In his memoir Childhood Days, the filmmaker Satyajit Ray remembers growing up amidst the austerity of the Brāhmo Samaj in early twentieth-century Calcutta. He presents the lack of any fun and festivity as a counter to what children normally would enjoy. The Brāhmo Samaj, significant for Ray's life given his family's membership in the group, as well as a large swath of prominent intellectuals, writers, and artists in twentieth-century India, is sometimes seen as the origin point for modern Indian religion, based on its broad and all-encompassing engagement with a variety of textual sources regarding religion and philosophy. How did a broad appreciation of different texts and comparative understandings of religion and philosophy transform into an organization with specific rituals, scriptural references, and the trappings of a new religion? Ray mentions how Brāhmo ācāryas (ministers) would enunciate Sanskrit prayers and hymns in an elongated, monotonous way. As he notes, they would say “asato ma sadgamaya” in English, using elongated enunciation familiar to anyone who has attended a Brāhmo service: “Le-e-ad us from/Untr-u-uth into Tru-u-th/Le-e-ad us from Da-a-arkness into Li-i-ght/Le-e-ad us from D-e-ath into E-e-ternal Li-f-fe!” This mantra is often included in published editions of the Bṙhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, as the Pavamana Mantra. How did mantras like this become associated with Brāhmo Samaj members and austere religious rituals? From the late 1830s after the death of Rammohan Roy, the Brāhmo Samaj continued to deepen its emphasis on Upaniṣads like the Bṙhadāraṇyaka, buil