Interesting read that brings up a lot of issues, but I will comment on only a few, such as your statement about the "unprovable notion that yoga is 5000 years old." This claim, which is always presented as unbiased academic truth is in itself a bias. It is unprovable, claim academics, due to lack of textual evidence. But is textual evidence the only form of real evidence? The fact is that most of the younger Western yoga academics today make that claim, but there are others who lean toward the 5000 year date, such as Edwin Bryant and Georg Feuerstein. Then you have Indian scholars like N.N. Bhattacharya and Sakhare who also make such claims based on their research. In addition, we have the essay An Archeology of Yoga by Thomas McEvilley, perhaps the most detailed study of the Pashupatinath seal, which archelogists have date to about 2500 BCE. McEvilley Lastly, French Indologist Alain Danielou has used the Puranas and other untranslated texts to claim yoga is 6000 years old. Which brings us to Indologist Justin M Hewitson and his study of Anandamurti's writings and a reinterpretation of the four Vedas and claiming yoga, in its Shaiva form, is even older. What there is growing agreement on among Western academics and those mentioned above is that yoga evolved largely outside the Vedic tradition among ascetic and householders among the lower castes. Where there is disagreement is mainly about the date of origin--2500 years for those using mainly textual evidence (Mallinson, etc) and 5000 plus for those also using other means, such as archeology, genetics, oral history, myth, emic insights from the traditions, etc. So, when you state it is "unprovable" that yoga is 5000 years old, it is only unprovable from a certain academic point of view--the one mainly relying on texts to date the history of yoga. When I teach the history of yoga these days, I mention all this, so that students can do their own study and make up their own minds.
Thanks! It's unprovable because that evidence you mention is limited. Material sources can of course be interesting. Some medieval sculptures show postures that don't appear in texts until centuries later. However, it's unclear what the Indus seals depict beyond a seated figure. Much of what McEvilley discusses draws on ideas that have no trace in other sources until later millennia. As a result, they're just hypotheses with no supporting evidence. Similarly, stories told by lineages are also interesting yet no more verifiable than the idea that God rested on day 7 after making the world... There's nothing special about texts, in my opinion, other than the possibility of dating things a little more reliably. I like to tell students that we don't know how much we don't know about early history. I think that's more accurate than suggesting we know what can't be proven. Re: the seal, is this also Paśupati? ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos
The cumulative evidence, using multiple sources, points to a much later date than 2500 BCE. The Gundestrup figure is strikingly similar. How old is yoga according to you, and what do you base it on?
I would also dispute your blanket statement that stories told within lineages are always akin to religious myths. The Puranas are not just based on myths but also represent genealogical records. It is from those and other sources Danielou claimed that the Aryans entered India before 3000 BCE. Those Puranic sources also contradict Hindutva claims of no Aryan migration at all but supports recent genetic evidence. Contemporary guru Anandmurti also claimed the same since the 50s in discourses and writings, all of which has been validated by genetic science, except for the "science" presented by the Hindutvas.
I didn't use the word myth. I just said that stories told by lineages lack corroborating evidence, so it's impossible to tell if they're accurate. As I'm sure you're aware, Vedic scholars reject those dates - see for example note 2 here:
"According to recent archaeological research the disappearance of the Indus cities is determined at 1900 B.C.; on the other hand, the AV is the first text mentioning iron which was introduced in North India at c. 1100 BCE. The RV, which no longer knows of the Indus cities but only mentions ruins (armaka, [mahā]vailasthāna), thus could have been composed during the long period between 1990 and 1100 BCE. An ad quem date for the RV is provided by the mentioning of Vedic gods (Varuṇa, Mitra, Indra, Nāsatya = Aśvin) in the Hittite-Mitanni agreement of c. 1380 BCE. The RV, however, presents, for the greatest part, only a 'snapshot' picture of c. 5-6 generations of poets and kings who lived closer towards the end of the period (cf. Witzel, forthc. a)."
Like everyone else, I have no idea how old yoga is. All we can do is examine the evidence and decide on a minimum verifiable date. The earliest use of the word yoga to refer to an inward-focused meditative state is in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, so that clearly means it's more than 2,000 years old. However, usage of the word in earlier Vedic textual sources means something very different, so it's probably a concept that develops with śramaṇas in the first millennium BCE. Hence the consensus around "2,500 years ago". It may well be earlier, but good luck with proving that! Re: the Gundestrup figure, that similarity suggests to me that there is probably a shared archetype of communion with nature, but since no one has tried to claim yoga was practised in Denmark more than 2,000 years ago, I don't see why the "strikingly similar" Paśupati seal must be yogic...
