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Dr James Mallinson - New Light on Śāktism and Haṭhayoga

Dr. James Mallinson explores new insights into Shaktism and the history of Hatha Yoga, highlighting textual and historical developments.

Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.

Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.

Key Takeaways

  • Hatha Yoga is a layered tradition combining physical practices with Shakta yogic concepts centered on Kundalini.
  • Early Hatha Yoga texts show significant influence from Tantric Buddhism, especially the Amritasiddhi.
  • The decline of Buddhism led to the absorption of its tantric elements into Shaiva traditions.
  • Shaivism and Tantra were dominant religious paradigms in medieval India, deeply influencing yoga practices.
  • Ongoing research continues to refine the historical understanding of Hatha Yoga's origins and development.

What the video covers

  • Dr. James Mallinson presents research on the intersection of Shaktism and Hatha Yoga, based on his extensive work and the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project.
  • He discusses the evolution of Hatha Yoga texts and their layered composition, combining a physical yoga tradition with a Shakta non-physical yogic practice involving Kundalini.
  • Mallinson revisits and revises his 2016 thesis in light of new discoveries, emphasizing stronger connections between Hatha Yoga and Tantric Buddhism.
  • The Amritasiddhi text is identified as a key Tantric Buddhist source influencing early Hatha Yoga traditions.
  • The transformation of Buddhist tantric traditions into Tantric Shaiva lineages is explored as Buddhism declined in India.
  • Mallinson highlights the dating and textual relationships of key yoga texts, such as Vivekamartanda and Goraksha Shataka, in relation to the Dattayoga Shastra.
  • He notes the dominance of Shaivism and Tantra in 11th-century India, shaping the religious and yogic landscape.
  • Discussions include the rejection of sexual rituals in some early Hatha Yoga texts and the role of yoginis and deities in the tradition.
  • The lecture touches on the complex interplay of Shaiva, Buddhist, and Vaishnava tantric influences on Hatha Yoga development.
  • Mallinson provides a nuanced understanding of the historical and textual codification of Hatha Yoga within Shakta and tantric contexts.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Introduction and Speaker Background
  2. 04:55The Amritasiddhi and Tantric Buddhist Influence
  3. 10:14Textual Relationships and Dating of Yoga Texts
  4. 20:11Shaivism and Tantra in 11th Century India
  5. 24:53Brahmanical and Tantric Traditions in Yoga Texts
  6. 29:56Tantric Vaishnavism and Hatha Yoga
  7. 34:45Yoginis, Deities, and Kundalini in Yoga Practice
  8. 39:58Rejection of Sexual Rituals and Concluding Thoughts

Answers

Questions about this video

What is the main thesis of Dr. Mallinson's lecture on Hatha Yoga and Shaktism?

Dr. Mallinson argues that Hatha Yoga is a layered tradition combining an older physical yoga focused on semen preservation with a Shakta yogic practice involving the raising of Kundalini, influenced by Tantric Buddhism and Shaiva traditions.

How does the Amritasiddhi text relate to the history of Hatha Yoga?

The Amritasiddhi is identified as a key early text composed in a Tantric Buddhist milieu that influenced the development of Hatha Yoga, particularly the ascetic yoga tradition later absorbed into Shaiva tantra.

What role did Shaivism and Tantra play in the development of Hatha Yoga?

