EDWIN
ARNOLD – BRIDGE BUILDER
S. Jagadisan
As early as
seventeenth century, Westerners, particularly the English, coming to India
evinced interest in Indian scriptures, customs, and culture. In the succeeding centuries, it became more
pronounced and culminated in the establishment of the Royal Asiatic
Society. Edwin Arnold(1832-1904) was
one of those who built bridges of understanding between the East and the West. He first took his B.A. Degree in 1854 and
two years later his M.A. Degree from
Oxford. After a brief spell of teaching
at Birmingham, he came over to India in 1856 as Principal of Deccan College,
Poona. He was made a Fellow of the Bombay University. During his five-year stay (1856-1861) in India, he studied Indian
languages, besides Turkish and Persian, and involved himself in the study of The
Ramayana and The Mahabharata.
The Mahabharata made a deep impact on him and caught his
imagination. He was filled with an
overwhelming desire to communicate his vision of India and her glory to his
countrymen. He fulfilled it in a series of works which include The Book of
Good Counsel (1861) based on the Sanskrit Hitopadesa, The Indian
Song of Songs (1875), based on Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, The Light
of Asia(1879), Indian Idylls (1883) and the Song Celestial (1885),
the last two from The Mahabharata.
The Light
of Asia or The Great Renunciation is the story of Lord Buddha. It was dear to Mahatma Gandhiji. It cast a spell on Pandit Nehru “The Buddha
story attracted me even in early boyhood and Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia became one of my
favourite books”. The story is related
by an imaginary Buddhist monk who serves as Edwin Arnold’s persona. He assumes it to lend credibility,
authenticity and convincingness to the narrative “ I have put my poem into a
Buddhist monk, because to appreciate the spirit of Asiatic thoughts, they
should be regarded from the oriental point of view ; neither the miracles that
consecrate this record, nor the philosophy it embodies, could have been
otherwise so naturally reproduced”.
The poem
falls into eight books, each book dealing with a particular stage in
Siddharta’s life. As a boy, besides
being learned beyond his age and his teachers, he demonstrated the qualities of
modesty, gentleness and compassion. The
incident in which he saved a swan shot down by his cousin Devadutta is well
known. King Suddhodana ordered that no
sight of sorrow, suffering and death should cross his son’s path. The order could not be carried out. For Siddharta went out on his own and saw
people suffering from disease, poverty and age. This proved to be a turning point in his life and he set out on
his quest to find the cause of sorrow and way to remove it (The scenes in which
he leaves his wife and child and then takes leave of his charioteer Channa are
deeply moving). He encountered Mara,
the Evil one. Under the Bodhi
Tree, he attained enlightenment and expounded the Fourfold Truth and
Eightfold Path.
Edwin
Arnold’s narrative is interspersed with descriptive passages that are exotic
and carry Tennysonian and Keatsian echoes.
The blank verse moves with majesty and ease. “It is a work of great beauty.
It tells a story of intense interest, which never flags for a moment;
its descriptions are drawn by the hand of a master, with the eye of a poet; its
tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to compare it, but the New
Testament; it is full of variety, now picturesque, now pathetic, rising into
the noblest realms of thought and inspiration” (Oliver Wendell Holmes).
Edwin
Arnold’s The Song Celestial, is his verse translation of The Gita,
which may be regarded as the crest jewel in The Mahabharata. In his dedication, he spells out the purpose
which impelled him to undertake the translation.
So have I
read this wonderful and spirit-thrilling speech
By Krishna
and Arjuna held, discoursing each with each;
So have I
writ its wisdom here – its hidden mystery
For
England; O, our India! As dear to me as She!
The Gita is
considered as the textbook of moral and spiritual wisdom. Arjuna is Everyman caught in conflict and
dilemma. Lord Krishna, the spiritual
preceptor, enlightens him on the meaning of the triple path of action, devotion
and knowledge. Edwin Arnold’s
translation captures and communicates the spirit of the original.
The Indian
Song of Songs is
Edwin Arnold’s translation of Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda popularly known as
Ashtapati. Jayadeva was born in
Kindubilva (whether the place is in Orissa or West Bengal has given rise to
difference of opinion). Available
evidence indicates that he should have lived in the twelfth century. The inspiration for Gita Govinda
seems to have come from an incident in the tenth section (Skanda)
of Srimad Bhagavatam. Sri Krishna is described as leaving
the Gopis alone in darkness, after sporting with him. Only one of them followed
Sri Krishna. The name of this Gopi is
not mentioned in Bhagavatam. Later poets identified this Gopi as Radha
and Jayadeva followed this tradition.
Gita Govinda- a Sanskrit idyll-has twelve sections and includes 24
ashtapadis and 90 songs which serve as commentary and connectives
(Each ashtapadi has eight couplets. A few have more than eight. Gita Govinda is enacted as
dance drama. The ashtapadis are
also rendered by musicians). It
celebrates in apparently erotic terms the relationship between the human and
the divine. It contains two elements
characteristic of amorous poetry – the pangs of separation (Vipralambha
Sringara) and the joy of reconciliation and union (Sambhoga Sringara). The whole gamut of love with all its varied
moods – anger, jealousy, despair, agony and ecstasy – is bought out in this
lyrical pastoral drama. Underlying the
ostensibly erotic element is the mystical, esoteric significance. Gita Govinda is an expression of the
longing of the individual soul (Jivatma) for identification with the
Divine (Paramatma). It is a
sequence of twelve movements culminating in the bliss of union of Radha and
Krishna. The Saki or confidante
in this drama is the mediator between the two.
Her role is to facilitate and forge the union of the two by describing
faithfully the state of mind of the one to the other. In a mystical sense, she is the guru, the preceptor leading the
human towards the divine. The
attraction of the two towards each other is mutual. The divine longs for union with the human as much as the human
longs for union with the divine.
Mystical poetry describes God as needing man much more than man needing
God. A superficial understanding of the
meaning of Gita Govinda may mislead the readers into thinking
that it describes sensual or carnal experience. Jayadeva invites the devotees to listen to his songs celebrating
the glory of Lord Krishna and revel in His sports as it will confer benefits,
material and spiritual, and earn His grace.