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݂ ݂

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Ili in di Malaya
through the Ages
hy
S. I)LII'ai Raja Sing: II
With il PTefill'e
by
Sri Jill WilhLTILL
Nehru
 

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2ia mage Clu
Antana 恋。 (UUOmaraswamų
a (5arlauth of (Urihutes
EDITED BY
S. DURAI RAJA SINGAM
WITH A MESSAGE FROM H.E. SRI C. RAJAGOPALACHAR AND A FOREWORD BY K. BHARATHA IYER.

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sh
Homage, to
Сјиђидео Ciиаида IC. Сосиа"astoaиу
from
Лидіа аид the (Uol2
ܬ
(Woodcut by Mr. S. Sanmuganathan, from a photograph of
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy).

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à dessage
from H.E. Sri C. Rajagopalachar,
Governor-General of India.
Among the few who saw beauty and the form of God in such beauty, Aтапda Coотaraswamy ranks high. He was a great man and
saw many things which others did not see.
C. Rajagopalachar.
Government House,
Calcutta,
23rd December, 1947.

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INTRODUCTION By K. Bharatha Iyer, Editor, "Art and Thought' --Amanda K. Coomaras nuvalmy Festichrift.
This book is a garland of tributes to one whom Immortality has claimed as its own. Men of different nationalities and ways of thinking are amongst its contributors. Their efforts have succeeded in bringing into relief the profound significance of the life and work of one whom many all over the world consider a very unique writer, thinker and leader. Thoughtful men regard Dr. Coomaraswamy's works as of more significance to humanity than any scientific discovery of our days. These tributes do not require any amplification at my hands but, I would, in passing, draw pointed attention to what Eric Gill in his utterly sincere and inimitable way has said of Dr. Coomaraswamy which is reproduced elsewhere in this book. It is no language of exaggeration that Eric Gill has employed; he has summed up truly and brilliantly the remarkable qualities of Dr. Coomaraswamy and the deep significance of his writings.
From science to art, theology, metaphysics and above all to the art of life; that was the progression of his career encompassing in this a very wide range of learned studies and researches which have resulted in the widening of the frontiers of knowledge and the deepening of our understanding. This most encyclopaediac of scholars is widely known as an art critic; easily, he is the most distinguished of the art critics we have ever had. He has done more than anybody else to resuscitate and preach the traditional philosophy of art of the East and West and to impress on us how deeply that philosophy is related to the social structure and well-being of the human race. Much more than that, he is the foremost exponent of the art of living. He himself lived a deeply integrated life where all knowledge was the means of a

VII
more abundant life. With immense patience and profound wisdom he expounded the principles of Sanditana dharma, the wisdom uncreate, which is neither Eastern mor Western, Hindu or Christian. He lived and wrote at a time of unparalleled intellectual chaos in the world. The two World Wars and the growth of Fascist ideologies may have shaken the faith of many in the efficacy of an industrialisedcommercialised-materialistic civilization. But, many more still hope that this civilization with a few more adjustments for the benefit of the 'mob' will usher in the new world for which they are longing. But Dr. Coomaraswamy has shown how absurd it is to exalt the economic man by ignoring the "common man' in "everyman', how very suicidal to attempt to live by bread alone and how disastrous to embark upon a rudderless voyage under the illusion it is “progress”. What standard have we when we measure a standard of living by the comforts added while we totally neglect to measure it in terms of dignity? Can any one seriously question his judgement that modern civilization is a murderous machine, that we are at war with ourselves and therefore at war with each other. No amount of intellectual sophistry not even all the scientific inventions that breed more and "more of the less and less' can help to happy living, much less to minimise the mounting cataclysm that rages all around us, until we realise and practise our Swadharma and get back into the saddle of the "norm'. No one has shown us so convincingly and with such deep insight how far and in how many ways we have departed from the "norm' in every walk of life. Nothing can save us when we have forsaken ourselves.
When one reads Coomaraswamy one feels like listening to the voice of a Socrates, a Plato, a Vyasa or Sankara. I do not deny that in the polite circles where god is not mentioned, where hallowed names of . the past are regarded as relics of a dead past, Coomaraswamy will be considered as a reactionary and a medievalist. Such an attitude is the result of

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ignorance and will not in the least help to meet the challenge that is Coomaraswamy, the very embodiment of the traditional wisdom of the ages. It is to his immense credit that having become a gndini he did not become a reculse. He lived nobly and well in the world and bravely faced its many grave problems. He fought heroically and relentlessly against the insidious vagaries and disastrous incursions of a reckless civilization that is now engaged in handing us over to atomic fury. Is it too late for us to profit by the teachings of this great guru ? Whatever be the answer, he will remain the friend, philosopher and guide to those who are earnestly endeavouring to build a brave new world out of the shambles that we now glorify as civilization.
Mr. Durai Raja Singam is an ardent admirer of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, his Gurudev, and the ideals to which the great sage was devoted. He shared in the abundant love of the master for all those who ever came into contact with him. But for his great devotion to the master and his ideals, it would not have been possible for Mr. Durai Raja Singam to undertake and carry out successfully so grave a venture as this which he has accomplished at considerable sacrifice and inconvenience. Where bigger men may argue and calculate, Mr. Singam with flaming faith and deep sincerity marched ahead and with reverence laid this garland at the feet of the master. One cannot be thankful enough to him for this splendid achievement which is calculated to re-mind us of our debt to the great sage and above all of our own responsibilities.
It is somewhat sad to think that this too should appear as a posthumous tribute as also "ART AND THOUGHT". It looks as though the gods did not desire to embarass so self-effacing a person as Coomaraswamy with tributes
FRANGOON,
6-12-47,

IX
ABOUT THIS BOOK
FROM THE EDITOR.
Sometime during the Japanese occupation in Malaya I i read . . the writings and publications of Gurudev Ananda K. Coomaraswamy with great keenness and admiration. Gurudey Ananda Coomaraswamy enunciated principles of lasting value, for mankind. His works are remarkable for vision, breadth of understanding and depth of thought. He was not only the most encyclopaedic amongst scholars of the world but also a great gnani, a prophet and a sage. His contributions to various branches of learning such a mineralogy, archaeology, art, literature, folklore, metaphysics and theology are very considerable and in the aggregate unequalled by any scholar. He took no sectional or compartmental view of life or the achievements of mankind. He was a deeply integrated personality.
I have brought out this book of tributes and essays presented on his 70th birthday, (22nd August 1947) for distribution amongst friends and admirers of the great savant. A limited number of 300 copies have now been printed at my expense. The collection and preparation of the material for this volume has been a labour of love. The limitations of the book are obvious. This is an individual effort, a token of deep respect and devotion, a widow's mite as it were. The critic should remember that I am not a wealthy man to bring out a superb production worthy of the great services of Ananda Coomaraswamy. The hand that wreathed together these fragrant and beautiful flowers into a garland is a rough and coarse hand.
I wish to thank heartily all the contributors to ... this volume for their kind and generous contributions. Views that are personal opinions of the contributors need not necessarily be taken as endorsed by the Editor. I regret it has not not been possible for me to obtain contributions

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from his numerous other admirers in India, Ceylon, Malaya, Burma, England, America and other parts of the world. My thanks are due to Dr. Andreas Nell ((olombo) Mr. Sanjiva Dev (S. India) and Mr. S. Sanmuganathan (Colombo) for the very many favours they have done. It was unfortunate that I could not produce the entire book in time. An advance copy of a considerable part of the book was sent to Dr. Coomaraswamy on his 70th birthday which he gratefully acknowledged. Having competed his mission he has passed on to another thirtha and to the company of the shining ones. We are deeply grateful to a merciful providence which gave him to us these many years for the service of mankind. Though he is not with us in body his effulgent personality is left in his great works to inspire and guide us.
Mr. K. Bharatha. Iyer, a fellow pilgrim at the same shrine has done me the honour of writing the introduction to my book. For this I owe him a deep debt of gratitude.
To my revered H.E. Sri Rajagopalachar, first Indian Governor-General of India are due my grateful thanks for having written a message.
An advance copy of this book reached the hands of Mahatma Gandhi and had it not been for the assasin's hand this book would have been enriched by a message from him.
Finally I wish to thank THE MALAYAN PRINTERs, Kuala Lumpur for their unfailing assistance towards the production of this book.
S. DURAI RAJA SINGAM. Kuantan, Malaya, 5th June, 1948.
A revised and enlarged edition will follow with contributions from Dr. Stella Kramrisch, Dr. Marco Pallis, Swami Sivananda Dr. Hari Prasad Sastri, Dr. Ranjee Shahani, Dr. Robert Ullich, Mr. Robert W. Bruce. Prof. B. S. Mathur, Mr. 8 Rajeswara Rao, Dr. Pesi Masani and several
others. LLLOL

XIII
SOME OF THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIIs voLUME.
Adaval S. B., Ajmer, India. Aiyappan A., Madras, India. Andreas Nell, Colombo, Ceylon. Aney M. S. His Excellency, Bihar, India. Asit Kumar Haldar, Lucknow, India. Atreya B. L. Benares, India. Basil Gray, London. Basu P. Udaipur, India. Bharata Iyer K., Rangoon, Burma. Bharatan Kumarappa, Bombay, India. Bisheswarnath Rau, Jodhpur, India. Chamkur S. N., Madras, India. Charles Collins, Sir, Colombo, Ceylon. Cousins. J. H. Adyar, India. Danapala, D. B. Colombo, Ceylon. Dewar Surya Sena, Colombo, Ceylon. Durai Raja Singam S., Kuantan, Malaya. Eric Gill. Francis Merchant, Cleveland, U.S.A. Geoffrey Grigson, Swindon, England. Gobind Behari Lal, New York, U.S.A. Goetz, H. Baroda, India. Graham Carey, Vermont, U.S.A. Gurdial Mallick, Santiniketan, Bengal, India Hafiz Syed M., Allahabad, India. Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, Bombay, India. Henry Moore, Sir, His Excellency, Colombo, Ceylon. Ivor Jennings, Sir, Colombo, Ceylon. Jacques de Marquette, California, U.S.A. James Marshall Plumer, Michigan, U.S.A. Jayananta Padmanabha, Colombo, Ceylon. Jeejeebhoy, J. R. B., Bombay, India. Joseph Campbell, New York, U.S.A. Kodanda Ram P., Pondicherry, Iñdia. Krishnalal Shridharani, New York. Khanapurkar, D. P., Bombay, India. Kulkarni W. B., Colombo, Ceylon. Kumria, R. R., Lahore, India. Kularatnam K. Colombo, Ceylon. Langdon Warner, New York, U.S.A.

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Laurence Schemeckebier, Ohio, U.S.A. Lester E. Dennon, Brooklyn, U.S.A. Leland C. Wyman, Boston. Maurice Collis, London. | Lucian de Zilwa, Kandy, Ceylon.
Madhava Menon, Trivandrum, India. Majumdar R. C., Calcutta, India. Manindra Bhusan Gupta, Calcutta, India. Mary Schimer, Boston, U.S.A. Menon K. R., Singapore. ܗܝ ܀ Murray Fowler, New York, U.S.A. Muttucumaru, T., Jaffna, Ceylon. Naidu. P. S., Allahabad, India. Nandalal Bose, Santiniketan, Bengal, India. Narayana Rao. C., Anantapur, Madras India. Navaratnam, K. Jaffna, Ceylon, Nicholas Roerich. Nilkan Perumal, Calcutta, India. Pattabi Sitaramaiya, New Delhi, India. Perinbannayagam, S. H., Jaffna, Ceylon. Polak, H. S. L., London. Poduval R. V. Trivandrum, India. Raghavan, M.D., Colombo, Ceyon. Ramaswamy Aiyar, C. P., Sir, India. Ramaswami Sastri, K. S., Madras, India. Ratnam, S. R. Singapore. Rawlinson H. G., C.I.E., London. Richard B. Gregg, Boston, U.S.A. Richard Ettinghausen, Washington, U.S.A. Robert T. Paine, Boston, U.S.A. Salmony. A, New York. Salomon, R. G. Ohio, U.S.A. Sambamoorthy P., Madras, India. Sanjiva Dev S., Tummapudi, Guntur, India. Sanmuganathan S., Colombo, Ceylon. Sastry K. R. R., Allahabad, India. Satyananda Bharathi, Singapore. Suddhananda Bharatiar, Pondicherry, India. Sudhir Khastagir, Dehra Dun, India. . Venkatachalam G. Bangalore, India. Venkataramani, K. S., Alwar, India. Vijayatunga, J. Colombo, Ceylon.
Walter Shewring, York, England.
William Rothenstein, Sir.
Woodward, F. L. Rowella, Tasmania.

-Sketch by Si. Nandalal Bose. "Studio of Sj. Abanindranath Tagore in Jorasanko, Calcutta”.
The time of the sketch dates back to a mid-day of about 1910 or 1911, when Sj. Nandalal Bose was busy in a discussion on Art with Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. The three other figures are the three well-renowned brothers Sj. Samarendranath Tagore, Sj. Gaganendranath Tagore and Sj Abanindramath Tagore.

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Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
(By the late Gogendranath Tagore, September, 1909)
 

Tributes
GREETINGS
(Nicholas Roerich, Himalayas)
Great is the country which honours its great men Great is the country which does not forget its unshatterable ancient ordainments of wisdom Great is the country which knows and reveres leaders of Culture.
There, where are manifested strivings to cultural upliftment and Beauty there are already growing seeds of progress and friendliness. In our days of destruction and dissemination, we must especially cherish all cultural Heroes, who by their work have guided humanity on the path of progress. In the ranks of these world heroes the name of . Coomaraswamy is justly venerated.
Not only India, not only America, but the whole cultured world is indebted to Coomaraswamy for his great work in propagating Indian Art and Culture. Everybody knows his achievements in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts but this accomplishment is only a part of his splendid cultural endeavour. In inspiring scholarly writings, in popularising the artistic treasures of his glorious Motherland, in his innumerable personal contacts Coomaraswamy has inscribed a beautiful page in the History of Art.
These are days when Culture has been shattered by brutality, by vandalism, and the activity of such cultural leaders should be deeply appreciated. All workers in the sphere of Art have to send their heartiest thanks for such memorable indefatigable work. The sacred Ploughfield of Culture is not easy and much greater is the achievement of the ploughman,

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2 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
who accomplishes such splendid results. Coomaraswamy is a friend of our Institution and many friendly personal contacts are in our memory.
Dear Friend, accept this sincere appreciation. lndia is in need of such enlightened leaders.
For twenty two years we have been connected with India and can speak about the cultural needs of this country. In India a glorious Renaissance of Art, Science and Culture is approaching and people should be prepared to meet this benevolent turn of Evolution. Nowadays after a victorious war all cultural needs have become apparent and should be fostered.
In the sacred traditions of Bharata, Art and Knowledge were venerated as moving powers of the Nation. The same beautiful tradition should be upheld just now, when the whole world is searching
for the best ways towards a Renaissance. The needs
of the young generation should be met by Artists, Scientists-by all cultural workers. For the young generation such Centres will become indispensable. Artists have no exhibition Halls, but without encouragement Art cannot grow-on ice there are no flowers. There must be Halls for the lectures. Museums should grow not only as Museums of Archaeology, but also of the contemporary Art. The Libraries should be enriched by the best editions, thus helping the young writers. Unlimited is the sacred Plough-Field of Culture. The blessed Future can grow only on cultural unity. Not only in big cities, but even in rural areas such Centres could also be started. From a small acorn grows a mighty oak. An endless host of Heroes is needed for such strongholds of Culture. Humanity has a Red Cross for physical welfare but still more needed is the Red Cross of Culture.
Every accumulation of cultural treasures will be a beneficial sign of our era. This will be not accidental hours or days of Culture, but this will be the Era of Culture. In striving towards this era let

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 3.
us gather our best thoughts, our best words, our best sacrifices and best friendship
During the present Armageddonial days not many joys are spared for troubled mankind. Amidst the Eternal Values, Art has a predominant place. Verily, be blessed all who inspite of difficulties labour in the name of Beauty. They know that in this creative work is being born the majestic Renaissance of their Motherland. Honour to Coomaraswamy
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(Eric Gill)
There was one person, to whom, I think William Rothenstein introduced me, whom I might not have met otherwise and to whose influence I am deeply grateful; I mean the philosopher and theologian, Ananda Coomaraswamy. Others have written the truth about life and religion and man's work. Others have written good clear English. Others have had the gift of witty exposition. Others have understood the metaphysics of Christianity and others have understood the methaphysics of Hinduism and Buddhism. Others have understood the true significance of erotic drawings and sculptures. Others have seen the relationships of the true and the good and the beautiful. Others have had apparently unlimited learning. Others have loved; others have been kind and generous. But I know of no one else in whom all these gifts and all these powers have been combined. I dare not confess myself his disciple; that would only embarrass him. I can only say that I believe that no other living writer has written the truth in matters of art and life and religion and piety with such wisdom and understanding.
-(Selected from Eric Gill's "Autobiography').

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4 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
IMPRESSIONS
(Harindramaith Chattopadhyaya, Bombay)
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is one of the true pioneers in the world of art; besides being one of the few Eastern savants who have, by interpreting the marvellous wisdom and culture of the East to the West, taken their place in the history of world pioneering. My contact with him, which was only for a short time at a dinner in New York in 1929, gave me the impression of one who had cultivated the depths and heights of rare vision, by being in constant contact with art and architecture which have their roots in the Himalayas and in vast contemplations. The Dance of Siva had, as it were, transmuted his presence into a concentrated quietness-and even when he spoke after dinner, I remember the clarity, the poise and the rhythm which marked both his speech and his demeanour. Dr. Ananda Coomarasamy is, undoubtedly, one of the rarest art-critics of our day-and of any day for that matter. His style and manner of writing, too are a wonder and a delight; every sentence chiselled into perfect shape, reminding one, at every turn, of a ripeness such as only a Walter Pater could claim as his own. Even as a literary genius then, I consider Dr. Coomaraswamy to be on a par with the finest writers of English prose; apart from the exquisiteness of content and the integrity of thought it embodies.
I congratulate the editor of this volume of tributes to a man who is already acclaimed as inevitable part of the annals of art-criticism and the history of pioneers in the field of ancient art and ancient wisdom.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 5
A BRILLIANT ART CRITIC
(Yogi Sri Shuddharmanda Bharatar,
Pondicherry, India).
I have long known Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, from his works and from his intimate associates. He is a charming personality, a polished modern man, a harmonious synthesis of the East and West. He is a gem of Jaffna, a flower of Indian culture, a proud progeny of the Tamilian civilisation. Though he spent the most fruitful part of his life in the Boston Museum, his heart had always lived in India ensouled in her magnificient paintings and monumental sculptures. As a pilgrim of art, he has traversed the nooks and corners of India and he has seen everything worth seeing in the pragmatic Europe and America. Dr. Coomaraswamy is a born connoisseur who loves art for art's sake and who sees the soul of immortal Truth in the heart of Beauty. From pottery to poetry, from theatre to concerto, from Nalanda to Madura he has traversed the wide and wonderful field of Indian art and has painted what he saw in a picturesque style. I knew about him also from the great patriot Durgirala Gopalakrishnaiya of revered memory who helped him to translate “Abhinaya Dharpanam'. His "Mirror of Gesture' holds a mirror to the sincerity of his art-fervour. It is a valuable contribution to the world's library of Indian Dramatic Science. He has left us a rich treasure of aesthetic knowledge in his illustrated volumes on Indian art. He has traced the history and mystery of Indian art from the remote Vedic age down to the modern times. He draws our attention to the beauty of the Buddhistic, Jain, Mayuryan, Sanga, Gupta, Kusan, Andhra, Pallava, Rajput, Mogul and Hoisala arts and gives the palm to the fully evolved Dravidian sculpture embodied in the South Indian temples and

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6 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
idols. His portraiture of Indian Art and iconography
is a magnificient record of his yeomanly service which
shall be remembered as long as art expresses in the
life of humanity, the soul of the Beautiful.
Though retired from his profession, he is not yet
tired of his great vision of India's soul animated in
the multi-coloured art of universal existence.
Vive art critic !
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(Devar Surya Sena, Colombo)
"The Dance of Siva' was the first book of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy's that I read. I was thrilled with it, I was then a student in England awakening to a national consciousness. Being a devotee of the Arts and especially music I scoured the Oriental bookshops and haunted the British Museum too, in search of literature dealing with various forms of Indian Art.
In this search, the name of Ananda Coomaraswamy, in addition to his own books, kept appearing in references of so many books written by European authors on Indian Art. He was indeed a pioneer and I am very glad that some effort is at last being made to give recognition to his contribution to the culture of India. It is tragic that in a country whose best brains were absorbed in the fight for political freedom, so little attention was paid to our cultural heritage. It is perhaps inevitable that a subject country develops a kind of inferiority which discounts its own art and culture and tends to overvalue the art and literature of its conquerors.
So, we in Ceylon, have spent a century copying the dress and art of England to the detriment of our ... own. And yet, we had rich treasures, not only in the field of literature but also in the field of art. Rockcarvings, magnificent sculptures, frescoes, ornaments,

TE DANCE (O SIVA

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The Buddha in Samadhi (Colossal image at Anuradhapura, Ceylon,
2nd century A.D.)
 

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 7
handicraft in silver, copper and brass-these treasures were not sufficiently prized by the bulk of our Sinhalese people. Ananda Coomaraswamy did a magnificent service in opening our eyes to these riches in his monumental work 'Sinhalese Mediaeval Art'. I have the good fortune to possess one of these rare copies. Others have since trodden in his footsteps. We have art critics now, lectures on art and a variety of books. It is only fitting that we should remember with gratitude the man who first cleared the forest of our ignorance and unearthed such treasures for our delight,
THE DoYEN OF INDIAN ART
(Prof. P. S. Naid, Alahabad)
Far removed from the scenes of his labour of love, hidden from public gaze, and spending the evening of his life in persuading his own countrymen to see and enjoy and cherish with tender love the beauty with which their country abounds, there sits in the Chair of the Keeper of the Indian Section of the Boston Museum, an imposing and venerable figure who reminds us of those long forgotten ancient Rishis, the selfless workers in the realm of Fine Art creating "things of beauty' through pure desireless devotion. My first introduction to the immortal work of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy was through his matchless little treatise 'The Dance of Siva'. The music of the sentences in this philosophic work is still ringing in my ears. And then the flood-gates of Fine Art opened out for me. I was literally overwhelmed by the avalanche of his works that burst on me commencing with his monumental 'History of Indian and Indonesian Art and enclosing with his 'Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought'. Indian Art, philosophy, poetry and cultural history-all these came under the venerable Doctor's free view. There

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8 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
is nothing in the wide realm of Indian Aesthetics which he left untouched, and nothing that he touched which he did not beautify and ennoble in some way. To the young and struggling student of Indian Art, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is a veritable beacon light. and to those who have advanced a few steps on the difficult road, he is a true friend, guide and philosopher.
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is the only aesthetic critic who has succeeded in presenting Indian Art to the world outside India and inside too in its true perspective. If ever a Nobel prize is instituted for Aesthetics, it should go first to Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy.
May he live long and continue to unearth more and more hidden treasures of Indian Art
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(H. S. L. Polak, London)
No three representatives of Asia, each in his different way, have done more to reveal Eastern culture to America than Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Rabindranath Tagore and Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy. The name of Coomaraswamy will long be associated in the United States where he has resided so long, with the interpretation of Indian Art and the conservation of some of its finest examples at Boston (Mass.) and elsewhere. His illuminating writings and lectures have brought the East and West together far more closely than the more ephemeral contributions of the later-comers to the American scene. It was a great satisfaction to be able to meet him in New York during my recent American tour.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 9
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(C. Narayana Rao, M.A., Ph.D.,
Anantapur, Madras)
I feel highly honoured when invited to pay my little tribute of praise and gratitude for the great work done by Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy during a devoted career of rare achievement in the field of Art. The lovers of Art all over the world had their eyes opened to the essentially inner beauty of the human soul unfolding itself and finding expression in architecture, sculpture, painting, music or dance. India is particularly grateful to this great modern interpreter of the Beautiful as in showing its art to the world, he has reached its heart, the source of all that is good, true and beautiful, of all that brings the human race into one brotherhood making its quest of the Permanent and Eternal in a changing and transitory world.
I first had the privilege of knowing at first hand about the greatness of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy through my friend the late Prof. Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya who was associated with the Doctor in writing “The Mirror of Gesture', the Abhinayada?"pana. Since then, I have been a close reader of the Doctor's exposition of Indian Art. I was especially struck by the sagacity with which he reproduced the Rajput paintings which he published in two volumes. It will be sufficient for me to say that I rarely missed a book or an article from his
)en.
I wish that many more would follow the path shown by this great artist and art-critic and keep the world culturally informed that the heart of India beats in melodious harmony with the heart of man regardless of clime, colour or country.

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10 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(Graham Carey, Vermont, U.S.A.)
The world to-day is in dire need of guidance. It is not help towards more mechanical power that we need, nor towards more elaborate techniques for the development and control of this. Rather, we lack understanding of the nature of things, of the principles behind phenomena, of the Will of God.
For to-day man is divided against himself as never before, and one sign of this social disintegration is the modern curse of Babel. Progressive, secular man has been smitten with the confusion of tongues. He can no longer make contact with the minds of those distant from him in time, and distant from him in space; and he therefore lacks the healing contact of ideas more normal than his own. He is deaf to the words of distant lands, and of the sages of ancient days. He cannot understand 'foreigners' (East is East and West is West, and never....), nor can he understand his own ancestors-(that was before they knew about anatomy). Spacially and temporally isolated, insular and parochial, he goes on repeating what he likes to hear repeated, untroubled by the contradictions of the wise. And cut off from wisdom, distant in space and time, he finds at length that he cannot even communicate with his own kind here and now. “Qui Verbum Dei comtempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis.”
The wise have always understood the importance of the gift of tongues. The Egyptian methods of writing, which seems to us so awkward, was devised in order that men speaking different languages could benefit from a common mode of communication. The Chinese Empire has for millenia been unified by means of a similar graphic convention. A phonetic system of writing, similar to ours, could not have accomplished this. Charlemagne strove in every way-by

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 11
In the spoken word and the written word-to unite the minds of the men of Europe, and to mitigate the curse of Babel. Every true leader of mankind has striven for understanding, and the means of understanding. Mind cannot commune with mind except through the agency of a common idiom, and this idiom it is that the curse of Babel destroys.
Such is the predicament of progressive mankind, and there is little that any one man can do about it. But there are a few who, each in his own way, are doing that little. High up on the list of the names of these must be that of Dr. Coomaraswamy. He has seen that our ills are due less to bad will than to unintelligence. He has seen that intelligence cannot be developed on a mental island, and that to understand, one must have the help of the understanding of all cultures and of all times. Unceasingly he has laboured to make his great Tearning available to those in need of it. He has striven unsparingly to explain the past to the present, the East to the West, and the West to the East; and to explain the fundamental nature of religion to those who seem completely to lack comprehension of it. He has spared no toil to revitalize an idiom in which again brother can commune with brother. If the deep learning and strong will of one man can avail anything to life the curse of Babel to-day, Dr. Coomaraswamy deserves the gratitude of mankind.
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY (Gurdial Mallick, Santineketam, Bengal)
My humble, but most heartfelt tribute to Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is in silence, or at least in a solitary sentence :-
God's wonderful rainbow-coloured creation stood dumb till the critic, in the divine form of man, witnessed it and made it unbosom and articulate itself in bewitching beauty.

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2 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
THE SCHOLAR
(Krishnalal Shridharani, Ph.D., New York)
When I met Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy in New York in 1939 for the first time, he appeared to me like the last of the Pundits, a scholarly type fast disappearing from India. His thoughtful eyes, his impressive beard, his sensitive nose and fingers-all these symbolized to me The Scholar.
It may be that I was already prepared to form
such an impression by the systematic reading I had done of his profound and illuminating, if necessarily heavy writings. I was already convinced that he was one of the most conspicuous bridges between India and America, indeed between the East and West. His contribution to the East-West understanding is all the more lasting because it is not shrill and self-advertizing.
Since then we have met again and again, and we haven't seen eye to eye on all issues. But our differences have been on a plane where differences are the salt of further growth. And I have continued to admire him for his fortitude in presenting thought in its purest form in a country and in an age where journalese is fast replacing philosophy as the guide for life. And lately he has taken my breath away by the way he left his ivory tower to battle for the causes of national freedom and racial equality.
THE BEST EXPONENT OF INDIAN ART
(S. B. Adaval, M.A., B.T., Aimer, India)
To me Dr. Coomaraswamy has been one of the best exponents of Indian art. Through him I have been able to discover the new vision in art, and I am sure without the help of his critical studies no scientific approach to our art can be made. His

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 13
critical outlook, well balanced judgment, deep study and widespread knowledge are admirable. Being a pioneer in the field he will undoubtedly be a sure guide to the new generation of art critics
A GREAT SOUL
(K. S. Venkataramani, M.A., B.L. Adviser, Rural Uplift and Education, Alvar).
I am a great admirer of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy who has done splendid pioneering service to India in a difficult sphere-alone and unaided. He is a great soul with abundant faith and joy in his own special work, the interpretation of Indian art, culture and life. He took to his savadharma with a detachment and concentration that yielded him finally the mysterious secrets of art and life. He did his life-work at an yogic level and the gain to India in the world's eye has been immense.
DR. A. COOMARASWAMY
(Alsit. K. Haldar, Lucknov).
It is indeed a great opportunity to express my heart felt gratitude to the great savant-Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, who is not only one of the greatest authorities in Indian Art, but who did mould the test for it amongst the art students and public. It was Coomaraswamy who spoke for Indian Art when only Messrs Havell and Tagore (Abanindranath) were actually advocating it. Inspite of the hostile attitude prevailing at that time, they understood the value of it and knew that it took roots in Indonesian and Asiatic countries long before the advent of foreign rules in India. The revivalist movement was started

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4. HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
by Dr. Abanindranath Tagore and strongly backed by Messrs. Coomaraswamy and Havell as far back as 1900. National consciousness for Indian Art was aroused long before the National movement was actually started in India in the political field after the partition of Bengal in 1905. Such conservation and continuation of forgotten tradition of Indian Art was only possible by men like Coomaraswamy, Havell, and Tagore. Throughout their life they went on revealing and interpreting the inner signifiance of it in their work which was so long lost sight of. We used to acclaim, along with our Western friends, our ancient heritage as nothing worse than quaint objects of curiosity.
As a connoisseur of art Dr. Coomaraswamy did open a new vista by revealing the past achievements of the ancient masters and also showing the way to the younger generation to discriminate art objects in their proper light and spirit. His classifications of the various schools of Moghul and Rajput paintings and the methods of selection of different classes of Indian Art cannot be challenged. He actually opened our eyes to them by interpreting them in their proper structures and environments. As a connoisseur he examined judicially and made known his discoveries with a new light. He knew that Indian Art once influenced the whole of ancient Asiatic countries during the epoch making Buddhist era.
As a student of Indian Art, I owe much to him. In earlier days, just as I learnt technique from my Guru Dr. Abanindranath Tagore I learnt much from Dr. Coomaraswamy to understand and appreciate old Indian Art Masters. In 1910 when Dr. Coomaraswamy was publishing his famous book (Portfolio Edition) "The Selected Examples of Indian Art', he taught me all that was necessary to discriminate different schools of paintings. He was at that time staying with Dr. Tagore and collecting ancient Indian paintings many of which found a place in the Boston Museum.

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Rabindranath Tagore and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
(From a photograph by Babu Hiralal Sen, Santiniketan, published in the Modern Review, Calcutta for April 1911)
 

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 15
Much as I wish to say about his multifarious lifelong activities in Indian Art, I refrain from it due to my limited capacity to express them and leave it to other worthy writers to complete them. I pay my homage to Dr. Coomaraswamy and am grateful for all that he did for me during my early days.
THE GREAT SAGE OF ART
(Nilkan Perumal, Calcutta).
Nearly a quarter of a century ago one day, turning on the pages of India's famous magazine the Modern Review, I came across a very startling photograph. In it I found India's Poet-Laureate Rabindranath Tagore standing in a very humble way behind a chair on which was seated a very distinguished looking figure, wearing a huge turban. The said person in that picture was Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy. That was my first understanding of this great Art Critic of the Orient. The picture was taken at a Conference on art matters in Europe to which both Dr. Tagore and Dr. Coomaraswamy had been delegates. The significance of the picture was this. At a time when Tagore was a less important figure, Dr. Coomaraswamy was a giant in the world of Arts. Since then I have been following the works Of the great Doctor. I have a number of his books On Art and gained some knowledge of the subject as I gained from no writer or critic on Art subjects.
Though I spent a few years in the United States of America I did not have the pleasure and the privilege of meeting Dr. Coomaraswamy, something for which I have lamented all through. But I heard a great deal about his greatness even from the lips of some of the most distinguished American art critics in New York, Chicago and other cities while discussing Oriental arts with them. Dr. Coomaraswamy has a reputed place in the world of arts and literature

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16 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY
to-day and so far as I know, his writings have been treatured by the Americans with great respect.
We in the Orient have not developed our nationalism sufficiently to the extent of honouring our own heroes adequately and the loss of Dr. Coomaraswamy both to India and Ceylon is great indeed. There was a time I knew when he was content to be living in India or in Ceylon doing his bit but we did not understand his worth adequately that we let loose the man who is , the top most Oriental in the world of arts to-day. We cannot be forgiven for this-our criminal negligence To-day, he is in another country where he is revered and what is a loss to the Orient is a great gain to the Occident. Dr. Coomaraswamy himself loved to serve only the Orient and even to this very day, he lives a pucca Hindu life in America in thought, deed and environment and to illustrate this, I have only to say that nota day, passes without his brow being adorned by the brilliant sandal paste and kumkumam. He is not merely the great art critic that he is, but he is also one who is a symbol of the greatness of the Hindu faith in Christian America. His book the Dance of Siva is the one work which will endure as the greatest interpretation of the immortal mysteries of the Lord of Kailas, for all ages Dr. Coomaraswamy's interpretation is as immortal as the Dance itself! My salutation to this great Sage of Art.
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
(H. G. Rawlinson, C.I.E., London).
I am very glad to avail myself of the opportunity to express my indebtedness to my old friend, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy. When I went out to Ceylon at the beginning of the century, I knew no more about Indian art than any other young man fresh from an English University. A perusal of Coomaraswamy's

OMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 17
Essays in National Idealism opened my eyes to the new world around me, and changed my whole outlook. From Coomaraswamy I went on to E. B. Havell, and from them both I conceived a love of Indian Art which has developed steadily to become a lasting source of inspiration. Coomaraswamy is a master of English prose, and all his writings are a joy to read. He is the greatest interpreter of the East to the West that we have ever had.
THE PATHFINDER AND PIONEER (G. Vem katachalam, Bangalore, India).
No Indian, except it be that immortal poet Rabindranath, can lay claim to the loving remembrance of a grateful people to the same extent as Ananda Coomaraswamy, for his unique contribution to Indian culture, for his pioneering work in the cause of Indiam art, for rediscovering to us its hidden beauty and for bravely championing its legitimate claims.
The art of India before his time was covered under the debris of age-long indifference and ignorance of its own people, and its traditions and ideals were as good as dead. It was left to Ananda Coomaraswamy to interpret Indian art to the world and to give it its proper background and value.
And if to-day, Indian art has become not only a great asset of the nation but is one of the cherished possessions of the entire civilised world, it is mostly due in a large measure to his genius and efforts. He is most unquestionably the father of the modern Indian Renaissance. s And yet, how many Indians know anything about this great Ceylonese and of his incomparable services to India and the world? Many in this land and elsewhere are familiar with his books and his writings but only a few really know anything of his birth, antecedents and magnificent work in the field of art in both the hemispheres.

