The Dance of Shiva

The life of Ananda Coomaraswamy was given to interpreting the East to the West, and often the West to itself. Throughout these beautifully written, integrated essays be puts forward the Indian way of life as expressed in art and religion, to serve as a lesson to Western peoples who have been caught up in a search for happiness solely through material accumulation. Reminding us of the resources in our own tradition, he suggests that the vigor of European action must be united with the serenity of Asiatic thought if civilization is not to destroy itself. Coomaraswamy's message is particularly appropriate now when many in the West feel that our culture has reached a dead end, and are casting about for a new ideaI that can replace that of Faustian man.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy was born in 1877 in Colombo, Ceylon, the son of an English mother and a Singhalese father. Originally trained as a geologist, he soon extended his researches into archeology, and from there to philology, iconography, metaphysics, and religion. From 1917 until his death in 1947, he was research fellow in Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.