Thiru Arumugam, courtesy of THE CEYLANKAN, May 2015, where the title is “Am I My Brother’s Keeper? The Life and Outline of Four Selected Books by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy,1877-1947”
“The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist” Ananda Coomaraswamy.
Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy (1834-1879) was the first Ceylon Tamil Knight. He was a lawyer and Member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon. He was the first non-Christian Asian to be called to the English Bar. He married an English lady, Elizabeth Beeby, who was a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria. They had one child, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who was born in Colombo on 22 August 1877. Sir Muttu’s sister’s sons were Sir P Ramanathan and Sir P Arunachalam. Sir Muttu passed away when Ananda was only two years old. He was brought up by his mother who never married again.
Ananda grew up in England where he studied at the newly established Independent School, Wycliffe College in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. His name appears in the School’s list of 25 ‘Notable Old Wycliffians’. In 1897 he entered the University of London, graduating in 1900 with first class honours in Geology and Botany. He returned to Ceylon and in 1903 was appointed as the first Director of Mineralogical Surveys. In 1904 he identified the mineral Thorianite found in gem pit gravel washings, and his work on this subject led to the award of a Doctor of Science degree from the University of London in 1906. He was the first Ceylonese to be awarded this degree, the highest degree of the University of London. He called the mineral Uraninite in an article in Spolia Zeylanica, but it was later identified as a new mineral and then followed an extended correspondence with double Nobel Prize winner Madam Curie about its radioactivity. She suggested that it be named ‘Coomaranite’ but he declined the honour. Continue reading
