Since Dayanand’s death the Arya Samaj has split up into two sections—­the “vegetarians” who with regard to religious doctrine may be described as the orthodox, and the “meat-eaters,” as the latitudinarians.  It is difficult to differentiate between the precise tendencies of these two sections, whose feuds seem to be waning.  In both are to be found not a few progressive and enlightened Aryas who, whatever their political activities may be, have undoubtedly applied themselves with no small success to the carrying out of that part of Dayanand’s gospel which was directed to the reforming of Hinduism.  Their influence has been constantly exerted to check, the marriages between mere boys and almost infant girls which have done so much physical as well as moral mischief to Hindu society, and also to improve the wretched lot of Hindu widows whose widowhood with all that it entails of menial degradation often begins before they have ever really been wives.  To this end the Aryas have not hesitated to encourage female education, and the Girls’ Orphanage at Jalandhar, where there is also a widows’ home, has shown what excellent social results can be achieved in that direction.  Again in the treatment of the “untouchable” low-castes, the Arya Samaj may claim to have been the first native body to break new ground and to attempt something akin to the work of social reclamation of which Christianity and, in a lesser degree, Islam had hitherto had the monopoly.  Schools and especially industrial classes have been established in various districts which cannot fail to raise the status of the younger generation and gradually to emancipate the lower castes from the bondage in which they have been hitherto held.  These and many other new departures conceived in the same liberal spirit at first provoked the vehement hostility of the orthodox Hindus, who at one time stopped all social intercourse with the Arya reformers.  But whereas in other parts of India the idea of social reform came to be associated with that of Western ascendency and therefore weakened and gave way before the rising tide of reaction against that ascendency, it has been associated in the Punjab with the cry of “Arya for the Aryans,” and the political activities of the Arya Samaj, or at least of a number of its most prominent members who have figured conspicuously in the anti-British agitation of the last few years, have secured for it from Hindu orthodoxy a measure of tolerance and even of good will which its social activities would certainly not otherwise have received.  That the Arya Samaj, which shows the impress of Western influence in so much of its social work, should at the same time have associated itself so intimately with a political movement directed against British rule is one of the many anomalies presented by the problem of Indian unrest.