Philosophy: Does the Bhaktivedanta Vedabase differ from the print version of SP's books?

A letter that came recently on an ISKCON affiliated website:

"I recently bought a copy of The Science of Self-Realization (Hardbound). When comparing it to my Vedabase, the books differred. The chapter titles, and even the content is different in places. The softbound version of this book, I've noticed it bigger then the hardbound. Could the hard bound be an abridged edition, or is it just that the print and/or book size is smaller?
I am concerned about this, in that I want to make sure that what I am reading is the original version of the book and that it has not been altered in any way. If someone could please ease my mind regarding this, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you, and Hare Krishna."

No answer given yet, hence the question given here.

Yes it is different it has more annotations... again...

mishra:ccd: I wonder why you are so interested in validating annotations.

Because they already exist? (not because I will write them..)

ccd: Okay I will tell you - Prabhupadas books were brought out and edited and published by a small number or lets face it uneducated or too young to be well educated people, who for the most part were nice devotees, but did not even know how to deal with large publishers, what to speak of publishing and formating the books that are there for many and still and will be the code books of religion. They were like the army of monkeys of Lord Rama, very useful and devoted, but not always very smart and often making wrong choices. They did not even know how to deal with publishers, how to paint, Prabhupada had to show them things from scratch, for most of things. They did not ask right questions and did not propose a few options to choose as far as format of books concerned, naive. For a most part, where Prabhupada could not supervise them, they did not do a good job and made ISKCON into almost a cult in the mid 80s. Thanks to Krishna, there are changes visible now, and more qualified devotees and academics are associated with the movement now. Books really have to be brought up to the standard they deserve. Prabhupada deserves to have a well formatted and presentable books, endnotes in academic format is a step forward in that direction. Moreover it will have to happen anyhow, its better to do it sooner then later. Of course I know people who started the petition against it too, and since I normally disagree with them on everything, I would disagree with them on this as well..

At 09:50 PM 6/25/2008 -0400, Radheshyama (das) HDG (Kazakh BBT) wrote:
>Therefore we have only a little knowledge - that's all. With a little
>knowledge you can manufacture a 747 airplane, but you cannot
>manufacture a mosquito.
>
>
>Vedabase:
>
>Therefore we have only a little knowledge - that's airplane, but you
>cannot manufacture a mosquito.
>
>
>Why the printed SSR and Vedabase versions are different?

The original VedaBase was produced from a scan of the printed SSR. One line of type was skipped -- "all. With a little knowledge you can manufacture a 747".


>Which of the two versions is acceptable for translation?

The book version.

Your servant,
Dravida dasa


Reasons are there, you just have to ask the right people.