D. Maclagan's _Punjab Census Report of 1891_;
Mr. R. Burn's _United Provinces Census Report of 1901_; Professor
J. C. Oman's _Cults, Customs and Superstitions of India_.]

List of Paragraphs

1. _The founder of the sect, Dayanand Saraswati_.
2. _His methods and the scientific interpretation of the Vedas_.
3. _Tenets of the Samaj_.
4. _Modernising tendencies_.
5. _Aims and educational institutions_.
6. _Prospects of the sect_.

1. The founder of the sect, Dayanand Saraswati.

_Arya Samaj Religion_.--This important reforming sect of Hinduism
numbered nearly 250,000 persons in India in 1911, as against 92,000 in
1901. Its adherents belong principally to the Punjab and the United
Provinces. In the Central Provinces 974 members were returned. The
sect was founded by Pandit Dayanand Saraswati, a Gujarati Brahman,
born in 1824. According to his own narrative he had been carefully
instructed in the Vedas, which means that he had been made to commit a
great portion of them to memory, and had been initiated at an early
age into the Saiva sect to which his family belonged; but while
still a mere boy his mind had revolted against the practices of
idolatry. He could not bring himself to acknowledge that the image
of Siva seated on his bull, the helpless idol, which, as he himself
observed in the watches of the night, allowed the mice to run over it
with impunity, ought to be worshipped as the omnipotent deity. [240]
He also conceived an intense aversion to marriage, and fled from home
in order to avoid the match which had been arranged for him. He was
attracted by the practice of Yoga, or ascetic philosophy, and studied
it with great ardour, claiming to have been initiated into the highest
secrets of _Yoga Vidya_. He tells in one of his books of his many
and extensive travels, his profound researches in Sanskritic lore,
his constant meditations and his ceaseless inquirings. He tells how,
by dissecting in his own rough way a corpse which he found floating
on a river, he finally discerned the egregious errors of the Hindu
medical treatises, and, tearing up his books in disgust, flung
them into the river with the mutilated corpse. By degrees he found
reason to reject the authority of all the sacred books of the Hindus
subsequent to the Vedas. Once convinced of this, he braced himself
to a wonderful course of missionary effort, in which he formulated
his new system and attacked the existing orthod