The message of Bahagavan Das on the present significance of the Vedic Social Order

applied to the subjective inner life of the individual person: and “The Science of Social Organisation’, in which these principles are applied to the social life of man and which he himself regarded as his most important work. He wrote many other books, including the Pranava Vada in which he gives the profoundest interpretation of the Sacred Word AUM as the basis of the Science of Peace, but these three books are put forward as a complete scheme of the relationship of thought or knowledge, feeling or desire, and will or action. All three were later summarised by Bhagavan Das in a short book “The Science of the Self’. In their very scheme they reflect the triune nature of Man and the Cosmos, which is a basic principle of Vedanta and of all serious religious thought.

One of the most significant aspects of the life of Bhagavan Das was his insistence that thought should be for the sake of life and action and not be mere speculation, and equally that life and action should be guided by serious thought and not be a mere succession of empirical events. And this is evident not only in his writings, but throughout the whole of his life. After completing “The Science of the Emotions’ in 1900, he started work on ‘The Science of Peace’, which was first published in 1903 /4. At the request of Mrs. Annie Besant he gave at the 34th Annual Convention of the Theosophical Society at Benares in 1909 four lectures on “The Laws of Manu as embodying the Science of Social Organisation’. These were published by the Theosophical Publishing House in 1910. In 1918 they asked leave to issue another edition of these, but by this time Bhagavan Das had worked out his thoughts much further on this subject and he asked them to wait until he had had a chance to revise them. He was, however, so busy with other work that he was not able to start the work until ten years later. He then found that the whole work required to be thought out afresh and finally the second edition was published in 1932, completely recast from the form of lectures to that of a book.

At that time he hoped to bring out a second volume of the book in 1933, but he was in deep sympathy with Mahatma Gandhi and his civil disobedience campaign, for which his eldest son twice went to prison, and his active work in support of this prevented him from writing. In 1934 he was persuaded to stand for and entered the Central Legislative Assembly, but he was nevertheless

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