Teachings of Lord Kapila

The Son of Devahuti

Long ago, in an age we know about only from the epics of ancient India, the great sage Kapila made His appearance on the earth–from the womb of the saintly Devahuti. When her husband left home to seek spiritual perfection in the forest, Devahuti implored her divine son Kapila to lead her to enlightenment. Lord Kapila then showed her the way of Sankhya–the analytical pathway to a higher understanding to the world, the self, and the ultimate source of everything.

Kapila's teachings are originally inscribed in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, or Bhagavata Purana, one of the most important scriptural documents of the Vedic theism. Within the Bhagavatam, Kapila's teachings comprise Chapters Twenty-five through Thirty-three of the Third Canto. This book, Teachings of Lord Kipila, The Son of Devahuti, is based on a unique series of lectures presented in Bombay, India, in the spring of 1974, by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In this series, Srila Prabhupada spoke from the Twenty-fifth Chapter, which contains the beginning of Lord Kapila's teachings. Srila Prabhupada is the author of a celebrated multivolume translation and commentary on the entire text of the Bhagavatam, and at the time of the Kapila lectures he had already completed his written commentary on the section of the Bhagavatam dealing with Kapiladev's teachings. In these special lectures, however, Srila Prabhupada went into significantly greater detail in elucidating the verses and shed an even broader light upon these fascinating teachings.