By the 11th century, Shaivism and Tantra were dominant religious paradigms in India, shaping the codification and practice of Hatha Yoga and integrating earlier Buddhist tantric elements into Shaiva traditions.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:10
Speaker A
Hey everybody, and welcome to the second lecture of the Shakta tradition online lecture series for contributions to a growing field of Shakta studies. Today, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. James Malinson, who is Reader in Indology and Yoga Studies at SOAS, University of London, and Chair of SOAS Center for Yoga Studies. Dr. Malinson has done important and groundbreaking work on topics such as Hindu studies and yoga, and he is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project. In relation to this, he is preparing five critical editions of Sanskrit texts on physical yoga and the monograph on its early history. He is likewise the co-author of Roots of Yoga and author of several other books and articles on yoga. I have to say that personally, Dr. Malinson's work on the history of Hatha Yoga has been a huge help and source of inspiration for my own studies, and I believe that his hard and profound work should be an inspiration to everyone interested in Hatha Yoga and yoga in general. Therefore, it is my pleasure to now, without further ado, pass the word to Jim.
00:26
Speaker A
london and chair of sowes center for yoga studies dr malenson has done important and groundbreaking work on topics such as hindu studies and yoga and he is the principal investigator of the erc founded hatha yoga project in relation to this he is preparing five
00:43
Speaker A
Hello, my name is James Malinson. I'm delighted to be giving this lecture for the Shakta traditions series in the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies. I'd like to thank Professor Gavin Flood and Dr. Bjarna Olsen for inviting me back. Without further ado, I shall attempt to share my screen so that you can see my slideshow. I haven't got a handout; I've just got this slideshow, as you can see. My talk is entitled "New Light on Shaktism and Hatha Yoga." Because I'd like to thank the organizers again for inviting me back, I've been involved in some previous events in this research project, the Shakta traditions research projects. So first of all, I've got a slide here just sort of summarizing my previous involvement. How do I make this one? There we go.
00:57
Speaker A
malenson's work on the history of hatha yoga has been a huge help and source of inspiration for my own studies and i believe that his hard and profound work should be an inspiration to everyone interested in hatha yoga and yuga in
01:12
Speaker A
So there was the conference in Oxford in 2011 on Shakta traditions, and then the proceedings of that, where I gave a paper on Shaktism and Hatha Yoga. Then I considerably revised that over subsequent years, and it was published in 2016 in a conference proceedings volume. Over the last five years, I've been working on a project and leading a research project, the Hatha Yoga Project, funded by the European Research Council. So I've been working even more deeply on the topics that I covered in that initial lecture and then the published paper. So you can see there's been sort of five-year intervals.
01:26
Speaker A
hindu studies i'd like to thank professor gavin flood and dr bjarna olsen for inviting me back um without further ado i shall attempt to share my screen so that you can see my slideshow i haven't got a handout
01:42
Speaker A
Now, I think there was quite a lot of change between what I presented in 2011 and what was published in 2016, and I think there's going to be even more change now in my thoughts on the subject after the previous five years' work. I'm reasonably confident, although I'm aware of becoming hostage to fortune, that in five years' time, if I were to return to this subject, my thoughts wouldn't have changed quite so much, not least because I probably won't get the time to devote so much of my energies to the topic of Hatha Yoga over the next five years. But also because I think we've really, you know, through this project, we've addressed a lot of the important questions.
02:00
Speaker A
project the sharks are traditions research projects so first of all uh i've got a slide here just sort of summarizing my previous involvement how do i make this one there we go uh so there was the conference in oxford
02:12
Speaker A
So what I'm going to do now is I will summarize what I put forward in the paper in 2016 and then also summarize the primary significant new findings which I think have forced me to alter the thesis or the various theses that I put forward then. I haven't really got the time here to cover as much as I did in that paper, in which I make some fairly bold statements about what I think about the wider historical context of Hatha Yoga and its relationship with Shaktism. But I will touch on those subjects towards the end of the presentation. But really, in the middle of it, I'm just going to look more closely at certain aspects of the textual codification of Hatha Yoga in particular and different text relationships with Shaktism.
02:29
Speaker A
and then over the last five years i've been working on a project and leading a research project the hatha yoga project funded by the european research council so i've been working even more deeply on the topics that i covered
02:43
Speaker A
Okay, so my thesis, I've tried to summarize it here because it's quite a kind of a complex paper. I'll read this one out: The early Hatha Yoga textual corpus reveals a process in which a Shakta non-physical layer yoga—yoga of dissolution involving the raising of Kundalini and practiced by Nath Siddhas—is overlaid onto a non-Shakta physical Bindu Dharana-oriented yoga, i.e., a yoga whose primary aim is the preservation of semen and which was practiced by older lineages of celibate non-tantric Munis. So yeah, the idea was this sort of more ancient pre-tantric tradition of celibate asceticism provides the sort of bedrock of Hatha Yoga practice, and over that, onto that is overlaying the tradition of yoga in which the goddess Kundalini is seen as residing at the base of the central channel and is then raised up through the central channel through the chakras and so forth, normally initially done by means of meditation and visualization of that process.
02:56
Speaker A
think there's going to be even more change now in my thoughts on the subject of after the previous five years work i'm reasonably confident although i'm aware of becoming hostage to fortune that in five years time if i were to return to this
03:11
Speaker A
Okay, so various things mean I need to somewhat—I mean, I think that the general idea, the general notion that this layered yoga is grafted onto a physical Hatha Yoga actually still has pretty much stood the test of time. But there are various elements of that thesis which need some revision, some tweaking, and that tweaking is due to various new discoveries that were made in the course of mine and my colleagues' research on the history of Hatha Yoga over the last five years. I've summarized the relevant significant ones here.
03:25
Speaker A
you know through through this this project we've addressed a lot of the important questions um so what i'm going to do now is i will summarize what i put forward in the paper in 2016 and then also then summarize the the
03:44
Speaker A
So firstly, well, generally, there's a stronger connection with Tantric Buddhism. The lineage that I identify as the Muni tradition of celibate ascetic yoga actually is first represented in a yoga text called the Amritasiddhi. And the term itself, yoga, which is not used in the Amritasiddhi, also derives from Tantric Buddhism. The Amritasiddhi itself is a Tantric Buddhist text. So these are two significant findings which force me to rethink the thesis to some extent because, of course, the tradition of asceticism and yoga taught in the Amritasiddhi, I don't think we can claim that that is super ancient.
04:01
Speaker A
some fairly bold uh statements about what i think about the wider historical context of hatha yoga and its relationship with sharktism but i will touch on those subjects towards the end of the of the presentation but really the in the middle of it i'm just going
04:18
Speaker A
In fact, something that I haven't put here because I didn't think it was directly relevant to the topic today, but another—I wouldn't say it's a discovery; it's a sort of an inference which I can't really prove, but I now feel, contrary to what I put in that 2016 paper, where I said I think there's a kind of—I propose that there's a direct connection from older ascetic practices to the new physical techniques of Hatha Yoga that are first codified about a thousand years ago—I now think that actually the vast majority of those practices are new, and they appear pretty much from nowhere. You know, we have no previous evidence for a lot of these practices.
04:37
Speaker A
a complex paper um i'll read this one out the early hatha yoga textual corpus reveals a process in which a shark to non-physical layer yoga yoga of dissolution involving the raising of kundalini and practiced by nat siddhas is overlaid
04:55
Speaker A
So there's that. And then, as I've shown in a recent article from 2019, the Amritasiddhi, which earlier had been shown by Dr. Peter Daniel Santo to have been composed in a Tantric Buddhist milieu, I then show how that tradition, the tradition in which it was composed, somehow morphed into a Tantric Shiva lineage, you know, as Buddhism disappeared from India. This tradition of Buddhism kind of was subsumed within a Tantric Shaiva tradition.
05:14
Speaker A
pre-tuntric uh tradition of celibate asceticism provides the sort of bedrock of hatha yoga practice and over that onto that is overlaying the uh the the tradition of yoga in which the the goddess kundalini is seen as residing at the base of the central
05:37
Speaker A
