About VEDA

Site history

The original idea of Vedic Encyclopedia, the first and main part of VEDA, came from my friend Varnadi in 1998, while we served together in NE-BBT headquarters in Sweden (1995-1998). It was planned as a part of iskcon.org, the main ISKCON site, which he partially designed and maintained since 1994. Although Krsna had other plan, I still decided to follow up on it. From the beginning of my study of bhakti-yoga I used to gather useful information to help me - any interesting material from sources like books, acaryas's commentaries, articles, dictionaries, encyclopedias, travel guides, discussion groups, correspondence, etc. Now I collected it and sorted it out into categories for easy reference for all, especially preachers.

For main assistance I'm indebted to three of my friends: Vaishampayana - Java applets programming and teaching me html basics, Ekanath - sastric resources, acaryas's commentaries, Puranic tables for SB-persons applet, and Varnadi - general encouragement and resources for units-applet.

At the end of 1998, when the material was gathered, sorted and edited, including the Samsara ("Planetarium") section, family obligations forced me to return to CZ and stay there. The project remained on a back-burner but I never stopped looking for a way to put it online as a part of a greater project. It did not work with ISKCON Czech Republic website neither with the website of ISKCON Communications Europe. Having all that material which no one could see was frustrating. It occurred to me that it will have to become a stand-alone project. "The most reliable way to have something done is to do it oneself."

So I got in touch with bh. Jirka "babaji" (Yadukulesvara/Yadava dasa) who in a short time became a pretty good webdesigner and on April 5 2001 (Damanaka ropana Dvadasi) the site was up due to his efforts and free hosting at his boss's server. From the fall 2001 to 2010 we were hosted at our friend's server (thanks, Dharma) and since 2010 at Yadukulesvara P.'s own server space. Since September 2015 we're hosted at bh. Bohdan's server which hosts most of ISKCON CZ sites.

Original text files (some of them are still online).

Veda 2002

2001-2: After one year of existence we prepared a major update.

2002-3: Added was a page with list of interesting books to be ordered from Amazon.com. (This feature is discontinued from 2022.)

2003-4: We began our fourth year of existence, continuing to grow, both by content (though slowlier then before as the main structure is already covered) and by traffic, and enjoyed visitors's feedback.

Veda 2003

2004-5: Section Connections was finally added to VEDA. Since September bh. Jirka moved to Sri Vrindavan-dham and among other services made a new website for ISKCON Vrindavan's Bhaktivedanta Swami Goshala. In early October a DNS change unfortunately caused many broken links and losing a good position in search engines. Fortunately, everything went back to normal in a few days.

2005-6: VEDA turned five years old! Updates were continuous although rather minor. In February bh. Jirka was initiated as Yadukulesvara dasa by HH Kadamba Kanana Swami - congratulations!

2006-7: We have added Quiz and constantly improved the articles adding facts and links. Czech Encyclopedia sections now has translations of most Vaisnava Upanisads and the rest will be added asap.

2007-8: This year started with joining the family of Krishna.com sites. A mirror of Vedic Encyclopedia section is hosted at veda.krishna.com as per the original idea of my friend Varnadi.

2008-9: No major changes. Updating and broadening references and resources.
September: A positive review in BTG 09/10 issue, Italian version
January: Our Amazon Affiliate payment went to Sastradana.cz

2009-2010: An increase of link exchange requests but only a handful qualify. Our content was also increasingly becoming found on other sites, sometimes in large amount and often without linking back. We understand that the quality content is not easy to create but this managerial approach is not appreciated here, sorry. To link back is the minimum one can do. Some examples:
https://reinkarnacia.sk/duchovia/ and more
https://bekrsnaconscious.blogspot.com/2011/09/hari-dhama-this-is-my-home.html
http://www.vaachaspathi.com/FAQs.php
https://bpgaur.blogspot.com/2009/03/beyond-chiranjeevis.html
https://bhakti-tattva.blogspot.com/2008/05/srila-vyasadeva-um-encarnao-de-krsna.html
https://gsgospel.wordpress.com/vedas-of-india/ (link included)

2010-2011: Sastra quoting script added to the main page.

