Sep 19, 2018

Does Yoga Sutra Prove to be an Integral and Consequent Text?

Everyone who studies Sanskrit deep enough knows the rule of reading a Sanskrit sentence: “first think through the phrase syntactic structure, then proceed to translation of every single word.” And never start interpreting from the first word unless you have comprehended the meaning of the entire sentence. 

Paradoxically this rule might be also applied for dealing with the whole text, be it translation or commenting on it. You first conceptualize the entire text structure and logic, and then see into separate lines. And never start from the very beginning… In fact, this is a standard rule for reading any complex text in foreign languages. Yet it is somehow omitted when it comes to handling Sanskrit sutras. 

The Hindu commentary tradition assumes that a text is thoroughly analyzed in the line by line manner from the beginning to the end. The problem of understanding text logic and inner structure, not to speak of its deconstruction, simply goes beyond the scope of established Hindu methodology. While the idea of singling out the text historic “layers” seems to be a blasphemy: a sutra is traditionally treated as a sacred text that has its inner completeness, perfection and harmony (even in case it obviously doesn’t), and all we need is to find and comprehend them with the help of various intellectual ingenuities. 

It thus develops into religiously-scholastic manner of old texts interpretation that “hypnotizes” also European scholars, so that they also start reading a text from the beginning and by default treat it as an integral piece. This principle of text work has considerably predetermined the structure of my blog on Yoga Sutras. I started commenting on the text ab initio, from the first sutra on. However, the farther into the text, the more I realized how confining this approach is. I have already mentioned in the opening articles that Sutras have many discrepancies and inconsistencies, and I could not ignore them any longer. It became necessary to study the structure and inner logic of the text. And quite unexpectedly the issues under consideration have morphed into the question of Sutras authorship and dating… 

So I shall give a brief outline of this study results. I guess it can take a couple of articles, but it will make a good contribution into the text analysis further progress. 

Sep 13, 2018

Greek Roots of Hatha Yoga?

In my surfing the web I’ve come across a curious article that advances the idea of hatha yoga Greek roots. I won’t now bother to look for the link, but the main message was that Alexander the Great’s military campaigns propelled to intensive interaction between Greek and Indian cultures (especially within the territory of modern Pakistan, which is obviously true). The people of India were amazed by the strength of Greek warriors to the extent they borrowed their system of body workout (the Greek gymnastics) and made it a basis of hatha yoga. As to the earlier “exercises” of India, these were nothing but mere asceticism and corporal mortification. 

Though daring, the hypothesis is easy to refute. I have some time before landing, so I’ll give my view of the theme. 

Sep 11, 2018

Does Yoga Evolve, or Can You Trust Primary Sources in All Aspects?


This short item has been initiated by my reading a pretty nice article about chakra system. The author points out (not without reason) that most of today’s notions about chakras are absent in traditional Hindu texts. He is however mistaken as to the list of these “missing points”, probably due to the fact that many texts related to chakras seem to be not known to him. 

Now, the author notes, different Hindu texts describe various variants of chakra system, not only the seven-chakra one. And an eventual conclusion he thus makes is: Europeans don’t actually understand what they do. This opinion can be rather often found in the works of experts in Indian culture, both scholars and those who deal with aspects of religion. They ponder on various questions of initiation and specific parampara (the lineage of gurus), advance the idea telling that practice beyond a legitimate tradition is impossible, and promote other kind of (as I have it) pseudo-religious nonsense that includes vituperative (as they think it to be) blaming (each other) for following the ideas of New Age and engagement in theosophy. 

I shall further brief my view of the problem.