subala
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by subala on Jan 20, 2010 3:32:18 GMT -6
Nitai...
Are you planning to publish any new books in the foreseeable future?
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 21, 2010 11:52:11 GMT -6
There are several projects that are in various states of completion. The one nearest completion is the small book by Sri Kanupriya Goswami called Mahat-sanga Prasanga (On Associating with the Great). I have a set of corrections to make in the main text and one last appendix that was included in the original that needs to be translated. The cover is partially designed for that as well. I expect that will be done in the next month or so.
The other projects that are in various states of completion are:
1. A new edition of the classic by Shishir Kumar Ghose, Lord Gauranga.
2. A translation of the Sri Krsna-lila-stava of Sri Sanatana, perhaps the first CV book.
3. A biography of Siddha Manohar Das Babaji (already translated, waiting for corrections and editing).
4. My dissertation on the rasa aesthetics of Sri Rupa (in process of being converted to my current system of diacritics and Devanagari production, then in need of some rewriting and updating)
5 The Songs of Govindadasa (bilingual edition with translation and comm of Biman Bihari Majumdar)
6. Bhakti-granthavali: Five Short Works on Caitanya Vaisnavism by Visvanatha Cakravartin (bilingual edition with the comm. of Shyamlal Goswami)
7 The Ujjvala-nilamani of Sri Rupa (bilingual edition with notes from the commentaries)
8. The Govinda-lilamrta of Sri Krsnadasakaviraja (bilingual edition with notes from the comm.)
9. The Sadhanamrta-candrika of Siddha Krsnadasa Babaji (bilingual text on practice)
10 The Nama Cintamani (three vols.) of Sri Kanupriya Goswami (translation from the Bengali with notes and introduction)
11 The Bhagavad-gita (bilingual with notes and introductions from the comm of Sankara)
12 On Bhakti Rasa by Sri Kunjabihari Das (translation from the Bengali with notes and citations)
13 The Siksastaka of Sri Krsnacaitanya Mahaprabhu (bilingual with extended commentary of Manindranatha Guha)
14 The Brhad-bhagavatamrta of Sri Sanatana (bilingual edition with notes from the autocommentary)
That is all I can think of at the moment. I am sure there are others, but these are the projects most in play. Apart from the first one which is really nearly done, which would you like to see me focus on?
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 21, 2010 12:17:15 GMT -6
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am planning on producing new editions of all of Dr. Kapoor's books, except for the one I have already done. Obviously, that is a lot of work for one person. I need lots of help with typing and editing and checking quotes and such. The first on the agenda is his The Gosvamins of Vrndavana. Anyone want to help?
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Post by gerard on Jan 21, 2010 18:52:26 GMT -6
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am planning on producing new editions of all of Dr. Kapoor's books, except for the one I have already done. Obviously, that is a lot of work for one person. I need lots of help with typing and editing and checking quotes and such. The first on the agenda is his The Gosvamins of Vrndavana. Anyone want to help? Do you think that " Experience in Bhakti: the Science Celestial" merits reprinting?? I thought the way he tried to prove that bhakti is science or a science was rather childish. I hope I don't offend you or any other reader with this opinion. |
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Post by Ekantin on Jan 21, 2010 18:54:49 GMT -6
Apart from the first one which is really nearly done, which would you like to see me focus on? Bhakti-granthavali, Nama-cintamani, and Siksastaka (M. Guha). These arouse my interest, although of course all those works sound great for publication. I can help if you like, let me know what type of help you need. I was surprised to see you bringing out a new edition of Brhad-Bhagavatamrta!  May I make a suggestion? Rather than producing it with notes from the commentary, why not produce the entire commentary, separate if necessary? Gopiparanadhana's BBT edition seems to be a competent translation but in some quarters his commentary has been criticised as his own ideas and not being true to Sanatana's Dig-darshini-tika. I don't think there is another translation of B.Bhag. with DDT available at present, and this would be a massive contribution if the DDT was done too. Of course it will be a huge amount of work but I'll help in any way I can and I'm sure others will too. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2010 10:59:27 GMT -6
>> Apart from the first one which is really nearly done, which would you like to see me focus on?
Songs of Govinda Das!
