46 Fun Facts About Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on 12 January 1863 under which name?

Narendranath Datta, Naren at home, was following a family precedent when he took his vows: his grandfather Durgacharan had left his own family to become a monk.

The 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago where Vivekananda spoke was staged as part of which larger event?

The World's Columbian Exposition was the world's fair Chicago held to mark 400 years since Columbus's voyage, which gave it his name; the Parliament met as one of the congresses attached to it.

Which greeting opened Vivekananda's 1893 Chicago address, reportedly drawing two minutes' applause?

Sisters and brothers of America brought thousands to their feet before he could go on; he then thanked them in the name of 'the most ancient order of monks in the world'.

Who suggested the name 'Vivekananda' in place of Sachidananda shortly before the monk sailed for America?

The Raja of Khetri, Ajit Singh, also swapped the monk's lower-class berth for a first-class ticket; the name he suggested joins viveka, discerning wisdom, with ananda, bliss.

Besides the Bhagavad Gita, which devotional classic of another faith did Vivekananda carry through five years wandering India?

The Imitation of Christ, the Gita, a staff and a water pot were almost all he carried; he drew parallels between the two books' teachings and wrote a preface to the Imitation.

The title Paramahamsa borne by Vivekananda's guru Ramakrishna literally means 'supreme' what?

Swan is the literal sense, a bird said to be equally at home on land and on water, as the true sage is at home in matter and in spirit.

Vivekananda and eight brother disciples took formal monastic vows at Antpur in 1886 on the day before which festival?

Christmas Eve it proved to be: by the Order's own account the young men took their vows before a fire and only afterwards learned the date, one reason its monks still honour Jesus.

Vivekananda died at Belur Math in 1902, aged 39 as he had foretold, on the date of which American holiday?

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, was the date: four years earlier to the day, travelling in Kashmir with American disciples, he had written them a poem called 'To the Fourth of July'.

Belur Math, the headquarters Vivekananda established for the Ramakrishna Order, stands on the west bank of which river?

The Hooghly flows past the grounds where Vivekananda placed Ramakrishna's relics on 9 December 1898, the act that founded the Math.

Vivekananda is said to have swum to a sea rock in December 1892 and meditated there for three days off which town?

Kanyakumari, India's southern tip, is where he resolved to cross the ocean and ask the outside world for the means to lift India's poor, the errand that took him to Chicago.

The Vivekananda Rock Memorial, funded partly through one-rupee folders, stands off which Indian state's coast?

Tamil Nadu, then Madras State, at first said no: its chief minister gave way only after 323 MPs signed in support, and ordinary donors then funded the memorial a rupee at a time.

Which organiser collected 323 MPs' signatures for the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and went on to found Vivekananda Kendra?

Eknath Ranade, a former RSS general secretary, camped in Delhi on Lal Bahadur Shastri's advice and had the signatures within days to present to the Prime Minister.

From which port did Vivekananda sail on 31 May 1893, reaching Chicago by way of Japan, China and Canada?

Bombay was the departure point, with the fare raised by his Madras disciples and several princely patrons, and he reached Chicago on 30 July 1893.

Which Harvard psychologist, after hearing Vivekananda speak, called him 'simply a wonder for oratorical power'?

William James added that the monk was 'an honor to humanity'; it was Vivekananda's book Raja-Yoga, built on Patanjali's Yoga aphorisms, that had caught the Harvard philosopher's attention.

Which nickname did American newspapers give Vivekananda in the months after the 1893 Parliament of Religions?

'The cyclonic monk from India' was the press label, and one paper wrote that after hearing him 'we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation'.

Vivekananda declined a chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard and a similar post at which other American university?

Columbia and Harvard both offered him academic positions, which he turned down because the duties would conflict with his commitment as a monk.

In which American city did Vivekananda found the first Vedanta Society in November 1894?

New York's society gained a physical home in January 1895, and Vivekananda later sent his brother-monk Abhedananda to take charge of it.

Which book collects the private lessons Vivekananda gave a dozen disciples at Thousand Island Park in summer 1895?

Inspired Talks was transcribed by Sara Ellen Waldo, who took down weeks of classes held in a cottage one of the students had offered.

Which thirteen-stanza poem did Vivekananda compose at Thousand Island Park in July 1895?

The Song of the Sannyasin sets out the ideals of the monk's life, and he wrote it the same summer that he initiated two of his Western students at the retreat into monastic vows.

Which poem did Vivekananda write in a fever in Kashmir in 1898?

Kali the Mother hails the goddess in her terrible form, as death and destroyer; the lines seized him so hard that he could not rest until they were down on paper.

Vivekananda's disciple Sister Nivedita, who opened a Calcutta girls' school in 1898, was born in Ireland as whom?

Margaret Noble was a London schoolteacher when she first heard him speak in 1895; without that meeting, she later wrote, her life would have been like 'a headless dream'.

The name Nivedita, which Vivekananda gave his Irish disciple on 25 March 1898, means what?

'Dedicated to God' came with a vow of brahmacharya taken at Nilambar Mukherjee's garden; she went on to nurse plague patients in Calcutta in 1899.

Which figure, revered by the Ramakrishna Order as Holy Mother, opened Sister Nivedita's school on Kali Puja day in 1898?

Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna's wife, had embraced the Irishwoman as 'khooki', little girl, within weeks of her arrival in Calcutta that January.

Belur Math's main temple, which blends the architecture of several faiths, has a ground plan shaped like which symbol?

