Theosophy and Race IV – India’s Aryans – II

Posted by Phil Hine in History, Occult  |  April 5th 2022  |  About poster:

“We place ourselves under your instruction. Perhaps, we may directly and indirectly aid you to hasten the accomplishment of the holy mission, in which you are now engaged; for our battle-field extends to India: from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin there is work that we can do.
You venerable man, who have learned to pierce the disguises and masks of your fellow-creatures. Look into our hearts and see that we speak the truth. See that we approach you not in pride but humility, that we are prepared to receive your counsel, and do our duty as it may be shown to us. If you will write us a letter, you will know just what we wish to know, and will give us what we need.”

Colonel Olcott, letter to Dayānand Saraswatī, February 18, 1878

In the previous post in this series, I gave a brief examination of one of nineteenth-century India’s reform movements – the Brāhmo Samāj, founded by Raja Rammohun Roy. For this post, I’m going to examine the Ārya Samāj, founded in 1875 by Dayānand Saraswatī. It is here that the Theosophical Society enters the picture – as the TS briefly allied itself with the Ārya Samāj, and it is arguable that Dayānand Saraswatī played a key role in the Society’s eastward turn.

Dayānand Saraswatī (1824-1883) was born Mul Shankar in Tankara, in the state of Gujurat. In his youth, he studied Sanskrit and religious texts but abandoned his home life to become a wandering mendicant. He took initiation into the Saraswati Dandis, taking the name of Dayānanda. In 1860 he became a disciple of Virajanand Dandeesha (1778-1868), known as the blind sage of Maratha. After nearly three years of studying with Virajanand, Dayānand emerged with a new mission – the purification and regeneration of Hinduism. For Dayānand, all truth could be found in the Vedas and when Hindus had diverged from the teachings of the Vedas, true knowledge was lost and ignorance prevailed. Accordingly, he began to preach against the elements that had led to India’s current state of degradation – polytheism, idol worship, pilgrimages, the Puranas, the priesthood, and the ban on widows re-marrying. He dressed as a sadhu, lectured in Sanskrit, and held debates with Brahmin priests, sometimes attracting large crowds. He later delivered his lectures in Hindi.

Dayānand established the Bombay Ārya Samāj in 1875, the same year that saw the publication of the first edition of his book, Satyārthaprakāśa (‘The Light of Truth’) in which he set forth his principles, and made it clear that for him, the only real religion was that of the Vedas and that for India to prosper, it required a return to Aryan values, as articulated in the Vedas. In fact, Dayānand rejected the term “Hinduism”, seeing it as a foreign imposition, and instead, preferred the term āryavrata – a monotheistic religion, purged of excessive ritualism, and promoting rationality, moderation, and self-improvement, and transcending caste and sectarian differences. Dayānand, like many of his contemporaries, accepted the idea that India’s Aryan past had been a golden age of rational religion and scientific advances. ¹

Dayānand saw epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana as no more than collections of legends, and was highly critical of practices such as astrology and the doctrines of the tantras, describing them in the first part of his autobiography, published in The Theosophist in December 1879 as: “an amount of incredible obscenities, mistranslations, misinterpretations of texts and absurdity, that I felt perfectly horrified.” ² He also seems to have an ambivalent relationship with Yoga – or at least what constitutes correct yoga practice. Mark Singleton, in his book Yoga Body quotes an anecdote (admittedly possibly apocryphal) from K.C. Yadav’s The Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati that in 1855, Dayānand dissected a corpse he found floating in the Ganges in order to discover the truth of the tantric cakras he had been reading of. Finding none, he concluded that with the exception of the Vedas, Patanjali, and the works of Sankara, all other texts (such as the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā) were false, and he tore up the yogic texts he had with him at the time and threw them into the river. ³

In 1877 the Lahore Ārya Samāj was established. At the same time that Dayānand criticized what he saw as the superstitious and irrational elements in religion, he also advocated social reform in the form of greater education for all and was critical of the limited opportunities for women and the inflexibility of the caste system. Dayānand argued instead that a person’s social status could be raised by self-improvement. The Ārya Samāj quickly established a network of local branches, and later educational institutions, temples, newspapers, and printing presses in North India. In 1947, when India finally threw off the yoke of British rule, the Ārya Samāj had almost two million members.