Okay, so yeah, these are all sort of important findings which are going to affect what I'm going to subsequently say. And yes, another point there: the Nath tradition is not homogeneous. Okay, so I think I imply in that 2016 paper that all Nath lineages of yogis are the same, but I think I probably wouldn't even have said that at the time if pressed to it, but I think I imply that within the paper. But I think now that we can see even in this early period of Hatha Yoga that there are different strands of lineages of yogis which come later on to coalesce under the umbrella of the Sampradaya.
05:57
Speaker A
idea the general notion that this layer yoga is grafted onto a physical hatta yoga actually still uh has pretty much stood the test of time but there are various elements of that thesis which needs some revision some tweaking
06:13
Speaker A
And then, looking more closely at the text of the Hatha Yoga tradition, I put a lot of weight in that 2016 paper on the Dattatreya Yoga Shastra.
06:30
Speaker A
so firstly um well it's generally there's a stronger connection with tantric buddhism that the um the lineage that i identifies as you know the muni tradition of celibate ascetic yoga actually is first represented in our yoga text in a text called the amrita city
06:50
Speaker A
[Music] and the term itself yoga which is not used in the amrita city um that also derives from country buddhism the amrita city city itself is a tantric buddhist text so these are two significant findings which force me to
07:08
Speaker A
rethink the thesis to some extent because of course the the tradition of asceticism and yoga uh taught in the amateur city i don't think we can claim that that is is is super ancient in fact something that i haven't put here because i didn't
07:23
Speaker A
think it was directly relevant to the topic today but another i wouldn't say it's a discovery it's a sort of um an inference which i can't really uh prove but i now feel um contrary to what i put
07:37
Speaker A
in that 2016 paper where i said i think there's a kind of i propose that there's a direct connection from older ascetic practices to the new the physical techniques of hatha yoga that are first codified about a thousand years ago
07:54
Speaker A
i now think that actually the vast majority of those practices are new and they appear pretty much from nowhere you know we have no previous uh evidence for it for a lot of these practices um so there's that and then the the
08:13
Speaker A
as i've shown in a recent article from 2019 the amrita city which earlier had uh iron dr peter daniel santo have shown to be have been composed in a tantric buddhist milia i then show how that tradition the
08:32
Speaker A
tradition in which it was it was composed somehow sort of morphed into a tantric shiva lineage you know as as buddhism disappeared from india this tradition of buddhism kind of was subsumed within a tantric shaiva tradition okay um so yeah these are all sort of
08:53
Speaker A
important findings which are going to affect what i'm going to subsequently say uh and yes another point there the not tradition is not homogeneous okay so i think i imply in that 2016 paper you know that will all not
09:08
Speaker A
lineages of yogis are the same but i think i think i probably wouldn't even have said that at the time if pressed to it but i think it's i imply that within the paper but i think now that we can see even in this early
09:21
Speaker A
period of hatha yoga that there are different strands of lineages of yogis which come later on to coalesce under the umbrella of the sampradaya and then more looking more closely at the text of the hatha yoga tradition i put a lot of weight in that 2016 paper
09:44
Speaker A
on the data yoga shastra as being the first text to codify uttar yoga and then so i kind of credit that with being you know the the or or it's the tradition in which it was composed i created that with being
09:58
Speaker A
the the original lineage of hatha yogis now i i don't think that's true uh well of course that the um the city comes before that and we now we know rather than it being having been composed in a shiva
10:14
Speaker A
milia as as i and others had proposed that it was composed in tatric buddhist emilia but then also i think it's become clear and jason burch has gone into some detail on this in his edition of the amaralga and the amaraga probably there
10:27
Speaker A
are two recessions that's why i put the brackets around the the name praboda in praboda but uh it seems it's become clear that the amaralga is the first text to draw on the teachings of the amrita city and then name them
10:46
Speaker A
yoga okay and then subsequently i think also the viveka muratanda probably predates that yoga shasta that's harder to be sure about and i will go into more detail in that in my um edition of that text which is uh
11:00
Speaker A
underway and so yes as i've already noted that means that the data yoga shastra was not the first text to codify uttar yoga and just in case just some of you aren't aware the amrita siddhi is the earliest
11:15
Speaker A
text to teach uttar yoga practices and principles but it doesn't call the mahata yoga okay so i'll now what i'm now going to do is look at the early development of hatha yoga within the textual corpus okay so
11:30
Speaker A
that'll kind of i'll go over some of these points again and make this these new findings put a bit more flesh on their bones and hopefully make them a bit clearer so if we move on to hatha yoga in
11:43
Speaker A
texts um as was the first point in that list of significant new findings in a paper that i published about say this year last year 2020 um in the volume on hindu practice edited by professor flood i show how the name hatha yoga
12:06
Speaker A
in fact comes from vajrayana tradition so this is just a list of texts in which uh i've managed to find it building on the work of jason birch his uh 2011 article on the meaning of hotter i think he
12:20
Speaker A
had identified six or seven texts which do this and then uh with the help of colleagues and digging around in e-text and so forth i've identified 10 or 11 more and significantly no shiver text so the point i make in the
12:35
Speaker A
article that i published last year the chapter is that no shiver texts used the term at all and so i think we can be fairly confident for those reasons and others that the the the term itself derived from
12:48
Speaker A
vajrayana tantric buddhism and it was then used uh late subsequently first in the umuraga proba as i'll show in a second to denote the practices that we know um or some of the practices that we now associate with yoga
13:06
Speaker A
within vajrayana the best definition of uttar yoga is found in the vimla prabha the commentary on the karla chakra tantra auto commentary by pundurica probably in auto commentary um where in which hatta yoga hata is a technique used in
13:27
Speaker A
vajrayana sexual ritual you'll see here that what i put in bold the explanation is having forcefully made the breath flow in the central channel through the practice of nada which is about to be explained although it's not explained very clearly
13:39
Speaker A
the yogi should attain the undying moment by non-vibration through restraining the drops of bodhichitta ai semen in the vajra penis when it is in the lotus of wisdom i.e vagina that is yoga so this is a kind of heterodox
13:54
Speaker A
approach to um vajrayana sexual ritual in which the male practitioner does not ejaculate okay um now when we then move on to the omaraga or praboda the the praboda is the longer ascension but the the amaraga itself i probably should
14:13
Speaker A
have just put umurauga here is the the shorter and earlier ascension um in that text it's the three practices taught in the amrita city and i'll look at them in a little bit more detail in a second they're identified with with hatha yoga
14:31
Speaker A
and then the data yoga shasta comes along and says that hatha yoga is these nine techniques of manipulating the vital energies okay and in both well in the data yoga shastra it's the sort of primary aim seems to be the
14:48
Speaker A
control of bindu and that's the same as the amrita siddi but as we'll see shortly in the amaraga already we see the sort of introduction of kundalini a kind of shark to spin on on the practice i'm just looking
15:04
Speaker A
there's what i've i've only summarized here because there are i i now think that the viveka marthanda for example also the goraksha shataka predate the data yoga shastra certainly the viveka muratanda um because the data yoga shastra seems to
15:21
Speaker A
incorporate some of its practices e.g the viparita currently which i think is first taught in the veteran the reason i don't put these those texts in this typology here is because they don't use the term hata okay i'm only looking at texts
15:37
Speaker A
which use the term hatter to denote a system of yoga practice so the data yoga shastra adds the six other techniques later on collectively known as mudras and then the pradeepika adds one more adds the shakti challani mudra which is
15:55
Speaker A
uh probably first taught in the gorakshi shataka another not uh shiva shark to text we'll look into that a bit more shortly um [Music] which uh does not call its yoga hatha okay and then the pradeepka also gives a
16:15
Speaker A
a kind of general statement on the sequence of practice in hatta the abhyasanukra [Music] in which it is its arsenal posture and then the various different complex methods of inhalation and exhalation called kumbhaka and then mudra those techniques we just
16:31
Speaker A
saw listed and then finally nada new sundance a concentration on the internal sound okay so using that definition uh you know because that's become the kind of classical definition of hata yoga using that definition if we then look backwards from the
16:50
Speaker A
hatred we can we see managed to identify well identified about 20 texts i think it is which verses from which are found within the pradeep occur but of those only 11 teach the techniques and practices of of physical yoga and there are those
17:11
Speaker A
11 there and then we can also list pre-1500 texts various others these um seven others which have parallels with the hata pradipika's teachings um but which uh the pradipika does not borrow directly from i've got the gyaneshwari in there
