THE CONTRIBUTION OF COOMARASWAMY
JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY
New York
It
has been my good fortune to have had close associations with three outstanding
men of the Middle East. Men born in neighbour lands to one another, but diverse
in their interests and attitudes.
Krishna Menon was, with
a single exception, the most brilliant and arresting speaker at the United
Nations. I met him at the Indian U. N. Embassy and, despite his general dislike
of Western ways, we became friends. Both in New York and in New Delhi he was a
gentleman of impeccable courtesy and quiet consideration. But I learned that,
when he had gone to England as a young man, to complete his education, he had
found himself the victim of English snobbery; he was treated as a “second
class” citizen. And he said to himself: “If this is democracy, I'll have none
of it!” Primarily a politician, he was a most formidable adversary, an active
and caustic opponent of Western attitudes and actions.
The one “exception,” a
statesman whose appearance always crowded the U. N. Assembly hall, was Ahmed
Bokhari. By the time Krishna Menon came to the U. N., Ahmed Bokhari had been
appointed by Dag Hammarskjold as Assistant Secretary in charge of information,
culture, and Eastern affairs. With him I discussed the possibility of a Theatre
of the United Nations. Ahmed had been principal of the University of the Punjab
at Lahore, and there he had translated some fifty English and American plays
for production by the students. When Partition came, he organized 200
outstanding Pakistani citizens, who pledged themselves to work for the new
government at modest salaries, to forestall any attempted despotism or
nepotism. He was already a noted scholar and writer; involvement in politics he
saw as a duty, not a delight, I used to listen to him playing Indian airs on
the recorder, explaining; to me the subtleties of Indian harmony. We were
working together on a translation of the poems of Ghalib into English; I was to
show him my version of a poem on a Wednesday, when over the weekend came news
of his sudden death. The New York Times accorded him not only a lengthy
obituary notice, but also an editorial eulogy, as an outstanding and exemplary
citizen of the world. But Ahmed Bokhari was a pragmatist; he had accepted the
standards of the West. Shortly before he died, he said to me: “The future of
civilization depends upon whether the Eastern hordes acquire the Western
destructive powers before they develop values of the West.”
Value is the key to the concern of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy who
moved from his native Ceylon and natural science to aesthetic considerations as
Curator and research worker at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Neither
politician nor pragmatist, he was devoted to the growth of culture in the world
as a whole, to the contribution of the humblest, as well as the most exalted,
toward the betterment of humanity. He saw the worth of the artisan, enjoying
his work, proud of and cherishing the product of his handicraft, beyond that of
the mechanic, whose grudged work was the necessary chore for the production of
means (money) to enjoy such hours as he could free from the burden of labour.
Ananda recognised that good things have long roots, that the worth-while is
neither created nor evaporated in a generation, that tradition outweighs mere
novelty. Men boast of progress, he declared, without bothering to query toward
what.
I met Ananda
Coomaraswamy through the sensitive and accomplished ethnic dancer La Meri, whom
he used for the many photographs illustrating his book on the hand-gestures of
the Indian dance. To him the dance was neither frenzied release from the
conflicts and strains of living, nor erotic prelude, but a symbolic expression
of the basic meaning and drive of human life. As is all art.
When Ananda planned to
visit New York from Boston, he would drop me a line, then come to our house at
least for lunch and a talk. I can still picture him, as I waited at the door,
can still hear his quick youthful step on the stairs as, disdaining the lift,
he climbed the four flights to our apartment. When we walked, I had to quicken
my step to keep apace–as when we talked my mind quickened to stay attuned to
his nimble intellect, and my spirit was lifted toward his exalted plane. And
there come to mind the words of the poet: “Genius is wisdom–and youth.”
The mature Ananda
Coomaraswamy had amassed an extra-ordinary amount of learning: the language,
the religion, the literature, the lore of many peoples. Mistrustful of Western
materialistic emphases, he became the leading expositor of Eastern values to a
West largely unaware of, and unconcerned with, the great contributions of the
Orient. A style both charming and cogent, capable of epigrammatic brevity or
sharp irony, lent power and persuasiveness to his writing. His influence on Western
thought has spread, like ripples on a pond, beyond recognition of its origin.
More are moved in Coomaraswamy’s way than know his name.
To my Dictionary of World Literary Terms Ananda
contributed several articles. One is on the artist’s Intention, as giving
direction to his work. When some influential American critics declared that it
is impossible to judge an artist’s intention from the work, and that in any
case the intention is irrelevant: the one question is not What did he propose?
but What did he achieve? Coomaraswamy made sound answer in The American Bookman, of which I was then editor. Although Pope’s
clever couplet–
In every work regard the
writer’s end,
Since none can compass
more than they intend–
is countered by the observation that every
genius has builded better than he knew, the fact remains that the production
hinges upon the purpose; the intention shapes the work.
Another
contribution to the volume is Coomaraswamy’s seminal study of Symbolism. Here,
he not only goes over the usual ground, but indicates the recurrence of basic
symbols in many cultures, attesting the universal oneness of man. Thus, the
19th century poet Blake wrote:
I
give you the end of a golden string,
Only
wind it into a ball;
It
will lead you in at heaven’s gate
Built
in Jerusalem’s hall.
And Blake, Coomaraswamy points out, is using a
symbol found in many lands and many ages. The string or cord is not merely a Christian
symbol, given sanction by Dante and the Bible. It occurs in Islamic works, and
Hindu, and Chinese. It is literally worn by Parsi and by Jew. It was of
significance to Plato and Homer of the ancient Greeks. It is spun and cut by
the Fates. All things are strung on Krishna like rows of gems on a string. The
Sanskrit word sutra, meaning a holy
maxim, literally means a thread. As the child in the womb of its mother, so are
we all bound to Mother Nature. This sense of the essential oneness of mankind
is basic in Coomaraswamy’s thinking, and reaches from symbolic representation
in art to the homely details of daily living. Rich among the aristocrats of the
intellect, he was humble in the democracy of life.
When I was planning to
publish surveys of all the literatures of the world, Ananda suggested that I
ask the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Society of Poona to contribute the
material on the Indian literatures. Its scholars sent me twenty-one articles,
of length enough to fill the two volumes the publisher allowed me for my entire
Encyclopaedia of World Literature. And it was with Coomaraswamy’s guidance and
encouragement that I was enabled to condense the material into usable
proportions; and the seal of his approval assured me of competent coverage of
the field. The Secretary of the Society tater asked permission to use the
articles, writing me that there was then (in 1946) no such general survey in
India itself.
It is good to cherish
the memory of a great man. His work remains, and should be widely known, as an
example and inspiration to others, as–in Coomaraswamy’s case–a tempering
influence, a reminder that we must recognize and welcome a common heritage,
must sieve the good from all the theories of world growth and world conduct
before there can be world peace and full opportunity for the rich expression of
the human spirit, the justification and validation of man’s being. But the
great man knows that his major contribution is anonymous. It moves into
patterns of existence, attitudes of mind, that spread from those nearest to
him, who revere his name, to farther minds and spirits accepting the values
without questioning their source, which may be far forgotten though its worth
and ways persist. And thus, those of us that knew, and that still pay homage
to, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, know also and are glad that his spirit will gleam
increasingly among persons in many lands made more attuned to the basic values
because Coomaraswamy lived.