The Arya Samaj Path of Indian Religion.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

Arya Samaj.

A reformer of different character was Dayanand Sarasvati, who was trained as a yogi but steadily lost faith in yoga and many other aspects of Hinduism. After traveling widely as an itinerant preacher, he founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, and it rapidly gained ground in the west of India. Dayanand rejected image worship, sacrifice, and polytheism and claimed to base his doctrines on the four Vedas as the eternal word of God. Later Hindu scriptures were judged critically, and many of them were believed to be completely evil. The Arya Samaj did much to encourage Hindu nationalism, but it did not disparage the knowledge of the West, and it established many schools and colleges. Among its members was the revolutionary Lala Lajpat Rai.

Society Of Aryans, vigorous reform sect of modern Hinduism, founded in 1875 by Dayananda Sarasvati , whose aim was to reestablish the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, as revealed truth. He rejected all later accretions to the Vedas as degenerate but, in his own interpretation, included much post-Vedic thought, such as the doctrines of karman and of rebirth.

The Arya Samaj has always had its largest following in West and North India. It is organized in local samaj that send representatives to provincial samajas and to an all-India samaja. Each local samaja elects its own officers in a democratic manner.The Arya Samaj opposes idolatry, animal sacrifice, ancestor worship, a caste system based on birth rather than on merit, untouchability, child marriage, pilgrimages, priestly craft, and temple offerings. It upholds the infallibility of the Vedas, the doctrines of karman and rebirth, the sanctity of the cow, the importance of the individual sacraments samskaras, the efficacy of Vedic oblations to the fire, and programs of social reform. It has worked to further female education and intercaste marriages, has built missions, orphanages, and homes for widows, and has undertaken famine relief and medical work. It has also established a network of schools and colleges. From its beginning it was an important factor in the growth of nationalism. It has been criticized, however, as overly dogmatic and militant on occasion and as having exhibited an aggressive intolerance toward both Christianity and Islam.