17:32
Speaker A
emirati texts we might also add a couple of other um marathi texts with veka darpana and the sarah you know they merit um some some more work and i hope in the future someone will work on those because i think
17:45
Speaker A
they're important for understanding the early development of hatha yoga and then there's a couple of other texts uh hemachandra's yoga shastra so that's from the 12th century and the amaralga shasta which is hard to date um oldest manuscripts are 16th century but
18:00
Speaker A
it may be a fair bit older and probably from the north west of the subcontinent and those two text teachings on which include teachings on physical yoga practice are quite distinct from uh the rest of the text here numbers one to
18:15
Speaker A
18. so you see that's a pretty broad range of text and what i've tried to do in this next slide is to identify uh most if not all of them with particular traditions particular lineages okay so there's eight different
18:37
Speaker A
groupings by the way a lot of what i'm saying here is based on a work in progress a kind of you know expansion of various things i published in in the past which is going to be a monograph um on the early traditions
18:49
Speaker A
of hatha yoga so some of these slides are sort of taken from draft of that and there's going to be more more from that later on uh so if we look here we've got numbers one to eight in the first section
19:02
Speaker A
lineages of tantric yogis which later came to be grouped together in the north sampradaya so as i said before you know the nazimradar is not a homogeneous entity we see not various different traditions contribute to it in fact i think
19:16
Speaker A
you know sort of one way of understanding it is that it's the it's the kind of monastic umbrella term for all monastic traditions that derive from earlier tantric traditions so even you know i haven't included here because it's not relevant to hata yoga but for
19:37
Speaker A
example there are these um samper khalabelia uh kind of snake chalmer traditions lineages that are part of the sampradaya which which never used to make sense sense to me but then of course uh one can derive them from the garuda
19:55
Speaker A
tantras you know this ancient uh or old early tantric traditions of um poison and snake magic and also another point i should make of course is that you know by this time so the earliest heart attacks around the
20:11
Speaker A
11th century so as professor sanderson has shown you know by that time shaivism and tantrum more broadly was kind of the dominant religious paradigm in india so it's almost impossible for anything to you know not to be tantric
20:27
Speaker A
at all any of these lineages i i'd say that perhaps i was thinking about this earlier perhaps number five you know a divide of adantings are the least tantric but even those texts are influenced by by tantra and the the rest
20:39
Speaker A
of them are almost all kind of directly derivative in some way of tantric traditions uh or not even derivative their you know their development straight out of earlier tantric traditions so the those that come on to be included
20:52
Speaker A
under the rubric of the naz are these tantric buddhists from the umrta siddhi which as i mentioned then kind of get subsumed or evolve into the south deck and konkan lineage which is represented by the amaraga provoda and then there's also the ketri vidya
21:08
Speaker A
and goraksha yoga shastra which for various reasons i think probably also come from that region these are all pashjimam naya kawla traditions and then you know i'm not 100 confident in all of this but i think that then these other
21:21
Speaker A
texts we can probably identify as coming from the north deccan in maharashtra maybe even as far north as southern gujarat [Music] the gorakshi shataka viveka martander gyaneshwari and yogabija and then there's the amaraga shasana which i mentioned earlier which is an
21:40
Speaker A
outlier and seems to come from the northwest of the subcontinent but um uh it does does its teachings you know which mentioned kundalini and so forth seemed to derive from pasta marmalade earlier pasta marmalade teachings and then there are the uh alchemical
22:01
Speaker A
lineages of the anandakanda the anandakanda borrows directly from the viveka muratanda does a you know copy and paste with a few changes i mean not quite no that's it does it does redact it a little bit but it's
22:13
Speaker A
clearly derives its yoga directly from the uh teachings of the vivekan rotunda uh and then the second group shri vidya following vidantins so we've got the tirumantaram and then the shivasang guitar okay so the tamilturimantaram which we can now date i'm
22:29
Speaker A
reasonably confident we can date to the late 11th century and then the shiva sanghitar which is probably at least two or three hundred years later uh requires some more work on that text i think to really pin it down it's a
22:41
Speaker A
rather quite long for uh yoga text and quite uh disparate but it's very clearly come from a shri vidya milia and almost certainly i think associated with the shringeri mutt in in south india and the third group is brahmanical
22:59
Speaker A
vaishnava tantric tradition so we've got the vikarnasas i'll come back to this because they're important this group in that it makes an important contribution to yoga because these are the first texts to teach non-seated complex asanas yeah because those
23:18
Speaker A
uh just go back to so i should have stressed this when we looked at the slide and maybe i'll jump back don't mind this one the the hatred for deepika um these you know the as i said in the introduction i now think that the
23:35
Speaker A
practices of hatha yoga you know the key distinctive practices of yoga as i outlined here asana and by here i'm referring to kind of non-seated complex difficult balancing asanas and then these complex methods of breath control and then the mudras the physical
23:51
Speaker A
techniques which are used for manipulating the vital energies these all seem you know there's traces of of some of the mudras perhaps possibly in slightly earlier chive attacks but the other two complex balancing postures and complex methods of inhalation exhalation do seem
24:08
Speaker A
to appear from nowhere within the tradition you know prior to the yoga corpus or prior to these i'll jump forward again prior to these number three the vicarnasa and pancharatrica texas date to sort of 10th or 11th century
24:23
Speaker A
nowhere in texts or our historical representations or travelers reports or anything do we hear of any of these kind of uh any physical postures being used by aesthetics other than methods of tapas you know long-term methods of mortification
24:39
Speaker A
postures that can be held for hours days months or even years on end and suddenly we get these kind of balancing postures which clearly can't be held for more than a few minutes at a time okay so they are an innovation of the um
24:53
Speaker A
of these brahmanical version of a tantric tradition so this is the vicarnus attacks the viman arch not culpa and then various parts of attacks and then uh later sort of derivative um uh yoga texts they don't call their
25:06
Speaker A
yoga hatha yoga um but the vasishta and yoga yagyavalkyo are very closely related those two texts and but we can trace a lot of their teachings back to earlier panchayat attacks such as the padmasang guitar and the sanghita and then there are
25:24
Speaker A
there's this sort of somewhat anomalous tradition of the data yoga shasta which i think is best summarized as vaishnava and non-vedic ascetics okay that's probably quite i mean the terminology is clearly quite tantric within the text but it's
25:39
Speaker A
quite scornful of tantric traditions in fact you know it's very disparaging about the vada and mantra and so forth it says these are for the lowliest practitioners or they're obstacles to yoga and so forth so it's clearly kind of opposing itself
25:52
Speaker A
in fact to you know what we might understand as sharp traditions then there are the advaita vedantas that i mentioned earlier represented by the apology and yoga taravali then kalamukha's i use the the the long a spelling kaalamuka because that's
26:08
Speaker A
what's found in the text the pampa mahatma this text from uh in praise of the goddess pampa from hampi vijayanagar which is a kalamukha text very interesting text and again like the anandakanda its teachings on yoga are clearly derived from the viveka
26:26
Speaker A
marthanda then we have uh text which i believe to be sort of forerunners you know from traditions which are four runners of the tradition that then coalesces under the term virus or and then finally the jain tradition represented or described
26:49
Speaker A
in the great polymath hemachandra's yoga shastra from the 12th century now of course um as professor sanderson has shown in recent years um himachandra's work in particular amongst the jains was heavily influenced by shiva tantra okay so that you know this and i'm going
27:09
Speaker A
to return to this this uh this very broad range of traditions which over a relatively short period of time you know will produce these texts on physical yoga practice and i'll just you know i might my latest thinking behind this which is quite
27:26
Speaker A
different from what i thought in the 2006 what i put presented in the 2016 article is that this happens because um because the uh because of the rise of the monasteries particularly in the deccan and south india uh these texts are all i think uh i'm
27:44
Speaker A
sure there's probably exceptions but i think we're gonna argue that probably all perhaps all uh uh productions of uh mata's monasteries monastic traditions of of that period okay so there's this new soteriological soteriology this new um yoga tradition this tradition of
28:05
Speaker A
physical practice appears and then every all the various different monastic lineages which are coming to great prominence in this period coming to great power they want to put their their stamp on on these traditions they want to produce their own texts their
28:18
Speaker A
