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An incredible
Achievement.
February 9, 2015, 9:11 pm
by Thiru Arumugam
"The artist is not a special kind of person; rather
each person is a special kind of artist" Ananda Coomaraswamy.
Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy (1834-1879) was the first Ceylon Tamil
Knight. He was a lawyer and Member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon. He was
the first non-Christian Asian to be called to the English Bar. He married a
wealthy English lady, Elizabeth Beeby, who was a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen
Victoria. They had one child, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who was born in
Colombo in 1877.
Ananda grew up in England, where he studied at the
University of London, graduating with first class honours in Geology and
Botany. Having returned to Ceylon in 1903, he was appointed as the first
Director of Mineralogical Surveys. In 1904 he identified the mineral Thorianite
and his work on this subject led to the award of a Doctor of Science degree
from the University of London. He called it Uraninite in an article in Spolia
Zeylanica and then followed an extended correspondence with double Nobel Prize
winner Madam Curie about its radioactivity. She suggested that it be called
‘Coomaranite’ but he declined the honour.
After a few years he moved to India and studied Indian and
South-East Asian Arts and Crafts, Religion and Metaphysics. He later wrote
books on Buddhism such as ‘Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism’, ‘Elements of
Buddhist Iconography’, ‘The origin of the Buddha Image’ and ‘Hinduism and
Buddhism’. He described his work as ‘research not only in the field of Indian
Art but at the same time in the wider field of the whole of traditional theory
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’. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as a ‘pioneer historian
of Indian Art and foremost interpreter of Indian culture to the West’. He set
about dismantling Western prejudices about Asian Art through an affirmation of
the beauty, integrity and spiritual density of traditional art in Ceylon and
India. He was fluent in 36 languages, where he defined fluency in a language as
the ability to read a scholarly article without referring to a dictionary.
Anthony Ludovici the famous British writer and philosopher says of
Coomaraswamy: "Thanks to his command of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, he was
probably the greatest scholar of his age in the Scriptures of both East and
West, and was therefore a formidable exponent of the philosophical and
ontological foundations of his cultural doctrines".
In 2002 James S Crouch published ‘A Bibliography of Ananda
Kentish Coomaraswamy’. Crouch says that ‘this book documents the remarkably
productive career of one of the great minds of the 20th century’. The book
describes in detail American, English and Indian first editions of 95 books by
Coomaraswamy, plus descriptions of a further 96 books containing contributions
by him and details of more than 900 contributions by him to periodicals and
newspapers. What a prolific writer! No wonder it took Crouch 20 years to
complete the Bibliography which runs to 430 pages.
It is not surprising that Ananda Coomaraswamy has been
described as the ‘most distinguished Sri Lankan of our time’. Outlines of two
selected books out of the 95 books by Coomaraswamy are given below.
Medieval Sinhalese Art
This was Coomaraswamy’s first major book and it was
published in 1908. The full title of the book is "Medieval Sinhalese Art:
Being a Monograph on Medieval Sinhalese Arts and Crafts, mainly as surviving in
the eighteenth century, with an account of the structure of Society and the
status of Craftsmen". It has 340 pages with 55 plates consisting of
multiple photographs and 153 illustrations. The photos were selected from over
1,000 relevant photographs taken by his English wife Ethel Mary Coomaraswamy
(nee Partridge) on glass plate negatives which was the technology of the day.
Coomaraswamy believed that in traditional societies there
was no distinction between fine arts and other arts nor between religious and
secular arts. He says in the book that rural arts and crafts are "the only
true art discoverable in Ceylon today. In a few years it may be gone forever. I
have tried to make a picture of it, before it is too late". The reason for
its probable disappearance he says is that "In Ceylon as in India, the
direct and indirect influence of contact with the West has been fatal to the
arts. The two most direct causes of this adverse influence have been the
destruction of the organisation of state craftsmen, following British
occupation", and that this occupation "has driven the village weaver
from his loom, the craftsmen from his tools, the ploughman from his songs and
has divorced art from labour".
Among the subjects discussed and illustrated in detail in
this 340 page large sized (35 by 27 cm) comprehensive study of the subject are:
Elements of Sinhalese Design and Ornament; Architecture; Woodwork; Stonework;
Figure Sculpture; Painting; Ivory, Bone, Horn and Shell work; Metal work -
Iron, Brass, Copper and Bronze; Gold and Silver; Jewellery; Lac work; Earthenware;
Potter’s songs; Weaving; Embroidery; and Mat Weaving and Dyeing.
As a typical example of an illustration from the book, Fig 2
shows Bherunda Pakshaya, the double headed eagle represented in the flag of the
Three Korales. This form also appears in wood and ironwork, in brass trays and
plates, and also in jewellery.
Bronzes from Ceylon, chiefly in
the Colombo Museum
This book was first published in 1914 by the Colombo Museum
as the first in a series of Memoirs of the Colombo Museum. It has 31 pages of
text followed by 189 photographic reproductions of bronze sculptures, including
a few from Coomaraswamy’s private collection. Some of these sculptures he says
are ‘of spiritual and aesthetic rank nowhere surpassed’.
Among the Buddhist Bronzes, eleven images of Buddha are
illustrated. The largest of them is a 55 cm high sedentary statue and
Coomaraswamy dates this as 5th or 6th century. It was found in Badulla and was
presented to the Museum by G FK Horsfall, possibly a Government Agent.
Coomaraswamy says that ‘The existence of a Mahayana cult in Ceylon is
abundantly supported by the discovery of many images of Bodhisatvas and
Mahayana feminine divinities in Ceylon’. By far the largest of the Bodhisatva
images is the 46 cm high bronze, probably of Maitreya, discovered in 1898 near
the Thuparama Dagoba in Anuradhapura. Also illustrated are four small images of
Avalokitesvara.
The largest of the Hindu bronzes are the eight images of
Siva as Nataraja, all were found in Polonnaruva. The largest of these is nearly
a metre high and is shown in Fig. 3. However, Coomaraswamy does not rate these
too highly and says that ‘they are inferior as works of art to the best of the
Buddhist images, the best images of Saiva Saints in Ceylon and the two splendid
Natarajas in the Madras Museum’. There are also eight smaller size images of
Parvati, Siva’s consort. There are seven images of Saiva Saints and
Coomaraswamy describes the image of Sundara Murti Swami as having ‘a touching
quality of suddenly arrested movement and breathless wonder, and is one of the
most remarkable works of all Indian art’.
Also illustrated is the stunning bronze of the Goddess
Pattini, nearly five feet (1.5m) tall. Coomaraswamy dates this as 7th or 8th
Century. It was found in the east coast of Ceylon and presented by Governor
Brownrigg in 1830 to the British Museum in London where it is a prized exhibit.
Coomaraswamy says that it ‘is a most striking work; the face strong and
thoughtful, and the modelling of the body and limbs most admirable’. Since it
has spent nearly 200 years in London, it is time t it was returned to its
country of origin.
