Volume 26, Number 2 · February 22, 1979
A Professional Sage
By Philip Rawson
Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers Vol. 1: Traditional Art and Symbolism Vol. 2: Metaphysics
edited by Roger Lipsey
Princeton University Press, 470 pp., $50.00 the set
Coomaraswamy Vol. 3: His Life and Work
by Roger Lipsey
Princeton University Press, 312 pp., $17.50
Ananda (Indian) Kentish (English) Coomaraswamy (Tamil-Ceylonese) is known in America as one of the great scholars of Indian art, the curator for thirty years, from 1917 to 1947, of the Indian section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Most of his important work was written in the US, but he was formed by a host of influences whose variety his name itself reflects. He was a natural scientist, trained in England as a geologist, and he founded the Geological Survey of Ceylon, of which he was the first director. He was a pioneering and scholarly art historian, and wrote three books which are still classics. And finally he could be described as a 'professional sage': he rightly disclaimed the title of 'guru,' but was nevertheless given it by younger admirers during his Boston years.
Review, 3957 words
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