The Light of Asia
The Light of Asia, subtitled The Great Renunciation, is a book by Edwin Arnold. The first edition of the book was published in London in July 1879.
In the form of a narrative poem, the book endeavors to describe the life and time of Prince Gautama Buddha, who after attaining enlightenment became The Buddha, The Awakened One. The book presents his life, character, and philosophy, in a series of verses. It is a free adaptation of the Lalitavistara.
A few decades before the book's publication, very little was known outside Asia about the Buddha and Buddhism, the religion which he founded, and which had existed for about twenty-five centuries. Arnold's book was one of the first successful attempts to popularize Buddhism for a Western readership.[1][2]
The book has been highly acclaimed from the time it was first published, and has been the subject of several reviews. It has been translated into several languages, including Hindi (by Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla).
[edit] Adaptions
A film adaptation of the poem directed by Franz Osten and Himansu Rai was made in 1928, titled, Prem Sanyas (The Light of Asia in English) [3]. Dudley Buck used the book as the basis for a cantata published in 1886.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Sutin, L.: All is Change: The Two-Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West, Little, Brown and Company, 2006. See pages 141 to 143.
- ^ Harvey, P.: An Introduction to Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, 1990. See page 303.
- ^ Prem Sanyas at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ The Standard Cantatas by George P Upton
[edit] External links
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