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New Light on Patanjali
by Dominik Wujastyk
This is an exciting time for yoga studies explain the meaning of the work for people
because in the last ten years a number of who didn't have the benefit of direct contact
crucial new discoveries have been made with the author. Sometimes the author
about yoga's history. These have rewritten himself would write such a commentary. At
our understanding of yoga's evolution, both other times, a pupil would write it, or even
as a philosophy and as a physical practice. someone who lived many years after the
The first of these new insights is about the author's time.
identity of the oldest explanation of yoga
philosophy. The oldest commentary on the Yogasutra
is called simply The Explanation(bha?ya).
The foundation work of yoga philosophy Modern scholars have debated the status
is called the Yogasutra.Patafijali was the of The Explanationfor over a century. A
person who composed this text in the general consensus existed until recently
Sanskrit language. This is a difficult text, full that this commentary was written centuries
of references to complex philosophical ideas. after Patafijali by someone called "The
On top of that, it is written in short, pregnant Editor" (vyasa).People argued about how
statements of just ...-------------------------, well The Editor
a few syllables l'-f. s. t-v?/ had understood
in length called . . . Patafijali' s
sutras. There are 1·tn· ll~ll~ffl~.:fJf:111f~tli~~il~~·mn~{Jl~ thought. Many
fewer than 200 of , ·qJfflf~J.l~,it11ff7~Ulij~~llll~~nnn~M" people felt that
'tJlflllW~Flil~
them. How could ~itP.l~u"tl~titu~a~~?r,~~:,ft~q~lif the commentary
the whole of
yoga philosophy
~~f:r.i:!1:1:
,,::ifi1ar1~~
,11~m?7ti~~
fi):~~iftlf~~Qq':1~~~~
11

~ifil~~ nm~
was too
difficult or too
be encapsulated ilil~~ll~it~fti~,~-Yl~~'ll#ijiftm'Q~lfm~":.~ l'.,J;rrr'!far removed
in such a short, l~~"l\lil\Uffl'Q~~lilil~~i\lillf.\~8'-tl from the siltras.
telegrammatic \1'16l~itt~~irll~°it ~~;pi°M-;pr They tried to
treatise? ~~<1im..f~nn;iJ1t1--~~~#Qan'I: -~ .+ understand the
Yogasiltraby
The siltra itself, feeling that they preferred to engage
format was not new when the Yogasiltrawas with the voice of the master, Patafijali, even
written . For hundreds of years, scholars in if his words were brief and cryptic.
ancient India had presented their thoughts
in this form. Sutra texts on grammar, Now, Professor Philipp Maas, of the
etymology, law, Buddhist philosophy and University of Leipzig, has solved the
other subjects existed. Patafijali picked a problem of the identity of The Editor.
format with which his audience would be In a brilliant piece of detective work, for
familiar. At the same time, it was normal for which he earned a PhD in 2006, Maas
such compact works to be accompanied by showed compellingly that the mysterious
a commentary, to unpack the contents and Editor was none other than Patafijali
Winter 201 7 9
himself. The Explanationwas not separated
from the Yogasatraby hundreds of
years. The Yogasatraand The Explanation
belong together as a single great work of
philosophy composed by a single author.
In The Explanationwe have Pataftjali' s own,
personal explanation of the meaning of
each sutra that he wrote. Furthermore, Maas
showed that every scholar in ancient and
medieval India up to about 1000 CE took
this view as self-evident. It was only in later
centuries that doubts crept in and that the
false idea of two separate authors gained
ground.
Professor Maas has also been able to
clarify the date during which Pataftjali lived.
Through a series of historical investigations,
he has confirmed the date as being between
325-425 CE, about 1600 years ago. This date
had already been generally accepted in
scholarly circles. However, before Maas's
work there were still some doubts and
many popular authors had made wild
guesses about Pataftjali' s date that varied
by thousands of years. Maas has put the
argument for 325-425 CE on a firmer footing
than ever before.
With these two discoveries - that Pataftjali ac.uk/.
himself explained his own sutras and that he • The Luminescent, a blog by Jason
lived in about 400 CE - many other points
about the history and philosophy of yoga fall news and fascinating historical insights :
into place.
These discoveries are not the only news
about yoga coming out of the universities
today. New light is being thrown on
Patafijali's relationship to the Buddhist
philosophers of his time, on the origins of
ha//,a yoga, on the entangled histories of
Indian yoga, ayurveda and alchemy and
on the strange pathways by which ancient
lndi,in yoga reached the high streets of
Europe and North America, to mention just
a few active research areas today.
Bibliography
Maas, Philipp (2006), Samtidhiptida:das erste
Kapiteldes Pataiijalayogasastra zum ersten
Mal kritisch ediert = The First Chapterof
for the First Time
the Ptitaiijalayogastistra
CriticallyEdited (Aachen: Shaker).
Maas, Philipp (2013), "A Concise
Historiography of Classical Yoga
Philosophy," in Eli Franco (ed.),
Historiographyand Periodizationof Indian
Philosophy(Vienna:University of Vienna).
This articleexplains his 2006 Germanresearch
in English, and gives an overviewof how Yoga
studies have evolvedin modern times.
Maas's articlescan be downloadedfreefrom his
pageat Academia.edu.
Further exploration
• An excellent reference point for some of
the newest research on Yoga is the website
Modern YogaResearch.org, led by Elizabeth
De Michelis.
• A major new team project on Hatha
Yoga, at London University, led by James
Mallinson, can be explored at hyp .soas.
Birch and Jacqui Hargreaves, is full of
theluminescent.blogspot.ca.
• The University of Vienna's project on Y1,g ,
Ayurveda and Alchemy, headed by Dt1g111,11
Wujastyk, can be explored at AyurYog.rn>:
Dominik Wujastyk is a Singhmar Professm11/
ClassicalIndian Studies at the Universily of
Alberta. He teachesthe course "On the I h~/111 V
of Indian Yoga and Meditati on." SAS. Ill
L/111/11•1
ca.