This ancient Mahatma was literally saturated with wisdom, without going through the painful processes that men of that class are usually compelled in the attainment of their ascetic ambition. By the agency of this psychic gift he could unfold, without having read its history, the glories of India in its ancient days; describing the magnificence of its rulers; their pomp; their immense retinues, which were on such a scale that the passage through his dominion by their Sovereign caused a famine in the parts traversed. Only two classes existed in those good old times, the very rich and the very poor.
He could conjure up pictures of the workmen dropping down dead from hunger and exhaustion who were engaged upon the erection of the loveliest mausoleum that the world has ever seen; more like an exquisite marble palace of fairy land than a resting place for the dead. Art had indeed attained its highest perfection in those far off days, the monuments of which the Eastern still gazes upon with pride and affection.
Or he could project his thought till it reached the mind of ministers in England, when he could produce a mental negative, so to speak, of the thought of the ministers respecting the policy they intended carrying out which would affect India; for it was only on the occasion of some great national question stirring the mind of the people that he cared to put out his thought in this direction.
Moreover, he possessed the power of seeing into futurity, for he foretold that in one hundred years India would have her own supreme Sovereign, one who would be of their own unbiassed choice, who lived among them, and studied the happiness of her people. One who was loved and reverenced throughout the world. Whose rule would bring honour, dignity and renown to their beautiful and beloved India; and this unrivalled potentate would be a woman, young, beautiful and talented.
New, this prophecy of the old Mahatma could not refer to Victoria, the first English Empress of India, for she was gathered to her forefathers at that time, and King Albert, the First, reigned in her stead.
The descendant of this wonderful Mahatma resided in London, his father having been appointed by Government to the post of Collector, a position of some importance in the Civil Service. But the son elected to follow a profession that was more in accordance with the traditions of his ancestors, and at the same time would supply a want in his own generation, that was called into existence by the exigencies of the times.
The worn-out theories of Theosophy which deemed nirvana the highest attainable condition of the human soul, had no attraction for him; but he regarded it with some amount of reverence, inspired by the traditions of an ancient religion, which cannot fail to cast a halo round it, even when discarded by the more advanced modern.
Dayanand Swami surrounded himself with the gorgeous luxuries of an Eastern prince, although dwelling in the English metropolis, and displayed his Eastern descent, by following Eastern customs as far as English conventionalities would permit. Nevertheless, he kept in touch with the times, accommodating himself to the requirements of the people among whom he had made his home.
The carriages of titled ladies might have been seen daily at his door; for love troubles, and court troubles disturbed the peace of great dames even in the twenty-first century.
Native servants waited obsequiously on these noble visitors who formed chiefly his clientèle, and whose rich fees sustained the splendours of his household.