INTRODUCTION
In chapter 5, we saw that the founding of the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 by Raja Rammohan Roy initiated a religious and political movement for the cultural purification of Hinduism. It was his belief that India had strayed from the true model for Indian culture and religion, the ancient Aryans. As a cure for India's political subjugation, he proposed a recuperation of the former Aryan vision and glory. Rammohan's method of reading the past as a means of reaffirming or undoing the present set a precedent. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth-century, Indian readings of the Aryan past revalorized ancient Indian history and contributed to social reform. Perhaps the most radical reformer was Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83), who founded the Arya Samaj in 1875. In much the same manner that Rammohan Roy based his reform on the translation and dissemination of the Upanishads, Dayanand developed his notion of the Aryan through a continued rearticulation of the authority vested in Vedic texts.
Like the Brahmo Samaj, the Arya Samaj was a movement that rejected much of what passed as current Hinduism. It based its reform on eradicating differences in language, religion, education, customs, and manners that prevented Indians from fully effecting the mutual good of society as a whole. The ten principles (niyams) of the Arya Samaj (written in 1877) provide a summary statement of Dayanand's position with respect to social reform and ethics. Many of the issues raised in the niyams address ethical concerns for the physical, spiritual, and social welfare of others that the Brahmo Samaj and Western critics had found lacking in Hinduism.1
As did Rammohan Roy, Dayanand rejected polytheism and posited the existence of a single and abstract God. He also condemned idol worship. Since God is formless, He cannot be captured by plastic representation. For both thinkers, the issue of idolatry was emblematic of a degenerate Hinduism as opposed to an earlier pure faith. Both focused on idolatry as a medieval excrescence totally foreign to Aryan religion. By debunking idol worship, both sought to reform Hinduism and return to its source. However, Dayanand took arguments against idol worship one step further. He asserted that idolatry led to India's political slavery and degradation. By depending on idols and not exerting themselves, Indians had lost their government, independence, wealth, and pleasures. Dayanand maintained that the Indians themselves were responsible for having become a subject race.
In addition to approximating the Brahmo Samaj's stand on monotheism and idolatry, Dayanand also advocated other issues that were fundamental to Rammohan's reform: female equality in education, postponing the age of marriage, marriage by choice (Dayanand 1981: 315), and widow remarriage (Dayanand 1981: 282). In matters of caste reform, Dayanand far exceeded the efforts of the Raja.2 While the Brahmo Samaj challenged caste with arguments based on Western Enlightenment concerns for social utility, Dayanand condemned caste as a Hindu distortion of Aryan social values.3 The means for rehabilitation existed and could be rediscovered in the Vedas. It was, therefore, a question of relying on Aryan solutions to social and religious problems. No foreign inspiration or models for reform were necessary. The Arya Samaj rejected the universalism of the Brahmo Samaj, particularly in its later configurations.4 Rather than accommodating different religious writings, the Arya Samaj challenged scriptural eclecticism. Hinduism was not equal in the brotherhood of religions, but superior to all others (Jordens 1978: 278-79).
Underlying the Arya Samaj's mandate was its founder's profound belief that modern Indians needed only to return to Aryan values articulated in the Vedas in order to effect reform and regain independence.5 Since the techniques for a return to the Aryan social system were to be found in the teachings of the Veda, Dayanand based his entire program on these texts. They possessed the necessary learning (Dayanand 1981: 117), including all scientific knowledge (Dayanand 1981: 404, 130). Unfortunately, the fundamentals of all types of knowledge do not appear in the Veda in their fully developed form. To access this knowledge, one needed the interpretive skills that Dayanand 's reading of the Veda purported to offer.
With the Satyarth Prakash and the Rgvedadibhashyabhumika,6 Dayanand sought to liberate the Veda from brahmin control, make it accessible to all Hindus,7 and reveal the Aryan Golden Age. In the following discussion, we will examine how the Satyarth Prakash (1875, revised 1883) and Dayanand's commentaries on the Vedas present a series of interpretive strategies enabling him to extricate Vedic revelation from its hermeticism and narrow ritualism and promote a vision of Hindu nationalism that resonates up to the present day.8
DAYANAND'S CANON AND HERMENEUTICAL STRATEGIES FOR READING THE ARYAN WORLD
Vedic textual reference was traditionally known only as memorized utterance. In order to reconstruct a universal system based on the Veda, it was first necessary to fix the revealed text as a written text in the form of a book edition or a translation before invoking it as a canonical authority. Rammohan Roy had begun this process by physically disseminating his "Veda" in the form of vernacular and English translations of the Upanishads. Max Muller continued this process of fixing the Veda with the monumental task of "collecting the ancient MSS" and "publishing for the first time the text and commentary of the Rig Veda, the oldest book of the whole Aryan race" (Muller 1970: 25). Before Dayanand, however, no modern Indian scholar had exhaustively studied the Vedic mantras. Although Hindus paid homage to the Vedas, the Puranas were the scriptures used by the masses and the elites alike. Even for rituals, priests did not rely on the Srauta Sutras, but on medieval glosses of their commentaries that had been written in Sanskrit (Sen 1979: 328). The perception of scriptural value was often more important than content or authorship.
