The "Yoga Sutra of Patanjali"

295 Pages·2014·3.42 MB·English

by  White, David Gordon

Lives of Great Religious Books
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
White.indb 1 2/27/2014 9:23:42 AM
Lives of Great Religious Books
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Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, Bernard McGinn
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The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, David Gordon White
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The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
A Biography
David Gordon White
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
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Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket illustration: Purkhu, The Five Siddhas Make Their Way to the
Kailasha Mountains, opaque watercolor on paper, ca. 1820, 14 1/4 in. x
19 11/32 in. (36.2 cm x 49.1 cm), Edward Binney 3rd Collection, the San
Diego Museum of Art, 1990.1250, http://www.sdmart.org
The Swami Shankarananda poem that appears in chapter 1 is reprinted by
permission from Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, by Swami Aranya Harihar­
ananda, the State University of New York Press © 1984, State University
of New York. All Rights Reserved.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978– 0­ 691– 14377– 4
British Library Cataloging­ in­ Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro
Printed on acid­ free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
dramatis personae vii
preface xv
chapter 1 Reading the Yoga Sutra in the Twenty­
First Century: Modern Challenges,
Ancient Strategies 1
chapter 2 Patanjali, the Yoga Sutra, and Indian
Philosophy 18
chapter 3 Henry Thomas Colebrooke and
the Western “Discovery” of the
Yoga Sutra 53
chapter 4 Yoga Sutra Agonistes: Hegel and
the German Romantics 81
chapter 5 Rajendralal Mitra: India’s Forgotten
Pioneer of Yoga Sutra Scholarship 92
chapter 6 The Yoga of the Magnetosphere:
The Yoga Sutra and the Theosophical
Society 103
v
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chapter 7 Swami Vivekananda and the
Mainstreaming of the Yoga Sutra 116
chapter 8 The Yoga Sutra in the Muslim
World 143
chapter 9 The Yoga Sutra Becomes a Classic 159
chapter 10 Ishvara 172
chapter 11 Journeys East, Journeys West:
The Yoga Sutra in the Early
Twentieth Century 182
chapter 12 The Strange Case of
T. M. Krishnamacharya 197
chapter 13 Yoga Sutra 2.0 225
notes 237
suggestions for Further
reading 249
index 261
vi Contents
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Dramatis Personae
Alberuni, also known as Abu al­ Rayhan Muhammad
ibn Ahmad al­ Biruni (973– 1048). A renowned Mus­
lim scientist and court scholar, in 1017 Alberuni was
taken by force to India where he authored a learned
account of Indian science, culture, and religion titled
the Tahqiq- i- Hind (“India”), as well as an Arabic trans­
lation of a now lost commentary on the Yoga Sutra,
known today as the Kitab Patanjal (“Patanjali’s Book”).
Aranya, Hariharananda (1869–1 947). The author of
the most highly regarded twentieth­ century commen­
tary on the Yoga Sutra, the 1911 Bengali­ language
Bhasvati (“Dawning Sun”), Aranya was also the
founder of the Kapil Math monastery in modern­ day
Jharkand state, where at his request he was sealed into
a cave in 1926. He remained there until his death in
1947.
Bhoja, also known as Bhojaraja, Bhojadeva, and Raja
Bhoja (eleventh century). The king of the west central
Indian kingdom of Malava. Bhoja was the author of
the Rajamartandavritti (“Royal Sun Commentary”)
vii
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on the Yoga Sutra. An enlightened despot, he was also
a prolific scholar, patron of the arts, military strategist,
and hydraulic engineer.
Blavatsky, Madame Helena Petrovna (1831–1 891).
Russian­ born cofounder of the Theosophical Society
and prolific spiritualist author, Blavatsky popularized
Yoga in the West by fusing principles and terminology
from the Yoga Sutra and other works on Yoga with the
Western spiritualist ideas of animal magnetism, har­
monial religion, and the occult.
Colebrooke, Henry Thomas (1765–1 837). British
Orientalist and cofounder of the Royal Asiatic Soci­
ety, Colebrooke authored the earliest English­ language
scholarly study of the Yoga Sutra in 1823. His massive
collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, donated in 1818,
formed the core of the India Office Library’s original
manuscript holdings.
Eliot, T. S. (1888– 1965). Eliot, who read Sanskrit
with James Haughton Woods at Harvard in 1911– 12,
became fascinated with the Yoga Sutra and incorpo­
rated its teachings into his psychology of reading and
writing as well as, perhaps, into the opening verses of
his 1922 masterwork, The Waste Land.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770– 1831). Ger­
man Idealist philosopher who adapted Colebrooke’s
study of the Yoga Sutra into his world history of phi­
losophy. For Hegel, Patanjali’s Yoga system epitomized
the Indian mind, which for him was “prephilosophi­
viii Dramatis Personae
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cal,” mired in a sort of dreamlike consciousness. Be­
hind his cavalier use of Colebrooke, Hegel’s critique
of the Yoga Sutra was especially a means for him to
settle scores with the German Romantics, for whom
ancient India was the fountainhead of all wisdom and
spirituality.
Hemachandra (1089– 1172). A Hindu convert to
Jainism and royal minister to the Chalukya king Ku­
marapala, Hemachandra was a prolific author whose
Yogashastra, the most comprehensive Jain work on
Yoga, drew heavily upon the Yoga Sutra.
Hiranyagarbha (“Golden Embryo”). Name of the
Hindu creator god who was, according to the Maha-
bharata and several Puranas, the mythical founder of
the Yoga system. These same scriptures ignore Patan­
jali entirely.
Krishnamacharya, Tirumalai (1888–1 989). The yoga
master of the Mysore Palace’s Yogashala, at which he
trained three of the most illustrious modern­ day gurus
of postural yoga, Krishnamacharya was the author of
two Kannada­ and two Sanskrit­ language works on
yoga that combined references to the Yoga Sutra and
the direct revelations he received from a tenth­ century
Shrivaishnava theologian with instruction in the
asanas.
Madhava, also known as Sayana Madhava (d. 1387). A
royal minster in the south Indian Vijayanagara king­
dom, Madhava wrote a comprehensive account of
Dramatis Personae ix
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