A.K. Coomaraswamy

A Call for Metanoia

Abstract

After writing and commenting extensively on oriental and medieval art, Coomaraswamy shifted himself to the understanding and explication of Vedic exegesis and traditional metaphysics, especially those of classical India and pre-Renaissance Europe. Coomaraswamy remarked in one of his letters that ‘my indoctrination with the Philosophia Perennis is primarily Oriental, secondarily Medieval, and thirdly classic’. His later work is densely textured with references to Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Aquinas, Eckhart and the Rhinish mystics, to Shankara and Lao-Tse and Nagarjuna. He also immersed himself in folklore and mythology since these too carried profound teachings. The vintage Coomaraswamy of the later years is to be found in his masterly works on Vedanta and on the Catholic scholastics and mystics. It is often laden with a mass of technical detail and with linguistic and philosophical subtleties which test the patience of some readers. Of his own methodology as an exponent of metaphysics Coomaraswamy wrote, ‘We write from a strictly orthodox point of view endeavouring to speak with mathematical precision, but never employing words of our own, or making any affirmation for which authority could not be cited by chapter and verse; in this way making our technique characteristically Indian.’