Like Rammohan Roy and Max Muller, Dayanand realized that the Veda's authority was contingent upon the text's accessibility, its availability to the public, and its release from brahmin control. In fact, the entire issue of Vedic authority and canonicity really entailed the liberation of Vedic revelation from its brahmin appraisers. Witness the format that Dayanand initially chose for his polemic, the sastrartha or book disputation (Llewellyn 1993: 104).9 The most notable book disputation took place in Benares in 1869. Here, Dayanand challenged the pandits to prove that idol worship had Vedic sanction by demanding that they physically produce references. They, of course, could not prove Vedic authority for idolatry. Only the Puranas sanctioned it, and Dayanand 's opponents based their claim on this authority.
The site and the theme of this book disputation are noteworthy: Dayanand chose Benares, a center for brahmin learning, as the site to debate idol worship, one of the major sources of priestly pecuniary gain. Although the topic was idolatry, the ensuing debate ended abruptly in the midst of a discussion concerning whether the Puranas were an expression of the same religion as was found in the Vedas. Legend has it that one of the pandits produced some pages containing the term purana ("old"), and while Dayanand was reading them, the pandit declared victory. Dayanand was pelted with stones and police whisked him away (Jordens 1978: 68).10 It is important to note that the debate rested more on the issue of canonicity than on idolatry. Even at this early stage in his career, the book-bound nature of his canon and the physical existence of a Veda were significant factors.11
With time, Dayanand focused even more on textually grounded Vedic authority (Jordens 1978:54-58).12 Throughout his career, he consistently emphasized the legitimacy of physically present texts. After he abandoned the medium of the book disputation and public debate, he focused his attention on translation and commentary. Through these efforts, Dayanand established a canon from which he could create a portrait of an idealized, monotheistic Aryan world devoid of idolatry.
Dayanand's initial task consisted of identifying a canon of authority. In an innovative move, Dayanand limited the Vedic canon to include only the samhita portions of the Vedas.13 It was a curious move on his part to posit the Vedic samhitas as the sole authority, since they were historically viewed as ritualistic texts. Dayanand, however, insisted that the samhitas be read exclusively in order to gain knowledge relevant to life. Since the Vedas alone were considered divine in origin and other texts were composed by seers, Dayanand deemed that whatever was found in any text contradicting the Veda must be rejected. As the only texts composed by God, they alone were infallible; other texts depended on them for their respective authority. By delimiting his canon in this manner,14 Dayanand sought to discover the earliest strata of religion in its purest form. The movement back to the earliest text, predating any and all practices, provided an impregnable position from which to launch an attack on contemporary abuses.
Regarding the rest of Hindu scripture, Dayanand only considered those texts written before the Mahabharata War in the Vedic Golden Age,15 the arsha literature, as authoritative. While this corpus contains some error (since it was composed by humans), Dayanand judged it valid to the extent that it reflected God's knowledge as manifest in the Veda. He judged the anarsha texts, those written after the Mahabharata War, devoid of authority and unworthy of study. They may contain some truth, but it is hidden under much falsehood, amidst "a lot of rubbish, myths and fabrications" (Dayanand 1915: 74). Given the fact that Dayanand clearly delineated those texts that he viewed as authoritative, it is interesting to note the extent to which he held to his valuation of textual legitimacy and adhered to his preestablished canon of authority. Dayanand scholar J.T.F. Jordens compared the first and second editions of the Satyarth Prakash and discovered that, in the first edition, Dayanand provided few Vedic references to support his portrait of the Aryan world. It was only after the long and arduous work on the Vedabhtishya that he compiled the second edition and cited the Vedas more frequently (Jordens 1978: 102). In both editions, Dayanand also relied heavily on Manu, the principal Upanishads, and the six schools of philosophy (Jordens 1978: 250).16
In an exhaustive statistical analysis of Dayanand's use of source material, J.E. Llewellyn has further shown to what degree Dayanand relied on arsha literature when the samhita portions of the four Vedas did not offer sufficient material to substantiate an idealized vision of Aryan reality. Llewellyn has quantified the extent to which Dayanand based his portrait of the Aryans on a limited Vedic canon supplemented by alternative authorities from arsha literature that were not Vedic as Dayanand defined it, but could be used canonically in conjunction with the Veda to support argumentation (Llewellyn 1993: 207).17 In order to develop a full theory of polity, for example, Dayanand relied primarily on Manu. Expediency overrode his self-imposed canonical strictures. The important point in this regard is that, textually, Dayanand's Vedic world was no more "Vedic" than Rammohan Roy's translations of the Upanishads. Moreover, in order to read this "Veda" in support of an idealized vision of the Aryan world, Dayanand devised a series of hermeneutical ploys that further facilitated his thesis that the Vedas embody a totality of truth.
