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Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி) (22 August, 1877, Colombo - 19 September,
1947, Needham, Massachusetts) was foremostly, as he
said he would like to be remembered, a Metaphysician, but he was also a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art,
especially art history and symbolism, and early interpreter of Indian culture to the
West.
Early life
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was the son of the famous Sri Lankan Tamil
legislator and philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. He became a pioneering historian and
philosopher of Indian art, and a great interpreter of Indian culture to the West. He was also a tireless campaigner for the
regeneration of Hinduism. In 1917, he became the first Keeper of
Indian art in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He stressed the spiritual element in
Indian art.
Born in Ceylon, he was educated in his mother’s homeland England, at Wycliffe College (Gloucestershire) [1]. He became one of the world’s greatest art historians and scholars of traditional iconography. He
settled in Broad Campden in the Cotswolds in rural
Gloucestershire, the friend and collaborator of the romantic socialist and Utopian
designer, Charles Robert Ashbee. He served as curator in the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts until his death, having been the first Oriental to make the meaning of oriental art understood in the West. He played an
important role in the collection of Persian Art for the Freer in Washington, D.C. and the Boston Museum of Fine Art as well.
His contributions
What made him a qualified as well as an acclaimed interpreter was his extensive knowledge, love, and understanding of the
world’s diverse cultures, sacred scriptures, and languages. Coomaraswamy was credited with knowledge of thirty-six languages, as
well as familiarity with the literature, poetry, and music of those languages. [citation needed]. He once remarked I actually think in both Eastern and Christian
terms—Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, and to some extent Persian and Chinese. For this reason, he had access to deeper levels
of meaning found in language which made it possible for him to interpret symbols and mythologies within the context of the
literature in which they are found.
Coomaraswamy died in Needham, Massachusetts in 1947.
The Perennial Philosophy
He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we
are still standing[citation needed]. While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter
part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism. His writings of this period
are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine,
Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart, Rhinish and other Asian mystics. He
was responsible for creating the collections of oriental art for the Freer Museum, Washington D.C., as well as for the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts. When asked what he was, foremostly Dr. Coomaraswamy referred to himself as a Metaphysician, referring
here to the concept of perennial philosophy or Sophia Perennis.
Along with René Guénon, and Frithjof Schuon,
Coomaraswamy is regarded as one of the three founders of Perennialism, also called the Traditionalist School.
Although he agrees with Guénon on the universal principles, his works are very different in form from Guénon's. By vocation,
he was a scholar, who dedicated the last decades of his life to searching the Scriptures. He offers a perspective on the
tradition which complements well that of Guénon. He had a very highly active aesthetic perceptiveness and he wrote dozens of
articles on traditional arts and mythology. His works are also intellectually more balanced. Although born in the
Hindu tradition, he had however a deep knowledge of the Western tradition and had also a great expertise and love for Greek metaphysics, especially that of
Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism.
He built a bridge between East and West that was designed to carry a two-way traffic: his metaphysical writings aimed, among
other things, at demonstrating the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism. His works also rehabilitated original Buddhism, a
tradition that Guénon has for a long time limited to a rebellion of the Kshatriyas against
Brahmin authority.
Works of Coomaraswamy
(partial list)
- The Dance of Siva (1918), Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1997 edition: ISBN 81-215-0153-9
- History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927), Dover Publications 1985 edition: ISBN 0-486-25005-9 Kessinger Publishing
2003 edition: ISBN 0-7661-5801-2
- Hinduism and Buddhism,
- The Living Thoughts of Gotama the Buddha, Dover Publications 2000 edition: ISBN 0-486-41439-6
- Am I My Brothers Keeper?,
- Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought, South Asia Books, 1981 edition: ISBN 81-215-0178-4
- What is Civilization,
- Time and Eternity, South Asia Books, 1993 edition: ISBN 81-215-0059-1
- The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934). South Asia Books, 1994 edition: ISBN 81-215-0325-6
See also his work of technical art history "The Technique and Theory of Indian Painting" in Technical Studies in the Field
of the Fine Arts vol. 3:1 (1934-5): 58–89, which includes extracts from Indian artists' technical recipe texts.
His two works
- Origin of the Buddha Image, Munshirm Manoharlal Pub Pvt Ltd, 1980 edition: ISBN 81-215-0222-5 and
- Elements of Buddhist Iconography,
still stand today as a remarkable achievement in the scholarly and metaphysical
explanation of earliest Buddhist symbolism and theirs roots in Vedic and Upanishadic thought.
A representative anthology of his work is to be found in the Princeton University Press Bollingen series (1977) collected by
Roger Lipsey:
- Traditional Art and Symbolism
- Ananda Kentish, Coomaraswamy (1978) ISBN 0-691-09931-6
- Metaphysics, 1987 edition: ISBN 0-691-01873-1
- Roger Lipsey, His Life and Work
Some of the very last unpublished works of Coomaraswamy, mostly on Greek philosophy, were only released in 2004 by Fons Vitae,
called
- Guardians of the Sun-Door: Late Iconographic Essays, ISBN 1-887752-59-5
References
- ^ ODNB Article by
G. R. Seaman, ‘Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1877–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
[1], accessed 8 Oct
2007.
See also
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Modern Dharmic Writers (1875 to present) |
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External links
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