Reception of Edwin Arnold’s Poem Light of Asia and the Ideas of Buddhism in the Works of Leo Tolstoy and the Tolstoy Circle

The article examines the peculiarities of Edwin Arnold’s poem The Light of Asia by L. N. Tolstoy in the context of his interest in the ideas of Buddhism, as well as the establishment of circumstances that contributed to significant attention to this work of the writers of “Tolstoy’s circle” (V. G. Chertkov, A. P. Barykova, and A. I. Ertel). Arnold’s poem, read by L. N. Tolstoy during a difficult period of spiritual and moral crisis, prompted him to turn to the study of the personality and activities of Buddha, which resulted in the idea of the article “Siddhartha, Nicknamed Buddha, that is, a Saint,” which later grew into the idea of a book about Buddha for the publishing house “Posrednik.” This idea, the implementation of which required the participation of the writers of “Tolstoy’s circle,” although was not ultimately implemented but entailed significant episodes of Arnold’s reception in Russia.