Llewellyn has shown how, in general, Dayanand was not truly consistent in his use of citations (Llewellyn 1993: 231).18 References to sources frequently did not even follow the authority quoted (Llewellyn 1993: 240). In the great majority of cases, Dayanand presented his own interpretation of the Vedic passage without any reference to supporting material (Llewellyn 1993: 231, 238). When he chose to support his readings, he prominently featured non-Vedic arsha texts noteworthy for their interpretive flexibility (Llewellyn 1993: 235-37).19 Dayanand also allowed himself considerable freedom through an impressionistic treatment of verbs. If the Veda was indeed timeless, Dayanand felt justified in changing verb tense or person to fit his interpretation (Llewellyn 1993: 237-38). Because God's knowledge is eternal and infallible, the relation of words, letters, and meaning remains the same in the past and in the future (Dayanand 1981: 40, 301). Thus, Dayanand could easily transform the past into the present. Semantic contortions allowed him to render historical events or geographical features into statements of principle (Jordens 1978: 271-72). The latitude that such tinkering afforded his translation cannot be overstressed. It virtually liberated his "authoritative" reading of the ultimately canonical text from any bonds of textuality.
However, Dayanand's most effective strategy for reading the Veda to support his argument was to be found in his fanciful etymologies and translations. Creative etymology allowed Dayanand to draw his rather baroque conclusions- that the Aryans possessed sophisticated scientific data regarding air filtration and water purification techniques (Dayanand 1981: 327), the science of aeronautics (Dayanand 1981: 264), and techniques of medicine (Dayanand 1981: 267). Grammar and semantics were enlisted to support Dayanand's unique notion that the Vedas were the repository of all scientific truth (Jordens 1978: 272). Creative translations also allowed Dayanand to reveal the Aryans' historical commitment to social progress. The Yajur Veda text 20.10 is literally translated thus: "I take my stand on princely power and kingship." Dayanand renders this passage:
I live in a kingdom which is administered righteously and in the country which is awakened, due to the widespread literacy and morality.
Two sentences later in the same passage, the Sanskrit can be rendered thus: "I stay on welfare, on upper regions and earth and I recline on sacrifice," to which Dayanand offers the following reading:
Those who carry on duties of government regarding me as their supreme Lord, achieve always triumph and progressive prosperity. All government officials therefore should strive to enlighten the people with knowledge and justice and should protect them so that injustice and ignorance may be uprooted. (Dayanand 1981: 293)
Creative translations also allowed Dayanand to reveal the Aryans' commitment to scientific progress by proving Aryan knowledge of telegraphy and modern chemistry.20 Reading the results of scientific investigations into the Vedas may well have functioned as a strategic ploy aimed at defusing the modern encroachments of scientism or attacking the scientific pretenses of modernism. However, Dayanand's linguistic flights of fancy also served a serious practical purpose: They were directed in service of religious reform.
Broad translation enabled Dayanand to draw his most significant conclusions regarding Aryan religious belief. A free rendering of the term pratima, as "measure" rather than "idol" or "image" (Llewellyn 1993: 250) allowed Dayanand to confirm that the Veda actually prohibits image worship (Dayanand 1981: 383-87).21 Morphosyntactic switching allowed Dayanand to affirm the existence of Vedic monotheism (Dayanand 1981: 91-92).22 Although Dayanand ascribed ten separate meanings to the term deva, he concluded that it in no way referred to a multiplicity of divinities (Dayanand 1981: 76).23 In this manner, Dayanand's reading of the Veda supported his critique of Hindu polytheism and idolatry, constant themes in his attack on traditional beliefs and practices. In other words, Dayanand's interpretive strategies established a hermeneutical structure that foreclosed all competing value systems: scientific, religious, and, finally historical.
