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Transwiki English Translation of Sutras

It is excellent to find this ancient text in wikipedia. Though, yhis should be in wikisource, which is for original texts without copyright and not in wikipedia - encyclopedia. --Arjuna 21:45, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Completed Merge of the Yoga Sutras Article Into This One

I just merged the Yoga Sutras article into this one. I made the merged article a redirect. I'm removing this item from the Duplicate Articles list. The text that I didn't use in the merge follows. --Smithfarm 19:51, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Besides the Bhagavad Gita, references to and discussions of yoga can be found in the Puranas, Vedas and Upanishads.
While Patanjali accepts the idea of what he terms "ishwar-devata" (worship of deities as manifestations of the single Brahman), his "ishwar" is not a conventional God and speaks more to a universal Brahman, an impersonal, unknowable, infinite force that is all and transcends all.
The Yoga Sutras are in fact a collection of aphorisms that define synthetically and by sequential logical steps, a practical model for the consciousness-Nature and individual consciousness, how these are related, how is possible to understand and interfere with the elements of this model, and what is the outcome.
The text emphasizes a non-mental way of knowledge as alternative form of knowledge. The procedure to achieve this type of knowledge is schematically outlined in Yoga Sutras, as application of the principle that a steady concentration on a certain object allows identification of the concentrating subject with the object itself and with the process of concentrating. This allows the subject to gain direct knowledge of the object by identification with it, rather than by indirect means, i.e. through mental elaboration of the sense perception of the object. Such process, called samadhi, occurs only when the concentration on the object neutralizes the mental activity, whose waves prevent the individual consciousness to fuse with that of the object.


Added-deleted?

I added the link to the site where the Patanjali sutra's named the The Thread of the Science of Uniting One's Consciousness was offered, because that is the only place where the book is read out aloud. There is no other way of offering this knowledge in this form but by this personal website. And, by the way, which of the already mentioned sites are not personal?

--rpba 16:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The Yoga Sutras were before Buddhism

Buddhist tradition asserts the opposite to the claim in this article: the Buddha studied under the two leading Yogi teachers of his day, and deliberately modelled his noble 8-fold path as a caricature of the Patanjali 8-fold path. i.e. Patanjali came first. The claim that the Yoga Sutras are modelled on Buddhism is at best contentious. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LMackinnon (talk • contribs) 01:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC).


TRANSLATION ISSUES

I really don't like the current discussion of "citta vritti nirodha":

"Yogas citta vritti nirodha" ("Yoga is control of thoughts and feelings").

citta is literally consciousness or thoughts and feelings, fine. but vritti is a swirling or a whirling. and nirodha is extinction or elimination. definitely not control. this is a really substandard interpretation. if you want a reference, I would cite any of the excellent textbooks by Feuerstein. They all support this view. This needs to be changed.Lesotho 20:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The current links by being so selective are implicitly biased and not nuetral. In this case, given the wide divergence of translations Wikipedia can only honestly present the competition. And since those nuances of difference may not even be suspected by researchers, the list should be comprehensive. Further, this page as stands is an outright advertisement for "Ashtanga Yoga". It needs to be totally revamped both in the light of current spiritual thought (or organisational strategy) and the light of modern academic research. Patanjali is not an userpable trademark for a single group. While the swamij.com interlinear is an admirable work it is not definitive. The inclusion of the BonGiovanni translation is problematic, one that seems almost to have been made to play up the qualities of the other more thourough work. Though I'm not much in favor of the his treatment of the third book, let me quote BonGiovanni (and Patanjali) from the second:

2.23 The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.

2.24 The cause of the association is ignorance.

We shouldn't force associations on this pure work.

Here are most of the other sources: Yoga Sutras in English[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [8]][9]

Thank you for raising this important issue of variations in translations. I completely agree that the article could use improvement in more clearly citing the variations. However I do not think that the best approach is to proliferate links to web sites, as that raises problems of WP:SPAM and WP:RS. Rather than just provide more English translations, many of which will be non-notable and inaccurate, it might be more effective to focus on which of the available Sanskrit-to-English translations would be of general value as reference texts, so that editors here who wish to do so can focus on source quality as the main issue. Many editions of the YS give word-by-word textual analysis, showing the original Sanskrit in Devanagari, along with English grammatical analysis. Examples of this type include:
  • Taimni, A. K. The Science of Yoga. 1961, ISBN 81-7059-212-7.
  • Satchidananda, Swami. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. 1978, ISBN 0-932040-38-1.
  • Mishra, Ramamurti S. The Textbook of Yoga Psychology. 1963, ISBN 1-890964-27-1.
In my own experience I have never found a single line of the Yoga Sutras where those three sources agree on the . In addition to those sorts of commentaries which include linguistic detail, a vast number of commentaries exist which purport to tell us what the text says. As a method of approach, our goal here is not to engage in WP:OR by determining the "correct" translation. Our job is to cite what WP:RS say on the subject, and when differences of opinion exist among sources to document them. Also, according to Wikipedia:List guideline just creating a list of things is not necessarily a good solution. One way of moving forward on the issue which you raise would be to pick one specific thing at a time in the article and see if it can be improved. Is there a particular point that would be good to focus on? Buddhipriya 23:29, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
O.K., I agree the Wikipedia is and must be a bastion of scholarship. You must be also be aware that a [vast?] majority of readers of this page, and indeed of the Sutras, will choose bongiovanni's translation( he's a christian cultist based in Uruguay ) because thanks to Infotext.com- scholarship's competitor- it has saturated the market. The other available on-line translations are from neo-essene, hermetic, theosophic, and bhakti oriented groups, only three come from more traditional yogi groups. And there are, of course other translations and commentaries at levels between. These may be "non-notable and inaccurate" but are current. In that case the reality is that that's the phenomena that needs to be documented; in comparison to not only traditional schools of thought, but to each other. As I've found no authority to take on this daunting task, I think I could be be comfortable with a section of this page dealing in a simple way with as many as possible of the available translations, and noting the movements they are connected with; perhaps also noting sections of wide stylistic or conceptual divergence.
Also, the term Ashtanga is generic as well as specific, and far from being the only yogic movements based on the Sutras. That must be sorted outKlasovsky 17:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
When there are several points to clean up in an article, one approach is to pick one thing at a time and focus on getting agreement on that point. Once it is settled, the next can be done in turn. I would like to start with the issue of translations, since it is central to everything else. I have never really worked much on this article before, but having just looked at the external link section closely I feel that it needs to be cleaned out almost entirely in order to eliminate sites which fail to meet the tests of WP:EL and WP:SPAM. Sites that are personal web sites, blogs, sales gimmicks, etc., should not be included.
The issue of notability is also important. There are many, many translations of the Yoga Sutras because it is a short work and of popular interest. One way of establishing notability is to check if the translator is mentioned in the Bibliographies of standard reference works or other related books that are published by academic publishing houses or in reviews of significant scope. I have never systematically tried to determine which English-only translations are most notable, but it is an interesting question. Does anyone know of an academic citation which discusses this issue? Can we find a review of which English translations are currently considered notable?
I just did a small spam cleanup and the EL section now directs the user to an archive site where multiple translations are available. Anyone who was serious about study of this material would probably be doing it from a book. Currently the article is very poorly referenced. I think what should be done is to begin adding some citations, which over time will build a better References section. Regarding points of fact which are contested, such as the "eight limbs" question, can we focus on specific sentences that are dubious? For example you could place a fact tag on one or two of the most dubious sentences, and then we could try to improve them. According to Wikipedia:Verifiability "Articles should only contain material that has been published by reliable sources. Editors adding or restoring material that has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, or quotations, must provide a reliable published source, or the material may be removed." So if you feel particularly strongly about unsourced material you can cut it. Unfortunately mass deletions usually just trigger edit wars, accomplishing nothing. So personally when trying to improve an article I chip away one sentence at a time if it is an article where a supportive team of editors has not yet formed. Collaborative work on individual issues build teamwork. Buddhipriya 18:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