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s HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
Ananda Coomaraswamy is a native of Ceylon, a scion of a cultured Tamil family, a son of a distinguished father, and the result of happy union between East and West. His two most famous kinsmen are the late Sir P. Ramanathan and Sir P. Arunachalam, two of the greatest Tamils of their generation.
Ananda Coomaraswamy's early education was in England, and after a brilliant career at Cambridge, he returned to his island-home to serve Lanka in cultural ways. He was a student of Sanskrit in his youth, and his knowledge of the classics give him an insight into the hidden beauties of not only Indian literature but of Indian art as well.
Born with a keen aesthetic sensibility and a discerning appreciation of beauty in life and art, and seeing so much of the beauty of the old world ail about him, in ancient monuments, in decaying arts and crafts and in the art traditions of his people, he felt an irresistible impulse to devote his life and talent for their regeneration and survival.
With that end in view, he started a cultural journal to interpret India and Ceylon to the world; for to him, as to many thinking minds, the culture and the arts of these two countries are identical and have a common origin and inspiration. Lanka, to him, was Only a cultural projection of Aryavarta, and whatever great and beautiful in that island came from the mainland.
He saw around him a hybrid culture fast taking roots and transforming a fairy island into a colourless Eurasia, and he felt it his duty to uproot it root and branch before it strangled the few lovely things still left and sapped the soil of its creative vitality. He carried a whirlwind campaign against the denationalising process that was fast setting in by ruthless exposure through lectures and writings.
It was a strange destiny for him. He was not only a child of mixed marriage but had all his early training and education in the Western lands and alien

HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. Coom.ARASWAMY 19
-surroundings, and yet, he proved to be the most understanding of men in the East so far as Oriental art was concerned. He had great odds to contend against, yery few intelligent co-workers, limited materials for his study and absolutely no outstanding pioneers, except the Orientalists like Monier Williams, Sir George Birdwood, Wilson and a few others. Havell, Binyon, Coddrington and the Tagores were his contemporaries.
It is remarkable that single-handed he did so much for Indian art and with such limited resources. It is his intuition that enabled him to see the spirit and meaning behind the forms of Indian art. He travelled widely, visited the world's museums, contacted the conoisseurs in the East and West, and thus enriched his knowledge before writing authoritatively about art in general and Indian art in particular. He felt he had a message of beauty from the East to give to the West and he chose to reside in Western lands to serve the East better.
His earliest writings on Indian art made their appearances in well-known and widely circulated journals of both East and West; and the Theosophist, then edited by the late Annie Besant, broadcast his writings on Indian sculpture and paintings to the English knowing public of the world. Ananda Coomaraswamy realised long ago, as modern authors and publishers realise now, that good illustrations convey more to the reader and are more illuminative than any amount of learned dissertations on the subject, especially on art matters.
And he had all his works profusely illustrated with selected examples of Indian masterpieces, which even to-day afford as the basis for study for students. His "Indian Drawings' in two volumes, published in 1910-1912, are still of invaluable help for a proper understanding of Indian art, and are the best examples of their kind. His earliest and best work, “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art” (1908), which made i his name famous throughout the world, is still the only uthoritative book on the subject. Published in a

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limited edition, it has long been out of print, and efforts are being made by the Ola and Nalanda publications to bring out a reprint of the volume as early as possible. -
In 1910, he brought out his most widely known book "Selected Examples of Indian Art', which contains choice specimens of Indian art in illustrations. The world owes to him a deep debt of gratitude for bringing to its attention the subtle beauty and the delicate drawings of the "Rajput Painting'. His two volumes on that subject is yet to be improved upon; even O. C. Gangoly's "Hundred Masterpieces of Rajput Painting' and his magnum opus, “Raga and Raginis” are only elaborations and amplifications of the subject, with additional examples. The pioneering work was Coomaraswamy's. -
"The Indian Craftsman' (1909), 'Essays in National Idealism', “The Dance of Siva', 'The Mirror of Gesture', 'The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon' and "Viswakarma', are some of his early contributions which made his name a household word wherever beauty and art are appreciated. “The History of Indian and Indonesian Art' is a veritable tour-de-force, and a book for reference to both scholars and students.
Ananda Coomaraswamy is a fascinating writer, and has a fascile pen. For a savant and scholar, he is not pedantic or obscure either in his ideas or in his expression. His critical studies of the various aspects of Indian art have a depth of knowledge, a penetrating mind and an understanding wisdom. They are not mere mental juggleries or an outburst of emotional vapourings. He is seldom obscure in his explanations, seldom mystifying, however mystical or abstract the subject may be. −
He ennunciates his ideas clearly, logically, and with no bias or preconceived notions. His style is crystal-clear and his narrative simple and direct. One seldom gets lost in words, reading his books;

HOMAGE TO ANAN DA K. COOMARASWAMY 21
and his ideas are never covered up by obscure technical words. He sees clearly and tells plainly the significant features of even the most obscure forms of art. More than any cther critic, he has a larger vision, a wider knowledge, a keener perception, a rare balance of judgment and an impersonal attitude towards things. These make him the great savant that he is.
Those of us who have dabbled in art and selfglorified ourselves as critics owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to him. We shine in borrowed light, and are but poor pale reflections of his genius. He is the pathfinder, the pioneer, the one true cultural messenger from the East to the West. It was my privilege to have known him only for a few brief hours during his last visit to India, and this personal contact has but deepened my affection and regard for him. I found him vivacious, for his age, and keenly alive to all the things going on around him. He enjoyed jokes, laughed heartily over silly arguments, listened patiently to all the prattles of the half-learned, and was calm like a rock amidst boisterous sea-waves.
Gentle of speech, perfect in manners, unruffled by any hostile criticisms, he moved among the small crowd that met to honour him, and had a good word to say to every one. Slightly bent with age, hair turned grey in study and service, face serene, lit by two dark eyes, and with a thin beard struggling to reach his neck, he seemed an ancient seer in a modern garb. And he reminded me of Gurudev Rabindranath in his stoop in his demeanour and even in walk. Tagore and Coomaraswamy are, undoubtedly, two names which India and the world will long cherish and honour as the two great architects of the 20th century Indian renaissance.

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ANANDA COOMARASWAMY: INSPIRER OF ART AND SWADESHI
(J. Vijayatunga, Colombo)
In 1918 while I was living with the Patwardhan family in Ahmednagar-Achyut and Rao Patwardhan are to-day nationally known-I ordered from a bookseller “Art and Swadeshi' by Ananda Coomaraswamy. I was then sixteen. I read with eagerness the various essays in the book-that on the incongruity of using the so-called “harmonium' for rendering Indian music, that on the harm done to the weaving art by the use of aniline dyes, and other essays all exposing the hybridism of our daily life and the low standard of our tastes. It was to me sheer inspiration from the first page to the last. No other book ever caused me so much mental excitement. Thoreau's "Walden' being the other book that came anywhere near 'Art and Swadeshi' in its immediate effect on me. My real education resulting in such views on Art and Swadeshi as I hold to-day must be attributed to my having read 'Art and Swadeshi' at the impressionable and idealistically inclined age of sixteen. It led me to read Havell and other books on smiliar lines.
My next desire was to contact the author. So somewhere about 1921 or 1922 while I was a teacher at Mahinda College I came up to Colombo (quite an adventure in those days) and met Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam to whom I had earlier written about my interest in Ananda Coomaraswamy. Sir Ponnambalam, the only great man in the Indian tradition of greatness I have been able to meet in Ceylon, gave me Dr. Coomaraswamy's address as at the Fine Arts Museum, Boston. .. ۔ مم : : ;
In 1928 when I went to New York I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting him. Tall and lithe, as fair-skinned as a European, supple-necked, with the lean face of the intellectual, he was what

Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Editor of "Ceylon National Review" 1903-1905)

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Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (President of the Ceylon Sncial Reform Society, 1903-1905)
 

HoMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 23.
his writings had led one to imagine what he would look like. He laughed readily and his geniality was not forced. I believe I corresponded with him twice after that. The first time was , when I sent him a copy of my "India Independence Bulletin' which I was then editing for which he sent me a five dollar. contribution, the second time being when I drew his attention to a letter that Babu Ramananda Chatterjee (of the Modern Review) had written to a New York magazine apropos of my review of Dr. Sunderland's "India in Bondage' pointing out that "Mr. Vijayatunga is a Ceylonese, not an Indian.' Dr. Coomaraswamy sympathised with my resentment, said that he had himself been discriminated against in that manner sometimes, but pointed out that we in Ceylon had invited the charge by our highly Europeanised outlook and way of living.
I have not been in touch with him since. But I consider him as one of the founders of Indian Nationalism, and I feel that someday he will be honoured worthily by India. We in Ceylon who cannot boast of great men with the same moral or intellectual stature as those in India must appropriate this noble son of Ceylon before he is claimed or acclaimed by others,
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY (M. S. Атеу, Colombo)
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy is one of those great Indians whose names will go downto posterity for the selfless services rendered by them to their motherland particularly in the field of cultural revival and nation building He is probably the greatest of the living critics of Indian Art in all its varieties. He is a nationalist to the core; yet his writings demonstrate his broad outlook and catholic capacity to examine every problem not in the narrow spirit

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2. HoMAGE To ANANDA Κ. COOMARASWAMY
of territorial nationalism but in that of internationalism. The reason is that at the present stage of human progress no nation can be completely selfsufficient not even for its physical requirements much less for its intellectual progress and spiritual uplift. A co-operative effort by all the civilised people of the world is more necessary to meet the intellectual and spiritual needs of the people of several civilised nations of the world to-day than at any time before. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy therefore warns New India against being westernised and carried away by non-spiritual currents of thought emariating from the West. He feels that there is a mission for India in the coming times. And she will be able to fulfil it only if she holds steadfast to the fundamental principles which have helped her to survive the onslaughts and ravages of time. India knows the secret of . immortality, an ideal which she has not only preached from the pulpit but preserved in all its pristine freshness and grandeur in her literature, architecture, religions, mode of thoughts and worship, music, dancing, painting, folk lore and forms of recreations. In his exposition keen intellect and high emotion are found most harmoniously blended. He has the rare gift to discern most sublime truths in things mundane. His love for Indian art and the spirit of mental equipoise which it produces in the artist in allowing him to pursue it in his own quiet way undisturbed by competition and depressing displays of unaesthetic mass production is simply boundless. He regards the true spirit of the artist as a national asset too precious to be lost for the spectacular but fleeting and momentary advantage of the products of power-driven industries. He appeals to the modern politician whose mind is influenced by the economic conceptions of the western thought that they must find out a formula that will harmonise the industrial progress of the future India with the preservation of the cottage industry where the true spirit of Indian art is being kept up free from contamination. He stands for the Swadeshi of the noblest type that does

Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

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A meagте collection of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's publications,
 

HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARAswa MY 25
not merely envisage the elimination of the foreigners' exploitation but helps the sustained growth of the spirit of true Indian art in its varied manifestations. He has so far played the double role of an interpreter between the East and the West and the apostle of Indian nationalism grounded in admiration for her cultural achievement in the past and also in faith for her capacity to serve humanity in their march to perfection in future.
India will ever remain grateful to him for his inimitable advocacy of her greatness before the bar of the world and pray for his long life and still more glorious service to mankind in future.
THE WRITINGS OF DR. COOMARASWAMY (Richard Ettinghausen, Washington).
There are few scholars anywhere in the world whose publications cover a wider range than those of Dr. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, since many years a Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian, and Mohammadan art in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His researches embrace philosophy, metaphysics, religion, iconography, Indian literature and arts, Islamic art, medieval art, music, geology, and, especially, the place of art in society. His publications comprise many voluminous books and a very large range of pamphlets, articles, and critical reviews published not only in India, Ceylon, England, and the United States, but also in France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Portugal and Rumania. More astounding than the sheer quantity of his publications are their extraordinary profundity and originality throughout his career, and their deep influence on the spiritually awakened, scholars and laymen alike all over the world. There are, indeed, few scholars who like him, are able to go straight to original sources and at the same time have the ability

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and courage to hand on a clear-cut, uncompromising message of what they have seen, heard, and learned. Never has he had time for, or interest in, presenting personal ideas or novel theories, so constantly and tirelessly has he devoted his energes to the rediscovery of the truth and the restating of the principles by which cultures rise and fall.
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY AS SAW HIM.
(Prof. K. R. R. Sastry, Allahabad).
A cultural tour took me to the West in 1946. After visiting London, Oxford, Harvard and Yale Universities I felt an urge to see the Savant of our Culture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
With grey hairs of maturity and wisdom, immersed amidst books, and looks reminding me of Gurudev Tagore and leonine Einstein, was the austere Scholar-Philosopher, our own dear Ananda Coomaraswamy.
We spent our time comparing notes on Mysticism. He is equally at home in arts, sculpture and Vedic learning.
His work for art has been universally praised; and his contributions on Vedanta have been outstanding.
At Boston he has done pioneer work on the India section of the great Museum. Full of age, wisdom and ripe experience, he is eager to return to his motherland.
I honour in him an outstanding representative of our hoary culture working in the New World. He is a profound scholar equally at ease amidst ancient lore, Vedantic, Saivaite and Buddhistic. I spent a pleasant one hour in his company-Time is Eternal. Yes: the cultured spend their lives in "KAVYA SASTRA VINODA” (taking delight in examining works on fine arts).

ROMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 27
The surge of Freedom is up: when the new
freedom comes to us in India and Ceylon, these rare gems of Culture will have to be preserved and honoured.
Ananda Coomaraswamy is planning to leave to his motherland. May we develop the meekness, discernment, and culture to honour our sages, savants and seers !
UNITY IN THE DIVERSITY OF FAITHS (Lester E. Denonn, Brooklyn, Nev York).
Ananda Coomaraswamy is known to me only through the printed page, chiefly for his contribution to that sterling, inspirational volume, "Contemporary Indian Philosophy,' his lectures on “Hinduism and Buddhismo and miscellaneous articles and reviews in "Asia and the Americas.' It is through the printed page, however, that our choice fellowship widens and we can number those thus known as closer to us than many with whom we have even more than a nodding acquaintance. I bow to Dr. Coomaraswamy for the thoughts he has enkindled in me even though I may not always agree with his premises nor favor his liking for scholastic logomachy.
He stands, to my mind, chiefly as an exponent of Philosophia Perennis for which he is a most convincing spokesman. The keen scholarship of Coomaraswamy enables him to bring within the vista of his exposition striking parallels in Heraclitus and Plato, in Buddha and Christ, in St. Augustine and St. Thomas, in Boehme and Eckhart, not so much through borrowing nor influences, says he, as the fact of there being an underlying perennial philosophy.
In these days when East and West can, should and, we hope, will meet, we can well mark this clarion call for a true understanding of the principles of comparative religion: "...the true end of which science, judged by the best wisdom, ... should be to

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demonstrate the common metaphysical basis of all religions and that diverse cultures are fundamentally related to one another as being the dialects of a common spiritual and intellectual language; for whoever recognises this, will no longer wish to assert that "my religion is best, but only that it is the "best for me." In other words, the purpose of religious controversy should be, not to 'convert' the opponent, but to persuade him that his religion is essentially the same as our own.' (1)
Such a particularistic approach to unity in the diversity of faiths impresses me as a greater solvent for "one world' than the strident bombast of any nation, people, race or religion.
(1) From “On the Pertinence of Philosophy' by Ananda Coomaraswamy as printed, in "Contemporary Indian Philosophy,' edited by S. Radhakrishnan, and J. H. Muirhead. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1936, Pg. 121.
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY (R. C. Majumdar, M.A. Ph.D., Calcutta).
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has rendered most valuable service to the cause of Indian culture by his numerous publications on Indian art. He possesses a keen and true instinct for the correct appreciation of art and his interpretation of Indian art has been acclaimed by critics all over the world as worthy of the highest praise. His extensive study of Indian and Indonesian art is revealed in his classical work and his estimate of its value has athrown an altogether new light on the subject. His lifelong devotion to the study of Indian culture as revealed through art has earned the gratitude of his countrymen who pray to God that he may be spared long to continue his useful career,

HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY 29
INDIA owEs MUCH TO ANANDA
COOMARASWAMY (Sir William Rothenstein)
India, and those who have come to value the genius of India, owe much to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Together with Havell he drove away the smoke-clouds which had too long obscured the splendid achievements of Indian sculptors, painters and builders. The art of Greece and of Italy had alone to European-and indeed to Indian-eyes counted as great art. Only when western scholars could detect influence in Indian carving and painting was their interest awakened. They failed to estimate, for example, the superb qualities, the overwhelming power of the Brahmanistic sculpture.
In his writings Coomaraswamy called insistent attention to the purely Indian character of the Indian geinus. He had early discovered the peculiar beauty of the Rajput and Kangra paintings, more spiritual hence more truly Indian, than those Mughal artists. Hitherto only Chinese, Japanese, and Persian Art had been regarded as "Fine Art'. In addition to his steadfast championing of painting building and sculpture, Coomaraswamy's all embracing perceptiveness made him the sensitive interpreter of the subtle spirit of Indian literature and music. He collected folk songs from the Punjab, translated folk poetry, interpreted symbolic character of the Indian dance. His sympathy with the Indian Nationalists caused him to loosen his ties with England and America has had the benefit of his wide scholarship and understanding. But his writings have given him a secure place among Oriental scholars in East and West. To-day, if India takes her due rank as a first-class artistic power, it is in a large measure owing to Coomaraswamy.
(From the Journal of the Society of Oriental Art Vol. V 1937. Published on the 60th birthday of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and dedicated to him).

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A MASTER EXPOSITOR OF INDIAN ART (S. Sanjiva Dev, Tummapudi, India).
Ceylon's finest contribution to the Opalescent efflorescence of Asiatic culture, in modern times, has been the person of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. His distinguished services in the sphere of Asiatic Art in general and the study of Indian Art in particular have been unique and stand as an immortal mounment in the history of Indian art criticism. His profound exposition of Indian classical art has not merely enabled the Western connoisseurs to appreciate Indian Art but also opened the otherwise closed petals of the Indian hearts so that they could vibrate to the vivant rhythm of Indian sculpture and the enchanting tune of Indian painting.
Dr. Coomaraswamy was once amazed at the utter ignorance of the Indian educated persons towards the existence of their cultural treasures. He observes in his "Art and Swadesi'. "A well educated Indian professional man once asked me, 'What is a Sufi 2. On another occasion a well known Nationalist enouired, 'What is a Gopi Little use to think of an "Indian people' when such are the fruits of Indian education' Dr. Coomaraswamy is a marvellous interpreter of the mysteries of the Indian Silpa Sastras; these scholarly interpretations have indeed created a new place of honour and appreciation in the hearts of the Western intelligentsia. Half a century ago Indian Art was a mere curio in the Western eyes. The abnormal anatomy, the peculiar mannerisms and the absence of perspective of Indian Art were seen with ludicrous eyes in the Western countries. This improper understanding of Indian Art, was, no doubt, not due to any sort of national or racial prejudices, but due to lack of study of the Indian cultural environment amidst which those works of art were produced.
Nobody can claim of appreciating an alien work of art unless he is acquainted with the cultural

SOMAGE TO ANANDA. R. COOMARASWAMY 3.
traditions of that nation which has produced that work of art. Sometimes it would be possible to appreciate the formal beauties of that work even without any familiarity with its cultural history. But mere formal beauty alone is not all that is to be appreciated in a work of art, there are several other things more. Even if we presume that form is everything in a work of visual art, we are not, at times, able to fully appreciate even that form without having a rudimentary knowledge of the mannerisms and its cultural background.
If deeply contemplated, form has no independent existence apart from idea. Every visual form is, in one way or other, associated with some idea as every idea is associated with some visual form. Hence form and idea are interdependent like seed and plant. The sight at every known form would immediately create in the beholder some idea. It is in order to avoid this idea from their pure forms that the creators of abstract art have tried and are trying to create forms that would neither resemble nor represent any familiar object of the phenomenal world. These experiments to produce absolute painting, in the same way as absolute music is produced, have been able to succeed to some extent only due to the recognised fact that the sounds in music do not resemble one form or other in nature. Consequently absolute painting is not of so easy feasibility as absolute music. All this philosophisation of form and idea denotes that the form, in general, is not independent of idea. So to appreciate a form needs, to some extent, the understanding of the idea behind it. To understand that idea requires the study of its traditions and cultural atmosphere. In order to appreciate an art-object of a nation it is required to get oneself acquainted with the nature of that nation's aesthetic evolution, as well as its gradual development of art-forms. s
It is the versatile genius of Dr. Coomaraswamy. which has interpreted to the puzzled West the mysteries underlying the apparently distorted form

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of Indian Art-both painting and sculpture in addition to the decorative motifs. What the great Swami Vivekananda had done for the cause of Indian faith and philosophy in the West, the same has been and is being done by Dr. Coomaraswamy for the great cause of Indian Art and aesthetics in the West.
It is interesting to find Dr. Coomaraswamy's services are not confined to Indian Art alone but they are extended to Indian mysticism and metaphysics as well. His penetrating scholarship of the Sanskrit classics and scriptures especially the Vedas is magnificent. The enormous art-literature produced by his pen is always interwoven with various wise Sanskrit references everywhere. It would be difficult to find a single page in his books which does not contain a score of Sanskrit words. At the first glance the reader would get perplexed to recognize whether the books were in English or in Sanskrit in Roman script. To give an instance from Dr. Coomaraswamy's masterpiece "Transformation Of Nature In Art'. "According to the related School of Manifestation (Vyaktivada) the essential or soul of poetry is called Dhvani, “the reveberation of meaning” arising by suggestion (Vyanjana). In grammar and logic, a word or other symbol is held to have two powers only, those of denotation (Abhidha) and connotation (Lakashana); for example Gopala is literally "cowherd' but constantly signifies Krishna. The rhetoricians assume for a word or symbol a third power, that of suggestion (Vyanjana), the matter suggested, which we should call the real content of the work, being 'Dhvani' with respect to either the theme (Vastu), any metaphor or other ornament (Alamkara), or, what is more essential, one of the specific Rasas. In other words, Abhidha, Lakshana, and Vyanjana correspond to literal, allegorical and anagogic significance.” (P. 53.)
Dr. Coomaraswamy's activities in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in U.S.A. are world-reputed. In America it is only the Boston Museum - that. could really be acclaimed as the foremost museum

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in that continent which possesses the richest collections of Asian arts. The Indian section was opened in this Museum in 1917. Dr. Coomaraswamy presented his magnificent collection of Indian Art to this Indian section in addition to still more magnificent collection of Dr. Ross. The Indian section of the Boston Museum has been a highly representative one of all the phases of Indian Art-painting, sculpture, industrial art, crafts, folk arts etc. All schools of Indian classical art have found their place in this Museum under the scholarly-cum-aesthetic guidance of Dr. Coomaraswamy. - S SS - It is often observed that the person whose life is completely dedicated to scholarly researches lacks aesthetic sense. The scientific researches of the antiquarian art-objects and languages and literatures would naturally eat away the aesthetic impulses in the scholar. The reason born of scientific outlook predominates the scholar's life supressing the aesthetic sense for the appreciation of the beautiful. But fortunately it has not been so in the life of Dr. Coomaraswamy. No dryness of his head has been able to make the aesthetic moisture of his heart evaporate. With the growth of intellectual power the aesthetic faculty also began to develop in him. With the increase of analytical induction the svnthetic deduction too started to flourish. With the maturity of penetrating scrutiny the integral vision also began to ripen. It is this equilibrium of the intellect and emotion that have beautifully blended into intuition which has m'ade Dr. Coomaraswamy a critical scholar, a comprehensive aesthete and a contemplative seer -
It is why his writings emit the solar rays of knowledge and the lunar rays of beauty alike. Informative vividness and inspirative vagueness simultaneously reign in his expositions of the Silpa Sastras. There are many volumes from the pen of Dr. Coomaraswamy. It is hijs “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art' published in 1908, that had actually lifted him

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to the eyes of the world's scholars and connoisseurs as well. Afterwards in 1909 his 'Indian Craftsman' was published in London. This interesting work gave him greater reputation. In 1916 his magnificent volume 'Rajput Painting' was published in Oxford. With the appearance of this monumental work on Rajput Painting, Dr. Coomaraswamy was reputed as the foremost master critic and historian of Indian Art. Now what we hear the names of the classification of Indian painting were denominated by Dr. Coomaraswamy. The credit of classifying the Rajput painting under the names Rajasthani and Pahari inclusive of Kangra, Chamba, Basoli etc., goes to Dr. Coomaraswamy only. His other publications are "The Dance of Siva', 'Elements of Buddhist Iconography', 'Catalogue of the Indian Collection' in several volumes, ''History of Indian and Indonesian Art', 'Introduction to Indian Art', “Transformation of Nature In Art', “A New Approach to the Vedas' etc. Besides these books there are numerous illuminating essays contributed to various journals of the world. His long essays entitled "The Part of Art In Indian Life' contributed to "The Cultural Heritage of India' has been a gem among his essays. -
Since some time Dr. Coomaraswamy has been engaged in Vedic studies and in interpreting Vedic myths and symbolism. His introspective investigatiolas into the mysteries of the motifs of the Indian Art have landed him on the mysticism of the Vadas.
The writer of these lines cannot pretend to have any personal acquaintance with Dr. Coomaraswamy in spite of the former's longing to do so. It is ardently desirable that Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy should be invited to India and a grand reception should be given to him in recognition of his services of infinite value rendered to Indian Art and Culture. All the Art Societies and Cultural Associations should deem themselves greatly honoured and blessed in honouring this great soul Dr. Coomaraswamy.

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May the Supreme Effulgence of which Dr. Coomaraswamy is a resplendent ray, make him enjoy eternal peace and everlasting bliss tinged with Long Life ! Pleasonyati sah.
Salutations to him.
OUR GREAT ART YOGI (S. Durai Raja Singam, Kuantan, Malaya).
"Blessed is he who has found his work: let him ask no other blessedness'-CARLYLE
It is perhaps too early as yet for the contemporary world, both in the East and the West, to assess the nature of the work of a living artist like Ananda Coomaraswamy, presently Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian and Mohamedan Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Mas.i No Easterner has done more to promote a profound appreciation of Oriental art in relation to its background of religion, philosorohy and mythology. Scientist, philosopher, theologian, linguist, art-connoisseur, social reformer, author and lecturer, that he is, all rolled in one, Ananda Coomaraswamy has made an indelible impress on every phase of intellectual endeavour that he made in his life of thought and action. The Grecian philosophical attitude, characterized by an innate love for wisdom, has never been
The Museum of Fine Arts at Boston has long been known as having the largest and most important collection of Indian works of art to be found outside India. This Museum can now boast of the most representative and comprehensive collections of Indian Paintings, Sculptures and Applied Art that have ever been brought together under one roof. Dr. A. Salmony in Proc. Pacific Arts Asscn. 1935 p. 61:.................. “In the United States for many years Ananda Coomarasamy has devoted all his energy to an explanation of Indian spirit and art. Thanks to his activity the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a collection comparable only to those of India, and, also thanks to him, the American public can accept the art of India free from the subconscious prejudice held by a great part of the European public'. w

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truer than of this prolific scholar, of whom-if genius be the capacity for taking pains-it can be truly said that he is a rara avis among his fellow humans.
Ananda Coomaraswamy comes of a distinguished family of Ceylon. His father Mutu Coomaraswamy Mudaliar, had the rare distinction of being the first knight in Asia and the first Hindu to be called to the Bar in the reign of Queen Victoria. That such a distinction was unique and unprecedented in his time may be gleaned from the following excerpt in the London and China Express dated July, 1874: -
“Mr. Mutu Coomaraswamy is also remarkable as having been the first person who, being neither a Christian nor a Jew, was admitted a barrister of 'one of the Inns of Court: his call bears date January, 1863...... He has also done much towards making the literature of India known to the Western world, having published several works relating to Indian and Buddhistic philosophy, and has given to the public an English translation of an interesting Hindu drama, Arichandra' which he dedicated to the Queen'. His mother's side, Elizabeth Clay Beeby-whom
his father married in 1876-belonged to an old English family. Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was born in
“Historicus' in the Ceylon Observer Centenary Number of February 5th, 1934, refers to him thus:-
Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy was the first of a brilliant family group to give his services to the public as a member of the Legislative Council. A striking figure and an enunciation and accent that were identical with those of a cultured Englishman were assets that were as valuable in the Council Chambers of Ceylon as in the drawing rooms of London society. In the Legislative Council he had many brilliant passage at arms with the Queen's Advocate, Sir Richard Morgan. Leaving for England in 1862 Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy remained for three years in that country where he was lionised to a great extent, enjoying the personal friendship of Palmerston and Disraeli.
*Published Arichandra London 1863; The Dathavansa, London 1874; Sutta Nipata, London 1874; Thayumanavar, announced but never published.

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Ceylon in August 22, 1877, has other distinguished cousins. Most notable among these were the late P. Coomaraswamy, Member of the Ceylon Legislative Council, the late Sir F. Arunachalam, RegistrarGeneral and Founder of the Ceylon National Congress, and the late Sir P. Ramanathan, more popularly known as the "Uncrowned King of Ceylon'.
Referring to his early acquaintance with books and culture, Ananda Coomaraswamy deprecates the use of the word "influence' and prefers to call a spade a spade. Here are some of the books from which he confesses to have learned the most:-
European: G. Macdonald, Phantastes; the Edda and Icelandic sagas; the Mabinogion; the whole Arthurian cycle, especially Malory, Sir Gava in and the Green Knight, Merlin; Chaucer; William Morris, especially Sigurd the Volsung, and the Well at the World's End. Plato (all); Plotinus, Emmeads, Hermetica; Philo (all); The Gospels, especially John; Shepherd of Hermas: Dionysius ; St. Augustine; St. Bonaventura ; St. Thomas Aquinas; Meister Eckhart; Tauler, Nicholas of Cusa; The Cloud of Unknowing; Jacob Behmen; William Law; William Blake.
Indian : Vedas; Brahmanas; Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita; . . . . . . Mahabharatu and Ramayana; Bhagavata Purama; Gita Gonvinda; Kabir, Vidyapati, Sri Ramakrishna; Tripurarahasya; Tiruvacagam. The Buddhistic Nikayas, Sutta Nipata and Dhammapada; Milinda Panha; Saddharma Pundarika.
Islamic: Al-Ghazali; Jalalu’d Din Rumi i Dinwam and Mathmanvi; Faridu'd Din Attar, Mantiqu't Tair; Llanw a'ih.
Chinese: Tao Teh King; Chwang Tzu Japanese: Genji Monogatari. No man whose essential outlook on the world has
not been catholic could have risen above the barrier of his own language. Ananda Coomaraswamy's

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greatness seems to have been derived from this recognition that Babel, though it is a barricade to be overcome, does not narrow the wider issues of the oneness of humanity. For though his early passion was for Geology and Botany, in which he passed his B.Sc., London, with first class honours, and though he later in 1906 attained the degree of D. Sc. he is also an accomplished linguist, having acquired English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit Pali and Hindi. In addition he knows something of Italian, Spanish, Icelandic, Dutch, Persian, Tamil and Sinhalese; and has travelled in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, India, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Korea, Japan, Java and Bali.
Prodigious as is his knowledge of ancient and modern languages, which by themselves would have taxed the memory of several average men, Ananda Coomaraswamy finds not only a scholar's interest but time for other intellectual fields. The academic recognition accorded to him has been both extensive in scope and international. He is a Fellow of the University College, London, Vice-President of the Royal India Society, London, ex-Vice-President of the American Oriental Society, Hon. Correspondent of the Archaeological Survey of India; Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst, The Hague; and Gesellschaft fiir Asiatische Kunst Berlin; Hon. Member of Eugene Field Society, Mark Twain Society, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, and of the Studi Internazuonali di Scienze e Lettera (Bologona). This last distinction was given expressly in connection with the Doctor's work on Vedic exegesis.
But it is perhaps for what he has done for Ceylon that he is likely to be best remembered with reverence and love by his own countrymen for generations to
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy......... was made an honorary member of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona, India, in appreciation of his services to Indian art and
Indology.
(Times London 11, Nov. 1936).

Coomaraswan
::: 升志 李夷简 订 厦夏 pè.

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Lady E. C. Coomaraswamy (about 1905)
 

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come. His first public service of cospicuous importance was rendered from 1903 to 1906, when he served as Director of Mineralogical Survey, Ceylon. Ever restless to leave the land of his origin a better place, he was one of the first to take pride in the arts and literature and recognize national education rather than to be ashamed of them. To give an impetus to national education and social reform he edited the Ceylon National Review; and, as President of the Ceylon Social Reform Society, he initiated a movement to spread the teaching of the national languages in all schools and for revival of indigenous arts and literature and customs and manners.
At bottom a nationalist though not an advocate of mere political idealism he subsequently wrote and lectured in support of similar movements in India, assisting to found the Royal India. Society from 1910-1911. Throughout his career he has been guided by a lofty idealism reminiscent of a happy combination of Mazzini and William Morris.
To-day Ananda Coomaraswamy is known to the world at large as a writer of no mean insight on the history of Indian Art, general aesthetics, Vedic exegesis, Sociology and Metaphysics. The following is a list of his publications, some of which are in languages other than Englisli:-
Reports on the Geology of Ceylon, 1903-1906; Veluspa : Mediaeval Sinhalese Art; The Indian Craftsman; Essays on National Idealism; Art and Swadeshi; Burning and Melting (with Y.
Hans Kohn in his “History of Nationalism in the East' says: A far reaching revolution took place in a quarter of a century. Social reforms acquired a new meaning, Indian Nationalism learned a new speech. The Shastris and Pandits of to-day approve of what would have wounded their susceptibilities profoundly a generation ago. The Asiatic cult has assumed new forms, corresponding to Europe's expressionist tendencies, her reaching out towards the mythical and primitive; the roots of nationalism struck deeper, men meditated upon its spiritual value, as is seen in the writings of Coomaraswamy and his contemporaries. And all has reached its climax in Gandhi's agitation.

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Daud); Selected Examples of Indian Art; Indian Drawings 2 Vols., Visvakarma; Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (with Sister Nivedita); Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon (also French edition); Vidyapati (with A Sen); The Taking of Toll, Rajput Painting; Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism; The Mirror of Gesture (with G. Duggirala); The Dance of Siva (also French edition); Portfolio of Indian Art (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Catalogue of the Indian Collections; Collections in the Museum of Fine Arts; Four comprendire l'art homdoue; History of Indian and Indonesian Art (also German edition); Yalasas; Les miniatures orientalesde la collection Goloubew; a New anproach to the Vedas; The Transformation of Nature in Art; Elements of Buddhist Iconography; Why Exhibit Works of Art; Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought; Am I my Brother's Keeper? La Sculpture de Bodhyaya; Articles in Athenaecum, Burlington; The Arts; Art Bulletin Rupa, Parnassus Ipek, Etudes Tradition-elles, Speculum, Smithsonian, Miscellaneous Publ., J.R.A.S., J.A.O.S., and other journals, in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Reviewers of one of his best known works “Hinduism and Buddhism,' taken at random from different periodicals, are as unanimous in their appreciation and praise as they are unstinted. Referring to it, P. H. wrote in "Freedom':
“It is as scholarly a treatment of a subject as have ever read and at the same time a beautiful piece of literature”.
Wing-tsit Chan wrote of it in “Philosophical Extracts' as “a short, concise, comprehensive and scholarly book by an Indian who stands firmly on Indian ground.'
C. H. Hamilton in the “Journal of Bible and Religion,' 1945 wrote:

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“Dr. Coomaraswamy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, here undertakes to state concisely and with careful and continuous reference to primary sources
his matured grasp of the essence of Indian religious tradition.'
The Hindu (Madras) 1944: “The distinguished art critic and Vedic scholar has presented in the above brief but very profound book a valuable and
original survey of the two most important religions of India.
The late Dr. Lucien Scherman discussing this book (and other works), in JAOS, 63, 1943 says:
"This new, excellently made-up book is full of thoughts and fascinates the reader; woven where he succeeds in breaking the spell and following other ways, he soon finds himself again in harmony with the author. I believe that in our time Coomaraswamy has become for Vedic religion and philosophy what once Philo of Alexandria had been for the religious thought of the Jews.'
Of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy's "Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought” Maurice Collis writing in the Observer, London (21st July 1946) says under the caption "An Exciting Ride':-
"those who like a lucid and original discussion about art, which at the same time is learned to a degree hardly to be met with, should read Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (Luzac, 10/6) by Ananda Coomaraswamy. I can promise them in this something quite beyond their normal experience, for they will be taken for a ride through the Sanskrit, Pali, and Greek classics, not to speak of excursions into the Fathers and the Neo-Platonists, and Hermeric Philosophers, and the Alchemists. This may sound an intimidating or confusing programme, but I can assure them it is not so, and they will enjoy themselves, and will come back to earth flushed and heartened, and ever after will find the metaphysics of the

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common run of art critics, whether here or in Paris where they know how to spin it up, very thin stuff, very small beer'.
The latest book of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is “Am I my Brother's Keeper?' (The John Day Company, New York). Mr. Arthur E. Jensen reviewing this book in "The Herald', Boston of April 23, 1947 says,
This group of essays by the distinguished Fellow in Oriental Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is an erudite yet lucid presentation of the philosophic dilemma of the West by a serene scholar, who himself is half western and half eastern both by blood and training. He finds that we are at war with ourselves, and that our recovery is by no means assured. It is a fresh, stimulating-and disturbing-interpretation. It is, moreover, one of those rare books which force us to think of man, not as occidental or oriental, but as the embodiment of the ageless human spirit.
Mr. E. S. Brightman in “World in Books', Boston, May, 1947, refers thus to this book.
In the short but many essays of this book, the scholar and sage of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts presents anew his insights into the perennial philosophy. Viewing the modern civilization as decadent, he finds the only hope and meaning of life in a spiritual religion like that of the Upanishads, which emphasizes the unity of all being and values, transcending the many forms which the divine reality assumes in different cultures and ages. The book is animated by intense opposition to machine civilization, to reliance on mere, literacy, and to missionary-proselytising...
His positive message may be found in such passages as the following:

hoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY 43
"The...Christian...is invited to participate in a Symposium of religions...; not to preside-for there is Another who presides unseen-but as one of many guests'...
The book is packed with information about religion and anthropology. The very footnotes are often fascinating. Dr. Coomaraswamy has provided a tonic and a challenge to modern man. And the News (Dallas, Teacas), quotes p. 90 "In a vocational order...its members' and comments: "this is enough to indicate the vigor and clarity of Coomaraswamy's hundred pages. To
his ಟ್ಗeat spirit and learning, the book must be read'.
It is inevitable that a brief survey of Ananda Coomaraswamy's life work reads like a narrative of high endeavours and attainments. A full intellectual life, crowded with an abundance of profound reflections, must necessarily suffuse with its generous wealth and contributions. His influence on the contemporary world has been far and wide, inspiring his own countrymen with pride, the West with gratitude for enlightenment and the world at large with admiration. In his autobiography, Eric Gill, the art critic, pays the following tribute to Ananda CoomaraSwamy ;
“There was one person to whom I think William Rothenstein introduced me, whom I might not have met otherwise and to whose influence I am deeply grateful; I mean the philosopher and theologian, Ananda Coomaraswamy. Others have written the truth about life and religion and man's work. Others have written good clear English. Others have had the gift of witty expositions. Others have understood the metaphysics of Christianity and others have understood the true significance of erotic drawings and sculptures. Others have seen the relationships of the true and the good and the beautiful. Others have had apparently unlimited learning.

