By Ajit Krishna Dasa

A recent Facebook post argues that Śrīla Prabhupāda’s July 3, 1970 objection to “Blessed Lord said” proves that the phrase was theologically unsuitable and therefore rightly removed from Bhagavad-gītā As It Is.

The quotation is important, but it must be read together with Śrīla Prabhupāda’s use of the expression before and after 1970, his approval of the Macmillan translations, and his later statement that “the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person.” My response is below, followed by the full Facebook post.

The July 3, 1970 statement is genuine, relevant, and important evidence. I do not deny it, minimize it, or omit it. In fact, in my book Kṛṣṇa, The Blessed Lord I treat it as perhaps the strongest single piece of evidence available to those who defend the later replacement of “The Blessed Lord said” with “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said.” But evidence must establish the conclusion for which it is being offered, and this is precisely where I think your interpretation goes considerably beyond what the evidence can bear.

Śrīla Prabhupāda said during an initiation lecture in Los Angeles on July 3, 1970: “Bhagavān uvāca means Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. Sometimes they say, ‘Blessed Lord said.’ No. Why you say? The Supreme Personality of Godhead Kṛṣṇa said.” The immediate context concerns the offense of minimizing or interpreting scripture. Śrīla Prabhupāda criticizes people who avoid accepting Kṛṣṇa directly, referring instead to “Paramātmā,” “Paraṁ Brahman,” and similar expressions, and he insists that the speaker is Kṛṣṇa, Bhagavān, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In that context, there is no question that he prefers the most explicit possible identification of the speaker. [Initiation Lecture, Los Angeles, July 3, 1970.]

The question, however, is what follows from this. It certainly establishes that on this occasion Śrīla Prabhupāda objected to “Blessed Lord said” and preferred “the Supreme Personality of Godhead Kṛṣṇa said.” It does not automatically establish the much stronger proposition that he considered “The Blessed Lord” inherently impersonal, theologically defective, or unsuitable wherever śrī-bhagavān uvāca occurs, much less that he issued a standing editorial instruction that the expression should be removed throughout his Bhagavad-gītā. Those propositions require additional evidence.

We can actually test that stronger interpretation against Śrīla Prabhupāda’s own conduct. If the July 1970 statement meant that “The Blessed Lord” was an unacceptable expression because it obscured Kṛṣṇa’s personality, we would reasonably expect Śrīla Prabhupāda thereafter to stop using it, correct it when it was read to him, have it removed from the complete Bhagavad-gītā, or at least explain somewhere that it was a mistaken or impersonalistic rendering. Instead, we find precisely the opposite pattern: he had already used and accepted the expression before July 1970, and he continued to use, hear, publish, and positively explain it after July 1970.

The pre-1970 evidence is especially important because Śrīla Prabhupāda was certainly not an impersonalist before July 1970. On November 27, 1968, Bhagavad-gītā 2.11 was read in his presence as “The Blessed Lord said,” and he proceeded to explain Kṛṣṇa’s instruction without objecting to the expression. [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 2.8–12, Los Angeles, November 27, 1968.] On December 16, 1968, “The Blessed Lord said” was repeatedly read during his lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 2.46–62, and Śrīla Prabhupāda explicitly explained that this was a conversation in which “Kṛṣṇa is answering.” [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 2.46–62, Los Angeles, December 16, 1968.] There is therefore no plausible argument that the expression was leading Śrīla Prabhupāda himself, his disciples, or the lecture into an impersonal conception of the speaker.

The evidence becomes stronger in 1969. On January 3, 1969, Śrīla Prabhupāda personally asked for the book, and Bhagavad-gītā 4.1 was read to him beginning, “The Blessed Lord said: I instructed this imperishable science of yoga to the sun-god, Vivasvān.” He then lectured on the verse and repeatedly identified Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 4.1–6, Los Angeles, January 3, 1969.] The significance is obvious: “The Blessed Lord” and “Supreme Personality of Godhead” were not functioning in his preaching as rival theological doctrines. He could hear the first expression in the translation and immediately teach the second as its theological meaning.

