[1] Manilal's writings belong to the Pandit Yuga, or "Scholar Era" – a time in which Gujarati writers explored their traditional literature, culture and religion in order to redefine contemporary Indian identity when it was subject to challenge from the influential Western model introduced under colonial rule.

His works include Atmanimajjan, a collection of poems on the theme of love in the context of Advaita (non-duality) philosophy; Kanta, a play combining Sanskrit and English dramatic techniques; Nrusinhavatar, a play based on Sanskrit dramatic traditions; Pranavinimaya, a study of yoga and mysticism; and Siddhantasara, a historical critique of the world's religious philosophies.

He was invited to present a paper at the first Parliament of World Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, but financial considerations made his participation there impossible.

His grandfather, Bhailal Dave, left eleven thousand rupees and a house to Manilal's father, Nabhubhai, who worked as a moneylender and sometimes as a temple priest.

Another affair was with Diwalibai, a teacher in a Bombay girls' school; Manilal initially rejected her but she persisted, sending him a series of love letters, and he finally wrote back, agreeing to a written correspondence.

[14] As early as his first term there in 1877, he became aware he had genital chancres, but, unfamiliar with syphilis and its long-term effects, he failed to seek treatment as they healed on their own.

Due to the corrosive effects of the infection on his tonsils and soft palate, he lost his ability to articulate and found it difficult to swallow food.

The operation enabled him to recover his speech and resume his job at Bhavnagar, though his painful nasal and throat ulcerations persisted and required follow-up treatment in Bombay.

[17] Manilal's confidence returned to the point that by January 1889, he felt sure a complete cure was possible, and indeed, by June, he experienced a notable improvement in both his general health and his speaking ability.

[22][23] By the late nineteenth century, a social reform movement was well established in Bombay and Gujarat, including early Gujarati writers such as Narmad, Dalpatram, Karsandas Mulji, and Navalram Pandya.

[25] Manilal was often critical of old customs, but he argued that true reform should not begin with simply abandoning Indian culture;[26] his message, in the words of K.M.

In this essay, he opposed widow-marriage,[29] which was traditionally forbidden even if the prospective husband died after betrothal but before the wedding,[30] and argued that a woman who understood her moral duties would not wish to remarry should she become a widow.

[29][29] The reformer Behramji Malabari was attempting to move the government to legally establish an age of consent for women, and to legislate in favour of widow-remarriage.

[30] In Manilal's view, child-marriage was harmful but it was rare for the woman in such a marriage to actually go to her husband's household before puberty, and he felt that the reformers were exaggerating the problem in order to gain support.

Her husband filed suit to force her to live with him, and the Bombay High Court found in his favour; Manilal wrote articles attacking the reformist position, which further estranged him from the modernists.

[37] Manilal criticised the Prarthana Samaj[G] for importing the concept of God as a transcendental creator from Christianity, which, according to him, was "the fifth edition of Aryadharma (Indian religion)".

On behalf of the Prarthana Samaj, Neelkanth entered into a seven-year dispute with Manilal on numerous topics related to religion, philosophy, social reform, education and literature.

Their public debates, carried on in the pages of Manilal's Sudarashan and Neelkanth's Jnanasudha, are considered unparalleled in Gujarat's history of reflective literature.

He came into contact with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, the first President of the Theosophical Society, and became a member in 1882, writing a series of articles on theosophy.

[41] Manilal was the secretary of Buddhi Vardhak Sabha, a group of Bombay intellectuals interested in social reform issues that had been founded in 1850 but which had become inactive.

[44] He contributed to almost all popular forms and published poems, plays, essays, an adaptation of an English novel, book reviews, literary criticism, research, edited works, translations, and compilations.

[48] According to Thaker, "Gulabsinh occupies an important place in Gujarati literature as a unique adaptation of an English novel, and as a novel of occult interest and a rare love-story of a human and a superhuman character.

[55] This reproduced a lecture he had delivered on the topic of 'The Logic of Commonsense', together with an introduction to theosophist Tookaram Tatya's English version of the Bhagavad Gita.

The English orientalist Edwin Arnold, who met with Manilal in Bhavnagar and conversed with him at length, admired the book for its content and clarity.

[69] Sudarshan Gadyawali (1909) collects these articles, which cover subjects such as religion, education, sociology, economics, politics, literature and music.

[59] He prepared with translation and notes the English editions of Patanjali's Yogadarshan and Mandukya Upanishad for the Theosophical Societies of India and America respectively.

[69] Thaker wrote a biographical play, Uncho Parvat, Undi Khin (1993; 'Lofty Mountain, Cavernous Valley'), based on Manilal's life.

Throughout his life, he struggled at both a personal and public level to live up to the practical principles he elicited from his reading of the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

Manilal thought that the non-dualistic philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, despite its complexity, contained important values which could inspire people to lead practical lives while remaining faithful to its ideals.

[72] Mahatma Gandhi, during his first stint in gaol in South Africa in January 1908, read widely in the literature of Western writers such as Tolstoy, Thoreau and Emerson to enlarge his vision and, "among the masters of Indian philosophy", he turned to Manilal's book on Raja Yoga and his commentary on Bhagavad Gita.