Theos-Talk Archives (June 2012 Message tt00065)

Formation of
Arya Samaj:



The Arya Samaj was formed in
1875, the same year the Theosophical Society was, in India by Dayananda Saraswati
(1824-83), a person of very high order and scholarship. Born in a highest grade Brahmin family in the
state of Kathiawar(now part of Gujarat state),
he became well versed in Vedic learning besides the mundane affairs, 'both
political and commercial. Vexed with finding around him 'superstition and
ignorance, spiritual laxity, degrading prejudices and millions of idols, he was
fortunate enough to reach a learned man "Swami Vajrananda Saraswati,"
a sanyasin blind from infancy, enrolled himself as his disciple and decided
upon to fulfil the will of his Guru 'to re-establish the ancient religious
methods of the age before Buddha, and to disseminate the Truth,'

Swami Dayananda found that
the Vedanta as practiced was diametrically opposed to the primitive Vedas; and
he did not even compromise with the Westernization of Indian
religious/philosophic ideas. He carved for himself a niche to be an Indian
Theist with firm unsullied faith in Vedas and Vedas alone.

It was on 10 April 1875 that
he founded his Arya Samaj, an association of the Aryans in India, the pure Indians - the descendants of the
old race of the Indus (Sindhu) and the Ganges (Ganga).

The ten Declared Principles
of the Arya Samaj run thus:

1. God is the primary source of
all knowledge, and of all things that can be known through it.

2. God is by essence being,
truth and bliss; he is bodiless, almighty, just, merciful, infinite,
unchangeable, beginningless, incomparable, the support and Lord of all,
all-pervading and present in all that lives, imperishable, immortal, fearless,
holy, and the maker of the universe. He alone is worthy of worship.

3. The Veda is the book of true
knowledge. It is the highest duty of all Aryans to study and propagate the Vedas.

4. All should always be ready
to accept truth and abandon untruth.

5. All actions should be
performed according to dharma, that
means after due consideration of right and wrong.

6. The principal aim of this
Samaj is to promote this world's well-being, material, spiritual, and social. 

7. One should treat all with
affection, according to dharma, and
with due consideration of their merits.

8. Ignorance should be
destroyed and knowledge increased.

9. Nobody should remain
satisfied with his own progress, but everybody should consider his own uplift
to depend on the uplift of all.

10. All should be subordinate to
social laws that govern the well being of all: and all should remain
self-governed in regulating their personal affairs.

The Arya Samaj had its
expansion among many Native states and the British provinces of the then Indian
Nation. It was able to catch the minds
and imagination of the educated Indians and made them more enlightened to
matters of general living attitudes and philosophy.

The Amalgamation and the
impossibility:

When Col. Olcott heard and
learnt about Arya Samaj and its founder Swami Dayananda

his jubilation had no bounds
as we could see from the very first letter he wrote. Similarly, Swami Dayananda
also gladly responded to this letter in sincere acclamation. Westerners coming out of their shells of
self-created superiority, getting to learn the Vedic knowledge and eventually
becoming instruments for dissemination -- must have pleased him well. 

The future events did not
permit the "amalgamation" to continue, and each component body was
trying to 'prove' its own point right and the other is apparently wrong. The
falling apart was some writers put more because of the philosophical
differences of the schools, added to the lack of trust on each side, than on
personality-conflicts as it was forth. We shall look into the developments as
we go.
(will continue)




















 



Literature is for Portrayal of Philosophic Ideas.







Dr N C Ramanujachary(Srivirinchi)

Besant Gardens, The Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020 

Phone: 044/24913584, Mobile: 9444963584


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