This is the revised form of a paper which was contributed to the Commemoration Volume published in October, 1933, at Ajmer (Rajputana, India), on the occasion of the celebration of the semi-centenary of the passing of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the Reformer of Hinduism and Founder of the Arya Samaj, who, for a short while, joined hands with the Founders of the Theosophical Society.

Benares 1-5-1934               BHAGAVAN DAS

(FROM Righteousness doth rise all lawful Wealth,
Whence the Fulfilling of all just Desire –
Why walk not then that Way of Righteousness !)

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.” (B.)

Every fresh proclamation by a great soul (1) of the One Eternal Essential Religion of the Oneness of God, the Supreme all-pervading Principle of all Life and Consciousness, the Universal Father, (2) of [Page 2] the consequent Brotherhood of Man, and (3) of the resultant natural Duty of whole-hearted Love and Service of and Co-operation with Fellowmen, which is the indispensable condition and sure source of all peace, prosperity, progress and happiness — every such re-proclamation has been followed by a fresh civilisation in human history.

This Essential Spiritual Religion, embodied in the Upanishads and the Gita, formed the basis of the ancient Indian civilisation from about 5000 B.C. to about 600 B.C. Then it decayed. Tirthankara Parshva-natha, about 850 B.C., and again Tirthankara Mahavira Jina, about 600 B:C., endeavoured to put new life into it. But chiefly the Buddha, contemporary with Mahavira Jina of India, Laotse and Confucius of China, and Pythagoras of Greece, proclaimed it in a new form, here, some 2,500 years ago, revived the decaying civilisation, and gave it a new lease of life.

This re-stored intellectual and emotional energy of the people indirectly helped the growth of the magnificent Empire of Chandragupta and his teacher and prime minister; Chanakya-Kautilya, (contemporary with Alexander and his teacher Aristotle, and nearly so with the emperor Shi-hwang-ti and the philosopher Mencius of China), and directly developed the yet more magnificent, [Page 3] and, what is far more, in all history matchlessly beneficent, empire of Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka Priya-darshi, the ‘Tender-eyed’. the ‘Lover of Mankind‘. Its vitality lasted for about 1,200 years. Then, having exhausted its missionary fervour, its preaching and teaching ardour, its literary activity, its colonising enterprise, it began to fail. Yet it lingered on for another 400 years or so, here and there, in this country, and then sank back again into the Vaidika ways, out of the degeneration of which it had arisen as a Great Reform.

During this period, the Vishv-atma, the Ruh-i-Kul, the Oversoul, the Collective-Mind, sent two other great teachers; Jesus the Messiah, to the Hebrew race, nearly 2,000 years ago, “not to destroy but to fulfil“ the Old Testament by the New; and Muhammad the Prophet, to the allied Arab race, about 1,400 years ago, to give to it the same Eternal Word of God in the language of the Quran.

“Innahu la fi zubur-il-awwalin ... Le kullé qaumin had ...“ (Q).

(This that I am now uttering unto you,
Is to be found in th’ ancients’ sayings too;
For prophets have been sent to every race.)

Buddhism declined, together with its corresponding magnificent civilisation, i.e., its special language and literature, its architectural and other arts, its forms of worship, its social manners and conventions, because, it would seem, of the loss of ‘virtue’, and the gradual growth of indolence, love of ease, luxury, avarice, vice, sin, tantrika practices of ‘black magic’, jadu, hypocrisy, crimes, and, finally, political ‘intrigues’, in the great viharas, the monastery-universities; and because of the fostering of excessive Buddha - idol - worship, and literalism and formalism outside the viharas; in consequence of all which the priests lost the trust of the people.

Just about this time, i.e. the middle of the seventh century, A:D., Islam came to the shores of Malabar, and then, a little later, in the last years of that century, to those of Sind. To the Malabar coast, Arabs had been coming for long, in pre-Islamic times, for trade purposes. And in these southernmost parts of India, Islam spread slowly and quietly, by peaceful attraction, without any political pressure, down to the end of the thirteenth century A.D., when southern India was invaded by Alauddin’s general, Malik Kafur.

