Hari Kanta DD (Russia) Exposes Book Changes

About unnecessary additions of translators to Srimad Bhagavatam.

You know, I'm not a big supporter of Srila Prabhupada's book distortion disputes for one simple reason: Srila Prabhupada provided this, so he repeated all the principally important moments of philosophy many times in books and lectures. Therefore, even if something has been changed somewhere, to track all such statements by Srila Prabhupada and unnoticed to change their whole business is almost impossible. This is the value of Srila Prabhupada's repetitions, for which critics sometimes scold him.

Therefore, my recipe for protecting yourself from intentional or unconscious distortion of Srila Prabhupada's books is simple: if you doubt any statement (that it might have actually belonged to Srila Prabhupada), you need to look for the same statement anywhere else.

However, while studying Srila Prabhupada's books, I have repeatedly noticed the unnecessary additions made in translations kind of for convenience, but which turned the meaning of the text to something else. There were details of the stories, but still...

I'll give a couple of examples (I came across one of them today in preparation for the lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam).

The first example from my long-time study about Gargi, daughter of Garga Muni. 

In the translation of the commentary to Sh B 5.1.12, for some reason, they replaced ′′ The Sage says Gargi ′′ with ′′ The Sage tells his wife ". Although Gargi was not the wife of the sage, she was Brahmacharini all her life. 

Why was it so changed? In 2016, I wrote about it to the editors of BBT, the new editors seems to have already corrected this translation https://vedabase.io/ru/library/sb/5/1/12/, but the previous editions it says about the wife... (pictured).

Today's text. Commentary on SB 3.12.28. It's about Brahma chasing his daughter. The comment explains that he did it before he listened to Srimad Bhagawatam's chatuh-shloku, which dissipates the illusion. Contemporary translation of the key proposal: "It happened to Brahma in one of the previous kalpas, but not after God told him the four original verses of Srimad-Bhagavatam," because after telling Lord Brahma the "Bhagavatam", God blessed him and promised that he wouldn't fall into illusion in the FOLLOWING Kalpas of Lord Brahma. He will not fall and will not go astray."

The word added by translators is highlighted in capital letters. In the English version of the word "later" no: ... "because the Lord blessed Brahma, after giving him lessons on the Bhāgavatam, that he would never bewildered in any future kalpa whatsoever."

Why is this important? In the commentary to SB 3.9.44, Vishwanatha Chakravarti Thakur writes that for the first time Brahma heard chatuh-shloku on his first birthday. And then Brahma received a chatuh-shloku on the day when he meditated (e.g. Sb 3.8-9). Therefore, the allegations that Brahma will not fall into any of the following kalpas (days of his life) are no longer correct ... because it was in one of the following days that Brahma succumbed to temptation and chased his daughter. 

And thus the phrase "he would never bewildered in any kalpa whatsoever" (verbatim: he would never be confused in any kalpa) should be understood as: in no kalpa in which he was receiving a chat-shloku. Because every morning, Brahma commits ascetics to gain the Vedic knowledge that he forgets overnight.

But because of one added word "follows" (kalpas), the expression gained meaning that it didn't originally have. Well, why would you do that? Can't you just add anything, but translate IT AS IT IS?

If I'm wrong on one of these two episodes, write boldly refutes in the comments.

Hari kanta dd