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Ananda Coomaraswamy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி)
(22 August 1877, Colombo - 19 September 1947, Needham, Massachusetts) was primarily a metaphysician, and wished to be remembered as one, but also he was a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, especially art history and symbolism, and an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West.
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) on August 22, 1877 to the Sri Lankan Tamil legislator and philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. His father died when Ananda was 2 years old and Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad.
Coomaraswamy moved to England in 1879 and attended Wycliffe College, a preparatory school, at the age of 12. In 1900, he graduated from University College, London, with a degree in geology and botany. On June 19, 1902, Coomaraswamy married Ethel Mary Partridge, an English photographer, who then traveled with him to Ceylon. Coomaraswamy's field work between 1902 and 1906 earned him a doctor of science for his study of Ceylonese mineralogy, and prompted the formation of the Geological Survey of Ceylon which he initially directed.[1] While in Ceylon, the couple collaborated on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art; Coomaraswamy wrote the text and Ethel provided the photographs. His work in Ceylon fueled Coomaraswamy's anti-Westernization sentiments. [2] Patridge and Coomaraswamy divorced after a few years and she returned to England.
He met and married a Ceylonese woman by the name of Ratna Devi with whom he had two children; a son (Narada) and daughter (Rohini). He moved to the United States in 1917 to serve as the first Keeper of Indian art in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Narada was killed in a plane crash and an already ailing Ratna died shortly thereafter. [3]
Coomaraswamy married Polish artist Stella Bloch (29 years his junior) in November of 1922, however they maintained separate residences in different cities; communicating primarily through letters. Eight years later they divorced in November of 1930, though the two remained friends throughout their lives. Shortly thereafter, on November 18th of 1930, Coomaraswamy married Argentinian Doña Luisa Runstei (28 years his junior) who was working as a society photographer under the pseudonym Xlata Llamas. This relationship produced a son, Coomaraswamy's third child, Rama Ronnambalam. In 1933 Coomaraswamy's title at the Museum of Fine Arts changed from curator to Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian, and Mohammedan Art. [4]
He served as curator in the Museum of Fine Arts until his death (in Needham, Massachusetts in 1947), having been an important and prominent figure in bringing the study of Eastern art to the West. He played an important role in the collection of Persian Art for the Freer in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts as well.
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.[5] . He once remarked "I actually think in both Eastern and Christian terms—Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, and to some extent Persian and Chinese" [6]. 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.
He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing[7]. 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. Several articles by Coomaraswamy on the subject of Hinduism and the Perennial Philosophy were published posthumously in the quarterly journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, alongside articles by Schuon and Guénon (among others).
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.
(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 its 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
- ^ Philip Rawson, "A Professional Sage", The New York Review of Books, v. 26, no. 2 (February 22, 1979)
- ^ http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/eadGetDoc.xq?id=/ead/mss/C0822.EAD.xml
- ^ http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1286298
- ^ http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/eadGetDoc.xq?id=/ead/mss/C0822.EAD.xml
- ^ http://www.fonsvitae.com/coomaraswamyseries.html
- ^ http://www.ignca.gov.in/nl001801.htm
- ^ http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.multiworld.org/m_versity/althinkers/coomara.htm
- T.Wignesan, "Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s Aesthetics"
- "Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy" in One Hundred Tamils of the 20th Century
- "Coomaraswmy, Ananda K.", Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, vol. 1, ed. Amaresh Dutta, Sahitya Akademi (1987), p. 768. ISBN 8126018038
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