Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and the Sārasvata Gauḍīya Family Tree

Please accept my praṇāma. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura ki jaya!

A quick note before I begin: if you are also on the Gauḍīya Kīrtana mailing list, then you have already received almost exactly this same message from me, so there is no need to read the whole thing again. I wanted to share it here as well because many Vine of Devotion readers are not on that list.

A lot has happened recently. There has been a new expanded edition of the Gauḍīya Gīti-guccha, and so many other things that perhaps I can share here another time.

For now, this is another one of those late-night posts about something I have just managed to get ready in the nick of time before the day crosses over into the next one.

And I should probably apologize in advance for this being somewhat long and rambling. I don’t really have time tonight to write a short post. Making something short usually takes much more time and careful thought than just blurting out everything in my head.

Today is the 188th appearance day of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura has always been one of the main inspirations behind the Gauḍīya Kīrtana app project. And now that project is gradually opening into something much bigger.

We are starting Gauḍīya Kīrtana completely afresh. The present app will not simply receive another update. We have rethought and rebuilt it from the ground up, with many more capabilities and, hopefully, a much smoother experience. Things are moving quite quickly, and I am hoping the new app can be ready toward the end of this year. I look forward to sharing more about that soon.

But Gauḍīya Kīrtana itself is now becoming one part of a larger project. There will also be a Gauḍīya Grantha app and, eventually, several other connected Gauḍīya apps.

My usual habit is to talk far too much about things before they have actually manifested, and maybe overpromise things, so I am trying to reform myself, lol. I won’t say too much about all of that yet.

But one thing is very important.

This larger project is not intended to favor one particular branch or saṅgha. It is meant to serve equally all the branches coming in the line of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s extraordinary gift to us, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Prabhupāda.

The bhaktivinoda-dhārā flowing through Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura has now spread into so many streams and rivulets throughout the world. Some are very large and some are very small. This project wants to serve every one of them.

Every devotee in this line who has a picture of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Prabhupāda on their altar should be able to feel that they and their spiritual family have been remembered and included.

So, for Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s appearance day, I wanted the first small step in this much larger project to be an offering to him.

That first step is the Sārasvata Gauḍīya Family Tree:

The idea is to gradually map all the branches coming from Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Prabhupāda, including dīkṣā-gurus and prominent śikṣā-gurus, generation after generation, throughout all the different branches of the Sārasvata Gauḍīya family.

For each personality, we eventually hope to gather as much reliable information as possible: photographs, appearance and disappearance dates and tithis, praṇāma-mantras, Gurudeva and Parama-gurudeva, sannyāsa-gurus and śikṣā-gurus where applicable, important contributions and accomplishments, books, articles, writings, and other relevant information.

Obviously this is far too large a project for me, or even a small group of devotees, to complete ourselves. For it to become genuinely complete, devotees from the different branches will need to help us fill in the history and details of their own spiritual families.

And there is a practical reason why this information matters so much.

The richer this shared information becomes, the more personally these future apps will be able to serve devotees.

I would like every devotee eventually to feel that these apps were somehow made specifically for them, for their godbrothers and godsisters, and even for the particular community within their saṅgha that they belong to.

For example, if the system knows your Gurudeva and his appearance tithi, then Gauḍīya Kīrtana could recognize his Vyāsa-pūjā when that day comes. If his appearance year is known, it can even know which Vyāsa-pūjā it is.

If there are songs written by or especially connected with your Gurudeva, those could naturally be brought forward at the appropriate time. For example, Rādhā-kuṇḍa-taṭa was one of Śrīla Bhakti Ballabha Tīrtha Gosvāmī Mahārāja’s favorite songs, and it was being sung when he entered nitya-līlā. So if you have him selected as your guru or śikṣā-guru, that song could be prominently featured around his disappearance day.

If your Gurudeva wrote books and those books are part of the larger database, the app could occasionally bring forward his own words about kīrtana.

When you open the maṅgalācaraṇa section, your Gurudeva’s praṇāma-mantra could already be there.

If you have śikṣā-gurus or other important spiritual guides, their information could be included as well.

Eventually even the particular observances, programs, or vratas followed by your temple or saṅgha could become part of your experience.

In other words, rather than making one generic Gauḍīya app and expecting everybody in the world to fit themselves into it, I want the apps to gradually understand and serve the actual spiritual communities that devotees belong to.

And the first foundation for that is simply knowing who everyone is and how all these branches are connected.

I have done as much as I could to get the beginning of the Family Tree ready for today, but there is still an enormous amount to add. It will be changing constantly, especially in these early months.

I hope this can gradually spread throughout all the different saṅghas so that devotees who know their own branches well can help us make their part of the tree accurate and complete.

And even if you do not have time to add information about your particular branch, your Gurudeva, or other personalities in your line, I would still be very grateful for any feedback you can give on any aspect of the Family Tree.

Feedback is always extremely helpful.

You can write to me directly at madhukar.das@gmail.com or reply to this email.

I may not always be able to respond to every email immediately, but I will carefully read all the feedback I receive and take it into account. I would eventually like to respond whenever I can.

I have also tried from the beginning to make this available in different languages. These projects should not favor English-speaking devotees over Bengali-speaking devotees, or Bengali-speaking devotees over Russian-speaking devotees, or any other community. The aim is to serve devotees equally throughout the different branches and different parts of the world.

There is a great deal more I could say, but this post is already proving my earlier point about not having time to make it short.

For now, I simply wanted to share this first step on the appearance day of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura.

The Sārasvata Gauḍīya Family Tree will continue receiving regular updates, so if you return from time to time, you will probably see quite a lot changing.

Hopefully, over the coming months, enough of the structure and information will be in place that it can begin to connect directly with the new Gauḍīya Kīrtana app and the other projects that follow.

We pray that our guru-varga is pleased with this humble effort.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura ki jaya!
Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Prabhupāda ki jaya!
All the ācāryas, Vaiṣṇavas, and Vaiṣṇavīs coming in this line ki jaya!

Your servant,
Madhukar das