Sir Edwin Arnold and ‘The Light of Asia’

By Prof. A. N. GUPTA, M.A.
(Government Hamidia College, Bhopal)

Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904), British poet, scholar, and journalist, was born on June 10, 1832, and educated at King’s School, Rochester; King’s College, London; and University College; Oxford, where in 1852 he gained the Newdigate Prize for a poem on Belshazzar’s Feast. After graduation he took to the profession of a teacher and in 1856 he came to India as the Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona. He continued in his post for five years, and during these years he made studies in Sanskrit language and literature and gained first-hand knowledge of India’s life which proved so valuable when he composed his memorable poem, ‘The Light of Asia’. In 1861 he went to England and joined the staff of the ‘Daily Telegraph’, with which he continued to be associated for more than forty years. He was a brilliant journalist and was distinguished by his range of ideas and enthusiasm for his work. But he was best known as the poet of ‘The Light of Asia’, or ‘The Great Renunciation’ (which was first published in 1879) an Indian epic. The poem became very popular and both lay readers and learned critics acclaimed it as a great poem. It went through several editions in a year or two, both in England and America. It was Sir Edwin who first brought to the people of the West the great and colourful life of Gautama Buddha. ‘The Light of Asia’, as soon as it was published, aroused profound interest in Buddha and Buddhism.

When the people of the West came to know of Lord Buddha and his life, they were struck by the wonderful analogy between Buddha and Christ. Perhaps this analogy, which must have been also obvious to Sir Edwin Arnold, inspired him to write another narrative poem of which the central figure should be Christ, as Buddha had been of the earlier. But ‘The Light of the World’ (1891), in which this idea took shape, failed to repeat the success attained by ‘The Light of Asia’. In his later years Arnold resided for some time in Japan, and his third wife was a Japanese lady. In ‘Seas and Lands’ (1891) and ‘Japonica’ (1892), he gives interesting study of Japan and her life. Arnold’s other works include ‘The Book of Good Counsels’ (1861) based on the Sanskrit book ‘Hitopadesha’, ‘The Indian Song of Songs’ (1875) on Jayadeva’s ‘Gita Govinda’, ‘Indian Idylls’ (1883) on the ‘Mahabharata’, and also ‘The Song Celestial’ on the ‘Bhagavadgita’. A prolific writer, a brilliant journalist and a great poet, Arnold was awarded the title of C. S. I. in 1877 and of K.C.I.E. in 1888. He died at the age of 72 on March 24, 1904.

‘The Light of Asia’ is an epic on the life of Lord Gautama Buddha. It is the first attempt of an European to understand Buddha’s life and message and interpret the same to Western readers. And in this attempt the poet was eminently successful. When Sir Edwin Arnold came to India as the Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona, he made extensive studies in Sanskrit language and literature and acquired considerable experience of India’s life and its rich heritage of ancient lore and culture. This stood him in good stead when he interpreted the message of Love, Peace and Truth, preached by Lord Buddha about the Middle of the 6th Century B. C. As a poet he was pre-occupied with the life of the Great Master and realised the very essence of Buddhism, which probably escaped the notice of the philosophers and religious doctrinaires in their attempts at explaining and interpreting Buddhism. Sir Edwin’s profound interest in Buddha and Buddhism was part and parcel of his wider interest in the life of Ancient India, and, this explains his wonderful success in revealing Buddha, the Mah, and Buddha, the Prophet, where greater scholars and erudite historians have failed. It may be pointed out that when the poem was first published in 1879, Oriental scholars complained that it gave a false impression of Buddhist doctrine; and, on the other hand, the suggested analogy between Buddha and Christ offended the taste of some devout Christians of the West. Arnold might not have been absolutely accurate in the details of Buddha’s Life and Doctrine but it does not take away from the excellence of the poem.

‘The Light of Asia’, as a narrative poem, is a class by itself,’ There are better poems, epic and narrative, in English Literature, Milton’s epic, ‘Paradise Lost’, is more heroic in its conception and execution; Matthew Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ is more powerful as a narrative poem in its poignancy and range; but in its own sphere ‘The Light of Asia’ stands unrivalled. The wonderful grace of diction appropriate to the serenity and compassion of Lord Buddha, the poise and balance of life in Ancient India, with its colourful contrast between raging warriors and meditating saints, Lave been revealed with the unerring instinct of a poet and the unswerving sense of a mystic. One learned critic has very aptly estimated this achievement:

“In spite of the learned writings of Western savants, so erudite and so painstaking, to a Buddhist there is but one book that describes his faith as he feels it, and that book is a poem and not a learned professor’s masterpiece of research. It is to Edwin Arnold’s poem, ‘The Light of Asia’, that the Buddhist turns as the only book in a Western tongue that fittingly describes the Buddhism that he knows, not that of dry sacred scriptures in a dead language, but the real, living Buddhism of today. It is because Edwin Arnold imagines himself a Buddhist and with his poetic fancy enters into a Buddhist atmosphere, that in his poem the Buddha is the central figure, and so his work is to Buddhists a satisfactory exposition of Buddhism.”

