Bhagavad Gita as it is Illustrated by Edwin Arnold

Description

THE FAVORITE and now venerable English poet, Edwin Arnold , showed his skill in smooth and lucid verse early in life. In 1852, when twenty years of age, he won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for a poem, ‘ The Feast of Belshazzar .’ Two years later, after graduation with honors, he was named second master of E dward the Sixth’s School at Birmingham ; and, a few years subsequent, principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona , in India. In 1856 he published ‘ Griselda, a Tragedy ’; and after his return to London in 1861, translations from the Greek of Herodotus and the Sanskrit of the Indian classic ‘ Hitopadeça ,’ the latter under the name of ‘ The Book of Good Counsels .’ There followed from his pen ‘Education in India’; ‘A History of the Administration in India under the Late Marquis of Dalhousie’ (1862–64); and ‘ The Poets of Greece ,’ a collection of fine passages (1869). In addition to his other labors, he has been one of the editors-in-chief of the London Daily Telegraph.  1  Saturated with the Orient, familiar with every aspect of its civilization, moral and religious life, history, and feeling, Sir Edwin’s literary work has attested to his knowledge in a large number of smaller poetical productions, and a group of religious epics of long and impressive extent. Chief among them rank that on the life and teachings of Buddha , ‘ The Light of Asia ; or, The Great Renunciation ’ (1879) . It has passed through more than eighty editions in this country and almost as many in England.