The choice of Hrir is unfortunate, though it might be of some use to an academic attempting to collate minor translations, the site it self is awkward and defaults to (in english) the neo-essene Vespers Havdallah translation, many browsers would not get past that. Possibly it should remain as a source, but I would imagine editors who have worked here would be unanomyous in reccommending that the swamij.com translinear be the principle web link. it follows classical lines, and although it is commented rather freely, this too is traditional, a fact of form that might be alluded to in the WIki text. It would certainly not serve scholarship if readers were shunted to what is among the weakest and most idiosyncratic translations over a fair and representative contemporary one- similar in intent to the Satchidananda you mentioned. There are no other on-line versions worthy of being considered representative. Which is a point I need to make. Saying that serious people read books is like saying they go to concerts: when you live in a world where every third person is head-phoned, you see that undoubted truth as being only marginally relevant. Certainly a list of book translations should be here. I myself favored once
  • Swami Prabhavananda, "How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Pantanjali" 1969 ISBN 978-0451620125

But I believe quoting sales figures may be as relevant as, and easier than quoting an academic as to relevance here. What are the Historical usages of this text? In Universities, in Ashrams, on the street? AS TO A SINGLE line. Well the number of sutras is contested isn't it? So

Alongside the Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Sutras are a milestone in the history of Yoga. The book is a set of 195 aphorisms (sutras)

Is the Bhagavad Gita considered a milestone of Yoga? Better to mention the Upanishads. 194-196 is the count. In the 3rd book are a couple sometimes omitted: the 3.19 & 3.22. 3.19 {impossible to know the structure of others} was brutal for yogis who sold yoga as magic, and I reckon someone of them dropped it and added the fluff of 3.22{also disappears hearing,etc} to compensate for what was perhaps the original 195 total. But we can't know today. When did the texts diverge? Klasovsky 22:13, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You have raised a variety of points, but I would prefer to pick one issue and get it settled. I would like to stick with the issue of translations first. Regarding web links, I might support adding a second repository site with multiple variants if one can be found that complies with WP:EL and which does not push a particular religious group, as does the swamiji.com web site, which seems to me to clearly fail the tests of WP:EL. Is there any other archival site that you can identify to add to the one which is currently listed?
Regarding the issue of good books, I do not support the strategy of just having a list of translations because it will be a magnet for POV issues and notability debates. If particular works are good, we would expect that they would show up being used for hard inline citations, and thus would appear in the list of References, which is a list of works cited in Notes. If that method is used, the works cited in Reference are in effect the recommended book list. Over time, that approach eliminates the need for something like the "Suggested reading" lists which are sometimes seen and which I do not favor.
To help get citations into the article, I suggest that you pursue your other content points by fact-tagging the specific sentences in the current article that you think need to be improved so we can zero in on specific language. I have placed fact tags on two statements which you have challenged. If you are not familiar with the fact tag, it is a call for citation and looks like {{fact}}. According to WP:V you may challenge any point, and call for citations in this manner, which is considered a polite approach as it gives editors the opportunity to respond prior to the cut. If the material is blatantly wrong, and unsourced, personally I just cut it and sometimes move the disputed material to the talk page. The burden of proof is on the person who wants to put a statement in.
Regarding the issue of variant texts, most Hindu scriptures exhibit this issue of variants. I have never systematically looked at variants for the YS but now that you have raised the point I am curious about it. Perhaps we can find a citation that discusses the issue. A related issue in the recensions is the age strata of the material.
I have not personally seen the Prabhavananda edition, but my opinion is that he is notable, and in general the quality of the Sanskrit translations produced under the direction of his order is good. I have placed an order for it so I can examine it, thank you for making me aware of it. Buddhipriya 23:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I am still searching for a comprehensive site, and am not positive that one will be found.
But Hrir is inferior, funnels users to a poor example, and its archives are dubious and poorly organized. we can't refuse to list, and instead refer users to a site with a poor and biased list. This may well constitute an occasion to make an exception to Wiki list guidelines. I have found this site with no manifest program, a nice disclaimer, the Sanskrit text, no commentaries and a rather rough transliteration; perhaps you will agree to put it on links.[10] To me this is an emergency, I wouldn't want to have a single potential sannyasin or sadhu turn to volleyball or poker on finding falsely that the sutras are just another obfuscatory quasi-religious tract.
I believe an Indian researcher will be needed for matters of comparative text variations, etc. Though perhaps someone could scour the work of Georg Fuerstein for these. Just now I did a web search for him and found a copy of his translation on line. This is great, because he is perhaps the accepted Sanskrit scholar in English. The translation is dry in the extreme, and hence unrepresentative, but aside from minor quibbles it will be acceptable to subsequent editors; and will be citatable as well, even if citatable isn't really a word.[11] I'd recommend these two links, wholeheartedly as representative and unbiased. The former also includes the spoken sanskrit and the aforementioned disclaimer. It is from a Grandson of Krishnamacharya, to whom it is dedicated; Krishnamacharya can certainly be reliably established as perhaps the most influential in bringing Yoga to the west. This translation is an improvement on one that comes more directly from this provenance or lineage: [12]
As to Prabhavananda's edition be forewarned that it is as much an English cultural artifact in the Burton tradition as anything, but as such it may underline the cross-cultural problems here. Klasovsky 14:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, Feurstein is an excellent source. I have several of his texts at home if I can help with any sourcing along the way. Osho also writes well and is respected in his discussions of the Patanjali Sutras. Lesotho 19:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Regarding getting into a comparison of translations at the level of individual sutras, we need to be careful not to get into WP:OR. I think it would be best to stick to a fairly high level, and cite what WP:RS say the work means rather than try to do a "correct" translation. Regarding such comparisons, in India both the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita are often given as copying assignments to schoolchildren, so finding people who know them in the Sanskrit is not difficult. But the problem is that we must not rely on their views. We need to identify what sources are the strongest and most respected, and see what they say. Regarding Georg Fuerstein, I personally view his work with some caution. Buddhipriya 04:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
ditto on Fuerstein, but there you go. Respected by whom?Klasovsky 11:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Yoga Sutras and the Web

I suggest that there be a topic added to this page: Yoga Sutras and the Web, in which the availability, and contemporary syntaxes (for want of a better word) of current Yoga Sutras' usages are ennumerated; i.e. its availability copywrite free for sites dealing with any aspect of spirituality, usage as a dogmatic tool by yoga groups, as evidence of an ecumenical nature by other groups, on personal pages of other translators, etc. And also to look at the discrepancies, or rather, at the range of differences as may appear in these. This proliferation of translations is a real phenomena, one that begs documentation; and it would serve the largely web centric readers of this 'pedia as a tool for critical differentiation . Perhaps this could be a seperate page, but it'd have to be linked here.Klasovsky 12:11, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The addition of a link farm to the article would be unwise in my opinion. I would agree that some discussion of major translations may be appropriate, but only if it can be sourced by referring to reviews of those translations in academic sources. Buddhipriya 03:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
not a link farm, but just a discussion of the multiplicity of translations available; this is a disambiguation issue, in the classic (pre-wikipedia) sense. Perhaps the appropriate form would be discussion of academically accepted translations, with notes, and a note on the far more wide-spread non-academic usages of the work. These appear because of the various failures of academic works to mesh with the experience and needs of practicing yogis; perhaps this is irrelevant to our discussion: If we were writing on truffles, we should not fail to mention false truffles, the prevalence on the market of last years flavorless truffles, and those perfidious Chinese truffles; the accepted meaning of truffles pertains to the gourmet french variety; there are however generic meanings appropriated by marketers. I find a similar thing has happened here. refer here to Sutra 1.9.
I think your suggestion of "discussion of academically accepted translations" sounds very interesting, and I would encourage you to see if you can flesh out that idea. However limiting it to things on the web seems to me a bad idea and likely to lead to problems with WP:SPAM. I would venture to guess that the most interesting translations are not on the web. Also, in the tradition of the sutra literature, one would generally not just do a translation, but instead would do a commentary. The commentorial literature grew us a distinct literary form in India addressing the somewhat cryptic nature of the aphorisms themselves. So for a native commentator, just translating the words would be considered trivial and unnecessary. It was important to interpret what the words meant. The sourcing for any list of "important" commentaries would need to establish notability for individual "translations". Someone must have done a paper on the current available popular ones, can we find it? I am referring here to the current crop of available works in English. I also think that your comment that academic materials often do not resonate with practitioners (and vice versa) is both true and worth discussing in some way. Another point which we have previously mentioned, is that those who wish to read the work in the original have different needs than those who wish to read it in translation. And so not to be obscure for those who do not have a copy of the text, sutra 1.9 is one of the definitional sutras, defining the technical term vikalpa (translated variously as verbal delusion, hallucination, a fancy) as an image conjured up by words without any substance behind it. Buddhipriya 03:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
"just translating the words would be considered trivial and unnecessary. . ." it seems this attitude has infected English and- do you know if this is true?- the Indian renditions and commentaries they rest upon; Fr instance: 1.41 [word for word, vrittis constrained, refined like a jewel, clapse, clasping, the clasped transformed by the setting, perfected reciprocally.(approx.)]On its most obvious level this was a true metaphor (drawn from lapidary art) setup as such by the universal/particular argument of the preceding sutra,1.40. But as "clasp-clasper-clasped" was a clever summation of the previous exposition on vrittis, and as grahitri has a slew of other meanings,(as do all the other words here) didactics dictated dialectics (over fidelity, for yogi-pendants) and the whole original metaphor has gotten lost entirely- no where to be found in English. Although most renderings get something of the sense, I believe Patanjali chose his words to resonate on many levels- and wanted to achieve that reciprocal perfection (samapattih) between words and ideas. The evolution of translations and commentaries must have drawn some sages along the way to study it but wouldn't this have happened more assuredly on the sub-continent? Must we depend on English research? I'll try to find sources, indeed I'm trying already but it may go slow [remember all those 'grasping' school kids who wont get past this 'pedia!]Klasovsky 12:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Please excuse any lack of clarity in my remark. I was alluding to the general literary tradition of making commentaries on the sutra literature, which is a stock issue in Sanskrit literature. The sutra form is a distinct type of literary composition, based on short aphoristic statements which generally use various technical terms. The sutra forms were desgined to be very concise, and were the texts that were intended for memorization in some of the formal methods of scriptural study (svādhyāya). Since each line is highly-condensed, another literary form arose, in which commentaries on the sutras were written to explain them. As a stock literary form, commentaries (Sanskrit: bhāṣya ) had their own rules of style. These commentaries were also written in Sanskrit, as it was assumed that the reader would be familiar with that language. In modern times, those who do not know Sanskrit must read the work in translation, and most of the Western books on the subject thus present only an English version of the sutra text, along with discussion of what that sutra means, all in English (or whatever language). Distinguishing between the sutra itself, and commentary about the sutra, helps to focus attention on the original source text, as well on the variations in views among the commentators. And if I have understood your point correctly, yes, the goal of study is to understand the sutra itself, through direct study of it, meditation upon its individual words, etc. It may be helpful to know what Swami X thinks the sutra means, but ultimately it is best if you can form your own opinion of what it means. And then you can write your own bhāṣya. Buddhipriya 19:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


Buddhipriya, I don't think anyone can argue with your contention that it would be optimal to read and process the sutras in Sanskrit, rather than relying on the interpretations others. The Kalama Sutra should tell us that much at least. However, it is my impression that this English version of Wikipedia is intended to provide access to and a summarized version of the knowledge available on various topics to native English speakers. I feel it impoverishes Wikipedia to eliminate all topics that have no origin in English or cannot be properly understood without combing through source texts.

Personally, I do not see the harm in pointing externally to Patanjali resources (in the form of textbooks, online bhasya, etc.). I disagree strongly with the position that there is no value (or indeed harm) in an interested learner or aspirant to consume all available knowledge on the subject. If the prerequisite for absorbing any of the lessons of the Yoga Sutras or Hinduism more broadly is years of formal training in Sanskrit, then I think that discourages all who are interested in furthering their own knowledge.Lesotho 17:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I regret if I have not made myself clear. I have no objection to citing what WP:RS have to say regarding the content of the Yoga Sutras. As a member of Wikiproject Spam, I will continue to object to the addition of spam that falls under the definitions given at WP:SPAM. Links used as references must also meet the tests for external links given at WP:EL. That is, just because someone has put something on a web site does not make that web site into a WP:RS. There is a great deal of nonsense on the web. I encourage all editors to challenge the quality of sources used for this article and demand that any statement related to a translation or interpretation be examined closely with regard to reliability. Any of course any editor may freely add anything they want to any article on Wikipedia. Personally due to current time restraints, I probably will be unable to work much on this article for a while, and thus will look forward to seeing what other editors can do in the next few months to improve it. Buddhipriya 19:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
it seems that in these present Yoga Sutras we have a nice parellel to some web/info phenomena- the narrowing of sources and interpertive possibilities in favor of the current and popular choice. . . Here was a nice bit of grammar covering a huge hunk of psychological/mystical ground. So, many people commented it. i come to see it as having been, yes, a mnemonic learning tool, but no, not for students in the ashram, but for health and religion professionals in need of philosophical underpining and, also in need of a summary understanding of learning processes. It seems to me that the psycho-social layer of meanings these commentators justly appended to the author's aphoristic words, have for later generations come to usurp the originals- these meanings even now top the entries in the sanskrit dictionary. So? for the obscuration of a few homely metaphors we wont mourn much; of course, much of the text is about meditation anyway; in this case the losses of meaning may be subtler and more insidious.
"There is a great deal of nonsense on the web. . ." but fear not, the Wikipedia Gadget is among the most popular Add-Ons for your iGoogle MyPageKlasovsky 10:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Ref from Studio 34 Yoga

