sattvät sanjäyate jnänam

The 7^th canto of the Bhavagatam Prahlad Maharaja simply says, Hearing should not be distracted from Krishna, or something like that, or something very simple but Prabhupada translates that one should not listen to cinema songs SB 7.9.40.

“Cinema Songs” is a very Indian expression. In England do they say “Cinema songs”? No it’s an Indian term, Cinema songs, from Bollywood… 1) Did Prahlad millions of years ago on another planet say cinema songs? That’s one question, the next question is 2) Does Prabhupada believe in a serious historical sense that Prahlad said Cinema songs? I don’t think he did… I think he is being kinda of tongue in cheek. Yesterday we were discussing the Indian sense or lack of sense of history, if you look at the Pre-Newtonian pre- Baconian (Pre-bacon, Sir Francis Bacon) look at the notion of historiography, What did people think about the writing of history before the scientific revelation? History was not the historical science, the notion that history should try to be a real science, and it’s something universities will spend their lives debating; which is essentially trivia. This is after Newton- everyone wanted to be the Newton of their field… Like I want to be the Newton of social studies, I want to be the Newton of history; I want to be the Newton of… so everyone wanted to be the Newton of their field…

This notion this notion of the thoroughly scientific historiography is modern. If you look at say, Virgil’s Aeneid which I think is a good example. Civilization. A Trojan prince somehow escaped the Trojan War which the Trojan’s lost, and somehow sailed around to North Africa. Then had an aborted disastrous love affair with some African queen that never got over it. And then finally came to Italy, and founded Rome. And it was all very glorious, there were all kinds of harbingers, prophetic signs, of this most glorious event of the founding of Rome. Is this real history, is this what really happened? No. There is no evidence that this really happened, but for the Roman people, it is like- this is so cool. This is such a great story, lets just run with this one because there was not this anxiety about we need to know exactly what happened, we needed to know every last little detail. They just didn’t have that anxiety. History was seen as a narrative art whose main purpose was to convey wisdom. So for the Romans I guess the highest wisdom was the glory of Rome.

Again, if you look at the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer- or the song of the Volga boatmen of Scandinavia it’s not an anxiety to scientifically understand the past and then preserve it. That’s not what they were doing. They always say you have to know history or otherwise you are doomed to repeat it. The historical lessons you really need to learn are the big ones it’s not in all the little details, it’s just the big lessons- for example- Hitler. That is you defeat a country in war and then impose upon the unreasonable sanction so they are driven to desperation you’re probably going to produce a radical enemy in the future. There are like certain basic lessons that you are going toned to learn. My point is that Prabhupada had the pre-Newtonian sense of historiography. Where there are certain basic facts, you’d have to get right- because it is a sacred lesson of Krishna, but the details are kind of, you can play with them. I think Prabhupada’s pre-Newtonian sense of Histiography is related to the fact that history is meant for wisdom. It is related to his translation style.