4. Debendra Nāth Tagore.
After the death of its founder the sect languished for a period of ten years until it was taken in hand by Debendra Nāth Tagore, whose father Dwārka Nāth had been a friend and warm admirer of Rām Mohan Roy, and had practically maintained the society by paying its expenses during the interval. In 1843 Debendra drew up a form of initiation which involved the renunciation of idolatry. He established branches of the Brahmo Samāj in many towns and villages of Bengal, and in 1845 he sent four Pandits to Benāres to copy out and make a special study of the Vedas. On their return to Calcutta after two years Debendra Nāth devoted himself with their aid to a diligent and critical study of the sacred books, and eventually, after much controversy and even danger of disruption, the Samāj, under his guidance, came to the important decision that the teaching of the Vedas could not be reconciled with the conclusions of modern science or with the religious convictions of the Brāhmos, a result which soon led to an open and public denial of the infallibility of the Vedas.
“There is nothing,” Professor Oman remarks, “in the Brāhmic movement more creditable to the parties concerned than this honest and careful inquiry into the nature of the doctrines and precepts of the Vedas.”[6]