In northern India, too, down to the end of the tenth century, i:e., the beginning of the raids of Mahmud of Ghazna there was very little fighting between the followers of the two religions as such, [Page 7] except perhaps in Sind. We may also note that Mahmud Ghaznavi was almost an Indian. The countries now called Afghanistan and Baluchistan were parts of India in his day, and their population, and also of great parts of Turkestan, was wholly Hindu or Buddhist, shortly before his time, and largely so in his day. His raids too, were, in motive, probably very much like the dig-vijaya, ashva-medha, and raja-suya (accession and coronation and overlordship) raids of Hindu kings. From the eleventh to the sixteenth century, the new religion and the old competed with one another, for the favour of the Indian people, somewhat more strenuously. Yet, it seems, they did so without any clear collective consciousness, on either side, that it was a struggle between the religions as such. The battles were principally motived by the ordinary ambitions of warrior-chiefs for plunder, martial glory, political supremacy, extension of territory. Thus even the religiously liberal, but politically imperialistic, Akbar drove the brave and noble Hindu queen Durgavati of Garha Mandala, (Gondwana), famous in ballad, to her death in A.D. 1566, and overran her territory and plundered her wealth, accumulated during many generations; and he also, similarly, caused the death of the equally valorous and famous Musalman queen Chand Bibi of Ahmadnagar, in 1596; Imperialism is more murderous than communalism. So, on the other hand, Aurangzeb, whom history knows as [Page 8] a bigot, was not an altogether indiscriminate iconoclast. He seems to have sincerely disliked the irrational superstition almost inseparable from excessive idolatry. But — so  traditions current among the Hindus themselves say, and traditions have their psychological value, even when not historically provable – his instructions were that those shrines should be spared, the keepers of which could show any extraordinary mystical or mysterious power. ”Apar-nath ka Tekra”(a large stone building, at Lakshmi-kunda, in Benares) is said to have been built by him for Apar-nath, because the latter showed him some extraordinary feats of Hatha-yoga. He also made a grant of several villages (still in their possession, with the exception of a part of one which was acquired for the grounds of the Benares Hindu University in 1915-16) to the heads of the sect of Jangamas, because of a display of their mysterious fire-walking powers, which powers they retain to this day, and exhibit to the public now and then (the present writer having witnessed the ceremony twice). The temple of Someshwara-nath in Arail, near Allahabad, also still enjoys part of the jagir granted to it by him, and the priests have still in their possession the original Persian firman making the grant, signed by Aurangzeb himself. Other instances can be quoted. An amusing one is recorded by Kincaid and Parasnis, (A History of the Maratha People, III, pp: 9-10): “Aurangzeb’s men-at-arms had [Page 9] tried to plunder the temple of Jejuri ... one of the holiest spots in the Deccan ... but had been ignominiously driven out by a swarm of hornets that ‘miraculously ‘ issued forth from a hole in the temple wall. The bigoted Emperor, convinced against his reason, of the power of a Hindu idol, bestowed on it a diamond worth a lakh and a quarter!”

The incoming religion was an openly proselytising creed. The indigenous religion had thrown away and lost the vital power of assimilation, very clearly embodied in the Vedic injunction,

“ Aryanise, civilise, the world”. The noble significance of the word ‘Arya’, from ‘ri’, to go, indicated by its etymology, may be expounded, thus,

 “He who is worthy to be gone to, approached, for help in trouble, and to whom people in distress run for relief therefrom – he is Arya”. The self-denying, other-helping; philanthropic person is the true Arya. [Page 11]

This assimilatively civilising, reforming, refining power, inherent in the very nature of Essential Religion, as a message for all from, and a call of all to, the God within and without — this power; the indigenous religion had formerly possessed and exercised fully and freely. Thereby, in pre-Buddhistic and Buddhistic times, it had, by ceremonies like the vratya-stoma, accommodated and incorporated all sorts of vratya, i:e. ‘nomad’ groups, tribes, communities, scattered all over India, or coming from outside, into its own shalina, i.e., ‘settled’ industrial - economical - political - educational organisation – of chatur-varnya, four temperamental - vocational classes, which are ‘the four inevitable natural estates of every civilised (or even semi-civilised) realm’, and which are only systematised and regularised in and by Varn-ashrama Dharma with clear partitioning and balancing of rights and corresponding duties between the four. Not only had it lost this power of inclusion and assimilation; it had begun to exclude, to positively drive out; it was ossifying into innumerable mutually ‘touch-me-not ’ castes and sub-castes.

Only when Hindus at large realise that ‘Hinduism‘ has developed prolific germs of fissiparous degeneracy within itself, whereby it has literally driven away millions, generation after generation, from its own fold into the folds of other religions, chiefly Islam, and, to a much smaller extent, [Page 12] Christianity — only then can the further rapid decay of Vaidika Dharma be stayed; only then will it revive and purify itself, as Swami Dayananda and some others have desired and endeavoured that it should, and will help to purify other religions also, by force of active example, from that excessive literalism, formalism, insistence on Non-Essentials and neglect of Essentials, which is the main cause of all religious conflicts; only then will it draw the world’s attention to those Spiritual Essentials which are common to all religions, and the insistence on which alone can promote good will and righteousness, and therefore peace and material prosperity throughout the human world.

It is well known that followers often try to outrun their leaders, and ruin their work by excess of zeal. History tells us that the Prophet Muhammad desired Khalid to bring to him a certain Arab chief, for persuasion into the fold of ‘Islam’, which word also has a noble significance, viz., “Love of God and submission to His will, whence inner and outer salm, shanti, peace“. Khalid was unfortunately short of temper, long of sword, strong of arm. He was fashioned for the work, not of teacher and preacher, but of soldier. The Arab chief demurred to his peremptory summons. Instead of bringing him whole, body and soul, Khalid brought his head, separated from both, to the Prophet. Muhammad expiated the great sin by much fast, vigil, and prayer to God for [Page 13] forgiveness. So the Vedic scriptures, while enjoining cleanliness of body and purity of mind, and careful avoidance of all unwholesomeness and impurity in diet and of all disparity of psycho-physical temperament in marriage, as naturally and properly do all scriptures of all religions, nowhere give countenance to the self-righteous and senseless exclusiveness and pretentious and hypocritical ‘don’t-touch-ism‘ which are the most outstanding features of Hinduism today.

