It happened very simply, and without any sort of preparation. He sat one afternoon in the library, among a throng of monks and novices, before him one of the Vinaya texts, the Mahavagga, a manuscript of law rigidly adhered to by Buddhist and even by Jainist communities. There, in the list of those creatures unfit to receive ordination, and commanded to be driven from the Samgha if, unknowing, they had been already ordained, he came upon the sixty-eighth section, wherein all such as he were declared unfit for holiness, ineligible for Buddhism, and therefore outlawed, absolutely, from the blessed life.[7] [7] “Sacred Books of the East,” Max Müller edition, Vol. XIII, Vinaya texts, Part I. Mahavagga, p. 222. (Trans. W. Rhys-Davids and H. Oldenburg.) He read the passage once, and then again, slowly. After that he leaned a little farther over his book, no longer seeing the writing, hoping only that none observed him. Stupidly he sat there, for an hour or more, neither reading nor thinking, only conning over and over again the two simple verses that had undone him. And when he had been quiet for a very long time, an idea came, and he whispered it over, lingeringly, wistfully, to himself: “I shall not confess. I shall not confess; and so—they can never know.” CHAPTER VII THE WHEEL OF THE LAW Four weeks passed, and Oman realized, dully, that September had come. For him, Time had lost the power of flight. He took little note now of the incidents in the life around him. He was in the grip of his conscience, wholly absorbed in the pangs of a new suffering. The consciousness that he was an outcast never left him for a single moment. The All-knowing, the master, the Buddha, had declared him ineligible for the serene life, had tacitly denoted him a creature unfit to attain to any degree of peace. This, after the first shock of discovery, was his chief thought. Instinctively, also, he clung to another: the passionate decision that he should stand alone in his knowledge. The broad inconsistency between these two points formed the land of his misery. He dared not reflect on the workings of the Dharma. He was forbidden, by every tenet of religion, to use his higher reason in the criticism of religion. But he knew that he was, by decision of the law, unfit for the Samgha; and that in the Samgha he intended, bitterly, to stay.