The Light of Asia (1925)

Directors: Franz Osten and Himanshu Rai
Writer: Niranjan Pal, “with specially selected titles from Sir Edwin Arnold’s masterpiece”
Stars: The Indian Players Company

Index: That's a Wrap!

It’s well known that 80% of American silent films are lost. That’s a painful statistic to think about but, in India, the equivalent percentage is a staggering 98%. Of the 1,338 known silent films made in India, only twenty-nine survive today and not all of them completely.

That makes The Light of Asia or Prem Sanyas a historic film, though it wasn’t entirely Indian. It was shot on location in the British Raj, most of it around Lahore, the city ironically now in Pakistan. Its cast was drawn from the Indian Players Company, so it looks authentic.

Another reason it looks authentic is because the Maharajah of Jaipur lent huge assistance. The story really isn’t deep so it takes time with extras: rituals, costumes and pageantry. That help allowed a vast amount of architecture to be on display and legions of local extras.

Himanshu Rai, the film’s lead actor, is even credited as its co-director. Nine years later, he would create the Bombay Talkies studio, a key element in the rise of Hindi cinema in a nation where each tongue has its own film industry.

However, the other director is Franz Osten, a Bavarian filmmaker who created a travelling cinema as early as 1907 then found a specialty in shooting Indian movies, two more with Rai, 1928’s Shiraz and 1929’s A Throw of Dice.

What’s more, the crew and equipment were also German, so there’s expressionism evident in some scenes and the camera even moves as needed. Rai had become a barrister in London, where he met writer Niranjan Pal and the pair hopped over to Munich to organise this film.

Pal wrote the script but it’s part of the early life of the Buddha, as filtered initially through the 3rd century Lalitavistara Sūtra and then the 1879 narrative poem The Light of Asia by British author Edwin Arnold. The latter helped bring Buddhism to western audiences and it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that Rai and Pal intended this adaptation to do the same visually.

If that’s what they tried, they failed because there’s not a lot of Buddhism here. That’s all in later chapters of the poem, while this only has eyes for its first six. So we get a lot about the Buddha, or at least the journey of how Prince Gautama became the Buddha. It’s more about the rich life he leaves than the poor one he sought, hence the costumes and pageantry.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. While I found that journey slow and simplistic, with Rai relatively unconvincing throughout, I was fascinated by the cultural history, brought to vivid life by Devika Rani, then Rai’s wife doing production design but soon to become known as the First Lady of Indian Cinema.

It doesn’t start out well, with locals showing white folk the sights in the present day. That’s Jumma-musjid, the largest place of worship in the world, but as we gaze at it, a streetcar goes by advertising Dunlop Tyres. It’s usually called Jamia Musjid nowadays and it has a capacity of over thirty thousand, which is impressive but the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca can hold at least three million, a hundred times more.

Soon enough, I guess, but after elements of the traditional exotica this film claims to have avoided, like dancing bears and fakirs poking cobras in pots, we reach Bodh Gaya to see the Bodhi Tree, which is when an old local steps forward to tell the story that we leap a couple of millennia backwards to see. Prince Gautama sat under that precise tree for forty days and nights to reach enlightenment. Who is Prince Gautama, you ask? Well, here’s his biopic.

Six centuries before Jesus, King Suddodhana is happy but his Royal Consort Maya sees deer frolicking with fauns and points out that she’s never had a child. His advisors echo that when they tell him to announce an heir or look for a wife that can provide him with one. And so we dive into ritual number one.

It’s apparently ancient law that in situations like this, a Sacred Elephant will be led out into the streets where it will wander around to find that heir. Unfortunately, while it does pick up a child, it promptly gives it back to its mother. Back to square one.

However, just like that, Maya has a baby. It’s that sudden. Then she dies and petals descend to bury her and she’s gone. Then we blink and Prince Gautama is on his first deer hunt. Here we meet Himanshu Rai, who’s first job is to be upset that a cheetah successfully bags a deer.

The most important scene here concerns his father, who has weird dreams, thus providing solid opportunities for the German filmmakers to play with light through double exposures. It also allows the mystics to interpret all this and determine that his son will one day renounce his throne. Thus they decide to cheat him into happiness by hiding all signs of age or sickness and surrounding him with women.

So we dive deep into rituals as they attempt to set up a marriage. There’s pageantry to the quest, as they visit King Dandapani’s palace to throw his beautiful daughter Gopa at Gautama and more pageantry when they fall head over heels. There are processions and parades and even a tournament of martial arts to confirm that he’s worthy of her hand.

Now, this isn’t a kumite. They have to lance a cactus leaf at full gallop; shoot an arrow into a drum while blindfolded, using sound alone; and then unseat their opponent on horseback using a lance but without causing bodily harm. It’s still fascinating to watch.

There are more rituals to the marriage feast, more rituals to the wedding procession, more rituals for the sake of more rituals. However, I loved them all. This film may not do a good job of telling the Buddha’s story but it does a great job at showing off Indian history, architecture and traditions. I’m sure that’s precisely what the Maharajah of Jaipur wanted from his large investment in the production.

Eventually, of course, Gautama realises that pain exists and suffering and death, whatever his father does to hide it from him. And so he leaves his “golden prison” to wander and seek the meaning of life. And he finds it, under the Bodhi tree and we’re done.

I wasn’t sold on most of it, Rai out-acted all the way by Seeta Devi, even in her film debut as Gopa. It’s slow and seriously padded and is ruthlessly unwilling to get into either myth or philosophy. However, it looks suitably grand and it dips us into ancient culture without the usual exotic touch and it just isn’t something we can see very often. As I said, 98% of Indian silent films are lost.