The case of Kala-Pahar, “Black Mountain“ or “Black Giant”, (also known as Kala-yavana in Assam), is well-known in Bengal. Originally a brahmana of the name of Raja-chandra (called Raju by Muslim historians), outcasted by his fellow-brahmanas on utterly false’ and trumpery charges of breach of trivial caste-customs, he formally embraced Islam, and, then, as commander of Nawab Daud’s forces, in the second half of the sixteenth century, destroyed numberless temples and oppressed [Page 14] and punished the brahmanas. The story of Sultan Sikandar, who reigned in Kashmir at the end of the fourteenth century is somewhat similar. His ancestors had recently adopted Islam, and he wanted to go back into the Hindu fold; but the Pandits declined to receive him back. He is now remembered as the Idol-Breaker and as having forced the bulk of the population to conform to the Muslim religion.

That in 1,200 years, from A.D. 700 to the present times, the Muslim population has grown from nil to about 25 p.c., and only 25 p.c., and the Hindu shrunk from about 100 p.c. to about 65 p.c:, and only 65 p.c.; (the remaining 10 p.c. being covered by other religions, Christian, Parsi, etc.) — this fact is mathematical proof, on the one hand, that the Hindu ‘majority’ as such has never thought of oppressing any other religious ‘minority‘ as such, but has, instead, fostered many such minorities and helped them to grow in its midst; (e.g., the Christian, which began to form in southern India in the very first century A.C., and which has grown here peacefully and slowly ever since, except when the first Portuguese invaders attempted forcible conversion for a while; and the Parsi, which established a colony in Surat, fleeing from Persia in the seventh century A.C. because of Arab invasion); and, on the other hand, it is proof that Islam has not spread so much by the sword as by the quiet pressure of political influence in the times of [Page 15] Musalman kings and emperors, and by its ‘attractiveness’ for the so-called ‘lower castes’ or ‘depressed classes‘ of the Hindus, helped by the ‘repulsiveness‘ of Hinduism for those ‘lower castes‘ — ’repulsiveness‘ proved by the very adjective ‘lower’, nicha-jati, applied to them by the self-styled higher.

On the other side, within the pale of Hinduism, appeared from time to time, good and great teachers, earnest men, devotees of God, bhaktas and jnanis, sadhus and sants, saints and sages, individuals belonging to the same ‘spiritual race’ as the sufis and auliyas, who also taught the same eternal truths in popular language, and endeavoured to tone down the differences of the surface between creed and creed and caste and caste. Vedanta and Yoga of the one side, Tasawwuf and Suluk of the other began to recognise fraternal resemblance in each other’s faces. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the Emperor Akbar, like the Emperor Harsha-vardhana, a thousand years earlier, made a brave effort at the reconciliation of all religions; an effort to complete, with the help of political influence, the spiritual work of the hermits, durveshas and sannyasis, faqirs and mahatmas, akhunds and swamis; while his contemporaries of Europe, Bloody Mary and scarcely less bloody Elizabeth of England were torturing and murdering Protestants and Roman Catholics respectively, and awful crimes against humanity were being committed, in the name of religion, in the Netherlands, France, Spain, and other countries.

But the time was not yet ripe. More heating and melting of the metals, in the fire of unhappy contests, was needed before they would weld into a sound and useful alloy. Hotter fires, of wars due to fanatical frenzy, have been used by Providence, [Page 17] in the West, to stimulate, on the one hand, ‘collective consciousness’, ‘common sentiment’, on the plane of mind, in respect of deliberately-held principles of life-conduct, (as distinguished from merely physiological ‘herd-ing‘ or even racial or national ‘horde-ing’, on the plane of the body), and; on the other hand, to make human beings realise the reductio ad absurdum of bigotry in religion; then to usher in the Age of Science; to lead that age, by excess of reaction, to the contrary extreme of frantic sensuality and horrible misuse of science, whence political and economic world-wars and world-bankruptcies; finally, let us hope and pray, to bring round again, on a much higher level, in the cyclic chakra of samsara, the world-process; the Age of Religious Science or Scientific Religion, when the Human Race as a whole will see that Spirit and Matter, Soul and Body, Religion and Science, are interdependent, are aspects of the same one Truth.

In the centuries after the tenth, Islamic religion and also political rule slowly advanced, and ’Hinduism’ — no longer true Vaidika Dharma (which words etymologically mean all the best that the modern words “Scientific Religion” can convey) – receded, socially and also politically, largely because of the same Spirit of ‘separativeness’, and ‘each for himself’, and consequent weakening, internal and external. Yet the natural [Page 18] and inevitable result of all these historical processes was that Hindus and Musalmans were constantly influencing each other, affecting and changing each other’s ways of life, as neighbours, in times of peace, and even in war, for both Hindu and Muslim soldiers were often to be found on each side. All this tended necessarily towards an amalgamation of cultures. Even so, today; we see assimilation of European ways of thinking and living, by well-to-do Hindus and Musalmans both, going on in the larger towns, and tending to serve as a means of closer approximation between these two, but sterilised in this respect by artificially created divisive politico-economic deceptions. The difference is that this new assimilation is one-sided, not reciprocated by the western resident, because he is politically dominant over both Hindu and Musalman in a manner in which these two never have been over one another, and because he lives apart, is not a neighbour, is not, (with the exception of the small community of Eur-asians or Anglo-Indians) a child of the soil (as every Indian Musalman is now, being a descendant of Hindu ancestors, paternal, or maternal, or both), does not adopt India as his motherland, and does not make it his home permanently. The few noble exceptions to this general practice of the western resident only prove the rule.

