Jairam Ramesh's “THE LIGHT OF ASIA: The poem that defined THE BUDDHA” - I

Dedicated to the memory of Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was instrumental in winning official recognition for Vesak as an international holiday at the United Nations in September 1999, on the eve of the 3rd Millennium

- BY ROHANA R. WASALA

Jairam Ramesh quotes the following short quatrain from Sir Edwin Arnold, the author of The Light of Asia, writing in 1893:

Praise me or asperse, Deck me or deride. In my veil of verse, Safe from you I hide.

Edwin Arnold addressed these words to his hypothetical biographer. His denial of his overt presence in the poem amounts to more than stating an obvious fact, which is that he is assuming a persona for the purpose of his artistic expression of his central theme. It is also a gentle invitation to the reader to catch, if possible, a whiff of his own authentic spiritual discovery, as reflected in the quality of his absorption in his subject: presenting the life and teachings of Buddha Gautama in the form of fictionalised fact for easy understanding at a time when little or nothing was known in the West about the great Indian sage. In his book about Edwin Arnold's poem Jairam Ramesh offers a brief description of the life and times of the poet, and narrates the story of how the poem came to be composed and how it was received at home and abroad, and how it later evolved to be a global phenomenon in the last quarter of the 19th century and beyond.