Edwin Arnold – Bridge Builder

EDWIN ARNOLD – BRIDGE BUILDERtc "EDWIN ARNOLD – BRIDGE BUILDER"

S. Jagadisan

As early as the seventeenth century, Westerners, particularly the English, coming to India evinced interest in Indian scriptures, customs, and culture.  In the succeeding centuries, it became more pronounced and culminated in the establishment of the Royal Asiatic Society.  Edwin Arnold (June 10, 1832 – March 24, 1904) was one of those who built bridges of understanding between the East and the West.  He first took his B.A. Degree in 1854 and two years later his M.A. Degree from Oxford.  After a brief spell of teaching at Birmingham, he came over to India in 1856 as Principal of Degree College, Poona.  He was made a Fellow of the Bombay University.  During his five year stay (1856 – 1861) in India, he studied the Indian languages, besides Turkish and Persian, and involved himself in the study of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata.  The Mahabharata made a deep impact on him and caught his imagination.  He was filled with an overwhelming desire to communicate his vision of India and her glory to his countrymen.  He fulfilled it in a series of works which include The Book of Good Counsel (1861) based on the Sanskrit Hitopadesa, The Indian Song of Songs (1875), based on Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, The Light of Asia (1879), Indian Idylls (1883) and the Song Celestial (1885), the last two from The Mahabharata.

The Light of Asia or The Great Renunciation is the story of Lord Budha.  It was dear to Mahatma Gandhiji. It cast a spell on Pandit Nehru “The Buddha story attracted me even in early boyhood and Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia became one of my favourite books”.  “I read the Light of Asia with even greater interest than I did the Bhagavat Gita.  Once I had begun it, I could not leave off” – Mahatma Gandhi.  The story is related by an imaginary Buddhist monk who serves as Edwin Arnold’s persona.  He assumes it to lend credibility, authenticity and convincingness to the narrative “I have put my poem into a Buddhist’s mouth, because to appreciate the spirit of Asiatic thoughts, they should be regarded from the oriental point of view; neither the miracles that consecrate this record, nor the philosophy it embodies, could have been otherwise so naturally reproduced”.

The poem falls into eight books, each book dealing with a particular stage in Siddharta’s life.  As a boy, besides being learned beyond his age and his teachers, he demonstrated the qualities of modesty, gentleness and compassion.  The incident in which he saved a swan shot down by his cousin Devadatta is well known. King Suddhodana ordered that no sight of sorrow, suffering and death should cross his son’s path.  The order could not be carried out, for Siddharta went out on his own and saw people suffering from disease, poverty and age.  This proved to be a turning point in his life and he set out on his quest to find the cause of sorrow and the way to remove it (The scenes in which he leaves his wife and child and then takes leave of his charioteer Channa are deeply moving).  He encountered Mara, the Evil One.  Under the Bodhi Tree, he attained enlightenment and expounded the Fourfold Truth and the Eightfold Path.

Edwin Arnold’s narrative is interspersed with descriptive passages that carry Tennysonian and Keatsian echoes.  The blank verse moves with majesty and ease. “It is a work of great beauty. It tells a story of intense interest, which never flags for a moment; its descriptions are drawn by the hand of a master, with the eye of a poet; its tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to compare it, but the New Testament, it is full of variety, now picturesque, now pathetic, rising into the noblest realms of thought and inspiration” (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

Edwin Arnold’s The Song Celestial, is his verse translation of The Gita, which maybe regarded as the crest jewel in The Mahabharata.  In his dedication, he spells out the purpose which impelled him to undertake the translation.

So have I read this wonderful and
spirit-thrilling speech?
By Krishna and Arjuna held, discoursing each with each;
So have I writ its wisdom here
– its hidden mystery
For England; O, our India!
As dear to me as She!

The Gita is considered as the textbook of moral and spiritual wisdom. Arjuna is Everyman caught in conflict and dilemma.  Lord Krishna, the spiritual preceptor, enlightens him on the meaning of the triple path of action, devotion and knowledge.  Edwin Arnold’s translation captures and communicates the spirit of the original.

The Indian Song of Songs is Edwin Arnold’s translation of Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda popularly known as Ashtapati.  Jayadeva was born in Kindubilva (whether the place is in Orissa or West Bengal has given rise to difference of opinion).  Available evidence indicates that he should have lived in the twelth century.  The inspiration for Gita Govinda seems to have come from an incident in the tenth section (Skanda) of Srimad Bhagavatam.  Sri Krishna is described as leaving the Gopis alone in darkness, after sporting with them.  Only one of them followed Sri Krishna.  The name of this Gopi is not mentioned in Bhagavatam.  Later poets identified this Gopi as Radha and Jayadeva followed this tradition.

Gita Govinda – a Sanskrit idyll – has twelve sections and includes 24 ashtapatis and 90 songs which serve as commentary and connectives (Each ashtapati has eight couplets.  A few have more than eight. Gita Govinda is enacted as a dance drama.  The ashtapatis are also rendered by musicians). It celebrates in apparently erotic terms the relationship between the human and the divine.  It contains the two elements characteristic of amorous poetry – the pangs of separation (Vipralambha Sringara) and the joy of reconciliation and union (Sambhoga Sringara). The whole gamut of love with all its varied moods – anger, jealousy, despair, agony and ectasy – is brought out in this lyrical pastoral drama.  Underlying the ostensibly erotic element is the mystical, esoteric significance.  Gita Govinda is an expression of the longing of the individual soul (Jivatma) for identification with the Divine (Paramatma).  It is a sequence of twelve movements culminating in the bliss of union of Radha and Krishna.  The Saki or confidant in this drama is the mediator between the two.  Her role is to facilitate and forge the union of the two by describing faithfully the state of mind of the one to the other.  In a mystical sense, she is the Guru, the preceptor leading the human towards the divine.  The attraction of the two towards each other is mutual.  The divine longs for union with the human as much as the human longs for union with the divine.  Mystical poetry describes God as needing man much more than man needing God.  A superficial understanding of the meaning of Gita Govinda may mislead the readers into thinking that it describes sensual or carnal experience.  Jayadeva invites the devotees to listen to his songs celebrating the glory of Lord Krishna and revel in His sports as it will confer benefits, material and spiritual and earn His grace.