The Light of Asia
In this poetic masterpiece, Sir Edwin Arnold describes the life and teachings of Buddha. The man who was to become known as Buddha to the world was born as Prince Gautama of India but he rejected the worldly riches and abandoned the reigns of power when he embarked on a journey to discover the meaning of life. This poem reveals Buddha’s life from the Buddhist perspective but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to appreciate this poetic work. As you read about Buddha's journey you will embark on your own course of discovery.
First published in 1879, the book has become a classic and has been published in many editions and many languages. Not only is it deeply philosophical in nature, but because of its poetic form and its narrative of the dramatic incidents in Siddhartha's life, it is delightful and absorbing reading.
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About the Author
Sir Edwin Arnold, (born June 10, 1832, Gravesend, Kent, Eng.—died March 24, 1904, London), poet and journalist, best known as the author of The Light of Asia (1879), an epic poem in an elaborately Tennysonian blank verse that describes, through the mouth of an “imaginary Buddhist votary,” the life and teachings of the Buddha. Pearls of the Faith (1883), on Islam, and The Light of the World (1891), on Christianity, were less successful.
After leaving the University of Oxford, Arnold was a schoolteacher in Birmingham before becoming principal of the British government college at Poona (Pune), India, in 1856. He returned to England in 1861 to join the staff of the Daily Telegraph, where he was chief editor from 1873 to 1889. He published several volumes of shorter poems as well as translations of Indian verse and a good deal of prose travel writing. The essays collected in Japonica (1892) were an important contribution to the late 19th-century “cult of Japan” in Britain, as were his adaptations of Japanese poetry in The Tenth Muse (1895) and his Japanese play Adzuma (1893). He was knighted in 1888.