The Veda eternally existed prior to all history.24 It cannot, therefore, relate to any particular event or individual (Dayanand 1915: 240). Those instances where the Veda seems to refer to proper names or events actually express statements of principle or injunction clothed in dramatic or poetic form. Moreover, the Veda cannot contain anything that offends reason and morality (such as miracles or myths). Seemingly supernatural or historical events must be interpreted allegorically (Dayanand 1981: 369). Names, particularly the names of various gods, can indicate general sense only (Dayanand 1981: 120).25 In short, Dayanand used a "shadow" Veda or alternative canon, miscitations, creative etymologies, and mistranslations to support his central thesis of the Veda's universal applicability and usefulness as a protomodernist tool for reform. This methodology had far-reaching implications: It ultimately allowed him to mythologize history and demythologize myth.
Dayanand's vision of text-centered authority, his delimitation of the canon, and the hermeneutical strategies he devised enabled him to attack the very type of religion that brahmins identified as "Vedic" and Dayanand deemed false and superstitious. His creative method of reading also challenged the modernism represented by the Brahmo Samaj and Indian scholars whom he felt were under the spell of Western ideological presuppostions.26 The layers of deception were manifold: Indian modernists depended upon Western scholars who, in turn, had fallen prey to brahmin falsehood in the form of traditional Sanskrit commentaries (Dayanand 1981: 405). Dayanand thus rejected the authority of traditional exegesis (in the form of scoliasts and commentators) as well as modern (yet traditionally trained) scholars both at home and abroad. After rejecting all competing exegetical authorities, his canon and interpretation alone remained valid.
Beyond imposing a personal idiosyncratic reading on the canon as he defined it, Dayanand's strategies for reading presented a serious attempt to liberate the Veda from the limited readership of brahmin priests and pundits who controlled access to the texts. Rammohan Roy had first sought to liberate the text by redefining access to it through translation. By rejecting traditional and contemporary readings, Dayanand directed his efforts to the same end-freeing the text from brahmin readings and bequeathing it to a more general public. Rammohan's efforts had been limited. Dayanand understood that, with the consolidation of colonial power and its print culture, Indians had the opportunity to reclaim their scripture from "unworthy" brahmin custodians. Dayanand's response was forcefully directed at undermining the system of age-old authority, overthrowing the traditional reader, and installing an ideal reader.
Dayanand 's discourse on the Aryan world thus challenged tradition in the form of brahmin textual power as well as incursions of modernity into tradition. Given the traditional Hindu attitude toward scriptural authority, Dayanand 's interpretive play with citations, etymology, syntax, and tense were truly innovative. They provided the textual apparatus for the reinterpretation and valorization of what it was to be Aryan. However, this text-based Aryan identity necessitated the rehabilitation not only of the text, but the reader as well.
ARYAN MASCULINITY AND THE TELEOLOGY OF DECAY
The task of rehabilitating the textually bound Aryan and his reader necessitated the revaluation of human actions and the spirit that animates them. Dayanand represented the human soul as an active and creative energy, not a passive spectator (Dayanand 1915: 226). In fact, the Satyarth Prakash at numerous reprises drives home the message of man's involvement in the moral world.27 Underlying Dayanand's recuperative efforts was the acknowledged conviction that the primeval truth of the Veda had been distorted by the Advaitan belief in the oneness of God and the human soul. According to Vedantists, neither good nor evil exist because God is the only reality. It is the Advaitan goal to realize this identity, and the sannyasi dedicates himself to this ideal. The world, where good and evil seem to exist, is an illusion. The Satyarth Prakash sets out to disprove the notion that the world is unreal and evil nonexistent. Common sense, Dayanand claimed, established the existence of objects independent of our perception of them. Objects have a reality of their own, and the world must exist or souls could not reap the rewards of previous deeds (Dayanand 1915: 221).
Dayanand presented the soul alone as the seer, doer, and reaper of the fruits of actions (Dayanand 1915: 290). It is the soul that thinks, knows, remembers, performs actions, feels individuality, enjoys, and suffers. Only the soul can perform good and evil deeds (Dayanand 1915: 221-30). Dayanand discouraged belief in concepts such as transmigration and karma because he felt that their determinism made people lazy and indolent. There were no shortcuts through ritual or devotion. Action alone led to moksha. In his estimation, passivity sanctioned by religion had deprived the Indians of their independence, happiness, wealth, political power, and learning. They sit idle, praying for relief and charity that is never forthcoming. Such behavior, he maintained, had completely ruined Aryavarta (Dayanand 1915: 318).
