Second in the series of the Collected Works of A.K. Coomaraswamy in the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Art's publication program, the twenty essays comprising this volume, some newly published here, ask fundamental questions in the piercing and incisive Coomaraswamy style.

What is Civilisation?: and Other Essays

COOMARASWAMY, ANANDA K.

Literature & Fiction

Oxford University Press

Yaksas is the sixth in a series of the celebrated collected works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy--perhaps the greatest Eastern philosopher and theologian of modern times. In it he provides an in-depth study of the Yaksas (fertility deities) by reexamining a great deal of iconographic and literary material. He looks at the origins of Yaksas in the context of Vedic, Brahmanical, and Upanisadic literature; addresses the interpretive levels of artistic motif; and looks at non-Indian literature, particularly on the water cosmology. This seminal critical text reveals the significance of Yaksas in religious history and iconographic evolution.

Yaksas: Essays in the Water Cosmology

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The late Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, uniquely combined art historian, philosopher, orientalist, linguist, and expositor in his person. His knowledge of the arts and handcrafts of the Orient was unexcelled and his numerous monographs on Oriental art either established or revolutionized entire fields. He was also a great Orientalist, with an almost unmatched understanding of traditional culture. He covered the philosophic and religious experience of the entire premodern world, east and west, and for him primitive, medieval European, and classical Indian experiences of truth and art were only different dialects in a common language. Finally, Coomaraswamy was a provocative writer, whose erudition was expressed in a delightful, aphoristic style. The nine essays in this book are among his most stimulating. They discuss such matters as the true function of aesthetics in art, the importance of symbolism, and the importance of intellectual and philosophical background to the artists; they demonstrate that abstract art and primitive art, despite superficial resemblances, are completely divergent; and they deal with the common philosophy which pervades all great art, the nature of medieval art, folklore, and modern art, the beauty inherent in mathematics, and the union of traditional symbolism and individual portraiture in premodern cultures.

Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art

Dover Publications

Gathered together in a single volume, here are the most important stories of Indian mythology, taken mainly from the epic poems the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, with additional tales from the purana and vedas from assorted narratives of Krishna, Buddha, and Shiva. The stories range from the initial stages of mythos to the final, mature state. Includes 32 illustrations by Abanindro Nath Tagore and others.

Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists

Politics & Social Sciences

Nivedita, Sister

Social Sciences

Ananda Coomaraswamy, late curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was unexcelled in his knowledge of the arts of the Orient, and unmatched in his understanding of Indian culture, language, religion, and philosophy. In this excellent reprint of a rare volume of essays, he reveals 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 Natarājā (Śiva), Lord of Dancers. In a series of 14 stimulating and provocative essays, Coomaraswamy unfolds the vast metaphysic of India: the magnificent revelation of its art; its conception of the universe; social organization; attitudes toward feminism; problems of family; romantic love, and marriage. His sweeping commentary considers the "intellectual fraternity" of mankind; the venerable past as it survives side by side with emerging modern India; and the individual, autonomy, and repudiation of "the will to govern." Enhancing the text are 27 black-and-white photographs — mostly of masterpieces of painting and sculpture from the second century B.C. to the eighteenth century, and including the glorious "Cosmic Dance of Nàtaraja." This handsome volume offers rich insight into the art, philosophy, and culture of a fascinating forty-centuries-old civilization.

The Dance of Siva: Essays on Indian Art and Culture (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)

Looks at each period of art in India and Indonesia, and shows and describes ancient architecture sculpture, paintings, manuscripts, textiles, and jewelry

History of Indian and Indonesian Art

Dover Pubns

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was a pioneer in Indian art history and in the cultural confrontation of East and West. A scholar in the tradition of the great Indian grammarians and philosophers, an art historian convinced that the ultimate value of art transcends history, and a social thinker influenced by William Morris, Coomaraswamy was a unique figure whose works provide virtually a complete education in themselves. Finding a universal tradition in past cultures ranging from the Hellenic and Christian to the Indian, Islamic, and Chinese, he collated his ideas and symbols of ancient wisdom into the sometimes complex, always rewarding pattern of essays. The Door in the Sky is a collection of the author's writings on myth drawn from his Metaphysics and Traditional Art and Symbolism, both originally published in Bollingen Series. These essays were written while Coomaraswamy was curator in the department of Asiatic Art of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he built the first large collection of Indian art in the United States.

The Door in the Sky

Princeton University Press

The description for this book, Coomaraswamy, Volume 1: Selected Papers: Traditional Art and Symbolism, will be forthcoming.

Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers, Vol. 1: Traditional Art and Symbolism

Princeton Univ. Press

The description for this book, Coomaraswamy, Volume 2: Selected Papers: Metaphysics, will be forthcoming.

Coomaraswamy, Volume 2: Selected Papers: Metaphysics (Coomaraswamy, 1)

Book by Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish

Hinduism and Buddhism.

Religion & Spirituality

Greenwood Pub Group

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Books by COOMARASWAMY, ANANDA K.