A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Indian spiritual teacher and founder of the ISKCON
Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1 September 1896 – 14 November 1977) was an Indian spiritual, philosophical, and religious teacher who spread the Hare Krishna mantra and the teachings of "Krishna consciousness" to the world. Born as Abhay Charan De and later legally named Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami, he is often referred to as "Bhaktivedanta Swami", "Srila Prabhupada", or simply "Prabhupada".
To carry out an order received in his youth from his spiritual teacher to spread "Krishna consciousness" in English, he journeyed from Kolkata to New York City in 1965 at the age of 69, on a cargo ship with little more than a few trunks of books. He knew no one in America, but he chanted Hare Krishna in a park in New York City, gave classes, and in 1966, with the help of some early students, established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which now has centers around the world.
He taught a path in which one aims at realizing oneself to be an eternal spiritual being, distinct from one's temporary material body, and seeks to revive one's dormant relationship with the supreme living being, known by the Sanskrit name Krishna. One does this through various practices, especially through hearing about Krishna from standard texts, chanting mantras consisting of names of Krishna, and adopting a life of devotional service to Krishna. As part of these practices, Prabhupada required that his initiated students strictly refrain from non-vegetarian food (such as meat, fish, or eggs), gambling, intoxicants (including coffee, tea, or cigarettes), and extramarital sex. In contrast to earlier Indian teachers who promoted the idea of an impersonal ultimate truth in the West, he taught that the Absolute is ultimately personal.
He held that the duty of a guru was to convey intact the message of Krishna as found in core spiritual texts such as the Bhagavad Gita. To this end, he wrote and published a translation and commentary called Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is.
“A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada” enters the record as indian spiritual teacher and founder of the ISKCON. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bhaktivedanta, Swami and Prabhupada can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q234898. VIAF identifies the subject as 31993003. The Library of Congress control number is n79133133. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1977, 1965 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.