gan teaching and writing in Calcutta soon
after 1800. The name means literally the "Church of the One God," and
the word _Samaj_, like the word Church, bears both a local and a
universal, or an individual and a collective meaning. Impressed with the
perversions and corruptions of popular Hinduism, Ram Mohan Roy
investigated the Hindu Shastras, the Koran and the Bible, repudiated the
polytheistic worship of the Shastras as false, and inculcated the
reformed principles of monotheism as found in the ancient Upanishads of
the Vedas. In 1816 he established a society, consisting only of Hindus,
in which texts from the Vedas were recited and theistic hymns chanted.
This, however, soon died out through the opposition it received from the
Hindu community. In 1830 he organized the society known as the Brahma
Samaj.

The following extract from the trust-deed of the building dedicated to
it will show the religious belief and the purposes of its founder. The
building was intended to be "a place of public meeting for all sorts and
descriptions of people, without distinction, who shall behave and
conduct themselves in an orderly, sober, religious and devout manner,
for the worship and adoration of the eternal, unsearchable and immutable
Being, who is the author and preserver of the universe, but not under
and by any other name, designation or title, peculiarly used for and
applied to any particular being or beings by any man or set of men
whatsoever; and that no graven image, statue or sculpture, carving,
painting, picture, portrait or the likeness of anything shall be
admitted within the said messuage, building, land, tenements,
hereditament and premises; and that no sacrifice, offering or oblation
of any kind or thing shall ever be permitted therein; and that no animal
or living creature shall within or on the said messuage, &c., be
deprived of life either for religious purposes or food, and that no
eating or drinking (except such as shall be necessary by any accident
for the preservation of life), feasting or rioting be permitted therein
or thereon; and that in conducting the said worship or adoration, no
object, animate or inanimate, that has been or is or shall hereafter
become or be recognized as an object of worship by any man or set of
men, shall be reviled or slightingly or contemptuously spoken of or
alluded to, either in preaching or in the hymns or other mode of worship
that may be delivered or used in the said messuage or