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Others have loved; others have been kind and generous. But I know of no one else in whom all these gifts and all these powers have been combined. I dare not confess myself his disciple; that would only embarrass him. I can only say that I believe that no other living writer has written the truth in matters of art and life and religion and piety with such wisdom and understanding'.
A writer in the New English Weekly of June 1937 says:
"Through the courtesy of the Editor and of Mr. Probsthain. I have been able to look through a vast collection of books, articles and manuscripts by Dr. Coomaraswamy. I regret that the space at my disposal prohibits any attempt at even a cursory review here. But I have been impressed by the deep and wide learning of this extraordinary writer, who can penetrate with such rare sympathy aspects of both East and West with equal sureness. His writings on Indian nationalism and aesthetics are perhaps better known by repute than at first hand. But his earlier books, for example, "Essays in National Idealism' with the emphasis on the Idealism as well as the essays in "The Dance of Siva', deserve the widest currency. Of his recent book, two essays in particular, should interest readers of this column. 'The Patron and the Artist' is a highly original variation on one of Mr. Eric Gill's well-worn themes. And a small pamphlet on "The Appreciation of Unfamiliar Arts', which should be reprinted in some more accessible form, preaches far better than any mere Westerner or pure Oriental possibly could, one of my own most frequent sermons. Of Coomaraswamy's incursions into Buddhist criticism I dare say nothing: they simply must command the awe of the ignorant. But such essays of his as those on “Vedic Exemplarism'

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and "On Translation: Maya, Deva, Tapas' give some notions of the subtlety, and of the versatility, of the mind behind them. Finally, as a crowning example of the kind invaluable study which probably no other living could make, I commend to the attention of the curious Coomaraswamy's commentary (reprinted from “Speculum: a journal of Medieval Studies'. Cambridge, Mass) on "Two Passages in Dante's Inferno'. It makes most European criticism look not merely simple but absurdly provincial”.
Yet the picture of this captivating personality, whose intellectual splendour has dazzled the world like the precious stones of his homeland, is nothing extraordinary from the rank and file of mankind. "Tali, handsome, of sovereign colour-the image of God carved in sandalwood' is an American description of his appearance.
Few men by challenging the orthodoxy of our modern views on art, theology, culture and educational institutions have done a greater service to humanity as a whole than Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy. Such a statement can hardly be said to be oversuperlative considering his life-time devoted to a profound study of Eastern and Western civilization, to philosophical disquisitions in a prolific stream of books, and to extensive lecturing. To the curious Dr. Coomaraswamy's monumental works of scholarship bring a deeper appreciation of the Orient as characterized by its art, religious significance and culture; but to the initiate they are a revelation of a philosophy which, while it is aware of differences of external adaption, embraces the spiritual unity of man.
The culture that he approbates is not one which stops within the confines of its geographic accident; for that would be ethnocentric, and is precisely what he fulminates against with such irrepressible logic. The world of Dr. Coomaraswamy has no place for the Western educational system with its warped emphasis on literary acquisition as the hall-mark of

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culture and obliteration of the value of an oral tradition of culture. The museum institutions, for him, are better non-extant if they are only intended to preserve relics in antiquity and relegate contemporary "native' works of art to being exotic freaks for the satisfaction of the curious rather than to impel understanding. Neither does he bear with western theologians, their supercilious condescension to other religious, and their consequent self-deceit and hypocrisy, by which the progressive unity of the present-day world is unhappily marred. Dr. Coomaraswamy's philosophy of art is by now wellknown through his books, many of which are published in other languages than English. Through his eyes even grotesque works of native art are invested with a fresh dignity and becoming awe for the meaning they have been inherently charged by artistic intention. He is essentially opposed to the current aesthetic view of art of the Western world, particularly its stipulation of emotive enjoyment in beholders; which, the more he delves into the tradition of art as a social legacy, the more it appears to him to be a temporary abberration in the trend of progress. Art, he argues by reason of its origination in work rather than play should be utilitarian by any standard of judgment and not merely serve as an ornament-a toy to be created and enjoyed for ever in leisure. In short, art should subserve society by its fund of service, and this is everywhere evident, not only in Eastern art, but in all traditional art of the countries of the world.
Because of the close association from time immemorial between art and spiritual truths underlying all religious, works of art should be viewed for the sake of comprehension. In so doing-and only thus by an intellectual effort-can a communal plane be found for all races to supersede the heresies of human hatred and disunity, brought sharply into prominence by modern civilization. Dr. Coomaraswamy's greatness lies not in his apologia for moribund traditions of art and culture but in their

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Page 39
Ceylon-the beautiful homeland of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
 

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 47
revival from oblivion to reunite the East and the West that once upon a time were united spiritually.
The charming personality of Ananda Coomaraswamy is seen to advantage when he relaxes to his hobbies of gardening, fishing or browsing among books when the beauty of his mind and body reveals the personality of the living artist. Long live our Art Yogi Ananda Coomaraswamy, the genius dedicated to India and the world.
CEYLON'S DEBT TO ANANDA COOMARASWAMY.
(Dr. Andreas Nell, Colombo),
\
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy was born in Ceylon on the 22nd of August 1877; consequent to the illhealth of his mother he left Ceylon with her in April 1878 when she went to England. His father, Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy was to have followed later in the same year after the close of the sessions of the Legislative Council of which he was a member, "to serve the Tamil interests”. But, as Sir Mutu was suffering from Bright's disease, the doctors advised him not to risk the rigours of the English winter and he postponed his departure to the spring in 1879. Arrangements were made for his departure early in May, but in April there occurred an unexpected and very serious turn for the worse which led to his death on May 4th, the very day on which he was to have embarked.
Lady Coomaraswamy remained in her native country England, and her son was educated there. He was a keen student endowed with intellect and artistic tastes who graduated in science and was an expert geologist and mineralogist at an early age.

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48 HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY
Forty seven years ago, at the age of twenty-three, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy came back to Ceylon, his native land, which he had left in his eighth month of infant life. He threw himself with zeal and energy into the study of the geology and minerals of Ceylon. A series of valuable articles published from time to time disclosed the scientific interest and value of Ceylon's rocksand and its early geologic history. Three years later was established the department of Mineralogical Survey; the first Director was Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy; after a few years he relinquished the post and devoted all his time to his cultural investigations. During the busy years of scientific work, he had not left idle the acute appreciation of art and handicrafts which was so strong a characteristic of himself and of his talented wife. Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy travelled over Ceylon more extensively than any other scientific investigator visiting rural parts and remote areas in which the surviving folk-arts captured the hearts of him and his wife and engrossed their attention as much as scientific objects; scientific analysis and methods, careful scrutiny of each item, consideration of all data and caution in judgement characterised their life work.
The spirit and devotion to research which had made the geology of Ceylon known and understood was not spent on science alone; humanity and art asserted their claims. Geology and mineralogy did not become a life-occupation; they were only a passing phase of the activities of a great worker; though with results of exceptional value they were displaced by the fascinating folk-arts of Ceylon and especially by the folk-arts of the Kandyan areas of Ceylon.
This son of Ceylon, who had not known it in his childhood and formative years, bred and taught in the civilisation and culture of advanced countries found among these backward peasants the charm of a simple humanity and unsophisticated art. His publications indicated the trend of his interests in social reform, political advance, and revival of national arts, and an

HoMAGE To ANANDA sk. cooMARAswaMY 49
absorbing study of all things pertaining to his native country.
For about six years valuable unofficial and official mineralogical reports and papers in scientific journals were the outcome of his studies and investigations of geology of Ceylon; but alongside were some publications and lectures of increasing intensity abput cultured matters. Associated with Ceylonese whom he inspired and enlightened British residents of sympathies like his own there were launched the “Ceylon National Review' and the "Social Reform League'. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Ethel M. Coomaraswamy, husband and wife, had seen and studied village handcrafts and explored antiqueremains of the fine arts in every part of the island. and had been enamoured of the folk-arts, especially in the Kandyan districts. Scientific methods of investigation inbred in these ardent explorers in a new field of study led to an amazing accumulation of knowledge which soon became their sole preoccupation. Two significant articles indicated their trend; the first number of the "Ceylon National Review', (January 1906) was Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy's article on “Kandyan Art, What it meant, and How it Ended', a luminous expression of feeling as well as an appeal to others to participate in a revival; in the second number of the same magazine (July 1906) was the contribution by Ethel M. Coomaraswamy on "Old Sinhalese Embroidery', very clear and accurate, well illustrated, and the only prlmer of that art, which is still the case; it has been reprinted more than once and helped to sustain in some centres the endeavours at revival due to her personal persuasion and tuition.
It would be easy, but it is needless, to mention other titles of published articles and of lectures on several occasions, all aimed at instructing Ceylonese of the folk-arts of former times and of survivals into the present and pleading for revival and encouragement of neglected sections of the arts and crafts once

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50 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
highly-favoured. Between the times of appearance of the above-mentioned articles in 1906, was a concise but comprehensive Handbook of the crafts-exhibits shown in an annexe of the Rubber Exhibition in that year. Both Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and his helpmate had done so much in the preceding years, and continued their researches so diligently that no surprise, only enthusiastic delight was evoked by the appearance in 1908 of the volume “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art’:
Seven years previous to Ananda Coomaraswamy's arrival in Ceylon, the late Mr. Herbert Wace, of the Ceylon Civil Service, when Government Agent of the Central Province had begun forming a museum and had created a Kandyan Art Association which rendered most valuable service, its Museum was of educative value to craftsmen as well as to residents and visitors, its register of craftsmen, advances of money or materials, its sales in a sales-room and its workshops for mats, textiles, lac-workers, brass and silver workers were attractive to visitors as well as of pecuniary advantage to the village craftsmen. Wace's institution survives to this day, performing well the useful functions, he intended for it, of helping the village craftsmen to find a sale of their products and it thus saved several handicrafts from the extinction which was to be their fate but for Mr. Wace's brave project. It has also introduced Kandyan arts and crafts to the knowledge of the series of junior civil servants who began their Ceylon careers as cadets and office-assistants at the Kandy Kachcheri and who were eac-officio the working honorary secretaries of the Kandyan Art Association and thus became intensely interested in the arts and crafts; through all their career in . different parts of Ceylon, that previous knowledge of Kandyan Arts and Crafts was a boon to the people of every district in which these civil servants worked. The Kandyan Art Association and the Museum also proved of service to Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, although its collection at that time was smaller com

HOMAGE TO ANANDA FK. COOMARASWAMY 51
pared to what he and Mrs. Ethel M. Coomaraswamy had inspected and studied in all parts of Ceylon.
The debt was lavishly repaid and a heavy counter-debt created by the publication of “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art', which was to the Kandyan Art Association an encyclopaediac and reliable book of reference and helped to stablize and extend its work and eased solution of problems time after time.
The volume “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art” opened with a charming acknowledgement of a helper in the dedication "To Ethel M. Coomaraswamy, my comrade in this undertaking'; an undertaking covering a wide area, embracing all details, and with a humanist outlook. Copies of it are rarely obtainable; a new generation awaits a new issue. The scope of the book was an entire review of conditions and consequences in Sinhalese Art of the eighteenth century. The earlier chapters explained the social economy of the period, and the system of education of the youth, of the artificiers, and discussed the teachers and their training. Separate chapters on Architecture, Stonework, Woodwork, Painting, Sinhalese Weaving, Embroidery, and other crafts, such as Pottery, Smithery, Matmaking, etc. made a complete review of the subject fitly ended with the history of Sinhalese Art. The illustrations were profuse and excellently adapted to the needs of the reader. Ceylon thinks of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy gratefully as having done national service by engaging heart and mind in the production of this invaluable review of Sinhalese Art though not unaware of his brilliant work in other fields of mental activity. In the extensive range of his books and essays in journals (500 items) are intensive studies of art in the East and art in the West, researches in Indian Persian and Islamic Art, especially in Indian religion, philosophy, and meta-physics, studies of rigorous vitality and appreciated by scholars all over the world.

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52 HOMAGE TO ANANDA, K, COOMARASWAMY
I would lay stress on Ceylon's debt to him for. two tasks undertaken with zeal and energy and accomplished with signal success. The first was the systematic exploration of the geology of Ceylon. and the institution of scientific methods for future work. The second was the exploration of the arts and crafts in all their art-aspects and in dwindling economic condition, the accumulating of facts, and the final lasting record in that book--"Mediaeval Sinhalese Art'. There are two other debts to which I can only refer briefly in this essay. One debt was his efforts at social reform by founding a League, attracting public interest by lectures and articles and his success in initiating changes which have spread over all Ceylon. The fourth debt Ceylon owes him was political advance by awakening (or was it importing?) the idea of nationalism. His associates and co-workers among all communities increased in numbers slowly but steadily. Being a government employee at the time I could not participate but was only a spectator, but (thanks to friends) a "spectator in the stalls'.
The history of that bit of history of our own times needs to be written; when it is written, due credit will be given to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Among his associates were Sir James Pieris and Sir P. Arunachalam, Mr. W. A. de Silva-but the catalogue is too long to complete-let me say and others whose
names should be commemorated though I omit them. But, though Ananda K. Coomaraswamy left Ceylon for a larger field, his work at promoting political advance fanning the ideas of nationalism remained and steadily grew stronger; I am inclined to think that the absence of his inspirating mind from our midst slowed down progress, but after all there was progress.
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy came of a Ceylon family of standing which was distinguished for intellect and devoted to the service of the people; hence one cannot be surprised that when he came to

OMAGE TO ANANDA K COOMARASWAMY 53
Ceylon which he had left as an infant, he devoted his intellectual gifts and cultural accomplishments to the service of Ceylon so wholeheartedly and successfully in Geology, Social Reform, Political advance and the national Arts and Crafts. Ceylon thanks Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.
ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY.
(Walter Shewring, Ampleforth College, York).
It was Eric Gill, towards the end of 1935, who acquainted me with Dr. Coomaraswamy's work, giving me to read the Introduction to the Art of Eastern Asia, speaking of its author with affection and admiration, and encouraging me to begin a correspondence with him which, of and on, has continued from then till now. In the few words that I have to say I feel that I speak for Eric Gill also (though tributes in his own words may be found in his Autobiography and his Letters).
Those who are likely to read this book will know well enough already the breadth of Dr. Coomaraswamy's interests and the variety of his learning; indeed the mere titles of his writings witness to this sufficiently. I should like to add that we have in his case something quite different from an academic accumulation of knowledge (as if a professor of Hebrew, say, should also be learned in ornithology and in musical theory). Interests and learning are unified here in an organic fashion unknown to the merely academic world-unified by metaphysical principles proceeding from above and applied to lower disciplines not uniformly but analogously; unified by the wisdom which alone makes knowledge worth having.
The general significance of his work might be summed up in various ways; and, with work thus integrated, any one way would imply the others and

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54 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY
lead to them. I choose perhaps the simplest of any: To those who read him with intelligence and good will, Dr. Coomaraswamy makes clear once and for all the fundamental distinction between a sacred and a secular way of life, and hence the doom that awaits the modern world if it does not retrace its course, does not repent, does not forsake its present self.
What else is worth saying of him? First, that to any who ask for his help or teaching he is of indescribable patience and courtesy. Then, that he has at once the dignity of a master and the humility of a disciple. Last, that here and there through his writing one comes to recognise in his tone that kind of austere serenity which seems to be one mark of a sage. I find it in such a passage as this, from The Philosophy of Mediaeval and Oriental Art:
"If we mean to go far, we must begin by asking what was the meaning of life for those whose works of art we are proposing to "understand' and 'appreciate'. We cannot go far to-day. I shall be content if you realize that the way is a long one. And I ought perhaps to warn you that if you ever really enter into this other world, you may not wish to return; you may never again be contented with what you have been accustomed to think of as "progress' and civilisation'. If in fact you should ever come to this, it will be the final proof that you have "understood and ‘appreciated” Mediaeval and Oriental Art.”
To me that recalls the tone of some passages in Plato, at the close of the Republic, for instance; and from there I take a few phrases which may summarise in another way the work and message of Dr. Coomaraswamy.
"So the myth has been saved from perishing, and if we heed it, it may well save ourselves ...Believing the soul to be immortal, let us always hold to the upward path, practising justice, practising wisdom; that both now and in that millennial pilgrimage it may be well with us.'

Coomaraswamу.
Sketch
anda K
An
A Penc
by Manindra Bhusan Gupta.

Page 44
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy at the "Near Eastern Culture and Society' Bicentennial Conference, Princeton University, March, 1947.
Conference participants assemble around the WPEN Philadelphia, microphone for a broadcast from the Graduate College Library. Reading clockwise around the table from the left are: Alan Grey and Robert Johnson of WPEN, Matta Akrawi, Director of Higher Education for Iraq, Horace Fowler of WIPEN, Dan D. Coyle ”38, Assistant Director of Public Relations, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Habib A. Kurani of the State Department (Top)-H. A. R. Gibb, Professor of Arabic, the University of Oxford, and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, (Below).
 

ROMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 55
A GREAT PATRIOTIC SON OF INDIA (R. R. Kumria, Lahore). Just as Philosophy in the east is not a mere arm-chair speculation but is practised as a practical solution of the fundamental problem of Existence, in the same way The Art of Asia represents life itself, the different ways in which the difficult problems of human association have been solved.” “In India, it (Art) is the statement of a racial experience, and serves the purpose of life like daily bread'. This peculiar nature of the art of India is difficult to be understood by the west. It is more difficult to interpret it to a people who are objectively inclined. And yet this difficult task has been performed by Dr. Coomaraswamy with remarkable success. I regard his "Transformation of Nature in Art' and "History of Indian and Indonesian Art' as great works. They reveal the depth and extent of his learning and research. Dr. Coomaraswamy is one of those patriotic sons of India who have devoted their lives to interpreting the mind of the east to the west His service to his country is unique in its own way.
HOMAGE TO DR. ANANDA. K.
COOMARASWAMY (Manindra Bhushan Gupta, Calcutta)
It is a great thing that a commemoration volume of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the great art critic is going to be published. Before I give my tribute to the scholar, nationalist, orientalist, linguist, economist and what not, I congratulate the organiser who has taken up such an important work. It is a matter of regret that such a work has not been undertaken earlier by our countrymen, for whom he has done so much. He has raised the status of cultural India in the world. He is a great ambassador of humanism and Maitri. What Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and others have done in the field of politics, Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has done that in the field of Indian culture. He is a towering personality.

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56 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
I saw him once only, but I did not talk with him, as I was then only a boy. I do not remember the date, most probably it was some where near about 1912 when I was a student of Santiniketan, where the eminent scholar came to stay for a few days with the poet Tagore. I remember him as a fair complexioned gentleman with a slight moustache, wearing a long coat and a white turban. I also remember his tie and tight breeches (churidar payjama). He had a very large mole on his right chin. He was tall and dignified. A magician came when he was in Santiniketan. All the inmates of Santiniketan, the poet and the honoured guest were entertained by the magician. We all sat on the spacious ground in front of the guest house. In the verandah of the first floor the poet and the guest sat. I still remember an item, a cock was brought back to life and it came out from a basket. I also remember, both the poet and our guest turned their faces when the butchery was going on. On this visit, the poet - and Dr. Coomaraswamy were photographed together and it was published in the Modern Review. It was a beautiful photograph of the two great personalities.
He also stayed with Dr. Abanindra Nath Tagore in Calcutta. I heard about that from my master Sj. Nandalal Bose, but I cannot tell anything about his visit to Calcutta, except that. artists were eager to show their pictures to him.
He is one of the pioneers in giving publicity to the Neo-Bengal School of painting started by Dr. Abanindra Nath Tagore, about whom he wrote in the studio, the famous art magazine of London, at the earliest inception of this school. He was not a full supporter of this school, though he has written much about it and considers this school to be a worthy modern descendant of traditional Indian Art. He did not like Abanindra Nath's wash method and his imposition of Japanese technique on Indian art. On this point however I differ from the emminent art citic. What is the harm if Japanese influence temporarily

HOMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 57
hovers upon our art? It is a matter of difference of opinion only. The emminent scholar wants Indian art to be purely Indian and bereft of an external influence and that it should closely follow Rajput painting which he so ably introduced before the world. He has shown in his famous work "The History of Art in India and Indonesia', that in different periods India has come under the influence of the fire worshippers, Greeks, Romans and Persians. So, is there any harm if Hiroshige, Utamaro or Taikwan among other artists, influence our art? Dr. Coomaraswamy's greatest work undoubtedly is the discovery of "Rajput Painting'. He has placed those paintings on the highest level of our art creations, like the poetic master pieces of Chandidas, Vidyapati and other great Vaishnava poets. As long as the love lyrics of Vaishnava literature will remain in this world, so long will the Rajput Paintings flourish. Its romantic atmosphere can never be compared with any art of the world. In the field of artistic romanticism it is unique. The poetry of Chandidas and his contemporaries once captivated the mind of the country. Even now it's influence is quite rampant. Just like that, Rajput painting captivated the mind of our people, and is the supreme efflorescence of our folk culture.
What I could not get from Havell and Vincent Smith, I got from Coomaraswamy. He unfolded the beauty of Indian art to me. Havell speaks in the term of abstract philosophy. Vincent Smith is only a dry chronicler, but Coomaraswamy is the real esthete (Rasajina) of high order, who speaks profoundly in the term of pure Indian Esthetics and reveals its beauty to all lovers of art. His "History of Indian and Indonesian Art' is a great work.
I am thankful also to him for his study “Medieval Sinhalese Art'. It is a classical work. It opened a new horizon of art before my eyes. From Parker's Ceylon I know about ancient Ceylon, and from Coomaraswamy's work I knew about the culture and crafts of a people which many have forgotten. The

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58 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
flickering embers of Ceylonese craft was not totally extinct, this we know from Coomaraswamy's writings. He has told about the ancient guild of craftsman or Kanimalar class. His sympathy for such workmen is not that of a dry historian. His work is that of a humanitarian and a true lover of art.
The only celebrated art critic with whom Dr. Coomaraswamy could be compared was the great John Ruskin. In the early days Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by the socialistic views of Ruskin. In the beginning Ruskin was an unrivaled critic and a great historian of art. But when the great critic saw the misery and squalor of the slum life of England, he turned a socialist, and there he was a real pioneer in England. He boldly asserted that, art should not be for the rich only, it must reach the lowest strata of society. The standard of living of the slum people should be raised, so that they could afford to keep and appreciate a good picture. In the same way, Coomaraswamy, the art-critic developed into an art- . economist. Through his writings on craftsmen and crafts guilds (Seni Kammalar) he gives his Original views on economics. One has however to coin a new turn to characterise his the)ry of economics. It is not socialism of the Western pattern, but it is #ប្តូnism which is the veritable socialism of ancient
O1a.
With so many of his admirers from East and West I send my homage and pranam to the master from whom I learnt so many things.
DR. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY
(P. Kodanda Ram, Sir Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India).
A grateful nation can never forget its great men who have distinguished themselves by their life-long labours for her uplift and regeneration. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, who, though long in exile in a distant land, is still by his tongue as well as by

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 59
his pen serving his Motherland as earnestly and vigorously as in his youth, and spreading her spiritual message of Peace, Love and Unity to an affilicted word. He is one of such men worthy of our grateful remembrance and of our humble homages.
Dr. Coomaraswamy has never been a politician, but he has ever been one of the outstanding personalities in the cultural renaissance of India. He was one of those who realised early how much the moral and spiritual subjection of Indian civilisation had improverished the nation, and wholeheartedly supported the Indian national struggle, which to him was not merely a struggle for political freedom, but a deeper struggle for the spiritual and mental freedom from the domination of our alien ideal. His monu- - mental studies on Indian Art and his brilliant interpretation of its deeper aims and ideals and methods have contributed a great deal to a better appreciation of not only Indian art, but art in general. I remember my college days when I read with much interest and inspiration his 'Aims of Indian Art,' 'Indian Craftsman', "Nationalism and Idealism", "Art and Swadeshi, 'Essays in National Idealism' and the "Dance of Siva', and I placed him on a line with Bepin Chandra Pal, Tilak, St. Nihal Singh, Sri Aurobindo and Tagore.
According to Dr. Coomaraswamy, art is a way of life, a living necessity originating in work, not in play. There is no distinction for him between fine and useless art on the One hand and utilitarian craftsmanship on the other. To him, art in India. is a statement of social experience and serves the fourfold purpose of life, Dharma, Artha, Kanna and Moksha. It is an integral entering in all activities entertained by all in their daily environment and produced by professional craftsmen following traditions handed down in pupillary succession. Any changes made by them in form reflected only the necessities of current theology, and any changes in quality reflected the varying changes in the racial psychology, vitality and taste. There is no question

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there of the invention or the genius of the individual artist. Quite in contrast stood the modern art with its 'art for arts' sake', its "fine' or useless arts which are unrelated to life and which are according to him monstrous products of human vanity.
Dr. Coomaraswamy cannot, therefore, be a modernist in his art-criticisms. He is a traditionist laying constant emphasis on the place and influence of tradition in the fine arts of India and expounding always the traditional view of art as the imitation of eternal realities rather than the accidents of human character and society. He exposes all that is false in a merely phenomenal and individualistic view of art and of the depreciated standards of life. To him iconographic art has its place in the development of human expression. He applauds such typical art as exhibiting universal qualities without individual peculiarity or limitation. To him all art must be a contemplation of the eternal form in a transitory shape, and he condemns the struggle of the modern artist for expressing the typical in the individual.
Dr. Coomaraswamy is not only a great critic of art
and a world-famous authority on Indian art especially, but also an interpreter of Vedic literature and the metaphysics based on it, who challenges many of the accepted conclusions of western scholarship. An erudite scholar, he is now engaged in searching the scriptures and the works of great theologians of all ages, so far as they are accessible to him in modern languages, and in Greek, Latin or Sanskrit.
A severe critic of the modern Western civilisation, he exposes its soul killing mechanism and constantlv upholds the ancient Indian Culture and social organisation built on the bases of the eternal verities of the spirit. But it is well to remember that the learned Doctor is no obscurantist opposed to all progress achieved by Western science and technology. In his address to the Indian students of Massachussetts Institute of Technology in January 1944, he concluded by the following appeal:

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. CooMARASWAMY 61.
Make Indian culture your foundation and western technique (in so far as it makes for quality, and not merely for quantity) your means. Beg, borrow, buy or steal modern inventions, if you must in self-defence, but do not imitate modern ways of thinking or forget that however novel these ways may seem to us, they are already stale in their own environment. I warn you, to invert the well-known Indian stoic parable, that what you take for a rope may be really a snake, and that to weaken, however little, is to play with fire in a forest...... 29 That is his message to the youth of India, and it is hoped that it will hearken to the warning uttered in his wisdom.
I rejoice that this great Tamilian and great son of India and also a great citizen of the world is still hale hearty and vigorous in spite of advancing years and I pray to the Divine to bless him with long life in order that he may continue his useful work in the cause of humanity.
COOMARASWAMY AND GANDHIJI (By Bharatan Kumarappa, Bombay).
In many respects Coomaraswamy and Gandhiji present a striking contrast. Coomaraswamy yearns for revival of Indian art and culture, and Gandhiji is apparently too engrossed in political and economic problems to trouble about art. And yet such a contrast of the one with the other is misleading and superficial, for both have in essence much in common, the difference between them being merely due to a difference in emphasis. w
Gandhiji feels that the most urgent problems requiring to be solved are primarily political and economic. As long as the nation is under foreign rule, and the people are living on the verge of starvation, there is no hope of any cultural renascence. If

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62 HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY
the Indian nightingale is to pour out her soul in song as of yore, on the one hand she must not be caged but enjoy the freedom of unfettered flight, and on the other she must have sufficient nourishment to give her strength and the joy of life. Gandhiji also desires that the Indian soul should be revived to contribute its own distinctive share to the welfare and happiness of mankind. But he sees political freedom and economic reconstruction as the necessary first steps. Coomaraswamy, artist that he is, is sure that cultural revival is after all what really matters, for even if we have secured political freedom and economic prosperity, if in the process we have lost our soul we have lost all. He therefore pleads passionately and unceasingly that the one thing we should work for is to save our dying culture and give it a new lease of life in very sphere-education, industry, architecture, music, dance and literature.
1. Since, however, for Gandhiji as for Coomaraswamy, the end is one and the same, namely freeing the soul of India from bondage for unhampered selfexpression under modern conditions, they do not differ even in regard to means. For example, both of them place high value on education. Coomaraswamy abhors modern education imparted in India in Government and mission schools. He believes that being unrelated to Indian life and culture it is not only unsuited, but what is more is positively injurious, as it spells intellectual and cltural slavery, which is worse than political subjection. He therefore urges the need for national education, planned and put into operation by Indians steeped in Indian culture. -
Similarly, Gandhiji saw years ago when his political work was still in its infancy the need for national schools. Several were started under his inspiration in various parts of the country. In them there was no forced attempt at imparting Indian culture. The nationalist spirit which pervaded these schools sufficed to secure that both teachers and taught drew their inspiration from the moral and religious heritage of the past. Slokas from the Gita

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 63
were recited at prayers, vows of truth, non-violence, self-control, non-possession and such like were taken daily, work was done and studies performed as in a religious ashram, and life lived from day to day in a spirit of devotion and service.
Then again, Coomaraswamy as an artist saw the great educative and cultural value of hand-crafts. They not only trained the hards of the craftsman, but also developed his whole personality. They incalculated in him a sense of form, colour, rhythm, system, proportion, and encouraged resourcefulness, self-reliance, thoroughness, Self-discipline and joy in work. Gandhiji also saw the great educative value of handcrafts. Hence his scheme of Basic Education, or education which seeks through the medium of a craft to train all the powers of the child, his mind and heart as well as his hand.
2. Or take Swadeshi. Both Gandhiji and Coomaraswamy advocate it, not as a political weapon, but as a means of revival of village life and culture. So neither of them is interested in Swadeshi if it only means replacing British large-scale manufactures by Indian ones. Coomaraswamy does not want capitalism with all its attendant evils-unequal distribution of wealth, crass profit motive, commercialism, slum-life, and vice. Nor does he find life or beauty in machine products. When civilisation is factorycentred, it tends, he says, to be interested in things rather than in men, in producing, possessing and vulgarly displaying rather than in being, in the barbarity of quantity than in the refinement of quality. It mistakes progress and culture for increase in material comfort and self-indulgence. Life becomes too complicated and filled with trivialities to allow time for quiet and for things of the spirit. One has no inclination even to be friendly and hospitable to fellow human beings. Compare this with the civilisation which went with home crafts. They were organised into trade guilds or castes. Whatever evil accretions they may have acquired during the course of the centuries, they promoted a certain

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amount of social justice and equality within the caste. Those who worked at an occupation controlled and directed it. Accordingly there was economic democracy and self-government. There was also a sense of neighbourliness and responsibility for each other. The economic life of the people was stable and well organised. Even the ordinary articles of everyday. use were beautified. They were not many. There was no need for more. Life was simple. There was time for thought and reflection, for art and human companionship. Coomaraswamy would have such an economic and social order.
Also Gandhiji; he too dislikes what goes with industrialism-over-crowded cities, rural unemployment, a craze for multiplication of wants, artificiality and a dead mechanical uniformity. Even more, he is opposed to centralisation which is a necessary part of factory production, for it means regimentation and enslavement of the worker. It also means placing too much power over the lives of others in the hands of a few. As compared with this, the craftsman and Village industry producer are their own masters. They own their tools and manage their work according to their own bast judgment. Not so the factory hand. He has to carry out orders of his employer, whether his employer be a private individual or a Socialist State. Otherwise he and his family must be prepared to starve. Not owning the means of production, he is completely dependent on others for his livelihood. Thus he forfeits his liberty, the most precious possession of human beings. What does it profit him if he gains the whole world? He has lost his own soul.
Gandhiji and Coomaraswamy are therefore one in wishing to revive decentralised cottage production. Gandhiji advocates it not only because otherwise the people in the villages will be without employment, but also because it is such production that will develop their intelligence and their strength. Coomaraswamy advocates it because art and beauty must

HOMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 65
perish where creativeness and initiative are ruled out. So both regard the salvation of India to lie not in dotting the countryside with factories, but in reviving the organised life of village communities. Their idea of Swadeshi is therefore not just political or economic but essentially cultural and spiritual. It is nothing short of bringing back to life the self-dependent village groups, which looked after their own needs, and in the process developed their own latent powers, learnt to love man and nature, and in them found their unity, wisdom and joy. عی
3. Another fundamental similarity between Gandhiji and Coomaraswamy is their belief that what we must aim at in our plans for the development of the country, is not mere material prosperity but the true happiness of the people. Coomaraswamy is not impressed by the high standard of living of men and women in the West. They may possess more than our poverty-stricken masses. But they are not happier for all that. They surround themselves with the latest mechanical devices like the radio, the telephone, the gramophone and the electric cooker, and imagine they are civilised. They forget that civilisation is not a matter of possessions but of the spirit. Their finer sensibilities are coarsened, if not altogether deadened, by machine products, commercialism, imperialism and war. Coomaraswamy therefore does not covet for India the material prosperity of the West. He would rather that India set herself deliberately to achieve real happiness and spiritual progress of her people even at the cost of material wealth. V
Gandhiji likewise has little use for a high material standard of living. He also will not sacrifice human beings at the altar of multiplicity of goods. His one test of whether a particular economic order is good or bad is not whether under it we can produce plenty of wealth, but whether it will promote human development and spiritual progress. Even his work in the political and economic spheres is due to his conviction that human beings in our

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country are not only prevented from growth and development but also actually made degenerate, demoralised and de-Indianised by subjection to foreign rule, and through poverty, hunger and disease.
4. Both of these men are equally convinced that the freedom of India is desirable not merely, as we have just said, in the interests of the people of the country, but also of those of England and the rest of the world. To keep a large section of humanity in subjection for the purposes of exploitation is thoroughly demoralising for England. It breeds in her people pride and self-complacency which precede national stagnation, decline and fall. The rulers become selfish, callous and unjust, and deliberately practise deceit on the subject people to keep them quiet. This is not without influence in the home country as well, for the ruling class there also becomes hard-hearted and reactionary, and pursues a similar policy of exploitation, repression and deceit in relation to the workers. Further, England plunges in wars from time to time to prevent others from wanting to share in her loot. She thus brings about misery and bloodshed over the entire surface of the earth. Both Gandhiji and Coomaraswamy therefore desire to see the end of British rule in India, not out of narrow nationalism or hatred of the foreigner, but because of deep concern for England as well as for the rest of mankind. Their nationalism is not incompatible with, nay more it is the ripe fruit of true internationalism, or genuine desire to work for the happiness of all men. Even when they desire to revive Indian culture, it is not because they are eager to pit India against the rest of the world, but because they are convinced that India has great treasures of wisdom which cannot be rescued and made available to-day for the welfare of the world, if her sons are held in bondage and trained in an alien culture, not rooted in the soil and lacking in the elements which have made her own culture unique and distinctive. It is for each nation, they believe,

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 67
to contribute of her best to the general progress of mankind; and the uniqueness of Indian culture is its emphasis on the supreme claims of the Spirit over the material aims of life, or as Gandhiji would put it, on the claims of Truth and Non-violence as over against ease and comfort bought with the aid of falsehood and violence.
Strangely enough, these two men whose work has carried them into fields almost poles apart, Coomaraswamy to the cloistered world of research and art, and Gandhiji to the heat and dust of political struggle, are so close in spirit. Just because of this they supplement each other beautifully. They are the prophets of a new age in India, Coomaraswamy in his own quiet way through the medium of his books, and Gandhiji through the noise and din of political action and through establishment of various nation-wide Organisations for reconstructing every aspect of national life. Would that India listened to them, for theirs are words of wisdom, and their teachings are for the healing of her people.
DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY ( Dr. P. Basu, Udaipur, India).
Although I have never had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Coomaraswamy I have in a way been in touch with his great work. He is not only a high authority on Indian art but has with depth of insight interpreted it to the outside world, especially bringing out the philosophical or mythological bearings of Indian art covering several centuries.
There was a time towards the end of the nineteenth century when the study of Indian art was neglected and its value unrealised in the flood of Western ideas, especially the variant art of ancient Greece which has been the inspiration of Europe. Coomaraswamy was one of those few masters in the study of Indian art, who by his deep insight and comprehensive study of the subject, revealed to the West

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as also to his countrymen both the beauty and the technique of the Indian system. Most Indians who had forgotten their own ancient art and were being persuaded by the impact of the Western art that Indian art was not of any high merit realised with a shock the tremendous beauty, originality, and inner urge embodied in Indian art in its various aspects. To a large extent he is responsible for popularising their study which has led to the revival of modern Indian painting. This in its turn has led to the revival of ancient Indian culture, especially that of music and South Indian dance.
For the present high position of Indian art in the World nobody is more to be given credit than Ananda Coomaraswamy and the country cannot show him too great honour for the immense services rendered by him in the cause of our artistic and cultural revival.
AN HUMBLE TRIBUTE (B. L. Atreya, M.A., D.Litt., Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Benares Hindu University).
To form a correct estimate of the great work accomplished by Dr. Coomaraswamy in a variety of fields, in every one of which he has made a distinct and lasting contribution, one must be a linguist, a philosopher, an art-critic, a theologian, a historian, and above all a man of deep insight. I am none of them. So my appreciation of Dr. Coomaraswamy's stupendous accomplishments will be no more than, as the proverb in Hindi goes, showing the sun with a lamp. God is great, yet every worshipper has the right and courage to make his own humble offering. So do I.
It was about 30 years ago, when I passed out of a school and joined the Central Hindu College, Benares, with an ambition and zeal to prepare myself for the service of the motherland, a deep love for which had been instilled in my mind by the lectures and writings of the great Swamis Vivekananda and

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 69
Ramatirtha, that I came across the two inspiring works of Dr. Coomaraswamy, viz., Essays im National Idealism and Art and Stadeshi. These two works have left a lasting impression on my life, and I have ever since been an admirer of the great author of these two great works. Long before Mahatma Gandhi became a guiding star of India, these works sowed the seeds of a kind of Gandhian outlook in my impressionable mind when I was a student of the Intermediate class. They made me proud of Indian culture and Indian outlook. And to-day I am so devoted to the cause of the spread of Indian Philosophy and Culture that I am prepared to do any effort to see that the entire world knows and understands them.
I have no capacity to judge the value of Dr. Coomaraswamy's life work. What I feel is that he is among the best interpreters of the East to the West and that he has raised the head of Mother India in the eyes of the Western people and as such he deserves congratulations and felicitations from every son and daughter of the hoary mother.
A TRIBUTE
(Bisheshwarmath Rau, Mahamahopadhyaya, Supdt. Archaeological Department, Jodhpur, India).
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Keeper of Indian and Mohemimadan Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (U.S.A.) has done a great service to India and Indonesia by his scholarly writings on their fine arts. His history of Indian and Indonesian Art is a unique and mounmental work, and a means of great help to students. His essays published under the title, "Dance of Siva' are fine examples of his scholarly attainments. The East is proud of such a scholar, whose work have been appreciated by eastern and western scholars aiike.

