A prophe­cy car­ries many de­f­i­n­i­tions, in­spired ut­ter­ances of a prophet, the in­spired de­c­la­ra­tion of the di­vine will and pur­pose, a pre­dic­tion of some­thing to come.

It is of­ten, but not al­ways, based up­on ex­pe­ri­ence or knowl­edge. There is no uni­ver­sal agree­ment about the ex­act dif­fer­ence be­tween the two terms, a pre­dic­tion or a fore­cast: dif­fer­ent au­thors and dis­ci­plines as­cribe dif­fer­ent con­no­ta­tions.

In most re­li­gious and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions there are records of prophe­cies by per­sons with vi­sion in­to the fu­ture. In Hin­duism, we have many record­ed pre­dic­tions of events that have lat­er un­fold­ed, or yet to take place. An­cient Hin­du sages have left us pre­dic­tions of events. Most of these pre­dic­tions are in San­skrit, the Hin­du an­cient lan­guage.

These an­cient San­skrit pre­dic­tions have come down to us in the form of “mantras”, (word for­mu­la) which are now be­ing trans­lat­ed by west­ern schol­ars. One of the more well-known west­ern writ­ers and stu­dent of Hin­duism is Stephen Knapp.

Amer­i­can born Stephen Knapp be­gan re­search and study of East­ern Cul­tures and Phi­los­o­phy in 1971, af­ter more than five years un­der the spir­i­tu­al tute­lage, guid­ance of Swa­mi Prab­hu­pa­da. In 1976 he was giv­en the spir­i­tu­al name Sri Nan­danadana Dasa, Sri (beau­ti­ful), Nan­da (Ma­hara­ja Nan­da), Nan­dana (Son of) and Dasa (Ser­vant of), so it means The Ser­vant of the beau­ti­ful son of Ma­hara­ja Nan­da, ‘fa­ther of Kr­ish­na.’

In 1986, he found­ed the World Re­lief Net­work, a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on Vedic phi­los­o­phy, Vedic cul­ture, Vaish­nav­ism and the process of Bhak­ti-yo­ga. In May 2022 at the ‘Fes­ti­val of Bharat’ he pro­claimed, “I was a Hin­du in my pre­vi­ous life.”

In his book ti­tled, “The Vedic Prophe­cies,” New Look in­to the Fu­ture, The East­ern An­swers to the Mys­ter­ies of Life, Knapp not on­ly deals with the Vedic pre­dic­tions, but al­so writes about the pre­dic­tions of Nos­tradamus, the Mayan prophe­cies and the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse.

Noth­ing gives a re­li­gious or spir­i­tu­al text more cred­it, recog­ni­tion, or trust than when its prophe­cies be­come re­al­i­ty. There are many prophe­cies in the Vedic lit­er­a­ture, many of which have al­ready hap­pened, and many more are present­ly un­fold­ing be­fore our eyes. We just need the knowl­edge to recog­nise them as they hap­pen around us.

One of the ear­li­est prophe­cies fea­tures Bud­dha. Sid­dhartha Gau­ta­ma was born in Lumbi­ni [mod­ern day Nepal]. Sid­dhartha is a San­skrit name mean­ing ‘One who has ac­com­plished a goal’ and Gau­ta­ma is the fam­i­ly name.

He was raised in great lux­u­ry, one night wan­der­ing the palace, his mind re­flect­ed an old age dis­ease and death that would over­take the bod­ies of the mer­ry­mak­ing of the palace’s mu­si­cians and danc­ing girls turn­ing their bod­ies in­to dust, he was no longer con­tent­ed with these lux­u­ries and left chang­ing in­to the clothes of a beg­gar, he thus be­gan his quest for en­light­en­ment.

The Vedic lit­er­a­ture not on­ly de­scribes his­to­ries of events on this plan­et, but al­so de­scribes a va­ri­ety of his­to­ries and fu­ture events of oth­er plan­ets. There­fore, the Vedic texts are uni­ver­sal in na­ture, deal­ing with im­por­tant spir­i­tu­al events that may hap­pen in any part of the uni­verse. Thus, they are al­so non-sec­tar­i­an. They be­long to no sin­gle cul­ture; al­though on this plan­et they are based pri­mar­i­ly in the area of In­dia.

The Vedic lit­er­a­ture al­so pro­vides de­scrip­tions of the var­i­ous in­car­na­tions or avatars of God that have ap­peared on earth and in oth­er ar­eas of the uni­verse, along with their pur­pose and pas­times. It al­so de­scribes avatars or in­car­na­tions that will ap­pear in the fu­ture. It is said that we can ver­i­fy an avatar of God ac­cord­ing to the de­scrip­tions pro­vid­ed in the Vedic lit­er­a­ture.

There will be times, es­pe­cial­ly in this age of Kali, when many peo­ple may be bold or fool­ish enough to de­clare that they are an in­car­na­tion of the Supreme. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there will al­so be those ig­no­rant enough to ac­cept such im­pos­tors. If they had knowl­edge of the Vedic de­scrip­tions, how­ev­er, they could tell which in­car­na­tions are sched­uled to ap­pear ac­cord­ing to the timetable giv­en in the Vedic texts with their names and char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The Hin­du re­li­gion does not claim any One Prophet, it does not wor­ship any One God, it does not fol­low any One act of re­li­gious rites or per­for­mances, in fact, it does not sat­is­fy the tra­di­tion­al fea­tures of re­li­gion or creed.

There are four Pu­rusharthas (ob­ject of hu­man pur­suit), Artha (wealth), Ka­ma (de­sire), Dhar­ma (right­eous­ness) and Mok­sha (lib­er­a­tion). These are said to be the four main goals of all Mankind.