Ananda Coomaraswamy as a Writer: His “Divine Shorthand”

ANANDA COOMARASWAMY AS A WRITER

His “Divine Shorthand”

S. DURAI RAJA SINGAM
Malaysia

In the galaxy of Indian writers of English–including Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and Ferdoon Kabraji–Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy holds a unique place. Tagore opened the soul of India to the West by exposing the poetry of his own individual soul. Gandhiji revealed India to the then hostile west through the simple beauty and idealism of his own life. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, and others, have each interpreted their sphere of activity in a language rich in splendour.

On the contrary, Ananda Coomaraswamy created nothing. He wrote a little poetry but not like Tagore or Sarojini Naidu. He propounded no political theories like Gandhiji or Rajaji or Nehru. He was no great mathematician or scientific genius. Ananda Coomaraswamy created nothing, but interpreted almost everything–Oriental art, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, iconography, Indian literature and arts, music, the place of art in society. And to be an interpreter of India to the West, Coomaraswamy was uniquely endowed.

Being the son of an Indian father (Ceylon Tamil), Ananda Coomaraswamy had sufficient emotional identity with India to view it with sympathy and understanding, and being also the son of an English mother and having had the benefit of years of Western education, he had the command over language and control over expression needed to be an effective exponent of his understand­ing to others. As Gai Eaton in his book The Richest Vein (London: Faber and Faber, 1949, p. 200) declares “Out of place nowhere, at home everywhere, no one could have been better fitted by birth and training, to bridge in his own person East and West.”

Throughout Ananda Coomaraswamy’s long life, Indian art and philosophy were abiding preoccupations and Ananda Coomaraswamy brought to the interpretation of these not only an enquiring and perceptive mind, vivid imagination, and encyclopaedic store of knowledge from his vast study, but also a rare honesty and dedication to truth. “His method of writing,” to quote Gai Eaton again, “however, is one that makes considerable demands upon the reader; sometimes the printed page is a mosaic of quotations, in which Sanskrit and Pali jostle with Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. The English language itself is here used with a precision which, in these days when words are employed so loosely, seems to belong more to the region of mathematics than to that of prose. Coomaraswamy splits up certain words which have lost their meanings through long misuse, with a hyphen between the two parts, to show their true derivation...Further, and this is a stumbling block not to be underrated in an age when reading is regarded mainly as a relaxation and an aid to slumber, each of his essays or articles is followed by several pages of notes, in extremely small print, and many of his most important reflections are compressed into those notes.”

At a talk given at the Indian Institute of Culture, Bangalore, some twenty years ago by Professor N. A. Nikam, M. A. (Cantab), the learned Professor referred to Ananda Coomaraswamy’s style as terse and allusive; his scholarship in many languages being unique. His wide references to the literatures of the world – for example, an essay of sixteen pages requiring twelve pages footnotes and references – demand not just a review, but an interpretation.

An interesting sidelight has been cast upon Coomaraswam contribution to the genre of reviewing by O. C. Gangooly in Homage to Ananda Coomaraswamy (Vol. II. p. 99, edited by S. Durai Raja Singam). He points out that Coomaraswamy has revealed new methods and manners of reviewing. Most of his reviews are actually independent articles, supplementing the data of the original subject under discussion. He readily interjects information unknown to the author being reviewed. As an example, his Indian architectural terms, a veritable encyclopaedia of the subject, has grown out of a review of Dr. Acharya’s books on Indian  architecture, and Coomaraswamy’s supplementary work now stands as an admirable and indispensable text-book giving a mine of information for all future students of the subject.

Coomaraswamy quotes in all of his writings several sources and refuses to make idle speculation about any probable meanings. This is particularly shown in his Dance of Siva (New York: Noonday Press, Revised Edition, 1967), a book which has been called a world classic like Okakuro Kakuzo’s Book of Tea. It is also amply evidenced in the particularly remarkable dexterity with which he quotes from the several Hindu scriptures, the Koran, the Bible, and the Summa Theologia of St. Thomas Aquinas in his essay. “The Indian Doctrine of Man’s Last End” (Asia, May 1937, pp. 380-38l, 396).

