A rasika is born and not made, even as a
poet is. Maybe, in the case of the rasika, his genius differs from that
of a creative artist. But that difference must, if at all, exist in degree
alone and not in kind.
An observation like the above one holds good with
an art-critic of the calibre of the late Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. For,
judging by adventitious circumstances alone, a person of the renowned Doctor’s
birth and up-bringing, could not have easily possessed the capacity, which he
showed in such abundant measure all his life, for appreciation of Indian Art.
His father was a Ceylonese and his mother of British origin. His education was
begun and completed in England. The rest of his years were practically spent in
Europe and America, the latter being his adopted country during the last thirty
years, till his death in September 1947. A savant to the core of his being, his
astonishing interest in the study of Oriental arts like Indian sculpture, architecture,
painting, music, dance and handicrafts, has earned for him an imperishable
name, which is perhaps second to none in the sphere of interpretation and
exposition of all that is best and noblest in the culture of the East, and
particularly of India.
Still one feels a wonder how this scholar spending
the best part of his life away from India could have divined the glory of
India, that is her great art and culture. Well, let us listen to himself before
trying to find out for ourselves what lay behind the wealth of scholarship he
brought to bear upon his numerous writings. He writes: “Hindu writers say that
the capacity to feel beauty (to taste rasa) cannot be acquired by study,
but is the reward of merit gained in a past life; for many good men and would-be
historians of art have never perceived it.” 1 Those that are
familiar with the stuff of which he was made, will unhesitatingly agree that
his amazing penetration into the nuances of Indian Art must be the result of
the vasanas of a previous birth and nothing else.
Moreover, it is not in one field of knowledge alone
that his capacious intellect perceived clearly things for itself or mastered
the intricacies of a subject. Indeed, studies pertaining to a dozen subjects
and countries, ranging from ancient to modern times, attracted him, and the
outcome was his remarkable output in the shape of high-class books on the
history and tendencies of the art of many countries, with beautiful plates to
illustrate his points, as well as pamphlets and monographs on special occasions
that demanded his considered views upon human problems facing the worn-out
world of today. And yet, what amount of precision marks all that he wrote! One
can judge of the level of his performances from what we get from him by way of
quotations from Sanskrit texts that achieve a rare illumination at his hands. His deep knowledge of Greek and
Latin too aid him in the special task he chose for himself. Still, nowhere in
his style do we perceive any desire for conscious effects or display of
erudition. Rather, his expositions gain considerably by the apt footnotes and
adequate extracts he was able to gather with accuracy. And in case there is any
difficulty felt by the reader in reading him, it must be due to the reader’s
own defective approach to the subject or the absence of a clear understanding
needed to voyage forth with the author in a wonder-world that is Indian Art.
Years back when pseudo-critics and uninformed
pedants like Vincent Smith, Maskell, Birdwood and Archer condemned the very
features of vitality, infinity and repose as exemplified in the many armed or
many-headed images we have in our hieratic art, there was only a dumb
acquiescence in all that they said on the part of our so-called educated men.
Western education spoilt so much the first few generations of
university-educated men and women in India that they hardly thought of our
heritage in the arts as anything but the vestiges of an unrefined or unformed
sense of art in our ancients. Everything pertaining to our culture and
philosophy stood at a disadvantage by the side of the amazing discoveries of
the West in science. But things were not allowed to remain thus for long. Soon
there arose, from the ranks of Westerners, art-critics of the type of E. B.
