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.
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.