2011-2012: March 2011 - 10 year anniversary! Just two months after Wikipedia (now having over 90 of our links). Hoping to remain online for many years to come. Thanks for all your support and letters.

2012-2013: March 2012 - Beginning from our 11th year I'll publish my articles under CC license (http://creativecommons.org/).
Kindly let me share a little thought related to words of Sri Caitanya "My name will be preached in every town and village" (sarvatra sancara hoibek mora nama). The usual understanding of this statement is that devotees will physically come to and chant in every small settlement worldwide, local people will become devotees etc. But what if this is only the aftermath? What if it has in one sense already happened through modern communication media which bring the Lord's name everywhere, spiritualizing the ether? And since from the subtle comes the tangible and Srila Prabhupada translates the Bengali word sancara (Harvard-Kyoto: saJcAra) as 'the advent, appearance, growing', it's the beginning of the worldwide spread of Krsna bhakti.
I'm happy that our website is part of this epochal undertaking, being just two months younger than Wikipedia (of which I heard only about three years later). I don't think it's a coincindence.
Hari Hari
ys Jan

May 12: Adding PayPal and Flattr. We're and will remain FB-free zone.

November 22: Removing Flattr. Otoh, PayPal works fine for us. Thanks for all your donations! Thanks to them we can cover the server costs.

2013-2014: A marked decrease in feedback due to social media. Translating traditional Vedic and GV texts into Czech (see Encyklopedie section) due to their dire lack. Suggestions welcome.

2014-2015: VEDA is a teenager ;), ALEXA rank greatly improved, continued translation of shorter Vedic and GV texts into Czech
Gradual archiving of disappearing linked content: 1. archive.org, 2. dl from VEDA.

2015-2016: Since September on another server (thanks, Bohdan Prabhu). Continuing the trend of two previous years to please Hari, gurus and Vaisnavas. Thanks for your feedback and support.

2017-2018: Adding lots of references from Pancaratric texts. Major interlinking of articles.

2019, April 16 (Damanakaropana Dvadasi, after Kamada Ekadasi): 18th anniversary of VEDA's existence! Big thanks to all who made and make it possible! We'll continue as in previous years, mainly maintainig and updating.

2020: Continuing as always, with your blessings. Coronavirus news aggregation on the main page.

2021, April 24: 20 years anniversary! Thank you for all your support. Hoping to serve for many years to come.

2022: Amazon.com affiliation discontinued. Earlier we gave the access to Sastra Dana USA and they probably chose to give it up or they forgot about it.

2023, April, August: Some technical finetuning for better user comfort and accessibility.

Site structure

The Bhakti-yoga section, a comprehensive (theory plus practice) introductory Vaisnava guide for seekers and new aspirants, is making use of material prepared for the Czech PR journal project from 1999 (unmanifested) with additional info in question-answer format. They are real questions asked by real people at iskcon.org and our site.

The Vedic Encyclopedia section is described above. The entries selection tries to cover topics and questions devotees ask while studying Vaisnava sastras. Aside from Srila Prabhupada's books and some other important Vaisnava scriptures this is what I learned till now. In harmony with the above instruction I seek to share it. This is also the idea of free encyclopedias, emulating the idea of free open source software, which appeared in recent times and grows in popularity. (On the other hand, famous Britannica made their contents available only on paid basis - which contributed to its ending of its printed version - so we don't link to it anymore.)

The Library section contains mainly unique material (unavailable online anywhere else) including biographies of Vaisnava acaryas and devotees and various study guides and seminars. For easier orientation it is split into topical sections.

Links page lists a wide array of links to interesting sites and pages. We don't automatically endorse all info in all these sources but after reading the rest of VEDA one should be able to discriminate. Also helpful in this regard are these resources.

Our articles include the name of author and other available references. We use Harvard-Kyoto Sanskrit-Latin transliteration. If there is no name, the author is either me (bh. Jan, JanM) or unknown. Missing data in some articles make them unusable for academicians but general readers can still benefit. You are welcome to use our material on your site but please add a link to its original place.

Site promo and PR

VEDA started as non-profit but now we post banners for donations. We are also open to link exchange with quality sites. For more info on link exchange see contact.

