Hinduism - Ananda Kentish Cooraswamy

[Dr. Jai Maharaj]

Hindu Wisdom
http://hinduwisdom.info

Dr. Ananda Kentish Cooraswamy (1877-1947) the late
curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
was unexcelled in his knowledge of the art of the Orient,
and unmatched in his understanding of Indian culture,
language, religion and philosophy.

He wanted India to remain Indian and continue to
demonstrate that a pattern of life rooted in religion and
philosophy can also be elegant, graceful and fully
satisfying. In India philosophy has been the key in the
understanding of concrete life, not a mere intellectual
exercise in abstract thought.

He is the author of "The Dance of Shiva: Essays on Indian
Art and Culture".

Praising this grand achievement of art, he writes about
the image of the Nataraja:

"This conception itself is a synthesis of science,
religion and art. In the night of Brahma, Nature is
inert, and cannot dance till Shiva wills it. He rises
from His rapture, and dancing sends through inert matter
pushing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also
dances appearing as a glory round about Him. This is
poetry; but nonetheless, science.

Whatever the origins of Shiva's dance, it became in time
the clearest image of the activity of God which any art
or religion can boast of.

"How amazing the range of thought and sympathy of those
rishi-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, note merely
satisfactory to a single clique or race, not acceptable
to the thinkers of a country only, but Universal in its
appeal to the philosopher, the lover and the artist of
all ages and all countries..."

"Every part of such an image as this is directly
expressive not of any superstition or dogma, but of
evident facts. No artist of today, however great, could
more exactly or more wisely create an image of that
Energy which science must postulate behind all phenomena.
"It is not strange that the figure of Nataraja has
commanded the adoration of so many generations past;
familiar with all skepticisms, expert in tracing all
beliefs to primitive superstitions, explorers of the
infinitely great and infinitely small, we are worshippers
of Nataraja still."

(Source: The Dance of Shiva - By Dr. Ananda K
Coomaraswamy p. 57-66 and India and World Civilization -
By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 .Part II p.
266).

"Hindus have grasped more firmly than others the
fundamental meaning and purpose of life, and more
deliberately than others organized society with a view to
the attainment of the fruit of life; and this
organization was designed, not for the advantage of a
single class, but, to use a modern formula, to take from
each according to his capacity, and to give to each
according to his needs."

"If it be asked what inner riches India brings to aid in
the realization of a civilization of the world, then,
from the Indian standpoint, the answer must be found in
her religions and her philosophy, and her constant
application of abstract theory to practical life."

The essence of the Indian experience, rooted in " a
constant intuition" of the unity and harmony of all life.
Everything has its place, every being its function and
all play a part in the divine concert led by Nataraja
(Shiva), Lord of Dancers.

He has described the Bhagavad Gita as "a compendium of
the whole Vedic doctrine to be found in the earlier
Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, and being therefore the
basis of all later developments, it can be regarded as
the focus of all Indian religion."

(Source: Readings in Vedic Literature - By Satsvarupa
dasa Goswami p. 38).

"There are many gods in Hindu pantheon, but they are no
more than the imaginative shadowing forth of all-
compassing, all penetrating spirit."

"Hinduism emerges, not as a post-Vedic development,
atheistic declension from the lofty visions of the
Upanishads, but as something handed on from a prehistoric
past, ever-changing and yet ever essentially itself,
raised at various times by devotional ecstasy and
philosophic speculation to heights beyond the grasp of
thought, and yet preserving in its popular aspects the
most archaic rites and animistic imagery."

(Source: The Wisdom of Ananda Coomaraswamy - presented by
S. Durai Raja Singam 1979 p. 97).

He detected in India "a strong national genius... since
the beginning of her history." He found Indian art and
culture "a joint creation of the Dravidian and Aryan
genius." Of Buddhism, he wrote: "the more profound our
study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish
Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if
any, Buddhism is really unorthodox. The outstanding
distinction lies in the fact that Buddhist doctrine is
propounded by an apparently historical founder. Beyond
this there are only broad distinctions of emphasis." No
right-wing historian could dare put it so boldly in
Indian today.

(Source: Non-saffron history unnerves reads - By
Meenakshi Jain).

"Almost all that belongs to the common spiritual
consciousness of Asia, the ambient in which its
diversities are reconcilable, is of Indian origin in the
Gupta period."

(Source: The Heritage of Asia - By Kenneth Saunders p.
45-46).

"Hinduism is not only the oldest of the mystery
religions, or rather metaphysical disciplines, of which
we have a full and precise knowledge from literary
sources... but also perhaps the only one of these that
has survived with an unbroken tradition and that is lived
and understood at the present by millions of men..."

The Indian tradition is one of the forms of the
Philosophia Perennis, and as such, embodies those
universal truths, to which no one people or age can make
exclusive claim.

"....We must, however, specially mention the Bhagavad
Gita as probably the most important single work ever
produced in India; this book of eighteen chapters is not,
as it has been sometimes called, a "sectarian" work, but
one universally studied and often repeated daily from
memory by millions of Indians of all persuasions; it may
be described as a compendium of the whole Vedic doctrine
to be found in the earlier Vedas, Brahmanas, and
Upanishads, and being therefore the basis of all the
later developments, it can be regarded at the focus of
all Indian religion.

(Source: Hinduism and Buddhism - By Ananda Coomaraswamy
p. 3-5). For more on Ananda Coomaraswamy refer to chapter
on Hindu Art and Hindu Music).

Hindu Wisdom

http://hinduwisdom.info

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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