the idol's body. After seeing this, he questioned that if Shiva could not defend himself against a mouse, then how could he be the saviour of the world. The deaths of his younger sister and his uncle from cholera led Dayananda to ponder the meaning of life and death. He began asking questions which worried his parents. He was engaged in his early teens, but he decided marriage was not for him and ran away from home in 1846. Dayanand Saraswati spent nearly twenty-five years, from 1845 to 1869, as a wandering ascetic, searching for religious truth. He gave up material goods and lived a life of self-denial, devoting himself to spiritual pursuits in forests, retreats in the Himalayan Mountains, and pilgrimage sites in northern India. During these years he practised various forms of yoga and became a disciple of a religious teacher named Virajanand Dandeesha. Virajanand believed that Hinduism had strayed from its historical roots and that many of its practices had become impure. Dayananda Sarasvati promised Virajanand that he would devote his life to restoring the rightful place of the Vedas in the Hindu faith. Teachings of Dayananda Maharshi Dayanand advocated that all Human beings are equally capable of achieving anything. He said all the Creatures are the eternal praja or citizens of the Supreme Lord. He said the four Vedas which are Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda are the only true uncorrupted sources of Dharma, revealed by the Supreme Lord, at the beginning of every creation, also because they are the only perfectly preserved knowledge without alterations using Sanskrit prosody or Chhandas and different techniques of counting the number of verses with different Vedic chanting techniques. He says, confusions regarding the Vedas arose due to the misinterpretations of the Vedas, and Vedas promote Science and asks Humans to discover the Ultimate Truth, which he has emphasised throughout his Commentary on the Vedas. He accepted the teachings of the first ten Principal Upanishads also with Shvetashvatara Upanishad, which explains the Adhyatma part of the Vedas. He further said, any source whatever, including Upanishads, should be considered and accepted to only that extent as they are in conformity with the teachings of the Vedas. He accepted the six Vedanga texts which includes Grammar and the like required for the correct interpretation of the Vedas. Among Sanskrit Grammatical texts, he says, Bhagavan Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī and its commentary, Mahabhashya by Maharshi