There is a kind of reductionism here in your arguments, and I do not want to needlessly waste yours or my time , because we are not in agreement in approaching this issue. Just searching for the word yoga in texts is a very limited way of finding proof of the same. Edwin Bryant, for example, use the P seal to also argue for a 4000 plus yoga history; he and others points to the kesin, Rudra, in the RV, and pranayama in the AV, etc, etc. Shekare to another meditation statue from the Indus Valley, etc. It is in the multiplicity of the evidence we must search, but that requires an open mind for that pursuit. I did find validity in many a debunking of Raganathan's points, though. Onwards, my friend.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Again, to reiterate, those other strands of evidence show yogic precursors. They're clearly influential on yoga's development, but how is it possible to say for certain that yoga existed at an earlier date without more conclusive proof? Instead, we have characters such as Vedic vrātyas, whose cosmic breath-control is very unclear in its objectives and techniques, or the keśin and his viṣa - fascinating, and clearly not a million miles away from modern dreadlocked renouncers... But it's hard to say much for sure from that handful of verses! Anyhow, all of the examples you mention are discussed in Roots of Yoga, to cite a book we're both familiar with, where they're just not regarded as proof of "the existence of systematic, psychophysical techniques of the type which the word ‘yoga’ subsequently came to denote." I can't help wondering why it matters so much to push the date back further - what's so bad about "at least 2,500 years"? I agree that we will probably continue to disagree about how to frame this, but it's still worth discussing, so thanks for the exchange. All the best, Daniel.
Nothing bad at all about 2500 years. But it's not about pushing dates for its own sake but about going beyond boundaries, which is a human, and indeed, yogic impulse. That search is unstoppable, and to me, very compelling. I grew up next to one of Norway's great archeologists, Erling Johansen--an autodidact, but pathbreaking discoverer. It's in my blood, this search for ever new possibilities. Keep up the good work, Daniel.
Listening during a walk in nature rather than reading the text I encountered some difficulties in getting the terms right as the intonation of several if not many actually well known subjects (i.e. one example “Purusha” being spelled [purua] ) sounded rather strange.
So if this is AI reading it needs to get taught a bit more of Indian philosophy 🙃 no critique just a bit of improvement suggestion 😉
Just seen the option in the app, and have given it a go... They could do with some variation in delivery - sounds a bit like an adult trying to sound like a schoolboy reading a text...
Great review! Sounds like this guy is a fellow-traveller of Rajiv Malhotra.
Thanks! Ironically, I suspect he’d see himself as anti-Malhotra but there’s definitely some playbook overlap…
Interesting read that brings up a lot of issues, but I will comment on only a few, such as your statement about the "unprovable notion that yoga is 5000 years old." This claim, which is always presented as unbiased academic truth is in itself a bias. It is unprovable, claim academics, due to lack of textual evidence. But is textual evidence the only form of real evidence? The fact is that most of the younger Western yoga academics today make that claim, but there are others who lean toward the 5000 year date, such as Edwin Bryant and Georg Feuerstein. Then you have Indian scholars like N.N. Bhattacharya and Sakhare who also make such claims based on their research. In addition, we have the essay An Archeology of Yoga by Thomas McEvilley, perhaps the most detailed study of the Pashupatinath seal, which archelogists have date to about 2500 BCE. McEvilley Lastly, French Indologist Alain Danielou has used the Puranas and other untranslated texts to claim yoga is 6000 years old. Which brings us to Indologist Justin M Hewitson and his study of Anandamurti's writings and a reinterpretation of the four Vedas and claiming yoga, in its Shaiva form, is even older. What there is growing agreement on among Western academics and those mentioned above is that yoga evolved largely outside the Vedic tradition among ascetic and householders among the lower castes. Where there is disagreement is mainly about the date of origin--2500 years for those using mainly textual evidence (Mallinson, etc) and 5000 plus for those also using other means, such as archeology, genetics, oral history, myth, emic insights from the traditions, etc. So, when you state it is "unprovable" that yoga is 5000 years old, it is only unprovable from a certain academic point of view--the one mainly relying on texts to date the history of yoga. When I teach the history of yoga these days, I mention all this, so that students can do their own study and make up their own minds.
Thanks! It's unprovable because that evidence you mention is limited. Material sources can of course be interesting. Some medieval sculptures show postures that don't appear in texts until centuries later. However, it's unclear what the Indus seals depict beyond a seated figure. Much of what McEvilley discusses draws on ideas that have no trace in other sources until later millennia. As a result, they're just hypotheses with no supporting evidence. Similarly, stories told by lineages are also interesting yet no more verifiable than the idea that God rested on day 7 after making the world... There's nothing special about texts, in my opinion, other than the possibility of dating things a little more reliably. I like to tell students that we don't know how much we don't know about early history. I think that's more accurate than suggesting we know what can't be proven. Re: the seal, is this also Paśupati? ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos
The cumulative evidence, using multiple sources, points to a much later date than 2500 BCE. The Gundestrup figure is strikingly similar. How old is yoga according to you, and what do you base it on?
