This beautifully written book confirms Brian Hatcher's reputation as an exceptionally painstaking and sensitive scholar of religious movements in nineteenth-century Bengal. The text on which it focuses – Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā, published by the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā in Calcutta in 1841 – made its first appearance in modern times in Hatcher's earlier book, Idioms of Improvement: Vidyāsāgar and Cultural Encounter in Bengal (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996). Discovering a single copy of it in the British Library, Hatcher argued that two of the twenty-one discourses it contains were by Vidyāsāgar himself. This was both interesting and important, as it showed that the great Sanskritist and educationist was, despite his background as a paṇḍit and his famous religious scepticism, well connected with the Brahmo circles that the members of the Tattvabodhini Sabha substantially formed, even though he was not among the twenty-one members who were led by Debendranath Tagore into taking dīkṣā into the Samaj in 1843. Thereafter, they were one organization, though the Tattvabodhinī Patrikā remained separate as an influential periodical that continued to be published into the early twentieth century. Hatcher reasonably surmised that Vidyāsāgar's connection with the Sabha and with Brahmo circles went back to its earliest days, and came through Rāmacandra Vidyāvāgiśa, who kept the Brahmo Samaj going after Rammohan Roy's untimely death in 1833, was a teacher at Sanskrit College until 1837 (overlapping with Vidyāsāgar's time as a student there, though it is not clear if he actually taught him), and was himself a member of the Sabha. Vidyāsāgar was only nineteen and still a student at Sanskrit College when the first of the discourses was delivered in December 1939; so the two discourses that Hatcher attributes to him, delivered in January and February 1840, count as very early indications of his thoughts on religion.

It is in the overall “earliness” of the discourses that Hatcher finds particular significance. In this book, he continues the detective work of his previous study to identify most of the authors of the discourses. This is not an easy task, as initials only are given, sometimes two (as with “Ī G” for Īśvaracandra Gupta), but more often only one (as with “A” for Akṣayakumāra Datta or “D” for Debendranath Tagore). Arguments based on language, style and content have to be brought into play, and the net result is very satisfying. One has a strong impression of a gathering of some of the finest intellects of nineteenth-century Bengal, battling as did Brahmos of a later period with the relationship between reason and religion, but doing so with a refreshing lack of dogmatism, sectarianism or even puritanism. Committed by and large to the development of a viable religion for the modern, educated Hindu householder, they are wary of asceticism, mysticism or classical Advaita Vedanta. Hatcher argues that their “bourgeois rescripting of the Vedantic message” is especially evident in “the role of the passions in the religious life. The passions are not to be suppressed or devalued outright”. Moderation and self-discipline are vital, but “were it not for such passions as lust, anger, and greed, human society would fall apart”. (p. 77)

Hatcher's careful and historically very well-grounded analysis tactfully leads us into his translation of the discourses in his final chapter 8. I suspect that he really loves these texts and the personalities behind them, and that his book has been primarily impelled by this admiration and affection. Yet, if he had expressed that too warmly in his analysis, the discourses – short and modest as they are – might have disappointed. In a Note on the Translation at the end, he worries that his avoidance of synonyms and attempt “to render Bengali terms the same way in every instance … may have resulted in a rather wooden translation”. I don't think it has. These are, in his rendering, lucid texts deserving of deep reflection, and only once or twice did I feel I was reading a translation. Is “mercy” the best word for dayā? (p. 165) Maybe “kindness” might be better – but then one remembers with Portia that “The quality of mercy is not strained./It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” – and finds both in the texts themselves, and in Brian Hatcher's appraisal of them, that very same quality.

Perhaps it is no surprise that the finest and most substantial of the discourses are by Debendranath Tagore, who breathed new life into the Brahmo Samaj by bringing the members of the Tattvobodhini Sabha into it, gave it a coherent theology with his Brāhmo Dharmaḥ (1850), and passed on its best traditions of rationalism and spirituality to his great son, Rabindranath. His telling of the story of Śaunaka (Discourse Fifteen), wrestling at the foot of a path up a mountain with the rival appeals of two nymphs, “the Desired One” and “the Good One”, is strongly memorable, and it is hard to think of better moral advice than can be found in Discourse Seventeen: “The Lord has made love, mercy, affection &c., the law of our hearts. Clearly, we have been created solely for the welfare of others, and anyone who works for the welfare of another finds happiness by following the divine law”. (p. 165) These are texts that would gain from a life beyond the restrictions of an academic press. Can we look forward one day to a popular, pocket-book edition as well?