Unknown Facts About Swami Dayanand Saraswati, The Founder Of Arya Samaj

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The 196th birth anniversary of Sri Dayanand Saraswati, the great Indian philosopher is going to be celebrated on February 15 2023. He was a social reformer who founded the Arya samja which took over as a national revolution that changed the mindset of the most orthodox Indians at that time. He validated the Vedas but opposed the way it was being applied to the common human life and blamed the purohit cross section for twisting the Vedic tenets as per their convenience. He called out to people to rise up in arms for achieving the swaraj and his statement "India for Indians" is most famous. He contributed in innumerable ways to defend the rights of women, rights to education and rights to learn Vedas in Sanskrit and Hindi.
Apart from all this, here are some interesting facts about the great philosopher:

1. Swami Dayanand Saraswati's premonastic name was Mool Shankar Tiwari.This name was inspired by the star Mula that he was born under. He received his monastic name from Swami Vrijananda.

2. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born in a Hindu family in Tankara Kathiawad. His father Karshanji Lalji Tiwari, who was also the head of a very eminent family in the village, was a wealthy tax collector, and mother, Yashodabai. His father, being a devotee of Lord Shiva, taught the young Dayanand, the scriptures and tried to put him to the Bhakti marga.

3. Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati began to worship Lord Shiva but on Mahashivratri, he noticed, during the puja, a small mouse climbing up the idol of Mahadev and eating all the prasad. Dayanand Saraswati became sceptical and questioned why Lord Shiva was unable to protect himself from the mouse. Then how could he save the world.

4. He was a monk right from his childhood.

5. It was Dayanand Saraswati who gave the clarion call to Hindus that was later taken up staunchly by Lokmanya Tilak.

6. When he lost his sister and uncle to Cholera, he turned inwards and realised that life was a futile exercise. When his marriage was fixed in his early teens, he rejected this idea and ran away from the house and wandered for 25 years in forests and Himalayan mountains in search of peace and an answer to all his doubts.

7. He wanted to follow the vedic path and felt that human beings would do better if they lived with a fraternal spirit. He wanted to release the society from the clutches of purohits who ruled the world of scriptures. He wanted the society to return back to Vedic way of life.

8. Dayanand Saraswati was a fighter from his early days and protested against the loopholes of the existing societal system that encouraged child marriage, denial of rights to education for women and so on. He had these convictions that were deeply rooted in him to support his fight.

9. Swami Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj finally at Lahore in 1877 and dedicated himself to the teaching of vedas and culture. He condemned idol worship, pilgrimages and caste discrimination, meat eating etc..

10. 6Very famous personalities like Bhagat Singh, Veer Savarkar , Lala Lajpat Rai and many more were ardent followers of his tenets.

11. He was declared as the maker of India by none other than President of India S Radhakrishnan and Sri Aurobindo.

12. . Around 800 colleges based on his ideas and reforms have been running all over the country and that speaks for his rich legacy.

13. Dayananda Saraswati contributed more than 60 works the most important of them being a treatise to Vedas. He authored satyartha Prakash.

14. Maharshi Dayanand endorsed the view and doctrine of Karma and Reincarnation.

15. On the topic "Do the Vedas uphold deity worship?" there was a natiowide debate held at Varanasi, where in Dayanand Saraswati singlehandedly won a debate with 27 scholars and over 12 pandits, in a large gathering of over 50,000 people for audience.