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the Guru and return the same night — the two-way journey made
on foot.
Finally he blows the whistle in the 1867
Kumbha
Gathering at
Haridwar on the banks of Ganga. He unfurls the flag called
Pakhancla-Kharylin7,
i.e. remover of all kinds of hypocrisy. He
listed the eight major ills plaguing the society then, such as
idol worship,
i'rciddha
for the dead people, etc. by the priests
whom he referred as popes in light of the Roman Catholic
priests in medieval Roman Empire who exploited and cheated
the innocent people. Next 16 years saw Dayananda making
whirlwind tours along the river Ganga from Haridwar to
Kolkata and back, and then on to undivided Punjab, Mumbai
State and Rajasthan. His activities included public lectures and
discourses, writing the Magnum Opus "Light of Truth" and
the commentaries on Rgveda (a major fraction) and Yajurveda.
He wrote
"Sarizsakdravidhir
pertaining to the 16 sacraments
with a view to giving rise to a better generation in the future.
The scientific nature of the Vedas was brought out in his
Introduction to the Commentaries on the Vedas — a voluminous
book by itself. His activities included founding an organization
in the name of Arya SamAj (meaning, the assembly of the noble
people) in Mumbai in 1875 at the persistent reques't of the local
intellectuals who vehemently supported his call of "Back to
the Vedas."
Svami Dayananda Sarasvati was such a multi-faceted
personality that it is very difficult to characterize what his
biggest contribution was. He was a staunch nationalist with
patriotic fervor, a social reformer with deep insights of the
social fabric, a kind hearted person with a soft corner for the
women and cows, a great humanitarian with deep rooted love
for the downtrodden, a dedicated soul for the love of truth and
hatred for the falsehood, and above all, the most brilliant Vedic
scholar India produced since the times of the great etymologist
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