Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/164

 received his enlightenment. The place, therefore, became very dear to him, and he founded a garden on that plot of land, and built a house and a temple of coloured glass with a white marble floor where, according to the trust deed, "every morning and evening, each day throughout the year must be performed the worship of the one true God." This Shanti Niketan, or Abode of Peace, was kept open to the outside public. Any one wishing for a few days of quiet meditation was welcome there as a guest, and the place was known as a religious hermitage before the school was thought of.

It was while residing there that the idea of reviving the Asram, the forest school of ancient India, occurred to the mind of Rabindranath, and it was as an experiment in this direction that in the year 1901 he began to keep a little school with two or three boys only. In two years' time there were eighteen pupils. In four years' time the number had risen to sixty, and there are now two hundred boys at Shanti Niketan.

As for the routine of the school, I will use as far as possible the words of Rabindranath's own pupil: