On the 8th of September, 1985, the author, and founder of Ananda Marga, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, began an extraordinary series of Sunday lectures in Bengali that would eventually fill a total of twenty-six volumes over the next five years. The title he gave to this series was Shabda Cayaniká, which translates into English as “A Collection of Words”. As the title suggests, each discourse consists of a discussion of a certain number of words from the Bengali language, beginning, in the first discourse, with the first letter of the Bengali alphabet, a, and continuing on alphabetically. What results, then, is neither an encyclopaedia, nor a dictionary, but something unique in the fields of scholarship and literature.

Ostensibly, Shabda Cayaniká is a series devoted to the linguistics and philology of the Bengali language, but in reality it is much more than that. The author uses the platform of the word as a point of departure to take the reader on a journey through all the varied landscapes of human knowledge – history, geography, medicine, science, art, religion, philosophy, etc. – and in the process adds the indelible stamp of his own unique wisdom, enriching our experience with new ideas and enabling us to see our human heritage in a way we have never been able to before.

Like most great authors, he is a consummate storyteller, using a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anecdotes, personal experiences and stories to capture the reader’s interest and lead him or her effortlessly through the garden of human knowledge. Along the way the author refines and develops a language that is the world’s fifth most widely spoken and the closest living language to its great classical ancestor, Sanskrit.

The English versions of Shabda Cayaniká Part 1 and Part 2, the first two books of this series, were published in 1996. The English Shabda Cayaniká Part 3 was published in 1999. Thereafter the publication of this important series could not immediately be continued for various reasons, but requests for further parts of the series kept pouring in from our readers. We have therefore decided to publish several of the remaining parts of Shabda Cayaniká each year in order to complete the series within a reasonable period of time.

As mentioned earlier, the author of this series has touched on a vast number of subjects of human knowledge. Therefore in this book we have provided an index of words and subjects at the end to help researchers and the general reader.

Weighing the feedback of our readers and all other considerations, we decided to print Parts 4 and 5 of Shabda Cayaniká in one volume and to use a bigger and more conventional book size than had been used previously for the Shabda Cayaniká series. Henceforward, the various parts of the series will all be published in this manner.

Footnotes by the translators have all been signed “–Trans.” Unsigned footnotes are those of the author.

Many readers are concerned that the author’s discourses, as published, should adhere as closely as possible to the precise wording the author used in speaking. For this reason, in the case of discourses given originally in English, the editors do not alter pronouns and other terms which the author in his life time considered “common-gender” words. As the author once said, “You know, ‘man’ is not only masculine gender, ‘man’ is common gender also. ‘Man is mortal’ – here ‘man’ means both male and female.”

The author was a natural advocate of women’s rights and on at least one occasion indicated that “lopsided justice” in language should be eliminated at some future date. In keeping with his guideline and with present-day trends, it is our policy in the case of translated discourses (where the published wording will necessarily be that of the translators) to use gender-neutral language.

The author was of the strong opinion that the Bengali alphabet should provide for a distinction between two slightly-different sounds, which he called “initial-la” and “end-lra”. To make possible this distinction, he proposed that the initial-la should be represented by an existing alphabetical character (ল), while for the end-lra there should be a new character (ল়) formed by adding a dot below the initial-la character. In the roman system invented by the author, the two sounds are rendered by la and lra respectively. Though in the original Bengali Shabda Cayaniká series the new character has been used wherever the lra sound occurs, in these English translations we have avoided using lra each time that the sound occurs (so that words familiar to speakers of Bengali should not be unrecognizable to them), and we provide instead, especially for the benefit of researchers, a list of all words in each book which should be read with the end-lra sound. For this book the words are as follows:

	spelled as	should be read as
Discourse 23	kála	kálra
Discourse 24	káliká káliuṋga	kálriká kálriuṋga
Discourse 25	kálii	kálrii
Discourse 26	kilaka kishala kishalay kiila	kilraka kishalra kishalray kiilra

Square brackets [   ] in the text are used to indicate translations by the editors or other editorial insertions. Round brackets (   ) indicate a word or words originally given by the author.

The author used a certain shorthand for explaining the etymologies of words. Under this system, a minus sign (–) follows a prefix, and a plus sign (+) precedes a suffix. Thus ava – tr + ghaiṋ = avatára can be read, “the root tr prefixed by ava and suffixed by ghaiṋ becomes avatára.”

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of the assistance and the support lent by many persons in various ways. Their sincere efforts are helping us develop an ever more professional system of work, so that the immense contribution of Shrii P.R. Sarkar can be presented in the best possible manner. Some esteemed readers, or better to say, lovers, of Shrii P.R. Sarkar’s books have come forward to make arrangement for the continuous publication of his books over the coming years; thanks to them, progress is being made in building up a committed and dependable sales network. Any interested person can come forward to participate in this effort.

Ideally every new book translation undergoes initially a draft by the main translator, then “first editing”, then “second editing”, then final verification. Other important functions include coordination of the different steps, and the development and management of a sales network. Some of those who have contributed to these efforts: Dr. Mohit Ray, retired professor of English, translated all seven discourses of Shabda Cayaniká Part 4, and the first editing of those discourses was done by Ácárya Priyashivánanda Avadhúta. Gáyattrii Ghista and Táraka Ghista did the second editing of those discourses. Dr. Visvanath Chatterjee, retired professor of English, translated all seven discourses of Shabda Cayaniká Part 5, and the first editing of those discourses was done by Ácárya Priyashivánanda Avadhúta. Deváshiiśa did the second editing and first verification of those discourses. Mádhava Basak did typing, layout work and DTP work for the entire book, as well as related office work. Kirit Dave took on sales management and coordination work.

We are also indebted to many others who gave constant encouragement and vital input. Final verification and parts of other tasks were done by the staff of Ananda Marga Publications.

If any defects be found, readers may be sure that they do not derive from the illustrious author, nor are they the responsibility of those who contributed to the work; rather they are the responsibility of the Publications staff alone.

Kirit Dave also prepared the cover page of the book. We like to express our sincere gratitude to Ms. Kate B., USA, for her kind gift of allowing us to use the photograph for the front cover of this book. The photograph, protected by the copyright laws, is the property of Ms. Kate, and may not be reproduced without her expressed permission.