Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Birth Anniversary on August 22:

Lover of our cultural heritage

Stanley E. Abeynayake

Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy ranks high as one of the few intellectuals who appreciated our cultural heritage during the British period. He revealed to us and the rest of the artistic cultural connoisseurs the excellent nobility of our ancient artistic creative accomplishments.

After careful research regarding those aspects in our country he wanted to make a record of some of them by producing his monumental work ‘Medieval Sinhalese Art’ rather his magnum opus. In fact, it is a monument of the great love he had for the Sinhalese people and his spiritual attachment to the unique cultural legacy of our country - Sri Lanka.

Jaffna Tamil

This great refined gentleman was born on August 22, 1877 at Kollupitiya, Colombo. He hailed from a distinguished family from the North, Jaffna. His father was Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy, the first Lankan Barrister-at-Law, Advocate.

He was also the first Asian to be made a Knight by the Empire. Sir Muttu was also a Pali and Sanskrit scholar and he married an English lady Elizabeth Beebee. The first child born to the Coomaraswamys was named Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. After receiving his secondary education in England, he graduated in Science BSc (London) with Geology and Botany in 1900, aged 23 years.

Scientist

After his return to Sri Lanka in 1902 then known as Ceylon, he was appointed the Director of the Ceylon Government Meteorological Survey. For his research on Meteorology, he made a name and fame as an internationally recognized geologist. His contributions to various journals on that discipline and allied subjects were given esteemed publicity.

It is to his credit that - he discovered some important minerals in Sri Lanka. Concurrently with his professional work as a geologist specializing in mineralogy, he visited our ancient Buddhist temples and saw the beautiful works of the ancients - our Buddhists. Although not a creative artist, with his penetrating insight, he made a study of our traditional art and architecture.

He made a scientific study of our surviving works in stone, metal and wood. Wandering through the country he met craftsmen, weavers and Kandyan blacksmiths. A craftsman carving an ivory or wooden elephant was near to his heart of things. The craftsmen of the Kandy-Gampola periods, the temple murals and architecture attracted him and drew his attention to them making notes of those aesthetic works of art and sculpture.

Versatile

Dr. Coomaraswamy studied intensely the Indian, Chinese and Indonesian cultures. He wrote books on Buddhism and the art and literature of India, Indian drawings, the Buddha and the gospel of Buddhism, the Dance of Siva, the History of Indian and Indonesian art, Elements of Buddhist Iconography and Transformation of Nature and Art.

Observations

He made the remarks that the immediate effect of British rule was to destroy the system of State support of the arts and crafts. The Government withdrawal of support for the national religion - Buddhism - adversely affected the building and decoration of temples. From the Sinhalese side, the history of the nineteenth century has been one of continual and snobbish imitation of the external features of Western culture, misunderstood and misapplied.

It is indeed, due to the affectionate devotion of the hereditary craftsmen of the old school that the art and its traditions still survive.

He asserted that the British rule has been characterized by almost complete indifference to indigenous culture. The effectiveness of the feudal caste system now fast-disappearing contributed in no small measure to the prevalence of crafts specially Kandyan, Kandyan dancing and drumming, mat weaving, handicrafts and pottery, cottage industry in the low-country. Further, he went on to assert that unlike in India our low-country people have been made strangers in their own land.

The apathy and indifference of the Kandy and high caste clan to those aspects of the Kandyan traditional heritage, he deplored. In an attempt to reverse the destructive trend of aping the worst aspects of the West, he founded the Ceylon Social Reform Society.

USA

In 1917 Dr. Coomaraswamy was appointed a Research Fellow of Indian Persian and Moslem art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, America, U.S.A. It was founded in 1870 an inspired genius gifted with a vast encyclopaedic and universal culture, he wrote on matters of art and life and religion with great wisdom art and truth. He understood the metaphysics of Hinduism and Buddhism.

His illuminating writings depict the inner unity which exists essentially between being and becoming, mind and nature, art and craftsmanship, attachment and detachment, action and contemplation.

Although he spent the greater part of his life in the West, his soul was always in the East. His writings indicate his great love for art attachment to the philosophy and life of the East.

Throughout his life two dominant passions possessed this remarkable man - the passion for traditional beauty and then passion to draw humanity together by allowing the affinities of all cultures. He was the first international figure Sri Lanka produced. Dr. Coomaraswamy was a world figure and held a pre-eminent position in the realm of scholarship.

The collection of Indian art in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a memorial to his connoisseurship and his scholarship. He spent 30 years (1917-47) as the curator of Indian art and eminent mentor of works of art.

During that period of three decades he wrote inexhaustibly on them (art) and later about metaphysics. His original collection at Boston was 1,570 pieces but it went up to one of thousands of pieces. The collection consisted of Buddhist and Hindu stone sculptures and brounes, Jaffna manuscripts, Rajput and Moghul paintings, textiles, jewellery and metal work. It added an art of completeness to the fine collections of Chinese and Japanese art.

His erudition was vast, equally at ease in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Italian and German. “The museum now possesses the materials for a logical presentation of Asiatic art as a consistent whole - a unity of all” Dr. Coomaraswamy first report of the Boston, Museum.

Dona Louisa Coomaraswamy was his wife and their son Ram Coomaraswamy worked as the curator at Boston Fine Arts Museum after in succession to his father. The world paid glowing tributes, when he passed away at Boston in 1947 aged 70 years.

Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy was one of those greatest Hindus who nourished like Tagore on the culture of Europe and Asia and justifiably proud of the splendid civilization. e conceived the task of working for Eastern and Northern thought for the good of humanity.