own manuals of yoga practice within their own um you know with their own uh the stamp of their their individual lineages in their text although i would still stand by what i say in that 2016 article though that
28:35
Speaker A
the uh you know the the allegiance to tradition is not not very important within those texts you know the texts are for everyone even though they are produced by particular uh monastic lineages okay so what i'm going to do now is i'm
28:54
Speaker A
going to look quite closely at just two or three tantric lineages which make important contributions towards uh uttar yoga i'm not gonna look at everything here uh not all these these different traditions which i summarize and i just wanna ask the question i mean
29:10
Speaker A
i know and i think uh dr olsen has addressed this in his lecture but it's quite difficult sometimes to disambiguate um shaivism and sharktism but i'm just gonna i want to have a bit of a look although it's very tentative and uh
29:27
Speaker A
you know i'm not sure uh what one can really draw from it but i look at the sort of shock to features of the yogas as taught in three of these different lineages now these lineages are firstly that of vajrayana and not
29:41
Speaker A
shaivism so the um amrita sidi amaralga uh tradition that i've mentioned and then secondly uh a second form of shaivism the kind of north deccan tradition or that is no but it covers both south and north tekken but these
29:56
Speaker A
kind of pasture and art lineages and then thirdly tantric vaishnavism might go slightly over what i just mentioned about their contribution to hatha yoga being in the form of complex arsenal practice okay so if we look firstly here vajrayana
30:18
Speaker A
and archives and three texts in particular it won't really touch on the yoga bj but it's in this lineage not least because these texts all talk about haka yoga okay the the texts of the other traditions don't the other
30:32
Speaker A
traditions i'm looking at don't internet and so it's not until there's any five texts is it prior to the pradeepika or four even which used the term yoga okay but there are all these other texts which are teaching physical yoga
30:47
Speaker A
and then after the kind of triumph of the hatred then scholars more commonly will refer to physical yoga practice as harta okay so looking first at the amrita siddhi and i just sort of i mean this is the earliest manuscript
31:06
Speaker A
it's thanks to this moment we were able to identify uh the text as being buddhist and in this manuscript and then in a sort of rather corrupt form in the south indian witnesses of which there are four but the other witnesses of the text
31:20
Speaker A
don't have it there is an opening mangala verse um to the goddess chin of a star okay who is named i won't go through the whole verse but you can have a look at it if you want so
31:32
Speaker A
i'm here i'm i'm reproducing the verses and translation as found in uh edition actually we've submitted for publication so uh this we've got this opening mangala verse to the goddess mustard so this is one of the key points
31:48
Speaker A
that helps us identify the text as buddhist because prior to around the 15th century 16th century she's not found in non-buddhist and hindu traditions but then of course she becomes uh prominent particularly in bengal because she's one of the 10
32:04
Speaker A
mahavidyas these great goddesses and we there's lots of wonderful iconography this is an image that actually is in the uh current although of course it's um we can't go there at the moment but the tundra show the british museum
32:21
Speaker A
so there's that aspect of it so and i think it it's significant i'm really no expert on this i'm worried that you know stepping out of my comfort zone but uh it strikes me obviously she's important within this
32:35
Speaker A
this buddhist tradition but within the text it's in that you know she's a goddess is praised at the beginning of the text but then within the text itself there's very little in fact that one might think of in terms of um
32:49
Speaker A
or goddess worship there's just a couple of kind of fleeting references in fact in the second chapter which is on the central channel and here you see in verse two uh sorry verse one the second the first verse of the second chapter uh
33:07
Speaker A
the central channel is called madhya elsa i think that's probably just metric causer because elsewhere she's the the channel is always called madhyama and we translate this as the goddess of the center because you see later on here in the in the
33:20
Speaker A
fourth verse she is identified as a devil okay so this goddess the mahavidyas is a rather difficult i'm not quite sure what why why it's used there in fact i think suggested demanding to mahadivya which perhaps would work
33:41
Speaker A
better you know very divine uh she is hard for even the gods to obtain so anyway she's referred to as a goddess but she's that's the only goddess named within the text we do get this other statement here though
33:55
Speaker A
so we've got we're talking about the central channel the top and bottom and at the bottom is the dwara the door of procreation and at the top is the mukti duara so the door of liberation when you propel your
34:07
Speaker A
self or your your breath out of the out of the top that brings back liberation it says that okay so at the door of liberation are situated or at her door of liberation all the mighty goddesses okay so this it's interesting so yeah it
34:33
Speaker A
seems to be you know the the the the text teaches a you know a macrocosm microcosm equivalent and it says that the goddesses are all situated at the bottom of the central channel now at the top of the mukti
34:45
Speaker A
dwara sakura nishkalo nato and i suppose you know that's because within this text we there's no mention of kundalini but this kind of does provide and so to some extent a you know a blueprint on which kundalini can be
35:15
Speaker A
um overlaid you know we've got the goddesses at the bottom of the central channel just as kundalini is in most subsequent um yoga traditions uh this is just our translation so i'll move forward through that and now just to summarize
35:30
Speaker A
the yoga of the amrita city the way the practice is done and really just to contrast it with the with the yo as yoga is taught in these uh other not tradition later on make the breath enter and rise up the central channel piercing
35:45
Speaker A
three knots along the way these grunties the brahma brahma rudra brahma vishnu and rudra grantees thereby raising the sun from the bottom of the central channel to the moon in the head gaining control over bindu keeping in the head and attaining samadhi and
36:00
Speaker A
jivan mukti okay and now so this that just the very kind of nuts and bolts the very basics of the amrita siddhis yoga is taken and absorbed into this much shorter text the um and then you know just it's taught in
36:15
Speaker A
just a few verses but the um while it's clear from various reasons that it's borrowing directly from the amrita city it does add to it does add kundalini into the mix okay so this is in the description of the
36:32
Speaker A
mahamudra practice there are three practices i've got them here you can see here there are these are the three basic practices we'll just look at this first sorry getting ahead of myself but the um in this description of the mahamudra
36:46
Speaker A
practice it's said that it uh makes um makes kundalini straighten up like uh like a serpent when struck by a stick so danda danda uh this is from jason's edition and translation so in the same way that a
37:11
Speaker A
serpent when stuck struck by a stick uh takes the form of the stick so straightens up uh so the coiled goddess are you kundalini [Music] okay so straight away we get you know as soon as soon as hatha yoga gets codified in the
37:35
Speaker A
omaroga in this first non-buddhist text to teach these practices kundalini is thrown into the mix okay and here are the practices as depicted in a much later 18th century manuscript in the british library so the the the the the body is filled up
37:53
Speaker A
with breath and then that's kind of compressed it's uh actually within the number two city the metaphors used are alchemical and the idea is a bit like a sort of alchemical crucible heated up to a point and then the final
38:05
Speaker A
practice the third practice the mahaveda which is isn't depicted isn't understood actually properly in in or in the same way in later texts uh it involves in the involves jumping sort of lifting up the body and then dropping it down
38:22
Speaker A
onto the dropping the buttocks onto the onto the heels which thereby um sends the breath shooting up the central column and that this idea seems to have been lost out lost in in india but um still current in tibet in fact
38:36
Speaker A
because the teachings of amrita city um traveled to tibet and formed a whole new sort of cycle of texts and uh and in tibet and bhutan i've met yogis in bhutan and discussed it with them and it seems very clear that their
38:50
Speaker A
practices where they've incorporated some of the amrita city's uh practices and teachings into this broader system of uh true core sometimes called magical movement in translation um so the again looking back i've been pondering this and preparing for this
39:13
Speaker A
lecture the role the position of the goddess within these traditions so if we look at um the place the the the place which identified an article published in 2019 as the likely site for where the amaraga was composed
39:30
Speaker A
and where the you know there's this transformation from vajrayana to uh shaivism to not shaivism but not this is very little in the way i was you know going over my notes and photographs there's very little in the
39:42
Speaker A
way of goddess worship at these places so i don't think we can really call these traditions shocked as such they're really more well i suppose vajrayana we can't even call shiva but their their male deity oriented so we see here the
39:58
Speaker A