A cross is the plan the engineer-monk Vijnanananda drew to Vivekananda's directions, its sanctum joined to a congregational hall as in a church, which its builders say older temples lacked.

In 1897, the year Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, one of his brother monks ran relief for victims of what?

Famine was already at hand: that same year Swami Akhandananda went to Murshidabad in Bengal to feed and nurse the starving, putting the new Mission's ideal of service straight to work.

Which creature on the emblem of Vivekananda's Ramakrishna Mission stands for yoga and the awakened kundalini?

A serpent plays that part in an emblem Vivekananda designed himself, in which waters, a lotus and a rising sun stand for work, devotion and knowledge, and a bird for the Supreme Self.

Which disciple of Ramakrishna, born Rakhal Chandra Ghosh, became the first president of the Order Vivekananda organised?

Swami Brahmananda was the boy Ramakrishna greeted as the spiritual son he had already seen in a vision, and he went on to head the Order until his death in 1922.

Which English couple who followed Vivekananda home from England founded the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati in 1899?

The Seviers, Captain James and Charlotte, set up a Himalayan ashram where, at Vivekananda's wish, no images are worshipped, not even of Ramakrishna.

Which English monthly of the Ramakrishna Order was begun in Madras in 1896 at Vivekananda's behest?

Prabuddha Bharata, 'Awakened India', stopped when its young first editor died in 1898; Vivekananda had it restarted from Almora in the Himalayas and wrote a poem to greet its return.

Ramakrishna, Vivekananda's guru, died in August 1886 at a garden house in Cossipore after developing which illness?

Throat cancer was diagnosed in 1885, and the disciples who nursed him at Cossipore received ochre robes from him, forming his first monastic order.

On the day he died, Vivekananda taught pupils the Shukla Yajur Veda, yoga philosophy and which other subject?

Sanskrit grammar filled part of that last day's teaching; he then took a long walk with a brother monk, laying out his plan for a Vedic college at the Math.

At which port did Vivekananda land on returning from the West, giving his first public speech in the East?

Colombo's welcome began a triumphal progress through Ceylon and southern India, during which people sat on railway tracks to force trains to stop so they could hear him.

Which city's Vedanta Society, founded by Vivekananda in 1900, built what is called the West's first Hindu temple?

San Francisco's society put up the temple in 1905, and within months of opening the building came through the great earthquake and fire of 1906.

In 1900 Vivekananda addressed the Congress of Religions in which city, speaking on the Bhagavad Gita's authenticity?

Paris held the congress alongside its 1900 Universal Exposition; his biographer Nikhilananda called it a rather tame affair beside Chicago's Parliament, confined to scholarly theories of how religions began.

Which soprano credited Vivekananda with lifting her from grief and travelled with him through Egypt around 1900?

Emma Calvé, famed for her Carmen, came to him in despair and left, she said, with her mind emptied of 'its feverish complexities'; she wrote that he 'truly walked with God'.

Which Oxford Indologist, author of Ramakrishna's first Western biography, met Vivekananda in May 1896?

Max Müller had already published an article on Ramakrishna, 'A Real Mahatman', and invited the disciple to visit so he could learn more about the master whose life he would go on to write.

Vivekananda told the Brooklyn Ethical Society he had a message to the West as who had a message to the East?

Buddha was the comparison; elsewhere he said he wanted to make 'the Methodist a better Methodist' rather than convert anyone to a new belief.

After Ramakrishna died in 1886, Vivekananda made a dilapidated house in which Calcutta suburb the first monastery?

Baranagar's monks lived on what holy begging brought in and, one of them recalled, rose at three in the morning to lose themselves in prayer and meditation.

Vivekananda's father, whose sudden death in 1884 left the family bankrupt, practised which profession?

An attorney at the Calcutta High Court, his father had a progressive, rational outlook that, together with his mother's piety, shaped the future monk.

Vivekananda studied Western philosophy at Calcutta's General Assembly's Institution, known today by which name?

Scottish Church College's principal, Hastie, called him 'really a genius', saying he had never met a lad of such talents even in German universities.

As a student Vivekananda joined Keshab Chandra Sen's Band of Hope, which tried to discourage young people from what?

Smoking and drinking were its targets from 1881 to 1884; Sen's Nava Vidhan and the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj also shaped the young man's rationalist beliefs.

Which city's airport was renamed for Vivekananda in 2012 because he lived there as a teenager in the 1870s?

Raipur, where his family lived from 1877 to 1879, renamed its Mana Airport for him on 24 January 2012; Chhattisgarh's state technical university also bears his name.

At which Kali temple, built by Rani Rashmoni in 1855, did Vivekananda visit Ramakrishna, who served there as priest?

Dakshineswar became the young sceptic's regular destination after his father's death, though at first he dismissed Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations.

Vivekananda's birthday, 12 January, has been observed across India since 1985 as which national day?

National Youth Day was declared by the Government of India in 1984, which said his philosophy and the ideals he lived and worked for could greatly inspire the country's young.

In G. V. Iyer's 1998 film Swami Vivekananda, which actor won a National Film Award for playing Ramakrishna?

Mithun Chakraborty's third National Film Award came for a film whose director spent eleven years on the research and screenplay.

Vivekananda Setu, a 1931 rail-and-road bridge across the river at Bally, was first named after which Viceroy?

Lord Willingdon's name gave way to Bally Bridge before the span, built to link Calcutta's port with the railhead at Howrah, was renamed for the monk.