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But it was not till 1898 that the governing body of the Samaj in the Punjab decided to carry into execution a scheme for restoring the Vedic system of education which Dayanand had conceived but had never been able to carry out.
At the foundation of this scheme of the world lies the conception of order, which is particularly defined in the Vedic arta and the Avestan asha the regulation of the world in accordance with human interests, in which the ethical element becomes more and more prominent as human society is more and more formed on an ethical basis.
For fifty-six days annually the Maharaja visits the temple thrice daily to hear Vedic hymns and recitations; the expiation ceremony ends with the LAKSHADIPAM or illumination of the temple by a hundred thousand lights. "In war a king should not fight with poisonous or fiery weapons nor kill weak or unready or weaponless foes or men who are in fear or who pray for protection or who run away.
'We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put forward by those who think that a study of the myths and customs of uncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities, and the views advocated by classical scholars who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a comparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more particularly from what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they plunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir folklore.
Though the Vedic sacrifices fell more and more out of general use, this notion of the power of rites and formulae did not fade with them but has deeply infected modern Hinduism and even Buddhism, in both of which the lore of spells and gestures assumes monstrous proportions.
I have myself seen the sites where such sacrifices were offered in 1908-9 in Mysore city and in Chidambaram, and in 1912 at Wei near Poona. The most usual form of sacrifice now-a-days is said to be the Vâjapeya. Much Vedic ritual is still preserved in the domestic life of the Nambathiri and other Brahmans of southern India. The animal is beheaded and the inference is that Kâlî likes it.
Kühn, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology myths of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of pure savagery, Max Müller admits at least two periods pan-Aryan and Indo-Iranian prior to the Vedic period.
He taught little about metaphysics or the nature of God, but he insisted on the necessity and efficacy of Vedic rites. More important both as a thinker and an organizer was Śankara. There is some discrepancy in the traditions of his birth, but he was probably born about 788 A.D. in a family of Nambuthiri Brahmans at Kaladi in the Cochin state.
The text as to the lifelong obligatoriness of the Agnihotra is valid for those only who do not retire from worldly life. The argument for the three stages of life, founded on their mention in Vedic texts, has no force, since all those references are only of the nature of anuvada. For none of those texts contain injunctive forms. The text 'There are three branches of sacred observance, &c. Up.
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