From the first day of his appearance Dayanand Saraswati produced
an immense impression and got the surname of the "Luther of India."
Wandering from one town to another, today in the South, tomorrow
in the North, and transporting himself from one end of the country
to another with incredible quickness, he has visited every part
of India, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and from Calcutta
to Bombay. He preaches the One Deity and, "Vedas in hand," proves
that in the ancient writings there was not a word that could justify
polytheism. Thundering against idol worship, the great orator
fights with all his might against caste, infant marriages, and
superstitions. Chastising all the evils grafted on India by
centuries of casuistry and false interpretation of the Vedas,
he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as he openly says before
masses of people, are alone guilty of the humiliation of their
country, once great and independent, now fallen and enslaved.
And yet Great Britain has in him not an enemy, but rather an ally.
He says openly--"If you expel the English, then, no later than
tomorrow, you and I and everyone who rises against idol worship
will have our throats cut like mere sheep. The Mussulmans are
stronger than the idol worshippers; but these last are stronger
than we." The Pandit held many a warm dispute with the Brah-mans,
those treacherous enemies of the people, and has almost always
been victorious. In Benares secret assassins were hired to slay
him, but the attempt did not succeed. In a small town of Bengal,
where he treated fetishism with more than his usual severity,
some fanatic threw on his naked feet a huge cobra. There are two
snakes deified by the Brahman mythology: the one which surrounds
the neck of Shiva on his idols is called Vasuki; the other, Ananta,
forms the couch of Vishnu. So the worshipper of Shiva, feeling
sure that his cobra, trained purposely for the mysteries of a