With the book, however, which probably more than any other work of the day has been the means of drawing the attention of English-speaking people to Buddhism, we cannot deal in so summary a fashion. For in Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, _The Light of Asia_, we have a work which is simply a rendering of the life of Buddha, in general accordance with the received traditions, and one, moreover, which has met with a cordial welcome at the hands of Buddhists. Nor can it be questioned that the book is a production of great power, or that it appeals altogether to a very different class of readers from that likely to be influenced by the _Occult World_, or _Isis Unveiled_.
It is indeed, the great beauty of its poetry, and the book's consequent popularity, that only make the more necessary a reference which must to some extent take the form of a protest. To put it briefly, the case is this:--Men and women have risen from a perusal of the _Light of Asia_ with a sense of damage done to their Christian faith, and with a feeling--confused, perhaps, but not the less real--that in Gautama Buddha they have been confronted with a formidable rival to Jesus Christ. How far the poem is responsible for this result we will not attempt to determine; and that such was no part of the author's intention we may readily believe. But that the minds of not a few have been perplexed and disturbed by the reading of this book is a certain fact; making it neither surprising nor regrettable that its publication should have been followed by works on the subject, written from an emphatically Christian point of view. To the fullest and ablest of these,--the Rev. S. H. Kellogg's _The Light of Asia and the Light of the World: a Comparison of the Legend, the Doctrine and the Ethics of the Buddha, with the Story, the Doctrine and the Ethics of Christ_ (Macmillan, 1885),--I would refer those desirous of investigating fully the points at issue; contenting myself now with a few brief observations.
It is, then, important to bear in mind that Sir E. Arnold's poem is written in the person, and from the stand-point of an imaginary Buddhist. This is indicated plainly on the title-page, in the preface, and in the course of the poem itself; and when the book comes to be read by the light of this explanation, a limitation is cast about much of its more startling language. To take, for instance, such expressions as "Our Lord," "Saviour," "come to save the world," constantly assigned to Buddha in the course of the poem. However accustomed Christians may be to associate such terms with One only, and however pained they may feel at their being referred, under any circumstances and with any restrictions, to another, still it is obvious that their use becomes less open to objection, when placed in the mouth of a disciple, singing the praise of his Master,--and that Master, one who, it can hardly be disputed, wrought no mean work of deliverance on the earth. Far less admitting of satisfactory explanation are passages in the book in which we find transferred to Buddha and Buddhism ideas and language distinctively Christian; the solemn saying of Simeon to the Holy Mother, "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also," and the still more solemn, "It is finished" of the Cross, being made to supply particularly distressing instances of such treatment.(8)