I would also dispute your blanket statement that stories told within lineages are always akin to religious myths. The Puranas are not just based on myths but also represent genealogical records. It is from those and other sources Danielou claimed that the Aryans entered India before 3000 BCE. Those Puranic sources also contradict Hindutva claims of no Aryan migration at all but supports recent genetic evidence. Contemporary guru Anandmurti also claimed the same since the 50s in discourses and writings, all of which has been validated by genetic science, except for the "science" presented by the Hindutvas.
I didn't use the word myth. I just said that stories told by lineages lack corroborating evidence, so it's impossible to tell if they're accurate. As I'm sure you're aware, Vedic scholars reject those dates - see for example note 2 here:
"According to recent archaeological research the disappearance of the Indus cities is determined at 1900 B.C.; on the other hand, the AV is the first text mentioning iron which was introduced in North India at c. 1100 BCE. The RV, which no longer knows of the Indus cities but only mentions ruins (armaka, [mahā]vailasthāna), thus could have been composed during the long period between 1990 and 1100 BCE. An ad quem date for the RV is provided by the mentioning of Vedic gods (Varuṇa, Mitra, Indra, Nāsatya = Aśvin) in the Hittite-Mitanni agreement of c. 1380 BCE. The RV, however, presents, for the greatest part, only a 'snapshot' picture of c. 5-6 generations of poets and kings who lived closer towards the end of the period (cf. Witzel, forthc. a)."
https://www.ms.uky.edu/~sohum/sanskrit/vedica.pdf
Like everyone else, I have no idea how old yoga is. All we can do is examine the evidence and decide on a minimum verifiable date. The earliest use of the word yoga to refer to an inward-focused meditative state is in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, so that clearly means it's more than 2,000 years old. However, usage of the word in earlier Vedic textual sources means something very different, so it's probably a concept that develops with śramaṇas in the first millennium BCE. Hence the consensus around "2,500 years ago". It may well be earlier, but good luck with proving that! Re: the Gundestrup figure, that similarity suggests to me that there is probably a shared archetype of communion with nature, but since no one has tried to claim yoga was practised in Denmark more than 2,000 years ago, I don't see why the "strikingly similar" Paśupati seal must be yogic...
There is a kind of reductionism here in your arguments, and I do not want to needlessly waste yours or my time , because we are not in agreement in approaching this issue. Just searching for the word yoga in texts is a very limited way of finding proof of the same. Edwin Bryant, for example, use the P seal to also argue for a 4000 plus yoga history; he and others points to the kesin, Rudra, in the RV, and pranayama in the AV, etc, etc. Shekare to another meditation statue from the Indus Valley, etc. It is in the multiplicity of the evidence we must search, but that requires an open mind for that pursuit. I did find validity in many a debunking of Raganathan's points, though. Onwards, my friend.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Again, to reiterate, those other strands of evidence show yogic precursors. They're clearly influential on yoga's development, but how is it possible to say for certain that yoga existed at an earlier date without more conclusive proof? Instead, we have characters such as Vedic vrātyas, whose cosmic breath-control is very unclear in its objectives and techniques, or the keśin and his viṣa - fascinating, and clearly not a million miles away from modern dreadlocked renouncers... But it's hard to say much for sure from that handful of verses! Anyhow, all of the examples you mention are discussed in Roots of Yoga, to cite a book we're both familiar with, where they're just not regarded as proof of "the existence of systematic, psychophysical techniques of the type which the word ‘yoga’ subsequently came to denote." I can't help wondering why it matters so much to push the date back further - what's so bad about "at least 2,500 years"? I agree that we will probably continue to disagree about how to frame this, but it's still worth discussing, so thanks for the exchange. All the best, Daniel.
Nothing bad at all about 2500 years. But it's not about pushing dates for its own sake but about going beyond boundaries, which is a human, and indeed, yogic impulse. That search is unstoppable, and to me, very compelling. I grew up next to one of Norway's great archeologists, Erling Johansen--an autodidact, but pathbreaking discoverer. It's in my blood, this search for ever new possibilities. Keep up the good work, Daniel.
We need ...
... The Truce of Yoga
Great article. It's what I thought about him when I heard him discuss his sutras book.
Thank you, Kurt - glad to hear it resonated. 🙌
Nice work Daniel. Thanks.
Thank you, Gareth - glad to hear it resonated. Happy new year!
Listening during a walk in nature rather than reading the text I encountered some difficulties in getting the terms right as the intonation of several if not many actually well known subjects (i.e. one example “Purusha” being spelled [purua] ) sounded rather strange.
So if this is AI reading it needs to get taught a bit more of Indian philosophy 🙃 no critique just a bit of improvement suggestion 😉
Thanks, Susanne - I didn't even realise it was possible to get the text read to you! I guess IAST diacritics don't come preprogrammed... 😅
Just seen the option in the app, and have given it a go... They could do with some variation in delivery - sounds a bit like an adult trying to sound like a schoolboy reading a text...
🙃 it’s reading very fast, too… like in a speed reading contest 😎