Even more decisive is his lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 4.1–2 in Columbus on May 9, 1969. After “The Blessed Lord said” was read, Śrīla Prabhupāda used the published wording while arguing specifically against interpretation. He asked what difficulty there was in understanding the sentence, said that it was clear, and then explained: “The Blessed Lord. He is Lord. He can say.” In other words, almost fourteen months before the July 1970 statement, Śrīla Prabhupāda did not treat “The Blessed Lord” as an expression that concealed Kṛṣṇa’s personality. He used the word Lord in the expression itself to establish why Kṛṣṇa could have instructed Vivasvān millions of years ago. [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 4.1–2, Columbus, May 9, 1969.]

This matters because the proposed explanation is that “The Blessed Lord” was somehow insufficiently personal and that Śrīla Prabhupāda’s July 1970 remark reveals his real theological objection to it. But he was no less a personalist in May 1969 than in July 1970. If “The Blessed Lord” intrinsically obscured Kṛṣṇa’s identity, why did Śrīla Prabhupāda himself say that the wording was clear and use it to argue that Kṛṣṇa is the Lord? The evidence makes far more sense if the July 1970 statement is understood as a contextual insistence on the fullest and most explicit wording, rather than as a universal theological condemnation of the alternative expression.

There is also direct evidence that Śrīla Prabhupāda knew what wording appeared in the abridged Macmillan Bhagavad-gītā. This is not merely an inference from the fact that the book existed. He was lecturing from it. More importantly, on December 24, 1969, Hayagrīva explicitly told him that the translations in the Macmillan edition had been “somewhat changed” and asked whether he liked them. Śrīla Prabhupāda answered, “Whichever is better, you think. That’s all. You can follow this Macmillan.” When Hayagrīva said that he considered the translations very good, Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, “Yes. You can follow that translation. Simply synonyms we can add, transliterations.” [Discussion with BTG Staff, Boston, December 24, 1969.]

That conversation does not prove that Śrīla Prabhupāda personally inspected and consciously approved every individual word of every verse translation, and I would not make that claim. It establishes something narrower but extremely important: he knew that the Macmillan translations had been editorially changed, he was specifically asked whether they should be used, and he authorized the editors to follow them. Since “The Blessed Lord said” was already present in that edition and Śrīla Prabhupāda had repeatedly heard it while lecturing from the book, it cannot reasonably be treated as some hidden phrase of which he was unaware.

If the July 1970 remark were a universal instruction superseding all of that earlier evidence, we would then expect the subsequent evidence to change direction. But again it does not. The complete 1972 Bhagavad-gītā As It Is was published with “The Blessed Lord said” still appearing throughout the verse translations. On August 1, 1972, in Glasgow, Pradyumna read Bhagavad-gītā 2.11 as “The Blessed Lord said,” and Śrīla Prabhupāda immediately repeated the translation beginning with those same words. [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 2.11, Glasgow, August 1, 1972.] If Śrīla Prabhupāda had decided in July 1970 that this terminology was spiritually misleading and should no longer be used, his own repetition of it two years later is very difficult to explain.

The same pattern continues. In Stockholm on September 10, 1973, Śrīla Prabhupāda himself says, “The translation reads, ‘The Blessed Lord said…’” and then continues explaining Kṛṣṇa as Arjuna’s spiritual master. [Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 7.1–3, Stockholm, September 10, 1973.] Bhagavad-gītā 15.1 was likewise read beginning with “The Blessed Lord said” in later lectures, including Calcutta on February 26, 1974. These are not pre-1970 remnants from a period before Śrīla Prabhupāda supposedly discovered the theological problem. They are post-1970 uses.

The most decisive post-1970 evidence, however, is not merely a case where someone read the wording and Śrīla Prabhupāda failed to object. In the purport to Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 6.132, published in 1975, Śrīla Prabhupāda explicitly writes that in Bhagavad-gītā Vyāsadeva says śrī-bhagavān uvāca, “the Supreme Personality of Godhead said,” or “the Blessed Lord said,” and then immediately explains that “the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person.” [Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 6.132, purport.]