Theosophy finds a Master
Blavatsky and Olcott seem to have become aware of the existence of the Ārya Samāj in 1877, shortly after the publication of Isis Unveiled. Some early correspondence from Blavatsky indicates that she considered Dayānand Saraswatī as an adept at the very least, and very likely a ‘Master’.

In a letter to C.H. van der Linden, written in July 1878, Blavatsky describes the Ārya Samāj and its leader:

“It is a Society (Somaj) organized by the orders and under the supervision of that mysterious body (mysteries – to the non-initiated, of course) of adepts and philosophers, whose existence in India I have hinted at in my book. The founder and responsible chief of it is a very noted Swamee (a holy man) named – Dya Nand Saraswati – at once the purest and most erudite man of the Hindu pandits.” ⁴

In May 1878, the Council of the Theosophical Society declared that it would henceforth be known as the “Theosophical Society of the Arya Samaj of India” and recognize Swami Dayanand Saraswati as its “lawful Director and Chief.”

It’s easy to see why Blavatsky and Olcott were so enamored of Dayānand Saraswatī and the Ārya Samāj movement. The Theosophists shared Dayānand’s view that Vedic civilization had been a golden age of rational religion and science. Blavatsky had come by that time to see India as the source of the universal wisdom tradition – the tradition from which all religion and occult science depended. Blavatsky also shared Dayānand’s stance against polytheism and idolatry, and like Dayānand, was critical of the activities of Christian missionaries, colonial authorities, and orientalist scholars’ views of India. Doubtless part of Dayānand’s appeal to Blavatsky was that he was a sannyasin, and had not received a western education and was thus an “authentic” source of Vedic wisdom. Blavatsky also shared Dayānand’s interest in social reform – in a manner that returned Indian society to traditional Vedic-Aryan values. In an essay in The Theosophist written in 1880 for example, Blavatsky states that:

“Every sentence, uttered by our President in his public addresses, here, at Meerut, Saharanpore, Benares and Allahabad, about the dead splendor of Aryan civilization and the sacred duty to revive it by reviving Aryan philosophy, religion, and science, has been greeted with unmistakable enthusiasm, and young Natives have risen to propose votes of thanks, with moistened eyes, and voices trembling with emotion.” ⁵

She goes on to complain of western influences in India’s urban centers: “It is there that one sees Natives wearing European clothes, drinking European brandy, riding in European carriages, and aping foreign manners to an absurd extent.”

Also, at a time when the Theosophical Society was struggling to formulate its identity, the prospect of gaining thousands of Indian members was probably a factor too.

Initial correspondence between Theosophists (Colonel Olcott in particular), Dayānand, and other officers of the Ārya Samāj seems to have been fairly cordial if guarded. However, in September 1878 Olcott received a pamphlet with an English translation of the rules of the Ārya Samāj, which, according to Olcott, caused much consternation, due to Dayānand’s concept of God, which they felt was too personalized rather than the abstract Vedantic concept of deity that they expected.

1. God is the original source of all that is true knowledge and all that is known by physical sciences.
2. God is existent, Conscious, All Beautitude, Formless, Almighty, Just, Merciful, Unbegotten, Infinite, Unchangeable, Beginningless, Incomparable, the support of All, the Lord or all, All-pervading, Omniscient and Controller of All from within, Evermature, Imperishable, Fearless, Eternal, Pure and Creator of the universe. IT alone must be worshipped.
3. The Vedas are the books of all True knowledge. It is the paramount duty of all Aryas to read them, to teach them to others, to listen to them and to recite them to others.
4. All persons should always be ready to accept the truth and renounce the untruth.
5. All acts ought to be performed in conformity with dharma i.e. after due consideration of the truth and the untruth.
6. The primary object of the Arya Samaj is to do good to the whole world i.e. to promote physical, spiritual and social progress of all humans.
7. Your dealings with all should be regulated by love and due justice in accordance with the dictates of dharma.
8. Avidyaa (illusion and ignorance) is to be dispelled, and Vidyaa (realisation and acquisition of knowledge) should be promoted.
9. None should remain satisfied with one’s own elevation only, but should incessantly strive for the social upliftment of all, realise one’s own elevation in the elevation of others.
10. All persons ought to dedicate themselves necessarily for the social good and the well-being of all, subordinating their personal interest, while the individual is free to enjoy freedom of action for the individual well being.

