HISTORY OF SRIKRISHNA, SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM .
Welcome to the site of the S'rîmad Bhâgavatam (or theBhâgavata Purâna). Here you will find the complete and up-to-date version maintained in Sanskrit, English and Dutch of this most important sacred book of stories of India. India knows many purânas or storybooks, but this collection of stories is generally accepted as being the most complete and important. The book, arranged in twelve so-calledcantos, comprises 335 chapters with about 18000 verses. Truly a Bible thus. It is this collection of stories which stresses the prime importance of the maintaining aspect of God personified by the transcendental form of Lord Vishnu.

The writer of this book is named Krishna Dvaipâyana Vyâsadeva, also called Bâdarâyana. He is the Lord, the bhagavân, among the philosophers, who in India assembled all the holy texts. He compiled the Vedas, also known as s'ruti, containing the basic wisdom, the mantras for the rituals and the hymns. He also wrote theMahâbhârata, which is the greatest epic poem in the world. It describes the history (itihâsa) of the great fall that the Vedic culture once made. The Bhagavad Gîtâ is the most important part of it. Vyâsa also wrote the rest of the eighteen great Bibles (thepurânas) of India as also the Brahma-sûtra, his masterpiece on the Absolute Truth.

The person The culture The representative of Vishnu on earth is named the Fortunate One in this book. We know Him specifically by the names of Lord Râma and Lord Krishna. The Fortunate One is thus the Lord who is known in different forms or incarnations, but also the devotees are part of His reality and are also called bhâgavata when they are of pure devotion. Thus there is the Lord in His many appearances, the devotee with as many faces and the book. They are all called Fortunate. To be fortunate means to be of the opulence, or to carry, or live by, the fullness of God's riches, beauty, fame, power, knowledge and detachment. Vyâsa was a grandfather of the Kuru-dynasty. He lived a very long time. His long duration of life enabled him to write the story of the Fortunate One and all the other books. He had a son calledS'ukadeva who handed the message of this Bible down to another member of the family, Emperor Parîkchit, who had difficulty respecting the classical wisdom. This emperor is there as a model for us normal people who seek their stability in the wisdom. This knowledge was conveyed by S'uka in disciplic succession (paramparâ), to those who teach by example (the âcâryas), the science of devotional service (bhakti). This book, and it's culture, was brought to the West by the Vaishnava, the Vishnu-monk,Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupâda. Together with his pupils (known as the Hare Krishnas of ISKCON, see videos 1 and 2)he realized a verse by verse commented series of books covering the entire Bhâgavatam. This site offers not all these texts (see for that purpose vedabase.net) but does offer under the Creative Commons copyright an as-it-is translation of the verses in a concatenated form complete with the previous version. This text is regularly updated and maintained by Anand Aadhar Prabhu(René P. B. A. Meijer), a dutch psychologist converted to the philosophy of yoga who received instruction in the temples of ISKCO among others. His predecessor in this duty was S'rî Hayes'var das (Hendrik van Teylingen) who covered most of the translations into Dutch. The present responsibility for the culture of Vaishnavism in Holland lies with the ISKCON Vaishnava-monkKadamba Kânana Swami.

KRISHNA'S BIRTH

' Mathura (in present day Mathura district, Uttar Pradesh) was the capital of the Yadavas, to which Krishna's parents Vasudeva and Devaki belonged. King Kansa, Devaki's brother,[48] had ascended the throne by imprisoning his father, King Ugrasena. Afraid of a prophecy that predicted his death at the hands of Devaki's eighth son, Kansa had the couple locked into a prison cell. After Kansa killed the first six children, and Devaki's apparent miscarriage of the seventh (which was actually a secret transfer of the infant to Rohini as Balarama), Krishna was born. Since Vasudeva knew Krishna's life was in danger, Krishna was secretly taken out of the prison cell to be raised by his foster parents, Yasoda [49] and Nanda, in Gokula (in present day Mathura district). Two of his other siblings also survived, Balarama (Devaki's seventh child, transferred to the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva's first wife) and Subhadra (daughter of Vasudeva and Rohini, born much later than Balarama and Krishna).[50]

dhritarashtra uvaca dharma-kshetre kuru-kshetre samaveta yuyutsavah mamakah pandavas caiva kim akurvata sanjaya

"Dhritarashtra said: O Sanjaya, after my sons and the sons of Pandu assembled in the place of pilgrimage at Kurukshetra, desiring to fight, what did they do?"

The Bhagavad Gita

pronounced: [%CB%88b%CA%B1%C9%99%C9%A1%C9%99%CA%8B%C9%99d%CC%AA ɡiːˈt̪aː] ( listen)), also referred to as Gita, is a 700–verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. This scripture contains a conversation between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide Krishna on a variety of philosophical issues.

Faced with a fratricidal war, a despondent Arjuna turns to his charioteer Krishna for counsel on the battlefield. Krishna, through the course of the Gita, imparts to Arjuna wisdom, the path to devotion, and the doctrine of selfless action.[1] The Gita upholds the essence and the philosophical tradition of the Upanishads.[2] However, unlike the rigorous monism of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita also integrates dualism and theism.
Numerous commentaries have been written on the Bhagavad Gita with widely differing views on the essentials, beginning with Adi Sankara's commentary on the Gita in the eighth century CE. Commentators see the setting of the Gita in a battlefield as an allegory for the ethical and moral struggles of the human life. The Bhagavad Gita's call for selfless action inspired many leaders of the Indian independence movement including Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who referred to the Gita as his "spiritual dictionary".

Background

Bronze chariot, depicting discourse of Krishna and Arjuna in Kurukshetra In the epic Mahabharata, Sanjaya, counsellor of the Kuru king Dhritarashtra, after returning from the battlefield to announce the death of Bhisma begins recounting the details of the Mahabharata war. Bhagavad Gita forms the content of this recollection.[16] The Gita begins before the start of the climactic Kurukshetra war, where the Pandava prince Arjuna is filled with doubt on the battlefield. Realizing that his enemies are his own relatives, beloved friends, and revered teachers, he turns to his charioteer and guide, Krishna, for advice. Responding to Arjuna's confusion and moral dilemma, Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince, elaborating on a variety of philosophical concepts.[1]