you know the original deities associated with the the buddhist vihara at khadri we've got manju shri actually i should have changed it so it's slotted this in from another slideshow i think it's more like to be manju vajra
40:11
Speaker A
rather than manju shri but again of course a male male form um similarly we have lokeshwara and it's the it's the location reform but then at the the monastery up the hill from the qatari temple uh seems to transform into matsyendra so
40:30
Speaker A
the first of the human gurus you can see the shared iconography in particular the the image on the crown of of jata okay i think this is as i argue my 2019 paper you know we can see here
40:46
Speaker A
a kind of the takeover of the body of matsyendra by the earlier uh bodhisattva evinced by this figure on the crown of jata which is not found in any other non-buddhist iconography to my knowledge and then yes i was going over my old
41:02
Speaker A
language from 2011 my old photographs from the the monastery the monastery up the hill at qadhari and the primary deities by river there are a couple of little goddess shrines but that's certainly not the most important uh parts of the there are many shrines
41:20
Speaker A
there but they they're not particularly prominent okay so now if we move on to the second tradition of not shaivism uh as evinced in particular by these texts of vika marthanda goraksha shataka and keith vidya i won't draw i'm not
41:40
Speaker A
going to go into too much detail here um again i mean i think it's more sort of inference but there seems to be it seems to be slightly more shakta although again none of these texts invoke well i suppose
41:54
Speaker A
one could argue that amrita city is more shakta in that it invokes chin and mastar at the beginning but none of these texts actually um invoke the goddess at the beginning they're all praising um either goraksha or matsyendra and so forth you know
42:11
Speaker A
they're in praise of i think or shiva himself um but they do all also um make a important place for the goddess kundalini as the highest shakti within the body and i think i'm thinking about it did i include the
42:28
Speaker A
verse i meant to but i may not have dropped it in but you know there are verses in in the in these texts which identify kundalini with the supreme baby okay so she's clearly said that you know the
42:41
Speaker A
ultimate shakti is said to reside within the body um just sort of going carrying on the the point about what these texts so yeah going back to my 2016 article which i think sort of built on earlier slightly polemical
42:56
Speaker A
publications of mine in which i think i was reacting against the you know the prevailing notion that everything to do with hatha yoga was not and i still don't think that that's the case i'm confident that's not the case
43:07
Speaker A
but i perhaps overreacted and then thinking about it today of course you know these texts these texts which are clearly not they make important contributions to hatha yoga as it's formulated in um in the pradeepka where it becomes a sort of classical form of
43:22
Speaker A
hatha yoga so there's a list of their their important contributions so these different bunders although one might argue that they are derived certainly the mullah bunda and jalandhar bandha are very similar they're the same as techniques that are part of the
43:36
Speaker A
mahabanda of the amrita city these various different locks within the body the the notion of shakti challenge so the stimulation of kundalini by manipulation of the tongue viparita karani so the inversion which is seen both as a sort of method
43:54
Speaker A
of keeping amrita in the head and also actually it was interesting discoveries were editing the text and the vika marthanda which is the first text to introduce the viparita currently it's seen as a method of pratyahara so withdrawing the senses
44:09
Speaker A
away from their objects then ketri mudra so the fully developed technique of in which the tongue is turned above the soft palate that's introduced was probably first introduced in the viveka muratanda i suppose but it's potentially maybe in the carla gyan and
44:28
Speaker A
near nao this is one of those practices that there are hints at in earlier chiva texts then the complex kumbhakas now these are certainly uh innovation first found in the goraksha shataka and for which we have no precedence
44:42
Speaker A
which then become an important part of yoga technique and then of course there's kundalini and the chakras i suppose one might argue that uh well it's hard to be sure that perhaps the amaraga was the first text to put kundalini in a
44:59
Speaker A
kind of physical yoga but then certainly she becomes very much more prominent within these you know not scheiber shaivism two texts and of course she is often associated with the idea of the chakras though within the yoga text that the system
45:15
Speaker A
that comes to the four is out of six plus one which is derived from pasteur marmalade tradition so six chakras and then sometimes you have the sahasrara as the the seventh on on top of that and just here summarizing their yoga
45:30
Speaker A
effectively it's very similar to what we have in the amateur siddhi except that what goes up the central channel is kundalini and then she goes through the six chakras to shiver in the head after which she either either the two of
45:44
Speaker A
them dissolve into one another and this is what we find in the gorakshi shataka final liberation is attained that's it you're going to go into a sort of death like samadhi or as we find in the ketri vidya
45:55
Speaker A
kundalini after sort of uniting with shiva and drinking the amrita in the head takes that umrita with her and as she goes back down she floods the body with it making the body immortal and also allowing the yogi to kind of enjoy
46:11
Speaker A
eternal jeevan mukti liberation while living okay so that's slightly different from what we find in the amrita city so here are some images from that same joke pradipika manuscript of um of those those bundas yeah that's slightly strangely depicted because it's
46:34
Speaker A
not really how it's taught in the text anyway the vipariti mudra of viparita karani so this inversion uh and then it's hard to depict what you'll see in this um in this illustration from the joke product also you can i don't know if you
46:50
Speaker A
can see but actually kundalini is depicted so katri mudra as i point out in my 2016 article you know it's kind of ambiguous there are these two apparently two aims of yoga yeah i mean that we can certainly the amrita siddhi tradition of
47:05
Speaker A
getting bindu up to the head you don't want to send it back down again unlike with kundalini in the in the kitchen vidya so in the we have these sort of katri mudra is quite interesting in that it
47:16
Speaker A
seems to have two quite contrasting applications one in which that by sticking the tongue back it seals bindu in the head okay but and that's how it's taught in the vivekananda but then in the khetri vidya it's used primarily for
47:34
Speaker A
awakening kundalini and thereby accessing with kundalini and the tongue the amrita in the head and then making that hammer to flood the body so it's rather different from the idea of sealing bindu in in the head and of course these traditions these
47:49
Speaker A
plastic marmalade traditions as i mentioned are responsible for introducing the chakras so an important part of many teachings on hatha yoga now what we don't find in these texts apart from perhaps one might argue with the viparita the
48:06
Speaker A
inversion are complex arsenals but one one sort of well it's a couple of strands of my research over the last few years that it makes me wonder about that whether you know maybe that we're not seeing that full
48:22
Speaker A
picture just by looking at the text because we made this uh exciting discovery um this gate in gujarat is the sanskrit name near um which was constructed in i think i can be fairly confident in pinpointing it as 12
48:40
Speaker A
30. uh and we went to have a look at that it happened to just be on the way somewhere my colleague dr daniella beverlacre and i because i read an article an article from the 50s just about the siddhas here on this
48:55
Speaker A
lower register of the gate i don't think anything else been published on this gate um but then there are these rather wonderful very much sort of shocked images we've got a so you've got 12 you know this is just a chord this is
49:08
Speaker A
half of one side so you've got 12 not yogi's then you've got eight yogurneys and then eight bahayavas with their consorts they're rather wonderful and the whole thing needs a lot more stuff so that's matiendra koraksha i've got a couple of yogurts
49:24
Speaker A
here i think this is probably bingo jason schwartz help me identify her uh another one of the yoginis and then these rather amazing biravers above with consorts i've not haven't got time to go through all of them i think i've got three of the buyer of
49:41
Speaker A
us here this is very much a shark to shiver gate uh tradition which has produced this um and but then sort of the exciting discovery we made also as we noticed up in these up in the sort of eaves of the of the
50:02
Speaker A
gate uh where all these yogis doing um postural complex postures including inversions and so forth okay so i'll just show you two or three of them and so these are the oldest known such images by about 300 years
50:22
Speaker A
so it's clear you know clearly they are associated with some sort of shiver yogi tradition even though none of the the texts of these traditions from this period to describe such postures but it also seems perhaps significant that further to the west but
50:36
Speaker A
not that far in kutch in gujarat around the same time possibly this is really sketchy actually the dating here i think the only way one can really any sort of vague grounds i'm basing it on is seismic records because um there's the
50:52
Speaker A
legend of the sage uh the haramnath who through his tapas which involves standing on his head for 12 years is said to have created the run of kutch the fire of his tapas burnt up the sea and then produced the
51:06
Speaker A
