Mahendranath Gupta
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Mahendranath Gupta (1854–1932), who preferred to call himself M, was one of the foremost disciples of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the author of The Gospel of Ramakrishna (Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita) (1942).
Mahendranath Gupta was the headmaster of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's high school when he first met Ramakrishna in 1882. He frequently visited Ramakrishna in Dakshineswar Kali Temple till Ramakrishna's passing away in 1886, and even stayed with him for successive days a few times. Every time he went back home after visiting Ramakrishna, he would note down in his personal dairy the conversations and sayings of Ramakrishna. It was from these notes that he compiled The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
In recent years, religious scholars Narasingha Sil and Jeffrey Kripal have questioned whether the Kathamrita is a work of journalistic accuracy, or more hagiographic and the result of sophisticated redaction. Despite requests, the Ramakrishna Mission has never released Gupta's personal diaries to be read or studied by scholars.
There is a chapter devoted to Mahendranath Gupta in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, titled "The Blissful Devotee and his Cosmic Romance"[1].
[edit] References
- Gupta, Mahendranath. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) (translation from Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda; Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, translation assistants - see preface; foreword by Aldous Huxley).
