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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Some historians of modern Indian religious thought claim that, in respect of a pure monotheism free from pagan or polytheistic myth and a morality free from taboos and superstition, Rammohun was indebted to the Christian missionaries of his time and more particularly to the Baptists of Serampore. Thus, E. Daniel Potts, in his British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837, observes:
The Brahmo Samaj or Sabha (or Theistic Society) founded by him [Rammohun] in 1828 after he disassociated himself from Adam's Unitarian Association used a congregational form of worship utterly unknown to the ancient form of Hinduism he believed he was restoring; any many of its teachings, particularly ethical, were drawn from those of the Precepts of Jesus. Related organizations to reform Hinduism sprang up in the 1830–s and after, and in the process propagated, though their leaders would not always admit this, the idea of Christian morality – both enterprises begun by Roy's direct response to missionary and particularly Baptist endeavours.’
page 669 note 1 Potts, E. Daniel, British Baptist Missionaries in India: 1793–1837 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 242.Google Scholar
page 670 note 1 Nag, and Burman, (ed.), The English Works of Rammohun Roy (Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1958), II, p. 194.Google Scholar
page 670 note 2 Potts, , op. Cit. p. 227.Google Scholar
page 671 note 1 ‘A second defence of the monotheistical system of the Vedas’, Calcutta 1817Google Scholar, in Nag, and Burman, , op. cit. II, p. 100.Google Scholar
page 672 note 1 ‘Abridgement of the Vedant’ (Calcutta, 1816), in Nag, and Burman, , op. cit. II, p. 70.Google Scholar
page 672 note 2 Abridgement of the Vedant’, in Nag, and Burman, , op. cit. II, p. 100.Google Scholar
page 673 note 1 ‘A second defence of the monotheistical system of the Vedas’, in Nag, and Burman, , Op. cit. II, p. 100.Google Scholar
page 674 note 1 Potts, E. Daniel, op. cit. p. 236.Google Scholar
page 674 note 2 Ibid. p. 237.
page 675 note 1 McGiffert, A. C., Protestant Thought before Kant (Harper Torchbooks), pp. 25–6.Google Scholar
page 675 note 2 Marshman, Joshua, ‘Reply to Rammohun Roy's final appeal against the atonement and the Deity of Christ’, The Friend of India (Serampore, 1824), pp. 11–13.Google Scholar
page 676 note 1 Ibid. p. 14.
page 676 note 2 There seems to be a warrant for such an attitude in the Gospels themselves. This is from Matthew, , XV, 22–7Google Scholar: And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil./But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us./But he answered her and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel./Then she came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, Help me./But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs./And she said, Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
page 676 note 3 Sigh, Iqbal, Rammohun Roy, p. 243.Google Scholar
page 677 note 1 McGiffert, A. C., Protestant Thought before Kant, p. 133.Google Scholar
page 677 note 2 Singh, Iqbal, Rammohun Roy (P.P.H., Bombay), p. 243.Google Scholar
page 679 note 1 Bhattacharyya, Pradyumna, ‘Rammohun Roy and Bengali Prose’, in Joshi, (ed.), Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernization in India (Vikas, 1975), pp. 195–223.Google Scholar
page 679 note 2 Sarkar, Sumit, ‘Rammohun Roy and the Break with the Past’, in Joshi, (ed.), Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernization in India, p. 55.Google Scholar
page 679 note 3 Miller, Perry, ‘From Edwards to Emerson’, in Interpretations of American Literature, ed. Feidelson (Galaxy, New York), p. 124.Google Scholar
page 680 note 1 It is my pleasant duty to give thanks for help received from the Carey Memorial Library, and for permission granted to examine old journals preserved in their archives.
