Prince Siddartha is born among the Sakyas under the Himalayan snows, raised in a palace walled off from suffering, and drawn out of it by the sight of age, sickness and death. Through eight books of blank verse Arnold follows him past the starving ascetics of the forest to the night of enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree and the preaching of the Law.
Published in 1879, the poem became one of the main roads by which Western readers first met the Buddha’s story. Download the free EPUB.