Obituary to Pundit Dayanand Saraswati

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 8 pages

Written for The Theosophist in December 1883, and notable for who it is about. Dayanand Saraswati, founder and supreme chief of the Arya Samaj, had been an early ally of the Theosophical Society and had latterly become its opponent; the relationship had ended badly. A telegram from Ajmere brought the news that he had died at six in the evening on 30 October, and this is the response.

The Latin tag she reaches for sets the terms — de mortuis nil nisi bonum — and she keeps to it. All our differences, she writes, have been burnt with the body, and with its now sacred ashes are scattered forever to the four winds; what remains is the memory of the grand virtues and noble qualities of a former colleague, teacher and late antagonist. The praise that follows is specific rather than formulaic: his lifelong devotion to Aryan regeneration, his untiring zeal for social and religious reform, his labour from his earliest years to recover the lost treasures of Indian intellect. Whatever might be said about his interpretation of the sacred writings — and she had said a good deal — his learning is not in question.

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