The amalgamation of the two cultures progressed slowly, because the outer forms of the two religions [Page 19] were different (though scarcely more so than those of the several sects of Hinduism or even those of Islam). But it progressed steadily because of constant neighbourhood and the interweaving of manifold social relations, and because, after all, the inner truths of both were the same.

They accepted ideas and practices from one another in philosophy, science (medicine, astronomy, etc.), fine arts (architecture, music, painting, calligraphy, illustration and illumination of manuscripts, weaving and embroidering and dyeing of fine cloths, shawls, blankets, and carpets, of cotton, silk, wool, and gold and silver thread, jewellery, perfumery, etc.), and crafts (metal-working, utensil-fashioning, weapon-making, etc.). The ways of living (housing, clothing, dietary, etc.) approximated more and more. Both joined in each other’s festivals freely. Hindu and Muslim kings wore the Same type of dress, at least for formal occasions. Many of the most favourite flowers and confections of India today have Persian-Arabic names; halwa, barfi, murabba, sharbat, gul-ab, gul-i-daudi, gul-i-shabbu, itr, etc., have become household words in Hindu homes; so dal, chapati, roti, puri, kachauri; tarkari, phal, sag, achar, pan, bela, chameli, etc., in Musalman homes; in northern India. The names of the cloths, clothes, utensils, and articles of furniture, used by Hindus and Musalmans alike, are an inseparable mixture of Samskrt and Arabic-Persian words, in the Hindu-Urdu or Hindustani speaking [Page 20] parts of India. Lala, as a title of respect, is used exclusively among and for Hindus, particularly in northern India; never now among Musalmans; yet, so Gibbon informs us incidentally (Ch. 58; Roman Empire), it is a Turkish-Mongolian word; it must have come into India with the Moghals. It must also not be forgotten that if Muslims are meat-eaters, so are the vast majority of Hindus, the only difference being that the one avoid one animal as too beneficent to humanity to be killed, and the other another as too unclean to be eaten. The scriptures of both equally forbid spirituous liquors.

As Hindus have added to their pantheon and their scheme of worship, all sorts of Muslim takiyas, dargahs, maqbaras, faqirs, auliyas, so would the Muslim masses have probably taken to mandiras, tirthas, sadhus, yogis; etc., also, if only Hindu priests had been less narrow-sighted and exclusive, and more large-hearted and liberal-minded. As it is, millions of Muslims offer milk and eatables on the altars of Shitala, the goddess of small-pox, in villages, and, less ‘happily’, Shia Musalmans have learnt to imitate the ‘don’t-touch-ism‘ of the Hindu; and certain Sufi sects, in their internal organisation, have adopted offices and names from corresponding Hindu sects of Sanyasis and Udasis, such as Sir-gur (Shri-Guru), Bhandari, Upakari, Chauk, etc..

Notwithstanding the exclusiveness of the Hindu, neo-Muslims often kept up relations with their old [Page 21] brahmana priests. Learned men, poets, physicians; and astrologers of the other community were almost always attached to the courts and houses of royal and other powerful families of each community. In legal matters also, there was approximation. The Khojas of the south follow Hindu law. The Muslim Taluqdars (landholders) of Oudh, like their Hindu confrères, observe the law of primogeniture, though it is not in accord with the Muslim law or Fiqah. Muslims in the U.P. and the Punjab seldom give the daughter’s share to her, though Fiqah requires it.

Such approximation was natural and inevitable, when the vast majority of the Muslim population was recruited from the ranks of the Hindus, and could not give up lifelong habits at once or altogether. Indeed, if the custodians of the Vaidika Dharma had retained the needed qualities of head and heart, they would have easily retained all this population in the old religion, and, more, would probably have been able to absorb the new-comers into it. As it was, the comparatively very few Musalmans who came from other countries, when they settled here permanently, were compelled by the social and climatic conditions of the country to adopt many of its habits. Converted Hindu women, married into Muslim households, retained many of their religious and semi-religious customs and practices, and considerably modified Muslim home-life. If Hindu chiefs, in those early days, could [Page 22] have had the necessary length and breadth of vision, and could have, not only given daughters to, but taken daughters from, friendly Muslim chiefs, who were quite willing — as Pauranika Kshatttriyas married women of the deva, daitya, rakshasa, yaksha, gandharva, naga, and other races, as Chandragupta married a Greek princess — the fusion of the two cultures and religions would have been completed long ago. It may be noted here that, though the religious communities, other than the Hindu, which inhabit India, do not call themselves Hindu, yet the members of all, as much as the Hindus, are equally called Hindi, quite rightly and naturally in the near west; i.e., Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Egypt — because Hind-i means ”inhabitant of Hind”, i.e., India; (as Bengal-i of Bengal, Madras-i of Madras, Panjabi of Panjab, Gujerati of Gujerat), which was the original meaning of the word Hind-u also:

