The Critical Premise of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The Critical Premise of
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, as his name speaks for itself, belongs to more than one culture. Born to a Sinhalese father and an English mother in Sri Lanka in 1877, he was brought up in England because of his father’s early death. He studied Geology at London University and was awarded doctorate for his work on thorianate. For sometime he served as Director of Minerological Survey of Ceylon but he gave up this post to become an art critic. He angered the then British Government by his protests against the British policies in India and for this he had to leave his country and seek shelter in America. Coomaraswamy’s contribution to Indian revivalism is a great saga in itself. His work is based on solid and lasting foundations such as those laid by Max Mueller and Rhys Davids. While the other two interpreted the Indian religious literatures, Coomaraswamy filled a great need by interpreting in a masterly fashion the Hindu and Buddhist art to the world.

There are many facets to Coomaraswamy’s work but they need individual and lengthy studies. His erudition of the East and the West and his massive efforts at a synthesis of world cultures cannot justly be estimated without a penetrating and polyglot knowledge of art, literature, philosophy and religion found in Greek, Sanskrit and Pali languages. I can attempt only a synoptic account of his literary stance here.

In the first place, it may be pointed out that Coomaraswamy’s grasp of poetics, dramaturgy, sciences of architecture and sculpture was so total and complete that Sanskrit terms and phrases came to him naturally and spontaneously even when he wrote about things Western. It might be due to his own favourite idea of Vac-­Saraswati visiting him or his vision of an intellectual fraternity of Europe and Asia and his stupendous attempts at finding a common base for major world cultures. He did not, however, make a direct use of traditional ideas or critical terms. Rather, he derived many of them from his studies of architecture and sculpture. Words like Sreya (good), preya (attractive), smarta (traditional), kritakritya (well and truly made), vastu (theme), tamas (sluggish) and a number of other words acquire a technical connotation and give a unique quality to his writing. Without a vocabulary of this kind, Coomaraswamy could not have written on oriental art as lucidly as he did.

Secondly, Coomaraswamy looks at everything, even including literature, with an architectural eye. For instance, a line like hiranmayena patrena satyasyapihitam mukham from Isa Upanishad has a philosophical and mystical meaning for us. Translated with the next line the Mantra means: “The face of truth is covered by a golden vessel. Remove, O Sun, the covering, for the law of the Truth, that I may behold it.” The traditional commentator explains away the Mantra as a prayer made to the Sun-god, by a dying man seeking self-realisation, for the removal of the vessel that covered the face of the Truth. Questions like why the dying man prays to the Sun-god and how the Truth is covered by a vessel will plague anyone who wants a thorough understanding of the Mantra. Coomaraswamy in his famous interpretation of the symbolism of the architectural dome makes an incidental reference to this Mantra which shocks us into a recognition of its meaning. He translates the line as: “entrance covered over by the golden platter of truth.” Mukha means face, gateway or entrance and patra means vessel, platter or disc. By translating mukha as entrance or gateway and patra as platter or disc, Coomara­swamy shows how the meaning of the Mantra, is related to the Sundoor of the Egyptian, Indian and Christian mythologies. It is also known as Kannika mandalam in Buddhist architecture and it is the result of the ancient belief that the Universe is a home and the sun’s disc acts as the door to the gateway of Heaven. The truth lies behind the door and the dead have to pass through the passage of the Sun to reach Heaven. He also cites the painting “Entrance to the Celestial Paradise” of Hieronymus Bosch which seems to be an illustration of the Mantra in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “He reaches the Sun, it opens out for him like a hole in a drum”. But for Coomaraswamy’s identification of the architectural myth in the Mantra it would have defied our understanding.

While Coomaraswamy confined himself largely to an elucida­tion of the principles underlying the ancient and medieval art, his ideas directly or indirectly influenced a powerful band of critics and poets like T. E. Hulme, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats who applied them to literature and contributed to a new canon of writing. Coomaraswamy’s emphasis on tradition, his idea of poetic process as a kind of contemplative activity and the merits he found in non-representational abstract art, became the main tenets of the new canon. His opposition to naturalism in art seems to have led unintendedly to the birth of cubism and other geometric art. Although he viewed the modern world as a cul-de-sac, he wished very much for a continuation to the glorious heritage. He thought that the truth of the Vedic Rishis, the severe psychology and compassionate teaching of the Buddha, the clear light of Plato and the Christian insight into God’s intimacy with man would, if identified and retold, lead us “somehow to first principles.” To discover these first principles, Coomaraswamy, with a rare energy and courage, made an odyssey into hitherto neglected and forgotten areas like a pilgrim, like a historian and connoisseur.

