Rammohun Roy Biography

Dromo's Den

Rammohun Roy (1772-1833). A Hindu rajah, scholar, and theist, the founder of the Brahmo-Somaj (q.v.). He was born at Bardwan, Bengal, of a high-caste Brahman family. He received a good native education, acquired some knowledge of Persian, and at Patna and Benares studied Sanskrit works on Hindu law, literature, and religion. In a treatise antagonistic to Hindu idolatry, written when he was 18 years of age, he laid the foundation of a prose literature in the Bengali vernacular. His religious views aroused the antagonism of his family, and in his two or three years' residence in Tibet he also gave offense by his denial that the Lama was the creator and preserver of the world. For five years be held the office of revenue collector in the District of Rangpur. He published various works in Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, their object being the uprooting of idolatry, and he was instrumental in procuring the abolition of suttee (q.v.). Becoming convinced of the excellence of the moral theories of Christianity, he published The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness (1820), a work of Unitarian tendencies. In 1830 was opened the first building in the Brahmo-Somaj, or Theistic church of India, which he had inaugurated and endowed. Shortly afterward (1831), as representative of the titular King of Delhi who had created him a rajah, he visited England. He was deluged with invitations, and in his anxiety to see everything overtaxed his strength and died at Bristol, where he is buried. Consult Carpenter, The Last Days of Raja Rammohun Roy in England, with Biographical Sketch (London. 1866).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 534-535.