Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was really somebody. I've owned and eventually given away at least half a dozen copies of this book over the years. I mean, I tend to force it on people. It changed my life.

The writer I'd compare him to, perhaps weirdly, is Joseph Conrad - if the young Conrad had, instead of going to sea, run away to join a museum and become an art historian, curator, philosopher and intellectual bridge between worlds. Certainly both men have a similar way of making you pay attention to every single word, and - this is so rare - repaying that attention with insight, not only into what the author means by what he's saying, but what he's actually talking about ie. the subject under discussion.

In a novelist this is a great thing, but in a historian of thought, art, mythology, metaphysics etc. it's almost miraculous. He spent his life explaining what we look at when we look at art - and why art matters, what it's for. Every sentence that he wrote was written to assist. And these good intentions are almost tangible.

In 1975, I dropped out of architecture and wandered off to become a poet, to the despair of my family and the amusement of my friends. At first this mostly just involved smoking pot and waiting for something to happen. Then I found this book. Just the footnotes are a virtual study guide to the wisdom of the world. Plato and Shankara, Aquinas and Eckhart and Plotinus and the Upanishads etc. It was all new to me back then, this book my door.

It was like my Yoda. It taught me how to read and think and start to know things for myself, and find the next book too, and the book after that. It also, and this was so important, helped me understand (in a way that didn't fall apart the first time someone called me on it) why art of any kind is not only worth doing, but doing well, the best you can. I love this book.

If you're interested in art (in any form, not just pictures on a wall) you will be interested in what he has to say. You might not accept all of his argument, but in the process you'll have thought harder and more clearly about where you stand than you ever normally get the chance to. And you'll learn things you didn't know. Because in this little book, as in all his work, Coomaraswamy is trying to pass on a vast and ancient and fruitful tradition in the best way that he can. And I'm grateful to him for having tried so hard, and succeeded so well.

I mean, it's just a bunch of essays, but hey - go for the paperback. It's cheap and well made (by Dover, a company that knows how to bind books) and you just might like it.

Definitely one of the most accessible works by A.K. Coomaraswamy and a good introduction to his oeuvre, of which the present book is somehow the sinthesis. Themes such as the meaning of art in its universality, the relationship between beauty and truth, and utility of art are developped to their maximum extent. The strenght of the thesis of the author, the almost perfect rigour of his analisys, the impressive richness of documentation provided, are such as to strike one's knowledge on the matter to the point of being able to change reader's relationship to the present reality.

This is a clear and terse book regarding ethnic arts and crafts on India and Ceylon. It is infomrative and interesting, and it is a must for anyone who is engaged in Indian studie

This is a really a great work from a great man who experienced and lived the ancient wisodom of the orient. This book brings the three jewels of Buddha , Dharma and Sangha in to the lotus of one's own heart. You can almost see the orange robed monk begging from door to door on streets of pataliputra and followed by the emperors of the day.

History of Indian and Indonesian Art is Coomaraswamy's last and most authoritative discussion of the history, especially early history, of Indian art. The paperback edition includes complete plates and notes thereupon. In general, for one interested in either the author or the subject this Dover edition is incredibly well-priced and worthwhile. Perhaps, one of the most sophisticated attempts to locate the Indian nation in the remote past written in a scholarly mode.

Kenneth Oldmeadow's book is a very readable and well researched survey of the Traditionalist school. The positions of its three main luminaries, Guénon, Coomarswamy and Schuon, are explored in the chapters devoted to each one of these thinkers, and some interesting biographical information is also provided. There is also a survey of some of the other traditionalists, as well as assessments, in the light of traditionalist thought, of some of the various characters and religious movements which have impacted on the modern sense of the sacred. Oldmeadow also pays close attention to the traditionalist critique of modern science. This book is an important intellectual history of a movement that has been unduly neglected by the academic world.

This book basically trys to resurect Gnosticism as a viable religion/philosophy from the ashes of its deserved heretical demise. It's best to leave the whole idea buried with the Templars.

I am truly glad that I was introduced this marvelous book. This is because my soul has long resonated to its subject- the Philosophia Perennis, or the Perennial Philosophy. Some would say the primary subject of the book is really the lives of the two great metaphysicians and promulgators of the Tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Rene Guenon. While it does deal with the lives and work of these giants, really, they were "merely" two of the modern vessels for this eternal Tradition. They themselves assigned the real importance of their work to the Tradition and downplayed any original contributions on their own part. Like all of us whose souls resonate to the vertical path of the Cross, of the World Tree or Axis Mundi, they primarily "recollected" these teachings in the Platonic or Gnostic sense. Coomaraswamy and Guenon were supremely aware of the true source of their inspiration.