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70 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
DR. A. K. COOMARASWAMY (K. R. Menon, Ph.D., Singapore).
Some men are appreciated for their personality; some are appreciated for their works and some are appreciated for both. In the present case I can only lay claim to the second one, because I have not come to know Dr. Coomaraswamy in person. The merit of a man, nay, the man himself is often reflected in his works and if this hypothesis is accepted, I feel, I am fully justified to write about a person whom I have only come to know through his writings.
A man seldom gets his legitimate due during his life time. Contemporaries usually appreciate the man more than his merit, but posterity regards merit more than the man. Thus the true greatness of a man comes into full view and significance only after he joins the exalted spirits in the unseen realm.
However, the scanty plaudits that a man receives during his life time for his noble work is at least some consolation that one's labours are not all lost in vain and that the world contains at least a few generous-minded people to express themselves in favour of a great man. To some such appreciation might appear to be a flattery; to some it may fall short of the greatness of the man about whom it is said or written. It may be either an underestimation or an overestimation; to keep the balance even may be a bit difficult.
His voice and his pen have done so much for Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy, that hardly any outside proof is necessary to illustrate the greatness of the Doctor. In choosing Art, one of the most complicated studies, he follows it religiously and his closest devotion to it has on many an occasion inspired him to put down in black and white certain facts that compare very favourably with the Gita and Bible. He sees life as an Art and everything associated with it as part and parcel of Art. He says, “All

HoMAGë “To ANANDA K. C () OMIARY. SWAMY 7.
art interprets life; it is like the Vedas, eternal, independent of the accidental conditions of those who see or hear.' In another place he states: “We ought not, then, to like a work of art merely because it is like something we like. It is unworthy to exploit a picture or a phrase merely as a substitute for a beautiful environment or a beloved friend. We ought not to demand to be pleased and flattered, for our true need is to be touched by love or fear. The meaning of art is far deeper than that of its immediate subject.' He has dealt with Art in its various ramifications and some of his outstanding works on this subject: Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon; Indian Drawings. History of Indian and Indonesian Art, are illuminating studies that throw out a spate of iridescence all around, with the result, Dr. Coomaraswamy has come to be looked upon as one of the erudite authorities on Art. I have often heard him being quoted by public speakers, scholars and professors. One day I was listening to a speech at Adyar, by the late Dr. Annie Besant, President of the Theosophical Society. Her subject was Art and she was copiously quoting Dr. Coomaraswamy. She was all praises for him. It was only then that I came to know for the first time of the learned author and thence arose my inquisitiveness to know more and more about the great Doctor.
Though born in Ceylon, he does not call himself a “Ceylonese' or a “Jaffnese.' He identifies himself with India, for to him, Ceylon and India are indivisable. Parochialism is not in his blood. He candidly avows in his work on Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon that “Ceylon from the standpoint of ethnology and culture, is an integral part of India.' He does not stop at this. "The more I know of Ceylon, the more inseparable from India does it appear, and indeed I regret sometimes that Ceylon and India are not at present under one administration. Ceylon is in the truest sense a part of India.... I was not bred on Indian soil, yet now when I go about my friends

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72 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
in India, I often find they quarrel with me because I am much too Indian in my ways of thinking for their anglicised tastes.”
With the domination of foreign rule and foreign influence both over India and Ceylon, the two countries became widely separated in their outlook. This was quite inevitable. In its wake came the division of Indians and Ceylonese and all attendant evils and squabbles. Here the two countries would do well to go through like their sacred books the writings of Dr. Coomaraswamy, who in massing ample evidence to show the unity of India and Ceylon makes an earnest plea for the complete understanding and co-operation of the people in either land. Says the Doctor; “Take for example Ceylor (whose people are now the most denationalised of any in India), can we think of India as being complete without Ceylon? Ceylon is unique as the home of Pali literature and southern Buddhism and in its possession of a continuous chronicle invaluable as a check upon the more uneertain data of Indian Chronology. Sinhalese Art, the Sinhalese religion and structure of Sinhalese society bring most vividly before us certain aspects of Hindu culture which it would be hard to find so perfectly reflected in any other part of Modern India. The noblest of Indian epics, the love story of Rama and Sita, unites Ceylon and India in the mind of every Indian nor is this more so in the South than in the North. In latter times the histories of northern India and Ceylon were linked on Vijaya's emigration, then by Asoka's missions contemporaneous with the earliest ripples of the wake of Hindu influences which passed beyond the Himalayas to impress its ideals on the Mongolian and later still a Sinhalese princess became a Rajput bride to earn the perpetual love of her adopted people by her fiery death, the death of which every Rajput woman would have preferred to dishonour.' •

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 73
In thus expounding the mutual indebtedness and solidarity of both countries from time immemorial, Dr. Coomaraswamy has done a distinct service both to India and Ceylon. Men like the Doctor are the invaluable assets of Nations,
. Dr. Coomaraswamy has carried the message of the East to the West and has tried to interpret it in the international language of Art "in which mind can speak to mind, heart to heart, where lips are dumb.' Thus the East and the West are both indebted to the noble work of the Doctor, who has created something that very few artists have succeeded as an eternal mounment for a correct understanding and appreciation of the East and the West, their unison in a New Civilization which is on the threshold.
AN APPRECATION (S. N. Chankun', G.D. (Art), Madras)
The unique research Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy has done in the field of Indian Art has brought to light innumerable and invaluable hidden treasures of the glorious Indian culture and Art of the past, which had been left unnoticed and uncared for till late.
After the advent of the British in India, we were very much influenced by their culture and traditions to such an extent that most of us, modern Indian artists, had to look to the west for inspiration, forgetting our own. It is not however altogether wrong to borrow whatever is good, from others and to use it in achieving our own ideals. Of course it had its Own repercusions on the Indian mind for a certain period. But for eminent scholars and art critics like Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy, who have dived deep into the ocean of Indian culture and Art excavating its origin, truth and philosophy, those artists would have by now completely been westernised in thought, word and act, and "the glory that was Hind' would not have been shown to the world. Thus Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy has brought back to us that glory,

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through his works profusely illustrated with sculptured panels, which serve to-day as one of the indispensible encyclopaedia for art lovers all over the world.
For the service Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy has done to elevate the prestige of Indian Art, ro tribute will be too high. -
AN APPRECIATION (Dr. A. Aiyappan, M.A. Ph.D. (Lond.) Government Museum, Madras)
I got an inkling of the patriotic spirit of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy when I read an article on "Anglicisation of the East' which he published about forty years ago in the CEYLON NATIONAL REVIEW. To most people, Dr. Coomaraswamy is primarily the man who has been interpreting Indian Art and Culture to the world with singular devotion and zeal, but the patriot and philosopher in him is perhaps not so well known. It has sometimes been given to students of the more exact sciences who have later turned their attention to cultural studies to make very significant contributions to the latter. Prof. B. Malinowski, for example, began as a sudent of physics and mathematics and later took to anthropology and rendered to it the most remarkable service that any one has rendered in the present century. Dr. Coomaraswamy, likewise, began as a geologist but art diverted him from mineralogy and got from him the best of service. The light that Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy has been throwing on obstruse themes in the Vedas is equalled, at present only by the contributions to the interpretation of the Vedas of Sri. Aurobindo; but his penetrating analysis of the symbolism in Hindu art is unparalleled. He has demonstrated to Westerners and Indians that the best Hindu sculptures and paintings are the meeting ground of Art with the deepest religious vision.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 75
AN HUMBLE TRIBUTE
(K. Madhava Menon, Sri Chitralayam, Trivandrum, India)
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has contributed perhaps the lion's share in the renaissance of Indian Art. He has travelled widely throughout India and Asian countries before leaving for America. The remarkable works he has done are to-day the most authoritative records in the field of art. None has sacrificed his life for the sake of art more than Dr. Coomaraswamy, except perhaps the nearest person whose name in the same field worth mentioning is that of Mr. Havell. But even Mr. Havell agrees that Dr. Coomarasamy to be the foremost pioneer in the field. For instance, the "History of Indian and Indonesian Art' is a very great achievement. The amount of strain in collecting the numerable records and appropriate explanations of each of the plates deserve high commends. Though a number of authoritative persons have co-operated in giving Dr. Coomaraswamy the necessary help by lending photographs, etc., yet the task must have been, nevertheless, a gigantic one. The East remains ever indebted to Dr. Coomaraswamy for his undying thirst to raise and bring into records of the past and current artistic activities by sumptuous illustrations and explanations. Though there are countless persons to-day producing ephemeral volumes on art, Dr. Coomaraswamy's works have been the nucleus for the birth of critics in India. Even to-day for authoritative records, writers turn to Dr. Coomaraswamy and his works. Therefore, I consider it a great privilege to pen these few words under the request of the author, and I wish him all success in his endeavour,

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DR. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY (V. B. Kulkarni, Colombo)
The editor of this symposium has assigned to me a task which he knows I am not qualified to undertake. I have not had the privilege of meeting Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in person, nor is my acquaintance with his vast and learned writings extensive. Nevertheless, I have consented to add a few words of my own to the tributes which are being paid to this great thinker and scholar of the East who has done so much to interpret the glorious heritage of our lands to the West.
. In this article I do not propose to dwell on Dr. Coomaraswamy's message to Western countries, for that is a task which should more appropriately devolve upon experts, but at this stage of India's evolution, after two centuries of subordinate apprenticeship to Britain, it would perhaps be relevant to remind ourselves how profoundly some of his earliest writings influenced educated Indians of those times. A little over two decades ago, Indian nationalism was still feeling its way. It is true it had already become alive and self-conscious, but beyond visualising their political objectives, Indian leaders, or at any rate a majority of them, had no clear conception of what they proposed to do when they succeeded in acquiring their national freedom. If their idealism connoted a mere change in the form of government, one wondered how the damage done to India's distinctive personality could ever be remedied. What was the advantage to the world if she, just one country among many, regained her lost freedom but failed to rediscover her soul?
These were not academic questions then, nor are they so even to-day. Most of us young men, who were swept off our feet by the new upsurge of nationalism, were somewhat bewildered by the absence of any clearly-defined goal of our national movement. It was not sufficient to preach to us that freedom was

DR. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY. (A dry brush sketch by Sudhir Khastagir).

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۶۰ م.، ص. به عه
DR. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY. A
,Swatantra, Madras— , , ...-. مہیہ
(CDrawing by H. W. Ram Gopal)
 

ም÷
HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY ;7
our birth-right and that by encouraging Swadeshi we would be doing the most proper and patriotic thing. I do not suggest that the movement lacked in its emotional appeal, but young men who could not think for themselves needed clear guidance on the ideal they were enjoined to strive for.
In those days boys of my age were confronted with a real conundrum. The cultural conquest of India, which Lord Macaulay's famous Minute on Indian education had enjoined the British Government to accomplish, was still going ahead. Had not the noble Lord, despite his profound misgivings about the success of his prescriptions, acclaimed such an event, if ever it came, as “the proudest day in English history'? We were taught to admire the greatness and glory of men and things that did not belong to us in the past or were to be ours in the future. The orcasion of the visits of Governors ard other high dignitaries of Government to our schools was still used to "demonstrate' our loyalty to the Raj. We dutifully stuck such symbols of the might and majestv of the Empire as tiny Union Jack flags on the lappels of our coats and in our own ludicrous way stood to attention as a detachment of British troops marched
past our schools.
While on the one hand our minds were thus being moulded according to the traditional concept of loyalty, on the other we began to feel new and strange stirrings in our hearts, -stirrings which became more and more audible as Indian nationalism attained a new orientation with the assumption of political leadership by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji's message appeared all too simple but it evaded our immature
comprehension.
I distinctly remember the day about two decades. ago, when I approached my father to show me a way out of the encircling gloom. He was a good and devoted student of philosophy and knew much about the ancient civilization of India. But how could he share his knowledge with his son who had been

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nurtured in Gulliver's Travels and Arabian Nights? How could the great literature of the East appeal to a boy who had been taught to despise its value? If, as Macaulay had said, oriental wisdom evoked the derisive laughter of English school-girls, it was improbable that the reactions of a "modern' Indian school-boy could be different.
After much thought, however, my father placed into my hands a book urging me to read it carefully. It was pubilished in 1909 and bore the title 'Essays In National Idealism,' with the name of whose author I became acquainted for the first time. My father warned me that the subject-matter was some* that diffic tilt, hut he assured me that if I persevered, Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, for that was the name of the author, would resolve most of my doubts. He prefaced these remarks with a brief biographical sketch of the author. This was how I was introduced to one of the early works of Dr. Coomaraswamy and have cherished this incident as an important event in my life.
'Essays in National Idealism' has not lost its freshness or the urgency of its appeal even with the lapse of nearly four decades. Even to-day it can inspire as well as instruct. This is because the author looks far beyond the immediate political and economic objectives. He does not, of course, minimise this aspect of the Indian freedom, but he warns us not to regard political emancipation as our only ultimate goal, for a free India 'subdued by Europe in her in most soul' is hardly worth the price of freedom. "I do not believe' he writes, "in any regeneration of the Indian people which cannot find expression in art; any reawakening worth the name MUST SO express itself. There can be no true realisation of Tolitical unity until Indian life is again inspired by the unity of national culture.' In other words, he wanted us to revive the great cultural glorv of our motherland by refashioning our national life in a manner best suited to the genius of our people.

HOMAGE TO ANAND A K. COOMARASWAMY 79
It is natural that this ardent exponent of Indiam renaissance should be firmly convinced of the unity of India. That unity is not merely geographical. It is the gift of our gods and our forebears and has survived repeated onslaughts upon it because it is founded on the hard core of the spiritual and cultural oneness of the people. Far from weakening, it has in modern times received further reinvigoration by the new political and economic consciousness among them. For this reason, despite the seemingly diversified character of the Indian people, with their irnumerable races, castes and creeds, the inner vitality of the country has remained unimpaired.
This unique spectacle of unity amidst diversity has won the admiration of many a foreign observer. Ramsay MacDonald writes thus: “India from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the Bay of Bengal to Bombay, is naturally the area of a single government. One has only to look at the map to see, how geography has fore-ordained an Indian Empire. Its vastness does not obscure its oneness its variety its unity... Political and religious tradition has also welded it into one Indian consciousness. Even those masses, who are not aware of this, offer up prayers which proclaim it and go on pilgrimages which assume it. This spiritual unity dates back from very early times in Indian culture. An historical atlas of India shows how again and again the natural unity of India influenced conquest and showed itself in empires. The realms pf Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka (305-232 B.C.) embraced practically the whole of the peninsula, and even after, amidst the swaying and falling of dynasties, this unity, was the dream of every victor and struggled into being and never lost its potency.' -
Sir Alfred Lyall was not a good friend of India, but even he was constrained to admit that "although the Indian people are broken up into diversities of race and language, they are as a whole not less distinctly marked off from the rest of Asia by certain

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80 ÈHOMAGE TÓ ANANDA K. COCÓMARASWAMY
material and moral characteristics than their country
is by the mountains and the sea.' It is important to
remember that the Indian concept of unity is not the
outcome of the impact of Western influence in later
years. The contribution of the West to India, how
ever valuable in itself, is mainly political and had
the country lacked those attributes of national unity
to which I have referred, no amount of administra
tive pressure from outside could have welded a vast and heterogeneous population into a single conscious
iness. This fact has been recognised by many out
side observers. Comparing India with Europe, the
distinguished authors of "A Short History of India'
state that while the pressure of political forces con
duced to the strengthening of the pre-existing unitv of India, operation of similar forces in Europe would
have produced different results.
I am indulging in these reflections, not with a view to participating in the prevailing political controversies in India, but in order to emphasise that. no matter in whatever form the final constitutional structure of that country might emerge, it would be a capital error of statesmanship if its basic cultural unity is sought to be impaired. Indian culture is not the exclusive possession of any one section of the Indian community; the Hindus, though in preponderating numbers cannot assert any prescriptive rights to it any more than Muslims can afford to turn their backs on the common heritage. “It would writes Dr. Coomaraswamy, "hardly be possible to think of an India in which no Great Moghal had ruled, no Taj been built, nor no Persian art and literature were wholly foreign.' The revivalist movement in India is, therefore, the concern of all, Hindus as well as Muslims. s
What then should be the endeavour of an Independent India? If the plea is for looking back, does it not amount to taking a retrogade step? Is it possible for India to revive her past and vet maintain her place in the modern world? These are

8.
legitimate questions, and their legitimacy would be greatly enhanced if the revivalist aim was to plunge Indians into illibera parochialism. Dr. Coomaraswamy rightly emphasises that we cannot ignore the tendencies of the modern age, but warns us not to become blind votaries of everything that comes from the West with the meretricious label of modernism.
It has always seemed to me that India's regeneration, whether it be in the realm of art, literature or music, cannot be dissociated from the imperative necessity of revolutionizing her educational system. The present system can only produce clerks and manikins and not artists, poets, scholars, and scientists. It is a badge of our intellectual slavery, and our national freedom will be incomplete to the extent to which we fail to recognise the immense possibilities of our educational reform. Those who have read Dr. Coomaraswamy's "Essays' will readily 'endorse his righteous indignation against Our denationalising schools and colleges.
It is fortunate that those upon whom will rest the burden of shaping India's future share the hopes and aspirations and the ideas and ideals of Dr. Coomaraswamy. Mahatma Gandhi's approach to the Indian problem may appear commonplace, but it does embody as much practical idealism as it is simple. He is a poor artist indeed who fails to perceive an inspiring spectacle in the Mahatma's aspiration to bring peace, happiness, light and contentment to millions of homes which are now plunged in the darkness of despair and desolation. -
It is significant that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's sense of realism does not obscure his realisation of the fact that it is our especial privilege to demonstrate to others that we can combine modern progress with our ancient culture 'which gave poise and equanimity to the countries of Asia.' With his “Discovery of India' he can be trusted to guide his countrymen in rediscovering their glorious heritage. On the day of such a consummation Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy will perhaps be the happiest man.

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82 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
THE GREAT CONTRIBUTOR TO THE
FLOWERING OF INDIAN NATIONALISM (S. R. - Ratnam, Seremban, Malaya)
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is not only one of the greatest authorities on the art of India and Indonesia, but he has also contributed no little to the flowering of Indian nationalism. I am afraid I am not competent enough to enlarge upon this point, except as a layman.
To me it seems that Ananda Coomaraswamy has broadened the bases of Indian nationalism by giving it a cultural content. He has not only made Indians aware, and therefore proud, of what is good and great in their culture, but also pointed out to them that the artistic impulses of the people were being stifiled by the presence of alien rule. Political liberation was for Ananda Coomaraswamy a necessary condition for the achievement of an even greater goal-the development of an art and culture that is genuinely Indian.
His indictment of imperialism has always been from the cultural angle, but it has been no less vigorous than an indictment of imperialism in political and economic terms. He has attacked any blind imposition, or acceptance of Western forms under the pretext of “civilizing backward peoples”.
He has shown that a virile art and culture can only flourish when the impulses for them originate from within the people spontaneously. Introduction of new forms from the outside and above has resulted in the destruction of the indigeneous culture and in the substitution of a parody of the new culture.
Underlying all his writings on art there is implied social criticism. For Ananda Coomaraswamy art is not an isolated function in society but is an integral part of the total activity of a people. For him "...agriculture and cookery, weaving and fishing are just as much arts as painting and music.’

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. CooMARASWAMY 83
'Art' he says, "invokes the whole of the active life and presupposes the contemplative.'
Thus disruption of the social or political life of a people affects also their artistic life.
This is not to say that Coomaraswamy is against Western civilization and the acceptance of some of its forms into other cultures. But what he contends is that such assimilation of alien cultures must be freely sought for by a free people in so far as they feel the need for it. But the ramming down of a "superior' civilization down the throats of a people is a different matter. --
In his seventy years Ananda Coomaraswamy has accomplished much. If to-day India stands on the threshold of evolving towards a destiny set by the peoples themselves Ananda Coomaraswamy can have the satisfaction of knowing that he has contributed no litle towards it.
AN APPRECIATION
(J. R. B. Jeejeebhoy J.P., Honorary Presidency Magistrate, Bombay).
Among the great Indians who have rendered abiding service to this country and to whom generations yet unborn will be beholden, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy takes a high rank. The biography of this versatile individual offers many elements for interesting and profitable study. . " ܕ
Born of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy who was the first Indian to be called to the Bar and was the author of several works which helped to make Indian literature known to Westerners, and Elizabeth Clay Beeby, a descendant of an old English family, Ananda's early childhood gave promise of those high attainments which so richly adorned his maturer years. With the glowing paternal example before

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84 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
him, with everything to stimulate inherent literary qualities and endowed with a mind capable of being largely cultivated, Ananda applied himself sedulously, in his earlier years, to perfect the super-structure, the foundations of which had been congenitally laid. Being thus descended from a family distinguished for its intellectual attainments, his reading naturally covered a wide range of subjects which resulted in his close association with several literary societies of Europe. These societies turned out to be perennial fountains for, the budding genius who drew from the waters of the world's literature in ample measure and attained a front rank in the literary world. Scientist, philosopher, theologian, linguist, art connoisseur, social reformer, author, lecturer, his was a life of versatile accomplishment and it can be truly said of him that he did not touch any department of knowledge which he did not adorn. He has written several books on scientific, philosophical, religious and social subjects and his works have earned commendation from famous writers. But his claim to our admiration rests upon higher grounds than mere intellectual attainments. He is a consummate patriot, he passionately loves India, its hoary mythology, its resplendant history, its ancient culture, its unique structure of city and country life which has come down almost intact through the corridor of time. Through his books and lectures he has made the westerners appreciate oriental art and philosophy. Moreover, as Editor of the Ceylon National Review, he has promoted national education and has been instrumental in initiating the movement for the teaching of the vernacular in all educational institutions in order to resuscitate ancient Indian culture.
Such is the brief estimate of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaarswamy "whose intellectual splendour', as described by my friend the Editor, one of his disciples, "has dazzled the world like the precious stones of his homeland'. Among the prominent men of the present generation, among the authors whose produc

SIR MUTU COOMARASWAMY
(From a sketch in "Christmas Debates', edited by Mr. Lorenz)

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HOMACE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 85
tions have had a marked and telling influence in Europe and America, it would be difficult to select a name which would embellish the Indian National Gallery more demonstratively than that of the subject. of this sketch.
KALAYOG ANANDA COOMARASWAMY AND HIS CONNECTIONS WITH CEYLON.
(S. Sаттидатathan, Colombo).
There are enough contributions in the form of ܀ books and literature in scientific and art journals scattered to gauge the work of Kalayogi Ananda Coomaraswamy. He comes in the line of the great Orientalists like Sir William Jones. As Sir William made Sanskrit known to the West so did Ananda Coomaraswamy throughout his life time succeed in interpreting to the West, the elements, structure and intensely spiritual foundation of art in India and adjacent countries. He is to-day a great world figure, the doyen of Orientalists, a man of inexhaustible energy and a man of rare learning.
He hails from a singularly gifted family of Tamils of Manipay, a village in Jaffna in the north of Ceylon. For several generations this family has a veritable record in the furtherance of administration, culture and scholarship in Ceylon. A part of the family tree, in the form of a diagram attached to this ಟ್ಗt should help to fill up the skeleton into a whole.
Ananda Coomaraswamy's grandfather, A. Coomaraswamy Mudaliyar of the Governor's Gate was the first Tamil representative of the Legislative Council. His father Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy was the first Ceylon Knight.
In an obituary notice dated 1st June, 1897, of Mrs. Visalakshmi Coomaraswamy, the widow of A. Coomaraswamy and grandmother of Ananda

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86 HOMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY
Coomaraswamy a comprehensive account of the family's attainments is given. For this information I am indebted to Mr. Sri Kanta Ponnambalam of Colombo. It is recorded, "The distinguished lady is the mother of the late Sir Coomaraswamy, M.L.C. and grandmother of Hon. P. Coomaraswamy, M.L.C., Mr. P. Ramanathan, C.M.G., Solicitor General and M.L.C. and of P. Arunachalam, Registrar-Generall.” It is said these grand parents of Ananda Coomaraswamy provided the fortune of the Hindu community of the Metropolis of Colombo and to them almost every important Hindu family owes its rise. The leading members, male and female of these families were brought up by them, married and started in life. They wielded their influence and benefaction from an old Dutch mansion in AMAITHOTTAM, UPPUKULAM at Mutwal, Colombo. The house is still standing next to the old St. Thomas' College, facing the sea, and is now owned by Messrs. Walker Sons & Co., Ltd., Engineers.
When in 1814 Ceylon was ringing with troubles in Kandy it was A. Coomaraswamy (grandfather of Ananda Coomaraswamy) who accompanied Major Doyley and Ehelepola in search of the last King Sri Wickrama Raja Singha of Ceylon. He was in constant attendance between Governor Brownrigg and the fallen King. Lieutenant-Colonel H. Hardy, Deputy Master General on that occasion wrote “A. Coomaraswamy Mudaliyar Chief Malabar. Interpreter to Government has served as Malabar Interpreter and Translator to the Commander of the forces during the expedition into the Kandyan Provinces in 1815 and which terminated in the subjugation of that country and the capture of the King. Mr. Coomaraswamy's services were of the most useful and active description in the seizure of, and communication with the Malabar State Prisoner'.
A. Coomaraswamy Mudaliyar actively worked with Mr. Alexander Johnston in the abolition of slavery in Ceylon.

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HoMAGE to ANANDA. K. CooMARASWAMY 87
At the close of the administration of General Brownrigg, Coomaraswamy Mudaliyar received a gold medal and chain with the inscription "This medal has been presented by H. E. Sir Robert Brownrigg, Governor of Ceylon, to Arumugam Pillai Coomaraswamy Mudaliyar of Governor's Gate and Chief Interpreter to Government, in proof of His Excellency's satisfaction with his public services during the period of his Government ending A.D. 1819'.
Similarly Governor Barnes presented him with "a beautiful gold-headed Malacca cane bearing the English Arms as an Insignia' on the occasion of Mudaliyar Coomaraswamy being elected as the head of the non-Christian Tamils in the Metropolis.
He passed away in 1836. and Governor Horton addressed the Legislative Council, "We have sustained a severe loss......... the conduct and capacity of that lamented gentleman are too well known and appreciated by those whom I now address'.
For nearly two years after his death his place was not filled. “Gentility combined with English education, was so rare in those days'. And Simon Casie Chetty Mudaliyar of Kalpitiya succeeded him.
At this time Arumugam Pillai Coomaraswamy’s only son Mutu Coomaraswamy was an infant in arms. When Mr. Mutu Coomaraswamy had barely attained his majority he succeeded as an M.L.C. and occupied that seat till his death in May, 1879 at the early age of 44. His public service is a matter of comparatively recent history. It is said “By his ability learning, independence and high character, he added lustre to the assembly, and his services in Council were rendered fruitful by his friendship with men of high official position in England'.
As a scholar he was equally gifted. He translated Harischandra and dedicated with the permission of Her Majesty the Queen to her and she was pleased to express her appreciation of it. His translations

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88 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
of the Pali Datha Vana and Sutu Nepata anticipated the work of the Pali Society.
In 1875 he married an English lady and on returning to Ceylon exchanged his Mutwa residence to the new fashionable quarter, to "Rheinland' in Kollupitiya, where Ananda Coomaraswamy was born in August 1877. Here it is well to record the changes taking place in Colombo of that period. There was a general exodus of residents from Mutwal, Chekku Street and Kotahena area to the newly opened out Cinnamon Gardens. The grandmother of Ananda Coomaraswamy too moved to Rajagriha, to the bungalow now occupied by Mr. Donald Obeyesekere, where she died in 1897, and was cremated at Kotahena and not at Kanatte as is the rule to-day. The Kotahena cremation ground is still in use and is wholly used by Hindus, though it is completely surrounded by domestic buildings with only a twentyfoot pathway, in between houses, leading to the grounds.
On account of Lady Coomaraswamy's health, when Ananda Coomaraswamy was hardly eight months old, they left for England. Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy was to follow them but unfortunately he died on the morning of 4th May, 1879. From there onwards Ananda Coomaraswamy was in the care of his nother. It so happened he spent very little time in Ceylon until when he was the Director of the Minerological Survey of Ceylon from 1903 to 1906. Soon after he left Ceylon for India and then to Engand and finally to the United States. It is during his stay in India and Ceylon that he collected at firsthand the material which he has used in his works on arts and crafts and allied subjects. But before he left the East for good he had already established himself as an oriental scholar and linguist.
As a student of Indian culture Ananda Coomara
Swamy must be considered a lone pioneer who has spent well nigh fifty years of his life. It is no easy matter to undertake such a task when we know, no

House at Mutuwal now owned by Messrs. Walker Sons Ltd. where Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy was born.
-Studio Sun, Colombo.
"Rheinland' the house where Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy was born is now demolished-now it is “Rheinland Terrace' a built up area of modern houses.

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篷 ※x悦 YOMA
Approach to Kotahana Crematorium where Hindus were ere. mated during the time of Sir Mutu Colomaraswamy. It is
now built up area with just enough land left for cremation. --Studio Sun, Colombo.
Bungalow now occupied by Mr. Donald Obeysekera where The
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's grandmother died. house has seen extensive additions and renovations by Mr.
Obeysekera. It is at Rajagiriya and stands on over 50 acres -Studio Sun, Colombo.
of land.
 
 

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. CooMARASWAMY S9
land, no civilisation has continued without a break, absorbing variety and forms of culture without ever fundamentally changing the underlying unity as India. The duration of Indian civilisation has been so long that no other country can bear comparison. Whether it be philosophy, religion, art or arts and crafts of India Ananda Coomaraswamy has excelled himself as no other scholar living or dead. To-day he is a world figure. We are now witnesses of the monuments he has raised for himself in oriental scholarship and are rightly proud.
Now, finally I must thank Mrs. Tayalnayaghe Tambyah, Mr. Ramanathan Rajendra and the Honourable Mr. Arunachalam Mahadeva for reminicences of Ananda Coomaraswamy's parents and grandparents which I collected casually during my conversations with them off and on. I am also indebted to Mrs. Meenalochani Sri Kanta - Poonambalam for a family tree which formed the basis of my research.
NATIONALIST THINKER AND
PHILOSOPHER (R. W. Poduval, Director of Archaeology, Travancore State).
My first acquaintance with Dr. Coomaraswamy's works began about 30 years ago when I was a student of the College classes. I happened to read then for the first time his Essays in National Idealism published by Mr. G. A. Natesan. My appreciation of Indian art and my admiration for Dr. Coomaraswamy began to grow subsequently. Later, I have had the pleasure of reading his article in Encyclopedia Britanica on Indian art and archaeology and his History of Indian and Indonesian Art. The Dance of Siva and a handbook of Indian art-two of his pioneer works in the interpretation and appreciation of Indian art have also helped me to create the

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9s) HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
necessary background of Indian aesthetic criticism. In all his works Dr. Coomaraswamy has displayed with perfected fullness and loving elaboration his ideal of aesthetic life, his cult of beauty as opposed to aestheticism and his theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of Indian art as an ideal of its own. Indian art owes much to Dr. Coomaraswamy for his patriotic interpretation of its symbolism and abstraction. The late Havell and Vincent Smith have written about the history of Indian art but their works are not philosophical as those of Dr. Coomaraswamy whose criticism is the outcome of his deep study and scholarship and above all his national patriotism. Dr. Coomaraswamy has interpreted Indian art as a means to higher and more spiritual life with the lofty idealism of a nationalist thinker and philosopher.
He has gone into Indian art as a great mystic philosopher. His attempt has always been to discern the inner beauty of Indian art and to interpret the other worldliness and philosophy of what it symbolises. His art criticism is therefore essentially a creative thing. Dr. Coomaraswamy possesses a secret convention, an inner enlightenment with which he sees into the life of ancient art. There is always in his writings an interfusion of metaphysica thought with apprehension of beauty which is essentially of a religious and philosophical kind. The inner spirit of Indian art has constantly an indefinable and constant attraction to him. Dr. Coomaraswamy has been in charge of the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston for a number of years and there is no doubt that such of the popularity and usefulness of that institution have been built by him. His life is one of a silent and dedicated philosopher appreciating and interpreting the inner spirit and symbolism of art. There is a spell that attaches itself to everything about him, as he appeals to the heart and intellect of all those deeply interested in Indian philosophy, religion and art.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 91
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST
(Richard B. Gregg, Boston).
Since there is nothing new under the sun, what I have to say is not original with me. Wherever the conjunction of these ideas came from I do not know, but they have become assimilated to my own thinking and therefore, at least for me, they have a feeling of validity and usefulness. They blossomed in my mind under the stimulus of Ananda Coomaraswamy's ideas and friendship and the reading he persuaded me to do. They therefore seem fitting to offer for this book in his honour.
The myths of all peoples are statements of ultimate realities or spiritual truths and relationships. They are in story form because, as is shown by dreams, the story form is the most fundamental mode of man's thinking. Myths are probably as old as language itself. A story is the mode of communication which carries the richest and most subtle meanings, which is most attractive to man at all stages of his growth, which is best and longest remembered. The question of the historical validity or accuracy of such a story is not essential to its fundamental meaning and value, for spiritual truth transcends time.
Because all spiritual principles have many levels of meaning, there may be many valid interpretations of every myth. The interpretation of the virgin birth of Christ which I am proposing is, therefore, only one of several possibilities. But it gives a richness of implication which is useful. ܫܝ -
Those of an ultra-scientific mind who laugh at myths which involve miracles are only revealing their scientific immaturity. Modern physical Science has clearly shown that all the so-called "laws of nature' - are only statements of probability. On a microscopic scale the probability is great, but nevertheless it is only a probability. A probability is not a necessity or

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92 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
an utterly sure thing. Within every possibility there is room for an exception, something unexpected. We cannot rule out the possibility of miracles. Besides all that, science does not apply to the realms of basic assumptions nor to the realm of values, both of which are real and in both of which dwell our myths. For these reasons scientific criticisms are quite irrelevant to myths. When dealing with myths we look for their meaning. V
Instances of virgin birth of an avatar or hero are not confined to Christianity. The ancient Greek god Dionysos was born of a virgin, as was also the Phrygian god, Attis. There are probably other. instances. Some of the meanings in the idea of virgin birth have therefore been recognized not only by Christians but also by other peoples who have pondered over ultimate realities.
One meaning seems to be that the incarnation of God, being a miracle, is unusual and surprising and a matter of wonder, something that reveals God's power and which could not happen except by God's power and grace.
Secondly, the virgin birth may well be a way of emphasizing the divine paternity, the fact that here is undoubtedly an avatar, a divine incarnation.
In the West, a frequent interpretation of the virginity of Mary, the mother of Christ, is that of physical purity. The implication is apparently that sexual intercourse is considered evil or dirty, and therefore since God became incarnate and had a human body, that body must have been absolutely pure and hence could not be the offspring of a mother who had previously taken part in an impure act. I think such an idea is a mistake. Sex had to be an immensely powerful urge if the human species was to survive through the ages, the disaster of war, famine, disease, earthquakes and floods. It is true that such power is frequently distorted and used for evil. The possibility or even probability that great power may be misused may well make us cautious, so we should remember

