Sri Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Prabhupada appeared in Jagannatha Puri on Friday, February 3, 1874, the day of krsna-pancami in the month of Magha.
His father and siksa-guru was the famous eternal devotee of Sriman Mahaprabhu, Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakura. His childhood name was Sri Vimala Prasada. From childhood he was an extraordinary scholar, a spiritual genius and righteous in his conduct.

Because Bhaktivinoda Thakura was a district magistrate, he would be transferred here and there, but he would always keep the Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu and Caitanya-caritamrta with him and explain them to his son. Prabhupada received so much instruction from him, but we should understand that Prabhupada is an eternally liberated soul; there was no one in the world like him. Without being educated in school or college he learned all subjects very quickly and became a great scholar in sanskrit. His English was so high that even big professors of English could not understand it.

At the age of seven or eight, Prabhupada began worshipping a Deity of Kurma-deva, and Bhaktivinoda Thakura gave him the maha-mantra and other mantras for his puja. At the age of eighteen, all of the scholars of astronomy in Bengal gave him the title 'Sarasvati'. After that he attended college, but quarrelled with the professors, saying, "Will I learn from you, or teach you?"

When he abandoned his studies, Bhaktivinoda Thakura and other family members became concerned, so they took him to Puri where he began studying in Satasana Asrama, which is where Svarupa Damodara and Raghunatha dasa Gosvami had lived.

There Prabhupada began giving readings from Caitanya-caritamrta. There were some babajis there who considered themselves rasika, and when they heard Prabhupada's explanations, they became inimical to him. Seeing this, Bhaktivinoda Thakura took him away from there and had him begin teaching the son of the king of Tripura.

Prabhupada had a great library of Vaisnava literatures, and having read through it thoroughly, he began teaching the son of the king in such a way that the boy accepted a chanting mala and began wearing tilaka. He became detached from the world, and gradually, hearing hari-katha became his sole interest. Seeing this, the queen became very annoyed and said to the king, "This boy will become useless! Then, after your demise, what will happen? Who will make offerings to our departed souls? He will become a renunciate, and everything will be ruined! You quickly get rid of this teacher! Give him four-hundred rupees to go - we don't need money, we need a son!" The king approached Bhaktivinoda Thakura and offered the money to him, but without accepting it they left from there.

Then Bhaktivinoda Thakura started a homeopathic shop. When the shop was unsuccessful he thought, "I was not made to run a shop anyway", and he went and purchased some land in Mayapura. After locating the birthplace of Mahaprabhu, he installed Deities there of Gaura, Visnupriya, and Laksmipriya, as well as small Radha-Krishna murtis.

After Bhaktivinoda Thakura's disappearance, Prabhupada was determined to follow the Navadvipa-dhama parikrama which his father had written, and to attract people he invited great kirtana performers to attend. He set up a large tent, thousands of people came for the parikrama, and there the katha of suddha-bhagavad-bhakti commenced.

In 1918, he accepted the renounced order (sannyasa) and became known as parivrajakacarya Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati. His diksa-guru was the supremely worshipable Srimad Gaurakisora dasa Babaji Maharaja.

Gradually, qualified youths of only sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years, whose hearts were soft and pure, came forward, and Prabhupada made them into brahmacaris and sannyasis. With great ease he was able to train them, but those who were over fifty years old, like parrots could not be taught anything new.

The convention of tridandi-sannyasa was established, and the result is that today the name and conception of Caitanya Mahaprabhu are being vigorously preached. Within eleven years, from 1926-1937, preaching was spread everywhere, but before that, so much time was spent in merely setting the foundation. Prabhupada published many magazines - daily, weekly, monthly - in the Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, Orissan, English, and Assami languages, and very easily we have all inherited the fruit of his endeavour.

He established the Gaudiya line very strictly with great endeavour, and there were so many difficulties in his preaching campaign that we cannot even imagine them. There was so much opposition to Prabhupada's preaching at that time that his disciples were not even allowed to enter the mandiras in Vrindavana or Navadvipa.

Prabhupada began culturing the creeper of devotion by cutting off all of the unnecessary branches and sub-branches. How? First of all he revised the guru-parampara. He said that we are of Mahaprabhus line, and he removed the names of those who were not fully perfected.