That statement closes one of the most important loopholes in this debate. It is not an argument from silence, and it is not merely an editor reading something in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s presence. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s own published purport explicitly places the two English expressions side by side as alternative ways of expressing śrī-bhagavān uvāca, and he immediately interprets “the Blessed Lord” in completely personalistic terms. It is therefore impossible to maintain that his settled theological position was that “The Blessed Lord” is intrinsically impersonal or obscures the fact that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Person.

His Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam likewise continued to employ blessed in explicitly devotional and even speaker-formula contexts. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 4.4.11 gives devy uvāca as “the blessed goddess said”; 6.1.38 renders śrī-viṣṇudūtā ūcuḥ as “the blessed messengers of Lord Viṣṇu spoke,” with the translation likewise beginning “The blessed messengers of Lord Viṣṇu… said”; and 10.8.31 refers directly to Kṛṣṇa as Yaśodā’s “blessed transcendental child.” [ŚB 4.4.11; 6.1.38; 10.8.31.] In a June 4, 1976 lecture on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 6.1.38, “the blessed messengers of Lord Viṣṇu” was read directly before Śrīla Prabhupāda, after which he immediately explained the verse. [Lecture on ŚB 6.1.38, Los Angeles, June 4, 1976.]

None of these Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam examples proves that śrī-bhagavān uvāca must always be translated “The Blessed Lord said,” and that is not my argument. Their significance is narrower: they demonstrate beyond reasonable dispute that Śrīla Prabhupāda did not regard blessed as inherently defective devotional terminology after July 1970. This makes the sweeping interpretation of one sentence in the 1970 initiation lecture even less plausible.

The evidence therefore forms a coherent chronology rather than a collection of cherry-picked quotations. “The Blessed Lord” is used and heard before July 1970; Śrīla Prabhupāda positively explains it before July 1970; in December 1969 he authorizes following the Macmillan translations; in July 1970 he objects to the expression while strongly emphasizing that Bhagavān means Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead; after July 1970 the expression remains in his published Gītā and continues to be read and used in his lectures; and in 1975 he explicitly says that śrī-bhagavān uvāca can be expressed as either “the Supreme Personality of Godhead said” or “the Blessed Lord said,” while explaining that the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person. The interpretation that best accommodates all of the evidence is therefore not “Śrīla Prabhupāda rejected ‘The Blessed Lord,’ period,” but rather that he could prefer the more explicit expression in a context where Kṛṣṇa’s personal identity needed special emphasis while still accepting “The Blessed Lord” as legitimate devotional English.

There is another piece of evidence that must be included because it tells us something about the history of the 1983 revision itself. Jayadvaita Swami states in his own Bhagavad-gītā Revisions Explained that while he was working on the Second Edition he was unaware of the July 3, 1970 passage and only discovered it later in the Folio VedaBase. His exact statement is: “While working on the Second Edition, more than fifteen years ago, I was unaware of the following passage… I came across the passage only recently.” This is important because the 1970 quotation therefore cannot have been the instruction that caused Jayadvaita Swami to make the change. It is evidence discovered later and subsequently used to defend a decision already taken.

That does not make the quotation worthless. Later-discovered evidence may certainly be relevant when evaluating an earlier decision. But it means we must describe the history accurately. Jayadvaita Swami did not encounter Śrīla Prabhupāda saying “Sometimes they say ‘Blessed Lord said.’ No,” understand it as an instruction to revise the book, and then obediently implement that instruction in 1983. He had already made the change without knowing that statement existed. The statement is therefore a retrospective justification, not the original authorization for the revision.

There is also the 1968 galley evidence, which should be acknowledged rather than avoided. Śrīla Prabhupāda reportedly crossed out “Blessed Lord” at Bhagavad-gītā 10.1 and substituted “Personality of Godhead.” That is genuine evidence that in at least that particular place he preferred another expression, and it belongs in any honest presentation of the case. But a correction at one location does not logically establish an instruction to eliminate the expression universally, especially when other occurrences remained, Śrīla Prabhupāda subsequently lectured from them, the complete 1972 edition retained them, and his 1975 Caitanya-caritāmṛta explicitly accepts “the Blessed Lord said” as an alternative rendering. Even Graham Schweig’s scholarly volume notes that the various pieces of evidence favoring the change would be valuable material for annotation but do not establish authority for globally replacing the published phrase after Śrīla Prabhupāda’s departure.

