Newly posted online for downloading is an updated version of the BBT Style Sheet.

It offers the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust’s latest standards on such matters as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and word choice.

This is a routine update. No shockers.

An overview of the editorial history of the books of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

by Jayadvaita Swami

Reprinted from ISKCON Communications Journal, Volume 11 (2005)

by Jayadvaita Swami

This item was first posted on the web in May of 2003

The story, posted some time back, of how Hayagriva Prabhu painstakingly sat with Srila Prabhupada for two years to fine tune the text of Bhagavad-gita As It Is is only just one more internet myth. Who says? Hayagriva.

Criticism and insults I can tolerate. Fictitious history is harder to bear. So let’s set things straight, shall we?

by Jayadvaita Swami

What does “adi vani” mean?

The words adi vani are Sanskrit. According to the Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary, adi means “beginning” or “first,” and vani means “sound,” “voice,” “words,” “literary composition,” and so on.

So adi vani can be taken to mean “original words.”

Sometime around 2003, a group of “Hare Krishna” people began using the term to promote their editorial views about the books of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

The term never appears in Srila Prabhupada’s books, and we have no evidence he ever used it.