By Visnu Murti das
On the 5th of November 2012 Vaniquotes.org – the thematic online rendering of Srila Prabhupda’s teachings – reached 100,000 pages. This is worthy of celebrating, and it is interesting to look back at how this amazing achievement has come about. Our first page was created on the 1st of June 2007, and it took exactly 600 days to arrive at our first 10,000 pages on the 21st of January 2009. It then took another 590 days to get to 20,000 pages on the 3rd of September 2010. From that time on we started to move at a steadier pace. We improved our systems, and more devotees became involved – some became very expert. This allowed us to get the following results.
20,000 to 30,000 pages took us only 124 days
30,001 to 40,000 pages took us only 143 days
40,001 to 50,000 pages took us only 98 days
50,001 to 60,000 pages took us only 100 days
60,001 to 70,000 pages took us only 89 days
70,001 to 80,000 pages took us only 97 days
From 80,001 to 90,000 we managed to complete in only 75 days, and from 90,001 to 100,000 pages, we have completed in a record time of only 67 days.
The first 50,000 pages were created in 1,555 days and the second 50,000 were created in only 428 days. At the moment these 100,000 pages are placed within 13,766 keyword categories, and inside the pages we have placed 1,858,338 verbatim quotes of Srila Prabhupada.
All this activity (vaniseva) translates into over 90,000 hours of devotional service performed by over 200 devotees. We still have not finished the thematic mapping in Vaniquotes, but with the amount of content that is there, a truly unique opportunity is already available for readers to enter into a deeper understanding of the teachings of Srila Prabhupada. He encouraged the devotees to “discuss the subject matter very minutely, and inspect it from all angles of approach, and savor the new understandings.” Vaniquotes helps a lot to do just that. We can liken it to having 100,000 windows opening into Srila Prabhupada’s teachings to help us to find things we already know, and also to discover many new aspects of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings that we are not aware of. This is all due to the dynamic linking process.
In 1970 Srila Prabhupada wrote: “My oral instruction as well as my books are all at your service.” In 1972 he wrote: “I am laboring so hard that before I leave this body, I may give you some books who you can enjoy after my death. So utilize it. Read every sloka nicely, try to understand the meaning, discuss amongst yourselves.”
Srila Prabhupada spoke and wrote as a service, so that all humanity can “enjoy” having his spiritual guidance throughout their lives. He encouraged the liberal distribution of his teachings, and with the help of modern technology and our creative efforts, we can build an encyclopedia that can lead to the world’s applauding with raised arms in profound gratitude the sacrifice that Srila Prabhupada made to offer us his priceless jewels of wisdom within his Bhaktivedanta purports, lectures, conversations and letters.
One of the active projects that we are working on at the moment is the building of a comprehensive English and Sanskrit dictionary that is being created simply from Srila Prabhupada’s definitions of words from his purports, lectures, conversations and letters. Through these dictionaries we can see Srila Prabhupada’s incredible qualification as a teacher as he painstakingly gives his students the right understanding of things.
http://vaniquotes.org/wiki/Category:Vaniquotes_Dictionaries
A wonderful way to celebrate this milestone is to have many more people coming to Vaniquotes to bathe their intellects in the sublime words that have emanated from such a pure and enlightened devotee of Krsna. We invite everyone to visit Vaniquotes and to inform their friends about Vaniquotes. In the month of October we had an average of 880 unique visitors a day. If we can get to 5000 regular visitors every day, we will consider it the best reward for all of the efforts that we have made to bring the project to its present state.
And a little hint for new users who are not so familiar with our thematic presentation. Simply google your topic of interest and add “Vaniquotes” to your search. In this way you will come directly into Vaniquotes.
And please always note that at the bottom of each page there are different categories that the pages are linked to. By entering into these categories, you can start the dynamic exploration of the whole of Vaniquotes.
Please shower your blessings as the vaniservants are inspired to attempt to make it to 108,108 by the last day of Kartika.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada’s vani. It really is the torchlight of knowledge blinding away the ignorance within our hearts and within this world.