Besides countless volumes on varied subjects, Coomaraswamy wrote book reviews, criticisms, forewords and introductions; he wrote for broadcasting, did articles for magazines and encyclopaedias, memorial volumes; wrote and gave lectures for countless learned and lay groups, translated poems from Hindu scriptures in Punjabi, Kashmiri, Bengali, Sanskrit, or Tamil; and appreciations on art.

Some of his varied titles are: Vegetarianism in Ceylon, Education in India, The Dance of Siva, The Indian Doctrine of Man’s Last End, Sri Ramakrishna and Religious Tolerance, The Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, The Mahatma, The Ragmala Poems, The Bee-Song of Sur Das, America and India, The Appreciation of the Unfamiliar Arts, Domestic Handicraft and Culture.

As one example of his writing, the following isincluded here in full:

Mata Bharata

There was once a tall, fair woman, not indeed young–no one could have thought that–but serene to the uttermost and possessed of great patience and grace. In years past she had been famed for wisdom, and the wise men of the world had sat at her feet and carried away her teachings to the ends of the earth. But now she was older, and a little weary, and the light in her eyes served only as a star for the few who still beheld reality behind appearance. She was, moreover, wealthy, and many had sought her hand, and of these, one whom she loved least had possessed her body for many years: and now there came another and stranger wooer with promises of freedom and peace, and protection for her children: and she believed in him, and laid her hand in his.

For a time it was well, her new lord was contented with the wealth of her treasure-houses and gave her the peace of neglect. But ere long he took more interest in his cold bride and her children, and said to himself, “This woman has strange ways unlike my own and those of my people, and her thoughts are not my thoughts; but she shall be trained and educated, that she may know what I know, and that the world may say that I have moulded her mind into the paths of progress.” For he knew not of her ancient wisdom, and she seemed to him slow of mind, and lacking in that practical ability on which he prided himself.

And while these thoughts were passing in his mind, some of her children were roused against him, by reason of his robbing them of power and interfering with the rights and laws that regulated their relations to each other; for they feared that their ancient heritage would pass away forever. But still the mother dreamed of peace and rest and would not hear the children’s cry, but helped to subdue their waywardness; and all was quiet again ere long. But the wayward children loved not their new father and could not understand their mother. And their new father turned to other ways, and sent the children to schools where they were taught his language and his thoughts, and how great his people were, and self-sacrificing; and from what unrest and wretchedness he had saved their mother, and with no thought of gain or profit; and they were taught, too, to forget their ancient glory and from the height of the new drawing-room finish despise their ancient manners.

But now another thing happened: the mother bore a child to the foreign lord, and he was pleased thereat, and deemed that she (for it was a girl) should be a young woman after his own heart, even as the daughters of his own people, and she should be fair and wealthy, and a bride for a son of his people. But when this child was born, the mother was roused from her dream, and lived only for the girl, and she grew up to remind the mother of her own youth, and favoured the foreign lord little; yet she had somewhat of his energy and turn for practical affairs. The mother talked long and deeply with her, and the foreign lord did not take it aught amiss, for he deemed that all must go even as he, such a great man, would have it go. And he got teachers, and she was taught the wisdom and manners of his people. But in secret the mother taught her the ancient wisdom, and her heart was turned away from her father and his people and his teaching. And the mother was content, and now she was white- haired and weak with age, and a time came when she passed hence, for her work was done. And the foreign lord scarcely missed his bride, for the girl was strangely like her, and some instinct taught her to show little of her lack of love as yet; and she took the mother’s place. So life went on for many years, until the foreign lord himself grew a little weary, for there were troubles in his own land, and some had said that he was a tyrant in a foreign land; and thereby his heart was pained, for had he not spent his life for others, and surely the labourer was worthy of his hire.

But the girl grew strong, and would brook little of her father’s tyranny, and she was a mother to the children of the children who came before her, and she was called the mother by all; and perhaps she and her mother were after all the same. One day there arose murmurings amongst the children as of old, and they said that they needed no foreign lord to take their revenues and school their minds. Still they were subdued witha high hand and some were cast in prison, or worse, for the father was a patriarch of the old type and deemed it amiss that he had not the power of life and death over all his subject people. But now they would not brook his tyranny–for he himself had taught them that the king-days were over, and made them dream of freedom, though he was sorry now he had done it.