The Studio 34 Yoga is being used as a reference, where I can find no information on Patanjali yoga sutra and also this site does not meet WP:RS criteria, I will be removing it. --Nvineeth (talk) 06:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you're right; the site doesn't say anything about Patanjali. Still, it seems useful to have a link to the text just for reference; I'll put one in External Links. PRRfan (talk) 14:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
The above site is a commercial site remotely connected to Hatha Yoga and has no relation with Patanjali yoga, and does not meet WP:EL either. --Nvineeth (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
My point is that there should be a link to the Sutras' text itself, not necessarily to any given site. As it happens, I can't find the text on that site anymore; I guess they moved it. PRRfan (talk) 14:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I have expanded the section to link to several published (and public domain!) translations of the Yoga Sutra and associated commentaries. The pre-existing audio link is borderline, but not blatantly spammy, so I left it in. Abecedare (talk) 17:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to add this link:

http://www.shaivam.org/sanskrit/ssyogasuutra.pdf

It leads to a PDF of the Yoga Sutras in Sanskrit. LanceMurdock999 (talk) 09:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Persistent removal of well-sourced material

My dear User CO2NorthEast, I must respectfully request you once again to desist from removing well-sourced material from academics and other respectable sources. If you have problems with specific sources not saying what I claim they said, point that out to me, I will be glad to rephrase my writings or even remove the offending part completely. However, the version of the article you want to bring forward is clearly not an accurate look at the subject matter. The Sutras are the core text of the Astika Hindu Darshana of Yoga, and their grounding is in Samkhya. There is definitely incorporation of elements from Buddhism and Jainism, which needs to be written about in the article. However, considering that the Sutras strongly criticize certain Buddhist schools, it isn't logical to put Buddhist and Jain influence on the Sutras as the first thing in the article. If Buddhism was indeed the pre-eminent force behind the formation of Yoga, one wonders why Yoga is limited to the Indian subcontinent (and Tibet, where Vajrayana traveled later after incorporating Yogic elements). Yoga is not found in the Theravada or Mahayana countries in farther parts of Asia, though Buddhist meditation, Dhyana and Vipassana are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.124.253.145 (talk) 17:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Removed paragraph from lead

This is not lead material. Unsourced. Why the quotation marks—is it a quote?

"The Yoga-sutras acknowledge the Personality of Godhead in an oblique way, but only as a helper whom the advancing yogi can utilize. Isvara-pranidhanad va: "Devotional meditation on God is yet another means of achieving concentration." (Yoga-sutra 1.23) In contrast, Badarayana Vedavyasa's philosophy of Vedanta emphasizes devotional service not only as the primary means to liberation but also as identical with liberation itself. A-prayanat tatrapi hi drstam: "Worship of the Lord continues up to the point of liberation, and indeed goes on in the liberated state also, as the Vedas reveal." (Vedanta-sutra 4.1.12)"

Accusativen hos Olsson (talk) 13:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC) he: היוגה סוטרות של פטנג'לי — Preceding unsigned comment added by RavitA (talk • contribs) 07:23, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Revert suggestion

This kriya into karma back into kriya editing is confusing and taking the article off point. I would like to restore the edit here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali&oldid=649336297 under the 'Compilations' heading. I'd rather it agree with Feuerstein than with a string of half edits that came after. Thoughts?Iṣṭa Devata (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. Cúchullain t/c 13:44, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali → Yoga Sutras of Patanjali –

There is consistency in the cat. Dharma Sutras, Brahma Sutras, Purva Mimamsa Sutras, Shulba Sutras, Vaisheshika Sutra, many in Category:Mahayana sutras are in Indian English, not in IAST. Britannica uses without diacritics too. --Redtigerxyz Talk 17:52, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.


suggestion for a minor [spelling] change

The Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali#Indian_traditions (sub-) section -- (at least, in this version of the article) -- ends with:

[...] and Buddhist' yoga stems from pre-Patanjali sources.[57]

Should the word after "and" be changed, perhaps? Maybe what was intended, was

[...] and Buddhists' yoga stems from pre-Patanjali sources.[57]

perhaps?

[That is, ((Buddhists')) instead of ((Buddhist')) [yoga] ]. IMHO, it should be changed somehow -- either by adding an "s" (the above idea), or else by removing the apostrophe [(('))] after ((Buddhist)).

Just a suggestion... from: --Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:59, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Pātañjalayogaśāstra

First paragraph says "Together with his commentary they form the Pātañjalayogaśāstra." referring presumably to Patañjali's commentary which I believe does not exist or at least is not extant. Is it possible this should read as Vyasa's commentary? I could be mistaken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iṣṭa Devata (talk • contribs) 22:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

