The Book:
The Vachanamrut or the nectarine discourses of Bhagwan Swaminarayan is the most sacred and foundational scripture of the Swaminarayan Sampraday. It contains the profound wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmasutras, Bhagvad Gita, Bhagvat Purana, Dharma shastras like Yagnavalkya Smruti, Vidurniti, and epics like the Ramayan and Mahabharat.1
It is the essence of ancient Indian wisdom given by Bhagwan Swaminarayan and compiled by His four contemporary scholarly-sadhus who were known for their asceticism and scholarship in Sanskrit, besides their devotion to Him.
In fact every statement of the Master is packed with and based on His in-depth religious knowledge, spiritual insights and practical experience. It contains practical and philosophical answers to the sincere enquiries of all types of aspirants regarding life in this world and the life hereafter.
The Vachanamrut is not only a sacred shastra in the Sampraday, but a shastra of every day study. All the literate followers read it daily and the illiterate listen to at least a page everyday. It is read and elaborated upon daily in the Swaminarayan mandirs the world over. It is a landmark shastra, philosophically and in all other aspects. It is the first modern Gujarati prose work which the noted Gujarati critic and poet, Shri Uma Shankar Joshi, acclaimed as the very pinnacle of Gujarati prose.
The Vachanamrut, a compilation of 273 spiritual discourses, is divided into 10 sections. The discourses were delivered by Bhagwan Swaminarayan in the last decade of His life, between 1819 and 1829 CE in Gujarati. Its simplicity of diction and style invariably reminds one of our ancient Upanishads. They were mostly delivered in ashram-like ambience in secluded places like Gadhada, Sarangpur, Kariyani, Loya, Panchala, Vartal, Aslali, and Jetalpur.
The book records the dialogues and conversation between the Master and His disciples in such a way that even the most abstruse and esoteric problems of philosophy and religion are answered, doctrines explained, terminology formulated and concepts cleared, both from the theoretical and practical point of view concerning daily life and spiritual sadhna.

The Master:
The protagonist of the shastra, Bhagwan Swaminarayan, was born on 3rd April 1781 - Vikram Samvat 1837, Chaitra sud 9 in Chhapaiya, near Ayodhya. His parents were a respectable Brahmin couple, Hari Prasad Pande and Murti Devi. They are known as Dharma Pita and Bhakti Mata in the Sampraday. His childhood name was Ghanshyam. He mastered all important Hindu scriptures under the guidance of his father by the age of seven. He renounced His home at the age of eleven and embarked upon a pilgrimage of sacred places in the country. He walked bare footed and had only a piece of cloth or two on his body even when He was in the Himalayas. He gained mastery over Ashtang-Yoga at the age of 14. It was a memorable event in the religious history of India when this unknown teenager from U.P., called Nilkanth, a total stranger to Gujarat's culture and language, arrived at Lojpur on 21st August 1799. He was given diksha by His guru, Ramanand Swami, on 20th October 1800 and named as Sahajanand and Narayanmuni. Ramanand Swami revealed the supreme divinity of Sahajanand Swami to his disciples. Within a year Ramanand Swami appointed Sahajanand Swami as the head of the fellowship when He was only 20 years old.
In December 1801, Ramanand Swami passed away. A few days after that, Sahajanand Swami introduced to the disciples the new 'Swaminarayan Mantra'. Very shortly people identified 'Sahajanand' with the 'Swaminarayan Mantra' and He thus became popularly known as Swaminarayan; the preacher became the message and the highest object of worship for both the householder and ascetic disciples who had been the followers of Ramanand Swami till then.
Lalji Suthar (later Nishkulanand Swami), a staunch follower of Ramanand Swami and a renowned poet, in his book called the Yama-Danda, written in 1804, described Him as 'God'. These momentous events speak volumes for Bhagwan Swaminarayan's greatness and glory.
From the time of His diksha in 1800 to His departure from this world in 1830, He initiated 3000 sadhus, 500 of whom were paramhansas of the highest spiritual calibre. With their help He ushered in a social, moral and spiritual renaissance in the lives of people in the first three decades of the 19th century.
To understand the depth and significance of Bhagwan Swaminarayan's teachings, it is also necessary to know about His personality and work which was accepted and appreciated by people who were not His followers.
An English contributor to the reputed 'Asiatic Journal' of England has written an article named 'Indian Sect: Memorandum respecting a sect, lately introduced by a person calling himself Swamee Naraen.' In this article he concludes, "most intelligent people in the country believed that his preaching had produced great effect in improving morals of the people... my own dialogues with natives lead me to form the same opinion. People of all castes and persuasions resort to Swamee Naraen. The number of his followers is very great, estimated by the most intelligent natives at about one hundred thousand."2
The British Government census of 1872, the last census which gives a breakdown of membership in different religious groups, gives the membership of the Swaminarayan religion as 287,687 in a total population of 6,693,289.3 Bhagwan Swaminarayan and His disciples were physically attacked, abused and harassed by both religious and secular powers because they felt threatened at the increasing size of His following. Despite persecutions the Sampraday grew to such an extent, even qualitatively, that the well known historian R.C. Majumdar calls it 'the greatest of the reforming sects of Gujarat' in his work Maratha Supremacy. Behind the exponential growth of the Sampraday are the universal teachings of the Master exemplified by the Vachanamrut and the Shikshapatri - the latter being a book of moral code of conduct of 212 shlokas. His band of three thousand sadhus and innumerable householder-devotees had listened and imbibed these discourses which were delivered from such diverse places as mandirs, farms, dining rooms, centres of festivals, homes and houses of followers.

Editors:
As has already been mentioned the discourses were written not by a single editor but by four contemporary scholarly-sadhus while they were being delivered. These editors were:

End Notes:
All references to the Vachanamrut are from its English translation, second edition (revised) 1st reprint, 2002 published by Swaminarayan Aksharpith, Shahibaug, Amdavad.