Confusion often arises about what Yoga is. Where does it come from? How did it evolve and where? An attempt at a common definition is to try to place Yoga as a "means", "end" or both from its origin in a Historical context, an option that has not always been peaceful. All areas of study are conducive to this type of bias, one would say, in any case it is not surprising that where there is more subjectivity the problem will increase. Indeed, until recently (19th and 20th centuries), I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the History of Yoga was predominantly framed in a Mystified and Traditional approach, deeply conditioned by sectarian views, associated with religious movements or the “idiosyncratic” transmission of gurus, having generated, in extreme cases, situations in which each mouth fostered its own “story” of Yoga.
I remember the first Yoga course I took where I was indoctrinated that, I quote: “Yoga would have been introduced to planet Earth approximately 5,000 years ago, by Śiva, which had transmitted all the Philosophy and Technique inherent to Yoga during this apparition”, for example, “developing the corpus of 84 āsana-s by observing animals in the forest”; “later (already in the 20th century), he manifested himself again in the form of a Guru who had re-systematized the teachings of Yoga to adapt them to the present age ”. Obviously, one does not want to disdain these types of versions, I stress, because they are abundant and often contain an intense fervor around them, hurting susceptibilities that deserve respect. However, one can exercise the right to look for another interpretation: concretely, an Anthropological, Historical, Cultural and Philological view regarding the way the yoga phenomenon emerged and has, ever since, been evolving and reinventing itself as an Contemplative Science (using the terminology of Alan B. Wallace[1]).
This is a process that meet a turning point with the entrance of the West in the East, along with the negative and positive aspects that the same movement had. From colonialist impositions and ethnocentric interpretations to legit attempts to merge the two cultures, much has been said and written. Between academics and spiritualists, sometimes both, names like Max Müller, Madame Blavastsky (Theosophical Society), Sir John Woodroffe (or Arthur Avalon), Mircea Eliade, Georg Feuerstein, David Frawley, James Mallinson, leaving so much more aside, gave their contribution. On the other side, prominent figures from recent India, such as Ramkṛiṣṇa Pôromôhongśa, Vivekananda, S. Dasgupta, Paramahansa Yogananda, Jiddu Krisnamurti, Aurobindu, T. Kṛiṣṇamācārya, K. Pattabhi Jois, BKS Iyengar made their remarkable contribution.
In an academic perspective, essentially, the genesis and evolution of Yoga has been framed in the course of civilizational movements in the East, mainly in the Himalayan Mountains, Indian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. From here, a basic assumption is made: operating this whole framework according to the origin and crystallization of Hinduism, which in turn leads to distinguish the concept of Hindu Yoga from those of Yoga Jaina and Buddhist Yoga (although ultimately all aim at the same “end”, albeit at the expense of different “means” and draped in a different cultural guise).
Thus, to speak of Hindu Yoga will be speaking of Hinduism, necessarily, from its antecedents and beginnings to the present. However, this path is also far from being peaceful or consensual, although some common elements are accepted. Which are? First, it is normally accepted a path in which Yoga evolved along the following lines: from Proto-Yoga, to Pre-Classic Yoga, to Classic Yoga and, finally, to Post-Classic and Modern Yoga. Second, this route fits into a series of Historical Periods that are predominantly linked to certain traditions and textual productions that mark them:
- Pre-Vedic (6500-4500 BC), of which there are mostly archaeological remains;
- Vedic (4500-2500 B.C.) and Brahmanic (2500-1500 B.C.), of which there are the Veda-s;
- Post-Vedic or Upaniṣadic (1500-100 B.C.), with the first Upaniṣad-s;
- Pre-Classical or Epic (1000-100 BCE), with the great Epics, Mahābhārata, Bhagavadgītā and Rāmāyaṇa;
- Classical (100 BC - 500 AD) and the formulation of Sāṃkhya-Yoga Darśana, with the consecration of the Yogasūtra of Patañjali;
- Tantric-Puranic-Haṭha (500-1300 AD) and Sectarian (1300-1700 AD), including Purāṇa-s, Tantra-s, Āgama-s and Saṃhitā-s (Śaiva-s, Śakta-s and Vaiṣṇava-s), the systematizing literature from Vedānta, to the texts of Haṭha;
- Modern (1700-present), Eastern and Western academic literature.
As can be seen, this has occurred over millennia, and the question regarding the precision of dates (in the previous case, borrowed from G. Feuerstein[2]) is complex for several reasons: essentially the lack of archaeological sites and elements, the difficulty in dating them; and the fact that a considerable part (some say the largest) of the knowledge inherent to Yoga does not occur in textual records, since its transmission was mainly oral, as already mentioned.
This leads to confusion concerning the timelines, mainly in the delimitation of periods. My suggestion is to not isolate the phases in compartments, as this does not seem feasible since it is not based on reality; the real seems continuous and does not move from one movement to another as from black to white; just like a long-time friend of mine says, “let look at the comparison between the succession of Time Periods and Artistic Movements, as one never ends to immediately give place to the other, as the change of tides, there is always a spectral phase making the transition from one general focus to the next ”.
Finally, it may also be wise not to assume that Yoga is strictly an Indian “product”, a trend that seems to be dominant and, in some way, strongly defended by India itself, perhaps with a nationalist motivation. In this sense, I would like to mention that it was only recently that we looked straightforward at the Shamanic genesis of Yoga. Similarly, the fact that Hindu Yoga also owes its origins, and much, to the precursor Buddhist Yoga, which is said to have been expelled from India for reasons that are relatively well known. Furthermore, the same question can be elucidated by studying the Mysticisms of Egyptian and Greek Antiquity, Christian and Islamic Contempaltives, and the way they moved geographically and sociologically, over the aforementioned Periods.
Joel Machado
jehoel@gmail.com
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