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Art and Culture of Tamilnadu
R. Nagaswamy
24. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
AN APPRECIATION AND TRIBUTE
If Indian art has taken its rightful place in the history of World art, if the World, particularly the West, recognises the Subtle and at the sametime delicate hands of ancient Indian artists, it is undoubtedly due to the pioneering work of Ananda Coomaraswamy. Not that there was no writer before him on Indian Art. Many of his ideas were in the air, but so rapid and perfect was his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his intiative, that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his personality. Ananda Coomaraswamy had an extraordinary background of Indian literature, philosophy, history and art and could cite with equal felicity from Pali, Tamil, Sanskrit or other Indian literature, to bring out the spirit which went into the making of these exquisite pieces of art and that was the inner secret of his success. He personally visited, often on several occasions most of the ancient and historical sites and museums. It was this intellectual curiosity that opened to him the immense realm of knowledge which he later recreated by his magnificent literature on Indian art.
This tribute is mainly concerned with his original and fascinating contributions to the study of Indian art rather than his life; for It is well-known, that Ananda Coomaraswamy was the son of Śrī Muthu Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka to an English mother Lady Elizabeth Clay of Kent and that he was in his earliest days an outstanding scientist, serving as the Director of the Mineralogical Survey of Sri Lanka and that he even discovered a new mineral thorianite. But soon his innate love for the aesthatic values of life and his abiding interest in the creative genuis of the artists of the bygone ages brought him to the realm of art history in which he discovered his fullness. He was not only able to delve deep into the ecstasies of these art forms, but also communicate to others the same joy through his illuminating and lucid writings.
Coomaraswamy was a prolific writer, and is credited with several volumes on Indian and Sinhalese art and over 500 research articles. His work The History of Indian and Indonesian Art, is a classic, a fascinating cultural study, often spoken of as the most significant contribution to universal understanding of Greater Indian Art. In this monumental work, he outlines the architecture, Sculpture, painting, textiles, metal works and other crafts of India and Far East, which makes it an indispensible work for any interested in the proper understanding of the subject. His work on Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon published in 1913 in Edinburgh was also published in French in 1923. His catalogues of the Indian collections in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, carry valuable data and are illustrative of his systematic work. Two volumes on Indian drawings were published in London in 1910-12. He has also written on Indian craftsman, some ancient elements in Indian decorative art, Bronzes from Ceylon, Rajput painting, the frescoes of Elura, etc. His work Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, published in 1908 is still an authoritative work on the subject.
A study of his work on Indian art, beginning with the Indo-Sumerian, dismisses the narrowness of time and space and make us. feel that we are the children of a common heritage, and We speak the same language only in different dialects. "It may be remarked" says Ananda Coomaraswamy, "that the further we go back in history, the nearer we come to a common cultural type, the further we advance the greater the differentiation".
Regarding the Dravidian elements in Indian art, Ananda Coomaraswamy considers the cults of the phallus and of Mother Goddess, Yakṣas and other native spirits porbably springing from Dravidians which played a major role in the development of image worship, that is of Puja as distinct from Yajña.
Ananda Coomaraswamy's view point on the beginnings of Hindu and Buddhist theistic art is worth recalling. "There is evidence in the early Vedic texts, revealing connection of the elemental deities with certain animals by which they might be represented in the ritual. The horse was associated with Agni and Surya, the bull with Rudra and Indra; the animal avatars of Prajāpati was later appropriated by Viṣṇu. The wheel which later on bedomes the mark of Cakravarti, the discus of Viṣṇu and the Buddhist wheel of law originally represented Sun.
It was the firm conviction of Ananda Coomaraswamy that temples and images should have existed before 2nd Century B.C. and perhaps even earlier.
When some scholars, considered the Gupta age as a period of Brahmanical revival, when Hindu temples and images began to appear, Ananda Coomaraswamy stoutly refuted the suggestion and said that there is no evidence of any preceeding lack of continuity in the development of Brahmanical culture. Certainly there had never existed a Buddhist India, that was not as much and at the sametime, and in the same area, a Hindu India. In any case an age of hightened aesthetic consciousness of final redactions of epics and Purāṇas and of codifications and systematisation in the arts, must have been preceded by centuries not of inactivity but of intense and creative activity. The Gupta period is one culmination of florescence rather than of renaissance.
