Begin with the name. Study will follow the practice.
पहले नाम लो, पढ़ाई बाद में अपने आप आएगी।
His instruction to a new seeker is never a reading list. Scripture read by someone who chants lands differently from scripture read by someone collecting information.
Begin with the name. The study can follow
Devotees frequently want to prepare before they start. They ask which scripture to read first, whether they should learn Braj Bhasha, what the correct sequence of texts is, and how much they need to understand before beginning properly. He reverses the order without much ceremony. Start the practice now; read afterwards, if you still want to.
The reason is not anti-intellectual, and he does not disparage the texts. It is about what preparation usually turns into. Study is comfortable, it produces a feeling of progress, and it never ends, because there is always one more book. A person who has decided to be ready before beginning has chosen a project that cannot be completed, and many devotees spend years inside exactly that.
He also observes that the texts read differently on the other side of some practice. The Shri Hit Chaurasi, the founding text of his sampradaya, is not a manual and does not become one through effort; it is the record of something, and a reader with a running practice recognises what is being described in a way a reader without one cannot. Approaching it as preliminary homework gets the sequence backwards.
Living with this saying
There is a plainer point about access underneath it, and it is consistent with everything else he teaches. Most people who come to satsang cannot read Braj Bhasha and many read little of anything. If understanding were a prerequisite the practice would belong to the educated, which would be a strange conclusion for a tradition whose entire claim is that the name is available to everybody without conditions.
He is careful not to turn this into a rule against learning, and he does not tell people to avoid the texts. Read them, by all means, when the wish is genuine rather than a way of postponing. The distinction he draws is about function: study that sits alongside a practice is nourishment, and study that stands in front of one is an obstacle wearing a respectable coat.
What it asks of you is to notice which of the two you are doing. If you have been reading about the practice for some months and have not started it, that is the information. Begin today at whatever small size you can hold, keep it running, and let the reading resume from there. The books will still be there, and they will make more sense.
A saying, not a certified transcription: a short statement of a position he has taken consistently in public satsang.
Questions about this saying
What does Premanand Ji Maharaj mean by “Begin with the name. Study will follow the practice”?
His instruction to a new seeker is never a reading list. Scripture read by someone who chants lands differently from scripture read by someone collecting information.
What is this saying in Hindi?
पहले नाम लो, पढ़ाई बाद में अपने आप आएगी।
Is this an exact quotation?
No. It is a short statement of a position he has taken consistently in public satsang, not a certified transcription of one recording.
Where can I hear him speak about this?
His satsang is recorded and published on the official channels. This site is an independent devotee site and is not connected to the ashram.