Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/125

 was: "If you will not let me study these things, how am I to know what is clean and what unclean?"—words fraught, as his biographer says, with the deepest truths of Vedantic teaching.

The same energy that made Nimāi a torment to his own folk made him throw himself into his school tasks and the study of Sanskrit with a kind of fury. He had soon learnt enough to tease and puzzle his masters and make fun of them and their pedantry. He could not restrain his wit; he was incorrigible in his wild and roguish exploits. At twenty he set up a Tol, or Sanskrit school, and pupils, good and bad, flocked to his feet; for he was a born teacher, knowing in himself how the tough fibres of the rebel mind can best be humoured. He was at this stage still very godless; some would say excess of imagination made him sceptical. "His mind was as clear as the sky, and his temperament like the sweet-scented cephalika flower." It attracted all those who came near him in spite of his teasing, tantalising spirit.

Before he settled down, Nimāi made a tour of the seats of learning in Bengal, where his Sanskrit grammar, young grammarian as he was, had already become the accepted book.