The Light of Asia is an Indo-European co-production and a religious epic. It opens with European tourists Bombay, watching street performers. They chance upon an old man sitting beneath a bodhi tree. The old man tells them about of the life of the Buddha ... An opulent epic made with the cooperation of the Maharajah of Jaipur and a cast of thousands, The Light of Asia is a landmark film which retains its power for its passionate portrayal of Prince Gautama (played by Himansu Rai) and for its many realist touches. This is particularly impressive when one remembers that at best only two percent of the nearly 1300 films shot in India between 1913 and 1934 have survived, partly because of the terrible fires in two of Calcutta's largest nitrate vaults in the 1940s. The Light of Asia is important for its aesthetic achievement, for what it tells us about the romantic appeal of Indian mysticism to many Germans in the 1920s, and for its visual setting. It was beautifully restored by India's National Film Archive.