Sir Edwin Arnold KCIE CSI (10 June 1832 – 24 March 1904) was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work The Light of Asia. Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. One of his six children was the novelist Edwin Lester Arnold. He was educated at King's School, Rochester; King's College London; and University College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1852. He became a schoolmaster, at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and in 1856 went to India as Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held for seven years, which includes a period during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay Council. Here he received the bias towards, and gathered material for, his future works.
