“Among the great company of remarkable figures at the head of all the Indian Renaissance one stands out by himself with the peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique in his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure vigorous and fertilizing water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain of life and health to the valley. Such is the impression created on my mind by Dayanand.”

The above statement of Aurobiondo Ghosh might well demonstrate the passionate tone of poet, but in its spirit and substance it conveys a historical truth. In the galaxy of the great men who rescued India from the clutches of degeneration and despondency in the nineteenth century, Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1833) occupies a very important place. Possessed of sharp intellect, rational thinking, and a vision far ahead of his time, he ceaselessly worked for religious reformation, social reconstruction, cultural regeneration and political emancipation of his country. He ‘transfused into her morbid body his own formidable energy, his certainty, his lion’s blood’, and thus came to share with other great sons of India, the coveted title of the Maker of Modern India.