What is Common to Indian and Chinese Art?

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The truth as a whole is an eternal, ever accessible, infinity, incapable as such of any improvement or advancement: the wise man is therefore not interested in the history of aspects, but only in the validity of a given statement as a means conducive to the realization of invulnerable happiness. So we must not be surprised that equally in India and China it would be an insult to a thinker to praise the novelty or originality of his ideas, or his independence of authority, nor surprised at his acceptance of anonymity or pseudonymity.

The perfected man, in his aspect as artist… must be thought of as transformed and invisible from our point of view, there remaining nothing by which his existence can be sensibly registered.

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With thanks to World Wisdom Books and the journal Studies in Comparative Religion.