LIGHT OF ASIA, The. The story of the life and teaching of Gautama, founder of Bud dhism, was published in 1879. Sir Edwin Arnold, then editor of the London Telegraph, had gained through some years of life in India and study of its literature the interest in its thought and poetry that produced not only The Light of Asia) but The Indian Song of Songs' and other translations and reproductions. Out of the mass of tradition, legend, and record that sprang up about the life of Buddha, Sir Edwin has drawn a figure of real dignity and charm. The poem narrates Gautama's renun ciation of wealth, royalty, and love for the sake of sharing the common lot and delivering his people; his attainment, after years of suffer ing and solitude, of the Nirvana of Enlighten ment. A greater artist might have given us a poem of greater imaginative beauty and poetic power. The bent of this poet-journalist and the taste of his public produced an elaborate Orientalism of descriptive detail that is often effective, but less convincing to a Kipling-fed generation. The exposition of Buddhism has
been criticized both by scholars and by theo logians. In substance it is not inaccurate but inadequate, not only because of the exigencies of poetic form but because of a lack of the completer data produced by the critical scholar ship of the last 30 years. The verse, though sometimes stately, is often prosaic or pompous.
To us, the chief interest of The Light of Asia) is its testimony to the 19th century con cern with the Orient, which, expressed in the romanticism of 'Lalla Rookh,> was to inspire the scholarship of the Pali Text Society. So successfully did Sir Edwin Arnold popularize Buddhism, we are told, that in spite (or be cause) of the opposition of English pulpits; 60 editions of the poem were sold in England and 80 in America. To-day The Light of Asia) at least fulfils the author's•wish by preserving "the memory of one who loved India and the Indian peoples."