From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan | Page 7

another with incredible quickness, he has visited every part of India,
from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and from Calcutta to Bombay.
He preaches the One Deity and, "Vedas in hand," proves that in the
ancient writings there was not a word that could justify polytheism.
Thundering against idol worship, the great orator fights with all his
might against caste, infant marriages, and superstitions. Chastising all
the evils grafted on India by centuries of casuistry and false
interpretation of the Vedas, he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as
he openly says before masses of people, are alone guilty of the
humiliation of their country, once great and independent, now fallen
and enslaved. And yet Great Britain has in him not an enemy, but
rather an ally. He says openly--"If you expel the English, then, no later
than tomorrow, you and I and everyone who rises against idol worship
will have our throats cut like mere sheep. The Mussulmans are stronger
than the idol worshippers; but these last are stronger than we." The
Pandit held many a warm dispute with the Brah-mans, those
treacherous enemies of the people, and has almost always been
victorious. In Benares secret assassins were hired to slay him, but the
attempt did not succeed. In a small town of Bengal, where he treated
fetishism with more than his usual severity, some fanatic threw on his
naked feet a huge cobra. There are two snakes deified by the Brahman
mythology: the one which surrounds the neck of Shiva on his idols is
called Vasuki; the other, Ananta, forms the couch of Vishnu. So the
worshipper of Shiva, feeling sure that his cobra, trained purposely for
the mysteries of a Shivaite pagoda, would at once make an end of the
offender's life, triumphantly exclaimed, "Let the god Vasuki himself
show which of us is right!"
Dayanand jerked off the cobra twirling round his leg, and with a single

vigorous movement, crushed the reptile's head. "Let him do so," he
quietly assented. "Your god has been too slow. It is I who have decided
the dispute, Now go," added he, addressing the crowd, "and tell
everyone how easily perish the false gods."
Thanks to his excellent knowledge of Sanskrit the Pandit does a great
service, not only to the masses, clearing their ignorance about the
monotheism of the Vedas, but to science too, showing who, exactly, are
the Brahmans, the only caste in India which, during centuries, had the
right to study Sanskrit literature and comment on the Vedas, and which
used this right solely for its own advantage.
Long before the time of such Orientalists as Burnouf, Colebrooke and
Max Muller, there have been in India many reformers who tried to
prove the pure monotheism of the Vedic doctrines. There have even
been founders of new religions who denied the revelations of these
scriptures; for instance, the Raja Ram Mohun Roy, and, after him,
Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, both Calcutta Bengalees. But neither of
them had much success. They did nothing but add new denominations
to the numberless sects existing in India. Ram Mohun Roy died in
England, having done next to nothing, and Keshub Chunder Sen,
having founded the community of "Brahmo-Samaj," which professes a
religion extracted from the depths of the Babu's own imagination,
became a mystic of the most pronounced type, and now is only "a berry
from the same field," as we say in Russia, as the Spiritualists, by whom
he is considered to be a medium and a Calcutta Swedenborg. He spends
his time in a dirty tank, singing praises to Chaitanya, Koran, Buddha,
and his own person, proclaiming himself their prophet, and performs a
mystical dance, dressed in woman's attire, which, on his part, is an
attention to a "woman goddess" whom the Babu calls his "mother,
father and eldest brother."
In short, all the attempts to re-establish the pure primitive monotheism
of Aryan India have been a failure. They always got wrecked upon the
double rock of Brahmanism and of prejudices centuries old. But lo!
here appears unexpectedly the pandit Dayanand. None, even of the
most beloved of his disciples, knows who he is and whence he comes.
He openly confesses before the crowds that the name under which he is
known is not his, but was given to him at the Yogi initiation.
The mystical school of Yogis was established by Patanjali, the founder

of one of the six philosophical systems of ancient India. It is supposed
that the Neo-platonists of the second and third Alexandrian Schools
were the followers of Indian Yogis, more especially was their theurgy
brought from India by Pythagoras, according to the tradition. There still
exist in India hundreds of Yogis who follow the system of Patanjali,
and assert that they are in communion with Brahma. Nevertheless,