The tale of the political and other alliances and friendly social relations; of chivalrous mutual loyalties to the extreme end, famous in Rajput ballads, as in the case of king Hammira of Ranthambhor and his Muslim refugee against Sultan Alauddin; of religious reformers in both communities with common aims of rapprochement, and of their partial success and partial failure, because of the play of priestcraft and kingcraft on the inherent weaknesses of human nature — this tale might be prolonged indefinitely. [Page 23]

Errors, evil ideas, and evil practices, have a tremendous power of persistence. The curse of caste-exclusiveness has crept into even the Muslim and the Christian populations of India, here and there, though, of course, in a milder form. ‘Milki‘ Muslims try to marry with only ‘Milki‘ Muslims and ‘Khatik‘ Muslims with only ‘Khatik‘ Muslims, e.g., in the U.P., and, in Goa, Brahman Khristis (Christians) with Brahman Khristis, and Kshattriya Khristis with Kshattriya Khristis, and so on. That a pernicious idea or practice, patently evil and irrational, may yet keep a whole vast and even intelligent, educated, civilised, nation in its vampire grip, for centuries after centuries, is illustrated by the fearful custom of the cramping; torturing, and disfiguring of women’s feet in China — which was abolished only recently, after the great revolution there, in 1912. The case of the mutually ‘untouchable’, rigidly hereditary castes and sub-castes of India is similar.

God, presumably, wants the world-drama to be prolonged indefinitely, and a drama is not possible without the maya of both wisdom and error, good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hate, alliance and conflict, laughter and tears. Therefore, perhaps, the fusion is being delayed.

Almost the most important consequence, and the clearest proof, of the amalgamation, is the steady growth and development of the Hindustani language, the destined Lingua Indica, in its two forms, [Page 24] Hindi and Urdu. But even here, Providence, for further testing, strengthening. and educating of the people, has introduced antagonisms. The Upanishad tells how,

 “What the gods tried to do, of and for good, their step-brothers, the titans, ran after and stained with sin and evil”. The Puranic conception of the divine saint Narada fomenting quarrels between kings by exciting their pride; the Hebrew conception of the Archangel Azaziel commanded by God, to become Satan and tempt human beings for their testing and ultimate salvation through suffering — all expound the same eternally-repeated phenomenon. ‘Religional‘ and ‘political‘ mis-leaders and wire-pullers are always staining unselfish work with selfishness, always thwarting the efforts of the good-leaders to guide mankind in the right direction. God would not be known if he were not contrasted with Satan. As the Persians say,

“Subut-i-shay ba zidd-i-shay.”
“All things are proven by their opposites.”

A larger and fuller synthesis was needed than even the mysticism of the saints and the idealism [Page 25] of Akbar had contemplated, and than was possible in their day — a synthesis based on a more varied and more extensive experience, by the whole of India, and of more religions than two, and to be achieved with the help of the rationalising, reconciling, welding power of widespread science and philosophy.

The convulsive and greatly belated effort made by India in 1857, to recover her political footing, rapidly slipping away, or, rather, already slipped away, from beneath her, failed — because she had not yet learnt the lesson that Providence wished her to learn. She had yet to pass through more [Page 26] sad experience of ‘separatism‘ and its consequences, in all the main concerns of life — religion, as the root and trunk, and domesticity, social relations, education, recreation, art, economics, politics, as the shoots and branches thereof. She had yet to realise — as indeed have all the mutually antagonistic nations of East and West alike, and as those of the West are trying to, slowly, very slowly, through the new ideas and new methods of the League of Nations — that we are all parts of One Great Whole, all members and limbs of the same One Organism, like head, arms, trunk, and legs,

Bani-Adam a’za-i-yak-digar and,

and that rational consultation, conference, cooperation, accommodation, far-sighted planning, are far more beneficial to all concerned, in the long run, than passionate militancy, rivalry, sabre-rattling, haphazard patchwork, muddling along, aggressive self-assertion, and other-exclusion.

After 1857, the soul of Muslim religion and culture concentrated itself in one person largely for a new effort of self-rejuvenation. A great leader arose among the Musalmans — Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan. He felt that if Islam was to be preserved from decay in India, some departure [Page 27] had to be made from the traditions of religious as well as political orthodoxy. He saw the necessity of taking the younger generation in hand. His great educational work, with its consequences, some foreseen, and others unforeseen, because of complications with new religio-political movements, is well known in India.

