Publisher's Note

Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti is the founder of Ananda Marga.

He dictated the original Bengali Ánanda Sútram to a close devotee as they sat, in a series of night sessions in 1961, on the tiger’s grave in Jamalpur that Ánandamúrtijii and the devotees used to frequent.

The devotee wrote by the light of a candle. Sometimes the candle flame was sheltered by a glass drinking tumbler as a sort of makeshift lantern.

Ánanda Sútram means, in part, “aphorisms leading to ánanda, divine bliss”.

The sútra form has been valued over the centuries as a powerful tool for communicating a deep philosophy in a condensed, memorable way.

The literal meaning of sútra is “thread”, implying that numerous jewels of thought can be strung on a single such thread. In the best traditions of sútra literature, the eighty-five sútras of this book serve, with breathtaking conciseness, as a framework for the entire Ananda Marga ideology.

Herein Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti has in a few vivid strokes presented humanity with original concepts of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and macrohistory. He has set out for the first time a socio-economic approach conceived in the light of a theistic philosophy, blending subjective approach with objective adjustment, that offers the world a well-knit and progressive social system based on economic justice. He designated Ánanda Sútram, together with the complementary book Idea and Ideology, as the darshan shástra (philosophical treatise) of Ananda Marga.

Ánanda Sútram as a whole has appeared heretofore in English in only one edition, the 1967 translation by Shrii Manohar Gupta (reprinted virtually unedited in 1990). Chapter 4 was reprinted in Discourses on Tantra Volume 1, 1993, and a retranslated Chapter 5 appeared in Proutist Economics, 1992.

The editors of the present edition have not striven to retranslate, but have edited the First Edition (or in the case of Chapter 5 the 1992 edition) according to a number of considerations important for the reader.

The editors of this edition have, in the first place, tried to adhere more closely to the author’s pattern of usage of important Sanskrit terms, by preserving those terms in the main text of the translation, while sometimes relegating the English equivalents to editorial square brackets.

The editors have also tried to eliminate the unnecessary repetition of pairs of Sanskrit-English equivalents.

The remaining considerations guiding the editors have been those of grammar, where correction was unavoidable, and consistency – consistency, for example, in the use or non-use of articles with various philosophical terms. In a very few instances in Chapters 1-3 it was found necessary to aim for greater accuracy by retranslating a sentence, for example the last sentence of Chapter 1. (In Chapters 4 and 5, which appeared in the recent compilations noted above, no retranslation has been done, except that in Chapter 5 the Sanskrit yuga has been rendered as “age” rather than the previous “era”. “Age” seems generally to have been the author’s preference in English, as indicated in Idea and Ideology.)

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

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.

To this edition the editors have added an appendix giving word-for-word translations of the sútras. Avadhútiká Ánanda Mitrá Ácáryá deserves special mention for having laid the foundations of this appendix years ago.

In the appendix, a certain shorthand preferred by the author of this book has been used 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.”

date N/A Published in: Ánanda Sútram Chapter 1Previous chapter: Publishers NoteNext chapter: Chapter 2Beginning of book Ánanda Sútram Chapter 1 Published in: Ananda Marga Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 2 [a compilation] Ánanda Sútram Notes: official source: Ánanda Sútram

this version: is the Ánanda Sútram, 2nd edition, 2nd printing, version (obvious spelling, punctuation and typographical mistakes only may have been corrected). I.e., this is the most up-to-date version as of the present Electronic Edition.

Published in Ananda Marga Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 2 as the Chapter 1 section of the article “Ánanda Sútram”.