All these trials were under him, and he grew old and weary; and the young mother (she would be mother of all she said, but wedded unto none) helped all the children and taught them to love and help each other and to call her mother; and she left the foreign lord and went to livein a place apart, where the children came to her for counsel. And when the foreign lord would have stopped it,she was not there but elsewhere; and it seemed that she was neither here, nor there, but everywhere.

And this tale is yet unfinished; but the ending is not afar off, and may be foreseen.
(The Modern Review, April 1907. pp. 369-371)

The following is an example of Coomaraswamy’s lucid descriptive ability:

Four Days in Orissa

Four days is not a long time to spend in Orissa; but it is time enough to see much. Puri consists of an old town with one broad procession road and many smaller streets surrounding the great temple; and a new and very English suburb on the shore. There is a rather amusing contrast between this seaside watering place with its nursemaids and babies on the sands, and the old religious city of the Lord of the World (Jagannatha – the “Juggernaut” of Anglo-Indian literature). Old Puri by all accounts seems to have been a very pestilential and insanitary place, and pilgrims died in thousands, even if they survived the robbers and other dangers of a journey through Orissa ... Not the least interesting things in Puri are the people themselves, the Uriyas. The men are often very beautiful, sometimes decidedly effeminate; the priests and pandas not very learned or intelligent. Few of the people speak any language other than Uriya. Bengali is better known than Hindi.

Reaching Puri in the morning by night train from Calcutta, one may leave the same evening by palki for Konarak, 20 miles away along the seashore ... weeks could be spent in studying detail at Konarak; but unless serious work is proposed, a day will suffice, and a return to Puri can be made the same evening...the partially ruined “Black Pagoda,” which stands alone in a great sandy waste, has been excavated and sufficiently restored to prevent further destruction. The temple is not only unique as a Sun-temple, but is in itself both architecturally and in the details of its sculpture, one of the noblest monuments of Indian mediaeval art. The date of its erection is said to be about A.D. 1250–contemporary with the finest period of European artchitecture.....

The four main entrances of the temple are guarded by pairs of rampant animals. Those on the south side are horses trampling down armed men. One of these great horses...has a majestic and monumental grandeur which give it a rank amongst the finest heroic sculpture in the world...

Not the least surprising thing at Konarak is the evidence of engineering skill afforded. How did the builders raise the great stones that crown such buildings as this? How did they transport the great mass of chlorite on which the forms of the planets are carved, 80 miles from the nearest hills where this stone is found, across swamps and rivers, to Konarak? When an attempt was made to transport this block to Calcutta, it had to be abandoned after moving 200 yards. The stone is now worshipped and there is an annual mela (a religious festival and fair) attended by about half a lakh of people.

From Puri one may proceed by the evening train to Bhuvaneswar.....

The first temple passed on the road from the station to Bhuvaneswar is small and unimportant, but particularly simple and dignified...Bhuvaneswar itself once consisted of some 7000 shrines surrounding a sacred lake. There remain now some 500 of these, more or less ruined. Many of the shrines at Bhuvaneswar however are not to be described as ruined: in particular the great temple built in the seventh century, “perhaps the finest example of a purely Hindu temple in India,” is well-preserved...There are in other parts of Bhuvaneswar many deserted temples well-preserved, nearly all of which have special interest or beauty of their own...There is much beautiful sculpture well-preserved here, (again recalling vividly the general character of Gothic) as well as some excellent modern work where judicious restorations have been made.

Each of Ananda Coomaraswamy s works shows a more profound knowledge of the soul of India than the work of any foreign educated Indian. It has been Coomaraswamy’s life-long work to render the living images of Indian art and philosophy and its abstract ideas with literary versatility, freshness and force of ideas.

As Kay Ambrose has written (in the Bibliography of Classical Dances and Costumes of India, London: A and C Black): “All books by the late Dr Ananda Coomaraswamy are of interest to the student of Indian thought, as his only compromise with the west was his splendid and readable command of English.”

