Sir Edwin Arnold

Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) was an English poet and journalist. After Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize, he became principal of the government Sanskrit College at Poona in India, an experience that shaped his life's work. Returning to England, he joined the Daily Telegraph and was its editor for many years. His poem The Light of Asia (1879), on the life and teaching of the Buddha, was hugely popular in Britain and America. He followed it with The Light of the World, on the life of Christ, translations from Sanskrit including the Bhagavad Gita, and books on Japan, where he lived for a time.