Theos-Talk Archives (July 2012 Message tt00027)

Death of Swami Dayanand
Saraswati:

When he cast away his
physical body on 30 October 1883, the sad demise was noticed in The Theosophist
(for December 1883). Under a caption "The Death of A Great Man", the
journal made an obituary note which fully reads thus:

A Master Spirit
has passed away from India.
Pandit Dayananda Saraswati, the Founder and Supreme Chief of Arya Samaj of
Aryavarta, is gone. ----------All our differences have been burnt with the body
and with its now sacred ashes they are forever scattered to the four winds. We
remember only the grand virtues and noble qualities of our former colleague,
teacher and late antagonist. ---- truly, however heretical and blasphemous
might have appeared his religious radicalism in the sight of old Brahmanism,
still his teachings and the Vedic doctrines propogated by him were a thousand
times more consonant with Sruti and even Srmiti than the doctrines taught by
all other native Samajees put together. If he merged the old idols into ONE
living Being, Iswara, as being only the attributes and powers of the latter, he
yet had never attempted the folly of forcing down the throats of his followers
the hideous compound of a Durga-Moses, Christ-and-Koran, and Buddha-Chaitanya
mixture of the modern Reformers. The "Arya Samaj" rites make
certainly the nearest approach to the real Vedic national religion. And now, on
the death of Swamijee, there is no one we know of in India, capable of taking
his place.---- Loving old Aryavarta, as we do, for its own sake, it is with
sincere sadness and fear and with a deep sense of sympathy for bereaved India
that we say once more -- the death of Pandit Dayanand Saraswati is an
irreparable loss to the whole country.
At the present chaotic stage of its reformatory progress, it is simply a
national calamity!



It will be apt to note here
that 'the great man' foresaw his death, 'so far back as two years ago'. The
account running in The Theosophist is as below:

---we can swear
that he had foreseen his death, so
far back as two years ago. Two copies of his will sent by him at the time to
Col. Olcott and to the editor of this magazine respectively - both of which are
preserved by us as a memorial of his by-gone friendship - are a proof of
it. 

 

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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