By three o’clock this was over; and the two following hours were spent in the library, in the perusal of sacred manuscripts, of which the Vihara of Truth owned a large number. Of all the day’s occupations this was, to Oman, the most deeply engrossing. He had a great advantage over most of his companions, in being able to read easily both in Sanscrit and the older Pâli; for the scholarship of his youth had not left him. The working day was ended by the most difficult task of all:—three hours of silent meditation on some tenet announced at the time. At first, to those unaccustomed to it, these three hours seemed as long as the eight months of the Sugata’s retirement; and the novices whispered, and yawned, and eyed each other, and let their minds wander, till the length of their penances became startling. But gradually the time seemed shorter, the habit of abstract thought more fixed, until it was sometimes a surprise to hear the great bell ringing out the close of day, when all save penitents were commended to seek a needed rest. This daily program was varied every two weeks, on Uposatha days, by the ceremony of the recitation of the Patimokkha; which meant the reading of lists of misdeeds punishable, the special penance for each offence, and, finally, a general confession and fixing of penances. The whole thing usually lasted from six to eight hours, and was very tiresome. But the remainder of the day was a holiday, when rules were abandoned, and monks and novices allowed to mix indiscriminately. Such was the outline of Vihara life, which, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, differed little from that maintained in the first Buddhist monastery eighteen hundred years before. The circumstances of the day were unvaried; but the details, for the individuals living the life, were never the same. The occupations held infinite possibilities, being perfectly adaptable to moods. The meditation that one day seemed to stretch out into infinity, passed rapidly on the next. If the incidents of the life of Gautama set forth in one day’s reading were dull and dreary, on the next the excerpt might sound like a fairy story, and the reading-hour prove all too short. For those of dull, phlegmatic temperament, perhaps there was not, after all, much difference. But Oman Ramasarman was everything but phlegmatic. A creature of strange moods, stirred by many feelings incomprehensible to the multitude, devoted to the working out of a mighty expiation, as unknown to himself as it was to his companions, his four months of Vihara life were a momentous period with him. He very soon came to an understanding of what this wisely regulated existence might hold for him. He perceived that here he might build a foundation for that resignation to the actual that he needed so terribly to attain; and forthwith he set himself, with all the determination of which he was capable, to attain to a full appreciation of the worth of the Buddhist teaching.