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Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Early Yoga text in Sanskrit from ancient India by Patanjali

  • 30 min read
  • 7 chapters
The Yogasutra is an ancient Hindu text on Yoga philosophy. As a sutra, it is terse and needs interpretation and commentary called bhasya in the Hindu tradition. The Yogasutra is a widely followed and
Ms Sarah Welch · CC BY-SA 4.0

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The Yoga Sutras draw from three distinct traditions from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, namely Samkhya, Buddhism traditions, and "various older ascetic and religious strands of speculation." The Yoga Sutras are built on Samkhya notions of purusha and prakriti, and are often seen as complementary to them. They are closely related to Buddhism, incorporating some of its terminology. While there is "an apparent lack of unity and coherence", there is a "straightforward unity to the text", which focuses on "one-pointed awareness" (ekagrata) and "content-free awareness" (nirvikalpa samadhi); the means to acquire these, namely kriya yoga ("action yoga") and ashtanga yoga (eight-limb yoga); the results acquired from the attainment of these levels of awareness; and the final goal of yoga, namely kaivalya and liberation.

The Yoga Sutras are best known for their sutras on ashtanga yoga, eight elements of practice culminating in samadhi. The eight elements, known as limbs, are yama (abstinences), niyama (observances), asana (yoga posture), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration of the mind), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (absorption or stillness). When the mind is stilled, (vritti nirodha) kaivalya ("isolation") can be attained, which is the discernment of purusha (pure consciousness, self, the witness-consciousness) as distinct from prakriti (nature, the cognitive apparatus and the instincts).

The contemporary Yoga tradition holds the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali to be one of the foundational texts of classical Yoga philosophy. However, the appropriation – and misappropriation – of the Yoga Sutras and their influence on later systematizations of yoga has been questioned by David Gordon White, who argues that the text fell into relative obscurity for nearly 700 years from the 12th to 19th century, and made a comeback in the late 19th century due to the efforts of Swami Vivekananda, the Theosophical Society and others. The text gained prominence as a classic in the 20th century.

Author and dating

Author

The colophons of manuscripts of the Yoga Sutras attribute the work to Patañjali, though, according to Gerald Larson, chapter 4 is a later addition, and cannot be attributed to Patanjali.

The identity of Patañjali has been the subject of academic debate, because an author of the same name is credited with the authorship of the classic text on Sanskrit grammar named Mahābhāṣya, that is firmly datable to the second century BCE. Although some scholars argue that this is the same Patanjali who authored the Yoga Sutras, the two works are completely different in subject matter, and Indologist Louis Renou has shown that there are significant differences in language, grammar and vocabulary. Before the time of Bhoja (11th century), no known text conflates the identity of the two authors.

Dating

The text of the Yoga Sūtras has been variously dated to be between 500 BCE and 450 CE, but later dates are more commonly accepted by scholars.

Philipp A. Maas assessed the date of Patañjali's Pātañjalayogaśāstra to be about 400 CE, based on synchronisms between its arguments and those of the Yogācāra Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (4th–5th centuries CE), on tracing the history of the commentaries on it published in the 1st millennium CE, on the opinions of earlier Sanskrit commentators, on the testimony of manuscript colophons and on a review of extant literature. This dating for the Pātañjalayogaśāstra was proposed as early as 1914 by James Woods and has been accepted widely by academic scholars of the history of Indian philosophical thought.

Edwin Bryant surveyed the major commentators in his translation of the Yoga Sūtras. He observed that "Most scholars date the text shortly after the turn of the Common Era (circa first to second century), but that it has been placed as early as several centuries before that." Bryant concluded that "A number of scholars have dated the Yoga Sūtras as late as the fourth or fifth century CE, but these arguments have all been challenged [...] All such arguments [for a late date] are problematic."

Michele Desmarais summarized a wide variety of dates assigned to the Yoga Sūtras, ranging from 500 BCE to the 3rd century CE, noting that there is a paucity of evidence for any certainty. She stated the text may have been composed at an earlier date given conflicting theories on how to date it, but later dates are more commonly accepted by scholars.

Text - Pātañjalayogaśāstra

Scholars hold that the Yoga Sutras and the Yogabhasya, a commentary on the sutras, were written by one person, and form an integral work. According to Philipp A. Maas, based on a study of the original manuscripts, Patañjali's composition was entitled Pātañjalayogaśāstra ("The Treatise on Yoga according to Patañjali") and consisted of both Sūtras and Bhāṣya. According to Maas and Dominik Wujastyk, Patanjali compiled yoga from older traditions in Pātañjalayogaśāstra, and added his own explanatory passages to create the unified work that, since 1100 CE, has been considered the work of two people. The practice of writing a set of aphorisms with the author's own explanation was well known at the time of Patañjali, as for example in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (that, incidentally, Patañjali quotes). These research findings change the historical understanding of the yoga tradition, since they allow us to take the Bhāṣya as Patañjali's very own explanation of the meaning of his somewhat cryptic sūtras. This commentary is indispensable for the understanding of the aphoristic and terse Yoga Sutras, and the study of the sutras has always referred to the Yogabhashya.

While the Yogabhashya was probably written by Patanjali, it has traditionally also been attributed to the legendary Vedic sage Vyasa who is said to have composed the Mahabharata. The bhasya has also been attributed by some to Vindhyavasin (late 4th century CE), who reinterpreted the Samkhya-philosophy due to his knowledge of Buddhist philosophy; his reinterpretation is closely related to the Yogabhasya, which builds on this reinterpretation.