The soul of Vaidika Dharma, in its urge of self-preservation by self-renewal, concentrated itself also in one individual largely for a time. A great leader arose among the Hindus too, simultaneously. Swami Dayananda Saraswati after [Page 28] deep heart-searchings, wanderings in forests and in mountains, and inner conversion of soul from formalism to essential philosophical and spiritual religion, felt it his mission to purify Vaidika Dharma from the manifold evils that had crept into the practice of it and corrupted it very largely from a blessing into a curse. He felt inspired to endeavour to re-Aryanise, re-civilise, India, along lines that would restore the best of the old, and make possible the selection of the good and avoidance of the bad in the new. He retired from the world, became a ‘sannyasi‘ — a true ‘missionary of God’, vowed to poverty, devoid of worldly riches and desires, so that spiritual riches might flow in, in ample measure, in their place — and began the work of his mission, by public preaching, in Agra, in 1863. “Back to the Vedas; worship the One God within and without all; organise yourselves, organise your Society, by the true Varna and Ashrama Dharma, of karmana varnah,” i.e., four natural vocational classes according to temperament or swa-bhava and corresponding appropriate karma, i.e., means of living, occupation, bread-winning profession, and division of the individual life into the four natural stages, regularly — this was his cry, as against time-wasting, intellect-stunting, superstition-fostering, separatism-nourishing worship of multitudinous idols, animals, plants; and against rigidly hereditary and mutually more or less ‘touch-me-not’ castes [Page 29] and sub-castes; of which there are now some three thousand, according to the Census Reports — everyone of these unable to intermarry with any other, and almost all of them unable to interdine also, in respect of at least some if not all preparations of food and drink.

Swami Dayananda began his public teaching in Agra, in 1863, as said above; and the Arya Samaj was founded, in Bombay, in 1875. Sir Sayyad Ahmad’s first school was started in Moradabad in 1861; and in 1875 was started his school at Aligarh which, two years later, became the Mohomedan Anglo-Oriental College. Swami Dayananda wrote rationalist commentaries on the Vedas, with extraordinary learning. So did Sir Sayyad Ahmad on the Quran. Both were anathema to the orthodox Pandits and Maulvis respectively. From 1863 to 1883, Swami Dayananda wandered incessantly, all over the upper and larger half of India, like the Buddha, preaching, and holding disputations with the orthodox pandits, in town after town, and arousing keen interest and controversy among the Hindu public. The movement took strongest root in the Punjab and western U.P., but its influence spread all over India, and helped to energise many other movements in which the reviving life of the Indian [Page 30] people is trying to find expression. After the Swami’s passing away, as the best memorial to him, a Dayananda Anglo-Vedic School was founded at Lahore in 1886. It developed into a College in 1888. Its name is significant of its purpose, like that of the M.A.O. College of Aligarh, and, today, it is one of the most distinguished educational institutions of the land.

Swami Dayananda may certainly be said to be the first pioneer and principal author of the latest Hindu revival, as Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan of the Muslim. Justice M.G. Ranade, himself “a man truly great, judged by no matter what standard” — this is the generous verdict of an Englishman, Kincaid, (vide Kincaid and Parasnis, A History of the Maratha People, I, 271) – wrote of the Swami, after his death:

“Religious fervour, … a daring and adventurous spirit born of a confidence that a higher power than man’s protected him and his work, the magnetism of superior genius … a rare insight into the needs of the times and a steadfastness of purpose which no adverse turn of fortune could conquer, a readiness and resourcefulness rarely met with, ... true patriotism which was far in advance of the times, and a sense of justice tempered with mercy — these were the sources of strength which enabled him to organise a great movement like the Arya Samaj.”

Many other movements and forces are very interesting and important to consider, for historical as well as practical purposes, in connection with the religious and moral growth of mankind, e.g., the Wahabi movement of Arabia, the Doukhobortski of Russia, the Babis and Bahais of Persia, the Spiritualists of U.S.A., the Theosophical Society (which has branches in all the continents, including some fifty civilised countries of the Earth), and, with special reference to the Hindu and Muslim revivals of India, the Brahmo Samaj, the Qadianis, the Deobandi Anjuman-i-Islamia, the Poona Sarva-janika Sabha, the Fergusson College, the Ganapati festivals and Shiva-ji celebrations, the Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Benares, Swami Vivekananda’s Mission and Ramakrishna Homes of Service, the Shibli Dar-ul-ulum of Azamgarh; and finally the Hindu Sabhas and Muslim Leagues. But they cannot be dealt with here at length, though they have all helped, directly or indirectly, the two revivals, the growth of the two collective communal consciousnesses, the two distinct common sentiments, in India. The two have, very unfortunately, been separate and separatist, under the pressure of internal and external circumstances and crafty and sinister influences acting on human weaknesses.

The general idea of socio-religious reform may be said to be common to the Arya Samaj and Sir [Page 32] Sayyad Ahmad’s school of thinkers. At one time, the latter were dubbed as Necharia (naturists) by orthodox Maulvis, some of whom have been heard to say jocularly to friendly orthodox Hindus: “Your Arya Samajis are our Necharias and Wahabis”. The Arya Samaj is as iconoclastic and unitarian in theory, as Islam, especially in the reformist Wahabi sect which is opposed to all tomb-worship as much as to idol-worship: Yet because the one believed exclusively in the sacredness of the Samskrt language and the word of the Veda; and the other in that of the Arabic language and the word of the Quran, and the one thought that one set of forms was the only correct way of worshipping God, and the other that another ritual was the only such, and neither cared to look beneath the words and the rites and note that the same ideas and heart-feelings and aspirations underlay both the different ways and terms, the preachers of each began to use very harsh language against the other, Khuda was overpowered by Khudi, Brahma was defeated by Maya, Universalism by Egoism, and the two sets of reformers clashed violently, and hindered the general progress instead of advancing it.

