Light on Hatha Yoga: a critical edition and translation of the Hathapradipika, the most important premodern text on physical yoga.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Abstract
The primary outcome of this project will be a critical edition and annotated translation of the Hathapradipika or "Light on Hatha [Yoga]". This Sanskrit text has been the most influential text on physical yoga, both in India since its composition in about 1400 CE, and globally since yoga started to spread across the world in the late 19th century. The Light on Hatha has been translated hundreds of times into several languages, but these translations are unreliable because they are of based on nine or fewer of its more than 250 manuscripts, which present widely different versions of the text, ranging from three to ten chapters. A team of scholars will trace the Light on Hatha's transmission and publish it in a critical edition which will foreground an authoritative version of the most influential version of the text and detail all its variations. By thus mapping the transmission history of this text the project will document the premodern development of physical yoga from its origins in the early part of the second millennium CE as a method of mysticism practised by heterodox ascetics in India, to its early modern apotheosis as a somatic soteriology available to all, prefiguring its current phenomenal worldwide popularity as a means to wellness.
Two key reasons for the Light on Hatha's not having been critically edited despite its great popularity are the large number of manuscripts in which it has been transmitted and the difficulty of its subject matter. The expertise of the project team mitigates both these problems. The team's members are all expert in editing Sanskrit texts from manuscripts, and the work of two of them, Mallinson and Birch, has focused on texts on physical yoga. Nearly half of the c. four hundred verses of the most influential recension of the Light on Hatha are drawn from earlier texts, the most important of which Mallinson and Birch have edited in their previous work. The team is thus uniquely positioned to produce a critical edition of the Light on Hatha.
In addition to the Light on Hatha, the project team will produce editions of two other texts which are less well known but important for making sense of the history of yoga. These are: (1) the Yogalaksanavali, "The String of Signifiers of Yoga", an as yet unstudied treatise on yoga which was composed in 1549 CE and includes quotations from several texts, including many which were used in the composition of the Light on Hatha; and (2) the Tattvabinduyoga, "The Yoga of the Elemental Point", a 17th-century taxonomy of 15 different yoga methods, which includes hathayoga and is thus an early example of physical techniques being absorbed into mainstream yoga.
Two key reasons for the Light on Hatha's not having been critically edited despite its great popularity are the large number of manuscripts in which it has been transmitted and the difficulty of its subject matter. The expertise of the project team mitigates both these problems. The team's members are all expert in editing Sanskrit texts from manuscripts, and the work of two of them, Mallinson and Birch, has focused on texts on physical yoga. Nearly half of the c. four hundred verses of the most influential recension of the Light on Hatha are drawn from earlier texts, the most important of which Mallinson and Birch have edited in their previous work. The team is thus uniquely positioned to produce a critical edition of the Light on Hatha.
In addition to the Light on Hatha, the project team will produce editions of two other texts which are less well known but important for making sense of the history of yoga. These are: (1) the Yogalaksanavali, "The String of Signifiers of Yoga", an as yet unstudied treatise on yoga which was composed in 1549 CE and includes quotations from several texts, including many which were used in the composition of the Light on Hatha; and (2) the Tattvabinduyoga, "The Yoga of the Elemental Point", a 17th-century taxonomy of 15 different yoga methods, which includes hathayoga and is thus an early example of physical techniques being absorbed into mainstream yoga.