At this point some had pided into the lines of Nityananda Prabhu, Advaita Acarya, Gadadhara Pandita, Vakresvara Pandita, Lokanatha Gosvami, and others, but Prabhupada said, "We accept in our line those who are fully perfected souls, who know the correct siddhanta, and who are rasika, wherever they are." In this way all of the various lines were represented in our parampara in one place or another.

There are so many lines of disciplic succession, but Prabhupada said that we will recognise the guru-parampara, not the disciplic succession. The guru-parampara is composed solely of those who were bhagavat-gurus, even if they made no disciples and therefore there is no direct disciplic line coming from them. Some of them may not have initiated any disciples at all, but still they are jagat-gurus. In this way, with all-pervading vision he collected all the mahajanas and made what is known as the bhagavat-parampara or the guru-parampara.

In Sriman Mahaprabhu's birthplace of Sri Dhama Mayapura he established his original monastery (matha), the Sri Caitanya Matha. He went on to establish approximately sixty-four mathas in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madras, Mumbai, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and throughout the whole of India, as well as in Western and Eastern countries.

Travelling throughout India, with profound enthusiasm he preached suddha-bhakti and inspired others to do the same. By publishing his own devotional books and periodicals as well as Upanisads, Puranas, the Brahma-sutra, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Bhagavad-gita, the books of the Gosvamis and authoritative books of the four sampradayas, he further expanded the enormous storehouse of Sri Gaudiya devotional literature. The world will remain forever indebted to this great personality.

In the beginning of 1936, Srila Prabhupada began to display his lila of ill health. Despite that, during that year he inaugurated a transcendental exhibition in Prayag, spoke hari-katha abundantly at Srivas Angan in Mayapura on the occasion of Sri Vyasapuja, established Sri Suvarna Vihara Matha and sri vigraha in Suvarnavihara, showered hari-katha on Sri Brahma Gaudiya Matha in Alalanatha on the occasion of Nrsimha Caturdasi, and observed purusottama-vrata in Purusottama Dhama.

Then he returned to the Calcutta-matha. During this period he often told everyone, "All of you should perform bhajana sincerely; there are not many days left now." Early in the morning of the day he entered aprakata-lila, he gave the order to Tridandisvami Srimad Bhaktiraksaka Sridhara Maharja to sing the kirtana "sri rupa manjari pada". Srila Prabhupada praised Sripad Narahari Sevavigraha Brahmacari Sevavigraha Prabhu, and told all his disciples that they should be honest like him, and that they should perform hari-bhajana without other ambitions. He then gave his last instructions to the disciples present:

"I have encouraged everyone to perform bhajana and be indifferent to everything else. For this reason, some people are dissatisfied with me. But one day they will surely understand that I have said this only for the welfare of the world.

All of you should with great enthusiasm preach together the mano 'bhista hari-katha (that hari-katha which embodies their innermost desire) of Sri Rupa Gosvami and Sri Raghunatha dasa Gosvami. Our objective and final aspiration is the dust of the lotus feet of the Vaishnavas in the line of Sri Rupa Gosvami.

You should stay together under the guidance of the asraya-vigraha (Gurudeva) to please the transcendental senses of advaya-jnana-para-tattva Sri Radha-Krishna Yugala. You should proceed on the path of hari-bhajana with determination, and maintain your life in this material world only for the purpose of hari-katha.

Never give up hari-bhajana even in the most difficult circumstances of slander and countless calamities and insults. Do not become discouraged to see that most people of the world do not accept the idea of pure service to Krishna. Never give up your bhajana, your hearing and chanting of krishna-katha, which is your everything. Always continue to perform hari-kirtana, being trinad-api sunicena, more humble than a blade of grass and more tolerant than a tree."

Having delivered these last instructions, Varsabhanavi-dayita dasa Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Prabhupada, the best of the followers of Svarupa Damodara and Rupa Gosvami, and Srimati Radhika's Nayanamani, entered the nisanta-lila of Sri Radha-Govinda in the last part of the night on December 31st, 1936.