Dayanand enjoined his readers to revert to their Aryan selves, to become again men of energetic and active habits (Dayan and 1915: 250). He urged them to reject ignorance and promote public good, justice, and righteousness (Dayanand 1915: 279). Rather than focusing on the casting off of bodily concerns with a view toward emancipation, Dayanand promoted an image of active masculinity, laying special stress on the efficacy of good works ordered by the Veda, the mastery over sense gratification, and behavior beyond the standard personal virtues. These traits had previously made the Aryans great and should be revived in modern India. Clearly, for Dayanand, the Aryans serve as models for human achievement. Their historical downfall, however, provides an equally important lesson, whose message has less to do with racial somatology than with textual politics and potency Dayanand's "history" of the past begins with a panegyric to Aryan glory. Humanity consisted of two classes: the good (arya) and the wicked (dasyu) (Dayanand 1915: 266). The Aryans were God's chosen people to whom the Veda had been revealed and whose language was the source of all languages. The Dasyus, also called asuras, were dacoits (Dayanand 1915: 264). Warfare broke out between the Aryans and Dasyus. Dayanand did not, however, use the terms arya or dasyu in a racial or a religious sense.28 Arya simply meant an "excellent man" as opposed to a "wicked man." He did not suggest that the Aryans were a particular race or tribe who had conquered aborigines and named them slaves (dasyus) (Dayanand 1981: 266).
Regarding India as the best place on earth, the Aryans emigrated there from Tibet "sometime after creation" (Dayanand 1915: 265) and colonized it. They named this land Aryavarta, the abode of the Aryans.29 Before the Aryans had colonized it, Aryavarta had no name and had been uninhabited. From their new home, the Aryans governed the whole world (Dayanand 1915: 320) and preached the Vedas throughout their dominion (Dayanand 1915: 266). All peoples embraced the Aryan morality, since it taught universal brotherhood. Only under the rule of the Aryans did peace and happiness reign upon this earth (Dayanand 1915: 326-27). Aryavarta was the center and source of Aryan power; all knowledge, righteousness, and all religions originated there (Dayanand 1915: 265). The Aryans were the true Indians. Unlike the Bible or the Koran, the Veda was meant for all nations. Sanskrit was the universal language, since it was no people's mother tongue and all had to learn it. The Aryans taught Egypt, Greece, and Europe whatever initial1earning they possessed (Dayanand 1915: 238). They were sophisticated, generous (Dayanand 1915: 39), and cosmopolitan (Dayanand 1915: 326). Their system of rule was so perfect that it formed the basis for all subsequent world governments (Dayanand 1915: 201). Devoted to the acquisition of knowledge and bodily perfection, endowed with ideal social structures and religious customs, the Aryans kept India free from disease and misery. Despite their efforts to maintain a perfect society, however, the Aryans brought destruction upon their culture.
The Mahabharata War marked the end of the Aryan Golden Age. During this conflict, Aryavarta was dealt a blow from which it never recovered: When the princes, kings, sages, and saints of the golden age perished, their teaching of Vedic literature and religion died with them (Dayanand 1915: 316-18). Superstition and degenerate cultic practices took root and began to flourish in the form of Hinduism's distortions of Vedic religion.30 Dayanand's philosophy of "history" installs this aetiology of loss and corruption as the root cause of Indian's contemporary malaise. However, what sets Dayanand's teleology of decay apart from Western theorists of degeneration, such as Spengler or Nordau, was that the degeneration Dayanand found in history was intimately related to textual degeneration.
Dayanand held that God communicates the Vedas to man at the beginning of each kalpa. Just as He has done in the previous kalpa, so will He reveal the Veda again in future kalpas ad infinitum (Dayanand 1981: chapter 1). Of the three eternally existing entities, God, souls, and the material universe, the universe and sows cease to exist in their present form at cosmic dissolution (pralaya). In the beginning of the next kalpa, however, they come into existence again (Dayanand 1915: 281, 284). Like the universe and sows, the Veda too, while not manifest in the period after pralaya, is communicated anew to humanity as each world is created (Jordens 1972: 372). Thus, God's knowledge in the form of the Veda is revealed to humanity at the beginning of each kalpa and, we are to assume, suffers a similar process of degradations through successive readings. Racial degeneration is thus tied to textual decline.
