Basic HTML Version
www.thea rya sa maj.org
.
up his mind to go up for the M.A. Examination, he paid very little
attention to his studies. Much of his time spent in chess playing —
a game for which he, in those days, had a passionate fondness, in
religious discussions and in conversation on topics of Samajic
interest with his friends and with gentlemen who gathered round
him in numbers for counsel, advice and enlightenment. There are
men, some of whom were his constant companions and lived in
the same house with him, who state that they seldom found him
with a book in his hand, studying for the approaching examination.
And yet he headed the list of the successful candidates, taking his
degree in Physics.21
After passing his M.A. he was appointed Assistant
Professor of Science in the Government College, Lahore in 1886.22
And now that he was settled in life he began to work heart and
soul for Dayananda Anglo Vedic College.23 He attended almost
all the anniversaries. His lectures grew so popular that every Samaj
was anxious to avail itself of his eloquence in this connection. The
Arya Patrika
designated him as "our famous anniversary lecturer
on the D.A.V. College movement."24 It is not possible to form
anything like an adequate conception of the hopes that he himself
entertained with regard to the College; the ordinary members of
the Samaj considered it as the would be centre of Vedic learning
and enlightenment in the country, as a home and nursery of the
Aryan civilization which would impregnate the entire atmosphere
with wholesome and salutary elements, favourable to the growth
of spirituality and high ideals of
dharma
among the Indians. Guru
Datta was a man of great intellectual insight; his expectations,
therefore, must be far higher and this idea receives wonderful
corroboration from the fact that he pleaded the cause of the College
with an unbounded zeal and enthusiasm. All that he said about it
seemed to arise from the innermost depth of the soul. He could
not, however, work the whole year (1886) without intermission.
His father, who at that time was much advanced in age, fell ill and
much of his time was spent beside the invalid's bed. The idea of
sending a deputation with the object of collecting subscriptions for
the College to N.W. Provinces and Oudh25 was conceived in 1886.
Pandit Guru Datta had no hope of accompanying it, for his father's
condition grew worse, flit disease, far from showing any sign of
abatement, assumed serious proportions. He must serve the father
xxxln