The Light of Asia - Sir Edwin Arnold - Lalitavistara

The Light of Asia.  Sir Edwin Arnold. The first edition of the book was published in London in July 1879. In the form of a narrative poem, the book endeavours 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 Sutra. 

After receiving the poem from theosophists, Mahatma Gandhi was awed and his subsequent introduction to Madame Blavatsky and her Key to Theosophy inspired him to study his own religion.^[3]

"A timely work in poetical form, and one whose subject . . . has just made its appearance. . . . the author, Mr Edwin Arnold, C.S.I., former Principal of the Deccan College at Poona, having passed some years in India, has evidently studied his theme con amore. In his Preface he expresses a hope that the present work . . . “will preserve the memory of one who loved India and the Indian peoples”. The hope is well grounded, for if any Western poet has earned the right to grateful remembrance by Asiatic nations and is destined to live in their memory, it is the author of The Light of Asia.'' (H. P. Blavatsky “The Light of Asia”, The Theosophist, 1.1, Oct. 1879, p. 20)

 

In 1885,  Sir Edwin Arnold translated The Song Celestial: A Poetic Version of the Bhagavad Gita. Much admired by Blavatsky, this version became popular among Theosophists.

https://www.bhagavadgitam.com/translations/The-Song-Celestial-by-Sir-Edwin-Arnold.pdf

 

It seeth everywhere and marketh all: / Do right — it recompenseth! do one wrong — / The equal retribution must be made, / Though DHARMA tarry long.

It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true / Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs; / Times are as nought, to-morrow it will judge, / Or after many days.

The Books say well, my Brothers! each man’s life / The outcome of his former living is; / The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes / The bygone right breeds bliss.

That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields! / The sesamum was sesamum, the corn / Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! / So is a man’s fate born. (Chapt. 8)

I, Buddh, who wept with all my brothers’ tears, / Whose heart was broken by a whole world’s woe, / Laugh and am glad, for there is Liberty! / Ho! ye who suffer! Know

Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels, / None other holds you that ye live and die, / And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss / Its spokes of agony, Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness.(Chapt. 8)

As one who stands on yonder snowy horn / Having nought o’er him but the boundless blue, / So, these sins being slain, the man is come / NIRVANA’S verge unto.

Him the Gods envy from their lower seats; / Him the Three Worlds in ruin should not shake; / All life is lived for him, all deaths are dead; / Karma will no more make (Chapter 8).

 

If making none to lack, he throughly purge / The lie and lust of self forth from his blood; / Suffering all meekly, rendering for offence / Nothing but grace and good:

If he shall day by day dwell merciful, / Holy and just and kind and true; and rend / Desire from where it clings with bleeding roots, / Till love of life have end:

He — dying — leaveth as the sum of him / A life-count closed, whose ills are dead and quit, / Whose good is quick and mighty, far and near, / So that fruits follow it.

Lo! like fierce foes slain by some warrior, / Ten sins along these Stages lie in dust, / The Love of Self, False Faith, and Doubt are three, / Two more, Hatred and Lust.

Who of these Five is conqueror hath trod / Three stages out of Four: yet there abide / The Love of Life on earth, Desire for Heaven, / Self-Praise, Error, and Pride (Chapter 8)

No need hath such to live as ye name life; / That which began in him when he began / Is finished: he hath wrought the purpose through / Of what did make him Man.

Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins / Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes / Invade his safe eternal peace; nor deaths / And lives recur. He goes

Unto NIRVANA. He is one with Life / Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be. / OM, MANI PADME, OM! the Dewdrop slips / Into the shining sea! (Chapter 8).