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 93
that “power belongeth unto God' and sanctify its use, but we should not try to blame God by calling His provision evil.
In so far as virginity may imply purity, it would seem to me in this connection to refer only to purity of heart and mind in the sense of non-attachment and freedom from admixture of anything other than oneself. Is there any other valid meaning to the idea of virgin birth of an incarnate God?
In many great religious traditions a distinction is made between soul and spirit. Soul is the subtle, intangible essence and pattern of the body; while spirit is the still subtler essence or soul of the soul. Soul has form and is still conditioned by space and time; spirit is unconditioned, not individual, eternal and without location. It "bloweth where it listeth' and is metaphysically the universal ground of all manifestation, life and consciousness. In relation to soul, the spirit is instigator and guide; and in turn in relation to the body the soul is instigator and guide. The soul is receptive and passive in relation to spirit; the body is receptive and passive in relation to soul.
As is well known, these concepts are shown in the various inflected languages. In language, gender indicates function. The words for spirit are usually of the masculine gender, as atman in Sanskrit, rinuach in Hebrew, momenuma in Greek, spiritus and affiliatus in Latin. On the other hand, the words for soul are usually feminine in gender, as for instance, mepohesh in Hebrew, psuche in Greek, and anima in Latin. In Latin there is also the masculine form animus, but I do not know whether in Latin those two gender forms are used to correspond to the soul of a man or woman, or to indicate that the soul is being related in one case to the spirit, in which caset it would be in the feminine form, or in relation to the } body, in which case it would be in the masculine form.f4

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94. HOMAGE TO ANANOA. K. COOMA.RASWAMY
This concept of the soul being feminine in relation to the spirit is mentioned by a considerable number of Christian mystics, among whom Eckhart is perhaps notable. He always referred to the soul as 'she'. In his Sermon VIII he states that God is eternally born in those souls who are fit to receive Him. Also in that sermon Eckhart discusses the necessity for certain conditions of non-attachment in the soul before such an event can happen.
It occurs to me that we can go further and take the whole story of the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary as being symbolic of the conditions under which the soul itself may be "born again of the spirit' as Christ himself later taught, or to put it the other way around, the conditions under which the spirit may be born or become manifest in the soul. -
In working out the details of such an interpretation, what would be the meaning of the virginity of Mary? We find a suggestion in the fact that in the original Greek of the story the word for virgin had a double meaning, one physiological and the other legal. In the legal sense it meant unbound by final legal ties of matrimony. So we may say that here the word virgin may have the idea of freedom from attachment to particular things of the senses, the idea of detachment and inner poise. t
Another detail of the story is Mary's humility, not only in reference to her own relative importance but also in reference to human ideas and assumptions about the laws of nature and limitations upon God's power. She accepted the miracle that was to be done within her body, in complete and instant submission to God's message. . . . ܀
It is also interesting to note in this connection that after the birth of Christ and one episode of his childhood, his mother drops out of the story almost entirely.
Putting together all these considerations, if we may say that the story of the birth of Christ is a way of saying that God may be born in any human

HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. CoOMARASWAMY. 95
Soul that makes itself fit for the reception or manifestation of the divine spirit, then the conditions set forth in the story of His conception would indicate the conditions which a soul must fulfil in order that God may become manifest there. The soul must be receptive, pure, full of faith in God, unattached to the world of the senses, utterly humble both morally and intellectually, willing to be used by God, willing to believe that it can know God even while in the flesh. And the soul must be willing to abandon itself, be ready to disappear and let God's manifestation take over the entire activity and entire meaning.
This interpretation of the meaning of the story of Christ's birth from a virgin mother is consistent with His subsequent teaching: the emphasis on complete humility, that God's will and power are supreme, that the soul must abandon its selfhood completely. All that is also consistent with and confirmed by the teachings of other religions. The myth of the virgin birth means belief in the everlasting, really creative power of God in the soul.
Some Reminescences and an Appreciation
(Dr. M. Hafiz, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., Allahabad University), Allahabad).
My recollection of Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy dates back to the year 1907 when I was a student at Benares and he had come over to the Theosophical Society. His tail and slim, and graceful figure, his intellectual and refined features and his Indian attire upon a foreign looking body attracted the attenion of all who saw him. When it became known to us youngmen that he was a scientist by training and artist and philosopher by nature we were all the more impressed by the many-sided culture which we expected to find in him. The fact that he lived in England and had foreign blood in his veins became more and more emphasized as a contrast to his deep understanding and burning love of Indian culture and civilization

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96 HoMAGE TO ANANDA K. COOMAFRASWAMY
and took our young imagination as if by storm. A kind of hero worship grew up in the mind of the younger generation who came into touch with him; and those of us who had read his articles published in the Central Hindu College Magazine, the Indiam Review and the Modern Review in the opening years of this century regarded him as an outstanding force of the time. -
The early years of the century were the years of great enthusiasm. The Partition of Bengal and the surge of patriotic feeling that came with it, the Swadeshi movement and the spirit of sacrifice that was liberated in support of it, the herculean effort which men like Gokhale and Lajpat Rai made for the unification of the politics of the Hindus and the Muslims of the country, all these and everything else that occupied the minds of men were germinally persent in Dr. Coomaraswamy’s writings of those early years. Yet, inspite of the great surge of national feeling in the country, the general attitude of mind to things Indian was marked by ignorance and contempt in the so-called English educated people.
Even the Indian National Congress in those early years lacked the national self-consciousness which Dr. Coomaraswamy tried to awaken. As I look upon the resolutions of the Indian National Congress adopted in those early years and remember the great speeches of the reformers of the time, I feel that the best that was, attempted or desired by us was to make India in every way like England. Hardly any one mentioned the need of revitalizing the Indian ideal or ಟ್ಗating the progress of things in terms of that ideal.
Dr. Coomaraswamy's articles quickened a sense of pride and dignity in the minds of young Indians for the past of their own civilization by giving them an understanding of the principles underlying their culture and civilization. “What shall it profit India to gain the whole world if she lost her own soul in her effort to gain it,' insisted Dr. Coomaraswamy in a

HOMAGE TO ANANDA - K. COOMARASWAMY 97
variety of ways. His articles were read and re-read, discussed and pondered upon by the cleverest of the younger generation and became a kind of tonic for their future effort. Everywhere the most ardent admirers of Dr. Coomaraswamy were young men to whom his words made a special appeal.
I remember how in every town and city which he visited for collecting pictures for the great exhibition at Allahabad in 1910, he made an impression on young minds and left crowds of them to ruminate on his central ideas. The great work that he did to educate public taste for Indian art exhibited at Allahabad stands out as a landmark in the evolution of modern India. Judging from his contribution towards the awakening of Indian consciousness to things one cannot but regard him as one of the great builders of modern India.
He did not figure, in the struggle for political freedom in any of its several phases. But his writings supplied the energy and the motive for the deeper undercurrent that worked imperceptibly behind the outward symptoms. He was a critic of art and toured the country as a collector of pictures. But his definition of and his interpretation of pictures became many-sided appreciation of the national forces that had gone to the making of the national arts. Whether he wrote on Swadeshi or on Industry, on Indian jewelery or Indian statuary and buildings, he always seemed to harp back on the central realization behind Indian culture and philosophy. When he wrote about education in India he displayed the same largeness of view and deep understanding of the Indian point of view which was neglected and ridiculed by the foreign educator of Indian youths. In short whatever was the subject to which he applied his catholic and liberal mind, he always brought his readers to consider all things as rooted in the central reality of the Indian conception. Even now to his old admirers the publication of a book by

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him is an outstanding event. And although he lives so far away in America we think of him as perpetually present behind the shaping energy of the times as one of its great main-spring. It is difficult to review his contribution to the making of modern India without taking away the essential dignity from the future Indian Ideal. For, to quote his own words, "nations are built, not by politicians but by artists and philosophers.'
It was he who insisted upon the fact that We want freedom for our country not merely for bread but for the sake of being what we have in ourselves to become. It is impossible not to be thrilled by the appeal Dr. Coomaraswamy made to the deeper selfrespect of Indians whose latter day history was devoid of all significances and substance and who from that cause were unable to make any contribution to the sum total of human culture and the civilization of mankind.
We have not said anything of Dr. Coomaraswamy's contribution to making India understood by Europe and America. But even here he is a great worker. His lectures and books addressed to the Western people present India in the fairest possible terms. As to the Indians so to the Englishmen, he talks of India as an essential link in the chain of human civilization and presents her case for freedom upon the level not of human conquest and slavery, but upon the level of the unity of mankind. His appeal is always couched in persuasive terms as would be that of a brotherly man talking to brotherly: men. This is so because he is a lover of the best that England stands for and equally of that which free India can still evolve out of her many sided culture for the solution of the many problems that face the modern world.
He used to say to us that the future of India could not be postponed for ever. Swaraj or SelfGovernment was the ideal of young India, and it depended upon the wisdom and sympathy of English

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rulers in India to say whether the growth of this ideal of nationality throughout the country should be attended by violent disturbance or whether it should be allowed to proceed peacefully towards the inevitable goal. Episodes such as Hindu-Muslim riots, and the deportation of Indian agitators in those days were but the flashes that announced the conflict. They were not the struggle itself. Nor did they explain its significance. What then, according to him, was the deeper meaning of the struggle? It was a part of a wider one, the conflict between the ideals of imperialism and the ideals of nationalism. Between these two ideals we had then to choose; and with the choice of England in particular we were then concerned. Upon that choice depended the salvation of much that was absolutely essential to the future greatness of civilization. For imperialism involved the subordination of many nationalities to One: a subordination not merely political but also economic and cultural. He thought that nationalism was inseparable from the idea of internationalism, recognizing the rights and worth of other nations to be even as One's own. For Indians he held that the ideal was that of nationalism and internationalism. He desired us, Indians to feel that loyalty for us consisted in loyalty to the idea of an Indian nation, politically, economically and mentally free; in other words he believed that India was for the Indians, not because we believed that every nation has its own part to play in the long tale of human progress, but that nations which were not free to develop their own individuality and their own character were also unable to make their contribution to the sum of human culture which the world has a right to expect of them. He was definitely of opinion that 'so long as England's ideals were set upon an achievement of domination over others she could neither be free nor truly great.' These precious words of his uttered forty years ago have come out to be true and his aspirations and prayers seem to have been fulfilled.

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Much has been said and written by political thinkers on the value and importance of individuals and nations. Dr. Coomaraswamy's view is no less valuable than that of some of the eminent thinkers of the West. He believes that "the world has progressed from the ideal of individual slavery to that of freedom; it has become an instinct to believe that men are equal at least to this degree, that every man must be regarded as an end in himself. But progress is only now being made from the idea of national slavery (empire) to that of national freedom (internationalism). We have to learn that nations no less than men are ends themselves; we have yet to realise that a nation can no more ultimately justify the ownership of other nations, than a man can justify the ownership of other men.'
Let us not forget, he further adds, that in setting this ideal of nationalism before us, we are not merely striving for a right, but accepting a duty that is binding on us, that of self-realization to the utmost for the sake of others.
Deeply learned as he is in the ancient lore of India and saturated as he is with the true spirit of Indian culture he lets no opportunity pass when he does not emphasize the need and importance of disseminating some of the vital ideals of ancient India that holds good for all times, and which the present erring and suffering world needs to no small extent. He sincerely feels that India has to play a part among the comity of nations and has to contribute something definite to the spiritual and cultural evolution of mankind. There is something in India in the form of spiritual values which is not found elsewhere in the world and it is that which India has to share with other nations in order to revitalise their outlook on life and reorientate their civilization. Every country like every individual has its own genius and special characteristics which have to be preserved in the interest of commonweal and human welfare. He is one of those few thinkers and advocates of

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India's cause who always take a deeper view of life and know how to discriminate between the real and the unreal, between vital and unessential. Unhesitatingly and with full sense of confidence and responsibility, he enjoins his countrymen (as he identifies himself with India and her aspirations) that India's contribution to the civilization of the world does not and can never justify her children in believing that her work is done. There is work yet for her to do which if not done by her, will remain for ever undone. He enjoins us not to shirk our part in the reorganisation of life which is needed to make life tolerable under changed conditions. He draws our attention to the fact that "it is for us to show that great and lovely cities can be built again without the pollution of the air by smoke or the poisoning of the rivers by chemicals; it is for us to show that man can be the master not the slave of the mechanism he himself has created.'
He desires us to bear in mind that 'wisdom is greater than knowledge.' We should never forget that "art is something more than manual dexterity, or the mere imitation of natural forms.' He calls upon us "to investigate the physical and supersensual faculties anew, in the light of the discoveries of physical science and to show that science and faith may be reconciled on a higher plane than any reached as yet.' It is for us, he emphasized 'to spiritualize the religious conception of the West, and to show that the true meaning of religious toleration is not the refraining from persecution, but the real belief that different religions need not be mutually exclusive, the conviction that they are all equal roads suited to the varying capacities of those that tread them and leading to one end.” k
How few patriots are there in our sacred land, who have caught the true spirit of India's past glory and have faith in her immense possibilities in future. Dr. Coomaraswamy is one of the very few of them who devoutly believe that the soul of India with its

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deeper and fuller significance, should be jealously guarded and carefully preserved. Every civilized nation is really proud of its national heritage and it is never willing to destroy it. The true ideal of swadharma doing one's own duty, however irksome and unpleasant it may be, must be pursued unflinchingly. He is one of those few persons who sounded a timely note of warning more than forty years ago that "the people of India should cease to imitate their rulers.' Indian music, Indian art, Indian architecture, Indian philosophy, in short everything that is truly Indian must be preserved. He has rightly awakened us to our national consciousness and told us that "the best in us is still sleeping.'
As a writer of great eminence and a thinker of no mean order, he is too well known in the world of to-day to need any further mention. His contributions to the Sinhalese and the Indian art shall ever live. His collections of Kangra, Moghul, and Rajput paintings are safely deposited and preserved in the Boston Museum of which he is the worthy Curator. Although he is far away from us in a distant land, I have no doubt, that his heart is with us and he is watching our rising destiny closely from his abode of peace.
A GREAT NAME
(P. Samba moorthy, B.A., B.L. Head of the Department of Indian Music and President of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Madras).
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is a great name in the realm of art. He is the cultural ambassador from the Orient. If the West has to-day awakened to the beauties of Indian art, music and dancing, it is principally due to his valuable writings and lectures. India is proud of his magnificent contribution to the literature of Indian Art. m

Dr. and MIrs. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

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ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY -
(Francis Merchamt, Biosophical Institute, Cleveland, U.S.A.)
Personally, I believe that Dr. Coomaraswamy has made a real contribution to spiritual advancement by emphasizing our western lack of spiritual idealism. He has shown us that the Promethean fire burns brightly in the sacred texts of the East. His efforts to promote better understanding between East and West will long be remembered.
ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY
(Laurence Schemeckebier, The Cleveland School of Art, Ohio, U.S.A.)
I have listened to Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy speak on various problems on the history of art many times and read countless of his books and articles and publications. I have always admired his scholarly integrity and his philosophical point of view and consider him one of the great scholars in America to-day.
THE HINDU PHILOSOPHER
(Swami Satyananda Bharathi, Singapore).
It is rather hard to write something in the way of an appreciation of a many-sided genius like Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. He is a philosopher, scientist, theologian, linguist, art-connoisseur, social reformer, author, educationalist, lecturer and above all an illustrious son of India. He has rendered in diverse ways a great cultural service to India in particular and the world in general by the unique method in which he has interpreted India's glorious heritage, through his speeches and writings to the

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world at large. In unmistakable terms he has shown that every branch of Indian culture has the one keynote i.e. the securing of the four “values of life' viz. Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.
In the following few lines I endeavour to pay my humble tribute to the learned Doctor viewing him as a true Hindu philosopher and teacher.
The Sanskrit term for philosophy is “Darsana', meaning "Sight' (to see)--implying "that which enables us to see Truth or God'. The Doctor is undoubtedly a seer of Truth like the Hindu rishis of old. This aspect of his greatness is revealed to us through one of his best known works entitled “Hinduism and Buddhism' published by the Philosophical Library, New York. This remarkable work of his not only bears testimony to the deep scholasticism of the Doctor, but also pre-eminently to his philosophic vision which is evidently original.
He does not attempt to "modernise' the doctrines of Hinduism he presents, as some others have done; but continuously goes to the primary and orthodox sources, thus keeping up the tradition of a characteristically Indian philosopher.
He has shown us by his deep erudite comparative study of Eastern and Western systems of religiophilosophic thought that the fundamentals of the Sanatana Dharma of the Hindus, the Akaliko Dhammo of the Buddhists, the Philosophia-Perennis. of the West and the doctrines of Plato as well as Christian theology have a common inheritance and that they all point to the same truth, thus reiterating the Vedic maxim "Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti”.
He sees the different "Darsanas' systems of philosophy as "so many points of view' regarding the one Ultimate Truth thereby revealing his synthetic understanding and at the same time reaffirming the teaching of the Bagavad-Gita:

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 105
“Ye yaitä mäm prapadhyante T'anstathaiava, bhajàiimnyahamManna artnant-vartante Mamush yäh, Pärtha sarvashah” “I’m whatever avay men nuvorship me, In the same way do I fulfil their desires, It is my path, O Som of Pritha, That mem tread in all nvagys”.
(Chap. IV-Verse XI)
The learned Doctor's clarity of vision is conspicuous when he asserts that the Bhagavad Gita can be regarded as the focus of all Indian religion'-i.e. all systems of religious thoughts that have emanated in India, whether past or present; and in this respect Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy holds the same premise as the great Acharyas. Again, in the Doctor's treatise on the Myth (in respect of Hinduism in the above mentioned book) we come across a startling statement of fact that many other Hindu philosophers have failed to see in Hinduism. Whereas the latter have drawn a line of demarcation between the Revelation (Sruti) and the Mythology (Itihasa) the Doctor with his vision of synthesis and harmony finds that “they are not contradictory doctrines but different ways of telling one and the same story.'
The Doctor has a remarkably apt yet concise and vivid method of expressing his thoughts. Let us cite a few sentences from his treatise on Theology and Autology (in the same book) to illustrate this. He says, “God is an essence without duality (Advaita) or as some maintain without duality but not without relations (visistadvaita). He is only to be apprehended as Essence (Asti) but this Essence subsists in a two-fold nature (Dwaitibhava), as being and as becoming. Thus what is called the Entirety (Krtsnam, Purnam, Bhuman) is both explicit and inexplicit......... characterised and uncharacterised (Saguna and Nirguna)'. The following words from the same treatise show the vision of fulfilment of the Doctor, like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. He

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says “whoever knows him in his prominate (Apara) aspect, immanent, knows him also in his ultimate (Para) aspect, transcendent.”
Regarding the validity of symbolism and symbols in Hinduism (which have been the objects of criticisms from certain quarters) the learned Doctor says "these forms are only means by which to approach the Formless and must be discarded before we can become It'; and true to the traditions of the Vedanta he advocates "of all the names and forms of God the mono-grammatic syllable “Om” the totality of all sounds and the music of the spheres chanted by the resonant Sun is the best. The validity of such an audible symbol is exactly the same as that of a plastic icon, both alike serving as supports of contemplation (Dhillyalamba)”.
The process of self-surrender to the Divine and the union of the individual soul with the Over-Soul is beautifully expressed by the Doctor when he says, "the submission of the Outer to the Inner Man is all that is meant by the words "self-control' and “autonomy' and the opposite of what is meant by 'self-assertion'.
The essence of Vedanta is marvellously expressed by the Doctor in the following words:- 'the theology and autology are one and the same science, and that the only possible answer to the question 'What am I?’ must be “That art thou'; “and to realise this constant verification of the foregoing assurance is necessary. This realisation enables "Him who fettered himself to free himself', and thus attain the state of perfection where Death has no power over him (Jivan mukta na punar mriyate).
A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD (Gobind Behari Lal, New York).
As the tides of the sea rise under the attraction of the sun and the moon, so our feelings of admiration, appreciation, grateful affection fountain forth towards Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy-one of the

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY O7
great emancipators of the human spirit, a son of the East, and a son of the West, a harbinger of the World Renaissance which, I believe, has already commenced, with tumult and turmoil.
I fell under his spell some forty years ago, when I was a college student in my native city of Delhi, now India's capital, before I came to the United States, landing at San Francisco in 1912, and since then have become more and more his ardent devotee. Dr. Coomaraswamy knew my oldest brother, Principal Brijmohan Lal, then head of the Jaipur School of Fine Arts, and the two, with Havell of Calcutta, were the jury at the arts exhibition in 1911, either in Delhi or Allanabad. I forget.
However, it was through his books, and what he wrote in and was written about him in The Modern Review and other Indian publications, that I knew him intellectually and emotionally. Even in those days I was inspired and instructed by his strange genius. For, he was the ideal son of Great India (by which I mean all the vast expanse of people, cultures, historical memories that have emanated from India during thousands of years)-with a mind like lrahma's, full of creative energy. He somehow brought together the attitude of modern science, the vital attitude of the West towards art, reality and life, and the Eastern (Indian, Ceylonese, Chinese, Persian etc.) gifts of imagination and aesthetic feelings, creative of a new system of values. He appeared to be an expositor of the ancient Eastern truths and wisdom, but-like his Shiva-he was a true inconoclast, a spiritual revolutionist. He was compassionate like Gautama Buddha and like Vishnu. And, for him the East was One-from the horns of the Italian and Greek seas to the Pacific, from central Asia to the beautiful isle of Ceylon. In the days when the mighty European rulers scorned the humbled East, especially India, Ceylon, Burma, Egypt, )r. Coomaraswamy, like a knight, a true Rajput, defended the East. To-day, as ever before, he champions in clear, bugle notes the cause of independence and equality of the Eastern, and other sub

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iugated, nations, but is a Citizen of the World, a maker of a New Civilization and a New Culture for the whole Human Race.
The realm of science and invention and the realm of art and imagination and love and other deep emotions have to be unified, so that man may become sane and whole: and Dr. Coomaraswamy's wonderful contributions are helping us in this new enterprise.
DR. COOMARASWAMY AND THE
PERENNAL PHILOSOPHY (Joseph Campbell, New York).
As one whose introduction to the writings of Dr. Coomaraswamy came by the way not of Oriental studies but of an apparently accidental encounter, I should like to speak for the many in this country whose search through the labyrinth of contemporary Occidental thought has been given direction, suddenly and decisively, by the chance discovery of one of those brief articles that Dr. Coomaraswamy, for the past many years, with almost miraculous bounty, has been sowing to all the winds. Like the guiding voices in a folk tale, which give to the hero, in the darkest moments of his trial, precisely the instruction that he needs, and which are ubiquitous, only waiting for the adventurer to require them, these beautifully wrought, brief articles to-day lie scattered and waiting at every hand: anyone diligently searching anywhere will certainly encounter one-as it were, by chance. And the critical, revelatory sign will be a sudden transformation of perspective: the machine of contemporary life will be seen against the formerly invisible background of humanity entire. For, whereas the Occidental tendency has been to view and evaluate always from the locus, ever changing, of the contemporary instant, every phrase of Dr. Coomaraswamy is framed in his knowledge of the permanent;

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and this in itself is enough to communicate a new (or rather, an old, an ageless), life-renovating insight.
We have many teachers who have spoken to us of the past, but I think very few who have taught from the point of view of the perennial. We have heard also the voices of the Romantics, nostalgic for some lost lotus-land, the tirades from our pulpits, condemning the modern age, prescriptions from our universities for the co-ordination of modern thinking around certain great Occidental books, and numerous teachers from the Orient, speaking of the beatitude of Sandidhi and the superiority of the Oriental mind; but there has been little recognition of that permanent, variously modulated, archetypal doctrine which it has been the supreme service of Dr. Coomaraswamy to make visible to the modern eye. His universal scholarship, controlled by an infallible eye for the significant, and made eloquent by a majestic understanding of the universal steech of traditional myth and art, has performed the giant's task, the god's task, of bringing together the fragments of our single, great human heritage, and re-awakening the life-illuminating Form.
CEYLON'S ART-YOG (T. Muttucumaru B.A. (Hons.) Lond.)
'O thou, Lord of all the Gods teach one in dreams how to carry out all the work I have in mind'
ANGI PURANA.
“Yoga”, says Coomaraswamy “is mental concentration carried so far as to overlooking of all distinction between the subject and object of contemplation, a means of achieving harmony or unity consciousness.'
The life of Coomaraswamy is typical of a pure artist realising with a "vigilant will' the oneness of humanity. He inherits the love of Art and the transcendental understanding of the unity persisting

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through diversity in the life of man from his parental home and from the land where he received his training for life as an active seeker after Truth. In him the East meets the West and through his work as an artist and as a philosopher the West begins to show her due reverence to the culture of the East. With all his training in the West and with his life spent mostly in Western lands, Coomaraswamy takes an earnestly genuine pride in his being a Ceylonese, nay an Indian and on the glorious and priceless heritage of his ancestral and spiritual home of India. His love for India and things Indian is not one of narrow nationalism or petty minded patriotism that lends races of mankind to suicidal warfare breaking through the chains of social conventions and sectarian dogmas.
Coomaraswamy has through Art become a citizen of the world. At every stage of his life, Coomaraswamy had a conscious urge to realise through Art the ever persisting rhythmic harmony of all life. His official life in Ceylon though short is great in his characteristic contributions to geological research, social reform and movement for higher learning. It is this official connection with Ceylon that was perhaps responsible in bringing out Coomaraswamy's talented love of the arts and letters of ancient Ind. Once started on his life as a pilgrim in the quest of Truth through Indian Art and Letters Coomaraswamy has become a Yogi remaining to this day the best interpreter of the East to the West through Art and Religion. All his writings on the art and crafts of India and Ceylon or on Nationalism revealing the living personality of the writer show that the one vision of Ananda Coomaarswamy is the establishment of fellowship of man through Art.
That the artist Coomaraswamy “never makes a stroke with his brush or pen without having seen it with his imagination', his conscious feeling of the realisation of the truth in his study of the Cosmic Dance of Lord Nataraj (the highest and noblest con

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('eption of human Art) stand out crystal clear. Thus ('oomaraswamy the scientist, the philosopher and the :rtist and all the three rolled in one as the citizen of the world invites the attention of the pilgrims in the est of truth to the grand conception of the Dance of Siva as a synthesis of Science, Religion and Art.
SRI ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY (Dr. B. Pattabi Sitaramaiya, New Delhi).
It was in 1908 that I had made the acquaintance of Sri Ananda K. Coomaraswamy at my place, namely Masulipatam. He was then making a tour in India ind I was advised by certain friends to invite him. did so and I saw before me a tall man with trousers but not socks, and a coat not of the Bond Street or Oxford street tailoring but hanging loose () in his legs and shoulders and with a huge turban on hair three inch long. In appearance he was clearly in Englishman; but the turban belied this estimate. () in enquiry, he was good enough to say that his mother was English and his father a Tamilian of Ceylon and when in the afternoon he unfolded the pages of his 'Medevial Sinhalese Art', what a delight it was A new world and vista opened out before or vision and the ancient culture and arts ind painting and sculpture all passed before the mind's eye in a rich panoply. I laced an order for a copy at once and got it sometime liter. It remained a source of inspiration for years fterwards. For the first time we were introduced then to what was called hand-made paper on which he chose to print his books and next he introduced us to his essays on nationalism wherein every subject ("onnected with the resuscitation of Indian culture was (alt with in convincing and inspiring language.
While we were all at lunch, squatting on the floor, he asked me whether I was permitted by my I'ligion and society to have commensality with him ind if not whether I was doing so out of conviction or out of bravado. He did not countenance any "don't

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care masterism'. At the same time he urged that we should observe Swadeshi for a long time to come only for the sake Swadeshi. His idea was that the pendulum should veer round to the other end for a time before it reassumed its normal, perpendicular position.
When in the afternoon he addressed a large audience, he laid the foundations, well and truly, of Indian nationalism in so far as South India was concerned. While the new spirit which was generated by the partition of Bengal (16-10-1905) created the first great upheaval in the whole of India, the forces so liberated required to be canalised along constructive channels and this piece of task which was by no means easy, was left to be achieved by Sri Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Later on whenever we saw his name in the Press or his writings briefly reported from abroad, they were treasured up invariably as sources of added inspiration and instruments of guidance to the nascent nationalism of India. Years rolled by when information reached us that the learned Doctor was employed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and was carrying on unobtrusively his service to India.
BEST KNOWN CEYLONESE IN THE WORLD
(D. B. Dhanapala, M.A.) The first name that comes to the mind when I think of greatness in connection with Ceylon names is that of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy who is at present in America in charge of the Oriental Section
of the Boston Museum.
Ananda Coomaraswamy is the best known Ceylonese in the world. In Europe, America and India-in fact anywhere where an interest is taken in Indian culture and art-his is the name quoted as an authority. Deeply read in all cultural subjects, he is the man who has put Indian art on the map. His great service to Ceylon is his famous book Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, a mounmental work in

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 13
which he collected all that could be collected on the :rts and crafts of the Sinhalese before this decaying, neglected heritage, actually died out. Nobody else so far has done anything so magnificient in the way of service to the Sinhalese nation in modern times. The introduction to that volume shows us the great man he is-a man with great foresight, a sense of values and a lover of service for its own sake.
Dr. Coomaraswamy is himself an artist in temperament. And his personality is as rich in surprises as his mind in brilliance.
He has not visited Ceylon for quite a long time ind whenever he comes here he arrives unannounced und departs unknown almost. But those who know his work and his worth would not hesitate putting him down as modern Ceylon's greatest living figure.
PROPHET OF NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL ART.
(K. S. Ramaswami Sastri, M.A., Madras)
Nationalism is sweeping all over India as a rising tide to-day. But we shall be ungrateful if we do not realise who were the persons who set it going, on its irresistable course. Though service and nationalism and democracy are the most powerful forces of the modern age and though nationalism swept all over Europe throughout the nineteenth ('entury as a result of the French Revolution, yet its impetus was felt in India only towards the later decades of the nineteenth century when the Indian National Congress was founded and when Swami Vivekananda returned to India in 1892 after winning the respect of the West for India by his epoch-making speech at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. He said on One occasion: “India should continue to be what she is. How could India ever cecome like Japan, or any other nation for the matter of that? In each nation as in music, there is a main of upholding the national Dharma is incompatible Each nation has a theme; everything else is secon

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dary. India is India'. It was he that proclaimed that while India must learn from the West new arts and science and industrialisation and political liberty she must preserve and perpetuate her individual and social and aesthetic and spiritual ideals. He said: "The national ideals of India are in Renunciation and Service. Intensify her in those channels and the rest will take care of itself. The banner of the spiritual cannot be raised too high in this country. In it alone is salvation.” Rabindranath Tagore intensified the nationalist mentality in India and nationalism became an irresistibly powerful force after Mahatma Gandhi began to direct the national life of India. It is with such a background that we must appraise Dr. Coomaraswamy's contribution to Indian nationalism.
In our passion for political freedom and independence, it is likely that we are prone to forget the other vital elements in nationalism. William Morris says well: "Meantime I can see no use in people having political freedom unless they use it as an instrument for leading reasonable and manlike lives, no good even in education if, when they are educated, people have only slavish work to do, and have to live lives too much beset with sordid anxiety for them to be able to think and feel with the more fortunate people who produced art and poetry and great thought.' Dr. Coomaraswamy felt in the same way. He says: "Nations are made by artists and by poets, not by traders and politicians.' Though this in its turn is an Over statement, he administered a corrective to. Our generation which has been too much obsessed by politics. He says with clarity and conviction: "In the immediate future, this passion for self-sacrifice and self-realisation will find expression in a nationalism which will be essentially religious in its sanction. Thus once more by the inspiration of a ruling passion-the religious and national ideal in one-the Arts of Life will be realised again; only by thus becoming artists and poets, can we again understand our own art and poetry, and thereby attain the highest ideal of nationality, the will and the power

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Dr. Ananda K. Colomaraswamy,
C1911)
 

HoMAGE. To ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 115
to give'. He says further: "All honour to those who have spent lives in the political struggle; yet I believe that it is not through politics that revolutions are made, and that National Unity needs a deeper foundation than the perception of political wrong. The true Nationalist is an idealist; and for him the deeper cause of the unrest is the longing for selfrealisation. He realises that Nationalism is a duty even more than a right, and that the duty of upholding the national dharma is incompatible with intellectual slavery, and therefore he seeks to free himself, and through others like himself, his country.'
Thus the deepest ideas in Dr. Coomaraswamy's concept of Nationalism is that Nationalism is a Duty, that Nationalism should be rooted in a lofty idealism, and that its highest self-expression is the literature and art and philosophy and religion. He affirms also that without attaining these aims, India will not be able to be industrially greater or to be politically free. He says: "There can be no true realisation of political unity until Indian life is again inspired by the unity of the national culture'.
I have had the privilege and honour of meeting Dr. Coomaraswamy some decades ago but it is more than doubtful if he remembers me to any extent. He is tall and fair of complexion and has dreamy and introspective eyes and a reliable intellectual face. When I saw him he had a white turban on and was dressed in dhoti and had a lace Anga vastram on. He not only preached the encouragement of indigenous industries but practised what he preached. He stood for complete nationalism in dress and manners and etiduette.

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GREETINGS. (Dr. Alfred Salmony, New York).
On August 22nd, the seventieth day of your birth, I want to tell you of the love I feel for you the human being, of the gratitude I owe to you the friend, and of the admiration I have for you the scholar. Like many others I never turn to you for inspiration and assistance without receiving generous reward. To me, like to most, you remain the unfailing transmittor of the eternal traditions.
I express the wish of innumerable friends when I say: may you continue to lead us for many years to come.
AN APPRECIATION. (Dr. Jacques de Marquette, California).
Although I only saw Dr. Coomaraswamy a few times, much too few for my satisfaction, I can deliberately say that I feel that he is one of the most important human personalities it has been my privilege to meet. And this is not saying little since in India alone it has been given me to make the acquaintance of Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Arabindo Ghosh, Sir Muhammed Iqbal, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir J. C. Bose and I was favoured by meeting men of the same caliber in France, England, Germany, the United States and China. My first impression was that of surprise. While I was expecting a sparse and slender intellectual like those I had met in Bengal or in Ceylon, here was a towering personality whose Olympian sovereignty was even more impressive than that of the great patrician Tagore.
My second impression, as I sat before him in his large studio at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was that of a great worker. A mere glance at his work table, at those of his assistants, at the vast library

(fz6I , noqo) uossos sụy əus, I go unəsnįIN əų) ug Xiao'Ao. qe Kuue Asea eurooO ‘YI topu eu V ~ IGI

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass: U.S.A.
 