No. See Wuyastik, Dominik (2011), The Path to Liberation through Yogic Mindfulness in Early Ayurveda. In: David Gordon White (ed.), "Yoga in practice", Princeton University Press. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:06, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
I still don't think this is the mainstream academic view, but more of an interesting theory. I can't find much support from sanskrit experts that a commentary like this could date from the same time as the sutras. It's like the people who think patanjali wrote a book on grammar that was most likely just a different patanjali, it's ignoring historical context to give patanjali more credit. Are there others besides White and Wuyastik who give evidence for this idea? Iṣṭa Devata (talk) 21:28, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Maas, apparently. I think that Wuyastik was added by me, searching for more info; Maas was added by User:Wujastyk diff; maybe he can tell more. Anyway, I've attributed now that info. It seems relevant to the topic, since it's so different from what one would expect. At least, that's my consideration. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:28, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Ho, wait a minute. If Wuyastik added Maas, it could be that Wuyastik added Wuyastik, right?... Ah, no, I did: diff. Funny, never noticed that Wuyastik also edited this article. Anyway, if White deemed it fit to publish, in his "Yoga in practice", published by Princeton University Press, then at least it's relevant, I guess. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:39, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello everybody! It's me, Dominik Wujastyk (note spelling :-). I do exist :-) Here is my view of the current state of research on Patañjali and related issues. First, King Bhoja (fl. ca. 1000-1050), in an introductory verse to his commentary on the Y. sutras was the first to put on record the idea that there was one single Patanjali who wrote on grammar, medicine and yoga. He did this in his introductory mangala verse, yogena cittasya ..., that has become well-known. Bhoja's commentary is well worth reading, but this particular assertion is historically wrong. I have read the grammatical Mahābhāṣya and the Yogasūtras with the Yogasūtra-bhāṣya (=Pātañjalayogaśāstra) and they are very different works, with no overlap of subject matter or language. It's rather like reading Shakespeare and then Bunyan - you can palpably feel that these are different historical stages of the language. As for the idea of a major medical work by Patanjali, in a word, there isn't one. Check Meulenbeld's History of Indian Medical Literature for the full detail on this issue. There's good evidence that the Patanjali who wrote the grammatical work Mahābhāṣya lived in about 120 BCE. There's good evidence that the Patañjali who wrote on yoga lived in the period 325--425 CE, i.e., half a millennium later. For the grammarian, see Hartmut Scharfe Grammatical Literature (1977). For the date of Patañjali who wrote on yoga, see Woods The Yoga System of Patanjali (1914, freely available at archive.org). (Woods thought Patanjali and Vyasa were two different people; I don't - see the following.) Okay, so far: two different Patanjalis - the old grammarian and the more recent yoga author. Next issue: did Patañjali write just the sutras, and someone else called "the editor" (vyāsa) the oldest commentary, the Bhāṣya, or are both sutras and bhāṣya by one person, namely Patanjali himself? This is controversial, and this is where new discoveries in the last few years have dramatically changed the picture. That's why it's confusing, and why different books and articles say different things. Because the paradigm is shifting, right now, and not everyone is keeping up. Basically, the new research has been done by Philipp Maas in his 2006 PhD at the University of Bonn. Philipp (currently a colleague of mine at the University of Vienna) collected manuscripts of the Yogasutras and first commentary (aka bhāṣya) from all over Europe and India, and made a critical edition of the first pāda of the sutras and commentary. This meant examining all the manuscripts in great detail, including all the scribal comments at the end of each manuscript (colophons) and also what other Sanskrit authors had said about the yogasutras in the medieval period. It's a fine piece of scholarship. I can't present the detail here, but some main points are 1) until about 1000 CE, all Sanskrit authors in India assumed that the sūtras and the bhāṣya commentary together formed a single work by a single author, and that this was called The Yoga Teaching of Patañjali that Presents Sāṅkhya (Pātañjala-yoga-śāstra-sāṅkhya-pravacana). Nearly every manuscript of Patañjali's work says this at the end. After about 950 CE, some authors, starting with Vācaspati Miśra, began splitting the sūtras from the bhāṣya, and a new author was invented for the bhāṣya, namely a "Vyāsa" (means just "editor, arranger"). 2) The single author of The Yoga Teaching of Patañjali was, er, Patañjali. 3) The date, already mentioned, 325--425 CE. Philipp's PhD is in German, which has probably slowed the dissemination of his discoveries in the USA and England (it has a short English summary, but that doesn't lay out all the detail and arguments). Philipp has now written a more general essay on the history of the study of yoga, and the different interpretations, A Concise Historiography of Classical Yoga Philosophy, where he lays out his views and those of many other scholars before, and how the whole argument unfolded. As you see, many of my own ideas about the history of yoga are derived from Philipp's research as well as my own study of the grammatical and yoga traditions. Philipp and I work closely together (our offices are on the same corridor). We both also know well and work with David White, Jim Mallinson, Jason Birch, Mark Singleton and others. There's a lot of exciting work going on in the academic field of the history and interpretation yoga right now, and not all of it has yet got into the textbooks. The terrain is changing, so it can be confusing. A slightly different point that I've personally been working on in the last few years is Yoga's debt to Buddhism. Reading and re-reading the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, and the early writings of Buddhists like Vasubandhu, I have become more and more convinced that what Patañjali was doing was re-packaging Buddhist meditation techniques and philosophy for a non-Buddhist Śramaṇa and Brāhmaṇa audience. But that's another story for another day :-) I'd like to thank everyone here in "talk" for engaging with these issues, which are so interesting! DomLaguna (talk) 09:46, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very, very much for your response! I'm going to read the article by Maass. Thanks! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Agreed! Thank you for this treasure trove of information. I'm eager to tear into these essays now.Iṣṭa Devata (talk) 22:04, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Now that [no less an authority (on the spelling of his own name) than] Dominik Wujastyk (note spelling :-) himself, seems to prefer the spelling "Wujastyk", ...is it perhaps time to modify the spellings used in the article? (maybe not the spellings [already] here on the "Talk:" page).
On the other hand, if publishers have already printed some stuff, using other spellings -- such as "Wuyastik", e.g., -- then *those* instances of such other spellings, should probably be kept -- (perhaps with some explanatory note, about variability of spellings).
Hi again, Dominik Wujastyk here. AFAIK, nobody has ever published anything of mine under the name "Wuyastik" or any other variant. It's always "Wujastyk". But I agree with your principle, that in a citation, even errors should be cited as they appear (perhaps with "sic"). DomLaguna (talk) 12:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Just a suggestion... from --Mike Schwartz (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Isvara Pranidhana

I see the translation evolving here a bit. If I remember correctly, Edwin Bryant's translation of the sutras gives a direct translation at one point of pra-before, in front of nidhana-lie down, making isvarapranidhana roughly to lie prone before one's lord (implying surrender). I'll try to find the page number and get that reference up here on the talk page. The current translation though clear and well cited seems less literal. Any thoughts? Iṣṭa Devata (talk) 03:40, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Edwin Bryant

Edwin Bryant does not comment on Maas, but on earlier research. To quote him in this way, after Maas, is WP:SYNTH and violates WP:NPOV. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:01, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Joshua. The user is new, and actually left a note on my talk page thinking I was the reverter. Can you go into more detail here why the data was removed, and how the revert fits into the rules you linked to. He/she seems to be someone who could be a good editor for this article and others, and in this case some encouragement and dialogue could be a gain for the project and for all of us as well. Thanks. Randy Kryn 18:08, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
@IndologyScholar: Edwin Bryant is kind of an alarm-bell for India related articles; see Indo-Aryan migration debate. So I figured "Here's another POV (Point of View)-pusher who wants to prove that Hinduism is the root of everything Indian." See for example User talk:RegentsPark#lord rama edit. But it seems I was mistaken here.
You're right, Bryant is from 2009, while Maas is from 2006. So, some compromise midway? best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:31, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

James Wood as source

@VictoriaGrayson: I agree that James Woods text is dated, and needs to be complemented with a more modern source. But, lets not discard James Woods, because his translation of Yogasutra and medieval era commentaries on Yogasutra are reliable. See, for example, David G White's The "Yoga Sutra of Patanjali": A Biography, Princeton University Press (2014), ISBN 978-0691143774, at page xii-xiii; David White writes, "James Woods - Harvard professor of Indian philosophy and author of what is considered to be the most accurate and authoritative translation of Yogasutra and commentaries of Bhoja and Vachaspati Mishra". Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 18:10, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch: David Gordon White criticizes the translation on pages 191-192. Even if the translation is accurate, his scholarship is probably not.VictoriaGraysonTalk 18:23, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Classical texts

