. The reason I wanted to learn Chanakya niti is because firstly Srila Prabhupada used to quote Chanakya pandit many times in his lectures. We know the most quoted ones are matravat para daresu paradravesu lostravat…, ayusah ksana ekopi na labhyah svarna-kotibhih..,putra hinam grham sunyam etc. In Srila Prabhupada lectures and books we can see numerous places where Prabhupada quotes moral principles mentioning Chanakya pandit. The author of this translation also mentions in the introduction that Srila Prabhupada had expressed a desire that Sri Chanakya Niti-Sastra be properly translated into English. Secondly why I wanted to read this book is that devotees are expected to be intelligent even in worldly dealings. We see even our acharyas like Srila Rupa gosvami, Sanatana gosvami, Jiva g...