Textual degradation was partially defined by brahmin agency. Since the Mahabharata War, brahmins had denied textual access to non-brahmins, thus bringing to a close the tradition of studying Vedic scriptures rationally. Without necessarily understanding the texts, they made their living by controlling and distorting them (Dayanand 1915: 158). Dayanand tied the degeneration of Vedic Hinduism to the proliferation of spurious works of a sectarian nature. Brahmins furthered India's degeneration by sponsoring superfluous rituals for financial gain. Hence they bequeathed to Hinduism belief in idols, miracles, pilgrimages, astrology, and the like, all absent in the Aryan world of the Vedas. Dayanand held that brahmin preoccupation with absurd rituals stemmed from greed and ignorance. He noted that when uneducated persons became preceptors, hypocrisy, fraud, and vice got an upper hand (Dayanand 1915: 317). Their behavior directly brought about the ruin of Aryavarta (Dayanand 1915: 318).
Given the brahmins' abuse of their privileges, Dayanand maintained that they were no longer worthy of the respect paid to them by their birthright (Dayan and 1981: 321). Out of selfishness, they destroyed Vedic knowledge. Lest their fraud be revealed, they contrived to undermine and repress all dissenting voices (Dayanand 1915: 157). They prevented people from educating themselves and ensnared the population in a net of hypocrisy (Dayanand 1915: 317). The authors of "current Sanskrit books or vernacular books" that "wrangle over trifflings" completed the degradation of Vedic truth (Dayanand 1915: 260). Brahmins abused and misdirected the power placed in their hands.
Dayanand directly associated this power with textual power. He claimed that the Vedic source of brahmin power, the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda (10.90), had intentionally been misinterpreted. While there were indeed four hierarchical classes, as evinced in this sukta, Dayanand described them as born out of the collectivity's needs for socioeconomic complementarity. Rather than the dismemberment of a primordial man into elements representing social hierarchy,31 the true meaning of the sukta related how the universe was created and sustained by an omnipresent God who oversees human merit, allowing individuals to enter their hierarchical station only by faithfully discharging the duties of that station (Dayan and 1915: 98-99).32 According to Dayanand's interpretation of the sukta, even the lowborn should be recognized as brahmins as long as they possess the requisite qualifications. Similarly, the highborn should be demoted if they fail to fulfil duties. Thus, righteous conduct alone determines the achievement of a "higher order of caste" (Dayanand 1981: 397). Dayanand claimed that the status distinctions, the actual "evil" of caste, were a later distortion read into the sukta by brahmins; they did not exist in Vedic times.
Dayanand proposed to replace the current caste system with a meritocracy, where all classes were determined according to the individual's qualifications, accomplishments, and character. Individuals would be assessed some time between their sixteenth and twenty-fifth year of age (Dayanand 1915: 100). Dayanand allowed that the shtidra could attain brahmin status and enjoy the privileges of a brahmin, if he evinced the qualities of a brahmin - if he possessed wisdom, piety, charity, and chaste conduct. The same criterion held true for the brahmin, who would become a shudra if he were impure, stupid, dependent, or subservient (Dayanand 1981: 396). For Dayanand, therefore, a brahmin is not born, but self-actualized. One whose mind is a repository of Vedic learning and devotion to God becomes a brahmin. 33 Self-realization is, however, tied to textuality or textual literacy. One can read and understand the Vedas only if one's mind and speech are pure and controlled (Dayanand 1915: 45). Such an individual represents for Dayanand the ideal reader of the Veda, someone capable of returning to true Aryanhood.