@VictoriaGrayson: Where do you see support for "classical Hindu texts emphasize" phrasing in David White on pages xvi-xvii and 20-23? Perhaps you can embed a quote from White, inside the cite? If it is from a different source, I am curious which "classical Hindu text(s) emphasizes". Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 22:15, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I made some changes. Also, you might want to listen to this talk by David Gordon White.VictoriaGraysonTalk 22:23, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, it looks better now. The "comeback classic" is supported on page xvi. Any text that is translated into over 40 languages, obviously had a following and interest in ancient/medieval India by their people. White states so, and it is significant enough to be WP:DUE. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 22:54, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Its interesting he says that. In the video I linked to he greatly minimizes the significance of the Yoga Sutras.VictoriaGraysonTalk 22:56, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Images

@VG: How about a collage of traditional asanas? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 03:39, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Wrong date, 400 CE?

Go a little bit more and make it 2015? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.158.37.233 (talk) 06:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, not a WP:PLATFORM. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:22, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Image grid for NPOV

@Effulgence108: No edit wars. I have reverted your unexplained deletion and edits, per WP:BRD you need to discuss and gain consensus. The image grid makes more sense as it is MOS:IMAGES and WP:NPOV. Why is the image you added better than the grid? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

David White Yogasutra's Biography, pages 31-32

@VG: I have reworded a summary of the paragraph on page 31 starting with, "While all the major Indian philosophical systems....", to the sentence on page 32, which reads, "Finally, according to the Buddha's teachings, both the individual self and the...". I am trying to avoid copyvio, and I invite your suggestions to improve that summary. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 12:17, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

That has nothing to do with the Yoga Sutras specifically. And David Gordon White says the Yoga Sutras might be originally Buddhist on page 41:

"A significant minority opinion, however, maintains that Vyasa lived several centuries later, and that his “Hindu­-izing” commentary, rather than eluci­dating Patanjali’s text, actually subverted its original “Buddhist” teachings. I will return to this provocative hypothesis in the final chapter of this book."

VictoriaGraysonTalk 14:02, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

@VG: Pages 31-32 are part of White's chapter 2. He explains the link between Samkhya-Yoga system and third chapter of Yoga Sutras there (page 30 and before). It is important enough that David White italicizes it on page 32. Please check. The "self, soul" theory is central to chapters 3 and 4 of Yoga sutras, is a key difference between Buddhist teachings and Yoga sutra, and that summary from White is needed here for balance. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:27, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
He is not referring to the Yoga Sutras in this entire paragraph on pages 31-32. He is merely giving an outline of philosophical systems.VictoriaGraysonTalk 19:48, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
@VG: Yet, that is the context of the chapter. The whole book is on Yoga Sutras biography. David White is not making a contextless, aimless commentary on Indian philosophies. That paragraph is part of the chapter, which is about the philosophy behind Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.
I checked page 41. White does state the minority opinion as, "Vyasa's commentary on Patanjali’s text subverted its original “Buddhist” teachings". That sentence does not mean "the Yoga Sutras might be originally Buddhist". A book can have Buddhist teachings, but belong to a school of Hinduism or Jainism because they shared conceptual terms and influenced each other. I will reword it a bit. Furthermore, note White states the majority opinion and the minority opinion on pages 40-41. We should not present the minority opinion, and be silent about the majority opinion. If the minority opinion is relevant and due in this article, the majority opinion is too. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 23:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

It appears huge effort is spent trying to prove Buddhist writings as the origin of Yoga sutra though, it is clearly other way around... Vyasa later than patanjali? (even though this is a minority opinion now - how long before it would be accepted / convoluted to be the "truth" - I think if you say a lie many times, that will become truth over time I suppose - The "scholars" would all agree)... No way things can be this subjective... Buddha attained Nirvana and helped liberate people is the only thing that is truth from a Buddhist purpose - How could they be exponent of yoga suddenly or for that matter other things like Advaita taking cues from Buddhism, and so on? - During the time of Buddha, the whole Hindu world (the pepole, culture, art, architecture, etc was at its peak - As in the main body of work of Vedas, upanishads, Yoga Sutras, Gita, Epics, etc, etc... were already complete by a few 100 or 1000 years ago - People were following that - Who can disptute that? - Even Buddha was a "Hindu" obviously - Whether he agreed with Hinduism or not is a different question). To assume they were written (may be after the discovery of script) could be true, but their existence prior to Buddhism, cannot be questioned (it would be anachronistic) - Obviously, for a philosophical tradition like Buddhism, Jainism, etc, owning the vast, rich Hindu "things" as "theirs" would be quite valuable (sellable to the followers - but, this is not theoretical physics, one cannot simply make a theory and try to prove it later (like Vyasa after Patanjali and so on)- Think of how corporates go after patents, that is what I could relate this to). The only logical explanation of why "Yoga" or Vyasa later than Patanjali theories come about, is the "vested" effort to own Hindu things as Buddhist (and I believe establishment less Hinduism is losing in this front - As nobody is there to set things right)... [Nothing further to add - Wanted to record this "Vested" interest to own "Hindu" things as "Buddhist" or so in the talk page... ]

Vyāsa just means an editor. Those people who believe that it was Vedavyāsa who wrote the commentary on the Sūtras also believe Vyāsa is an immortal. Rationalist tend to say Vyāsa just means the guy who anonymously wrote the first commentary, which Philip Maas and Dominic Wujastyk insist was also Patāñjali (though this is hotly contested, e.g. by Christopher Chapple). The Yoga Sūtras were written after the Buddha's life by even the most generous dating: (Buddha between 800-500 BC, Sutras between 200 BC and 400 AD). And the Buddha was likely part of an non-vedic Śramanic religion (not necessarily Brahmanism). Śramana is where most scholars agree that Hinduism acquired yoga, meditation, and karma which were novel to the Vedic sacrificial religion. The Yamas of Patāñjali are almost the exact same as the five precepts of Buddhism and the five vratas of the Jain Acaranga Sutta, and the levels of samādhi are very similar to the jhānas of Pāli Buddhism, and the abhidharma teachings explain supernatural powers by the same logic as sāṁkhya as a gnosis over the five elements. Like the Bhagavad Gītā, even Hindu nationalist scholars recognize that these Hindu yoga texts directly address and reproach certain schools of Buddhism and Jainism, often rejecting their emphasis on renunciation as a threat to Brahmanic hegemony. It is impossible to assign any one of these three religions credit for inventing yoga when they were all borrowing from each other and responding to one another throughout this time. Iṣṭa Devatā (talk) 22:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
A footnote I just came across on the difficulty of trying to compare the dates of different yogic schools and their ontologies between buddhism, jainism, and hinduism from:

