Allen Ginsberg: What does the Sanskrit sound like? Is that to be . . . is Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam to be chanted?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like . . . I will read some portion. Tasmai tubhyāṁ bhagavate vāsudevāya vedhase to vāsudevāya śantāya yadunām pataye namaḥ, (SB 10.10.33-36). Like this:
- tasmai tubhyaṁ bhagavate
- vāsudevāya vedhase
- ātma-dyota-guṇaiś channa-
- mahimne brahmaṇe namaḥ
- (SB 10.10.33)
- yasyāvatārā jñāyante
- śarīreṣv aśarīriṇaḥ
- tais tair atulyātiśayair
- vīryair dehiṣv asaṅgataiḥ
- sa bhavān sarva-lokasya
- bhavāya vibhavāya ca
- avatīrṇo 'ṁśa-bhāgena
- sāmprataṁ patir āśiṣām
- (SB 10.10.34-35)
- namaḥ parama-kalyāṇa
- namaḥ parama-maṅgala
- vāsudevāya śāntāya
- yadūnāṁ pataye namaḥ
- (SB 10.10.36)
Allen Ginsberg: It's beautiful prosody.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Oh, the Sanskrit poetry writing is very difficult. They have got rhetoric system. So many words should be first, so many words, second. You cannot deviate.
Allen Ginsberg: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Then the analogy and metaphor should be like that. Nothing should be twice repeated. So there is Sāhitya-ratna in Sanskrit. Sāhitya-ratna. Caitanya Mahāprabhu defeated one great scholar simply by little mistake. Yes. Keśava Kāśmīrī. Keśava Kāśmīrī was great scholar, and Sanskrit great scholar means he must fluently speak in Sanskrit verses everything.
Allen Ginsberg: Everything he says must be done in perfect Sanskrit verses?
Prabhupāda: Oh, that is . . . yes. That is Sanskrit scholar. Not in prose. He'll go on composing verses. So Caitanya Mahāprabhu at that time was sixteen-years-old boy, but He was very learned logician. So the Keśava Kāśmīrī, he was traveling all over India by, I mean to say, competing other paṇḍitas, other learned scholars. So he . . . everywhere he was victorious. So he came to Navadvīpa. And in those days Navadvīpa and Benares and Udupi and Kashmir, four, five places, were very scholarly.