ARYA SAMAJ, a Hindu reforming sect, founded by Day anand Saraswati, a Brahman of Guzerat, who, born in 1825, was brought up as a Shiv-worshipper, but renounced idol-worship. He sought in the Vedas a solution of the problems of human misery and final salvation. After 1866 he gathered disciples and assailed the Christian scriptures, maintaining that the Rig Veda not only supported his own beliefs but that in it all modern discoveries in science were described. Thus he discerned the endowment of true learning, the arts of manufacture, chemistry, popular in struction, etc., all in the yajna or sacrificial cult. While denying that the Vedas recognized Caste, he retained the four classes as social units into which entrance was to be dependent on examina tions. Such ideas naturally antagonized the Brahmans, so he turned to the masses, and founded numerous samajes, "associa tions," the earliest at Bombay in 1875. He died at Ajmere in 1888. The Arya Samaj is not eclectic, like the Brahma Samaj, but narrower in scope and intenser in conviction. It attracted edu cated men whose Hinduism had been undermined, but who were opposed to the teachings of foreign creeds, while they wished to reconcile modern science and Western ethics with the faith of the Vedas.