RANI MOHUN ROY ix the only great mita! to whom modern Bengal can potrit. Ile was the first great modern theistical reformer of British India. Ile waa born about 1774, at the village of Radhanagar, in the district of Illundtidalail. Ilia father WA.9 a Brahman, and hie grandfather had held office under the Moghtil mix ror. Brought up rut a child in the popular Hindu faith and piety, he became as a boy disgusted with its extravagant mythology, and at aixteen compow it spirited tract against idolatry. 110 WAS perse cuted, and fled, first to Benares, the atrooghold of Brahmanism, afterwards to Tibet, that he might converse with the Buddhist priests, being deter mined t,o study each religion at the fountainhead. Probably he was the earliest earnest - minded investigator of the science of comparative religion that the world has produced. As he studical the Vedas in Sanskrit, so he was believed to have approached the Buddhist Bible, the Tripitaka. in the original Pali. He mastered Arabic that Ile might read the Koran • and later in life learnt Hebrew, and began dreek, that he might the better know the Old and New Testaments. Returning home at about twenty years of age, he seems to have been reinstated in the favour of his family, and returned to his Sanskrit studies and the examination of his ancestral religion. Ile was too logical to be deceived by Brahmanical sophistries, yet Ile was wont to say he found nothing elsewhere equal to the Hindu scholastic philosophy. Then, t,00, he learnt English, and shook off his prejudices against European society. After his father's death in 1803, he became bolder in his controversies with the Brahmans, and published various works against Hinduism, his antagonism to idolatry becotning more and more marked. Ile maintained that the worship of idols was not sanctioned by the oldest national sacred books, and aroused general attention by insisting on the absence of all Vedic sanction for the self immolation of widows (sati). The agitation set ou foot by hint against sati ultimately led to its abolition hy law throughout British India in 1830. Ostracised by his own social circle, he had retired to Calcutta in 1814, and there, having been joined by Jains aud Hindus of rank, wealth, and influ ence, among them being Dwarkanath Tagorc, formed in his own house in 1816 the Atmiya Sabha, or Spiritual Society. Becoming more and more impressed with the sayings of Christ, he pub lished in 1820 a book called The Precepts of Jeans, the Guide to Peace and Happiness. Being shown
a picture of Christ, he said the paiuter had falsely given him a European countenance, whereas Jesus was rut orlintM, and that the Christian Scriptures glowed throughout with rich oriental colouring. He strongly o.pposed the doctrine of the Trinity, arguing that it was polytheistic, and to the .aitt his Unitarianism was strongly marked. His idea of inspiration was that it was co-extensive with the human race.
The beginning of Januttrv 1830 inaugurated a new era in the history of Imiian religious thought, ushering in the dawn of the, greatest change that has ever passed over the Hindu njud. Then w aa opened in Calcutta the first Hindu theistic chum!), called the Brahma Sabha, or Brahmiya Samaj, that is to say, the assembly or society of God.' Ram Mohun Roy visited Britain in April 1831, being the first native of rank and influence to cross the ' black water.' Here he stayed until his death at Bristol, on 27th September 1833. His Brah manical thread was found coiled round his person when his spirit passed away. His successor was the son of his friend Dwarkanath Tagore. This remarkable man, Debendranath Tagore, like his predecessor, aimed at being a purifier rather than a destroyer. It was not until 1843 that lie for mally joined the church founded by Rain Mohun Roy. He saw that organization was needed if the Samaj was to hold its ground as a permanent church in India, and he himself drew up the Brahma covenant, consisting of seven solemn vows, to form the bond of union among its members. They bound themselves to abstain from idolatry, to worship no creature, but to worship, through the love of God, and through the performance of the -works God loveth, the Great God, the Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, the Giver of Salvation, the One only without a second; to lead holy lives, and to seek forgiveness through abandonment of sin. The year 1844 might be given as the date of the real commencement of the first organized theistic church of India, hence called the Adi-Braltina-Saunaj. In three years the c,oveuanted members numbered 767, and in three years more kindred societies had sprung up in not a few Indian provincial cities, though mean while controversies had broken out which led Debendranath to put forth a new theistic directory. —11-lonier Williams on Indian Theistic Religion ; Rajasthan, ii. p. 642 ; Marshman's Defence of the Deity and Atonement of Jesus Christ, London 1822 ; _Calcutta Review.