Shivaite pagoda, would at once make an end of the offender's life,
triumphantly exclaimed, "Let the god Vasuki himself show which of
us is right!"

Dayanand jerked off the cobra twirling round his leg, and with a
single vigorous movement, crushed the reptile's head. "Let him
do so," he quietly assented. "Your god has been too slow. It
is I who have decided the dispute, Now go," added he, addressing
the crowd, "and tell everyone how easily perish the false gods."

Thanks to his excellent knowledge of Sanskrit the Pandit does a
great service, not only to the masses, clearing their ignorance
about the monotheism of the Vedas, but to science too, showing who,
exactly, are the Brahmans, the only caste in India which, during
centuries, had the right to study Sanskrit literature and comment
on the Vedas, and which used this right solely for its own advantage.

Long before the time of such Orientalists as Burnouf, Colebrooke
and Max Muller, there have been in India many reformers who tried
to prove the pure monotheism of the Vedic doctrines. There have
even been founders of new religions who denied the revelations
of these scriptures; for instance, the Raja Ram Mohun Roy, and,
after him, Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, both Calcutta Bengalees. But
neither of them had much success. They did nothing but add new
denominations to the numberless sects existing in India. Ram Mohun
Roy died in England, having done next to nothing, and Keshub Chunder
Sen, having founded the community of "Brahmo-Samaj," which professes
a religion extracted from the depths of the Babu's own imagination,
became a mystic of the most pronounced type, and now is only "a
berry from the same field," as we say in Russia, as the Spiritualists,