The life and letters of Raja Rammohun Roy - WordPress.com

OF SOPHIA DOBSON COLLETxxixfor her self-imposed, disinterested labours in compiling theBrahmo Year-Book. It is much to be regretted thatshe did not write a complete History of the Brahmo Samajwhich the Glasgow Herald had announced in 1871that shehad been preparing, The reason for the non-fulfilment ofthis project was her extreme scrupulousness as a historian.She would, not write a single sentence for which she had notunquestionable authority. But though she did not herself writea History of the Brahmo itSamaj,is to her initiative that weowe Pandit Sivanath Sastri's two recent volumes on thesubject. For, she it was who induced Pandit Sastri duringhis visit to England to write a complete History of theBrahmo Samaj. Besides the article in the ContemporaryReview already noticed, she published two other pamphletsbearing on the history of the Brahmo Samaj, one in 1871,called An Historical Sketch of the Brahmo Samaj, and theother in 1884 under the heading, Outlines and Episodes ofBrahmic History. Not only are they veryconvenient sketchesof the modern Theistic movement in India for the ordinarypublic unacquainted with the history of the Brahmo Samaj,but even many Brahmos will find in them many incidentsand episodes to interest them in the history of their church,not known to them before.Now we turn to the last but not the least of Miss Collet'smanifold services to the Brahmo Samaj her Life of theFounder. Rammohun Roy died in 1833. Nearly fifty yearspassed away but no adequate biography of the great religiousreformer of modern India was written. In 1866, just on theeve of her visit to India, Miss Mary Carpenter published asmall volume, entitled "The Last Days in England of theRajah Rammohun Roy," but it was not a complete biography.The necessity of compiling such a biography was suggestedat the second of the memorial meetings organised by theendeavours of the newly constituted Sadharan Brahmo Samaj