1. Ananda Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy was a Ceylonese metaphysician, historian and a philosopher of Indian art who was an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West.
24 Facts About Ananda Coomaraswamy
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Ananda Coomaraswamy has been described as "the groundbreaking theorist who was largely responsible for introducing ancient Indian art to the West".
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Ananda Coomaraswamy's father died when Ananda was two years old, and Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad.
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On 19 June 1902, Ananda Coomaraswamy married Ethel Mary Partridge, an English photographer, who then traveled with him to Ceylon.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy then met and married a British woman Alice Ethel Richardson and together they stayed on a houseboat in Srinagar in Kashmir.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy divorced his second wife after they arrived in America.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy married the American artist Stella Bloch, 20 years his junior, in November 1922.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote catalogues for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and published his History of Indian and Indonesian Art in 1927.
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Shortly thereafter, on 18 November 1930, Ananda Coomaraswamy married Argentine Luisa Runstein, 28 years younger, who was working as a society photographer under the professional name Xlata Llamas.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy was ordained a Traditionalist Roman Catholic priest, despite the fact that he was married and had a living wife.
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Rama Ananda Coomaraswamy studied in England and then in India, learning Hindi and Sanskrit.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy made important contributions to the philosophy of art, literature, and religion.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy expressed some of his feelings in a letter to Graham Carey:.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy pointed out that the Greek word daimon, which at root indicates something given, was synonymous with the Christian Holy Spirit, God's gift of life.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy was a strong advocate for Indian independence and was pressured to leave England for publicly suggesting that Indians not fight in the First World War.
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Unlike Rene Guenon and others who shared many of his understandings, Ananda Coomaraswamy was not content to describe traditional ideas from the inside out, in metaphysical terms alone.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy did not believe that science and metaphysics were in opposition, but were two different ways of looking at the world.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy was critical of the writings of Carl Jung and of Theosophy, which he believed distorted the meaning of traditional ideas.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy spent a lot of his time documenting themes and images that appeared to be very old, given their widespread distribution.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy observed these symbols in different cultures and time periods, both in religious writings and in folklore.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy maintained that traditional technologies were applications of metaphysical ideas, just as modern technology is an expression of scientific principles.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy offers a perspective on the tradition that complements Guenon's.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy was extremely perceptive regarding aesthetics and wrote dozens of articles on traditional arts and mythology.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy built a bridge between East and West that was designed to be two-way: among other things, his metaphysical writings aimed at demonstrating the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism.