Sanskrit Lessons

It was perhaps because of Carl’s interest in Sanskrit that Prabhupada began holding Sanskrit classes.  Carl and David and a few others would spend hours learning Sanskrit under Prabhupada’s guidance.  Using a chalkboard he found in the loft, Prabhupada taught the alphabet, and his students wrote their exercises in his notebooks.  Prabhupada would look over their shoulders to see if they were writing correctly and he would review their pronunciation.  His students were learning not simply Sanskrit, but the instructions of "Бхагавад-гита".  Each day he would give them a verse to copy in the Sanskrit alphabet (devanagari), transliterated into the Roman alphabet, and then translated word-for-word into English.  But their interest in Sanskrit waned, and Prabhupada gradually gave up the daily classes to spend time working on his own translation of the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

His new friends may have regarded these lessons as Sanskrit classes, but actually they were бхакти classes.  He had not come to America as the ambassador of Sanskrit; his Guru Maharaj had ordered him to teach Krishna consciousness.  But since he had found in Carl and some of his friends a desire to investigate Sanskrit, he encouraged it.  As a youth, Lord Caitanya had also started a Sanskrit school with the real purpose of teaching love of Krishna.  He would teach in such a way that every word meant Krishna, and once His students objected, He closed the school.  Similarly, when Prabhupada found his students’ interest in Sanskrit was transitory, and since he himself had no mission on behalf of Sanskrit linguistics, he gave it up.