As a result, the Council of the Theosophical Society voted that the relationship with the Ārya Samāj would be restricted to a ‘Vedic Section’ of the Society as a whole.

Blavatsky and Olcott landed in Bombay on 16 February 1879. Their first meetings with Dayānand Saraswatī – taking place in May and December 1879 seem to have been fairly convivial, and Dayānand published a pamphlet announcing the creation of a link society between the Theosophicals and the Ārya Samāj, and that the two broader organizations would be independent of each other. However, after the second meeting, Dayānand sent a letter that criticized Blavatsky for her showing of “phenomena” such as causing rose petals to appear or commanding a flame to rise and fall. In Dayānand’s view, such yogic siddhis were mere distractions from the true path of knowledge. A third meeting took place between Dayānand, Blavatsky and Olcott in September 1880. According to Erik Reenberg Sand, Olcott’s memoir of the meeting mainly concerns a discussion about yoga and siddhis (later published in The Theosophist) but a more troubling account can be found in Har Bilas Sarda’s Life of Dayanand Saraswati. According to Sarda, “it became clear that their (Blavatsky and Olcott’s) desire to learn the Vedic Faith was a pretense, and service to India an excuse.” Sarda published the exchange of letters sent by Blavatsky and Olcott to Dayānand and to Hurryand Chintamon, president of the Bombay branch of the Ārya Samāj. The disagreement, according to Sarda began when Blavatsky observed a member of the Samāj praying, and asked him if he really prayed, and to who he addressed his prayers. Blavatsky apparently admitted that she did not believe in God, and that she and Colonel Olcott were Buddhists. ⁶ As Sand points, out, this admission seems to have surprised and shocked Dayānand, and after three days of discussion, he declared that there could no longer be an alliance between the Theosophical Society and the Ārya Samāj. Dayānand later alleged that Blavatsky and Olcott had hidden from him their views on the existence of god for two years.

But that was not the end of the matter. In October 1880, Blavatsky sent a long letter (via an intermediary) to Dayānand – which Sarda, reproducing it in full, describes as “impertinent”. Blavatsky stated that she did not believe in a personal god, and complained that she had heard that Dayānand had said that there could not be the same friendship between members of a “foreign” Samāj as there was between members of the Ārya Samāj who belonged to the same country and religion. She also stated that the Theosophical Society accepted anyone, regardless of their religion. She also hinted strongly that whilst the Theosophical Society would not be affected by the Ārya Samāj not joining them, the Samāj would lose out. She went on to list new members and allies of the Theosophical Society, including members of the colonial administration and that Colonel Olcott had received an invitation to visit the Governor-General.

Further correspondence between Dayānand and Blavatsky continued, growing increasingly acrimonious. In one letter, Dayānand complains that Olcott had publically declared Dayānand to be a member of the Theosophical Society, when in fact he was never a member. He also writes, sarcastically “How amazing it is that you come here (India) to become a disciple and a pupil and now want to become Guru and Acharya (preceptor).” ⁷ A final meeting took place between Blavatsky, Olcott, and Dayānand on 30 December 1881. This meeting seems to have been brief, and Dayānand’s main concern was to discuss the nature of god. Olcott set a date in March for a meeting but did not keep to it, and on 28 March 1882, Dayānand gave a public lecture in Bombay giving his views on the relationship between himself, the Theosophicals, and the Ārya Samāj. His lecture was later published in Hindi as Golmāl Polmāl, now generally called ‘Humbuggery of the Theosophists’. In this pamphlet, Dayānand avowed that whilst Blavatsky and Olcott had initially approached him as pupils wishing to accept the Vedic faith under his instruction, they did not do this, nor did they believe in any religion. He was scornful of Blavatsky’s master the Mahatma “Koot Hoomi Lal” saying that no one had ever heard of this person, that Blavatsky had no real knowledge of yoga, and that her “phenomena” were no more than the tricks of jugglers and mesmerists.