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 28, 2010 17:42:36 GMT -6
>> Apart from the first one which is really nearly done, which would you like to see me focus on? Songs of Govinda Das! Those are my favorites, too. Definitely need to reopen that project. We were getting to the astakaliya lila padavali, too. That should be quite interesting. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 28, 2010 18:09:27 GMT -6
Apart from the first one which is really nearly done, which would you like to see me focus on? Bhakti-granthavali, Nama-cintamani, and Siksastaka (M. Guha). These arouse my interest, although of course all those works sound great for publication. I can help if you like, let me know what type of help you need. I was surprised to see you bringing out a new edition of Brhad-Bhagavatamrta! May I make a suggestion? Rather than producing it with notes from the commentary, why not produce the entire commentary, separate if necessary? Gopiparanadhana's BBT edition seems to be a competent translation but in some quarters his commentary has been criticised as his own ideas and not being true to Sanatana's Dig-darshini-tika. I don't think there is another translation of B.Bhag. with DDT available at present, and this would be a massive contribution if the DDT was done too. Of course it will be a huge amount of work but I'll help in any way I can and I'm sure others will too. Good choices. I enjoy working on all of those. At present there is more of the first (Bhakti-granthavali) than of the other two, so I suppose that is the logical one to concentrate on. It would be great if we could put together a kind of online assembly line to produce these books. When one participant finished his or her work, it would be sent on to the next and the next and finally to the printing company. For it all to work I need typists (people who can handle diacritics and/or the creation of Devanagari and Bengali), copy editors, translators, typesetters, and proofreaders, and last but not least someone to handle public relations and advertising (sending books around for review, sending out brochures and catalogues, finding distributors and avenues of distribution, etc.). And last but not least someone to help set up electronic versions of the books that could be read on Kindles and Ipads and such. Basically at present I am doing all of that stuff myself, with the help of some friends who help with the proofreading and editing. For that reason things are extremely slow. I usually can only finish a book or two a year. If we could set up a group of dedicated links in the chain of book production, we might be able to pick up speed and bring out half a dozen books or more a year. Initially, the work would have to be a labor of love, much like the way programmers work on the free operating systems like Linux or FreeBSD. Once money starts coming in, though, i would be happy to share it with the whole crew. I have noticed that sales of the books already out are picking up and I think if we had another dozen or so well done books available and some effort made to advertise them, we might be able to bring in a respectable amount, both to compensate those who work on them and to fund more publications. Of course, making money is not the most important goal. I am much more interested in making more of this delightful and rich CV literature available. Still, though I doubt our income will ever reach a level at which we can quit our day jobs, earning something to help make ends meet is not a bad thing. Anyway, this the idea. If we can work together, each contributing what we can to the process, we might be able to create quite a library of fine works. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 28, 2010 19:15:39 GMT -6
Basically, here is what we need:
1. Typists who can learn how to do diacritics
2. Typists who know Devanagari and Bengali script
3. Translators who know Sanskrit or Bengali or Hindi
4. Editors who can make rough text smooth
5. Typesetters who can use LaTeX and/or Scribus (even font designers would be useful)
6. Proofreaders
7. PR/promoters
8. Electronic text and "See inside" generators
And eventually (hopefully)
9. An accountant who can keep track of expenses, royalties, licenses, etc
10. A lawyer, to create contracts (in case others come forward with books we might be interested in and to keep track of copyrights)
We have a learned and talented group of people here who participate in the forum. In addition, if someone wants to learn how to do any of these things, I can teach them (except for the accounting and the lawyering). One does not need to be initiated to do any of this or even think of him- or herself as believers in the tradition. One might just like CV literature, either traditional or modern.
If we set up an assembly line like this, we might be able to accomplish great things. I would like to see a complete edition of the Bhagavata come out, for instance, with Sridhara's comm. and Srinatha's comm, and Sri Jiva's comm. and so forth. A new edition/translation of the CC with a variety of commentators, so we are not stuck between Bhaktivedanta and Dimock. There are tons of lives of saints, works of modern writers like Haridas Goswami, Rasikamohana Vidyabhusana, the songs of Sri Ramdas Babaji, of Jagatbandhu, of Shyamlal Goswami. Pranagopal Goswami, etc.
Yes, Ekantin, you are right about Gopipranadhana's edition/translation of the Brhad-bhagavatamrta. He should have separated his own commentary from Sri Sanatana's. That should be corrected. To do something like that I would need help typing in Sanatana's commentary. If I did it alone, it would take me forever. It is a big commentatary and a very important one.
Then there are all the lila granthas. I've always thought that at the end of my life I would concentrate on the lila-granthas and part of a final meditation. Karnapura has written one; Krisnadaskaviraja, Visvanatha Cakravartin, and then there is the grand-daddy (actually more like a grand-son) of them all the Bhavana-sara-sangraha of Siddha Krsnadas Babaji.
There are the sandarbhas, the rasa texts, the other Bengali accounts of Mahaprabhu's life, the vast corpus of songs. By myself, I would never be able to do hardly any of this, but with help who knows what we can achieve.
