By Rohana R. Wasala

Continued from May 22, 2025

For the twenty-two year old Anagarika Dharmapala, his encounter with the fifty-four year old Sir Edwin Arnold proved to be a pivotal moment in his life as a Buddhist revivalist and international Buddhist missionary (of his own characteristic Buddhist model). His acquaintance and his later mentor mentee relationship with Edwin Arnold (‘my English guru’) led to his involvement in the campaign for the restoration of Bodh Gaya to Buddhists, while also opening doors for him to visit Europe, America, as well as countries in Asia, for his missionary work. As he once specifically said, he was not aiming at converting any non-Buddhists to the Buddhist religion, but at explaining to them the rational teachings of the Buddha (‘my Compassionate Master’). He devoted much less time for his secondary role of advocating and promoting social reform among his own people in Ceylon.  Because of this dominant aspect of his work focusing on foreign engagements, about seventy-five percent of his communications in the form of speeches and writings were through the medium of English, according to the reputed Buddhist scholar and diplomat, the late Dr Ananda Guruge.

Actually, as already mentioned previously, the very idea of having Bodh Gaya transferred to Buddhists’ custodianship was advanced by none other than Edwin Arnold on his first visit to Ceylon in 1886. In his autobiographical booklet ‘My Life Story’ Anagarika Dharmapala writes: ‘In February 1886, when Sir Edwin was in Ceylon, he brought the Buddha Gaya question before the late Weligama Siri Sumangala Nayaka Thero, and requested him to urge the Buddhists to petition the Government for the restoration of the holy site to Buddhist monks’. Arnold had visited Bodh Gaya in 1885 and was deeply moved by the state of neglect and desecration that it was being subjected to in a non-Buddhist neighbourhood (as Arnold described in his book ‘India Revisited’).

The meeting between Edwin Arnold and Weligama Siri Sumangala Thero took place at the latter’s Rankoth Viharaya monastery in Panadura, which was the first place Arnold visited after disembarking at the Galle harbour on his first visit to Sri Lanka in 1886. The two had been in contact with each other through correspondence before that date. Jairam mentions the fact that the monk had made the first Sinhala translation of the Sanskrit language text  ‘Hitopadesha’ or ‘Beneficial Advice’. Arnold himself had rendered it into English from original Sanskrit as ‘The Book of Good Counsels’ (1861). 

Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott had popularised a mystical belief that, in the Orient, there was a class of ‘Mahatmas’ ‘Great Souls’ or philosophers with esoteric wisdom and special psychic powers. In his autobiography, Dharmapala refers to these as ‘Adepts of Tibet’ or ‘Himalayan Masters’ who, as he, under the influence of especially Madame Blavatsky, persuaded himself to believe, were devoted to the Buddha; the impressionable young Dharmapala heard about these so-called ‘Masters’ from the theosophists who mesmerised the young boy with stories about them. 

Arnold had heard about them too, but, being a learned man himself, was too sceptical to take those stories seriously. So he asked Weligama Siri Sumangala Thero if such sages really existed. The monk told him that such beliefs were totally false and baseless. Hearing this, Anagarika Dharmapala himself, who had, because of his adolescent naivety, been inclined to accept that particular piece of fiction as true, must have come out of his own original delusion.  

 A large crowd of over one thousand had gathered at Rankoth Viharaya to welcome him that day. Such warmth and adulation extended to him by the Buddhists of Panadura must have convinced Arnold of the rightness of his own decision to help Buddhists in the fight for gaining control over Bodh Gaya..  

Edwin Arnold’s second meeting after his arrival in Ceylon was at the Vidyodaya Pirivena, at Gangodawila, Nugegoda, near Colombo, headed by the erudite scholar monk Hikkaduwe Siri Sumangala, who had founded it in 1873. A large company of some 3000 Buddhist monks and members of the laity had assembled there. The monks spoke in Pali and Sinhala, welcoming him, and Arnold responded speaking in Sanskrit. 

His third meeting with the monks was in Kandy, where he worshiped at the Dalada Maligawa. The Mahanayakes, ordinary monks, the Diyawadana Nilame or the lay custodian of the Temple of the Tooth Relic, and lay Buddhists, were there to welcome Edwin Arnold with great honour. He presented them with a leaf from the Sri Maha Bodhi at Bodh Gaya. For Buddhists, the bodhi leaf symbolizes the ‘enlightenment, spiritual awakening, and the potential for growth and wisdom within each individual’ (AI summary)  The monks reciprocated his gesture by giving him a begging bowl and a yellow robe. 

That particular gift implied what the monks thought about Arnold: for him to be so devoted to Buddhism meant that he was indeed a ‘Bodhisattva’, a ‘Buddha-to-be’, who would like to assume robes soon, and join the Sangha Sasana, like them. Anagarika Dharmapala was to pay the same compliment to Col. Olcott years later, before he fell out with him over his alleged lack of respect towards some Buddhist statues  or some other sacred objects that Olcott had in his room. However, it is known that Dharmapala and Olcott parted company on grounds of some more serious disagreements, while still retaining their friendship and mutual goodwill. Even in his younger days, Dharmapala was his own man. 

 Coming back to Arnold, his love towards the people of India and of much smaller Ceylon was genuine. But they were the subjects, and he, a loyal servant, of the British empire, which he considered a benign overlordship over them all. As a man of education and culture, and a free thinking spiritual seeker, he had a consuming interest in Eastern religions and he was much excited by his discovery of the unique teachings of Buddhism. 

