Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 509

a personal Creator and Heavenly Father.[110] Intellectual—anything but emotional—it failed to satisfy many worshippers. And as a church it was conservative in regard to social reforms.
In 1858 Keshub Chunder Sen, a Vishnuite by family, then but twenty, joined the Sams=alj, and being clever, young, eloquent, and cultivated, he, after the manner of the Hindus, undertook to reform the church he had just entered, first of all by urging the abolition of caste-restrictions. Debendran[=alth was liberal enough to be willing to dispense with his own thread (the caste-mark), but too wisely conservative to demand of his co-religionists so complete a break with tradition and social condition. For the sacred thread to the Hindu is the sign of social respectability. Without it, he is out of society. It binds him to all that is dearest to him. The leader of the older Sam[=a]j; never gave up caste; the younger members in doing so mix religion with social etiquette, and so hinder the advance they aim at. Sen urged this and other reforms, all repugnant to the society in which he lived, changes in the rite at the worship of ancestors, alterations in the established ritual at birth-ceremonies and funerals, abolition of polyandry and of child-marriages, and, worst of all, granting permission to marry to those of different castes. His zeal was directed especially against caste-restrictions and child marriages. Naturally he failed to persuade the old Sam[ra]j to join him in these revolutionary views, to insist on which, however sensible they seem, cannot be regarded otherwise than as indiscreet from the point of view of one who considers men and passions. For the Sam[=alj, in the face of tremendous obstacles, had just secured a foot-hold in India. Sen's headlong reforms would have smashed to pieces the whole congregation, and left India more deeply prejudiced than ever against free thought. Sen failed to reform the old church, so in 1865 he, with some ardent young enthusiasts, reformed themselves into a new church, ceremoniously organized in 1866 as the Br[ra]hma Sam[=alj; of India, in distinction from the Calcutta Sam[=alj, or (=A]di Sam[=a]j. A futile effort was made to get all the other local congregations to join the new Sam[=a]j, the last, of course, to be the first and head of the organization.