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As he himself says, at the age of forty, a new era thus dawned upon Ahmad, and he began to receive Divine revelations. His father’s death brought about a radical change in his life, and his religious tendencies began to assume a more definite form. There was no longer any pressure put upon him to give himself up to worldly pursuits, and the whole of his time was from then onwards devoted to the study of the Holy Quran and other Islamic literature. He was undoubtedly leading a deeply religious life, but it had taken a quite different course from that which religious devotion normally followed in those days. Many schools of the Muslim Sufis require their votaries to undergo various forms of devotional exercises, of which no indication is found in the practice of the Holy Prophet. Ahmad belonged to none of these schools and he never practised such innovations. In fact, from his early life, he hated all ascetic practices which were opposed to the word and the spirit of the Holy Quran. His only devotional exercise was the study of the Holy Quran in solitude. For days and months, he would continue studying the Holy Book, and so great was his love for it that those who saw him were convinced that he was never tired of reading it. His son, Mirza Sultan Ahmad, who was then a young man of about twenty-five years, bears witness to this in the following words:

On one occasion, he saw a vision in which an old man appeared to him saying that, according to the law of prophethood, fasting was a necessary preparation for receiving Divine light. On the basis of this vision, he kept fasts for a period of eight or nine months, reducing his food during that time to two or three morsels. Nevertheless, he did it privately so as to keep the fact concealed from his nearest relatives, and made special arrangements for the disposal of the food which he received regularly. This long fasting, however, had no injurious effect upon his health. On the other hand, he saw many wonderful visions relating to the future, some of which were later on published in the Barahin Ahmadiyya, his first great work. The fulfilment, years afterwards, of the prophecies contained in them showed that they were actual revelations from God and not the hallucinations of a diseased brain.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was, however, no mere visionary. From his early life, he was a student not only of Islam but also of comparative religion. He himself says:

Christianity necessarily attracted his attention first, as that was the only foe of Islam in his early days. We have seen that, during his stay at Sialkot, he had discussions with Christian missionaries about the comparative merits of Islam and Christianity. Returning to Qadian after four years, he actively refuted the anti-Islamic propaganda of Christianity, whose centre was Batala. In fact, Christian propaganda against Islam was most active, and at the same time, most scurrilous, during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, being a devoted student of religion, closely studied that literature, and his heart ached at the way in which the holiest of men was being maligned and abused. By producing this abusive literature, the aim of Christianity was to engender, in Muslim hearts, hatred for the Holy Founder of Islam. In fact, with its numerous bands of missionaries insinuating themselves into every nook and corner of the Muslim world, and with heaps of abusive literature distributed freely among the Muslims, Christianity was challenging the very existence of Islam, and Ahmad, whose heart was full of the deepest conviction of Islamic truth, took up the challenge in real earnest. He started to write against the aggressiveness of Christianity, and articles from his pen began to appear in Muslim periodicals. The publication of such articles in the Manshur Muhammadi, which was issued from Bangalore in Southern India, shows the keenness with which he was controverting the Christian propaganda.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was not, however, a mere controversialist. He was a student of religion, and, as early as 1873, while his father was still alive and he was engaged in law-suits relating to the family estates, he had determined to make a comparative study of religion and to place the result of his researches before the public. He had already decided to write a book, and the following memorandum in his own handwriting show his deep consciousness of the superiority and the perfection of the Islamic teachings which it had become his life’s aim to establish and for which he wanted freedom from worldly entanglements:

This note is signed thus: "Ghulam Ahmad, 17^th Oct. 1873, Friday, Qadian."

He was preparing himself for this great work by studying not only the Islamic literature, the Holy Quran, Hadith and commentaries, but also the literature of other religions, in his spare time. His father’s death, in 1876, had opened the way for him to realise the great dream of his life - to establish the superiority of Islam over all other religions. While he was thus fighting single-handed against the vast forces of Christianity, another foe of Islam had appeared in the field, in the form of the Arya Samaj. The founder of this new off-shoot of Hinduism was born in distant Kathiawar, Gujerat, in the Bombay Presidency, in the year 1824. At an early age he fled from his home, and after visiting various centres of Hindu learning and formally starting his mission in 1875, at Bombay, he gave final shape to it two years later, at Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, and the Arya Samaj of today rests on the principles enunciated there. Originally, this movement was directed against the idol-worship of Hinduism, but, as Western education was opening the Hindu mind for the acceptance of Christianity and Islam, the Arya Samaj, from its inception, came into conflict with these two religions.

The Punjab proved to be a fertile land for the Arya Samaj, and, by the end of the year 1878, branches of the organisation were established all over the Punjab, one being established at Qadian itself. It was through this local branch that Ahmad was drawn into a controversy with the Arya Samaj. The local discussion soon assumed importance and found its way into the columns of both Hindu and Muslim papers of Lahore and Amritsar. The Hindu Bandhu of Lahore, which was edited by Pandit Shiv Narain Agni Hotri, who later became the founder of another Hindu sect, called the Dev Samaj, opened its columns to articles for and against the Arya Samaj.

The following note from a Hindu editor’s pen shows how powerfully Ahmad was carrying the fight against the Arya Samaj:

It has elsewhere been shown that Ahmad had studied the Bible. His controversies with the Arya Samajists show that he had also studied the Vedas, from such translations as were available, and he repeatedly called upon his opponents to judge the merits of the Holy Quran as compared with other sacred books. Not only was he a student of comparative religion, but he also claimed to have the religious experience which makes men attain communion with God. Therefore it was that he had to devote much of his attention to the Brahmo Samaj, an earlier Hindu reform movement, started by Ram Mohan Roy in 1828. It is a well-established fact that the founder of the Brahmo Samaj was mainly influenced by the Muslim Sufi ideals. It was thus a very liberal movement, based on the principle that all religions are true. Yet, strangely enough, it denied the possibility of revelation, and it was this aspect of the Brahmo Samaj which attracted the attention of Ahmad. Pandit Shiv Narain Agni Hotri, the great Brahmo leader at Lahore, himself carried on this controversy, but, after some time, he deserted the Brahmo Samaj and laid the foundation of a new sect, called the Dev Samaj. 

Footnotes
(by the author, except where indicated as Publisher's note.)

Note 2: This collection was accidentally burned later in the life-time of Ahmad. {Back to main text}

Note 3: Italics are mine. {Back to main text}