Swami Dayananda Saraswati : (1824-83): born in a Shaivite Brahmin family in Morvi Kāṭhiāwād: studied Sanskrit & Vedas at Kāshi, took up sanyāsa & settled on the Narmadā: travelled to Abu, Hardwar, Srinagar, northern Himalayas in search of gurus & held religious debates all over India: in 1875 founded the Arya Samāj a movement advocating a return to the temporal & spiritual authority of the Vedas. Sri Aurobindo considered him the first discoverer of the right clues in the matter of Vedic interpretation. He was a powerful promoter of nationalism.
... a mass of superstitions, barbarous and benighted. Their descendants are today's 'secularists.' We were lucky to have some true great reformers; those who could think for themselves. Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, and others. Free thinkers, they looked at the degraded forest of Indian society. They looked closely at the myriad 'age-old' customs clogging the river of life. Were they ...
... also knew Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Page 76 weaning many a soul from the influence of Christian missionaries. At this time, in another part of India, arose another man, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, who, according to Mrs. Besant, first proclaimed "India for Indians". He discovered in the Vedas the perennial source and support of Hindu society, and sought ...
... scholars led by the prestigious Max Muller (whose research work, interestingly, was commissioned and generously paid for by the East India Company) than to India's own savants and seers. Swami Dayananda Saraswati was perhaps the first to reject the Aryan invasion theory, emphasizing that the word arya referred in the Veda to a moral or inner quality, not to any race or people. Swami Vivekananda followed ...
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