The excellence of ‘The Light of Asia’ as a poem is two-fold. Firstly, the poet realises in it the very Spirit of Buddha–His compassion, His love, His search for truth–and expresses them in the course of his narration in the most convincing and magnificent poetic style; secondly, the workmanship, the technique, through which he builds up the wonderful mansion of the life and message of Buddha. The art is conscious and deliberate; the conception is noble and inspiring; equally befitting is the execution and unfolding of the great them. In it, the life and teachings of Buddha are expounded with great wealth of local colour and unsurpassed felicity of versification. The verses roll down in great splendour and the cadences are varied with the variation of the theme of his poetry, The substance and the form of poetry become one, and this is the high water-mark of all great poetry.

‘The Light of Asia’ is divided into eight books (cantos) of almost equal length. Mostly it is written in blank verse; only in the eighth book, where Buddha delivers His Message, it is in quatrains, ‘Blank verse is a verse of 10 syllables of 5 feet and without any rhyme. Accent is mostly placed on the second syllable of each foot. Given below is an illustration, from the text, of the usual blank verse with accent marks and division into feet:

Therefo’re,/upo’n/ the seve’n/th day’/, there we.nt/
The Sak’/ya lord’s,/and town’/ and coun’t/ry roun/d,/
Un’to/‘the mai’d/m/; and’/ the mai’d/ went to’o/
Amid he’r/ kinsfolk’,/carrie’d/ as a’/ brid’e/
With mus’ic,/ and wit’h/ litte’rs/ gail’y/ digh’t/,
And gold/horne’d oxe’n/, flower-ca’p/ arison’ed/.

It must not be supposed that the strength of the blank verse depends upon its rigid regularity; very often the reverse is the case. The poet may take endless liberties to vary his rhythm and metre to suit the theme of his poetry. Such variations are very frequent in ‘The Light of Asia’ as in any other epic of fame. Then there is another device by which the poet makes for continuity of thought in blank verse. Every verse need not necessarily pause at the end of the length syllable of the 5th foot; it may run on to the next verse with agility and vigour. Cases of this kind of continuity by the device of run-on verses are also frequent in ‘The Light of Asia’ and constitute great strength and show great skill in the versification of his poem. Here is one instance from the poem:

“Then all men live in fear?”
“So live they, Prince!”
“And none can say, ‘I sleep Happy and whole tonight, and so shall wake’?”
“None say it.”
“And the end of many aches, Which come unseen, and will come when they come.
Is this, a broken body and sad mind,
And so old age?”
“Yea, if men last as long.”

Another device in versification which was a favourite with the poet and of which he made excellent use in the poem is what is called ‘alliteration’–i.e., the sound echoing the sense:

“And all this House of love was peopled fair
With sweet attendance, so that in each part
With lovely sights were gentle faces found,
Soft speech and willing service; each one glad
To gladden, pleased at pleasure, proud to obey;
Till life glided beguiled, like it smooth stream
Banked by perpetual flowers, Yasodhara
Queen of the enchanting Court.”

At no time in the history of Man was Buddha’s message so essential as it is today. War is writ large on the face of the world and even myopic eyes do not fail to see destruction round the corner. ‘Peace or perish’ is the only stern reality. Who will give Man his peace? Who will show him Light in the all-pervading gloom of hatred, greed and selfishness? It is the beacon-light of Buddha, His Life and Message, that can save Man from a head-on collision to destruction and death. And it is on the youth that Buddha’s message of Love, Peace and Truth can work wonders and thus transform the future life of the world. The young men and women may be inspired by the noble life and divine message of Buddha.

It is with this aim of helping the young with the vision of a new life of Peace and Truth that the present writer has taken upon himself the work of writing on ‘The Light of Asia’, the wonderful epic of Buddha’s Life and Message, and he hopes that a considerable section of our young men will not fail to be acquainted with, and inspired by, Buddha’s noble life and great message, through this great poem.