I'm sure there are many modern scholars and materialists that will try to read to this book only to come away with absolutely no understanding of it. That is because all such teachings are presented for those with the "ears to hear." If you are ready, then you will intuitively understand what is meant by such terms as quantity and quality, indeed, you've probably known it for many years. Indeed, if you understand what is being discussed here you will no doubt understand the source works with minimal interpretation (the Gitas, Upanishads, the Tao te Ching, the Hermetica, the Gnostic Scriptures, etc.) You will also recognize false and dead academic interpretations of no real understanding.... To the quantitative, empirical, analytical, statistical-minded academics out there this will all be dismissed as self-referencing, hermeneutical, irrationality. However, you will know better in your heart of hearts, for you understand mystical insight and direct intuitive recognition of the underlying values, meanings, and perceptions of things. You know the difference between rational and suprarational understanding. You are steadily ascending the vertical axis of the Cross. You are becoming, through "recollection", the sage and teacher that you could never find among the sterile, dead ashes of the modern world of scientism.

I personally found it enlightening that both Coomaraswamy and Guenon were initially highly accomplished in the sciences and mathematics. You see, they didn't reject the material world (the horizontal arm of the Cross), they just recognized that it was the lowest and most trivial part of Creation and instead chose to ascend the vertical arm of the Cross, towards man's last end, s'eternar....

_The Only Tradition_ provides an answer to the crisis of modernity through the <>, the Tradition as expressed in the writings of Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. Against a modern world lacking in values, meaning, and a traditional framework and presenting immanent problems of overpopulation, relativism, nuclear disaster, pollution, and the destruction of traditional cultures, is presented the perspective of the primordial tradition. The author explains that there is only a single Tradition that underlies the traditional cultures which have existed throughout history. As such, the work provides a basic outline and history of the ideas of Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy (as well as those of other expositors of the tradition such as Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr). The author traces these ideas from the personal biographies of both Guenon and Coomaraswamy to the various organizations which grew up in France, England, North America, and Iran based upon the writings of these individuals. (The author notes however that tradition is universal in application and therefore not localized to a particular point in time and space.) The book then outlines the "first principles" upon which the Tradition is founded, distinguishing the various aspects of the <>. A brief synopsis of theosophy (<>) and it's modern manifestation in the Theosophical Society of H. P. Blavatsky is given. An examination distinguishing between the two distinct forms of traditional culture (primitive and developed) is set forth. In particular, the traditional culture of medieval Christendom is chosen as an example, and the idea of "fusion" - the totalization of traditional principles throughout the culture - is explained. For the expositor of Tradition, the traditional culture may appear to be utopian in nature. However, the author explains that various aberrations within such cultures demolish this utopian quality. The author next turns to modernity and it's vicissitudes. The "reign of quantity" and the denegration of "quality" as explained by Guenon is shown to be the persistant condition of a modernity based on a crude scientism and positivism. As an answer to this emptiness of meaning, the author proposes a global planetary return to tradition, along with the arrival of a new planetary consciousness.

A fabulous collection of one of America's most gifted writers, METAPHYSICS is a collection of essays that Coomaraswamy authored throughout his life, reflecting a deep understanding of primarily the Greek and Indian traditions and to a lesser extent Islam. Coomoraswamy was a firm beleiver in the sophia perrenis, or perennial philosophy which is the metaphysical truth encapsulated in all of the traditions of humankind. For him the forms or dogmas varied, but such variations were like different beads of a string, a string which connected the dogams together and flowed through them. This recurring wisdom was found in every known civilization; a wisdom which included among its protagonists Plato, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Shankara and Eckhart, to name but a few. Any reader of METAPHYSICS will be impressed by the author's stunning mastery of language and aesthetical style of weaving words together to form some of the most moving and beautifull prose of this century.

Other authors of who have made arguments along similar lines as Coomaraswamy are Frithjof Schuon and Hustom Smith.

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was the son of a Sri Lankan Tamil father and an English mother, born in Sri Lanka and educated in Great Britain. This twofold cultural citizenship also symbolizes the two major traditions from which this recently re-issued book draws. Coomaraswamy's basic strategy is best seen as proceeding from a long lineage of Hindu thinkers who have sought to appropriate and assimilate the Buddha's teachings, most famously exemplified in the Puranic accounts of the Buddha as merely being another incarnation of the god Vishnu. On the other hand, Coomaraswamy's attempts to argue this point are based on the presuppositions of early-20th century positivist approaches to oriental studies, especially in their concern to uncover the very oldest (and presumably, truest) of doctrines. In this case, that means recovering the true meaning of the Buddha's words by divining his actual intentions, while ignoring completely the ideas and interpretations of later Buddhist thinkers. Although The Living Thoughts of Gotama the Buddha will be deeply misleading to its target audience of readers who are looking for a reliable introduction to Buddhism, it should be of great interest to intellectual historians looking to understand the ideas of the various thinkers like Coomaraswamy who are today often lumped together under the heading of Orientalism.