Dayanand's attack on the traditional brahmin and redefinition of the true brahmin intersects with his discourse on masculinity, which, in turn, is intimately related to his ideology of the Aryan. False brahmins (that is, traditional brahmins) are false readers of the Veda. They do not exhibit the traits of the Aryans. True brahmins have recuperated Aryan values by returning to the Veda. These "restored Aryans" differ radically from present-day "emasculated Aryans," who are the object of Dayanand's invective. In fact, Dayanand took pains to dissociate his followers from the fallen Aryans of Hinduism. For the 1881 census, Dayanand gave the direction that Arya Samajists should enter themselves as "Arya" in the column on community or race and should note "Vedic Dharma" in the column on religion.34 When he once inadvertently used the term "Hindu" in one of his sermons in Poona, he immediately corrected himself.35 He urged his audience to give up the name "Hindu" and take pride in "Arya" and "Aryavart." He noted: "You have degenerated in your qualities, which is bad enough but you should at least not corrupt your name."36 Dayanand chose a series of persuasive metaphors to describe the manner in which modern "Aryans" had rejected Aryan values and adopted evil customs (Dayanand 1915: 320). One metaphor that Dayanand chose to illustrate past Aryan glory and present "Aryan" dissolution was that of the sannyasi. Rather than focus upon renunciation as the path by which one seeks personal liberation, Dayanand devalued the renunciant's role in Hindu society.37 Dayanand "Aryanized" the sannyasi. Like others, the true sannyasi should be an active member of society, dedicated to the good of the people, rather than a worthless parasite (Jordens 1972: 377).38 Dayanand juxtaposed Aryan worldliness with what he considered to be modern Indian provincialism. He cited dietary regulations as symptomatic of the general malaise. How, Dayanand asked, could Indians fight and persevere over their enemies (as the Aryans had done) if they worry about who prepares their food, where they eat it, and with whom? Real Aryans had travelled abroad learning good qualities from other peoples and rejecting bad influences. They traded, wielded political power, and were fearlessly bold. Rather than obsessing on foolish injunctions, modern Indians should emulate Aryan cosmopolitan sophistication.
The loss of Aryan values was thus tied to the loss of true ksatriyahood (Nandy 1983: 24-26), as the loss of knowledge was directly tied to the loss of worldly power. Perhaps this is why Dayanand never took a stand against the British. In his view, foreign rule had occurred through the Indians' own failings. A country cannot progress when it indulges in mutual feud, child marriage, carnality, untruthfulness, neglect in the study of the Veda, and other evils. When brothers fight against each other, then only an outsider can pose as an arbiter (Dayanand 1915: 320). Unless a country trades effectively with foreigners and extends its rule over others, it can only expect misery and poverty.39
Dayanand's Aryan thus stands in stark opposition to the tendency in Hinduism to draw men away from the world and active involvement in it (Jordens 1972: 378). Indeed, this thematic expresses itself throughout his commentaries. The message of activism, a vision of an active Hindu and a new Hinduism, finds expression most significantly in the purified, vital, and progressive India that Dayanand hoped to see reborn on the model of the Aryan Golden Age (Jordens 1972: 379). Dayanand tied the loss of Aryanhood to the very behavior and customs that his reform sought to attack: communal and sectarian violence, idolatry, lack of education, child marriage, and the neglect of Vedic study. These malpractices brought about the loss of Aryanhood and, as a consequence, caused India's foreign subjugation. To reverse Aryavarta's degradation, one merely had to reestablish the Aryan utopia with its undistorted institutions. The necessary palliatives for modern Indian malaise could be found in Vedic times. One need not resort to other proposed cures, such as Christianity or modern science. The cure was in "reading" the wisdom that the Aryans left behind, as in Dayanand's interpreting the ancestral varna system to incorporate individualistic values. Such "correct" readings of the Veda would usher a new Aryan age into being.
CONCLUSION
Contemporaneously with European flights of scholarly imagination within the domains of linguistics and philosophy, India was creating its own autochthonous myth of origin in the Aryan past. A myth of a Vedic Golden Age was first promulgated by the Brahmo Samaj. Rammohan's reinterpretation of the Indian socioreligious tradition led to conflict on two fronts: against Christian missionaries on the one hand and Hinduism on the other. It was Rammohan's belief that Hinduism had strayed from its true model, the ancient Vedic period. He condemned the later period, identified as that of Hindu idolatry, for destroying the texture of society.
The belief that India had degenerated from Aryan ideals also found support in the commentaries and debates of Dayanand Saraswati. Dayanand's cure for India's political subjugation was to recover past vision and glory. Like Rammohan, who based his version of the Aryan myth on the interpretation and authority of canonical sources, Dayanand also sought a textual basis to reconnect with the Aryan past. The Arya Samaj, founded in 1875 by Dayanand, provided a social context for interpreting the Vedic canon (Llewellyn 1993: 7). In fact, throughout the nineteenth century, a myth of the Aryan, grounded in arbitrary readings and authoritative definitions of what was considered "Vedic," was used by social reformers to mobilize public opinion. Reformers devised interpretations of the Aryan tradition in order to diffuse Western missionary propaganda, battle against modernity, and combat social inequity. Out of a need to reassert self-esteem under colonialism, caste Hindus regarded themselves as descendents of ancient Aryans and stressed the continued historic superiority of their culture. Since philology had deciphered the relationship between Sanskrit and Greek, the Indo- Aryans could now be recognized as the true originators of civilization. The historian Romila Thapar has correctly noted that the theory of the Aryan race was the most influential theory to come out of nineteenth-century Indology (Thapar 1992: 3).