Havell, who had the vision to perceive and proclaim to Indians themselves what
phenomenal folly it was to neglect such great traditions as had once infused Bhakti
in artists and inspired them to capture through imagination the undying
glories of Ajanta and Ellora. Among Indians also champions appeared like Sri
Aurobindo who carried on a crusade against the traducers of our ancient
culture. But a regular school was needed to revive our arts and to teach what
was gradually vanishing from our midst. The Tagores, Rabindranath and his
cousins Abanindranath and Gaganendranath, inaugurated the Bengal School and ere
long there was a stir in our hearts to understand what goes by the name of
Indian Art. Still nothing could be so effective as a deep study of the basic
rules of Indian Art and the rare philosophy behind all creative efforts in the
land of the incomparable temples and stupas. Therefore it is that a
tribute to Ananda Coomaraswamy for the inestimable services he rendered in
fostering an appreciation of our relics becomes all the more essential in order
to retain the spirit of such a revival, especially during times when India has
become a free nation and no longer needs others to help her in the
reconstruction of her future.
His writings abound in first-hand information and correct
sources of historical data regarding the phases through which art has passed in
our long history. To him we owe the first portfolio of ‘Selected Examples of
Indian Art’–a collection of forty-two plates comprising representative types of
painting and sculpture of more than one school, recognised and classified as
such by savants working in the field. In addition, his wide travels in all
parts of the world, as well as his intensive study of Indian handicrafts, urged
him to specify in one of his early books, ‘Art and Swadeshi’, the need for a
new orientation in our outlook and the preservation of what still remains with
us after all the ravages of our contact with the West. Apart form that, he has
given in that brochure the underlying ideas of Indian painting and sculpture
with an exhortation to us to return to the past, at any rate in the sphere of
fine arts.
His numerous other books require perhaps a special
attempt at a careful classification and analysis according to both
chronological data and subject matter. But we cannot in a brief compass do
better than stress some of the salient ideas born of his great mind in the
interpretation of our culture. ‘The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon,’
published so early as 1913 and containing two-hundred and twenty-five
illustrations, is a comprehensive treatise treating adequately of our
sculpture, painting, architecture and handicrafts. To prove its merit as a
handbook for the earnest student of Indian Art, we can only quote one or two
passages from it. In understanding the history and character of Indian Art he
would wish us first to know that, “The Hindus do not regard the religious,
aesthetic and scientific standpoints as necessarily conflicting, and in all
their finest work, whether musical, literary or plastic, those points of view,
now-a-days so sharply distinguished, are inseparably united.” 2 A
more healthy plea for an all-embracing concept of Art we do not find anywhere
else, except perhaps in some of Tagore’s essays on our culture. Again, let us
listen to his elevating explanation for the absence of artists’ names on all
the great historic relics we still have left us: “The absence of names in the
history of Indian Art is a great advantage to the historian of Art, for he is
forced to concentrate all his attention upon their work, and its relation to
life and thought as a whole, while all temptation to anecdotal criticism is
removed.” 3 Indeed, we pause to admire the tradition and belief
which was never concerned to leave to posterity the vestiges of a personal
vanity!
The collection of essays under the title of ‘The
Dance of Siva’ bears out his critical appreciation of the great themes that
have inspired our artists in sculpture, image making, music, etc. The
birthright of uniqueness which we possess in our arts, he would not like us to
surrender for the sake of anything in the world. In his words, “The essential
contribution of India, then, is simply her Indianness; her great humiliation
would be to substitute or to have substituted for this our character (Svabhava)
a cosmopolitan veneer, for, then indeed she must come before the world
empty-handed.” 4 It is not too late in the day if we, who are on the
threshold of a new era of glory for our Motherland, should try to imbibe the
spirit behind his utterances and try, in a remote way at least, to follow his
timely admonition.
Let us turn to what he says of Indian music.
Everybody today is fond of music, and, judging by the numbers that visit music
performances in our country, we cannot but view with pride the enormous
interest ordinary people show in such an intricate and delicate science as
Carnatic music. But the fact cannot be screened from our view that so many that
listen to such a type of music are not reflective enough to know what exactly
accounts for the unflagging interest that generations have evinced in this art.
