Selected Letters of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy [Hardcover]

A. K. Coomaraswamy (Author), Alvin Moore Jr. (Editor), Rama Poonambulam Coomaraswamy (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 1989

Coomaraswamy was perhaps the greatest philosopher-theologian of recent times to have emerged from the East. This ambitious work is the first to present a selection of Coomaraswamy's letters to mystics, theologians, art critics, painters, philosophers, writers, and religious thinkers and scholars. No other source reveals the author's erudition, as well as facets of his life and thought, as completely and delightfully as this collection.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 532 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 18, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195623061
• ISBN-13: 978-0195623062
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,453,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY was born in 1877, of Anglo-Ceylonese parents. After completing studies in Geology he soon became interested in the arts and crafts of his native Ceylon and India. In 1917 he relocated to the USA where he became Keeper of Indian and Islamic Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, establishing a large collection of Oriental artifacts and presenting lectures on their symbolic and metaphysical meaning. An encounter with the seminal writings of perennialist author René Guénon served to confirm and strengthen his view of the Perennial Philosophy. From this period onwards Dr. Coomaraswamy began to compose his mature--and undoubtedly most profound--works, adeptly expounding the philosophia perennis by drawing on his unparalleled knowledge of the arts, crafts, mythologies, cultures, folklores, symbolisms, and religions of the Orient and the Occident. In 1947 his plans to retire to India and take on sannyasa (renunciation of the world) were cut short by his sudden and untimely death. A representative collection of his extensive writings, entitled The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, was edited by his son Rama P. Coomaraswamy and published by World Wisdom.