According to what Coomaraswamy calls the “traditional theory” of art, ideas are never made but only discovered and entertained. That is, the artistic process is a kind of discovery and not an individual creative activity. The artist is “not express­ing himself but that which was to be expressed”. ³ The door, the arch and the circle emerged from the consciousness of a community of artists. Coomaraswamy distinguishes hieratic and folk art which are smarta (traditional) from academic art which is a “class art” supported by a limited class of intellectual aristo­crats. The images of the seated Buddha and the dancing Shiva Nataraja are the works that express the thoughts of a whole community of people. “It is the art of a unanimous people (jana)”. ⁴ “The folk drawings of alpana says Coomaraswamy, “are an outstanding example of fine art”. ⁵

Following the principles laid down in Sukraniti and Manasara he holds that the beautiful is not what pleases the fancy, but that which is in agreement with the canon and the artists should reject what has not been prescribed.

He deprecates those who depend for guidance merely upon individual opinion, taste and passing fashion as mithya panditas (perversely educated). ⁶ The artist has to execute what the people in their deepest want. To achieve this, the artist has to get immersed in tradition and traditional lore. Citing from the Manasara he points out that the master architect and even his assistants (surveyors, painters and carpenters) were required by way of professional qualification to be acquainted both with the Vedas and with their accessory sciences (sthapatih…vedavicchastra paragoh). Architecture affects the whole society and in it all other arts are harmonised in one great unity and as such, an architect “should be saturated with the traditional art of his race in order that he may know how to see”. ⁷ True art corresponds to the common and collective need of the people and it bestows, in the words of Bharata, “the four-fold fruit of life –­ virtue, pleasure, wealth and spiritual freedom”. ⁸

Although the artist has to execute his work according to the established canon, his work is not altogether outside himself. He has to contemplate on the object before he sets to his work. “Since the eternal and intelligible models are supersensuous and invisible,” says Coomaraswamy, “it is evidently not by observation but in contemplation that they must be known”. ⁹ The artist has to look at what the shastra says with his mind’s eye and contemplate on it. Speaking of impersonality in art T. S. Eliot used the language of Coomaraswamy. Donne, according to Eliot, is finding an object “which shall be adequate to his feelings” but Lancelot Andrewes is “wholly in his subject” and his emotion is purely contemplative. “It is not personal,” says Eliot, “it is wholly evoked by the object of contemplation, to which it is adequate; his emotions are wholly contained in and explained by its object. But Donne’s sermons are a means of self-expression”. ¹⁰ In the language of Eliot the idea becomes obscure and changed but Coomaraswamy knows what he is talking about. To him art is a kind of Yoga. ¹¹ The mind of the artist should work like that of a Yogi in his nidhidhyasan. Just as the Yogi contemplates on the meaning of a mahavakya for its realization, the artist too, should contemplate on the portrait given to him by shastra. Even in worldly art which is asvargya (not leading to heaven) the discipline of Yoga-dhyana is needed: The portrait of a queen made for a love-sick king is given all the lineaments of a padmini and yet thought of as a good likeness (susdrisa). Even in secular art like this, the artist is expected to visualise in contempla­tion the form in agreement with pre-established canonical propor­tions. ¹² “The vision of beauty,” as Coomaraswamy repeatedly says, “is an act of pure contemplation, not in the absence of any object of contemplation, but in conscious identification with the object of contemplation”. ¹³ Even the word chaitya is derived from chitta because it comes as a part of builder’s consciousness.

Coomaraswamy admires art that is austere with a hard outline, non-sensuous and unsentimental (which characteristics strangely crept into Ezra Pound’s Imagist Manifesto). He points out to the standing Buddhas at Anuradhapura and Amaravati as the purest and the noblest achievement of Buddhist sculpture. He calls them the primitive Buddhas as they are untainted by alien influences and as they conform more to the native tradition. “In these austere images,” says Coomaraswamy, “the moral grandeur of nibbana ideal finds its own direct expression in monumental forms, free of all irrelevant statements or after effects, and these are prototypes that are repeated in all subsequent Buddhist art”. ¹⁵ The Sanchi art has a sensuous touch which makes it “less precisely Buddhist.” The Gandhara sculpture is “effeminate” with “foppish” costume and “listless gesture.” But the primitive Buddhas of Anuradha­pura and Amaravati are associated with “the idea of mental discipline and the attainment of the highest station of self-­oblivion”. ¹⁶ One might ask, if only the austere and non-sensuous art is superior art, what about the full-bosomed damsels of Ajanta with their music and love? What about the Khajuraho exuberance of sex? Coomaraswamy says that in the midst of the enchanting scenes in Ajanta there moves “the figure of one whose heart is set on more distant good, who feels an infinite compassion for all born beings”. ¹⁷ Khajuraho sculpture, according to him, involves symbolism which expresses the virility of Iswara and the fecundity of the Great Mother: “A man united to a darling bride is conscious of either within or without, so is it when the mortal self is embraced by the all-wise Self”. ¹⁸

