RAMMOHUN ROY, a celebrated Hindu rajah, was born at Bordnan, in the province of Bengal. between 1774 and 1780. In a sketch of his own life, written in 1832, he states that his ancestors were Brahmans of a high order. At home he acquired the usual ele ments of native education, with some knowledge of the Persian language. At Patna,. and afterward at Benares, he studied Sanskrit, and the works written in it, which con tain the spirit of Hindu law, literature, and religion. At a very early age he began to compare the evidence for and against the various religious doctrines held by those around him; nor did he except from this investigation those doctrines in belief of which he him self had been brought up. them all repugnant to' his vigorous understanding, he boldly acknowledged this fact both to himself and to the world. The result was a quarrel with his father, his family, and his community. He appears, indeed, to ]rave succeeded in converting the understanding of his mother; but it, in its turn, was over come by her sentiment? " You are right," she said to him, when she was about to set out on a pilgrimage to Juggernaut; "but I am a woman, and cannot give up observances which are a comfort to me." Rammohun Roy spent two or three years of his youth in Tibet, where he excited general anger by denying that the Lama was the creator and preserver of the world. For a king time he had a strong, and perhaps not unfounded, dislike to the English; but becoming convinced that their sway was, on the whole, to India, his views changed, and he applied himself to the study of the English language. For five years he held the office of revenue collector in the district of Rung poor.
language. 1803 his father died, but left him no part of his estate. In 1811, however, by the death of his brother, he succeeded to affluence. " After my father's death," he says, " I opposed the advocates of idolatry with still greater boldness." He published varioui?
-works in Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit; the object of the whole being the uprooting of idolatry. He also issued in English an abridgment of a work called the Pedant, giving a digest of the Vedas, the ancient sacred books of the Hindus. Becoming more con vinced, as he grew older, of the excellence of the moral theories of Christianity, in 1820 he published The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace cod Happiness. It appears from this work, that while lie believed in the morality preached by Christ, he did not believe in the divinity of the preacher. • He rejected the miracles also, and other portions of the gospels held to be fundamental in the various churches of Christendom. The book, therefore, as was to have been expected, met with severe ecclesiastical censure, the grounds of censure being various and conflicting. In April, 1831, the rajah visited Eng land, The great question of parliamentary reform was then agitating the country. Of the reform great he wrote, that it "would, in its consequences, promote the welfare of England and her dependencies; nay, of the whole world." his society was universally courted in England. He was oppressed with invitations to attend social parties, and political and ecclesiastical meetings. His anxiety to see everything and to please all led him to overtask himself to such an extent that his health, long failing, at last quite broke down. He died at Bristol, Sept. 27, 1833. The adverse circumstances of his birth were such as might easily have enslaved even his powerful understanding, or still more easily, might have perverted it to selfish ends; but he woo his high position by an Inflexible honesty of purpose and energy of will.—See Sketch of his Life, written by himself, in the Athenaeum, No. 310, Oct. 5, 1833; also Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Aug. 2, 1834.