The Dance of Shiva Fourteen Indian Essays

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The Dance of Shiva by Coomaraswamy explores the metaphysical part of India. It explains India's contribution to the entire humanity. This book addresses the Indian ethos in a more detailed manner since Indian philosophy is often misinterpreted by the Westerners. Topics associated with fine arts, philosophy, and music are covered in this book, these include the Hindu and Buddhist perception of art from the aesthetical and historical points of view. Popular sculptures such as Nataraja. another incarnation of Shiva, represented as the God of dance, and multiple-armed images in Indian art are studied extensively. There is also a section on Indian music, which is also studied in great detail. Besides, this volume also covers the issue of the status of Indian women, Sahaja philosophy, the intellectual community, Indian youth. and individualism.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877-9 September 1947) is a Ceylon-based metaphysician, historian, theorist, and philosopher of Indian art. He brought the Indian tradition of art into the western world. He was also seen as the bridge-maker between western and Indian art and philosophy, as he was much inspired by Hindu and Greco-Roman traditions. His works were influenced by the Traditionalist and Perennial Schools of Philosophy. He authored several books which were based on the traditional arts, metaphysics, and social criticism. He was also the curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

THERE HERE ARE a number of us in Europe for whom European civilisation no longer suffices-dissatisfied children of the spirit of the West, who feel ourselves cramped in our old abode, and who, without depreciating the subtlety, the brilliance, the heroic energy of a philosophy which conquered and ruled the world for more than two thousand years, nevertheless have had to confess its insufficiencies and its limited arrogance. We few look towards Asial.

Asia, the great land of which Europe is but a peninsula, the advance guard of the army, the prow of the heavy ship, laden with a thousand wisdoms from her have always come to us our gods and our ideas. But, in the course of the many circuits made by our peoples who followed the track of the sun, losing contact with our native East, we have deformed, for our own ends of violent and limited action, the universality of her great thoughts.

And now the Western races find themselves trapped deep in a blind alley, and are savagely crushing each other out of existence. Let us snatch our souls from the bloody rout! Let us strive to win back to the great crossways whence flow out to the four points of the sky streams of human genius. Let us climb back to the high plains of Asial.

It is true that Europe has never scorned the roads of Asia when the business in hand was pillage or extortion, or exploitation of the material riches of her countries under the banner of Christ or of Civilisation. But what benefit has she drawn from Asia's spiritual wealth? That has lain buried in collections and in arachnological museums. A few brilliant tourists, members of Academies, have nibbled at its crumbs, but the spiritual life of Europe has derived no benefit from it.