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 117
covering the walls, all bearing the evidence of much use and activity, made it clear that his many books and articles were only the outer expression of a vast store of knowledge extending far beyond that part of it which had been made public. That impression of a great store of reserve science was still increased by his talk. His deiberate delivery, his use of precise and well chosen words reinforced the sentiment of masterly laconism left by his later essays and forcibly reminded one of Goethe’s remark: “Erst in beschrankung zeigt sich der Meister.’ Here was a master of thought and expression, looking at life from a “high place', aloof from the trivialities of Ordinary pursuits and steeped in the familiarity with abstractions and general ideas which are the pabulum of the great intellectual.
Our conversation, bearing on Mystical Theology, of which he has a rare grasp, confirmed that impression of a man more aware of the transcendent realities than of the practical factors of daily life. So much so that one was brought to wonder if this detachment of the ordinary human engrossments did not cause a certain coldness. But that feeling was soon dispelled by a closer acquaintance and a visit to his fine home in the country near Boston. On entering the unpretentious house, nestling under fine New England trees and filled with rare books and beautiful Oriental works of art, one was struck by the warmth of the mellow cultured atmosphere prevailing in it. And that it was not the creation of Dona Louisa alone, was evidenced by the wealth of human interest displayed by the great scholar in his familiar conversation. It became evident that in his relations not only with his charming and cultured wife and with their son, but also with his many students, Dr. Coomaraswamy, under the veneer of the intellectual objectivity extended to human beings the considerate appreciation of an artist for the accomplished productions of Life. While completely aware of the illusory character of the world of objectivity, his was the attitude of the Buddah of compassion who refuses to enter Nirvana

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before "the least blade of grass has been redeemed' to quote one of his favourite references to the teachings of the Tathagata. This faculty of being a warm friend of men while fully conscious of the illusory character of their personal traits, seems to be the outstanding trait of the great scholar for whom obviously his aesthetic sense provides an anchor keeping him in contact with concrete beings while his intelligible vision sees through them, in the contemplation of their intrinsic unity.
That this supremely human attitude should be arrived at not by a priest of one of the great religions but by a scholar is a most heartening experience for all the devotees of the larger Humanities of which he is such an outstanding exponent.
The progression of Dr. Coomaraswamy's career was a life long demonstration of the integration of Art in the process of deification of creation in the return to unity of the consciousness functioning through the many. In his elucidation of the dialectical steps of the art process in the light of India's ancient wisdom, the author of the Transformation of Nature in Art also brought to light some other of the wider and deeper messages of aesthetics which are of a profound spiritual nature since they are steps to a realisation of the unity latent in variety. One of these is the close correspondence between the three great disciplines of civilization, Art, Science and Religion. A deeper understanding of the stages of attainment of the full appreciation of RASA throws a new and complementary light on the corresponding steps of divine Yoga through science and religion. In lifting consciousness from the PRATYAKSHA to the PAROKSHA vision, Art does not only bring about the most desirable of all human goods in the consummation of inner harmony and peace through a temporary DAIVAM MITHUNAM of his lower and higher natures; but it also helps man to a realisation of the identity of the similar unions between the two selves

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 119
reached along the roads of JNANA and BHAKTI and the eventual fusion of their discriminative processes in imageless non-differentiating MOKSHA.
In his many valuable articles and monographs Dr. Coomaraswamy made another very important contribution to the realization of the efficacy of Art as an agent of universal synthesis, thus of effective religion. While acknowledging most graciously the value of the works of Western Orientalists in the elucidation of the message of Hindu aesthetics, notably in its references to the "Icnographie Boudhique' of Foucher; he made a most valuable contribution to the demonstration of the fundamental unity of the cultural traditions of mankind which is tantamount to a reassertion of its spiritual unity. Displaying an amazing knowledge and grasp of the precious gems of the cultures of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain as well as the Scholastic traditions and their Greco-Latin origin, he pointed repeatedly to the close similarity in the description of the operations of the spiritual and natural laws of the universe in the parallel traditions of the human race. Thus, while bringing the contribution of aesthetics to the appreciation of the cultural unity of mankind abreast of those made by comparative religion and metaphysics he sounded so strongly and so repeatedly the call to a realization of the fundamental unity of the philosophical interpretation of life that one feels entitled to consider his work as providing a personal contribution to this much needed vindication of the deep cultural unity of mankind. Of course this had already been expressed since Hegel and Victor Cousin; but the wealth of information of the great Ceylonese scholar, his grasp of the latest acquisitions of research and criticism in all correlated fields gives singular authority to his message. For nearly thirty years this eminent representative of Oriental aesthetics has been insisting on the fundamental unity of all cultural traditions whether in the fields of Mythology. Theology or Philosophy; and their essential reaction to particular aspects of the all embracing

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perennial philosophy. It must be indeed gratifying to him to see that this call to the service of the universal and perennial philosophy which he has been sounding so persistently for more than a generation is now popularised by writers who have access to the general public. V
This recognition of the unity of the essential origin of all cultural traditions provides the necessary intellectual foundation for the insaturation of international and inter-racial appreciation and co-operation.
In this realm of the preparation of an era of world harmony he has made also a very useful, if indirect, contribution in pointing to the close historical ties connecting the artistic and cultural traditions of para-Indian countries, Ceylon, IndoChina and Indonesia, with the old Mother India, common source of their inspirations. When mankind reaches a proper appreciation of human or spiritual values as the necessary foundation for successful political adjustments, this should lead to her restoration to her rightful place in the Areopagus of nations as one of the chief centres of intellectual and spiritual leadership. This is important not only for all Indians and friends of India, but also for all mankind, since it is badly in need of that balanced poise and harmony which can only result from a consummate union of the efficient practical activity of the empirical West with the guidance and inspiration of mature Eastern intution and wisdom of which India is the chief fount and most qualified representative. And India can only make her full contribution to the new order in a world still worshipful of matter if she enjoys not only the authority justified by her spiritual and intellectual brillancy, but also that accruing from political importance.
This aspect of Dr. Coomaraswamy's work is particularly gratifying to French students since it not only appeals to their natural inclination toward universality but also falls in line with the main con

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 121.
tribution of French Orientalists to Indology. From the days of Anquetil Duperron and of Burnouf to those of Foucher, Sylvan Levi and Pelliot, to quote only a few names, they brought back to light many of the spiritual and material monuments of the past, traces of the vast expansion of the high civilization of India over Central, Eastern and Southern Asia in the days of her splendour.
In his profound understanding of the essence of the culture of the main Western countries, Dr. Coomaraswamy could be held an Eastern replica of the late Sylvan Levi, probably the greatest of the Western Orientalists in the last half century who possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the living and dead languages and civilizations of the middle and lar East. In fact, Dr. Coomaraswamy represents the fulfilment of a hope expressed by the great French ()rientalist in his last visit to the Jambudvipa. Sylvan Levi stated that the development of Indian scholarship would usher in a new cultural era, another renaissance carrying the common cultural inheritance of mankind to new summits by the influx of the full values embodied in the Sanatana Dharma, and also by providing a complementary standpoint for the reassessment of our Western achievements.
To this new Renaissance in which civilization shall at last reach its full planetary scope, India has already contributed a galaxy of thinkers of the first magnitude. Tagore in the field of poetry, the two Nobel prize winners, J. C. Bose and Raman in science the philosophers Das Gupta and Radhakrishnan have made a splendid contribution to the mutual understanding and appreciation of the East and the West. Dr. Coomaraswamy seems to have gone one step further in not only unravelling the folds of Indian culture for Westerners, but also projecting new clarities on Western philosophical doctrines in his field of aesthetics and related metaphysics by their comparison with their Indian replicas.

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An acquaintance with the metaphysical implications of Indian aesthetics has brought many Western thinkers to a clarified vision of the relations between artistic appreciation and adoration which is the consummation of religion. The realization of the close interrelation and even fundamental unity of all cultural, religious traditions deals a death blow to the fallacious view still prevalent a decade or two ago among many Western circles, including well-known psycho-analysts, who asserted the existence of a radical difference and even opposition between the “racial sub-conscious' of the different branches of the human family. In contributing to explode this dangerous fallacy, Dr. Coomaraswamy helped to restore to man the full stature of his world-wide citizenship, high above all sectarian racial sectionalisms. In demonstrating the fundamental unity of man's approach to the deepest and highest problems of life, both in his field and in that of general philosophy, the learned Curator of the Boston Museum of Art has shown himself to be not only a forerunner of the new Renaissance but one of its most eminent representatives to whom the present writer feels honoured to tender the tribute of his admiration and gratitude.
THE PIONEER OF A NEW AGE (K. Bharatha Iyer, Rangoon).
I consider it the proudest privilege of my life to have been given an opportunity to pay tribute to Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy for whom my veneration has grown with the years. Writers more competent would have told of his many gifts and great achievements in various fields of studies in which his pioneering work has thrown a flood of light that will remain an unending source of inspiration to his successors. While his achievements in a single field are such as to perpetuate his fame, his varied gifts and achievements make him one of the unique scholars of the

Dr. Ananda K. Coemaraswamy (in America, about 1940)

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Dr. Ananda K Coomaraswamy (about 1915)
 

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 123
world. He was far more than a scholar; scholarship was to him only a path, a form of tapasya. It was said so truly of him that he never wrote a line save by way of clarifying what needed to be understood for himself. Of how many writers can we say this? This may sound curious in an age cluttered with the printer's ink. But in this as in other cases he was far removed from the vulgar banalities of this age which has reduced the art of living into a cheap farce reeking with trivialities, vanities and intense selfaggrandisements. In the course of a letter he wrote thus in reply to an inadvertent compliment I paid crediting him with "originality of thinking'... “one of the most important things ever learnt by me is "not to think for myself'; my mental effort is not directed towards novel thinking but towards understanding.' Here is the key to the remarkable, admittedly unique, personality of Dr. Coomaraswamy. In trying to do this wisely and sincerely he performed one of those epic feats of human endeavour unsurpassed in the intellectual history of mankind. The attempt led him to conduct vast researches into every sphere of art and thought of many cultural groups covering the entire gamut of traditional knowledge. As a result, much of this vast body of traditional knowledge which was in ဖွံဖြိုးဝှိ၊ of neglect and total distortion, has been rescued and re-interpreted. The eternal meaning of long forgotten symbols and ideas have been restored.
He was one of the very first to see clearly while others remained bewitched by the "progress' modern civilization had made, that the metaphysical bottom, the very thing in which all human endeavour should be rooted, was mouldering off. For forty years or more his voice had been heard warning the leaders and the general public of the dangers of the selfdestructive game that we have allowed ourselves to indulge in.
The last few years of his life represent an
extraordinary synthesis of ideas. The common inseparable traditions which interlink all humanity in

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spiritual and cultural fraternity are re-established and their supreme importance as a potent force and enduring factor to create and sustain international and inter-racial amity is convincingly brought out. The way of Perennial Philosophy, the only correction for the many ills of this deeply destructive age is laid out as the pathway for pravarti and nivarti. He has in short laid the foundations of a new age and gathered around him a band of deeply sincere intellectuals of the highest rank drawn from every part of the world on whom the responsibility for the promotion of the New Order, is indeed very heavy.
Truly, he belongs to the world; thinking men in all countries have accepted him as a jagadguru. But in a especial way he belongs to us Indians. Not because of his Indian blood alone. His contributions to the various fields of Indian learning are immense and he remains the greatest of those who have understood and expounded the Indian traditions. The great place which India now occupies in the cultural map of the world is in a larger measure the result of his devoted labours. Similarly, the whole field of Oriental studies has received under his guidance a new orientation and much needed corrective which have stimulated scholarship to greater heights. As Capt. Anthony Ludovici observes in his fine contribution to ART AND THOUGHT Dr. Coomaraswamy has been the voice of their ancestors to the Indian people in everything relating to their highest products -their arts and crafts-and the spirit that should inspire them. Perhaps, it would be too much to claim that India preoccupied as she is with the more immediate problems arising from her long subjection, has recognised or accorded him the place that is his alongside her greatest sons. But I have no doubt that when the heat and dust of the present day controversies abate, more and more India will turn to him for guidance to rejuvenate her many sided cultural life, the one means by which she has lived young through ages.

سہیہ مسلحمحل مہا سہما لععمامہ! المعاہ شاه حدا سمجموعہ\ \ مہارڈ 2 حسلما! . حالی فعہ منجھا جن سطحبیب ہلمنشلم حسینما می به • هلشتات بنتلیه ابومهای تیمهای
,_ ہمہمعہ - لحمہ۔ یہ لمہما ح ^\ حھلم کسی معاہ اللہ العہمعہ اما مار صستها چمفه سعهط مه ۱ هستمعامل - محمد ادامه ل، i صحضلعہ rیبعہ (مجلسندہی سہ:مہا پسنمصن.........\ی ہینڈلحمہمہv ) ، -به جمعه شهرک منم که مند حتمعم پدیدمن سہ عالمہ ہ، ، ، (جسمہ. میلہ عw بہما عرصہ بr}ز مسجہلم' معمہاجہ 1۔شیاء ہوا .......... ہم تم.'
. مهم مممد محمد م؟
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's reply to the question, “What is your tribute to Gandhiji for achieving freedom through non-violence? (In a letter to the Editor)

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Dr. Anatda K. Coomaraswamy (Right) photographed with a friend, Dr. Murray Fowler.
 

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 125
TWO LETTERS. (1)
(Dr. Murray Fowler, Harvard University, Massachusetts).
I am honoured that you should ask my opinion of Dr. Coomaraswamy's life and work; but I should warn you that, since I am neither historian nor critic of art, many of his writings are quite beyond my competence, and that I must also look upon everything that he has recorded from the limited view-point of one knowing only in very small part what he now knows, I believe, nearly completely. I am, I hope, a faithful student of what he has had to say in the latter portion of his life: it is as the opinion of such a student that I must ask you to accept what I write. I should divide Dr. Coomaraswamy's work into two parts: his contributions to knowledge in the realms of art (history, criticism, and theory of aesthetics); and his theological writings of the Vedas, and, above all, articles and books which are paths to understanding of the Philosophia Perennis).
Of these two divisions of Dr. Coomaraswamy's work, I should personally regard the scholarly discipline of the earlier period, no matter how good in itself, as subordinate to the ever more conscious, ever finer and fuller. ever more nearly complete entelechy of the latter. Thus I think that in his writing on art can be clearly seen that enunciation of principles as essential to criticism of art which later became a wider and more definite affirmation of one Principle as essential to criticism of life. I assume that you will want to quote from such books as Raiput Painting: were I doing what you have set out to do, I should look for the teleology, and I should find its traces in the early period in the earnest search for principles, rather than in the often exquisitely sympathetic descriptions-to which, of course, you will also want to refer.
Although I have postulated two periods of Dr. Coomaraswamy's work, I have done so only for con

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venience: I find no absolute break between them. From the Orientalist to the writer on life and religion seems to me to have been but a forward step in time. (If you are reading through the corpus, you may, however, be able to fix the point at which the roads crossed.)
Of the latter period I can speak with more personal certainty. I know of no one in the West who has done more to illuminate Indian religion than Dr. Coomaraswamy (his A new Approach to the Vedas is exactly that for the West); and I know of no one else anywhere who has worked so clearly and certainly toward his end of bringing together the doctrines of East and West and of showing them on the highest level to be one and the same. It is in this period of his work that Dr. Coomaraswamy now finds himself. He is certainly, in my opinion, the leader of all those in this country who make an attempt to follow the way of the Philosophia Perennis.
If I may finally speak as a friend, I think Dr. Coomaraswamy would not wish to be praised for "distinction' of any worldly sort, except in that he may be distinguished from most modern historians and critics of art as being consistently opposed, on traditional, reasoned grounds, to any doctrine of “art for art's sake', and to any merely sensitive appreciation of art which does not consider the intention of the artist, the art which he may have within himself, and the inspiration which is implicit in him and explicit in his work; and except in that he may be distinguished from most critics of life as making constant reference to eternal principles, which he has made his own, of course, not by inventing them, but by subscribing to them. I believe he would prefer to have his personality submerged for posterity in his work, just as, in his writing on art, he has always maintained that art should clearly and unmistakably be a manifestation of some form of the eternal, and by definition, therefore, be something infinitely greater than the mere personality of the artist.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 127
(2) (Dr. Langdon Warner, Harvard University. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts).
While few people in this generation better deserve. the tribute you plan, I am hardly the person to add my word to the others. Not being a scholar in his sense of the word, I am in the position of following his writings with absorbed interest but contributing nothing. It is my belief that our true debt to him will not be appreciated during his life-time and that a century may, elapse before articritics, and historians of religion and philosophers will turn to his writings for source material.
For this reason I congratulate you on your plan to prove to him that his own generation is not entirely without gratitude.
THE SCIENTIST
(K. Kularatnam, M.A., B.Sc., University of Ceylon, Colombo).
The first Ceylonese Doctor of Science of the University of London, a Fellow of University College, London and a Geologist by training, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy arrived in the island in 1903 at the age of 26. He worked at his own expense for a year at mineralogy and geology. His scientific discoveries roused opinion in London and Ceylon to have a Department of Mineralogy. He accepted for four years the post of Director. At the expiration of the period he left Ceylon. True to high geological tradition, Coomaraswamy spent most of his time in the field, conducting his traverses on foot and by bullock cart and thus came to know his Minerals and Recks very intimately indeed. Here lies the secret of his success and also of his early introduction to the new fields of art, archaeology, religion and sociology, whose attractions, unfortunately for Ceylon and Geology, tore him away so early in his

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career from his first love! By direct personal contact, he came to know the place, folk and their work well. His discoveries during that short period and the contributions he made to Geology and Mineralogy perhaps far outweigh the total output of all his successors during the past forty years, despite their luxury limousines and lounges without which, it is to be regretted, geological work apparently refuses to get a start to-day.
Apart from the classic Administration Reports of the Mineral Survey of Ceylon which contain the accounts of his field surveys and investigations, Coomaraswamy published several authoritative papers and academic discussions in the Quarterly Journal of the Geologcal Society; the Geological Magazine, London; British Association Reports; the Mineralogical Magazines; the Spolia Zeylanica, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, etc. Other contributions of no mean importance are the Glossary of Sinhalese Mining Terms and names of Gems, and a Bibliography of Ceylon Geology (1906) which has since been brought up-to-date and published separately by Wadia. Coomaraswamy's mind thought and worked far ahead of his time. This needs no proof when we recall how on some of the intricate problems of petrology and mineralogy which he raised in his papers on (1) the Crystalline limestones of Ceylon, (2) Graphite, (3) the scapolite-wollastonite rocks of th Galle Series, (4) the Balangoda Group, etc., no finality of opinion has yet crvstallised out, though the attention of several outstanding geologists in Europe and America has been focussed on them during the past forty years.
Among the discoveries of economic importance to Ceylon made by Coomaraswamy were the finds of workable occurrences of mica, graphite, corundum (ruby and capphire), moonstone, iron-ore, rare-earth minerals and others, -all accomplished within the short period of four years.
The first large-scale geological map published of any considerable area in Ceylon was that of a part of

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY . 129
the Kandy District by him in 1906. It is significant that since then no smaller map has ever been issued, but for two small-scale sketch geological maps of the Island by Adams and Coates. Considering the importance of large-scale geological maps as one of the primary foundations of agricultural and industrial planning it is a crying shame that the country has been kept waiting for nearly half a century and not received even a single sheet of this essential prerequisite. Coomaraswamy's divorce from Geology has therefore definitely resulted in irreparable loss to our economic progress. What is most urgently required to-day to remedy this extremely unsatisfactory position, is a strong central body composed of scientists, agriculturists, industrialists and businessmen to guide and direct the Geological Department, to give first place to first things, and to bring about a better co-ordination of work between sister Departments. No doubt, this matter will be among the first to receive the attention of the new Parliament.
No account, however brief, of Coomaraswamy's career as a geologist and mineralogist can afford to miss some of his spectacular discoveries. In the year 1904, a new mineral was identified and added to the list known to mineralogists. It is a cubic mineral of high specific gravity which on analysis proved to be an oxide of thorium and uranium. This mineral was discovered by Coomaraswamy. It is a pity this fact is not generally known, especially as the importance of this mineral has today been immensely enhanced because of its radioactive properties. As is characteristic of Coomaraswamy's scientific modesty, instead of immortalising his own name through this mineral-a practice extremely common with mineralogists. e. g. Allanite, Fergusonite, Geikeilite, Baddeleyite, etc.-he preferred to name it simply as thorianite, after the principal chemical element, thorium, present in it. It was only as a result of a letter (dated 28-12-44) received by the present writer from Dr. Coomaraswamy's son, Rama, asking for a specimen of "thorianite,

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(father's discovery), that he was led to seek and find confirmation of this fact! Serendibite, Geikielite and Baddeleyite were other minerals discovered in Ceylon in Coomaraswamy's time.
FROM “ART AND THOUGHT”
The following are eactracts from letters to Mr. K. B. Iyer, Editor ART AND THOUGHT-the Coomaraswamy Festschrift published by Messrs. Luzac ć Co.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has done great service to Oriental, and, in particular, Hindu thought. He is to-day its most qualified ambassador. But in considering it in its traditional essence he has been led beyond ethonographic limits. This is why he has so often come to compare Eastern with Western thought for the sake of demonstrating their original identity.
Few Westerners are, to-day, as capable as Coomaraswamy of bringing into relief, beyond the iconographic representations, beyond symbols and signs, the reality of the principle which animates and justifies them. Those very people who, by reason of their priestly function, should be the last to forget that the spirit transcends the letter, seem indeed to have fallen a prey to appearances. Do they not strive, in the name of a rationalism which is mere unreason, to satisfy the demands of a philosophical scientific, and even sociological opportunism, instead of denouncing the fundamental aberration which has led men away from the true path? v
The work of Coomaraswamy is a recall to order. In an age in which, after losing sight of God the cause, man, the effect, is in his turn lost intellectually in a maze of dusty notions corresponding to a host of improbable bipeds, the voice of Coomaraswamy was

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 31
first raised in the wilderness. Nothing could be more in accordance with the rules. The wilderness, to-day, is becoming inhabited. Although still few in number, those who already belong to a world risen from its own ashes, profit by what such a voice has to say. Like a fertilising spring rain which sets in motion the expectant subterranean germinations the radiant wisdom of Coomaraswamy stimulates a vital activity in those who, having looked on death, desire resurrection.
From “Active Traditions of East and West' by M. Albert Gleizes in ARTAND THOUGHT.
“Lives fruitful for good in other lives, as Ananda Coomaraswamy's life has been fruitful, are often dedicated to the affirmation of generally neglected values. By emphasising what is antithetical to the ephemerally prevalent they may be said to correct their times, and in a certain sense to throw the shadow of eternity into their own day. For many Westerners, struck by the now unmistakable failure of our civilization to make mankind happy, Dr. Coomaraswamy's has been the prophetic gesture pointing East, and his the authoritative and mordant voice affirming the existence of a Tradition, of a pattern of order more important to our well-being to-day than any scientific discovery of any international authority could possibly be. And India from whose art and thought he has drawn so many texts, has become to such Westerners a kind of Holy Land, to every station of whose historical pilgrimage a special and spiritual interest attaches.'
From "Troubled Image' by Eric Schroeder in ART AND THOUGHT.
“A. K. Coomaraswamy is to us the greatest living authority on Indian art. On his shoulders the mantle of E. B. Havell had fallen to interpret to the World the message of Indian art, and he has accomplished this task with a penetrating sensitiveness a depth of knowledge and grandeur of cultural and religious vision far surpassing those of his predeces

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sors. There is hardly a branch of Indian art to which he has not contributed some pioneer research work. a a In an America-European world which acknowledges other races merely as servile colonial peoples, he was amongst the first to champion the cause of Asia, not as some inetesting petrefeact of earlier stages of man's development, but as a cultural equal to the West. In a world still dominated by the onesided Greek ideal of beauty he raised the banner of Indian art, and with better arguments than E. B. Havell. In an age of crude materialism he became one of the most interesting and successful interpreters and prophets of Indian spiritualism.'
From “Rajput Art and its problems' by Dr. H. Goetz in ART AND THOUGHT.
"Personally I think that Dr. Coomaraswamy is not only the most versatile and philosophic interpreter of Indian art and the Hindu spirit, but he is the most encyclopedic. His understanding of art is profound, and he is performing a great service not only to India but to the world.'
Dr. Kurt F. Leidecker (U.S.A.)
“I am certainly an admirer of Dr. Coomaraswamy's work and I have found myself again and again in very close sympathy with his thought. I agree that his life-work should be honoured and that anything possible should be done which would make
his work and his philosophy more widely known.'
T. S. Eliot (London).
“I am sorry to say that I have never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Coomaraswamy in person,
though I have been a keen student of his writings.'
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be able to pay my tribute to Dr. Coomaraswamy in the way you suggest; for I have the greatest admiration for him and for the unique work he has done for Indian art and thought.'
Sir John Marshall.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. CooMARASwAMY 133
'I shall do all I can to render homage to Dr. Coomaraswamy, the greatest of us, who have made the understanding of the traditions of India the purpose
of Our life.'
Stella Kramrisch.
"One of the greatest living exponents of Buddhism
and Hinduism.'
Miss I. B. Horner.
“Ever since I became interested in Asian studies, I have admired Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and for many years, I have been proud to consider
him as a friend.'
Dr. Alfred Salmony (U.S.A.)
There is no scholar who deserves honour more
and none to whom I would rather pay homage and
express my gratitude for all that he has done for my understanding of traditional art in India.
Dr. Benjamin Rowland Jr. (U.S.A.)
A WONDERFUL MAN (Dr. Mary Shimer, Boston).
I knew Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy personally. He did not take pupils usually, being busy with research work but since I lived in Boston I used to go to the Museum quite often. I got to know Dr. Coomaraswamy and had the privilege of reading under his guidance for a while. I went to see him before I started on my trip to the East, and he seemed quite well, a little tired-looking and thin but not more so than usually. Everybody in . America had the highest admiration and regard for Dr. Coomaraswamy. He was a wonderful man.
COOMARASWAMY, THE STUDENT. (Dr. Lucian de Silva, Kandy).
Reading of Dr. Coomaraswamy’s avowed intention of eventually retiring to a mountain solitude, I was reminded of the fact that he was a recluse even

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134 HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. cooMARAswaMY
in his student days. It may interest his admirers to know something about his undergraduate period from one who was his contemporary for four or five years.
Coomaraswamy entered University College, London, a couple of years after me, and I was interested to know that he was a son of the man who had so greatly impressed Moncton Miknes and his friends. But a seniority of two years is a formidable barrier in undergraduate life, and it was made insurmountable by Coomaraswamy's not coming out of his shell. We never got beyond a nodding acquaintance, with casual meetings in the corridors or in Sir William Ramsay's chemical laboratory.
Coomaraswamy took no part in the social life of the College. He was never seen in the Men's Common Room to which students from all the faculties came to talk or to read the newspapers, or to play chess. He never attended the meetings of the Debating Society, or the Literary Society, or even the Philosophical Society. He never contributed to the students' magazine, the University College Gazette, which I edited for two years. He did not attend any of the College dances or dinners. He was glimpsed flitting along the corridors and stairways, like a "transient and embarrased phantom'. Perhaps he could say with Erasmus that he was least alone when most alone: титqиат тітиs solиs qиат solisтиs.
He passed the Inter Science in 1899 with honours in Botany. When he graduated B.Sc. in 1900, with first class honours in Botany and Geology, I had completely lost sight of him, as I worked in the hospital and went across to the College only for meetings of societies.

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 135
WORLD FIGURE IN THE REALM OF
SCHOLARSHIP (H.E. Sir Henry Monch-Mason Moore, G.C.M.G. Governor-General of Ceylon)
I should like to associate myself with this meeting, which is being held to celebrate the 70th birthday of Ananda Coomaraswamy, who is generally recognized as among the foremost scholars and men of letters Ceylon has produced in recent times.
For many years now Dr. Coomaraswamy has lived
out of Ceylon, but his writings have kept before men's minds the cultural heritage of Ceylon, and, I am sure, have inspired Ceylonese to appreciate more deeply and intensely their own traditions. Dr. Coomaraswamy is a world figure in the realm of scholarship. It is fitting that when Ceylon is about to attain her full political stature she should express pride in her sons who have brought her glory in their own spheres of activity.
Coomaraswamy stands out among the sons of Ceylon. He has directed his great gifts to drawing humanity together by showing them the affinities of their culture, and has thus helped in promoting peace and understanding among the peoples of the world. (Read at the public meeting held at King George's Hall, University of Ceylon, to mark the seventieth birthday of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and to offer him Ceylon's felicilations.)
MOUNMENTAL WORK
(Sir Charles Collins, Chief Secretary of Ceylon). We are met here to-day to do honour to a distinguished son of Lanka, who to-day would reach the allotted span of the Psalmist-three score years and ten, but who is still going strong and doing good work. It is rumoured that he is shortly to retire from Boston, Massachuseets (generally known I believe, as the hub of the Universe) to a place in the Himalayas. If he does, I hope it will be only a transition from one sphere of work to another.

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136 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY
Dr. Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo on August 22, 1877 and was a son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife. He was thus a member of one of the most distinguished families of Ceylon. He was educated in England and on his return here was Director of the Mineralogical Survey (1903-1906). His work took him out into the country when he became interested in Ceylon art and literature and this led to the writing of his first mounmental work, 'Medeival Sinhalese Art.' After further studies he went to America and for the last 30 years he had been Research Fellow of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and had spent his life studying and interpreting those arts both to the Western world and to the world at large.
The great point in his work was his role as interpreter between the East and West and as an ambassador of understanding. I have been asked to unveil his photograph, which I will now do with pleasure. I will at the end of the meeting ask the meeting to agree to a message to be cabled to Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy to-morrow'. −
WORK FOR UNIVERSITY
(Sir Ivor Jennings, Vice-Chancellor, Ceylon University).
Many people, in Ceylon at any rate, know of the distinguished services rendered by the late Sir Ponnampalam Arunachalam and Sir James Pieris and later by Dr. H. M. Fernando, Dr. S. C. Paul and Mr. M. T. Akbar in the establishment of a University in Ceylon, but not many seem to be aware of the very great share in that movement, especially in its earlier days by two other stalwarts, both yet happily alive. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy and Mr. F. L. Woodward. The former has now been in America for over thirty years publishing innumerable books and pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects, while Mr. Woodward lives in retirement on his farm in Tasmania after he left Mahinda College. It

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HoMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARAswaMY 137
is a pleasure to be able to say that he too is very actively engaged in writing Pali texts and preparing a Concordance of the Buddhist Tripitaka.
Dr. Coomaraswamy and Mr. Woodward were closely associated with Sir Ponnambalam in the Ceylon University Association, founded in 1908, which also published a journal for several years. The few copies available revealed "the most valiant soldiers that fought under Sir Ponnambalam's generalship.'
These early pioneers had great hopes that the Ceylon University would be a meeting place of Eastern and Western cultures, that it would attract students from lands beyond the seas, from Burma, Siam, Cambodia, China and Japan drawn here by the esteem in which the Island is held in the Buddhist world. Sanskrit and Pali will naturally have Professional Chairs in the Ceylon University and the prospect of studying on the spot the sacred language and books of Buddhism will draw students in increasing numbers to the University. One need not be a prophet to anticipate that Ceylon is destined from its central position and its history and religious associations to be a focus of Eastern and Western culture throughout the East and to exercise a great influence over the world's thought. Perhaps, in the course of years, Singapore, and Hongkong, the F.M.S., Siam, Burma and Cambodia, China and Japan will contribute not only students but endowments to the Ceylon University.
Brave hopes these that inspired men like
Coomaraswamy in their fight. It proved to be a long time before the Ceylon University came to be established even in name. But it was the vision of these pioneers that made the project possible at all and their refusal to despair when the odds were very much against them. It was a very happy day for Coomaraswamy when he lived to see his most cherished dream fulfilled, at least in some measure for he along with the others wanted a full-fledged resi

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138 HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. cooMARASWAMY
dential University and when the University was established, he wrote to a friend in Ceylon that he was glad to have lived to see the day. He said he had but one more wish in life, to retire to the Himalayas to spend his last days.
He not only fought hard for the idea of a University in Ceylon but also spent all his life in creating traditions of learning which have proved noble examples of real University research. It has always been his aim, he explains in his writings to "endeavour to speak with mathematical precision, but never employ words of our own, or make any affirmations for which authority could not be cited by chapter and verse.'
ON THE 70th BIRTHDAY OF DR. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY (M. D. Raghavan, Ethnologist and Asst. Director, National Museums of Ceylon).
Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy is a many-sided personality. His interests are so varied that he is in himself an inexhaustible subject. An international figure, the man and his work, may best be considered from three aspects: - First as an art critic. Ananda Coomaraswamy stands pre-eminently as the exponent of what he himself calls the forgotten view of art-that art is the making well of whatever that needs to be made-a view best conveyed in he words of St. Thomas that there can be no good use without art. The dexterous hands of the Stone Age man, acting in association with his mind, have given us from the beginnings of time, a variety of objects, which are at once objects of utility and objects of art. Art has thus developed as a specific need in early human societies. Ananda Coomaraswamy has helped us to dispel the illusion that art is the privilege of the few, or that art is only the productions we see in the Museums or Art Galleries.

HOMAGE TO ANAN DA K. COOMARASWAMY 139
Secondly, Ananda Coomaraswamy figures as the champion of the folk arts. Distinctly human in his cultural outlook, he looks back with regret at the golden age of Kandyan Craftsmanship under the aegis of the Kandyan monarchy, the disappearance of which has meant such a setback to rural arts. This he elaborates in his inspired work, “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art'. To-day he stands as the great apostle of rural arts, rural welfare and of rural development-words which are on everybody's lips at the present time. To his lasting credit, is his foresight in giving folk arts and crafts, their rightful place in the welfare of the land.
Thirdly, is his status as a Museum man. A Museum Curator is essentially a specialist and an enthusiast in one branch of study, besides being widely learned in arts in general. The varied interests of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy make him the great Museum Curator that he is to-day. He has something to say of Museums in general and Art Museums in particular. It is not the business of a Museum as such to exhibit contemporary works, - . which function best in the environment in which they were designed. To preserve for future generations, ancient works of art as are adjudged worthy of such preservation, is the major value of Museums. His great mission is expounding Eastern Art and Culture to the Western World, and of preserving for posterity, the treasures of Eastern At.
To these three, I may add a fourth. His role as an apostle of peace. Speaking of the revival of Ceylon arts and culture he asks, "How are the people to be saved? How shall they be re-energised and reinspired, how become once more socially constructive, how learn to-express the national emotion in literature and art?” Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy gives the answer, "Bw love of India'. As he puts it in his own inimitable way-, “There is scarcely any part of Sinhalese life, or religion or art, which is quite comprehensible without reference to India;

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the Sinhalese themselves are Indians; the greatness of their civilization dates from the wave of Indiam influences that reached Ceylon through Asoka's missionaries; the air and soil in which the nation has grown and borne good fruit are Indian'. "India without Ceylon is incomplete, for in many Ways, Ceylon is a more perfect window through which to gaze on India's past, than any that can be found in India herself. Much more is Ceylon incomplete if alienated from the motherland.' * Forecasting with prophetic vision the great event that has dawned on India on the 15th of this month (Aug., 1947), Ananda Coomaraswamy rightly stresses, that "of the unity of the Indian peoples, Ceylon is economically, mentally and spiritually, a part; and with the culture and life of India, must Ceylon's own survive'. These words of Ananda Coomaraswamy ring more true to-day, than when he expressed them more than thirty five years ago.
THE FAREWELL DINNER
(Dr. James Marshall Plumer, University of Michigam, U.S.A.)
The departure of Dr. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy from the Harvard Club of Boston on the evening of his seventieth birthday, August 22, 1947. was unhurried, and unnoticed except by the handful of friends who had just dined with him-and by the driver of a car which had just drawn up to the curb on Commonwealth Avenue to take him home. No photographers were there, no reporters. There was no band, no music-only the normal nocturnal clatter and din of city streets.
Two of the group walked on either side, holding his arms in such a way as to support him gently. When they were still some distance from the curb,
*P. 18. “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art”. —Ch. I

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 141
there came a gay joking call from the driver of the car, who was also the great man's wife. Most of the departing guests, mindful that he had just suffered one of his agonizing recurrent physical upsets, were slightly shocked. To him whose part in the banquet had been all but that of an ascetic, however, the words were a message in code. He knew that she knew that the attack had come again and that he had conquered it. If he was aided from that point to the car, he was unaware of it. The moment of suffering had ceased. The moment of joy was to linger.
To understand why there should have been great suffering and great joy it is necessary to know that Dr. Coomaraswamy was not only one of the world's greatest philosophers, but was also one of the most human of men.
He who in private conversation would refer to himself with great restraint and no bitterness as "an undesirable alien' (his actual legal status in the United States for many years) was deeply touched by a convocation that in fact meant the highest possible official recognition of his long labour of love in this country.
While the Bostonian, almost British, formality of the Harvard Club affair served to set the dignity and solemnity of the occasion, even black ties and sherry could not disguise the fact that all of the company had met at various other times under the most informal circumstances, lolling on stone steps or in morrischairs, or even sitting on the floor, to converse with him. They had known the intimacy of his home: the garden with thyme growing between the stones, the collection of cacti all tended like children, the sacred bronzes and stone fragments of devas and gjakshis whose smiles added warmth to the parlour hearth, the glorious Rajput miniatures including "Radha in the Kitchen'-in the kitchen, of course-and the grand orderly disorder in his upstairs study of pictures, drawings, pamphlets, books and living manuscripts.