Just some daydreaming. The structure is in place; all we need is to fill in the details.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 28, 2010 19:35:27 GMT -6
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am planning on producing new editions of all of Dr. Kapoor's books, except for the one I have already done. Obviously, that is a lot of work for one person. I need lots of help with typing and editing and checking quotes and such. The first on the agenda is his The Gosvamins of Vrndavana. Anyone want to help? Do you think that " Experience in Bhakti: the Science Celestial" merits reprinting?? I thought the way he tried to prove that bhakti is science or a science was rather childish. I hope I don't offend you or any other reader with this opinion. Ha ha! That one is already done, gerardji. Yes, his efforts to prove bhakti a science are rather childish. I comment on that in my introduction. But there is much more to the book than just that. His "laws" of bhakti are rather interesting and his examples are great. Moreover, in his defense, one has to point out that he has appealed to things like the uncertainty principle and used the writings of physicists Sir James Jeans and Eddington long before others who wanted to argue against determinism and for "free will." People are still trying to push that line of thought. I think if one takes his appeal to "science" as part of a effort to establish the fundamentally experiential nature of bhakti, it makes more sense. Bhakti may not be a science in any meaningful, modern use of the word, but it is based on experience and it culminates in experience. In that sense one can say that is has a strong empirical dimension to it. Anyway, there are similar problems with all of his books, which why they need to be edited and corrected. Once that is done their value, already very great, is greatly increased. |
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Post by Ldd on Jan 28, 2010 20:30:18 GMT -6
It would be nice if we all could chip in an hour a day to support this publishing work. Its easy to ask about new publications, or order a book. But face it, the man grinds out blood to get one book published all by himself and never asks for help. Its a selfless task, with no monetary profit.
One person recently told me "People are sick and fed up of Iskcon books." I had a few of Nitai's publications and people grabbed them. This was on my recent trip to the Caribbean. I was so proud to sell my copy of Sadhu Sadhu to a guy. You don't see books like these nowhere.
I will help with typing and proof reading, editing. We really need a production line to make the books come out faster, instead of leaving all the work to one man. It's Krishna seva and whoever participates will be blessed. There must be a spare hour we could donate for this. And i know that all of you are kind and merciful, in keeping with Lord Nitai's mood.. May he grant you his grace today and always. joy nitai.
An hour of Krishna seva (not the factory type) will add to your pious merits and help you reach Goloka quicker. Guaranteed. Krishna says it : "Those who preach my glories are very very dear to me," in Gita.
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Post by JD33 on Jan 30, 2010 12:17:59 GMT -6
I will handle typing in all of Dr. Kapoor's books, except for his book on Caitanya. I have Baro Baba's book The Life of Love, already half-way done and parts of each of his two Saints Books. I will next work on the one you want Nitai Dassji - The Companions - right Visakha?. As you know I will continue to edit and proof-read copy and support monetarily. BTW - it is Visakha Dassi who is doing this typing work! May God Bless her!
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Post by Ldd on Jan 30, 2010 22:28:37 GMT -6
Sorry for not mentioning that JD33 has been doing his share of the work. We are really unable to repay the debt to him for his ongoing efforts. This kind of seva will reap you eternal rewards. I am carrying with me next week a suitcase full of books I got from the Blazing Sapphire. I can't express how proud i am to distribute these to devotees who are yearning for new literature. This service is most pleasing to sri Krishna, so dear devotees please do what you can to contribute.
The lives of the saints are so sweet to hear about. The Lord of Love by Premananda Bharathi is a masterpiece. Anyone who reads these books will be transformed. Even Iskcon devotees were begging me to bring new books. More publications the merrier. I am doing my share to promote them in my area. This is not for the sake of Nitai's glory or profit. He is just a translator and publisher.
Krishna is the driving force behind this project - so that pious people could be enlightened about the real purpose of Mahaprabhu's advent. To bless the world with madhurya rasa etc. I observed that Iskcon's books were turning into termite food on some people's bookshelf. They have become so stale. Our books are so relishable, full of love and sweetness, people will be enlivened once more.
So dear devotees keep it up. Your service is not going unnoticed. It's highly appreciated.
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Post by Ekantin on Jan 31, 2010 16:07:19 GMT -6
I'm also happy to help with (diacritic) typing and editing/proofreading. I have spent some time proofreading for my local newspaper so I have a little experience. And maybe I can look into electronic publishing, I'll have to research it.
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Post by Ekantin on Jan 31, 2010 16:16:03 GMT -6
Hmmm, it took me just a minute to find out how to format books for Kindle: ehow.com - converting books to Kindle format. Apparently Amazon handles the conversion process themselves, and all anyone has to do is upload an electronic doc, HTML or pdf to Amazon's database. So only Nitai can do it so that he can get his share of proceeds from sales. |
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May I make a suggestion? Rather than producing it with notes from the commentary, why not produce the entire commentary, separate if necessary? Gopiparanadhana's BBT edition seems to be a competent translation but in some quarters his commentary has been criticised as his own ideas and not being true to Sanatana's Dig-darshini-tika. I don't think there is another translation of B.Bhag. with DDT available at present, and this would be a massive contribution if the DDT was done too. Of course it will be a huge amount of work but I'll help in any way I can and I'm sure others will too.
