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259 Sir Edwin Arnold d D Edwin Arnold (1832–1904), an indefatigable writer and editor, was best known for his poetic re-creation of the life of the Buddha, The Light of Asia, and for his enterprise as a newspaper editor who sponsored reporting expeditions around the globe. During the period of his greatest productivity as a poet, Arnold wrote more than six thousand leading articles for the Daily Telegraph. As chief editor of that paper from 1873, he dispatched reporters on numerous expeditions, including most famously the joint efort with the New York Herald that sent Henry Morton Stanley to Africa. Unlike many poets we might properly think of as Anglo-Indian in the Victorian sense—poets who were born in or spent the majority of their lives in India— Arnold lived only briely on the subcontinent. He spent 0ve years in India (1857–61) as principal of the Deccan Sanskrit College in Pune. There he studied Indian languages, including Sanskrit and Persian, though he never claimed for himself a mastery of the languages that his biographers have since claimed for him. Undoubtedly Indian culture had a profound inluence on Arnold, and it was by allying that inluence with an earlier interest in poetry that he produced his most famous work. Arnold’s accomplishments as a poet began while he was still a young student. He earned a scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1854 and M.A. in 1856. At the beginning of his university career he won the Newdigate prize for his poem “The Feast of Belshazzar.” His Poems Narrative and Lyrical was published in Oxford in 1853. Years later, Arnold achieved his greatest success with The Light of Asia (1879) which went into many editions in Britain and America and was translated into numerous languages. This work, with its implicit endorsement of Buddhist views, aroused great enthusiasm and provoked great hostility. One critic called Arnold a “poetizer and paganizer.” To quell such criticism, the poet endeavored a parallel volume on the life of Jesus, which he called The Light of the World (1891). It was on all accounts a failure, and perhaps for that reason Arnold returned to translation. Arnold’s versi0ed life of the Buddha had been preceded by a volume of Sanskrit translations, The Indian Song of Songs: From the Sanskrit of the Gîta Govinda of Jayadeva (1875). The Light of Asia was followed by an additional volume of translations or transcreations, Indian Idylls, from the Sanskrit (1883). 260 d Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India The Indian Song of Songs and The Light of Asia were intended by their author as part of a trilogy—expounding the beauties of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The third volume in this endeavor appeared in 1883 as Pearls of the Faith; or, Islam’s Rosary, Being the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of Allah (Asmâ-el-husnâ) with Comments in Verse from Various Oriental Sources (As Made by an Indian Mussulman). Arnold’s long title reveals much about his “poetizing” and “paganizing” strategies, for he often takes on an “Oriental” persona, surrounding translated passages with poetry supposed to be by a practitioner of the religion in question. He sums up his approach in the preface to Pearls of the Faith: “I have thus at length 0nished the Oriental Trilogy which I designed. In my ‘Indian Song of Songs’ I sought to transfer to English poetry a subtle and lovely Sanskrit idyll of the Hindoo theology. In my ‘Light of Asia’ I related the story and displayed the gentle and far-reaching doctrines of that great Hindoo prince who founded Buddhism. I have tried to present here, in the simple, familiar, and credulous, but earnest spirit and manner of Islam— and from its own points of view—some of the thoughts and beliefs of the followers of the noble Prophet of Arabia.” Arnold’s global—if imperialist—sensibility is indicated in his personal life. He was twice widowed and three times married—to a British woman, to an American woman, and to a Japanese woman. His later eforts include a prose work, East andWest (1891), presenting a positive view of Japan. He was made companion in the Order of the Star of India upon Victoria’s being proclaimed empress of India, and the king of Siam awarded him the order of the White Elephant to honor his contributions to the appreciation of Buddhism. Sources Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation...

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