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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
Ah! Blessed Lord! Oh, High Deliverer!
Forgive this feeble script, which doth thee wrong.
Measuring with little wit thy lofty Love.
Ah! Lover! Brother! Guide! Lamp of the Law!
I take my refuge in thy name and thee!
I take my refuge in thy Law of Good!
I take my refuge in thy Order! OM!
The Dew is on the Lotus! – Rise, Great Sun!
And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
Om mani padme hum, the Sunrise comes!
The Dewdrop slips into the shining Sea!
With these words, Edwin Arnold concluded his The Light of Asia, a blank-verse life of the Buddha in eight books. Without doubt, it was one of the most popular long Victorian poems. First published in 1879, it went through at least a hundred editions in England and America. It was translated into numerous foreign languages, and in 1884 Trübner's Record announced that it was to be published in Bengali and Sanskrit. Christopher Clausen remarks that, ‘Largely on the strength of it, the hitherto obscure Arnold achieved fame, a knighthood and an ultimately disappointed expectation of the laureateship.’
As a result of its popularity, there was an enormous upsurge in awareness of, and interest in, Buddhism in late Victorian England, along with which went a polarization in attitudes towards it.
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