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This small group of men who on that evening in August had gathered together from the neighbourhood of Boston and Cambridge were quite unaware of the tremendous significance that their meeting held for their guest. Indeed, they felt a bit sheepish about their modest dinner, when a cable was read describing the splendid coinciding celebration in Ceylon. Dr. Coomaraswamy was touched beyond any knowledge of those present. When in begining his speech he had said that he was "somewhat overcome', none realized the stark truth. That he remained seated had been taken as a gesture of informality. But in actual fact, he was so overwhelmed that he was unable to stand. His voice quavered, but he read on. For he had prepared his speech with the same meticulous and loving care that he was accustomed to devote to his brilliant lectures.
Ten years previously, in 1937, at the age of 60 he had said in all modesty that he already had in various stages of preparation "material enough to publish for the next 60 years'. It was in the succeeding decade that, among others, "the Kingship manuscript' (a work that would save India today if her leaders would but read and understand) came out under the title of “Spiritual Power and Temporal Authority in the Indian Theory of Government.'
In 1942 “Ars Islamica” (Vol. IX (1942) p. 125) published on the occasion of Dr. Coomaraswamy's sixty-fifth birthday a partial list of his writings up to that time, in which are found no less than four hundred and ninety-four items.
v Indicative of the type and range of his work since then are two lectures delivered at the University of Michigan on successive days in January, 1946: "The Religious Basis of the Forms of Indian Society’ (since published) and “The Riddle of the Greek Sphinx”. The latter, still only in manuscript form, bore no reference to the Egyptian sphinx but referred

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 143
to parallels elsewhere including India and was şummed up in his final sentence: "Hath not God said: I slay and I make alive.' '
With him a lecture no less than a book was a crystalization for the edification of others of certain ellements drawn from the inexhaustible Ocean of Truth.
It was such a writer, such a speaker, such a teacher as well as friend and charming host of pleasant memories who was, this evening, the guestand all the other guests were hosts. Through the person of the host-at-his-right, George Harold Edgell, sometime Harvard Professor and Dean and now Director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, all American museums and universities spoke. Through the host-at-his-left, Langdon Warner, Harvard curator, explorer, teacher extraordinary, all Americans who love the Far East spoke. Through Graham Carey, man of convictions, the rest of those at the table spoke. Through telegrams and cables the world-at-large spoke.
Presentations appropriate to the birthday were made and included the dummy for the Festschrift volume, "Art and Thought', embodying some forty contributions from admiring scholars all over the ... world. Later he was heard to remark: “I can't see why they should have gone to all this trouble on my account' Also given to him as a token of admiration from his assembled friends-and from several who were unable to be present, was a pair of simple sturdy silver drinking cups-a compliment to his happy marriage, that gave him real delight. Together with the cups went a handsomely lettered testimonial from the donors and a practical English leather carrying case, just large enough to hold everything including the Festschrift and all the telegrams. There was also the beautiful silk embossed seventy line poem of felicitation in Tamil sung by Pandit Navaneetha Krishna Bharathi of Jaffna, Ceylon sent by Mr. Durai Raja Singam of Malaya. -

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After this Dr. Coomaraswamy read his speech, the text of which follows:
I am more than honoured-somewhat, indeed, overcomeby your kindness in being here to-night, by the messages that have been read, and by the presentation of Mr. Bharatha Iyer's Festschrift. I should like to recall the names of four men who might have been present had they been living: Dr. Denman W. Ross, Dr. John Lodge, Dr. Lucian Scherman, and Professor James Woods, to all of whom I am indebted. The formation of the Indian collection in the Museum of Fine Arts was almost wholly due to the initiative of Dr. Denman Ross; Dr. Lodge, who wrote little, will be remembered for his work in Boston and Washington, and also perhaps for his aphorism, "From the Stone Age until now, quelle dégringoiade”; I still hope to complete a work on Reincarnation with which Dr. Scherman charged me not long before his death; and Professor Woods was one of those teachers who can never be replaced.
More than half of my active life has been spent in Boston. I want to express my gratitude in the first place to the Directors and Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, who have always left me entirely free to carry on research not, only in the field of Indian art but at the same time in the wider field of the whole traditional theorv of art and of the relation of man to his work, and in the fields of comparative religion and metaphysics to which the problems of iconography are a natural introduction. I am grateful also to the American Oriental Society whose Editors, however much they differed from me “by temperament and training', as Professor Norman Brown once said, have always felt that I had "a right to be heard' and also have allowed me to be heard. And all this despite the fact that such studies as I have made necessarily led me back to an enunciation of relatively unpopular sociological doctrines. For, as a student of human manufactures, aware that all making is per artem, I could not but see that, as Ruskin said, "Industry without art is brutality', and that men can never be really happy unless they bear an individual responsibility not only for what they do but for the kind and the quality of whatever they make. I could not fail to see that such happiness is forever denied to the majority under the conditions of making that are imposed upon them by what is euphemistically called "free enterprise', that is to say, under the condition of production for profit rather than for use; and no less denied in those totalitarian forms of society in which the folk is as much as in a capitalistic regime reduced to the level of the proletariat. Looking at the works of art that are considered worthy of preservaion in our Museums, and that were once the common objects of the market place,

HoMAGE To ANANDA. K. CooMARAswaMY 145
I could not but realize that a society can only be considered truly civilized when it is possible for every man to earn his living by the very work he would rather be doing than anything else in the world-a condition that has only been attained in social orders integrated on the basis of vocation, svadharma.
At the same time I should like to emphasize that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learnt is never to think for myself; I fully agree with André Gide that toutes choses sont dites dèjà, and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the "inferior philosophers'. Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the Spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse' transcending the differences of
tongues.
This is my seventieth birthday, and my opportunity to say Farewell. For this is our plan, mine and my wife's, to retire and return to India next year; thinking of this as an astam gamana, "going home'. There we expect to rejoin our son Rama, who, after travelling with Marco Pallis in Sikkim and speaking Tibetan there, is now at the Gurukula Kangri learning Sanskrit and Hindi with the very man with whom my wife was studying there twelve years ago. We mean to remain in India, now a free country, for the rest of our lives.
I have not remained untouched by the religious philosophies I have studied and to which I was led by way of the history of art. Intellige ut credas! In my case, at least, understanding has involved belief; and for me the time has come to exchange the active for a more contemplative way of life in which it would be my hope to experience more immediately at least a part of the truth of which my understanding has been so far predominantly logical. And so, though I may be here for another year, I ask you also to say "Good bye'-equally in the etymological sense of the word and in that of the Sanskrit Savagà, a salutation that expresses the wish "May you come into your own', that is, may I know and become what I am, no longer this man so-and-so, but the Self that is also the Being of all beings, my Self and your Self.
As the music of the meaning of his words rang out, men who had gathered to pay their respects as friends, were transformed into disciples. Men who

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had come to a birthday party found themselves at a Last Supper. Men who had been listening to an after-dinner speech found themselves hearkening to the Last Words of the Master. -
A kind of joyous silence followed the necessary if prefunctory applause. (After all, they were at "the Club.') Then very simply and informally in groups of twos and threes the assembled company departed.
ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY (Sir C. P. Ramasivamy Aiyar, K.C.I.E.)
The multiform contacts between Ceylon and India have always been intimate and have resulted, among other things, in a lively and continuous interchange of ideas, literary and artistic. From the days of the Ramayana and through the Buddhist epoch, Lanka played a notable part in the history of India and vice versa.
The middle of the last century witnessed the activities of three men who did a great deal to foster the unity of outlook and the friendliness between Ceylon and India and who, in their several ways, contributed to promote the cause of Indian culture. All the three -Sir P. Arunachalam and his brother, Sir P. Ramanathan as well as Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy—were natives of Jaffna which was practically an off-shoot of the Tamil land; but every one of them played a great part in the life and-politics of Ceylon. The literary and educational work of Sir P. Arunachalam and Sir P. Ramanathan are well known to every one in the south of India. Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy not only made a great position for himself but he bequeathed to India and the world of Art his son, Ananda Coomaraswamy.
The generation to which Coomaraswamy's father belonged adopted European ways and educational

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 147
methods in pursuance of which, young Coomaraswamy was sent to England for education very early in life and he wound up his academic career with a Doctorate of Science in the London University. Returning to Ceylon, he accepted office as Director of the Mineralogical Survey of the Island but the claims of literature and art were paramount and he devoted his life to the study and elucidation of Indian Art in its various aspects. His equipment was many-sided and is proved by his Fellowship both of the Geological and the Linnean Societies. As happened in the cases of Tagore and of J. C. Bose, so it was with CoomaraSwamу; and his Indian contemporaries began to recognise his merits only after he was made a Research Fellow in Persian and Indian Art in that centre of intellectual activity. Both in that capacity and as Vice-President of the India Society, he did pioneering work in explaining to the English and American public the meaning and significance of the artistic output of India.
His services were even more fundamental. Macaulay had held up to scorn the literature and the legends of India and European connoisseurs had damned Indian Art with faint praise. It should be remembered that the traditional arts and crafts of India have survived the impacts of invasion and vandalism; and in various corners of India, masons and sculptors are still to be found, especially in the Indian States, who continue the vital tradition of the immemorial past. Lord Curzon did more than any Indian for the preservation of the monuments of the country and unfortunately, educated India, in the early years of the 19th century, was almost studiedly neglectful of its heritage. The arousing of the national consciousness with regard to the ancient and mediaeval art of India was largely the work of Ananda Coomaraswamy and E. B. Havell; and credit must also go to Abanindranath Tagore and his followers including Nandalal Bose, in effecting the renaissance of Indian painting by drawing inspiration from

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Ajanta. Happily such ignoring of our Art is a thing of the past and India is now on the threshold of a new age. The new nationalistic movement has indeed created a revolution against the imitation of the West.
Combining in himself a deep knowledge of Buddhistic philosophical and artistic masterpieces and those of the Aryan and Dravidian intellect and spirit, Dr. Coomaraswamy started a movement for national education in Lanka in the vernaculars as an essential preliminary to the revival of Indian culture. He lectured in American and European centres on Indian and Sinhalese Art. He studied the methods of the Indian craftsman and wrote on his technique. He spoke on Art and Swadeshi and analysed the Visvakarma legend in collaboration with Sister Nivedita and produced excellent examples of Indian Art exhibiting the treasures of India and Ceylon. The name of Dr. Coomaraswamy is epecially associated with the study and exposition of what has been designated "Rajput Painting'. The term is perhaps misleading for the reason that, as pointed out by Mr. Havell, although the traditions of Hindu painting were specially formative in Rajputana, yet they were, by no means, exclusively Rajput. Travancore, Cochin, Pudukkotta, Kashmir, Bengal and Gujerat produced their own Schools of Art which owed their inspiration to the same influences that operated in Rajputana and all Hindu painters, even when painting on paper, have followed the technique of Mural painting which was a feature of the Hindu Chitrasaia. Whereas the Musalman painter was concerned mainly with the life of the Court and the Camp, the Hindu artist was not only a chronicler of rural and scenic aspects but essentially a religious teacher clothing the mysteries of religion in familiar garb and introducing into his paintings the events of daily life. The so-called Rajput painting is, in fact, a sequel to the Buddhist frescoes wherein the Indian artist displayed perfect acquaintance with the intricacies of the effects of light, and Coomaraswamy himself has thus described Indian

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Art: "This vigorous archaic outline is the basis of its language. Wiry, distinct and sharp as that golden rule of art and life desired by Blake: sensitive, reticent and tender, it perfectly reflects the severe self-control and sweet serenity of Indian life'.
Dr, Coomaraswamy specialised in the exposition of Hindu painting but this was not his only sphere of activity. He published his own reading of Lord Buddha and his gospel. He tried to effect a new ap
tion of Nature in Art, in addition to compiling a sumptous catalogue of the Indian collection in the Museum at Boston. All art is one although its manifestations may be many; and it is therefore not surprising that Dr. Coomaraswamy lectured and wrote on the art of dance as illustrated by the Dance of Siva and Kali and Krishna and collaborated with an Andhra expert in a publication on Abhinaya entitled "The Mirror of Gesture’. His work was ever characterised by a keen faculty of discrimination as well as the utmost delicacy of feeling. Behind and above all his activities there was a passionate devotion to Indian aspirations and an ambition to create in the country of his origin, a devotion to those impulses which made India the paradise of Fine Art in the days of the epic past. The interpretation to the European and American world of the essential and inseparable symbolism of Indian painting and sculpture and the explanation of the inner spirit and rationale of Indian Art were the main contributions of Dr. Coomaraswamy; and reading one of his latest works “Why Exhibit Works of Art' published in 1943, one realises with what concentrated enthusiasm he applied himself to his self-imposed duty of interpreting Indian thought-forms such as those personifying the allegories of Nataraja dancing the Cosmic dance, Krishna as the protector of his flock capturing the souls of his devotees with the music of his flute and the eternal virgin, Kanya Kumari, waiting for her union with the Lord.

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DR. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY
(Robert Treat Paine Jr., Asst. Curator Asiatic Dept. of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts)
The intellectual productivity of Dr. Coomaraswamy was hard to realize for those of us who merely saw the quiet research of a man before a well piled desk or heard the busy clicking of his typewriter. His work at the museum evolved gradually from the history of art to the underlying principles of aesthetics and from these to the study of metaphysics. With each change of interest the radius of his influence became greater. Yet to his colleagues in the museum the quietness of his personality never suggested the eminence of his position.
He loved a philosophical argument, but it was rather his keen perception in the use of words which made him a stimulating conversationalist. The naturalness with which he could pass from the medieval or oriental point of view to the modern often became an incentive to thought. One day he remarked that “vacation' no longer had its original meaning. Once it designated a holiday or Holy Day, while now it suggests merely a period of idleness. Distinctions in connotation caused him to observe broad social changes, changes which were anything but progressive from the Doctor's point of view.
Even in discussions of art theory which often took place in the museum dining-room it was hard to correlate one's own field of interest with his theories which concerned all of art. But what was surprising was the consistency of his theory and taste, even in fields where he did not possess any specific knowledge. In the whole range of Chinese art he felt that the bronzes of the Shang and Chou periods were the most monumental products of this culture. Despite the glories of Sung painting, he was moved most by the primitive ritualistic work of unknown, or at least

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arguable, meaning. He enjoyed this type of art not because it conformed to his ideas but because this was an art which his attitude made enjoyable.
Few men could have been more industrious. His Office in the museum was pleasantly withdrawn so that he was seldom disturbed. To him interruptions, unless they were to benefit the work of a fellow student, were wasted time in his zeal to clarify and express his thoughts. He seemed in his being to illustrate the saying in one of his favourite authors, Meister Eckhart, "that "the soul is constant only to this unknowing knowing which keeps her pursuing'.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH
TO ART (Leland C. Wyman, Boston University, U.S.A.)
“It is in this arena that I shall throw down a minimum challenge: I put it to you that it is not by our aesthetic, but only by their rhetoric, that we can hope to understand and interpret the arts of other peoples and other ages than our Own'.1
One aspect of our culture's compulsive habit of wasting much precious time in fuss and bustle about non-essentials is the frequent preoccupation of educated men with just what kind of an "-ologist' their colleague may be. This magic in labels is nowhere more evident than in the field of education. The man who does not find himself tied by training, circumstances, professional requirements, or the insistence of his colleagues, to one restricted tag is rare indeed. One such great mind by its very nature could not be trammeled by the inventions of feebler intellects was that of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. We were first drawn together by mutual interests in art, in education, but especially in
1. A. K. Coomaraswamy, Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (London, 1946) p. 34. Italics mine.

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anthropology, and it is of Coomaraswamy "the anthropologist' that I would speak here,2 and, in spite of my remarks above, I would apply a “label' to his approach to art, one which he himself pref: fired when he spoke of “the superiority of the anthropological to the psychological and aesthetic approaches tu an usinfamiliar art'.3 To restrict his multifarious approach by one such designation is no fairer than to tie his name to a single discipline, but for the purposes of education in art "the anthropological approach' is more meaningful than simply “the Coomaraswamy approach' and is more apt, I believe, than any other possible title. For Dr. Coomaraswamy was ever mindful of what the native artist had to say about the use and meaning of his product, and this is the attitude of the anthropological field worker. Said he, “My thesis will be, then, that if we propose to use or understand any works of art (with the possible exception of contemporary works, which may be “unintelligible'), we ought to abandon the term "aesthetic in its present application and return to "rhetoric, Quintillian’s beme dicemdi scientia”,4 and in his discussions of the arts he was as ready to quote from the writings of Boas, Malinowski, Fr. Schmidt, Parsons, Mead, as from those of aestheticians or art historians. In any specific instance he was curious not only about the statements of the native maker but also about those of native artisans of "traditional' societies
2. Others have and for long will continue to speak of him as an accomplished linguist, historian, metaphysician, social philosopher. In his earlier years he even attained eminence as a geologist and mineralogist (Director of Mineral Surveys for Ceylon). And all of us who knew him have poignant memories of his kindness, his friendliness, his capacity for moving simplicity as well as for profurdity. On short acquaintance our awe before his learning was not lessened but was soon tempered by affection. I remember with gratitude his pains in answering my slightest question, but I recall with warmth his talking "dog-talk' to my Scottish terrier.
3. The Art Bulletin, Vol. XXI, p. 204, 139. 4. Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought, op. cit., p. 10.

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anywhere, 5 Iceland, Celtic, Australian, American Indian. As he himself said of the anthropologist, he was "looking for something that is neither in the work of art as if in a place, nor in the artist as a private property, but to which the work of art is a pointer', and, "For him, the signs, constituting the language of a significant art' were "full of meanings'.6 "The superiority of the anthropological' approach to art should be nowhere more valid than in the teaching of art appreciation and history in College and University, so for those who will attend here was Dr. Coomaraswamy's great contribution to art education.
Another contribution, perhaps one of his greatest, was to the understanding of the inter-relationships of the mythology and folklore of the world, and folkloristic studies are usually considered a branch of anthropology. He once Wrote, *Peutêtre aucun sujet n'a-t-il été ètudiè par le savant moderne d'une fascon plus 'extensive’ que celui du folklore; et peut-être n'en . est-il aucun dont l'interprètation ait été faussè par plus de préjugés*7, and “Le contenu du folklore est métaphysique. Notre impuissance éa le reconnaître est due en premier é morte ignorance insondable de la métaphysique et de ses termes techniques.”8 Without ranging himself dogmatically On either side of the controversy as to whether or not it is now possible to reconstruct an ur-mythos which bocame world-wide by whatever process, and without proselytizing as to
5. Cf. Sir Gawin and the Green Knight: Indra and Namuci (Speculum, Vol. XIX, pp. 2-23, 1944), p. 18 ff.
6. Symptom, Diagnosis, and Regimen (College Art Journal, Vol. 2, pp. 121-124, 1943).
7. There is, perhaps no subject that has been more extensively investigated and more prejudically misunderstood by the modern scientist than that of folklore.' Figures of Speech, op. cit. p. 216. r*
8. De La “Mentalite Primitive' (Etudes Traditionelles, 44e Annee, No. 236, pp. 277-300, 1939), pp. 277, 278. *The content of folklore is metaphysical. Our failure to recognize this is primarily due to our own abysmal ignorance of metaphysics and of its technical terms.'

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source9 he compiled and interpreted metaphysically innumerable unsuspected parallels, sparing no portion of the world's literature or oral tradition. Quite justifiably he could say "nous-mêmes, qui nous appelons des anthropologistes''.10
THE GENIUS. (F. L. Woodward, M.A. (Cantab., Rovella, Tasmania).
I first met Ananda Coomararswamy in Ceylon, in 1904. He had then just been appointed Director of the Mineralogical Survey, financed by South Kensington Museum, London. He and his assistant, Mr. Parsons, used to travel all over the country in bullock carts, living for the most part in the jungle in their tents and carts, busied with the geology, gems and minerals of Ceylon. The son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy, an accomplished Sanskrit scholar and benefactor of the Ceylon Tamils, and an accomplished English lady, he had studied at London University, of which he was then B.Sc.
When not abroad in his cart he lived in a bungalow just outside Kandy with his wife, Ethel, herself an artist and German scholar; she was busy translating Dr. Geiger's Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa. I spent many pleasant days there. He was then occupied with his fine work on Ceylon Mediaeval Art, parts of which I remember reading, when he was typing it out as a thesis for his London Doctorate of Science. This he gained about 1905. Tall, of aquiline features and of distinguished bearing, he wore European clothes, but always with a turban.
9. “But we have no intention whatever of suggesting that India was therefore the source of the Western matiere.' Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, op. cit, p. 18.
10. De la mentalite primitive, op. cit, p. 279. “We, who call ourselves anthropologists.'

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In the years 1905-7 there was much talk in Ceylon of the necessity of dress reform and a return to ancient customs. A society was formed and a journal started, which, however, became the Ceylon National Review, in the editorship of which I joined him and Dr. Arthur de Silva. This journal was devoted to all aspects of national welfare in Ceylon. Later he thought and wrote of the proposed Ceylon University, and stil later his uncle. Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam started the Ceylon University Journal, with which also I was associated. Both Journals survived only a few years, and, as is the way in Ceylon, died natural deaths for want of support.
He left Ceylon, I think, in 1907, since which time I never saw him, but have corresponded with him frequently during the following years, when he was director of the Oriental Art Department at the Boston Museum, U.S.A. -
When he left Ceylon for U.S.A. he was succeeded by Mr. Parsons who was unfortunately lost in the jungle at Nuwara Eliya, December 1909, at the same time as the famous disaster of Messina. His body was not discovered till some years later.
He went to England with his wife and bought an ancient building at Campden, Gloucestershire, where he set up a printing-press, once used by the famous artist, William Morris, the Essex Press, where he turned out many volumes, his Ceylon Art, Thirty Indian Songs etc. His range of intellect was wide He was well acquainted with Tamil and Sanskrit literature, though he did not claim to be a scholar in these languages, and was familiar with the classical languages of Europe. Though not himself a musician he had a complete understanding of the Indian modes of music, the symbology of the gestures of dancing women on which also he wrote a book. Before leaving the East he joined the Theosophical Society, of which Mrs. Annie Besant became President in 1907, she herself being keenly interested in the revival of

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Indian art and literature. After some years in England, busied with innumerable writings and printings, he went to Boston, U.S.A. as Director of the Oriental Art Department of the Museum, and this post he held till his death this year (1947) at the age of seventy.
It would be impossible for me to enumerate the many books and articles he wrote during those years; he always sent me a copy. I may however mention, in addition to those already named;-Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, Myths of the Hindus and Balddhists (with Sister Nivedita), Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon, Rajput Paintings, Essays in National Idealism, Songs from the Punjab and Kashmir, Origin of the Buddha Image, Visvakarma and Aims of Indian Art, and in 1942 Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government.
Latterly he spent much time over the Pali Scrip. tures, and, while modestly not claiming to be a Pali scholar, sent in many suggestions to the late Dr. C. A. Rhys Davids, and at the time of his death was busy with a volume of extracts from the Tipitakas together with Miss Horner, Secretary of the Pali Text Society. All this work has been held up of late years by the shortage of paper in England.
He had no patience with the feeble imitations in modern art of ancient works, which can never be produced again. Their time has passed. One cannot step twice into the same stream. So also he would not allow of reconstruction of Gothic or other ancient buildings, holding with William Morris, whom he regarded as one of his masters, that one may prop up, repair and strengthen a building, but never restore.
To conclude this brief record of this most distinguished son of Ceylon and England (for his gifted mother was English) I will say that he was successful because he possessed the secret of developing what is called genius, the imperishable atom which records the karma, but which is powerless until developed. What is called "genius' may be born with imagination,

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but no genius is born with knowledge. Knowledge can only be acquired in the Ordinary way, by the power of intense concentration on what one is doing. This he had, whether designing a picture, copying a figure, printing a fine page or writing an article. Thus possessing by heredity on both sides a finely complex brain and, as we should say in the East, a rich carmic record of past lives, he, by this application, may be termed a genius. To think that a genius is "heaven born' and steps forth in perfection is an error.
A NATIONALIST. (Dr. D, P. Khanapurkar, M.A., Ph.D., Вотbay).
Dr. Coomaraswamy is not only a true nationalist, but is also an internationalist and an idealist all combined in one. At the same time he is different from all other nationalists and internationalists, in the fact that he owes his nationalism to Indian culture. In the understanding of Indian culture and Art he sees the regeneration of Nationalism, He has a firm belief in the greatness of India and its ancient culture. According to him the basis of national unity and nationalism lies in the ancient culture of India, whose ideal is inspired by religious sentiment of self-sacrifice and self-realisation. And to understand this great ideal he advocates the study of Indian Art.
Indian Art, to him, is an expression of India's self, as it has that essential feature of Indian outlook namely religious outlook. He states that Indian Art express something that, is infinite, inexhaustible and unknown. In short Indian Art expresses divinity, and he advocates the study of this Art, as it is bound to influence the character and mind, as well as to teach lessons of love, duty and self-consciousness. In addition to Indian Art he speaks of the understanding of Indian Music and Dance. He

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looks at both of them as full of hope and message for iankind. While the Jndian Music appeals to the soul, the Indian Dance idealises every passion, human and divine. That is why he insists on study of Indian culture as a whole-the culture in which lies excuisite sweetness of colour and beauty. Indian culture is the one, which accepts life as religion, while the Indian Art is Beauty governed by love that is God. He considers it as the duty of an artist to give expression to this divinity underlying Art and Culture M
All Art to him, is rather a spiritual discovery than a creation. He opines that like science Art also has the aim of unity of formulating natural laws. And both have the common aim to reach Platonic Idea. While Art seeks this aim deductively and synthetically, Science does it inductively and analytically. His idea of Art contains in itself the deepest principles of life, the truest guide to the greatest art, the Art of Living. He says that this Art of living or life can only be realised by the inspiration of religious and national ideal in one. And this is possible in the immediate future by passion for selfsacrifice and self-realisation. It is here that India. steps in to play a prominent part in this Art of Life. The true life, the ideal of Indian Culture is itself a unity and an Art, as it is inspired by one ruling passion, the desire to realise a spiritual inheritance. Hence he advocates the study of Indian Culture and Art. In true Art he sees not only the spiritual, but the material regeneration of India. He has no belief in any regeneration of Indian people, which does not find expression in Art. It is this outlook, which makes him state that nations are not made by traders and politicians but by artists and poets. According to him it is only by becoming artists and poets, that Indians can attain the highest ideal of nationality.
With this background he views the National movement in India and considers it more than a political conflict. He considers it as a struggle for

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spiritual and mental freedom from the domination of an alien ideal. And hence he says that so long as Indians are prepared to accept an education, the aim (of which is to make them English in all but colour, they cannot achieve a national unity. He views with danger the moral and spiritual subjection of India and thinks that by it Humanity is impoverished. He can not think of the realisation of political unity until Indian life is again inspired by the unity of the national culture. According to him India already had essentials of nationality, namely geographical unity and common historic evolution or culture. To him the differences that separate the Indian communities are nothing compared with the differences between the Indian and European. He states that diverse peoples of India are like the parts of some magic puzzle, seemingly impossible to fit together but falling easily into its place, when once the key is known and this key is the realisation of the fact that the parts do fit together. He opines that Mohamedan and Perso-Arabian Culture have played a great part in the historic evolution of India. Citing the example of Great Mogul Emperor, Akbar, who had great religious toleration, he says that Akbar was able to dispose of the Hindu-Muslim difficulty as he knew that there could be no real diversity of interest between Hindu and Muslim. This left him to treat them both with impartiality. It was not his interest to divide and rule. On the contrary he identified himself with his kingdom and did not entertain any interests that clashed with the kingdom's interests. In the words of Confucious "He was the Prince, who loved what the people loved and hated, what the people hated'. He was the Father of the people.
As far as the National Movement is concerned, he thinks that two sides of the Movement, the material and the spiritual are inseparable and must attain success or fail together. It is to him a part of the conflict between the ideals of Imperialism and Nationalism. By succeeding in the movement India can achieve leadership in Nationalism, i.e. the will

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and the power to give. Like staunch nationalists his objective is the control of the Government and not a share in the administration of the country. He wants political freedom and full responsibility, as essentials for self-respect and self-development of India. So he declares that India should achieve freedom from spiritual and political domination of England, if they will, with their consent and with their help, but if they will not, then without their consent and inspite of their resistance. Yet he warns the authorities and the leaders by saying that none can be truly qualified to govern or educate, who cannot make themselves one with the people or the religion.
His inspiration for nationalism was love first of India, and secondly of England and of the World. He did not consider nationalism, separate from internationalism which recognised the rights and worth of other nations to be even as one's own. According to him all true nationalists are idealists and being himself in that category he could not bear to see the idealism of Asia in danger. He warned Europe that “Beware Lest great Nemesis turn back on you by the hand of Asia, the imperialism of wealth of violence with which you have armed her'. He frankly utters that in the degradation of Asia lies the cause of Europe's ruin. In Asia's upliftment is the safety of Europe.
His love for India and the Indian Culture leads him to appeal to her people, "India’s ancient contribution to the civilization of the world does not and inever can justify her children in believing that her work is done. There is yet work for her to do, which if not done by her, will remain for ever undone. It is for us to show that great and lovely cities can be built again and things of beauty made in them, without the pollution of the air by the smoke or the poisoning of the river by chemicals. It is for us to show that man can be the master, not the slave of the mechanism, he himself has created. It is for us to show that industrial production can be organised on

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 6.
socialistic lines without converting the whole world into groups of state owned factory'. He expects India to play such a bright role, in this darkened atom-mad world. Yet this role is not complete for India. He wants India also to show that science and Faith can be reconciled on a higher plane than any reached so far. He wants her to intellectualise and spiritualise the religious conceptions of the West and to show that the true meaning of the religious tolerance is not the refraining from persecution but the real belief that different religions need not be mutually exclusive. This was the big part that he wanted India to play in the reconstruction of the world, and he thought her capable of it, as he believed in that secret of Indian greatness, namely "that all knowledge and all truth are absolute and infinite, waiting not to be found,' and that the secret of "infinite superiority of intuition, the method of dire perception over the intellect, regarded as a mere organ of discrimination'.
It was the belief in greatness of India and her ancient culture, which led Dr. Coomaraswamy to raise the prestige of India in foreign countries. Though endowed with a soul of an artist, he served as India's unofficial national ambassador, and by his works on Art and Culture of India, he turned the eyes of the foreigners towards the glory of Indian Culture, and created interest in them about India. Thus he was able to serve his nation not only as an artist, but as a staunch nationalist and a patriot.
I am indebted to Miss Vimal S. Navalkar M.A., for helping - me in drawing notes on the subject matter of the article.

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THE ARTS OF MINISTRATION AND THE ARTS OF FLATTERY (Geoffrey Grigsom, Swindom, England)
DA B.B.C. Broadcast on 14th February, 1947
I read not long ago-perhaps you read it as wellan article by an art critic, in one of our able, intelligently controlled weekly papers, which reviewed the King's Pictures at Burlington House. With a shudder of ecstacy, the article ended-it was not a woman's fashion paper-it ended "Goody What pleasures there are for those who like pictures'. I Was hunting around to get that quotation right when my child, who is five, rushed out of the kitchen crying "Goody, Goody, Goody, ginger pudding for lunch'. Reflect for a minute that among the King's Pictures are paintings by Fra Angelico, Durer, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, reflect that the weekly paper which published that ecstacy is one much in earnest, morally in earnest, about politics and society; and you come straight to the point of Ananda Coomaraswamy's book. It is an attack, an attack on the conception of "fine arts', an attack upon aesthetics, upon elevating our likes and our dislikes into a science a pseudoscience, I'd rather call it. "Goody' and aesthetic experience are the same things. Aesthetic experience, perception by the senses, is, Coomaraswamy says, and he's not the first to say it, "a faculty that we share with animals and vegetables and is irrational'. That art should be held a matter of aesthetic experience, and nothing else, held to be ginger pudding, is a modern heresy; less than two hundred years old. It contradicts the practice and beliefs of the major artists of the world. In brief, Coomaraswamy's book concerns, in his words, “the doctrine about art that the greater part of mankind has accepted from prehistoric times till yesterday'.
Coomaraswamy lives within two traditions-the tradition of Europe and the tradition of India-he is

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an Indian; the tradition of art, within those two traditions, is the same. And it is not aesthetic. It is the tradition, whether of Plato, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or of early Buddhist writings, that art is ministration. Not aesthetic, not flattery, not selfexpressive. But art ministering to you and me. It is Plato's art "caring for the bodies and souls of citiZens'. It is conveying, in a pleasing form, the highest kind Cf wisdom. Coomaraswamy maintains that now, in the tywentieth century, we leave out any notion of conveying wisdom; we forget the wisdom, we believe that art-poetry, painting, music-any art, is simply the method by which the older and greater artists conveyed their wisdom, is simply the pleasure.
Let me give three examples. Going back to goody and the ginger pudding, in the first number of a new art magazine a critic has made an anthology of pictures. Introducing it he makes several statements, all of which come out of aesthetics, out of the modern science of our likes and dislikes. He says "the chief occupation of the artist is to project the world of his imagination'. He says that "widespread calamity has discredited the notion of pleasure, diverting by a continuous pressure the artist from his natural bent. He says if only the artist could become independent once more, he "would have the skill...to make us believe again in the importance of happiness'. All that you can condense to three things, to self-expression, pleasure, and happiness as the ends of art. Another example: have you noticed how difficult it is to keep distinct in one's recollection one painting from another in the work of abstract and near abstract painters? One of the reasons for that, in my belief, is that picture after picture by the same artist is simply the expression produced by one stimulus after another to form, one stimulus which differs very little from the next stimulus. A Titian, say the National Gallery's "Baachus and Ariadne', stays distinct in the recollection from another Titian; why, because each one has a meaning, a meditated

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purpose, far more complicated than a mere message of pleasant form, or engaging colour. I noticed a Sunday art critic not long ago confessing, in a review of such an exhibition, that all he could say was “I like this or I like that'. Aesthetic art had reduced him to aesthetic judgment. And I feel much the same if I go to a large exhibition of pictures and sketches by Constable, because one Constable sketch differs from another by only a little more than the difference between Constable's moods. His pictures are also aesthetic, also self-expression, the autobiography of a not very interesting self.
Now a third example; a living and popular poet uses words in his poems not as Coomaraswamy would have us use words; not as "specific referents', and not as symbols; but in a way that Coomaraswamy calls irrational "for merely aesthetic and non-artistic purposes'. The words forming these poems bubble out on to the page-you must take my word for ithaphazardly and without meaning; the words, the images, as he's stated himself bubble out from his unconscious and then they're arranged with no ordering by the intellect, or not very much. If these poems are enjoyed-it appears that they are-it can't be anything else but chaos calling to chaos, junk shop calling to psychological junkshop. Some years ago this poet defined his notion of poetry. He said “whatever is hidden should be made naked. To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean. Poetry, recording the stripping of the individual darkness must inevitably cast light upon what has been hidden for too long, and by so doing, make clean the naked exposure'. He thought his poetry would be useful to others, because others would be acquainted with their own similar struggle to reveal what was hidden'. Self-expression, you see, once more, self-indulgence; all three of my examples add up to art as self-expression or art as pleasure; and all, especially the last, the poetry of undressing, are something very different from the

HOMAGE TO ANANDA. K. COOMARASWAMY 1.65
'Katharsis' of Aristotle and Plato, which was not plunging into oneself, but a separation, as Coomaraswamy says, from oneself, a separation from one's passions and one's own natural darkness-in fact, declares Coomaraswamy, art was held to act cathartically by 'sacrificing the old and bringing into being a new and more perfect man'. A comment he makes is this: "the so-called emancipation of the artist is nothing but his final release from any obligation whatever to the God within him and his opportunity to imitate himself or any other common clay at its worst'. "All wilful self-expression', he goes on "is auto-erotic, narcissistic and Satanic and the more its paranoiac quality develops, suicidal'.
Again, to make his case still clearer, he says that "No one will deny that art is a means of communication by signs or symbols. Our current methods of analysis are interpretations of these signs in their inverted sense, that is, as psychological expressions, as if the artist'-remember that “making clean the naked exposure'-'as if the artist had nothing better to do than to make an exhibition of himself to his neighbour or of his neighbour to himself. But personalities are interesting only to their owners, or, at most, to a narrow circle of friends; and it is not the voice of the artist but the voice of the monument, the demonstration of a quod erat demomstrandum, that we want to hear'.
Two points occur to me now, which are valid and which need to be made. One is obvious, the other not so obvious. The less obvious point it this: Coomaraswamy is not just attacking modern art, the art of poetry broadcasts, or exhibitions in London galleries or New York galleries, now. "Modern' goes back a long way, which is why I mentioned Constable. Constable was very pleased to think that his pictures were regarded as the music of Nature using nature in a very simple literal sense. In a talk lately I mentioned

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an Oxford Professor's statement made approvingly (further), in 1946, that "the modern conception of poetry is of something which shocks, surprises and enthrals, something which gives an immediate and overwhelming thrill'. Fifty-three years ago Coventry Patmore was going for a Cambridge lecturer-in fact you may be surprised to hear Edmund Gosse, for saying that poetry was “an art which appeals to the emotions and the emotions only'. Patmore held that poetry was "the mind of man', that it used "the female or the sensitive soul, as its accidental or complementary means of expression'. The sensitive soul was the music. "The sweetness of the lips increaseth learning', Patmore quoted; and then he continued: “But what is the sweetness of the lips without learning? An alluring harlot, and Mr. Gosse’s conception of the Muse'. That was 1893. Going still further back to 1801, Coleridge wrote some comments on a statement by one of his friends that the object of poetry is to please: "Dammed nonsense' Coleridge wrote down in the margin. "But why does it please? Because it pleases?' And he added that poets must aim at pleasure as their "specific means', but aim "at something nobler as their end' -at “cultivating and predisposing the heart of the reader'. That is Coomaraswamy's position: it is the traditional view of the arts. It is the view that, at least, after a hundred and fifty years, or more, things getting worse and worse, most of us, instead of a few of us, seem to reject. “Most of us' includes the Academician who apes Constable as well as the မျိုးဝှိct painter who logically develops from Constable.
My other point, the obvious one, is that if we do reject that traditional view, if we do mistake means for ends, we make nonsense of all great art and great artists of the past; we make nonsense of Dante saying he is one who "when Love inspires me, attend, and go setting it forth in such wise as he dictates within me'. We make nonsense of Milton praying to the “Eternal

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Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge', nonsense of Henry James looking, as Miss Bosanquet reminded us, looking in writers' works, when they have become mature "for some expression of a total view of the world they have been so actively observing'. And of course we do make nonsense of the great artists, in the spirit of goody and the ginger pudding, because. we go to the Divine Comedy or Milton or the Bible as to “Literature', in inverted commas, and neglect most of their meaning most of their ministration, - most of their intention, and wallow in the means, wallow in their poetics. Coomaraswamy quotes the case of an American Indian “who cannot understand how we can like his songs and not share their spiritual content.' Of course it is much easier like that, much easier to rely on One's sensations. If you asked me why Mr. Dylan Thomas's poetry seems much more popular now in England than Mr. Auden's poetry, I would say because it is a meaningless, magical kind of poetry. It demands no intellectual effort; whereas Mr. Auden's poetry is meaningful, it is full of meaning that you have to grapple with. I don't say his poetry was always like that. But he is now on the side of ministration, on the side of Plato, or Coleridge, or Coomaraswamy, and not on the side of aesthetics.
Its easy as I say to rely on one's sensationseasy to go to the Ashmolean-to take a very simple example-and enjoy the colours, and arrangement, and birds and animals and flames of Piero di Cosimo's “Forest Fire', to say "goody in front of it: but we can't understand, can't feel it entirely, if we don't trouble to discover that it is a picture about the development of man, the uses of fire, and the delivery of man from his animal origins and connections. We are forgetting how to look at such pictures, forgetting how to read Dante or Milton. s
In fact, one thing which Coomaraswamy makes plain is that this sensational way of ours of looking at the art of past epochs is pointless and idle; that

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the iconography, the intentions of the artist, the assumptions of the culture to which he belonged, are matters of importance first importance. The meaning is not the means.
A critic argued to me recently that the common aesthetic elements of all works of art were in fact art, so that if one is sensitive enough, just sentitive, all works of art of all epochs have an immediate eternal validity. The meaning, he said, all the intentions, concern and meditation of the artist, all that meaning was only the trigger he pulled to produce for our delight the eternal means. I objected, that there was no great artist in the history of the world who would agree for one minute; and I had the astonishing reply that the artists themselves don't know, the artists themselves are always the worst judges. Think of a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Milton a Coleridge, and that reply must strike you as a monstrous insult to them and to our status as human beings. Coomaraswamy gives in full an early Buddhist document on the artist's preparation for painting. The artist purifies himself, he contemplates, he confesses his sins, he prays, he realises in his mind what he is to paint, and performs an act of worship. This is Act One of the painting; and it may be enough, he may go no further. The actual painting, the art of skill process, is merely Act Two. We elevate Act Two totally; and absolutely above Act One. Clearly if such art does become exclusive, does become dominant in the world, then there is nothing to do except look at it. One can say nothing about it except to repeat “this is art', except to say "examine it and you will see that it is art like the picture alongside, but that the two artists have different personalities and combine their elements in slightly different ways'. So art becomes tea, and the spectators and the critics become tea-tasters who smack their lips at a nice cup; and one says to another "this is not your cup of tea'. -

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It's time to give a clinching, summarising quotation from Coomaraswamy. This: "So long as we make of art a merely aesthetic experience or can speak seriously of a disinterested aesthetic contemplation, it will be absurd to think of art as pertaining to the “higher things of life'. The artist's function is not simply to please, but to present an ought-to-be-known in such a manner as to please when seen or heard, and so expressed as to be convincing. We must make it clear that it is not the artist, but the man, who has both the right and the duty to choose the theme; that the artist has no license to say anything not in itself worth saying, however eloquently, that it is only by his wisdom as a man that he can know what is worth saying or making. Art is a kind of knowledge by which we know how to do our work, but it does not tell us what we need, and therefore ought, to make'.
Experience suggests-my experience, perhaps yours-suggests that we are apt to treat art, as Coomaraswamy argues we do, as if it were an aphrodisiac; but my own view is not quite as gloomy as his. Not quite. There are signs, a few signs of a return to the traditional view which every major artist and critic always come to in the end, has always defended-which Coomaraswamy defends and expounds with such muscle, clarity, and scholarship. The traditional view, he says, can be ignored-this book of his has been almost totally ignored-but it cannot be refuted. I must say another thing. Books in which we convey our being, I hope, we most of us regard as property. We sell ourselves, and see to it that we put "All rights reserved' at the beginning. You will find “all rights reserved' at the beginning of new religious books by respected teachers and theologians. But you will not find it at the beginning of “Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought' Coomaraswamy's book is his being: he believes in the importance of his view. On the back of the title page it has "no rights reserved': it says that quotations may be made without permission. Why?