the run here okay um but yeah as i said through seismic records i think i can well very tentatively date the legend to around the same period 12th 13th century okay and there's a there's a contemporary because he's still revered
51:24
Speaker A
in that area for his uh for what he did particularly by these pastoral um pastoralists who because the the run floods each year and then all this grass grows and they can graze their crops so no i'm not an art yogi as you can tell by
51:39
Speaker A
his name still revered there and then similarly i just took a brief excursion into jane tantra i mentioned hemachandra earlier but also from the same period and not very far away um we see uh in his uh sophagia vritti on his yoga
51:57
Speaker A
shastra um he mentions a couple of inverted postures so the headstand and then inverted lotus and those as we just saw also depicted on on the gate at da boy um so it seems yeah suddenly in this area we get evidence all around
52:18
Speaker A
the same period for these for headstands appearing and there does seem to be some connection as i've mentioned earlier as professor sanderson has shown this strong influence of shaivism on chandra so yeah perhaps this is hints at uh shaiba arsenal practice
52:35
Speaker A
traditions that we don't know from our texts but meanwhile what we do know our earliest concrete solid evidence of complex arsenal practice from texts is found in vaishnava tantric traditions as i mentioned earlier um firstly in the iman arch in our
52:52
Speaker A
culprit which is vicarnasa text from the vicarsa kind of ascetic and ritualistic tradition it's the first text to teach the mayur asana and then the ahir buddha sanghita of the pancharatrika tradition is the first text to teach the kukultasana
53:10
Speaker A
okay and then the same verse is found subsequently in the vassas to sanghita and and other texts and then those these practices are then taught in the hata pradipika okay so that's sort of important contribution from these vaishnava
53:24
Speaker A
schools but i really think again i you know this is not something i'd look closely into but to my sort of feeling is that we can't really can't call those texts very sharp to i don't think there's any the goddess
53:36
Speaker A
has very little prominence within those texts so that leads me on and i think one of the reasons perhaps that maybe these you know these happy yoga traditions aren't really that sharp though even the knots okay we think we can call them shakta because
53:48
Speaker A
they do derive from this pasta marmalade tradition um traditions but really the key point about these hutter texts is that in general they are for celibate ascetics and here sort of samurai hata yoga is is really yoga for celibate ascetics as
54:07
Speaker A
it's taught in these texts and there's and i'll go into this a bit more now but there's a bit of sort of leeway i suppose on how important the rules are but the the kind of framework the paradigm as
54:18
Speaker A
set out in the amrita city if we look at it here is is very much a kind of rejection of sexual rituals so the amrita siddhi as we've seen we saw the beginning that hatha yoga's first formulated in um rajarayana is
54:34
Speaker A
a technique used in sexual ritual to prevent ejaculation but then the amateur sydney goes a step further and it kind of rejects sexual ritual altogether and it says so we see here um it is that expul expulsive breath the raychaka
54:50
Speaker A
which must always be kept in check by yogi's the one which goes out of the body in conjunction with bindu sorry i forgot to put the sanskrit in here but anyway i can supply that if anyone wants it
55:00
Speaker A
um so it's saying that you know the by mastering the yogic techniques one gains control over the impulse the ejaculatory impulse when that breath has been conquered and going upwards i.e you know instead of is wanting to go down but the yogi can
55:16
Speaker A
turn it back upwards enters the central channel and overcomes the bliss that is death by time karl arnondum so this is the the bliss of orgasm effectively because that brings about the loss of bindu which brings about death
55:30
Speaker A
and as a result of doing that the sahaja yoga arises now sahaja yoga the innate bliss that is also the term within vajrayana uh sexual ritual teachings for the and other teachings as well but for the highest bliss you know there's a system
55:45
Speaker A
of four blisses sahaja yoga is the highest and that is achieved in sexual rituals so the text is saying that amrita city is saying you don't need the sexual ritual by mastering these techniques you can achieve the same ends just on
55:59
Speaker A
your own you know as the male celeb yogi within your own body in fact you really don't want and you really don't want to be wasting that bindu as is normally done in tantric ritual and then similarly i think i touched
56:14
Speaker A
upon this i'll mention this in my 2016 article the gorak shataka and i'd say that the you know the emphasis on bindu retention is not nearly so strong in these texts it's quite strong in the viveka maratunda but that's a bit of a
56:27
Speaker A
hodgepodge because it sort of brings it up and then seems to forget about it and so forth it's not emphasized quite so much in the shaivism ii or even in the amaraga as it is in the amrita siddhi and the data yoga shastra
56:41
Speaker A
but still we find at the end of the garaksha chataka this verse which is um you know it's rejecting tantric practice including drinking alcohol eating meat and having sexual intercourse okay finally subs you know at the end we see
57:00
Speaker A
that it's a difficult verse i won't go and try to translate it bit by bit now you can have a look at it um but it finally says if there is integrity if we are going to have intercourse my
57:10
Speaker A
tuna it happens spontaneously in total absorption in a mind dissolved in the void not in a vagina okay at the end so again a rejection of sexual practice so yes i think one can argue you know one can say that overall and perhaps this is
57:31
Speaker A
because of this uh uh the sort of um orientation towards the celibate uh yoga practitioner the goddess does not have such a a huge a huge role within the hata yoga traditions but then just finally i want to turn to
57:49
Speaker A
um one last point and this now i'm kind of expanding out again and showing you why i've rejected a lot of the a lot of the ideas i had about the what the the wider historical context of the production of the hutta yoga
58:05
Speaker A
corpus and its practitioners that i put forward in the 2016 article um because that you know one of the questions i've been puzzling a lot and i've already mentioned here the sort of my current thesis which i'm i'm
58:20
Speaker A
i'm i'm happy with i'm i think it's pretty strong i was always a bit sketchy about what i was saying before i didn't feel very confident but i think this idea that the texts were produced by uh within monastic traditions seems to
58:33
Speaker A
explain a lot of the problems the questions i had about um the corpus you know i had previously put forward this idea that you know it was all to do with uh making the making yoga more accessible to all but
58:46
Speaker A
if that was the case why are the texts in sanskrit well monasteries these mata traditions they produced all that text in sanskrit they text before generally high-caste males [Music] generally celebrate male monks okay so who would have all known sanskrit so
59:01
Speaker A
that's why the texts are in sanskrit you know why did the texts not mention women well again the texts are for you know celibate monastic traditions so why would they mention women you know women were not their audience
59:14
Speaker A
um so building on that i just got a couple of pictures so of course kadri is a ancient mata it was first called a vihara when it was a buddhist monastery and then it became a mata down in mangalore
59:28
Speaker A
there's another important mata in bali in karnataka in some inscriptions are said to be yogis although it doesn't mention specific practices of hatha yoga and then i think also in sringari as i mentioned earlier on this on this actual temple what's it called
59:46
Speaker A
the vidyar shankara temple it's not as early as as they claim it's probably early 16th century it's got depictions of um some you know balancing postures and so forth but it's quite likely that the i think that the shiva sanghitar was
60:00
Speaker A
produced there or at least in connection with this this monastery and i think um you know some texts i've looked at i think one can associate with particular monasteries others i'm not so sure but i think that might be a fruitful
60:15
Speaker A
avenue for future research now what i'm going to do here i've got four or five rather text heavy slides i'm afraid because this i thought was the best way to present it rather than me waffle on so probably lose my thread but this is how
60:28
Speaker A
i've presented my thoughts in my draft monograph monograph about the early hatha yoga and then in the context of raja yoga okay so what i'm saying so the concept of raja yoga is not found prior to the appearance of the
60:44
Speaker A
hatha corpus all of whose texts which teach yoga named as such also teach raja yoga so most of them have this hierarchical vortex culminating in raja yoga then the hatred as i point out in my 2016 article kind of gets rid of liar yoga and mantra
61:02
Speaker A
yoga subsumes liar within okay anyway raja yoga is presented both as hatha yoga's apotheosis so the final final attainment in the final aim and as a yoga which is less demanding than the arduous techniques of hutter i should qualify that by saying less
61:20
Speaker A
demanding but no less difficult you know some texts of the shiva sanghitar for example when it gives a hierarchy of aspirants it says that raja yoga is only for the very best okay so you've got to be very skillful to do
61:31
Speaker A
it but it's not so demanding at the same time if that makes sense you know it's a it's kind of trick you know so it's usually a meditative technique um but seen as a hard meditative technique but not so
61:44
Speaker A