FROM CATEGORY TO ONTOLOGY: THE CHANGING ROLE OF "DHARMA" IN SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA Author(s): COLLETT COX Source: Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 32, No. 5/6 (December 2004), pp. 543-597 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23497152: "See Bronkhorst (1987, 1996, 1999a, 1999b); Houben (1995); Frauwallner ([1956] 1973: pt.2, 79ff.); Matilal (1985: 269ff„ 378ff.)." That's who you want to look at for this subject.Iṣṭa Devatā (talk) 03:51, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

The sentence "Scholars consider Patanjali's Yogasutra formulations as one of the foundations of classical yoga philosophy"

Isn't this idea disputed by David Gordon White when he says "This reinvention of the Yoga Sutra as the foundational scripture of “classical yoga” runs counter to the pre­ twentieth­ century history of India’s yoga tradition..."VictoriaGraysonTalk 23:13, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

We should summarize the majority view, not just David White's book, for NPOV. Classical yoga philosophy, for most scholars, is the conventional name for teachings resonating with Patanjali's YS.
Even David White is saying several things, including this on page xvi, "after a five-hundred-year period of great notoriety, during which it [Patanjali's YS] was translated into two foreign languages and noted by authors from across the Indian philosophical spectrum, Patanjali's work began to fall into oblivion". He asserts the same in Chapters 7 and 8. White may be trying to assert three things: (a) Before 12th century, YS was famous and important; (b) between 13th to 19th century (~700 years), YS fell into oblivion; (c) in pre-20th-century history, while YS was in oblivion, other yoga texts and traditions dominated the Indian yoga scene. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 01:16, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
The merit of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali does not rely solely on the consideration of scholars--mere conjecture, no matter how warranted it is; and it is due that much if not more. The real issue here is the classification of the work, and the knowledge contained within it, as a formulation. Considering what has already been discussed within this section, its clear that some understanding of the basic aspects, if not even the more advanced aspects, is at least familiar. With that said, it should be obvious that a development as systematic as seen in the Yoga Sutra has had a long tradition of development and testing--a system centered around the core infrastructure of all Yoga, the Kundalini-Chakra paradigm. If this is understood, then how can this fallacious notion of some temporal formation of Yoga be allowed to continue? Aghoradas (talk) 09:27, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't recall the YS mentioning Kundalini or chakras; aren't you confusing dhyana with hatha yoga? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:17, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
The Yoga Sutras do mention the chakras (starting at section 3, verse 30). It doesn't however mention the Kundalini herself directly; but the absence of her mention is inconsequential, given that the chakra-complex is generated by the prana aspect of the Kundalini. Dhyana is the state of meditation arrived at through the practices of Hatha Yoga (as the prana begins to flow back into the bindu of ajna chakra). There are some who seem to say that there exists different forms Yoga, which I'm sure they have their reasons for doing this--merely different aspects of the larger umbrella. Pragmatically speaking though, what we know of as Yoga developed around the awakening of the Kundalini. Aghoradas (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

David Gordon White's opinion is just one of many; "This reinvention of the Yoga Sutra as the foundational scripture of “classical yoga” runs counter..." - is a theoretical assumption rather than proven fact, one can dispute his statement in any number of ways, for example, if there was no continuity of Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in yoga tradition then there would be no reason for Vivekananda and others to use the Yoga Sutras as the foundation of Raja Yoga, or Ashtanga Yoga, when they brought yoga into attention of Westerners.Pradeepwb 19:47, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

@Pradeepwb: You are entitled to your opinions/ assumptions/ wisdom /prejudice. Yoga tradition has been continuous in all three major Indian religions. We just need to stick with summarizing the diversity of views in WP:RS. Wikipedia is not a place to "prove facts" and pick a side, nor a blog about what might or might not be a "theoretical assumption". Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 22:29, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
The classic stance against science: "it's just an opinion." Right. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:50, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
So, a few things:
The Yoga Sūtras is, objectively the foundational text of the Yoga Darśana. This means that when primary or academic sources list the six schools of Hindu philosophy with their patriarchs and foundational texts they ALWAYS say Yoga-Yoga Sūtras-Patāñjali, just like they assign Sāṁkhya the Sāṁkhya Sutras and Kapila. The words "Classical Yoga" refer very specifically to this formulation of Yoga, even though there are older yoga texts like the Bhagavad Gita and certain Upanishads. I believe all the darśanas use different sūtra texts as their loci classici. David Gordon White's book does not argue with this. His point is that the sūtras went through a long period of disuse and are not the basis which most later yogas are based on, hence not foundational or even very relevant to most extant yoga schools which are mostly Vedantic or tantric in philosophy. But classical yoga still means Patāñjali's dualist, Buddhist and Jain inspired, theistic, practice oriented version of yoga. That is not in academic contention. Vivekānanda and others used it, but their teachers didn't. Krishnamacharya had to go to Tibet to find someone who studied it. Vivekānanda's teacher, Ramakrishna was a hardcore Bengali tantric and didn't care about 8-limbed yoga. Vivekananda (according to Elizabeth De Michelis' book among many others) pretty much rewrote Hinduism into a new 'Neo-Vedanta' of his own that was very new age and borrowed from mesmerism. Texts like the Yoga Sūtras and the Bhagavad Gita gained new repute during this 'Bengali Renaissance' period that they had not had prior. This is also what David Gordon White is pointing out. See also The Bhagavad Gita: a Biography for more on this.
What is in contention is the notion that the sūtras describe cakras or kundalinī which are almost universally recognized to be much later inventions (David Gordon White thinks they were borrowed from China). The Vibhūti Pāda (third chapter) of the Yoga Sūtras actually only uses the word cakra to describe the belly button (nabhi cakra) which does not mean the same thing as an energetic cakra. While many scholars including Christopher Chapple, and some classical commentators believe these points of focus may allude to the cakras (or 'proto-cakra' like systems), it is very uncertain and impossible to prove. It is an interesting vein, no doubt. And, of course, the commentators tend to believe that the practices they knew were all primordial and not evolved, and present their schools as older to legitimize their teachings, so they often overestimate the antiquity of their lineage and practices. Hence the belief from Hariharananda and others that the lokas in 3.26 refer to the cakras. And again, by the time of the commentators, the tantric notion of micro/macrocosm had made the seven lokas of late upanishadic hinduism the macro version of the seven cakras of classical haṭha/lāya yoga, but they were not seen that way during Patāñjali's time (as far as we can tell). The most convincing verses are those concerning meditating on the sun, the moon, and the light in the head, the heart, the throat, and the belly button. But these focal points for meditation are never given descriptions regarding the subtle body and match more closely with ascetic magic practices and the samsketas of certain lāya schools (e.g. meditate on the big toes, meditate on the back of the head, et cetera). The only mention of nadis is the kurma nadi which no one seems to have a good explanation for. But actual clear-cut cakra and kundalinī descriptions do not come in textual form until hundreds of years after the sūtras period in Indian history in the tantras, agamas, and vaiṣṇava saṁhitas that come well after the sūtra period.