Compilation of sources

The Yoga Sutras are a compilation of sutras from various traditions and sources, with "an apparent lack of unity and coherence."

Larson notes that Yoga, Buddhism, Jainism, and Ajivika share related origins, and argues that the Yoga Sutras draw from three distinct traditions from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, namely "(1) one or more Samkhya traditions, (2) one or more Buddhist traditions, and (3) an emerging philosophical Yoga tradition that is compiling various older ascetic and religious strands of speculation." Patanjali's Yoga Sutras may be a "hybrid formulation, a conflation" of these three traditions. From the old Samkhya philosophy, the Yoga Sutras adopt the "reflective discernment" (adhyavasaya) of prakrti and purusa, its metaphysical rationalism, and its three epistemic methods to gaining reliable knowledge. From Buddhism, the sutras adopt the nirodhasamadhi philosophy, the pursuit of altered states of awareness and an ontology of 'naive realism' (Sarvastivada) or representationalism (Yogacara). Like Samkhya, the Yoga Sutras are physicalist or materialist, but unlike Samkhya, "it rigorously rejects any notion of substantive transcendence." The third stream that the Yoga Sutras conflate are elements of older traditions of ascetic meditation, including "the kriya yoga sections of Book Two (YS II.1-27), the yoganga sections of Books II and III (YS II.28-III.55), some karma yoga sections in Book IV (YS IV.7-13), and various sutras having to do with the issue of God (isvara-pranidhana). According to Larson, "many of these strands come probably from contexts such as the Moksadharma and Bhagavadgita portions of the epic, some passages from the early Puranas, the so-called middle verse Upanisads (Katha, Svetasvatara, and Maitri, and from oral traditions of regional teachers and any number of local asramas.

Structure of the text

Beginning in the early 20th century, scholars have dissected the sutras into the constitutive layers. Book I consists of two texts, I.1 or I.2 to I.16 or I.22, the remainder of the book forming a second text. Book II.1-27 is the Kriya yoga text, while Book II.28-III.55 describes ashtanga yoga. J. W. Hauer regards Book IV as one text, treating nirmanacitta ("individual mind"), while Paul Deussen discerns four "appendices," namely IV.1-6 (nirmanacitta, "individual mind"), IV.7-13 (karman, action, and vasana, subtle traces), IV.14-23 (vastu, reality, citta, mind, and purusa) and IV.24-33 (kaivalya, release).

Erich Frauwallner discerns two main traditions, namely the ashtanga yoga of Book II and III, which aims to attain "mental alertness and clarity," and the "way of suppression of mental functioning" of Book I. Frauwallner rejects Book IV as a later addition.

According to Georg Feuerstein, presupposing an inherent homogeneity of the text, the Yoga Sutras are a condensation of two different traditions, namely "eight limb yoga" (aṣṭāṅga yoga) and action yoga (kriya yoga). The kriya yoga part is contained in chapter 1, which forms an introduction, chapter 2 sutras 1–27, chapter 3 except sutra 54, and chapter 4. The "eight limb yoga" is described in chapter 2 sutras 28–55, and chapter 3 sutras 3 and 54. According to Feuerstein, the Yoga Sutras main component is the Kriya yoga, with ashtanga yoga forming a "long insert or quotation of an 'Eight-limbed Yoga'portion." While Larson is appreciative of Feuerstein's attempt to treat the Yoga Sutras as a uniform text, he also notes that "it is doubtfull that most researchers would concede that the YS overal centers on kriyayoga." Scholars seem to agree, though, that the yoganga-portion, the eight-limb yoga, is a distinct unit, though there is no agreement as how far it extends into Book III.

Larson takes into account the Yogabhasya and Vacaspatimitra's commentaries when describing the basic structure of the Yoga Sutras. Book I describes levels of awareness relevant for yoga, namely "one-pointed or content-filled awareness and suppressed or content-free awareness, and the means for attaining these levels of awareness: 'practice' (abhyasa) and 'renunciation' (vairagya). Book II treats practical exercises "needed to train those who have not yet reached" those levels of awareness; these exercises include kriya yoga and the first five limbs of ashtanga yoga. Book III describes the results acquired from the attainment of these levels of awareness, resulting from dharana, dhyana and samadhi. Book IV treats the final goal of yoga, namely kaivalya, content-free or seedless samadhi, and liberation.

Commentaries

A well-known commentary on the Yoga Sutras was written by Vachaspati Mishra, who had also written commentaries on other schools of Indian philosophy such as Vedanta, Samkhya, Nyaya, and Mimamsa. After Vyasa, it is believed that Vachaspati Mishra's commentary is the "next most authoritative." Other commentators include Bhoja Rāja, Vijñānabhikṣu, and Rāmānanda Sarasvatī. Vijñānabhikṣu, according to Bryant, wrote the "most insightful and useful commentary after that of Vyasa's." Bhoja Rāja and Rāmānanda Sarasvatī's commentaries follow the previous commentaries, without expanding much on what their predecessors have said. Hariharānanda Āraṇya, in contrast to the above figures, is a modern commentator on the text. Bryant explains that, even though "his is a standpoint exposed to Western thought", it is still "thoroughly grounded in tradition".

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