demanding in terms of rules and regulations and time and so forth so the tension between hata yoga and raja yoga articulated in the hatta text reflects a new turn in the perennial argument over the role of asceticism in renunciation
61:58
Speaker A
the domestication of peripatetic asceticism which has caused the you know as part of the reason for these monasteries all appearing it resulted in ascetics acquiring greater worldly power and in some cases the matadi patis the heads of monasteries
62:14
Speaker A
started to live and function like kings the resulting incongruity with the usual ascetic ideal was compounded in some instances by pontiffs taking wise and having children leading to a change in the mode of succession to the position of matadi
62:27
Speaker A
pati from elective succession to inheritance okay so this is what i'm getting at here is that the raja yogi is the the head of of these different monasteries and this is a position okay murtadi parties of several traditions lived and functioned like
62:44
Speaker A
kings during the period of the composition of the early hata corpus in subsequent centuries and they were often referred to as such i think this quote coming up is from professor saunders and i think it was from the shiva age
62:56
Speaker A
shiva murtadi paties from bengal to karnataka ruled like kings not only founding new monasteries but also bestowing land grants on brahmins rewarding poets founding temples and new settlements and providing the means of irrigation and they were given royal or even
63:10
Speaker A
imperial titles shri vaishnava pontiffs such as yamanachari and ramanuja were also awarded royal titles and the heads of matas where the heart attacks are likely to have been composed were also conceived of as kings thus in hagiographies such as the shankara dig
63:25
Speaker A
the jail shankaracharya the role model of the murtadi patissa sringeri he's recorded many royal attributes including of course the undertaking of the dig vijaya of the title of the text and to this day the matadi patis and shringari sometimes
63:40
Speaker A
wear royal insignia okay it's a little bit more of this more evidence the heads of the biksha british islam and i'm i'm more and more convinced that the pradeep was a product of sri shilam and most likely of this
63:56
Speaker A
tradition so the head there which uh they were given the title raya king and ruled as potentance potent potentate sorry carrying out administrative functions maintaining military forces and commissioning works including irrigation projects the decoration of the malik original temple and literary productions
64:15
Speaker A
their mode of succession was through inheritance vijayanagara was also known as vyasaraya king vyasa and so forth and then finally in perhaps most colorfully the head of the nat at kadri in present-day mangalore has been called king since at least 1475
64:33
Speaker A
and to this day is known as the king yogi the rajya yogi in hindi and in canada and then we there's got this great description there's more of it in fact if you want to look it up but
64:44
Speaker A
um describes the raja yogi as um i'll read it all out but uh every three or four years like a pilgrim he goes on pilgrimage uh with three or four thousand of his people and with his wife and children and he just he's
64:59
Speaker A
significant he's got wife and child but then it's also said actually in the description that he's accompanied by these kind of more ascetic yogis who are kind of loying cloths and dreadlocks and and covered in ash and so forth and he
65:12
Speaker A
takes four or five courses and civic cats apes parrots leopards and falcons and in this way he goes through the whole of india okay now this tradition also just a quick aside perhaps or just to show the pervasiveness of this idea the notion of
65:25
Speaker A
the rajya yogi so the yogi who is both a yogi but also a worldly sovereign okay seems to be the idea of what the raja yogi is and still in qadri every 12 years they uh initiate they have the abhisheka of of the raja yogi i
65:42
Speaker A
was lucky to make it there in the last one 2016. there he is um just in one of the long as a sort of three or four days of intense ceremonies um four or five hundred yogis gather for
65:54
Speaker A
all of this you can see it's quite a big tamasha um but also this yeah as i said this idea of the raja yogi is is actually sort of current within vernacular today and i i think you know there's some quite
66:10
Speaker A
interesting examples which i haven't yet collated properly but in the guru granth sahib for example um there are various seek teachings about how you know the accomplished yogi uh becomes a raj yogi and he sits on his tuck at his throne and then he's kind of
66:25
Speaker A
in full yogic sovereignty and we see it here the same term applied to yogi adityanatsu the hindu nationalist chief minister of uttar pradesh and also the head of the gorak poor matt the goraksha prieta disra and in his
66:40
Speaker A
say in this biography of him he's called the raja yogi and cindy i've heard prime minister modi called um raja yogi you know i someone once told me that his he wanted to become an ascetic but his guru said no no
66:54
Speaker A
you've got to go and become a raja yogi okay so this is the idea this sort of the um spiritual sovereign we might say um now this seems to me to tie in and this is perhaps somewhat conjectural but i
67:09
Speaker A
think because this this notion of the raja yogi is so strong that raja yoga must carry some of the the the same connotations and we see this in the idea that um the mastery of raja yoga enables the raja
67:24
Speaker A
yogi to do whatever he wants basically you can reject um you know the strict rules of hatha yoga the sort of ascetic restraint associated with it and attain both bhukti and mukti so we see here from the data
67:37
Speaker A
yoga shastra in the perfection stage after raja yoga has been attained one gets the rewards of enjoyment and what enjoyment as well as liberation book team and then also in the amaraga provoda some summarizes here the longer ascension so slightly later
67:56
Speaker A
we're not sure exact dating but the king amongst yogis the yogi raat it is in the in the in the sanskrit sometimes naked in caves sometimes wearing divine clothes sometimes a loin cloth sometimes enjoying lovemaking with a divine woman sometimes celibate
68:10
Speaker A
sometimes living off arms sometimes indulging himself the king among yogis has no restrictions whatsoever and leaves troubles behind so what i think here and my point is i think this is a kind of development of a of a
68:25
Speaker A
tantric notion of a sharper sharpener notion of the um raja abhisheka and i'll come to that in a second but also just in terms of it's kind of the thin end of the wedge it's a [ __ ]
68:38
Speaker A
in the hatta yoga tradition in that it allows for practitioners other than you know celibate ascetics okay kind of somehow this sort of means that yoga is possible um you know you don't have to live as a celibate ascetic
68:57
Speaker A
you know in a matter of well i suppose yeah in a mutter or in a you know in an ashram sealed off from the world in order to be a yogi okay and then just yeah another paragraph from my this is the final
69:10
Speaker A
slide actually from my um uh monograph draft monograph showing this connection and i hadn't i should have introduced the note 6 i think is another reference to professor sanderson but so the idea of the raja yogan was a
69:24
Speaker A
development from that of the raja guru the mata dipati who was chaplain to a worldly king and initiated him with a special royal consecration the raj abhisheka thereby freeing him from the obligation to perform the post-initiate post-initiatory observances which were
69:40
Speaker A
required of others but were impossible for him because of his worldly duties okay through patronage and political changes matadi parties became powerful rulers in their own right as we've seen losing their dependence on royal patrons and shedding their roles as raja gurus
69:59
Speaker A
by freeing mathadi patis from the obligation to practice the arduous methods of hatha yoga raja yoga had a function similar to that of the rajyabhisheka okay so the idea is it seems to be a kind of development of this tantric
70:12
Speaker A
notion or this shaiva sharper notion of um of the rajya abhisheka enabling the king to get on with his ruling and not have to do the the you know the demanding tantric rituals that others other tantric initiates would have to do
70:33
Speaker A
um yeah so raja yoga would do the same for the um for the raja yogi the matadi pati so by being able to rather simply although as i say i don't think the idea is that anyone can do it
70:47
Speaker A
the idea is you've got to be very skillful obviously very accomplished a very great yogi but it's not very demanding if you can employ it to attain samadhi and thereby the the various uh cities and powers that that go with um
71:04
Speaker A
with yoga and in particular sir there's this notion we see in some of our texts of yoga rajya so kind of yogic sovereignty that is bestowed upon the practitioner by by raja yoga so yes that's just to summarize so i
71:18
Speaker A
think this is a you know this this is now my working hypothesis and i hope i'm i'm more confident in it than i was on the hypotheses i put forward in 2016 for both the kind of the the the
71:33
Speaker A
production of the hata yoga corpus and also the the the reason for the tensions between hatha yoga and raja yoga and also the reason for the the introduction of this this notion of raja yoga as well which i
71:50
Speaker A
believe also is a sort of ideological development from the previous the earlier notion of the raj yabi sheikha okay the the tantric special royal consecration okay um well thank you very much that's that's that's it from me thank you
72:12
Speaker A
thanks again for inviting me to speak um i hope i get invited back maybe in five years time okay goodbye
Topics:Hatha YogaShaktismTantric BuddhismKundaliniYoga HistoryAmritasiddhiShaivismTantraJames MallinsonYoga Texts

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