COOMARASWAMY, ANANDA (1877–1947), Sinhala art historian and religious thinker who spent the last three decades of his life in the United States.

Coomaraswamy's work falls into three periods, distinguished less by topic than by purpose and sensibility. From 1903 to 1916, as a young scholar and idealistic author, Coomaraswamy was a well-known proponent of traditional Indian and Sinhala culture and a stirring essayist on behalf of cultural and political independence in both countries, then under British rule. He was also an extraordinarily perspicacious art historian who discovered and restored in historical perspective one of the great schools of Indian painting. In his middle years, from 1917 to 1931, when he was curator of Indian and Muslim art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he applied his erudition to the production of a series of scholarly books and articles on Asian art; many of these works are still consulted for...