Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, was a Brahman of Kathiawar; he was not born in the Punjab, and it was not in the Punjab but in Bombay, where, however, it struck no roots, that he founded the Arya Samaj.

Only in the later years of his life did the Punjab become the chief centre of his activities.

The doctrines he taught were embodied by him in his _Satyarath Prakash_, which has become the Bible of his disciples, and in his _Veda Bashya Basmika_, a commentary on the Vedas.

He had at an early age lost faith in the Hindu Pantheon, and to this extent he was a genuine religious reformer, for he waged relentless war against the worship of idols, and whether his claims to Vedantic learning be or be not conceded, his creed was "Back to the Vedas." His ethical code, on the other hand, was vague, and he pandered strangely in some directions to the weaknesses of the flesh, and in others to popular prejudices.

Nothing in the Vedas, for instance, prohibits either the killing of cattle or the eating of bovine flesh.
But, in deference to one of the most universal of Hindu superstitions, Dayanand did not hesitate to include cow-killing amongst the deadliest sins.