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INTRODUCTION

BY THE

EDITOR.

The works of Raja Ram Mohun Roy are at last republished after naving been neglected for 50 years. The author spent the best part of his life and the whole of his hard-earned fortune in writing and publishing these valuable works. After his death however they were neglected and nearly forgotten. It is as strange as it must be painful to every Indian heart, that this should have been so; for there is no subject of importance to India whether it be social, religious, or political which has not been dealt with by the Raja with an ability to which few of his countrymen after him can lay any claim. Reformers and patriots of India of the present age and of ages to come will always find much to learn from the first and the greatest patriot and reformer of modern India.

Nor are Indians alone who have much to learn from him. Civilised Europe and America also will find much in his works to think seriously upon, and will not fail to admire the genius and the learning of a native of India who could write upon the Bible and its doctrines with an amount of erudition not surpassed by the most learned divines of his age.

In introducing his works, it is perhaps fit that we should give a short account of his life and the times in which he lived, and of the circumstances which surrounded him, and which were the direct causes of the writings which are now republished.

Raja Ram Mohun Roy was born of a very respectable high-caste Brahmin family, at Radhanagore, a village in the District of Hooghly in Lower Bengal, in the year 1774, A. D. The English had just acquired Bengal and were trying to establish settled government in the country. It was in this very year that the first GovernorGeneral of India and his Council were appointed, and the Supreme

Court established. It was indeed a momentous year for India. Raja Ram Mohun Roy's father was Ram Kant Roy, a small Zemindar, who had served under the Nawabs of Murshedabad and had seen their downfall. His mother was a woman of very great piety and remarkable firmness of character. Her name was Tarini Devi, but she was commonly known as Phool Thakoorani.

Tols of Pundits where Brahmins only were taught, and Muktubs of Persian Moulovies, were the only places of instruction in those days. Persian was still the language of the Court, and all persons who were ambitious of secular honours for their sons, had them educated in Persian and Arabic. Ram Mohun Roy was, consequently, after he had acquired what knowledge he could, of Bengalee and Persian, in his native village, sent in his ninth year to Patna the principal seat of Arabic learning in Bengal, The extraordinary memory and the uncommon intellectual powers of young Ram Mohun enabled him to master the Persian and Arabic languages within 3 or 4 years, In this short time he studied not only the poets and philosophers of Persia and Arabia, among whom the Sufis, whose mystic philosophy resembled the philosophy of Vedanta and Yoga, pleased him most, but he also read Aristotle and Euclid in Arabic inorder to qualify himself better to carry on controversies with Moulovies and Pundits in which he constantly engaged,

In his twelfth year Ram Mohun Roy was sent to Benares to study Sanskrit, Benares was then and is still the principal seat of Sanskrit learning, especially of the Vedantic philosophy. Ram Mohun Roy stayed there till his sixteenth year, and diligently studied the literature and the philosophy of the old Hindus; and it was here that he imbibed the monotheistic tenets of the Vedanta and the Upanishads, and he came back from Benares a determined enemy of idolatry and the religious evils of his country.

Soon after his return home Ram Mohan Roy wrote a treatise against the idolatry of the Hindus, which caused a rupture between father and son, and young as he was, he left his paternal roof and wandered for 4 years from place to place, alone and without a friend. It was during this time that he travelled to Thibet where he learnt the doctrines of Buddhism at its principal

seat. His assertion of monotheistic doctrines hére nearly cost him his life, but the kindness of the women of Thibet saved him from all dangers and difficulties,—a kindness which he never forgot, and which, as he said forty years after, made him always feel the warmest respect and gratitude towards the gentler sex.

After four years, he was recalled home by his father, who was heart-broken, as he said, like Dasaratha, by sending his Ram to the wilderness; and till his 25th year he spent his time in learning English and studying the Sanskrit shasters, and carrying on controversies with the Brahmins upon idol-worship and the burning of widows, which however again brought upon him the wrath of the Hindu society, and he was once more obliged to leave his home.

From 1800 to 1813 Ram Mohun Roy was employed in Government service filling various posts till he was made a sherestadar. He spent 10 years of his life in Ramgarh, Bhagulpore and Rungpore, as dewan or head officer of the Collectors and Judges of those districts, and hence it was, that he was commonly known as the Dewanji, till he was made a Raja by the Emperor of Delhi. While at Rungpore, he was also busily engaged in studying the shasters and in controversies with the Brahmins, and though we have got none of his writings of that time, there is a book written against him at Rungpore and subsequently revised and printed in Calcutta in 1245 B. S. (1838 A. D.) named Gyananjan, from which we learn, that while at Rungpore he wrote Persian tracts and translated parts of the Vedanta.

From Rungpore Ram Mohun Roy came to Calcutta in 1814, and as he said "gave up all worldly avocations and engaged in religious culture and in the investigation of truth," and began the work of his life for which he had been so long preparing. Inorder to give an idea of the difficulties which Ram Mohun Roy had to overcome, and the prevalence and enormity of the evils which he had to fight against, we shall give a short account of the state of the country and of the Hindu society at that time.

When Ram Mohun

It was the period of a great revolution. Roy was born, all the old kingdoms were tumbling down, and new ones being reared in their stead. In Bengal the tyrannical

Serajudoula had been overthrown, and the rule of a race of foreigners from beyond the ocean had been set up. Throughout the whole country there was disorder and confusion. The old state of things was passing away, giving place to the new, the only question being whether this would be for the better or for the worse.

The

In the religious world also there was much excitement. Saktas or the worshippers of the Goddess Sakti and the Baishnabas, mostly followers of Chaitanya, were both strong, and were contending with each other for supremacy in the land. It was at this time also that the Tantrik worship flourished in Bengal, with all its midnight horrors and corruptions, as well as with that profound though rather gloomy devotion so well exemplified in the case of Ram Prosad Sen, Raja Ramkant and other great men, many of whom were contemporaries of the father of Ram Mohun Roy. Nor was Baishnabism weak. With all the corruptions that had polluted the sacred religion of Chaitanya there was still some religious fervour left, which enabled it to keep its hold upon the people. The strife between the Baishnabas and the Saktas was bitter, and Ram Mohun Roy lived in the very midst of it; for his own family was one of the foremost Baishnab families of Bengal, while his maternal grandfather was the acknowledged spiritual head of the Saktas of that part of the country, and stories are told of quarrels between the two families on account of their religious differences; and it is not strange that religious discussion was the pleasure of Ram Mohun Roy's life during his youth as well as afterwards. But however great might be the bigotry of the two sects, their general immorality and corruptions were simply revolting, and it was high time that matters should mend.

The social condition of the people in Bengal was also deplorable. The rigid Caste-system of India with its blighting influence reigned in its full vigour. The horrible rites of Suttee and Infanticide were the order of the day. There were indeed many instances of true Suttees to whom the death of their lord was the end of all desire of life and its pleasures, and who went joyfully into the fire with vermilion on their forehead and other bridal decorations, without casting 'one longing lingering look behind.' But it should not therefore be forgotten