Iṣṭa Devatā (talk) 07:30, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

@Iṣṭa Devatā: I see you have been reading. FWIW, these are a subset of the views on YS etc. There is a lot more. Krishnacharya's and a few others you quote are best examined with views of other scholars, for example. A text such as YS did not become the most translated text in medieval India, 40 languages!!, without appropriately inspiring and being popular. If David White is right, Yoga and YS were even more widely popular with Hindus/Buddhists/Jains than what the scholars of mid-20th century thought. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:28, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
"the sūtras went through a long period of disuse and are not the basis which most later yogas are based on..", how is that known?, David Gordon White analyzed several aspects of that gap (XVI-XX centuries) in his The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali by using references to how many commentaries were written in comparison to other schools of Indian philosophies (Vedanta, Vaishesika, Nyaya, ect). However, in India yoga was/is a practical discipline where practitioners would practice it in caves, forests and seclusion in comparison to Western group thing and public yoga shows. In that context, YS usage in India can not be measured properly by his academic criteria of university-based research focus, because that focus is mostly theoretical. Surprisingly, he does not go into researching for example Himalayan yoga traditions (Kriya Yoga, Kumoan siddha yogis, etc) covering that supposed YS usage gap period. Why?, because that most likely would undermine or considerably change his conclusion. Pradeepwb 19:40, 12 June 2016 (UTC) User talk: Pradeepwb
@Pradeepwb:What is known is that nearly every systematized version of Yoga we have that came after the Yoga Sūtras is based on the later schools of Vedānta and tantra and not on the dualist Sāṁkhya that Patāñjali employs. Other schools that retain the eight-limbs as in the Dattatreya Yoga Śastra also change their definitions of several limbs including the yamas and niyamas and become attached in the Vaiṣṇava traditions with Viṣiṣṭādvaita philosophy and other post-classical schools. They also take on devotional philosophies as with Madhva's commentaries on the Gītā. If we look at the major schools of yoga that came about in the post classical period we see that they often use the six limbs (shadāṅga) including tarka as with nearly all the Yoga Upaniṣads, and have radical departures in both philosophy and practice from the Sūtras which does not really teach Karma Yoga, Laya Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Mantra Yoga, or Bhakti Yoga (except teaching Om, and mentioning iśvara praṇidhana without really explaining them as types of yoga). Whatever may come directly from the YS may just as easily have been borrowed from Buddhist or Jain schools. We have no knowledge of direct transmission from Patāñjali (no list of his disciples, or possible location where he taught) and it would be spurious logic to make direct links. Later yogas use different lists for the Yamas and Niyamas, define pratyahara in terms of prāṇa withdrawal instead of the senses, and mostly abandon the levels of samādhi. We also have many examples of yoga schools directly rejecting Patāñjali's views on Iśvara, Samādhi, et cetera. While we can't say how many of these 'cave-dwelling' medieval yogis were using the Sūtras, we do know that if a sūtra text were popular it would have commentaries written to elucidate it (sūtras require commentaries to be understood, especially in vernacular languages as most cave-dwelling yogis didn't read Sanskrit, and the aphorisms are so sparse the whole text has four verbs) and the more popular it was to vernacular practitioners, the more likely it would have surviving commentaries in vernacular languages from this period. These are not 'University' based commentaries, these were typically written by teachers on texts they used in their teachings or lineage. During the period where no one was writing commentaries on the Yoga Sūtras, there were plenty of commentaries coming out on texts that were widely used in yoga such as the Brahma Sūtras and Vasugupta's Shiva Sūtra, the Yoga Upaniṣads were being composed and countless new manuals with little resemblance to the Sūtras were coming out constanly in the Buddhist, Agamic, and Vaiṣṇav milieus of their time. We can't say these later yogas are based on Patāñjali because they don't teach sāṁkhya based yoga. They may, however, be reacting to the Sūtras by attempting to undermine or supersede them. Furthermore, these later yogas often have the different goals of union with god or the attainment of siddhis. What similarities we can find cannot be definitively linked to the Sūtras. Sāṁkhya itself took a role subservient to Vedantic ontology after Shankara and the later Vedāntic elaborations. Shankara himself criticized the yoga school, and all yoga after that point bears the imprint that Vedānta made across Indian philosophy and then later tantra had the same wide-ranging impact. Then with the advent of subitism, the gradualist practices of samādhi became even less central to many post-classical yoga schools. Rationalist modern teachers like Vivekānanda come back to it precisely because it does not emphasize the magical or religious trends in tantra and bhakti that came to dominate post-classical yoga.Iṣṭa Devatā (talk) 22:14, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
@Iṣṭa Devatā: Yoga is a discipline based more in practice than theory. It means, no matter what theoretical assumptions and opinions we have, the core stays pretty much the same provided someone is doing sadhana yoga practice. But sadhana remains pretty much hidden from the outside world, because in a guru-disciple lineage tradition, sadhana is supposed to be protected from being revealed or even talked about. That is a big hurdle for researches and scholars, because they can't have data on practices and can't verify if yoga was continuously practiced over certain period of time. That is why David Gordon White doesn't go at all into this subject, it is not really adaptable to his research. However, if we skip this part of yoga history we maybe reaching dubious theoretical conclusions and unrealistic views about yoga being discontinued, not practiced over certain period of time, etc. So, the point is that research has it's limitations and as such it should be acknowledged and stated.Pradeepwb 18:22, 20 June 2016 (UTC), User talk: Pradeepwb
Pradeepwb: By this same logic, we can not put this information into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is based on this research which you claim to be "not adaptable". The information is based on verifiable written or pictorial records. You are certainly welcome to your opinion that this tradition of "yoga" (I'm not sure whether you are referring to all eight limbs here) has been a continuous tradition, but that doesn't meet the standards of Wikipedia. In the case of Vivekananda, it was to his great advantage to present a short and inscrutable Sanskrit work to a Western audience, a book of which Vivekananda was the only accessible expert. His commentary betrays in parts a very "loose" translation of the Yoga Sutras that enables him to make philosophical flourishes. Outside of India there were very few who could contradict his interpretations. Soon thereafter the Theosophical Society presented their own translations. The unreliability of Madame Blavatsky and her organization at that time are well known. They would have been operating under similar motivations, and they, and others inside India would be appealing to Hindu nationalism as well. This is the same way the European alchemists has their secret traditions of the philosopher's stone. If we accepted the existence of a secret, hidden tradition unknowable to modern scholarship, we would still be seeking this magical stone today. Please don't ask us to do such a wild goose chase for the chakras in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Tumacama (talk) 04:38, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Sutra or Verse?

In the article, "sutras" in the Yogasutra are referred to as "verses". In reality, a sutra is quite different from a verse and so the usage of the word verse will mislead a reader. Therefore, I propose we replace the words "verse" when describing sutras of Yogasutras to "sutra", and linking the first occurrence it to this article Thank you. - Sudarshanhs (talk) 06:17, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

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