Rammohun Roy. Rájá Rám Mohán Rái, founder of the Brahmo Somaj (q.v.), was born at Radhanagar in Bengal, in May 1772, his ancestors being Brahmans of high birth. He studied Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, and soon began to doubt the foundations of the ancestral faith. He spent some time studying Buddhism in Tibet, and gave offence there by his frank criticisms. He incurred the enmity of his family for his religious views, and lived at Benares till 1803. For some years he was revenue collector in Rangpur. In 1811 he succeeded to affluence on the death of his brother. He published various works in Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, the object of the whole being the uprooting of idolatry. His influence was powerful in securing the abolition of suttee. He also issued in English an abridgment of the Vedanta, giving a digest of the Vedas, the ancient sacred books of the Hindus. In 1820 he published The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness, accepting the morality preached by Christ, but rejecting belief in His deity or in the miracles, and wrote other pamphlets hostile both to Hinduism and to Christian Trinitarianism. In 1828 he began the association which grew into the Brahmo Somaj, and in 1831 visited England, where he was received with all but universal friendliness and respect. He took a lively interest in the Reform agitation, and gave valuable evidence before the Board of Control on the condition of India, but overtasked himself, and died at Bristol, 27th September 1833.
See Miss Carpenter's Last Days of Rammohun Roy (1866). There is also a full Bengali memoir (1881); and his English works have been edited by Jogendra Chunder Ghose (2 vols. 1888).