Jairam Ramesh's 'THE LIGHT OF ASIA: the poem that defined THE BUDDHA' - III

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).

- ROHANA R. WASALA

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 to 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').