Now let us hear Ananda Coomaraswamy upon the fundamental quality of our music
that is responsible for this phenomenon. “The Indian music is essentially
impersonal; it reflects an emotion and an experience which are deeper and wider
and older than the emotion or wisdom of a single individual. Its sorrow is
without tears, its joy without exultation, and it is passionate without any
loss of serenity.” 5 How many, we ask, could have revealed the
essence, as this great Doctor does, of what we term as musical experience,
which alone produced such outpourings in a Saint like Thyagayya, whose music as
regards its notes may be even limited but as an expression of truth is
infinite? We know our music has an elaborate theory and a technique difficult
to master; still we say, in its totality of appeal, it is not an art but life
itself.
Of his ‘Transformation of Nature in Art’ one cannot
easily attempt to describe the merits or defects. For, before one can essay
upon that task, one should search one’s own mind in order to acquire
self-integration of a high order. Some of the most subtle aspects of Hindu
theories of art, imagination and sense of beauty are detailed here with a full
consciousness of their imperishable underlying truths. Ananda Coomaraswamy
feels himself secure in these regions, as the number of Sanskrit texts, upon
art and aesthetics in general, have invariably aided him in formulating them
and made him an object of marvel even to those that have spent their whole
lives in studies of Sanskrit literature and Oriental arts. To quote one example
of his deep penetration into the subject he has chosen, let us turn to him for
a while. The word Sadrsya in Sanskrit is interpreted by him as follows
in relation to art: “What the representation imitates is the idea or species of
the thing by which it is known intellectually, rather than the substance of the
thing as it is perceived by the senses.” 6 Another passage from this
valuable work will show us what earnestness he evinced in making us all
art-minded as well as sympathetic to Indian Art. “In Western Art, the picture
is generally conceived as seen in a frame or through a window, and so brought
toward the spectator; but the Oriental image really exists only in our own mind
and heart and is thence projected or reflected on to space. The Western
presentation is designed as if seen from a fixed point of view, and must be
optically possible; Chinese landscape is typically represented as seen from
more than one point of view, or in any case, from a conventional, not a real
point of view, and here it is not plausibility but intelligibility that is
essential.” 6 No doubt, to a novice much of what is here may be
unintelligible. But that cannot be helped, as in the very nature of things art
as conceived by our ancients should never wish to imitate nature.
Rather, according to them, art should, if at all, imitate nature in copying
nothing.
Ananda Coomaraswamy’s recent book ‘Figures of
Speech and Figures of Thought’ is a work of rare value and defies analysis by
any reader with a superficial outlook. There is no denying the fact that
whatever he writes is informed by a religious feeling that his readers, whether
few or many, should not be taken into a mere maze of ideas, but taken by the
hand along the path trodden by more erudite and ancient writers upon the
subject. Yet we find him fresh and genuine in his theories, without losing the
thought of the present.
To the end of his days he was found writing
periodically upon art and allied subjects that were near his heart. It is true
he is not quite so widely known for his services to our country, as some of our
great politicians. But that does not detract from the merit of the great
impetus he gave to the revival that we are witnessing in the appreciation of
our arts. All the same, the past was never an obsession with him. He moved with
the times and cautioned his readers against a complete return to our past. What
he wants of us Indians is “to understand, to endorse with passionate
conviction, and to love what we have left behind,” as the only possible
foundation for power that we aim at among the nations of the world.
Let us then pay our dutiful homage to the greatest
of art-critics that our age has produced. Though separated by the distance of
the seas and the oceans, he always thought of India and even felt a longing,
towards the close of his life, for peace and rest in a secluded spot on the
Tibetan Himalayas. He was a great path-finder and dreamed of many of our
present aspirations for the reconstruction of India’s future. We cannot think
of any other analogy for characterising his wonderful work of interpreting
Indian Art than the great exploration of the unscalable heights of the
Himalayas, whose peaks are not more imposing than they who discovered them
first to us.
1 The Dance of Siva, p. 43.
2 The Arts and Crafts
of India and Ceylon, p. 17.
3 Ibid, p. 22.
4 The Dance of Siva, p. 1.
5 Ibid, p. 79.
6 Transformation of
Nature in Art, p. 13.