Your suggestion that Śrīla Prabhupāda used “Blessed Lord” because he was preaching in the West and was borrowing terminology familiar to Christians also needs much stronger evidence. The published English text of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s 1936 Vyāsa-pūjā address contains the sentence, “‘One should understand the spiritual master to be as good as I am,’ said the Blessed Lord.” This address was delivered in Bombay before members of the Śrī Gauḍīya Maṭha on the occasion of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura’s Vyāsa-pūjā. It was not a lecture designed for a Western Christian audience; it was presented to Indian Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas decades before Śrīla Prabhupāda began his Western mission. [Abhay Charan Das, Vyāsa-pūjā homage to Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, Bombay, February 1936; subsequently published in The Harmonist.]

This does not require us to claim, without an original manuscript, that no editorial hand ever touched a word of the published 1936 English text. The narrower and sufficient point is that “Blessed Lord” existed within the English Gauḍīya devotional environment in which Śrīla Prabhupāda himself was participating long before his Western preaching. The Harmonist likewise used blessed repeatedly in expressions such as “Blessed Lotus Feet,” “Blessed Yaśodā,” “Blessed Name of Krishna,” and “Blessed Land.” The theory that the expression should primarily be explained as a concession to Western Christian sensibilities therefore does not fit the historical evidence very well.

Nor would a Western or Christian history of an English expression establish that the expression is unsuitable. Śrīla Prabhupāda was translating and preaching in English. Words such as God, spiritual, and transcendental are no more Sanskrit or indigenous Indian words than blessed is. Yet nobody argues that Śrīla Prabhupāda compromised Vaiṣṇava theology when he called Kṛṣṇa “God,” spoke of the “spiritual world,” or described Kṛṣṇa consciousness as “transcendental.” English words necessarily have histories within English and European religious and philosophical culture. The relevant question is not where a word historically came from but whether it adequately conveys the intended concept and how Śrīla Prabhupāda himself used it.

The linguistic meaning of blessed also closes another possible misunderstanding. In this type of religious English, “the Blessed Lord” does not mean “the Lord who received a blessing from somebody superior to Him.” Blessed can mean holy, revered, hallowed, glorious, or worthy of praise; similarly, the traditional expression “bless the Lord” means to praise or glorify God, not to bestow upon God a power or benediction He previously lacked. My book discusses this because I have actually encountered devotees who misunderstood the expression in precisely that way. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s own statement that “the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person” makes the intended meaning unmistakable.

All of this is important, but there is still a second question that must not be confused with the first. Even if, for argument’s sake, I granted that “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said” is the superior translation, that Śrīla Prabhupāda’s early manuscripts generally favor it, that the word-for-word sections favor it, that the 1968 galley correction favors it, and that the July 1970 statement favors it, none of those propositions automatically establishes that disciples were authorized after Śrīla Prabhupāda’s departure to remove “The Blessed Lord said” from his published Bhagavad-gītā and replace it throughout the book.

This is a straightforward logical distinction between evidence concerning wording and evidence concerning editorial authority. An earlier manuscript can show what Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote at an earlier stage. A lecture can show which formulation he preferred in a particular context. A word-for-word equivalent can show how he analyzed a Sanskrit term. A handwritten correction can show that he wanted one particular occurrence changed. None of those facts, simply by existing, establishes a general rule permitting a disciple to reconstruct a completed published book after the author has departed. To establish that conclusion, an additional premise is required: evidence that Śrīla Prabhupāda authorized such posthumous reconstruction.

This is why the proper solution, in my view, is preservation together with transparent annotation. An annotated edition could present the manuscript evidence, the 1968 galley correction, the word-for-word meanings, the July 1970 statement, and the editors’ reasons for preferring “The Supreme Personality of Godhead.” It should also present the evidence on the other side: the pre-1970 lectures, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s approval of following the Macmillan translations, his positive use of “The Blessed Lord,” his post-1970 lectures, and his explicit 1975 statement that “the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person.” The reader would then possess all the evidence without an editor silently resolving the historical complexity by overwriting Śrīla Prabhupāda’s published wording.

This also answers your criticism of the title Kṛṣṇa, The Blessed Lord. For that criticism to succeed, you would first have to prove that Śrīla Prabhupāda regarded “The Blessed Lord” as an illegitimate designation for Kṛṣṇa. But he used the expression before 1970, continued to use and hear it afterward, and in 1975 explicitly explained that “the Blessed Lord is the Supreme Person.” The title therefore uses language entirely compatible with Śrīla Prabhupāda’s own published theological vocabulary.

Finally, the question of whether revised books remain spiritually potent should not be confused with the question of whether their editorial alterations were authorized. A book can contain immense amounts of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s transcendental teaching while also containing poisonous editorial changes that should never have been made. Those two propositions are perfectly compatible. My argument does not require the claim that all spiritual potency disappears from a book the moment an editor changes a sentence; it requires only the much narrower claim that a disciple does not acquire the right to rewrite his departed spiritual master’s published words merely because much of the resulting book remains spiritually powerful.

The evidence therefore supports three distinct conclusions, and keeping them separate removes much of the confusion surrounding this question. “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said” is a perfectly valid and highly explicit rendering of śrī-bhagavān uvāca; “The Blessed Lord said” was nevertheless also accepted and used by Śrīla Prabhupāda and cannot honestly be characterized as an inherently impersonal or theologically defective expression; and evidence that one wording may be more explicit does not by itself constitute authorization for posthumously replacing the other in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s published Bhagavad-gītā. The July 3, 1970 statement establishes the first proposition. It does not overturn the substantial evidence establishing the second, and it does not establish the third.

For context and fairness, I have reproduced the Facebook post I am responding to below in full. Readers can therefore compare the original argument with my response above.

By Nimāi Nitāi Dāsa

The problem with this argument is that it selectively presents evidence while ignoring Śrīla Prabhupāda’s own direct explanation of the expression “Blessed Lord.” Prabhupāda was preaching in the West, where Christian terminology such as “Blessed Lord” was familiar, and he sometimes used terminology familiar to his audience. But that does not mean he considered it theologically precise. In fact, when explaining bhagavān uvāca, he explicitly rejected that expression.

On July 3, 1970, in Los Angeles, he said:

“Kṛṣṇa uvāca. Kṛṣṇa, Bhagavān uvāca: ‘The Supreme Personality of Godhead said.’ And we should not add here that… What is called? Paramātmā uvāca. No. Kṛṣṇa uvāca. Paramātmā is feature. In the Gītā Press edition you will see ‘Paramātmā.’ They never say ‘Kṛṣṇa.’ They’re so much afraid that ‘If I say “Kṛṣṇa,” He will at once capture me.’ You see? [chuckles] So in a different way. ‘Paraṁ Brahman,’ ‘Caitanya,’ like this, so many impersonal ways they will say. But that is not required. Bhagavān uvāca means Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. Sometimes they say ‘Blessed Lord said.’ No. Why you say? The Supreme Personality of Godhead Kṛṣṇa said.” PrabhupadaBooks.com

This gives the context that is repeatedly omitted. Prabhupāda’s objection was precisely that such alternative terminology can obscure who Bhagavān actually is: Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Therefore, quoting instances of “Blessed Lord” while ignoring this explicit rejection does not establish Prabhupāda’s position. We have to consider all of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements, not select only those that support the “poison books” argument.

Also, calling a book **“The Blessed Lord”**—when Śrīla Prabhupāda himself explicitly rejected that expression—does not demonstrate adherence to his desires. And disagreeing with the **poison-book conclusion** does not mean we support unauthorized editing. We can firmly oppose and correct unauthorized changes while still recognizing that the books remain **spiritually potent**. These are two separate issues, and conflating them is precisely the problem.