To establish that the Buddha was a Hindu, Coomaraswamy first denies that the Buddha was in any way a social reformer. For the Buddha's rejection of the caste system was nothing of the sort: "what he actually did was to distinguish the Brahman by mere birth from the true Brahman by gnosis, and to point out that the religious vocation is open to a man of any birth: there was nothing new in that." In one sweeping assertion, Coomaraswamy radically revises the history of caste. Apparently in Coomaraswamy's view, the true system of caste in ancient India was a meritocracy in which any outcaste with a religious vocation could study the Vedas and practice Brahmanical rituals. Needless to say, this attitude conceals and trivializes the terrible inequities of the caste system, both past and present.

Coomaraswamy's greatest concern, however, is to show that the Buddha's teachings were in no way doctrinal innovations. Most notably, Coomaraswamy denies that the Buddha taught the non-existence of the self. To this end he engages in an elaborate series of intellectual gymnastics that should manage to bewilder any reader who is still following along. For instance, he chooses the extremely awkward "un-Selfisness" [sic] as his translation of the Buddhist term more commonly rendered "no-self" (Pali anatta, Sanskrit anatman). Of course, in this denial of the doctrine of no-self he has had a great deal of company; virtually every western scholar of Buddhism in the 19th and early 20th century seemed to try to find some way of making this seemingly nihilistic doctrine more harmonious with the Christian belief in an eternal soul. As a Hindu, Coomaraswamy's unique contribution to this history is his insistence that "the Buddhist point of view is exactly the same as the Brahmanical." To make such a claim required that Coomaraswamy and Horner engage in a great deal of translational mischief in the second part of the book, their presentation of excepts from the Pali canon. So, for instance, a passage normally rendered as "Go along, monks, taking refuge in yourselves" becomes "Go along, monks, having Self as refuge." (For more on the no-self doctrine and specific issues in translating Pali terminology, see Steven Collins's _Selfless Persons_.)

It may sound strange, but Coomaraswamy's book is ultimately not about the Buddhist religion at all, since for him this religion is at its root an enormous misunderstanding. Readers interested in the Buddhist religion should read Walpola Rahula's _What the Buddha Taught_, which remains the best introduction to Buddhism written in English. For Coomaraswamy, the Buddha was a Hindu sage who taught no new doctrines and implemented no new social practices, but agreed with all of the great (non-Buddhist) thinkers in (European) world history, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Eckhart, et al. This position would have appealed especially to 20th century advocates of the "perennial philosophy," thinkers such as Aldous Huxley and Joseph Campbell who sought to combine all of the world's philosophies and religions into one unified, albeit extremely vague, body of wisdom. Yet Coomaraswamy's vision is deeply offensive to contemporary Buddhists, just as a writer would offend Christian believers who claims that Jesus was just another not particularly innovative Pharisaic Jew deeply misunderstood by his followers. Thankfully, however, in the early 21st century dialogue on Buddhism, ideas like Coomaraswamy's have generally fallen out of favor. Today's scholars are more apt to acknowledge that Buddhists themselves, not Hindus or western orientalists, have been the best caretakers of the Buddha's teachings.

This book is one of the best introductions to Buddhism. It goes past the layers of obfuscating polemics that were added to make the Buddha into a cult figure, which in his own life he wasn't.

Im a Pali scholar and write books on Buddhism. This book is (outside of the Suttas) is the single best introductory book to own on Buddhism... AK Coomaraswamy is seen by Indians and experts in Buddhism as a "GOD" of Indian Philosophy. He spent endless years translating Pali as well as Sanksrit. He is also very well trained in Platonism as well as Neo Platonism. ...

Perhaps it is that my scholarly bent towards facts rather than opinions is a bit too severe, but I found this book to be largely opinion whereas I was looking for more factual substance. The essays are certianly well-written and present a very well-thought out view of each topic they discuss. But they are one person views. I would not recommend this book to the person looking for an introduction to Indian art and culture, for I find them very one sided and sometimes greatly disagreed with their take on history and historical cultural perspective (my particular focus on interest). Certianly something good to give you a strong, specific viewpoint and challenge one's own opinions on the topic. If one already has opinions, reading this book can be an enlightening exercise.

Surely, this book addresses an audience with serious and genuine interest in the ancient Indian art, architecture and culture. Coomaraswamy boldly puts forward his thoughts, understandings and conclusions in a systematic form. Some of his observations may border on being provocative. He discusses at length about the Hindu view of Art -- its history and aesthetics, and then, presents his theory of beauty.

But, why I liked this book? -- because it gives a satisfying explanation of the image of Nataraja, the Dancing Shiva ( that stimulated Fritjof Capra to write his masterpiece "The Tao of Physics"). It also explains the philosophy behind the Indian images with multiple arms.

I recommend this book to serious readers as it provides a rare insight. It leaves you with fewer questions, but more answers. Equally worth reading is the foreward by Romain Rolland.