Olcott wrote a refutation of Dayānand’s charges, which appeared in an Extra Supplement to The Theosophist.

Years later, Olcott, in his Old Diary Leaves (1895) writes of “our brief and unpleasant connection with Swami Dyanand Sarasvati and his Arya Samaj” and his wish to “explain the hidden causes of the union and subsequent quarrel”. He goes on to say, at the outset, that “If, therefore, Swami Dyanand and his followers ever misunderstood our position and that of the Theosophical Society, the fault was theirs, not ours”. Olcott maintained that the Ārya Samāj was merely a sect – and not an eclectic one at that, and whilst Dayānand was certainly a “great man and a learned pandit” he was “not an adept at all”.

Some Conclusions
The fragile alliance and subsequent fallout between the founders of the Theosophical Society and Dayānand Saraswatī would seem at first blush to be a classic case of romantic orientalism – with Blavatsky and Olcott projecting their own desires and interpretations onto Dayānand and the Ārya Samāj on the basis of very little informed knowledge, only to find, once they actually arrived in India, that there were irreconcilable differences between their aims and that of the Ārya Samāj.

Dayānand and Blavatsky & Olcott had – despite their apparent similarities, very different conceptions of the limits of the term ‘Aryan’. Both Olcott and Blavatsky, in their letters (and rebuttals) to Dayānand seem to have accepted Max Müller’s view that European and Indian Aryans were “brothers”. As I noted in the previous installment of this series some Indians accepted this view, but it soon became clear that Dayānand did not. Moreover, Dayānand did not accept the eclectic approach to religious diversity that Blavatsky and Olcott were beginning to champion. For him, all truth was contained within the imperishable and eternal Vedas, and that anything outside of the Vedas (vedabāhyāni) was invalid. This included Buddhism, the Jains and Sikhs, Islam, and Christianity, as well as movements such as the Vallabhacharyas (see posts tagged libel case).

Dayānand, despite some early contact, had distanced himself from the Brāhmo Samāj on the grounds that they were too fond of Christianity and the English. He was also opposed to any foreign interference in India such as the activities of Christian missionaries. The colonial authorities strongly disapproved of Dayānand and the Ārya Samāj and Dayānand were frequently labeled rebels or anarchists. It must have rankled with him to read Blavatsky’s letter in which she lists the colonial authorities that she claimed were allies to her cause. Another key difference in the respective usages of ‘Aryan’ seems to be that Blavatsky and Olcott saw ‘Aryan’ as indicating the esoteric occult wisdom-tradition which they believed was rooted in India; Dayānand, although he shared the orientalist notion of the age of the Vedas being a golden age of technological prowess, was more critical of occultism – particularly Blavatsky’s demonstrations of occult prowess. Whilst he seems to have accepted certain parts of this narrative; particularly that India had strayed from its former pinnacle of civilization and was in need of reform, he most certainly did not accept another element of this narrative – espoused by Müller – and increasingly, by Blavatsky, that contemporary Indians were ignorant of the glories of their own past and needed the help of Europeans to interpret their own sacred texts.

Sources
Karl Baier, ‘Theosophical Orientalism and the Structure of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy’in Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss (eds) Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016)
H.P. Blavatsky, “Our Duty to India” The Theosophist, 1/5, 1880, 111-112.
Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India: III.1 Socio-religious reform movements in British India (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
J.T.F. Jordens, Dayānand Saraswatī: His Life and Ideas (Oxford University Press 1960)
Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves: the true story of the Theosophical Society (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895)
Erik Reenberg Sand ‘The Marriage between the Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj’ in Tim Rudbøg and Erik Reenberg Sand (eds) Imagining the East: The Early Theosophical Society (Oxford University Press 2020)
Har Bilas Sarda, Life of Dayanand Saraswati: World Teacher (Vedic Yantralaya, 1946)
Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Online
H.P. Blavatsky, ‘Our Duty to India’ The Theosophist, Volume One, No. 5 (February 1880)
Dayānand Saraswatī: Humbuggery of the Theosophists

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