Coomaraswamy shows that the Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic and Christian art meet on common ground in their symbolic presentation and in their aversion to sensuous naturalism. Accord­ing to him symbolism is a language and precise form ofthought. It is “hieratic and metaphysical language” and not determined by “somatic” or “psychological categories.” Its function is in the analogical correspondence of all states and orders of being or levels of reference. It is based on the idea Yadamutra tadanviha (this world is in the image of that). ¹⁹ Plato approves of symbolic art and Coomaraswamy concurs with him in expecting three tasks from an expert critic: The critic should find out what archetype is involved, whether it is correctly and well made and finally whether it is good or not.

Those who do not understand the symbolic character of Hindu art find the many-armed, many-headed gods and goddesses to be grotesque. To such people Coomaraswamy says: “It is no criticism of fairy tale to say that in our world we meet no fairies ... and it is no criticism ofbeast fable to say that after all animals do not speak English or Sanskrit”. ^{20 “Needless to observe that our arithmetical ability to count up arms, or to recognise theriomorphic elements in the artist’s vocabulary, is not an aesthetic capacity.} The lakshanas required are an integral part of the artist’s problem (karya, kartavya) presented to him a priori ; what we judge in him is not the problem, but the solution”. ¹¹

Coomaraswamy finds a clear and adequate definition of art (or literature) in Viswanatha’s Sahityadarpana in the line vakyam rasatmakam kavyam. He translated this statement as: Art is a state­ment informed by ideal beauty. As Coomaraswamy believes that Hindu art, literature and music are based on the same principles, what Viswanatha says of poetry may be taken to hold good for art as well. As the translation is inadequate Coomaraswamy further clarifies: Statement is the body, rasa the soul of the work. He also says that a true critic has an inward criterion of truth (Pramana) and as competent he is a pramatr and as an enjoyer he is a rasika. In his own writings, especially such as his description of Shiva Nataraja, Coomaraswamy combines within himself, a pramatr, a rasika and a sahridaya.

References

¹ “Traditional Symbolism: The Sundoor and Related Motifs.” Selected Papers (Princeton University Press, 1977). Pp. 416. 481, 489 & 508.
² Quoted by Roger Lispey in his Introduction. Selected Papers.P. xxxv.
³ Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art.(Dover Publications, N. Y. 1956 reprint) P. 30.
⁴ Ibid, P. 119.
⁵ “Art in Indian Life”, Selected Papers. P. 91.
⁶ Ibid. P. 95.
⁷ Obviously Coomaraswamy would not have approved the con­struction of cities like Chandigarh which are out of tune with tradition.
⁸ The Dance of Shiva. (Sagar Publications, 1968, reprint) P. 40.
⁹ “Figure of Speech of Thought,” Selected Papers, P. 24.
¹⁰ “Lancelot Andrewes” (1928), Selected Essay.(Faber and Faber, London) P. 351.
¹¹ “The Intellectual Operation in Indian Art,” Selected Papers, P. 131.
¹² “Art in Indian Life,” Selected Papers, P. 90.
¹³ Chintayet pramanam, tadhyatavyam bhittau nivasayet, Abhilaskitartha Chintamani.1.3.158. S. P. P. 93.
¹⁴ Selected Papers, P. 13.
¹⁵ Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, (Asia Bombay, 1956 reprint) P.339.
¹⁶ “The Buddhist Primitives” The Dance of Shiva.P. 60.
¹⁷ Buddhism, P. 331.
¹⁸ “Art in Eastern Asia.” Selected Papers, P. 24.
¹⁹ “Buddhist Art.” Selected Papers.P. 174.
²⁰ “Indian Images with Many Arms,” The Dance of Shiva.P. 83.
²¹ “Art in Indian Life”, footnote. Selected Papers.P. 88.
²² “Art of Eastern Asia,” Selected Papers.P. 104-105.
²³ Ibid
²⁴ Vakyam rasatmakam kavyam: I, for one, would translate this as
²⁵ “A sentence well-written is poetry.”
The Dance of Shiva.P. 77-78.