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, a social thinker molded 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 the ideas and symbols of ancient wisdom into the sometimes complex, always rewarding pattern of these essays. Appearing in paperback for the first time, the essays in this selection 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.

Roger Lipsey has been Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the State University of New York, College at Potsdam, and has taught at Princeton University and the University of Texas at Austin.