To the first influence we may assign one of the chief doctrines of the [=A]ryas, namely, their monotheism.  Others of their doctrines belong to the theology and philosophy of Hinduism, e.g. the ancient doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the doctrine of the three eternal entities, God, the Soul, and Matter, the doctrinal significance of which we shall have occasion to consider hereafter.  These three uncreated existences constitute one of the doctrines of the Joga system of Hindu philosophy.  To the second, or patriotic, influence, we may assign especially the fundamental tenet of the founder of the [=A]ryas, namely, the infallibility of the original Scriptures, the four Vedas, given, as he alleged, to Indian sages at the creation of the world.  “Back to the Vedas!” we may say, is the cry of the [=A]ryas.  In effect, the cry is tantamount to the plea that the errors of Hinduism are only later accretions; and be it acknowledged that no sanction can be drawn from the Vedas for the prohibition of widow marriages, for the general prevalence of child marriages, for the tyranny of caste, for idolatry and several other objectionable customs.[54] Among the [=A]ryas, therefore, we have the championship of things Indian in its crudest form.  Ludicrous are the attempts to rationalise all the statements of the Vedas, and to find in them all modern science and modern ideas, pouring new wine into old wine-skins, in perfect innocence of “the higher criticism.”  Thus while animal sacrifices are proscribed by the [=A]ryas, they are everywhere assumed in the Vedas, and two of the hymns in the Rigveda are for use at the sacrifice of a horse (a[s’]wamedha).[55] According to an [=A]rya commentator, however, a[s’]wamedha is to be translated not “sacrifice of a horse,” but destruction of ignorance,—­sacrifice of an ass, as one may jestingly say.[56] Offerings for deceased parents, prescribed in detail in the Vedas, are similarly rationalised into kind treatment of parents in old age.  The ancient and modern condemnation of eating beef was rationalised by the [=A]ryas as follows:  To kill a cow is as bad as to kill many men.  For suppose a cow to have a lifetime of fourteen or fifteen years.  Her calves, let us say, would be six cow calves and six bull calves.  The milk of the cow and her six cow calves during her natural lifetime would give food for a day to an army of 154,440 men, according to the calculation of the founder of the [=A]ryas, while the labour of the other six calves as oxen would give a full meal to an army of 256,000 men.  Therefore to kill a cow, etc., Q.E.D.  Modern democracy, the Copernican system of astronomy, a knowledge of the American continent, of steamships, and of the telegraph are all discovered by Dyanand in the Vedas, as no doubt wireless telegraphy and radium would have been, had death not cut short, in 1883, the discoveries of the founder of the [=A]ryas.[57]

[Sidenote:  The modern leaven still affecting the [=A]ryas.]