Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/21



INTRODUCTION

By

greatest teachers in ancient India, whose names are still remembered, were forest-dwellers. By the shady border of some sacred river or Himalayan lake they built their altar of fire, grazed their cattle, harvested wild rice and fruits for their food, lived with their wives and children in the bosom of primeval nature, meditated upon the deepest problems of the soul, and made it their object of life to grow in sympathy with all creation and in communion with the Supreme Being. There students flocked round them and had their lessons of immortal life in the atmosphere of truth, peace and freedom of the spirit.

Though in later ages circumstances changed and numerous kingdoms, great and small, flourished in wealth and power, and forests began to give way to towns with multiplication of luxuries in the homes of the rich, the highest 1