As a thoughtful writer of the Qadiani sect says: “Custom, convention, book-worship, letter-worship, mulla-worship, pir-worship, these, in short, were so many fetters on the Musalman’s Soul, keeping it in a state of perpetual slavery. Death and [Page 33] decay was consequently the order of Muslim society”. [ Muhammad Yakub Khan, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. the Man]

It will be readily observed that the words of the quotation describe Hindu society equally well and exactly, if we only substitute Pandit, Purohit, Guru, for Mulla, and Pir, and add tomb-worship in the one case and idol-worship in the other. It is also a noteworthy coincidence that Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (in north-western India) began his reforming work very shortly after Swami Dayananda and Sir Sayyad Ahmad began theirs. The motive idea of all was the same socio-religious reform. Yet because of the defects permeating the mental and moral atmosphere of the country, mentioned before, they, any more than the Wahabis or Ahl-i-Hadis, have not progressed as they should and would have, if they had joined, and as they ought to even now join hands, on the common platform of science and reason and the new Lingua Indica, for the general welfare of the Indian people instead of any particular section, as the Japanese Shintoists, Buddhists, Confucians and Christians, or the Chinese, Confucians, Laotsians, Buddhists, Christians, and Musalmans, or the Egyptian Musalmans and Christians (Copts), have done for the welfare of their respective countries.

The Hindustani language, splendid achievement and proof patent of the amalgamation, in one most important respect, of the Hindu and Muslim [Page 34] cultures, with its two forms, Hindi and Urdu, has done very great work in newly unifying India, by spreading a common medium of exchange of thought all over India. It has travelled into all corners of the country. Hindus by the million have studied Urdu; by the hundred thousand, Persian; by the thousand, Arabic; and Musalmans by the lakh, Hindi; and by the score, Samskrt. If Musalmans have studied Samskrt little, the reason largely is that Pandits would not teach them. Scores of Musalman poets have written splendid Hindi poems, some being classics of the highest order; and hundreds of Hindus have written admirable classic Urdu poetry as well as prose. It should be noted that the only differences between Urdu and Hindi are (1) the difference of script, and (2) the use in Urdu of more Arabic-Persian words, and in Hindi of more Samskrt words; the syntax being exactly the same, as also the bulk of the vocabulary. Partly out of aversion to intellectual exertion, and partly out of mere communalist zid, obduracy, Hindus and Muslims have, for sometime now, been jibbing, the one against so-called ‘high Urdu’, the other against ‘high Hindi‘. No doubt, some writers, in each, affect an unnecessarily stilted style; still, the knowledge of a few hundred extra woods; Arabic-Persian for the one, and Samskrt for the other, is eminently desirable. As the famous German thinker, poet, and statesman, Goethe, has said, “no one knows his own mother-tongue [Page 35] properly, unless he knows some foreign language also”. The one way to get behind the sound to the sense, to distinguish between the word and the thought, to overcome letter-worship, to transcend not only idolatry but also Vedolatry, Quranolatry, Biblolatry, is resolutely and with unbaffled intelligence, to recognise the same thought, the same friendly familiar face, behind many masks of many languages. The Yoga-sutra points to the need for such discipline of the soul:

“The introspective meditation which confuses together, does not distinguish between, the word, the object meant by the word, and the cognition of the object and of the word, is tainted and influenced by personal likes and dislikes, and is therefore erring and unable to behold the exact truth.” The evil power of catch-words is well-known.

Such institutions have undoubtedly done great good work in their day, and helped to unify and strengthen their respective communities splendidly. But now they are over-shooting the mark, and stimulating, not healthy emulation, but harmful rivalry and antagonism.

What is this acute ‘separatism‘ due to? — a separatism, the reductio ad absurdum of which is that every individual should `self-determine’ himself away and apart from every other self-determining individual.

It is due to the forgetting of the real nature of that Swa which, when rightly known, is the quintessence, the source, the ever-upwelling fount, of all genuine Religion, all Spiritual Purity, Whole-ness, Heal-th, all unselfish trust and co-operation, whence alone all stable Material Prosperity, Wel-fare, Weal-th, for all; and, when wrongly misconceived, is the cause of all Spiritual Impurity Dis-ease, selfishness, whence perpetual internecine dissensions and consequent Material Ill-fare and Misery for each and every one. We have forgotten that Swa means the higher, wiser, better, unifying, all-including, un-selfish Universal Self; and [Page 40] have come to believe that it means only the lower, smaller; false, separative, short-sighted, grasping, cunning, self-ish self. Self-government is truly such only when the governing and legislating persons embody the higher and not the lower Self.

Circumstances made the separate development of the two communal common sentiments, Hindu and Muslim, inevitable, and even perhaps desirable, for a while, for the purpose of solidarising countless fragments (for Muslims also have scores of sects and sub-divisions, while Hindus have thousands) into at least two strong groups, though the serious error of not keeping in the fore-front, as guiding Pillar of Light, the Ideal of the Higher Unifying Self, is frustrating even that purpose.

This is possible only by (1) a systematic Study and inculcation of The Essential Unity of All Religions,in all educational institutions specially, and among the public generally (as is the purport of the second Object of the Theosophical Society); (2) by due study of the ancient Indian Science of Social Organisation the true Varn-ashrama Dharma, in comparison with the other old as well as the many modern schemes of socialism and types of states and forms of government, to see whether and how far the Ancient Solutions of Modern Problems, which problems are harassing all nations and not only the Indian, are practicable, under modern conditions, and (3) by formulating, as the result of such study a Scheme of Organisation of Society which will provide an adequate technique, in the present age of physical science and machinery, for successfully making an equitable division of work and enjoyment in accordance with the essential Ethical Teaching of all Religions: “Do as you would be done unto ”, (which is the purport of the First Object of the T.S.) [Page 42]

So long as there were some three hundred quarrelling Daimyos (Rajas, Maharajas, Nawabs) in Japan, with a nominal Emperor (Mikado) and a real Shogun (Prime Minister) — so long it was in imminent danger of being swamped beneath the flood of advancing western Imperialism and Capitalism. But innate tremendous reserves of virtue and strength transformed the pygmy, by the miraculous power of the utter self-sacrifice and renunciation of the Daimyos, in two short weeks of June, 1869, into a giant ready to face the world. Japan was inspired by, and aglow in every tissue with; the Higher Self, even though she may not have clearly recognised — perhaps does not yet clearly recognise — that Higher Self, in consequence of which non-recognition; she may be in danger of internal troubles, from the self-same spirit of capitalist and militarist Imperialism taking possession of her mind too completely and making it begin to operate, not simply defensively, but also offensively.

If India is to recover her soul, if the work of her great and genuine reformers is not to go in vain, if their innermost and best hopes and wishes are to be fulfilled, if Material Wealth and Prosperity are to come back to her, she must clearly understand the meaning of Spiritual Health and Purity, must understand the nature of the true Spirit, the Higher Self, irrespective of, nay, as above and apart from, all particular languages and words and books [Page 43] (whether Veda, or Quran, or Bible, or Avesta, or Grantha, or Tripitaka, or Agama), and must learn to recognise the Goodness and Wisdom, which are that Higher Self’s primary manifestation in the human world, behind any and every credal mask and label, wherever such Goodness and Wisdom may be found.

“Good brides, valuable sciences and arts, useful laws, sound rules of hygiene and sanitation, excellent advice, wise maxims, and gems and jewels of all kinds — shall be gathered diligently from everywhere”. (The indication of inter-marriage, under proper conditions, may be noted incidentally).

Genuine Religious Reform consists, not in blind self-assertion and other-rejection, but in re-interpretation of the old, in conformity with changing times and circumstances and newly discovered facts; in putting aside of whatever of our own ‘old‘ has become unsuitable; in taking up of whatever of any other’s ‘new’ is shown by attested [Page 44] reason to be useful, and in grafting of it on to the good in our ‘old’; and always in avoidance of excess, the one sole cause of the corruption of good customs. This is what Swami Dayananda and Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan both seem to have essayed in their new Veda-Bhashya and Tafsir-i-Quran respectively.

(No-thing is good simply because ‘tis old;
No-thing is bad merely because ’tis new.
The wise choose either, after scrutiny;
The others follow blindly others’ views.)

When men grow excessively attached to forms and words, and begin to neglect the Spirit, then that Spirit, as Providence, arranges to have the forms and the languages broken up and replaced by others, whether the forms and words be religious (Veda, Quran, Bible; Mandir, Masjid, Church; Svastika, Crescent, Cross; Image, Maqbara, Eikon, etc.); or political (monarchy, oligarchy; republic, etc.) or economic (individualism, trade-unionism, socialism, etc.); or domestic (endogamy, exogamy, polygamy; sacramental, contractual, free, etc.) etc.. The ultimate purpose of religious conflicts and political wars seems to be to lift [Page 45] Mankind from narrow-minded ‘nationalism’ and ‘religiosity’ to Philanthropic Internationalism and Humanism.

Attachment to mere words and catchwords is such a great hindrance to the progress of the soul; that all scriptures warn us against it.

Gar ze sirre ma’rifat agah shawi,
Lafz bi-guzari, sué ma’ni ravi.

“Beware of the letter which killeth, and follow the Spirit which giveth life”.

We must all learn to see the common ‘meaning’ behind the various ‘words‘ of the various scriptures. We should dwell on the good points of others, the bad of ourselves. We should help others to find out the bad in themselves, by pointing out the bad in ourselves; by setting a good example. This is what the Swami and Sir Sayyad endeavoured to do, when they pleaded against the corruptions that had crept so abundantly into Hinduism and Islam. Not by picking holes in other religions, and opposing and rejecting them, but by dwelling on their good points and combining and assimilating them with those of our own; not by emphasizing differences, but by insisting on agreements, may followers of the various creeds be reconciled. If we want peace and unity between the followers, we must first emphasise the essential [Page 46] unity between the religions. If we go on saying that the religions differ but that the followers should unite, we shall never succeed in uniting them.

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