Ananda Coomaraswamy’s mastery of language and hisexversatility have been the subject of much high praise. Robert Allerton Parker inhis introduction to Coomaraswamy’s book. Am I My Bruther’s Keeper? (New York: John Day Company, pp. IX-X) says:

His pen is an instrument of precision. His closely and tightly woven fabric of thought is the very model of explicit denotation–a virtue of written expression that is now-a-days being rediscovered. For this scholar the exegesis of ancient texts is above all else a scientific pursuit, considered as means to a more abundant life, he prides himself upon never introducing phrases of his own and never makes any claims for which he cannot cite chapter and verse. His compact prose often presents a forbidding mosaic on the printed page, offering nothing in the way of enticement to slothful contemporary eyes but challenging attention nonetheless because of his rigorous exactitude, like that of a mathematical demonstration. Not infrequently matter that would suffice for a whole article is compressed into a footnote. But even when he is thus writing for scholars, it is certainly not only for scholars, for he can, as the essays in the present collection show, write very simply, relegating footnotes to concluding pages where the reader can ignore them if he so desires.

And speaking further on the subject of footnotes and Coomaraswamy’s scholarly approach. Alan Watts (Myth and Ritual in Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press. 1968. p. 20 ff.) has said, ‘but the problems which confront anyone wishing to make an exhaustive study of his [Ananda Coomaraswamy’s] researches are considerable since he had a ‘squirrel-like’ tendency to bury the best of his knowledge in elaborate footnotes contributed to the most obscure journals–often published in far-off lands.”

Another writer in “The Indian Nation-Builders” (Pt. 111) (Ganesh & Co., Madras. 1908. pp. 337.382) describes Coomaraswamy’s style thus:

Dr. Coomaraswamy is a master of English style and as purely literary productions alone his writings have a value. None who had not read them can realize their throbbing beauty of language. A chiselled simplicity, limpid purity, a directness and pointedness of phrase–equalities 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.

Indeed, Coomaraswamy’s scintillating prose throbs everywhere with a vigour and virility seldom paralleled even by the masters of English prose. As an art critic of the first rank, as a cultural ambassador of India’s spiritual heritage, as an interpreter of the message of the East to the West, as a crusader for art and Swadeshi (a movement for national autonomy) and as a patriotic son of India with glowing and intense love for his motherland, he used a scholarly prose which has rarely been equalled by anyone. He writes a clear and forceful English with often a psalmic cadence and Oriental love of colour supplemented by apt allusions and quotations. Ananda Coomaraswamy had a remarkable power of choosing words with a microscopic examination and arranging them almost as a jeweller inlays his gold with gems. In fact, his writings baffle our imagination by the infinite variety of passages quoted from the eternal wisdom of the past. Who could fully comprehend the essence of his works like Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government or his last great book Time and Eternity.

The greatness implied in the word Mahatma, for example, is explained ina learned little article, Mahatma in Dr S. Radhakrishnan’s uniquecollection of tributes to Gandhiji on his seventieth birthday (Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections on his Life and Work with Memorial Edition, London: George Allen and Unwin. 1949. p. 65).

In mahatma, maha is simply “great,” “eminent”; and atman, like Greek pneuma, primarily “spirit” (as distinguished from soul and body). But because the spirit is the real being of the man as distinguished from the accidents of this being, is temporal manifestation as so-and-so characterised by particular qualities and properties, atman in reflexive usage acquires the secondary value “self” whatever physical (hylic), psychic or spiritual (pneumatic) self we may intend.

To savour the style of Ananda Coomaraswamy’s delicious flavour, and to touch the fine fabric of language and thought he weaves, one could hardly find a passage more representative of him or one more eloquent in pleading his claim for greatness than the following description of striking beauty. It is of an Indian musical party in Coomaraswamy’s essay Essays in National Idealism (G. A. Natesan & Co., 1909. pp. 188-191).

One could comment about the range and calibre of Ananda Coomaraswamy’s writings for page on page. One could comment about the extensiveness of his knowledge, the versatility of thought, the profundity and originality of his analysis of Indian art, or one could carp about the extreme traditionalism in his attitude to art or his claim that no work which ignores the identity of utility and beauty is art. One could comment about all these things but having said all this one would still have let slip the very essence that informs all these varied excellences. One would not have captured the infinite variety which is Ananda Coomaraswamy. Cowed by his sheer stature–his learning, his wisdom, his probity–one can perhaps give him no greater praise than that paid to Goethe by Napoleon: “Voila, un homme.”