It’s been a long time since the previous article dedicated to the issue of Yoga Sutras’ inconsistency was published. An interested reader might have become tired of waiting, and an incautious one could have forgotten the point. So I recommend that before getting down to the text below you read the previous post. For those who won’t I shall remind the basic conclusion. Yoga Sutras does not prove to be an integral and consequent text written by one person at one time; it consists of several completed fragments that come from different Traditions with large time gaps between them.
These fragments can be singled out distinctly pursuant to the following methodological grounds.
1. Consistency of each fragment style.
2. Consistency of used notions thesaurus.
3. Uniformity of described mind-techniques and experience.
4. Presence of finished quotes taken verbatim from other sources.
On the basis of the foregoing criteria I have singled out five different fragments of Yoga Sutras. Notwithstanding the chapter four: there’s little doubt it is an extraneous element within the basic text. As well as inclusions from Buddhism that are 1 or 2 lines long. The latter can be told easily by their being totally out of the basic text tune, and being in fact quotes from Pali sutras.
