What are you reading? These are the commentaries? And this is the text?

Expressions researched:
"These are the commentaries? And this is the text" |"What are you reading"

1969 Conversations and Morning Walks

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. This is original Sanskrit. There are eight commentaries by big, big stalwart scholars.

Room Conversation with Allen Ginsberg -- May 14, 1969, Columbus, Ohio:

Allen Ginsberg: What are you reading?

Prabhupāda: Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. This is original Sanskrit. There are eight commentaries by big, big stalwart scholars.

Allen Ginsberg: These are the commentaries? And this is the text?

Prabhupāda: This is text.

Allen Ginsberg: What does the Sanskrit sound like? Is Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam to be chanted?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like... I will read some portion. (chants a few verses, "tasmai tubhyāṁ bhagavate vāsudevāya vedasi" to "vāsudevāya śantāya yadunām pataye namaḥ") Like this.

Allen Ginsberg: It's certainly 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.