[Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-13)]

*🌺A PHYSICAL COLOSSUS🌺*
[Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-13)]
✍🏻Author - Pandit Chamupati M.A.
*Presentation - 🌺 ‘Avatsāra’*

Dayananda's greatness lay not in his intellectual and spiritual excellences alone; his body, too, was no less a prodigy of physical strength. As he stood amidst large concourses of people, he could easily be distinguished by his towering height. The make of his whole body was gigantic. He had a bulky constitution, which, however, continuous exercise and asceticism had wrought into a solid mould of prowess and power. In his movements he was agile. As he went out for his morning constitutionals, those that accompanied him had literally to run. 'Sound mind in a sound body' was the maxim that Dayananda in his person typified. Yogis there are who by continued fasts and self-tortures, emaciate all their limbs, so that, for the purposes of physical activity, they are no better than a bare skeleton, incapable of strenuous exertion. Such, however, was not Dayananda's idea of Yoga. In his early years, before he had the good fortune to knock at the door of the hermitage of his sage guru Virajananda, he had learnt all the physical exercises of Yoga and, as he somewhere candidly admits, had derived great benefit from them. Yet, what is physical is barely physical. Of real Yoga, which Patanjali defines as the restraint of inner and outer organs, moral rectitude is the first and foremost factor. Among yamas and niyamas which, according to the author of the Yoga Darshan, are the first rungs of the ladder of the Yoga, there is prescribed swadhyaya, which commentators interpret as the study of Veda. Thus in order to be a Yogi, in the sense in which Rishis use the term, exertion, mental as well as physical is necessary. Both these presuppose a sound body and a sound mind. Among one of the achievements of Yogis is mentioned arogya or freedom from disease. And, in case a Yogi should rivet his attention on his body, he is said to acquire, by the continuation of that attention, an adamantine physical frame.

Such, too, appears to have been the ideal of our ancestors during, and before, what are termed in history the epic ages of India. The Arya warriors of old were not the human automations that are driven mechanically to the fields of battle today. The work of fighting for the country was under the old Varnashrama system, entrusted to Kshastriyas who were dvijas or twice-born, having passed through a second birth by undergoing a course of intellectual and spiritual training at a Gurukula. Patriotism was in those times an intelligent sentiment which none but the educated had the right to cherish and profess. Those that incited men to a bloodshed under holy pretences of 'maintenance of Liberty', 'love of the Motherland', etc., etc., themselves were responsible for keeping that spirit intact amidst revolting barbarities of War. The development of intellect had, thus, to go hand in hand with the development of the body.

Dayananda who, by a devotee of his, has been characterised as a glimpse of the good old India of the time of Rishis, typified in him, like his forbears of old, a harmonious working of all the human powers that conjointly make for perfect human growth. He was a refutation incarnate of the idea, that of late had begun to gain ground, that physical strength and prowess were inconsistent with a keen intellectual acumen. Those that are spiritually great should also be physically great. Sunken eyes are no doubt an indication of nocturnal vigils. They, however, harbinger, also, an early imbecility, which is sure to hasten a premature decadence of the intellect. The work that Dayananda had set before himself was gigantic. It required, for its accomplishment, a gigantic physique with gigantic capabilities of enduring gigantic strains. A few years before his death he could point to the havoc that constant exertions had worked on his once colossal body. That he could endure such incessant exertion of both body and mind up to the end of his life was due to the early care that he had, during his period of preparation or what some call probation for apostleship bestowed on his gradually but harmoniously growing constitution. He had consciously developed it, consciously strengthened it, consciously hardened it, till the process of deliberate development had given him a perfect unbroken and unbreakable vehicle of work.

Innumerable are the feats of strength that Dayananda performed and to which witnesses are found even today among old men of some of the places which he had the occasion to visit. It was at Jullundhur that Vikram Singh, one of the big landlords of the place, a rais, asked of Dayananda some physical proof of the prodigious powers with which he used always to credit practisers brahmacharya (sexual chastity). And the sage, instead of giving an answer, was silent. After a while, the Sardar made preparation to go somewhere and a carriage, drawn by a pair of horses, was made ready for him. The Sardar sat in it, and the syce made sign to the animals to start. Finding them loth to move, he whipped them, but their obduracy was unconquerable. Looking behind, what should he see but that Dayananda stood holding one of the wheels with his hand, making it impossible for the carriage to move. At Wazirabad in the course of a lecture, he held up his hand and called to the wrestlers that had mustered strong in the audience, to come and lower it. None of those present had the courage to answer the challenge. Passing through a lane he was, all of a sudden, confronted by a huge bullock, which, from its reddened eyes, appeared to be infuriated. Nothing daunted he pressed on, while his companions stood behind, thinking to find out some way of avoiding the ferocious beast. Later, when they had joined him, one of them inquired of the Sage what he would have done if the animal had attacked him. He closed both his fists and said, he would catch it thus by the horns and force it back. A constable, who had kept watch for the night, sank terrified on the ground as he perceived the gigantic figure of the Sage advancing towards him in the early dusk of the dawn, when the rishi was probably returning from his yogic meditation in some sylvan solitude.

At Karanvas he made objection to the raslila, or dance performance of characters representing Shri Krishna and Radha, arranged under the orders of a Thakur, by name Karan Singh. The latter, getting incensed, came to the habitation of the Sage, armed with his sword, and after a furious altercation, actually advanced to strike him, when lo! the Sage leapt from his seat, and, with the alarcity of a practised warrior, wrested the sword from the rude assailant's hand, and resting it on the ground pressed it so that it broke in two.
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Dayananda never took the offensive in fighting. Nor did he ever evince a desire to make show of his physical indomitability. Even when acting on the defensive he invariably spared his opponent. His sublims vow of Sanyas prevented him from pressing his advantage further. Yet the consciousness, that he had with him an immense store of strength on whic': he could draw at the time of need, made for self-reliance, so that he went about quite undaunted, wherever and whenever exigencies of his mission to spread Vedic teachings drove him, often alone in the face of odds.

Physical power, today, is the dire need of society. In fields, political, religious, and communal, strong invincible bodies are in great requisition. They will aid in fighting patriotic battles. They will save communities from the onsets of other communities. They will, above all, help in carrying the message of the True Faith to lands where Barbarism rules; and Culture, unless it has, to shelter it if need be, an invulnerable shield in the shape of a strong physical constitution, is sure to succumb. Let Dayananda then, the Dayananda that was indomitable, as much by dint of his adamantine physique, as by the wonderful radiance of his intellect and the marvellous magnetism of his spirituality, serve as a model for that hankering humanity, which is impatient to press its pace in fields of politics, of scientific and philosophical research, and of Religion alike.

✍🏻Author - Pandit Chamupati M.A.
*Presentation - 🌺 ‘Avatsāra’*

॥ ओ३म् ॥