It is not surprising that there was latent disapproval and even hostility that Edwin Arnold had to have risked in the Christianity dominated conservative British society of the time back home on account of his unconcealed enthusiasm for Buddhism. Despite the controversy he invited through his ‘pagan’ fascination with Buddhism, Arnold was quite hopeful of being appointed Poet Laureate on the demise of the then incumbent Laureate, Alfred Tennyson in 1892, but the honour was given to poet Alfred Austin after a four year lapse, in 1896 and he remained in the post till 1913. Meanwhile, there is evidence to show that Edwin Arnold remained strong in his self acquired Buddhist faith until his death in 1904. 

If Sir Edwin Arnold was denied the Poet Laureateship because of his alleged Buddhist ‘paganism’ and his ‘The Light of Asia’, that unjustified stigma had worn off by 1930 mostly due to the more friendly reception of the Buddha’s teachings in Britain that he worked towards initiating. For, in that year, the poet who was appointed Poet Laureate was John Masefield (1878-1967). He was not only an admirer of Buddhism, but also had drawn inspiration from The Light of Asia  in his teenage years. Masefield published a collection of poems entitled Gautama the Enlightened and Other Verses in 1941, which is still available.

According to Jairam, in his old age Edwin Arnold was thoroughly disappointed about one of his sons, who was the only degenerate among his six children. He was blind and paralytic then, but cheerful and generous as ever. Anagarika Dharmapala, who happened to be in London in 1904, called on Edwin Arnold and found him ‘a changed man. Time and illness had done the rest’.  However, Sir Arnold was well looked after by his Japanese wife Tama Kurokava for which, he praised her in these terms:

‘I am blind, and yet I can see. I am chained by my infirmities to one spot, and yet I have feet that carry me everywhere’. 

In the final months of his life, Arnold wrote of the Buddha as providing ‘Light to all the world’. Naming his epic poem about the Buddha ‘Light of Asia’ was apparently a concession to the prevailing Christian religious dominance of the age. No wonder, in the 1880s he had been accused of being a Buddhist, for it was obvious that he was attracted to the Buddha more than to any other religious founder. Jairam says that after his passing, some people thought that Arnold had embraced his wife’s Shinto faith in his very last days. But this is unlikely to be true. We can assume that he was too much of a Buddhist to hurt her native Shinto religious sentiments though they were naturally contrary to his rational and non-mystical Buddhist beliefs. He was generous and respectful towards the woman who loved and cared for him.      

Probably, he didn’t differentiate much between Buddhism and Hinduism, except for Hinduism’s emphasis on the importance of devotion (bhakti) to a supreme deity or deities and elaborate rituals (puja) for worshiping them, and Buddhism’s freedom from such elements (i.e., bhakti and puja). As a man of great intellect, he understood what he thought was the essence of Buddhism, which he found in both of its two main branches or forms: Mahayana and Hinayana (Great and Minor Vehicles). The Light of Asia incorporates elements from both branches of the same tree that is Buddhism: it comprises the mythologized biography of the Buddha and his basic doctrinal concepts. The later mythological accretions should be discarded as the wrappings, once the essence is grasped. Jairam correctly identifies the last canto of the poem entitled BOOK THE EIGHTH ‘as the most important section of the poem’ for it contains a reflection of Edwin Arnold’s rational understanding of Buddha Gautama’s life and his teachings.

Following are some lines chosen at random from that section.

‘Pray not! the Darkness will not brighten! Ask

Nought from the Silence, for it cannot speak!

Vex not your mournful minds with pious pains!

Ah! Brothers, Sisters! Seek

Nought from the helpless gods by gift and hymn,

Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruits and cakes :

Within yourselves deliverance must be sought;….’

Arnold ends his epic narrative with a humble expression of his own inadequacy to deal with the lofty theme he has chosen:

‘A little knowing, little have I told

Touching the Teacher and the Ways of Peace

Forty-five rains thereafter showed he those

In many lands and many tongues, and gave

Our Asia Light, that still is beautiful,

Conquering the world with spirit of strong grace.’

But Edwin Arnold’s voluntary conversion (so to say) to Buddhism is implicit in the words that he puts in the mouth of  the ‘imaginary Buddhist votary’, the medium by which he sought to ‘depict the life and character and indicate the philosophy of that noble hero and reformer, Prince Gautama of India, the founder of Buddhism’ (The words I have put within quote marks in this sentence are from Arnold’s own 1879 Preface to his poem). The following seven capitalised lines from the end the poem (in BOOK THE EIGHTH) are of central importance: 

AH! BLESSED LORD! OH, HIGH DELIVERER!

FORGIVE THE 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!

Here, the poet and the persona (the imaginary votary) have become one by emotional fusion in the ethereal realm of felt experience evoked through poetry. The last three lines correspond to the traditional triadic Pali formula of ‘Tisarana’ (The Three Refuges) or Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha: Buddham saranam gachchami, Dhammam saranam …., etc. In Buddhism, that amounts to formal embracing of the Faith (Trust in the Triple Gem or the Gem with Three Aspects). 

This depth of absolute devotion, piety or faith was not replicated in the other three religious poems that Edwin Arnold subsequently went on to compose: Pearls of the Faith or Islamic Rosary Being the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of Allah (1884) about the Islamic faith, The Song Celestial: a poetic version of the Bhagavad Gita (1886) about Hinduism, and The Light of the World or The Great Consummation (1891) about Jesus Christ and Christianity. But it can be safely said that The Song Celestial,The Light of Asia and The Light of the World form a monumental trilogy on the single theme of Awakening or Enlightenment, which is the highest spiritual goal of self realization taught in Buddhism. 

Jairam Ramesh implies a special warning to Sri Lanka that I didn’t mention in this essay. About that, later.

Concluded