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Dayanada and Arya Samaj
5
himself in this condemnation of all weakness and
his hatred for superstition, a Sanyasi blind from
infancy and from the age of eleven quite alone in
the world, learned man, a terrible man Swami
Virijananda Sarasvati. Dayananda put himself under
his 'discipline" which in its old literal seventeenth
century sense scarred his flesh as well as his spirit.
Dayananda served this untamable and indomitable
man for two and a half years as his pupil. It is,
therefore, mere justice to remember that his
subsequent course of action was simply the fulfilment
of the will of the stern blind man, whose surname
he adopted, casting his own to oblivion. When they
separated Virjananda extracted from him the
promise that he would consecrate his life to the
annihilation of the heresies that had crept into the
Puranic faith, to reestablish the ancient religious
Discipline in the ecclesiastical language of an earlier
age meant not only supervision but the instruments used
by ascetics to scourge themselves.
1
Discipline in the term of ancient usage meant not
only supervision but the instrument used by learned
teachers to make the taught fit in his mental, moral and
physical attainments without any super imposition of his
own will on him. (Editor)