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Because Coomaraswamy performs an act of ministration; not an act of flattery. He is a minister, not an aesthete. A man in earnest, not an admirer of goodies.
A TRIBUTE TO ANANDA
COOMARASWAMY
(Јауатta Padтатabha, Coloтbo).
The death of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy at Boston on September ninth, shortly after the celebration of his seventieth birthday, deprived the world of learning of a scholar and critic who had earned a unique reputation throughout Europe, Asia and America as an authority on art and the philosophy of art. Yet he would have repudiated the notion that any views which he held on the arts, or on philosophy or religion, have any special claim on our attention. The present article is merely concerned to sketch very briefly some of the traditional views on these subjects which he expounded as a corrective to the current heresies of the age.
His approach to art was unusual in many ways. He started life as a scientist, and the training in scientific method which he received as a geologist and botanist gave a characteristic exactness and precision to his later studies of the arts. These qualities were developed by his reading of scholastic philosophy, which taught him to begin every critical or speculative discussion with the exact definition of terms. Moreover he was preoccupied with philology as well as philosophy and therefore used words with a scholarly sense of their derivation and of their senantic OVertones.
And finally he had an advantage not enjoyed by every art critic-a deep and intensive knowledge of literature, which appears to have embraced the whole of the secular and religious thought of both East and

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West. It enabled him, for example, to bring to bear upon Dante, a subject on which he did not claim to be a specialist, an erudition which, it has been said, "makes most European criticism look not merely simple but absurdly provincial”.
In one of his more controversial essays, entitled Why Eachibit Works of Art? he remarks that a museum or art gallery, if it is to serve any useful purpose in the community, needs both a Curator to act as a custodian of the exhibits and a Docent to expound them to the uninitiated. The role of Docent was his vocation and his lifework. He interpreted art as seriously and as reverently as he interpreted religion in books like Buddha, and the Gospel of Buddhism (1916) or Hinduism and Buddhism (1946). It was not without reason that a writer in The Net) York Herald Tribune called him “the scholar, curator and priest of Oriental art'.
He took as his point of departure the dictum of Plato that art is an intellectual virtue; and he thought it his function as docent and hierophant not to put forward theories of his own but to expound what he called the "normal' or traditional view of art-a view which is far from being normal in the present abnormal age. He mistrusted the personal viewpoint. In some ways, though the parallel cannot be pressed too far, his contribution to art criticism resembles that of T. S. Eliot to literary criticism. He stressed that art is not the expression of personality but a release from personality. As Eliot in his famous essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent compared the poet to a catalyst, Coomaraswamy insists that the artist must be not an agent but an instrument of inspiration-not, certainly, a passive instrument like a stenographer but one who consciously makes use of himself as an instrument, who is “both a contemplative and a good workman'.
Like Eliot too he had a keen sense of the continuity and contemporaneity of diverse cultures. A view of art which held good for ancient India,

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classical Greece or medieval Europe should, according to him, still be valid for today, if today's art were sane and healthy; and above all the civilsations of East and West were complementary and inseparable parts of 'one world'.
From the fact that the artist is an instrument 'inspired' by something outside himself, it follows that art is, as the Abbe Bremond argued of poetry, an act of prayer. Coomaraswamy remarks that all religious art is “visual theology', and he everywhere implies that all genuine art is fundamentally religious. In a civilisation which was sound the magnificent phrase “visual theology' would be as applicable to factory and theatre as to cathedral and temple, and as valid for an aeroplane as for a statue. . . He condemns the subjective or “aesthetic' view of art and argues, on the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas, that whatever is made only to give pleasure is a luxury, and that the love of art under these conditions becomes not merely a frivolity but a mortal sin. All art is symbolic, and "the utility of iconography must come to an end when the vision is face to face.'
These ideas Coomaraswamy did not claim as his own. He dissected the work of art before him and reconciled the results of his dissection with the generalisations of the great philosophers and mystics on the beautiful, the true and the good. The “normal' view of art which he arrived at by these methods is in direct conflict with the accepted canons of most modern criticism. . - -
He rebuts, for example the notion that poetry is not the thing said but the way of saying it, that the purest poetry is that with the least intellectual content and that the test of a poem's greatness is whether the late A. E. Housman would have cut himself he had happened to remember a line from it when he was shaving. ; い
He opposes the fashionable view of the fine arts, as propounded, for instance, by Paul Valéry, that the

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chief characteristic of art is its complete uselessness; and when critics speak of significant form, he reminds them that the word significant is meaningless unless the form is significant of something, and that the value or truth of that something must be considered in assessing the work of art.
At the other extreme he rejects the utilitarian view of art as represetented in the saying of Le Corbusier that a house is a “machine for living in'. Even domestic architecture is an act of dedication, and a house is “visual theology' in the same way as a church. · á ·
Coomaraswamy held that all art had a serious purpose, and as he did not distinguish in the last analysis between religious and secular art, so he did not differentiate between fine art and applied art. He believed that our society is sick and impotent because it has created a dichotomy between the beautiful and the useful in everyday life. On the one hand we have men working without joy and without art to produce machine-made objects for sale, On the other hand artists without purpose and without religious sense engaged in producing pictures, statues and objets d'art for exhibition and collection. く
In earlier civilisation, he reminded us, the artist and the artisan were one and the same thing; and it should be the purpose of a museum or art gallery to restore a sense of the earlier values, when art permeated every part of man's economic, political, social, sexual and religious life, and was not, as it too often is to-day, an 'extra' in the school curriculum, a hobby for collectors, a commercial commodity for dealers and speculators.
His political views, in so far as any are implied in his critical writings, were, if I am not mistaken, in a direct line of descent from William Morris. He believed in Labour in as much as he believed in the dignity of manual crafts and “manufacture by art', but in other respects he was, if not a conservative, at

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least a laudator temporis acti. He did not believe in progress or democracy or any of the political catchwords of the machine age. The director of one of the great museums of the Eastern States once remarked to him: "From the Stone Age until now, what a decline' Coomaraswamy quotes this pessimistic reflection with approval in one of this essays and adds: "He meant, of course, a decline in intellectuality, not in comfort. It should be one of the functions of a well organised museum exhibition to deflate the illusion of progress.'
His lack of faith in what is usually understood by democracy was even more striking that his distrust of "progress'. "Whereas it was once the purpose of life,' he wrote, “to achieve a freedom from oneself, it is now our will to achieve the greatest possible measure of freedom for oneself, no matter from what.' He ascribed most of our social and spiritual ills to over-industrialisation, and reminded us that despite our cult of political freedom we are, in the things that matter, much less free than the craftsmen and artisans of the old feudal societies who were the anonymous, impersonal and willing servants of church or state. w
But he would not allow you to infer from this whole viewpoint was based upon nostalgia for the age of chivalry. "If I assert,' he said, "that manufacture by art is humanely superior to "industry without art', it does not follow that I envisage knights in armour.' He did not want to set back the clock, but he did seek to correct what he considered the heterodoxy of contemporary criticism by the standards of an earlier, serener and more settled order.
These standards were to be deduced not merely from Plato and St. Thomas and the Upanishads but from works of art. As he used the term, this meant not only from painting and sculpture and museum exhibits but also from any communal activity like the dance or the drama, from any directly productive

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Occupation like farming or carpentry, and even from utensils which are custom-made by creative artists and not mass-produced for sale.
For those who are able to accept his doctrine, works of art are not dead stone and inanimate pigment, they are creatures of the living spirit. They do not merely offer themselves to be looked at from the walls of art galleries and the showcases in museums; they look back at the beholder and say, like the torso Öf Apollo in Rilke’s poem: “Dal musst dein Leben dendern.’ If society as a whole could be made to accept the challenge of art in this spirity and undergo the change of heart which it demands, there might be some hope of redressing its ills by other than revolutionary methods, and we might be able to get rid of the vanity and violence and despair by which modern civilisation is haunted.
This briefly was Coomaraswamy's message. It is neither novel in substance nor individual in tone, and the last thing he would have claimed is that it is original. Yet it is original in the truest sense: as G. K. Chesterton once said, it is original in that it deals with origins-original in the sense in which we speak of original sources or original sin.
It seems likely that the form which Coomaraswamy's characteristic greatness took was due in part to his mixed birth. His vast erudition, which he carried with such humility, was a unique synthesis of Occidental and eastern learning which could not have been achieved either by a pure Westerner, however learned, nor by a pure Oriental, however cosmopolitan in outlook. Born in an uneasy halfway house between two civilisations, he was the lord and legatee of both. In his calm and unembittered vision the conventional antagonism of East and West is reconciled.
I think it is only fair to add, however, that his life story offers a warning as well as encouragement, when we consider that he spent, apparently, less than a decade of his seventy years in his native land, and

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was able to perfect his mission only because he worked in exile and at a safe distance from the parochial and personal squabbles which contaminate art and administration in Ceylon. Few of his compatriots are fortunate enough to have seen him in the flesh, at any rate in recent years; but those who have seen his recent photographs or the portrait of him which was unveiled at the University of Ceylon to commemorate his seventieth birthday on August 22, 1947, will understand what an American writer meant by saying that he had "the appearance of a distinguished eagle', or what another admirer in the United States had in mind when he wrote that he was "tall, handsome, of sovereign colour-the image of God carved in sandalwood.' In a letter to me a few weeks before he died he mentioned that he intended to retire at the end of 1947 and lead an 'approximately votnaprastha. life somewhere in the Hinalayas.' It is a tragic irony that soon after he had formed this resolution his untimely death should have cheated his many admirers in Ceylon of the hope that he might be prevailed upon to revisit his native country en route for the Himalayas and give his countrymen and kinsmen the opportunity to honour him in person.
AN APPRECIATION S. H. Perinbanayagam, B.A., Jaffna, Ceylon)
Ananda Coomaraswamy's forbears went forth from Manipay in the Jaffna Peninsula and blazed a trail. Some of Ceylon's most gifted orators, legislators and administrators during the present century were Ananda Coomaraswamy's kinsfolk. Sir Mutucoomaraswamy was his father. The Ponnambalam brothers, Coomaraswamy, Ramanathan and Arunachalam were his first cousins. But to none of these others was it given to reach the same pinnacle of fame that Ananda Coomaraswamy reached. The

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scholars of the world paid homage to Ananda Coomaraswamy and acknowledged their indebtedness to him.
He chose for himself a comparatively humble role. He did not aspire to be a creative artist in the many spheres of Indian Art, Thought and Culture of which he possessed profound and intimate knowledge. The task he chose for himself was to act as India's interpreter to the world-particularly the Western World. And what a consummate and accomplished interpreter he proved himself to be
To those who are in their twenties and early thirties to-day, it would be difficult to imagine the intelectual background of my generation. Contempt for, and ignorance of, our past civilization and culture was part of our intellectual equipment. To idolize the West and its achievements and to turn up our noses at everything oriental was the correct tning to do. Among Ananda Coomaraswamy's services to my generation was that he opened our eyes to the glories of our heritage and restored our national self-respect. India's and Ceylon's achievements in arts and crafts, in dance and drama, in architecture, in speculative philosophy and religion were proclaimed by Ananda Coomaraswamy to the whole world. Choice spirits in Europe and America, who seemed to have been looking for just such an interpreter, not merely caught from Ananda Coomaraswamy's writings, glimpses of India's ancient wisdom, but recognized their spiritual kinship with the devotees of this ancient wisdom. Perhaps the highest tribute to Ananda Coomaraswamy's labours as interpreter of mystic wisdom was paid by a writer in an American magazine The Living Age. This writer took it upon himself to warn the Western world to beware of the insidious influence that was being wielded by men like Ananda Coomaraswamy and Romain Roland. The West, he said, was aggressive dynamic, progressive and if it succumbed to the seductive charms of the Oriental

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mysticism propounded by Ananda Coomaraswamy with its emphasis on poise and introspection and inward serenity and the attainment of Samadhi, it was in danger of losing its soul-its distinctive characteristics.
Ananda Coomaraswamy's attitude to Hinduism -in the fullest sense of the term the myths, the rituals, the speculations reminds one of Newman's acceptance of Roman Catholicism. In both of them, it was the whole-hearted and unreserved assent to entire corpus of the particular tradition; neither of them picked and chose according to the dictates of fancy or intellect particular items and rejected others. Therefore the interpretation of Hindu thought that Ananda Coomaraswamy gave to the world was that of an intelligent and sensitive traditionalist, who identified himself with the tradition and unfolded its details from, so to speak, within. The interpretation was acute, analytical by sympathetic, rendered by one whose outlook was identical with that of those who had fashioned the symbols and rituals of the faith and formulated its doctrines. He was no reformer or zealot. He never apologized for Hinduism. He never wanted to convince its critics that it was not so bad as they thought it was. He never accepted the position that Hinduism had to justify itself in terms of norms set by other faiths. He was content to say what he thought Hinduism was, and to leave it at that.
The sex-symbolism that plays an important role both in the devotional and the doctrinal literature of Hinduism has given offence to certain European critics of Hindu thought; and many apologists for Hinduism have tried to whittle down the sex-element and to push it to the background, in their endeavour to make Hinduism respectable in Western eyes. Not so Ananda Coomaraswamy; boldly and frankly he accepts it and expresses it in accordance

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with the tradition that created it. He makes no discrimination between this and the more respectable elements in the tradition.
The Dance of Siva at Chidambaram embodying sublime conceptions of art, philosophy and religion, the Brahata Natyam performed by the despised temple prostitues, Sahaja-as found in the story of Chandidas, the Brahmin priest and Rami the washerwoman-which represents the apothesis of sex-loveare all handled by Ananda Coomaraswamy in the same spirit of calm detachment and reverent acceptance.
Speaking of the Nataraia image he says:
Now to summarize the whole interpretation we find that the essential Significance of Siva's Dance is three-fold First, it is the image of his Rhythmic Play as the Source of all Movement within the Cosmos, which is Represented by the Arch: Secondly, the Purpose of his Dance is to Release the Countless souls of men from the Snare of Illusion: Thirdly, the Place of the Dance, Chidambaram, the Centre of the universe, is within the Heart.
So far I have refrained from all aesthetic criticism and have endeavoured only to translate the central thought of the conception of Siva's dance from plastic to verbal expression, without reference to the beauty or imperfection of individual works. But it may not be out of place to call attention to the grandeur of this conception itself as a synthesis of science, religion and art. How amazing the range of thought and sympathy of those rishi-artists who first conceived such a type as this, affording an image of reality, a key to the complex tissue of life, a theory of nature. not merely satisfactory to a single clique or race nor acceptable to the thinkers of one century only, but universal in its appeal to the pilosopher, the lover, and the artist of all ages and all countries. ow supremely great in power and grace this dancing image must appear to all those who have striven in plastic forms to give expression to their intuition of Life:
Of Sahaja, he says : —
In India we could not escape the conviction that sexual love has a deep and spiritual significance. There is nothing with which we can better compare the 'mystic union' of the finite with its infinite ambient-that one experience which proves itself and is the only ground of faith than the self

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oblivion of earthly lovers locked in each other's arms, where "each is both'. Physical proximity, contact, and interpenetration are the expressions of love, only because love is the recognition of identity. These two are one flesh, because they have remembered their unity of spirit. This is moreover a fuller identity than the mere sympathy of two individuals, and each as individual has now no more significance for the other than the gates of heaven for one who stands within. It is like an algebraic equation where the equation is the only truth and the terms may stand for anything. The least intrusion of the ego, however involves a return to the illusion of duality.
But it would be a grievous error to regard him as a monomaniac, whose only pursuit was to study and expound Hinduism. His sympathies were truly catholic. All art and all thought were his province. His writings teem with quotations from writers of all luations-Manikavachagar and Sankara, the Neoplatonists, the Sufis, the Taoists, the Christian saints and mystics all jostle one another in his pages. Nor was he satisfied with Nationalism as a final philosophy for India. Romain Rolland in his Foreword to The Dance of Siva sums up Ananda Coomaraswamy's message thus in Coomaraswamy's own words :-
'Nationalism does not suffice for the great idealists of
Young India. Patriotism is but a local interest...Great souls have greater destinies to fulfil. Life, not merely the life of India, demands our great devotion. The happiness of the human race is of more import to us than any party triumph. The chosen people of the future can be no nation, no race, but an aristocracy of the whole world, in whom the vigour of European action will be united to the serenity of Asiatic thought...”
souTH INDIAN PAINTING (Dr. James H. Cousins, Adyar, India)
It is stated in text-books of geography and other publications that South India ends at Cape Comorin. But Rabindranath, on a visit to Ceylon, asked the people of that island to recognise that India was their motherland. A racial or cultural frontier

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is apparently not the same as geographical or political one. At the other end, or rather beginning, of South India there is the same difference in frontiers. There is no question about the western and eastern coasts. But between Bombay and Cuttack whatever the geological margin of the Deccan plateau may be, the cultural frontier, if it could be drawn, would present a line as wavy as the red ones on a railway map. It may be said that, as the Buddha was born and enlightened, preached and passed, in what is now regarded as northern India, the art which arose out of Buddhism was, therefore, a north Indian art. But this would be as far from fact as a statement that art which arose in Europe out of Christianity was a west Asian art. The caves of Ajanta, far from the scenes of the Buddha's life seeing that its founder was born, laboured and died in what is called the Holy Land on the verge of north and south India, were the centre of a cultural impulse that both gave to and took from the life and genius of south India. Scholars in the arts of India note resemblances in certain south Indian architectural features and those of Ajanta; they also note similarities between the hair-dressing and ornaments of the women of the Ajanta frescoes and those of Malabar coast.
Whatever may be in these matters, or not, it is set down as an axiom of art-history that Ajanta is the classical back-ground of Indian art, that is to say, of the Hindu art that followed the Ajantan era after the latter passed into history and legend about the eighth century of the Christian era. The wallpaintings of the caves of Ajanta, executed between the first century B.C. and the eighth century A.D. gave to the world one of the largest and most perfect presentations in colour and form of both the appearance and meaning of life. The painters of Buddhist era, under the inspiration of a new version of the old faith in the possibility of human perfection, depicted life in its association with religious observ

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ance, in its social rankings, its personal distinctions, its costumes and customs. They also gave a visual interpretation of a man of the highest spiritual quality and most inclusive human sympathy, under the influence of the noblest and purest emotions and aspirations leading up to the attainment of certainty 器 individual unity with all life, the state of Buddha
OOCl.
In an art of this kind, there is no room for
vulgarity, triviality, or cheapness. The intimacies of life are without sensual suggestion. On the technical side the paintings of the Buddhist era are among the supreme achievements of human genius in the arts. They combine clarity of idea with assured efficiency of eye and hand, and in this are elders of the immortal mural art of Fra Anglico in Europe (to name only one comparison) which followed the end of the Ajantan era by five hundred years. Details cannot be gone into here. But it may be said, as one clue to the appreciation of the background art of South India, that its chief technical feature is its line, which is not only used as a means of delimiting colour-spaces but of aiding the expression of the idea and its accompanying feeling.
Painting as an autonomous art, that is, free from restrictions of walls, proceeded along with the mural art. References in old literatures indicate this, but nothing of this phase of painting of ancient date has so far been preserved. An eleventh century book in Canarese sets out the technique of painting. But the history of South Indian painting, as we have it at present, is of mural painting, mainly in temples. Of this history we can give no more than a mere indication here and there.
The murals discovered in a "mantapam at Sittanavasal, in Pudukottai State, some years ago have been regarded as examples of the oldest South Indian Painting, about the end of the Ajantain era. To these have been added, only a few years ago, the discovery

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of a small cave-mantapam of a shrine in the side of a great rock at Thirunandikkarai in South Travancore. The shrine is dated by inscription to the eighth or ninth century A.D., and its mural decoration is assigned by scholars to the same era. Copies of fragments remaining on five out of seven panels on the walls of the mantapam have been added to the unique collection of Indian murals in the State Picture-Gallery (Sri Chitralayam), Trivandrum. They stimulate the imagination to a vision of what must have been a beautiful, if small, centre of art twelve centuries ago. The paintings are of Puranic subjects; but there is something in their technique that suggests a relationship with the Buddhist style. It is conceivable that future research, co-ordinated and guided by a department of Government or of an Indian Academy of Arts, may write a fascinating chapter of art-history from such venerable relics of ancient genius, indicating their relationship with Buddhist Ajanta and the much later Hindu mural art of South India.
The long gaps in the history of South Indian painting are filling up, though slowly on account of the scarcity of researchers equipped with scholarship, experience and intellectual alertness. Some years ago Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy wrote of a seventeenth century Nataraja mural in the temple of Ettumanur, in Central Travancore, as the oldest known Dravidian painting, and emphasized the necessity for a search for others. The desired research has been undertaken, and much has been added to our knowledge on both sides of the Ettumanur mural. For example, at the southern end of the Andhradesa, two small temples of the sixteenth century provide the architectural and sculptural elaborateness of the short-lived but culturally powerful Vijayanagar era as backward for historically and artistically important paintings. One of the temples is at Lepakshi in the Anantapur District, the other at Somapalle in the Madanapalle Taluq of the Chittoor Dis

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trict. The paintings are Puranic: the figures at Somapalle are mainly about twelve inches from top to bottom, though there are single ones of larger size. Where left undamaged by rain, and other agents of destructiveness, the paintings disclose expert work in line and colour, and a suggestion of a blending of classical vision with local technique. A thorough study of these through faithful copies shown as they are, with reverent re-creations of the least damaged, to indicate their original quality, would add a valuable chapter to the history and direction of South Indian painting.
Such a chapter has been added to the history of indigenous painting on the south-west coastal strip through the patronage of art by the Rulers and Governments of Travancore and Cochin States. Collections of copies of sixteenth or seventeenth to nineteenth century murals in temples and palaces have recently been placed in public galleries in Trivandrum and Trichur. These have all the signs of an era in art-abundance, enthusiasm, assurance, skill, and the religious devotion that is the loftiest inspiration and ultimate justification of artistic creativeness.
For three centuries or longer the genius of Kerala produced a gallery of mural paintings of extraordinary volume and quality. A study of those now available should form the basis of illuminating comparisons, chronologically and geographically, between Padmanabhapuram in the south and Trichur in the north of the region. And there are numbers, perhaps thousands, of neglected and weather-worn paintings of high artistic distinction and historical importance awaiting intelligent restoration and reverent copying.
The same, indeed, may be said of centres of mural painting in the Tamil Nad that adorn the middle distances of South Indian Painting. There are groups in the great temple areas of the southeast coast, copies of which should form a special
section of an adequate art gallery in Madras. A

Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy at work in his garden at Needham, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (1934)
-Photo by Dona Luisa Coomaraswamy.

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most impressive set of copies of what were originals of the highest order of wall-painting in the Kailasanath Temple at Conjeevaram were made a couple of years ago. If the murals were put on the walls not long after the building of the temple, they take the history of South Indian Painting back to the eight century. These and the murals of Sittanavasal and Thirunandikkara, in their special emphasis on expressive line, suggest a school of painting of the postAjantan era over a wide area of south India.
Perhaps the latest of the purely indigenous schools of South Indian Painting is a large mural in a palace at Krishnapuram some miles north of Quilon in Travancore, a masterpiece in size, conception and execution. A quarter-size copy of the original (which is 14 feet by 12) is in the Trivandrum Gallery awaiting wall-space that will take a copy of the fullsize mural. Work in the indigenous manner ceased apparently a century ago in the extreme south. A new impulse of cultural patriotism is awaited to revive the art of painting in South India, an impulse charged with the spirit of the Bengal movement of fifty years ago, though not necessarily fulfilled in its
ale.
A MAN WORTHY OF EMULATION
(K. Navaratmam, Secretary, Kala Nilayam, Лаffта, Сеylот).
Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy--the Ruskin of Oriental Art - is undoubtedly the greatest international scholar that Ceylon has produced. He comes from a family of scholars who have left their mark on the social, political and cultural life of the country. Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan, Sir Ponnampalam Arunachalam and Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy are the three great luminaries in the Tamil firmament of Ceylon.

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Dr. Coomaraswamy, son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy, the first Tamil Knight, was born in Ceylon om August 22, 1877. He has amply proved himself a worthy son of a worthy father.
Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy published an English translation of a Tami I drama entitled “Harischandra' and dedicated it to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. "The translation was a masterpiece of English composition. Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy had a command of English such as few Englishmen could boast of, and he was a speaker of no common order.'
Dr. Coomaraswamy returned to Ceylon and worked for six years in the fields of Mineralogy and Geology. From 1903 to 1906 he was Director of the Mineralogical Survey of Ceylon. This work provided him ample opportunities to study the ancient artistic and historical monuments of Ceylon and also brought him into personal contact with the peasants and craftsmen of the Island.
It was during this period that he collected all the materials necessary for his book on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art. In 1905 he published a pamphlet entitled "Borrowed Plumes' in which he appealed to the Ceylonese to awaken in them a sense of the value of their own traditions and national culture-Language, Literature, Art, Music and Dress. This pamphlet was translated into Sinhalese and was circulated amongst the reading public. As a result of this a meeting was held at the Musaeus School on April 22, 1905, and the Ceylon Social Reform Society was inaugurated with Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy as Oresident. He later visited Jaffna and organised a branch Society there with the Late Mr. A. Mailwaganam, J.P., and U.P.M., as president. Dr. Coomaraswamy regularly contributed to the Ceylon National Review the Journal of the Society, on cultural subjects. He was also one of those who worked for the early establishment of a University for Ceylon and was an ardent member of the University Association.

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Dr. Coomaraswamy left Ceylon in 1907 for England with a view to complete his book on Sinhalese Art which was published in 1908. In 1919 he was appointed to his present post as Keeper of Indian and Muhammedian Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A. He was invited to contribute an essay to the publication "Book of Homage to Shakespeare' edited by Israel Gollanz, published in 1916. He has also contributed a paper to the "Contemporary Indian Philosophy', a volume in the Library of Philosophy Series edited by S. Radhakrishnan and J. A. Muirhead. He wrote two articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 14th Edition (1929) on “Indian and Sinhalese Art and Archaeology” and “Dance; India”, and two other articles to the National Encyclopaedia (1932) on “Indian Art' and “The Dance in India'.
Dr. Coomaraswamy is a master of English style and as purely literary productions alone his writings are of a high value. 'None who has not read them can realise their throbbing beauty of language. A chiselled simplicity, a limpid purity, a directness and pointedness of phrase-qualities like these lend to his style a force all their own. But perhaps it is vigour of thought more even than charm of style that is the secret of his power.'
It was Dr. Coomaraswamy who first proclaimed to the world the mystic grandeur and the artistic excellence of the Nataraja Image. In the field of Buddhist Art, the Western Art critics led by Foucher and Fergusson and their like formulated a theory that the idea of a Buddha Image was first suggested to the Indian mind by the Greeks. But Dr. Coomaraswamy by an intensive study and detailed analysis of a group of Kusana Images proved that there existed an indigenous Indian plastic ideal for an image of Buddha and that the Buddha type of the Mathura School was a direct development of the old Indian School. Dr. Coomaraswamy's paper on

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“The Origin of the Buddha Image” published in “The Art Bulletin, Vol. IX., New York, 1927, settled this question and gave a decent burial to an unhappy controversy which clouded an accurate understanding of the nature and evolution of Indian Art.
Dr. Coomaraswamy's paper on "The Origin of the Buddha Image' published in “The Art Bulletin. Vol. IX., New York, 1927, settled this question and gave a decent burial to an unhappy controversy which clouded an accurate understanding of the nature and evolution of Indian Art.
Another great contribution of Dr. Coomaraswamy to Indian Art was in the field of Indian Paintings. It was he who for the first time drew the attention of the art critics of the world to the main differences between the various Schools of Rajput (Hindu) and Moghul Painting. He emphasised in his writings with sufficient proofs the fact that the Rajput School of Painting is one of the most significant and outstanding achievements of mediaeval Hindu India and not an isolated development due to the Mohamedan influence. His two volumes on “Rajput Painting' remain as the standard work on the subject.
Dr. Coomaraswamy's "History of Indian and Indonesian Art” may be said to be his magnum opus, "It is a masterly survey of Indian Art in all its phases, and will furnish the most scholarly and authoritative guide for all students of Indian Art for many years to come. It is an indispensable text-book for university students and should find its place in every library as a valuable work of reference.”
The life and achievement of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy are worthy of emulation by the youth of this land. He is not only a historian and critic of Indian Art but also a great prophet of nationalism, and a patriot of a very high order.
Romain Rolland writing about him says: 'Ananda Coomaraswamy is one of those great Hindus

顯
Eric Gill-the great friend of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

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who, nourished like Tagore on the Culture of Europę and Asia and justifiably proud of their splendid civilisation, have conceived the task of working for the union of Eastern and Western thought for the good of Humanity.' Dr. Coomaraswamy is not satisfied with the limited nationalism of India or Ceylon. He dreams and longs for an early realisation of an all-comprehensive nationalism which could bring the East and the West together. It will be to the best interests of this country if we could devise ways and means of raising sufficient funds to commemorate the services of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy to the cause of Art, Religion and Philosophy by establishing in Ceylon a Cultural Centre similar to that of Tagore's Santiniketan. &
UNIQUE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE WORLDS OF INDIAN THOUGHT AND WESTERN SCHOLARSHIP
(Dr. Richard G. Salomon, Kenyon College, Gambier,
Ohio, U.S.A.) .
In my collection of photos there is a picture showing Ananda Coomaraswamy in discussion with myself. The photo is a cherished memento of the first Kenyon Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples which was held here in the fall of 1946, not long before Coomaraswamy's death. He appears in the picture in the colourful regalia of the University of London. For me, there is much of symbolical value just in this "circumstance. Coomaraswamy will live in our memory as a unique mediator between the worlds of Indian thought and Western scholarship. Equally equipped with the intellectual armour and the traditions of both Eastern and Western civilization, he had been invited to participate in the Kenyon Conference "as a critic of Western ideas and attitudes' which formed the subject

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matter of the addresses delivered at that Conference. I had the privilege of listening to his lecture: "For what heritage and to whom are the English-speaking people responsible?' In listening to it then, as now in re-reading the printed text, I was deeply impressed by his admirable integration of intellectual honesty, profound scholarship and deep, almost mystical, spirituality. I did not feel the sting which his criticisms left with some of my Anglo-Saxon friends. To me, it was not difficult to hear, through the harsh accords of critical polemics, the “eternal melody' of his thought: his belief in Humanity. Being myself of German background, I have loved from my early years the Song of Songs of Humanity: Lessing’s version of the old oriental parable of the Three Rings, in his "Nathan the Wise'. Ananda Coomaraswamy, at that moment, appeared to me like a re-incarnation of Lessing's Sage, professing a wisdom that is above all differences in creed.
DR. A. K. COOMARASWAMY
(Basil Gray, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum)
Death seems often to claim a man just as his life-work is coming to full fruition; and it is so with Dr. Coomaraswamy who has recently died in the United States. For forty years he has been engaged in reconciling the West with Indian art and thought, and now 1947, year of India's political independence, is likely also to see dispersed the last vestiges of the "smoke clouds which,' as Sir William Rothenstein put it, "had all too long obscured the splendid achievements of Indian sculpture.' This writer's exhibition of Indian art at the Royal Academy will probably mark the end of that particular prejudice, and it is to Coomaraswamy above all that our gratitude for this is due. It is sad to think that the occasion can

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not now be enhanced by his presence and appreciation. Those who are aware of this debt must pay their tribute to him.
Born in Ceylon seventy years ago and educated in England at the University of London, he returned to his native land to work in the Mineralogical Survey, but after three years came again to this country, with a message. He had perceived the last flickering of the mediaeval arts of India in Ceylon. Starting from a protest against the destructive effects of industrialism and the impact of European art on Indian culture, in which he naturally found himself allied with the movement in this country in which C. R. Ashbee and Lethaby were prominent, he passed beyond this to regions of thought and interest in which he found the less organised culture of the United States with greater social freedom a more favourable atmosphere; but he remained to the end turned towards the older civilisation of Europe especially as represented by the mediaeval German mystics, in his search for an idea of life of universal application.
Coomaraswamy continued to seek an integration of life and thought, of art and philosophy, and of Eastern and Western aesthetic and theology. This unity of the spirit was his answer to the disintegrating forces in modern life and society, consciousness of which made him a rather lonely figure in his later years, as he lived his own retired life, in spite of honours given to the doyen of Indian studies in three continents. Personal contact showed him still as perceptive as ever of quality, and enjoying to the full the carefully chosen collections of Indian art which he had built up at the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston during the last thirty years. He produced elaborate and scholarlv catalogues of these during the twenties amply illustrated and, as in all his writing, directing the reader to the significance of the objects described both in their historical context and also especially as Awnression of ideas. rom his earliest writings in Sinhalese art in 1908, he always sought the “rasa,”

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the essential “passion' which is behind every true work of art, whether in literature, music, painting, or sculpture, and in an integrated society finding simultaneous and complementary expression through each art.
Coomaraswamy was not primarily a literary scholar though his translations of vernacular poems and technical passages from Sanskrit were needed in view Cf their neglect . by the professed literary scholars. The list of his publications in all its copious variety shows him as the pioneer in a largely unmapped field: he provided a general 'map' in his excellent “History of Indian and Indonesian Art,' and views of the land he pioneered in volumes of reproduction published by the India Society (of which he was one of the founders in 1910) and by the Boston Museum, and, above all, in those united to a most valuable text in the two volumes of "Rajput Painting' published bv. the Oxford Press in 1916, which marked an epoch in the appreciation of Kangra painting in the West. He was a man of striking appearance with his strong body, perceptive eye, and quick understanding, bent to his life's purpose for which he was uniquely placed.
AN EXCITING RIDE (Maurice Collis, London)
Those who like a lucid and original discussion upon art, which at the same time is learned to a degree hardly to be met with, should read “Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought' (Luzac, 10s. 6d.), by Ananda Coomaraswamy. I can promise them in this something quite beyond their normal experience, for they will be taken for a ride through the Sanskrit, Pali, and Greek classics, not to speak of excursions into the Fathers and the Neo-Platonists the Hermetic Philosophers, and the alchemists. This may sound an intimidating or confusing alchemists. This may sound, an intimidating or confusing programme, but I can assure them it is not so, and that they will enjoy themselves, and will come back to earth flushed and heartened, and ever after will find the metaphysics of the common run of art critics, whether here or in Paris where they know how to spin it up, very thin stuff, very small beer. '

Printed at The Malayan Printers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.

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Ananda Coomaraswamy
-A study of :
World Figure and
a Great Teacher
by
S. Durai Raja Singam
(in preparation)

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