The Grerco-Buddhist art of Gāndhāra, according to Ananda Coomaraswamy may be described from one point of view as representing an eastward extension of Hellenistic civilization mixed with Iranian elements, from another a westward extension of Indian culture in Western garb.
The origin Of the Buddha image—the representation of the Tatagata in human form, in sculptural representation, was a subject of absorbing interest. Many conflicting views were propounded. Made by the craftsman Gogga under orders of king, Meruvarman in 8th Century A.D. the images represent Lakṣṇadevi (Mahishasuramardini), Śakti devi, Ganeśa and Nandi with inscriptions on the pedestal.
The sectarian classification of temple styles adopted by Fergusson does not appeal to Ananda Coomaraswamy. He says just as in the case of sculpture there are no Buddhist, Jaina, and Brahminical buildings in the Indian styles of the period. Nor can a clear distinction of Viṣṇu and Śiva temples made in the Manasara be recognised in medieval practise. The Indian temple is one but there are provincial variations existing side by side with the secular variation in pure style. In respect of these the only adequate classification is geographical.
Comparing the Rājaput painting with the Great school of Mughal painting, Ananda Coomaraswamy says Mughal painting is academic, objective, dramatic and eclactic. Rājput painting is essentially an aristocratic folk-art, appealing to all classes alike, static statue, lyrical and inconceivable apart from the life it reflects. Quoting the Works of Jehangir's own words, Coomarawamy says, Mughal painting after Akbar is almost devoid of any poetical background. Rājput painting on the other hand illustrates every phase of medieval Hindi literature and its themes cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of Indian epics, the Kṛṣṇa līla literature, music and erotics.
Ananda Coomaraswamy has also noticed the continuing tradition of the ancient architecture in South India. Regarding cultural migration, particularly of craftsman to the Far East, Ananda Coomarawamy has this to Say, "The importation of craftsman and labourers including quarrymen Who have their own methods of obtaining the large stone beams required is of interest. In my view, it is far from unlikely, that some or the whole of the work may have been done by workmen of Indian birth under the guidance of Śilpins using Indian Śilpa Śāstra. Such workmen have moved from India to Ceylon in large numbers at various periods, the Mahāvamsa mentioned carftsmen and a thousand families of the 18 guilds sent by a Pāṇḍya king from Madura, to Ceylon in the time of Vijaya."
The Indian element in the art of the Far East is nevertheless a considerable one; for here there was not merely the acceptance an iconography and of formula but the assimilation of a mode of thought so that we have to take into account effects of both of outer form of Indian art and of an emotional working of Indian thought.
Ananda Coomaraswamy in the earlier art of Cambodia, Champa, and Java, holds that really the art and culture of the Deccan that is traceble rather than those of southern India. Though this view needs revision, it cannot be doubted that before the time of the Pallavas of Kāñci, the Kaliṅgas, the Andhras of Orissa and Veṅgināḍ laid the foundations of Indian or Indianised states beyond the moving seas.
Ananda Coomaraswamy was conscious and aware of the originality and vigours of the national schools of the Far East and in fact considered it an injustice to apply the name of Indian colonial to the several national school after the end of 8th century.
In architecture, sculpture, and in the drama, and minor arts each country developed its own formula, freely modifying, adding to or rejecting older Indian forms.
It is in the interpretation of the theme of the cosmic dancer, the dance of Śiva, that Ananda Coomaraswamy rose to the highest pinnacle of art appreciation. He united inseperably with that supreme thought, which is echoed in brilliant work the Dance of Śiva. In this writing Coomaraswamy is supremely native to the theme and at the sametime one of the greatest art connoisseurs of the world besides being one of the greatest devotees of that cosmic dancer. Like the Cöḻa monarchs he was a bee delighting ever in the nectar of the lotus feet of Nataraja. According to him the Nataraja is one of the greatest creations of Indian art, a perfect visual image of becoming, adequate complement and contrast to the Buddha type of Pure being. The movement of the dancing figure is so admirably balanced while it fills all space, it seems nevertheless to be at rest, realising the simultaneity of the Pañcha Krityas, which the symbolism specially designates". Summing up his appreciation of Śiva-Nataraja, Commaraswamy says, "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 ṛṣi artists who 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 philosopher, the Bhakta, and the artist of all ages and all countries." This is sublime poetry. Ananda Coomaraswamy is undoubtedly a great Mahaṛṣi of our age, who reinterpretted for us the arts and thoughts of the Ṛṣis of yore.