In Dayanand's discourse regarding the Veda, the loss of Aryanhood and the degradation of values from the Vedic Golden Age was intimately bound up with textuality and the hermeneutic process. Cultural regression was due to the loss of interpretive skills that had previously ensured the survival of Aryan values. If the glorious past of great achievement rested on Vedic knowledge, Dayanand explained India's modern decline as a distortion of that knowledge through inaccessibility and/or misreading of its textual basis. He proposed a plan for the revival of that glorious past through the restoration of Vedic textual knowledge and readership. In short, he assigned to the Veda an authority that far exceeded its traditional status within orthodoxy. While still the locus of truth and authority, it now became the measure of all knowledge and the only tool whereby the reversal of India's sociocultural decline could be effected. Prior to his interpretation, Dayanand felt that the Veda had either been foreclosed or incorrectly read. "Unworthy" modern Hindus had limited access to the text or intentionally misinterpreted it. All Indians were entitled to the text. Through a correct reading for which Dayanand provided the hermeneutic tools, they would be guided back to its true meaning and its ideal Weltanschauung.
Dayanand's ideology of the Aryan framed, therefore, a larger discussion wherein Indian masculinity was placed in the balance and found to be sorely lacking. The biographies (hagiographies) of Dayanand tend to ennoble his cultivation of physical powers. The soteriology of moral activity that he devised codified engagement as opposed to contemplation. Dayanand's myth of the Aryan brings into focus the larger reformulation of Indian masculine identity in nineteenth-century social reform. Ashis Nandy has shown just how, in coming to terms with India's subjugation, certain Indian thinkers both attributed England's use of power to masculine superiority and India's defeat to the loss of the ideals of Aryan manhood. The task now was to seek in Indian tradition those "cultural differentiae" (Nandy 1983: 25) that enabled the West to stay on top. Dayanand found these values, or rather read these values, into a flexible Vedic canon.
Through an idiosyncratic reading of essentially non-Vedic sources, Dayanand revealed the Vedic truth of active masculinity that had been destroyed by distortion and brahmin greed. This truth revealed the character of the Aryan as a cosmic force to be reckoned with-a figure engaged in good works and fearlessly bold. This ideology of the Aryan was not intended as an alternative frame of reference by which Indians might confront their colonizers. For Dayanand, colonialism did not represent an absolute evil. Britain did not appear as a juggernaut, but merely as one conquerer among others who had profited from Aryavarta's decline. Dayanand's aetiology posited the crises of Indian identity not as a result of colonialism, but as an ongoing degeneration dating from ancient (mythological) history.
It is not surprising that postcolonial critics have neglected a seminal colonial figure like Dayanand. He does not serve their theoretical criteria. In Dayanand, there is no systemic effect; struggles for self-realization are not subject to forces beyond one's comprehension. He knew who the enemies of Aryanhood were; they were close to home and identifiable. Their power could be questioned and challenged. The texts themselves tell us how to deconstruct brahmin power. The reader possesses individual agency and wields it through formal textual strategies. Under colonial rule, liberal visions of individual agency functioned in widespread and sophisticated forms. Dayanand represents a subaltern voice railing against home-grown oppression, reordering society through the rearticulation of myth, and building a hermeneutic structure to assert a new national identity. By distinguishing the modern brahmin from the ancient Aryan, Dayanand justified the need for a new social order and provided a model for redefining authority. His ideology of the Aryan became a means of redefining the role and position of the brahmin elite.40 By liberating the text from its traditional custodians, documenting their misreadings, and offering an alternative reading, Dayanand rewrote the caste system as a meritocracy and "Aryanized" Hindu masculinity.
British colonial rule was the symptom, not the cause, of India's real tragedy. The cause was to be found in the loss of Aryan manhood. Emasculation had brought about India's legitimate defeat at the hands of the British. Dayanand's strategies for reading created a myth of the Aryan that allowed Indians rather to "redeem their masculinity and become the counterplayers of their rulers according to the established rules" (Nandy 1983: 11). Dayanand's textual construction of the Aryan exhibited a political strategy enabling Indians to access a discourse of power and, as reified Aryan overlords, share in it.