We did quite a lot of promotion and SEO and got linked from many quality sites without paying a cent. Google search result placements (ranks) for words "veda", "vedas", "vedic" range in top 20, at former Topsite.com even in top 10. Main page's Google Page Rank is 4 and there're hundreds of unique visitors per day.

Our wish to make VEDA an outstanding Vedic Vaisnava resource for everyone from random surfers, students, devotees to scholars is achieving a concrete shape by a significant growth of visitors and contents:

2001 (April - beginning) 20 visitors per day
January 2002 54
January 2003 201
January 2004 309
January 2005 524
January 2006 800 (approximately, as our stats was merged with harekrsna.cz)
December 2006 and on: stats by StatCounter.com and Alexa

Many sites offer a simple site analysis including an estimated site value. The range is ridiculously large though. As of 5/2023 VEDA ranges were between $208 (https://www.siteprice.org/website-worth/veda.harekrsna.cz) and $1,928 (https://hypestat.com/info/veda.harekrsna.cz)

We are listed among the Top reference related websites by number of links from Wikipedia.

Among backlinks from major media we have e.g. The Guardian.

Academic references: As of 10/2020 Google Scholar search turns up VEDA cited in32 sources (with some possible repeats).

The cooperation with other ISKCON-related organizations and projects did happen by link exchange. Bhaktivedanta Archives expressed a desire to put a link to our SB-persons applet into their upcoming version of Vedabase 2003 but it didn't happen since we wanted to keep it free on our site.

We are getting practically only positive feedback and sometimes very interesting questions to which we try to gives the best answers possible. (As one Prabhupada disciple wrote: "Thanks for your prompt, informative and meticulous response. If you got paid by the hour for your consultation, you would probably be a millionaire by now.")

And we encourage a thorough study of Vaisnava scriptures which this site is not intended to replace. :)

I like your site. How can I co-operate?

Your offer is welcome and appreciated. As polls show, only a tiny minority of people online are actually content providers (aka 90-9-1-principle). This is a symptom of their pro-active (an opposite to reactive) nature.

Please let us know a bit about yourself - your background, education, theoretical/practical acquaintance with Vedic/Vaishnava culture, etc. How much time you have? Are you a native English speaker? Do you have sastras (esp. editions with verse index) at home? An access to uni libraries in the West or India or both?...

Here is a "to do" list (starting with more time-consuming things):

- Translating articles to other languages, esp. major ones like Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic. We get repeated requests.

- Suggesting new topics and writing articles to cover them.

- Checking references other than BG and SB (mainly in Puranas) and finding new ones.

- Looking for factual errors, typos (spell-checking), etc. and suggesting improvements.

- Promoting the site on other sites ("add url" forms), blogs and discussion forums (by linking to relevant content, not as a spam), etc., keeping the referring sites list.

- Suggesting relevant quality content on other sites (to link to it).

- Any other ideas? Please contact us.

I consider your site valuable. How can I support you?

Our service is voluntary but we accept donations thru PayPal (see link at the bottom of every page).

You can also donate and receive ads in exchange. See Contact page.

We pray that Sri Sri Gandharvika-Giridhari, Sri Sri Gauranga-Nityananda, Sri Guru parampara and Vaisnava sanga continue to bless us and become satisfied with our humble efforts to be an useful online part of the growing sankirtana movement.

Thank you for your visits, feedback and blessings.

Your webservant,
bh. Jan (co-founder, owner, content creator, SEO self-taught, PR/communications manager, C2 English)

uhlíková stopa: 3.87 t CO2 / rok (Bydlení 0,93; Doprava 0,09 t; Potraviny 1,83; Spotøeba 1,02)

Related:
Contact us
Very short history of internet preaching in ISKCON
Vedabase about internet
VEDA feedback from readers

personal resources (Jan):
Rozhovor v knize Eva Pavlatová - Bojíte se smrti? (Olympia 2001, ISBN 80-7033-061-9), s. 58-65
Vzpomínka na kapucína Václava Anselma Špaèka, mého prastrýce z matèiny strany, èlánky o jeho pùsobení, zemøel 12.6.1983 v Londonu (Ontario, Kanada)
biodata

moje uèitelka angliètiny z USA v roce 1990

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