SRI SRI RAMAKRISHNA KATHAMRITA

Famously known as "M" and Master Mahashay, Mahendranath Gupta (1854-1932) was a householder-disciple of the 19th Century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna.  He  first met Ramakrishna in 1882, and, attracted by his teachings, maintained a stenographic record of Ramakrishna's conversations and actions in his diary.  This diary eventually took the form of a book, Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, translated as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.  In the beginning, M had no plans of publication.

After the death of Ramakrishna in 1886, the growing public recognition of Ramakrishna encouraged M to make his diary public. Indeed, he thought that his was an important medium for public dissemination of Ramakrishna's ideas. He also sought the assessment of Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna's wife, before publication.

The first volume was preceded by a small booklet in English called A Leaf from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1897).    Between 1898 to 1902, excerpts from his diary were published in leading Bengali journals, such as Bangadarshan, Udbodhan, Hindu Patrika, Shaitya Patrika and Janmabhumi. 

Volumes one through four were published in 1902, 1904, 1908 and 1910 respectively, and the fifth volume in 1932, delayed because of M's health problems.  At the time of M's death in 1932, he was contemplating at least one, if not two, additional volumes after which he hoped to rearrange the entire material chronologically.

It should be remembered that the Kathamrita was published from 15 to 50 years after M's sessions with Ramakrishna, and covers a total of only 186 days spread over the last four and a half years of the saint's life.

The full text of the original diary, which is said to contain enough material for another half dozen volumes, has never been made available publicly.  However, according to Dipak Gupta, M's great-grandson, scholars can, and have, seen all the material.  The diary belongs solely to M's descendants, not to the Ramakrishna Order.