2015-12-17

最近花三毛钱买了三本书，这第一本就是1879年首版的《亚洲之光》（The Light of Asia）。是第一本向西方人系统介绍佛陀生平的佛教经典。对欧美佛教影响颇钜。出版后，佛教乃广为欧美人士所知晓。

不过我的这本是1890年的翻印本。该书的可贵之处是书中的多幅铜板插图制作得很精妙。


亚洲之光的作者是埃德温·阿诺德（Edwin Arnold，1832～1904），是将佛教介绍给近代欧洲人的英国文学家。1832年生于肯特。1852年，以诗作《巴尔萨斯的节日》获纽德基特奖。1854年毕业于牛津大学。曾任伯明罕英王爱德华六世学校副校长、印度波拿地区梵语学校校长。1861年，任《每日电信》 报主笔，负责撰写文艺批评。阿诺德的著述颇丰，撰有《亚洲之光》、《印度田园诗》、《信仰的珍珠》、《再访印度》、《世界之光》等书。译有《薄伽梵歌》， 并編著《土耳其文法》。

• Sir Edwin Arnold was an English poet and journalist. In 1856 he went to India as principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona where he gathered material for his future works. Returning to England in 1861, he worked as a journalist and, later, editor of The Daily Telegraph, as well as contributing to other journals including the Press, The Literary Gaette, The London Review, and The Critic. It was Arnold who, on behalf of the proprietors of the Telegraph, in conjunction with the New York Herald, arranged the journey of Henry Morton Stanley to Africa to discover the source of the Nile River, and Stanley named a mountain after him. To his contemporaries, however, Arnold was best known as a poet. The literary task which he set before him was the interpretation in English verse of the life and philosophy of the East. His chief work with this object was The Light of Asia, which was translated in various languages, including Hindi. It appeared in 1879 and was an immediate success, going through numerous editions in England and in America.