File:Children rescued by Arya Samaj in 1908 Indian famine.jpg

Identifier: aryasamajaccount00lajpuoft Title: The Arya samaj; an account of its origin, doctrines, and activities, with a biographical sketch of the founder Year: 1915 (1910s) Authors: Lajpat Rai, Lala, 1865-1928 Subjects: Dayananda Sarasvati, Swami, 1824-1883 Arya-Samaj Publisher: London Longmans, Green Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: of dire calamity. But still more blessed are those who paid for their own bread and did not spend even a pie of public money on their own food. Personally my gratefulness to them is indescribable. They have earned the everlasting gratitude of their people by setting such a good and noble example of self-sacrifice to the other members of the rising generation. Let us hope that these services are an earnest of what may be expected of them in the future. This record of their work is a magnificent ray in the sunshine of Hindu revival, to which we all look with hope and pleasure. 3. Famine Relief in 1908 In 1908, however, the movement was expanded and general relief was aimed at. The following extract from the Census Report of the United Provinces of Agra and Oude for 1911 will give some idea of the extensive scale on which work was done during the famine :— The emissary of a well-known Arya leader came round distributing relief during the famine of 1907-8 and visited a certain village near which I had

Text Appearing After Image: / PHILANTHROPIC ACTIVITIES 219 encamped. After his visit, the recipients of his bounty, being not quite sure whether they were doing right in accepting private charity when Government was looking after them, sent a deputation to ask me whether they might keep his gifts. I, of course, told them to take all they could get; and then their leader asked me who was the man (the Arya leader) who was distributing money in this wholesale way.1 4. Social Service The philanthropic work of the Arya Samaj is not, however, confined to famine relief, but includes various kinds of social service. In times of pestilence it organizes medical relief, nursing the sick, and helping in the disposal of the dead. At the time of the great earthquake in the Kangra Valley in 1904 it organized relief on a large scale for the sufferers, and earned the thanks of the people and the Government. In this calamity the Arya Samaj-ists were the first to reach the afflicted area. This example has, within recent years, been largely fol

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