Sharngadhara-paddhati ( IAST : Śārṅgadharapaddhati , "Sharngadhara's Guidebook") is an anthology of Sanskrit -language short poems ( subhashita ) from India, compiled by Sharngadhara in 1363.
140-402: The text is notable for its account of Hatha Yoga , which it categorizes into two types: Gorakhnath 's Hatha Yoga with six limbs and Markandeya 's Hatha Yoga with eight limbs . The Sharngadhara-paddhati (literally "Sharngadhara's Guidebook") was compiled by Sharngadhara in 1363. This Sharngadhara is believed to be the same individual mentioned in a prashasti (eulogistic inscription) as
280-488: A beginner, states the historian of religion Mircea Eliade , the asanas are uncomfortable, typically difficult, cause the body to shake, and are typically unbearable to hold for extended periods of time. However, with repetition and persistence, as the muscle tone improves, the effort reduces and posture improves. According to the Haṭha yoga texts, each posture becomes perfect when the "effort disappears", one no longer thinks about
420-559: A controlled diet is one of the three important parts of a complete and successful practice. The text does not provide details or recipes. The text states, according to Mallinson, "food should be unctuous and sweet", one must not overeat and stop when still a bit hungry (leave a quarter of the stomach empty), and whatever one eats should please Shiva . Haṭha yoga teaches various steps of inner body cleansing with consultations of one's yoga teacher. Its texts vary in specifics and number of cleansing methods, ranging from simple hygiene practices to
560-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
700-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to
840-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit
980-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
1120-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be
1260-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
1400-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and
1540-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
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#17327804339821680-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from
1820-538: A system of chakras was overlaid onto the earlier bindu-oriented system. The aim was to access amṛta (the nectar of immortality) situated in the head, which subsequently floods the body, in contradiction with the early Haṭha yoga goal of preserving bindu. The classical sources for the mudras are the Gheranda Samhita and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika . The yoga mudras are diverse in the parts of
1960-470: A water wash and others describing the use of cleansing aids such as cloth. Prāṇāyāma is made out of two Sanskrit words prāṇa (प्राण, breath, vital energy, life force) and āyāma (आयाम, restraining, extending, stretching). Some Haṭha yoga texts teach breath exercises but do not refer to it as Pranayama. For example, section 3.55 of the GherandaSamhita calls it Ghatavastha (state of being
2100-605: Is "said to represent the teachings of Virūpākṣa ". According to Mallinson, this figure is most likely the Buddhist mahasiddha Virupa . The c. 10th century Kubjikāmatatantra anticipates haṭha yoga with its description of the raising of Kundalini , and a 6- chakra system. Around the 11th century, techniques associated with Haṭha yoga also begin to be outlined in a series of early Hindu texts. The aims of these practices were siddhis (supranormal powers such as levitation) and mukti (liberation) . In India, haṭha yoga
2240-489: Is a branch of yoga that uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some hatha yoga style techniques can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Hindu Sanskrit epics and Buddhism's Pali canon . The oldest dated text so far found to describe hatha yoga,
2380-516: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand
2520-500: Is an extended version of Sharngadhara-paddhati . It contains 588 sections, out of which 473 sections have been borrowed from the Sharngadhara-paddhati . The anthology has 7586 verses (including 10 Prakrit verses); it excludes 66 verses from the now-extant portions of Sharngadhara-paddhati , and includes 2963 additional verses. An edition of the text ( The Paddhati Of Sarngadhara , Volume I), edited by Peter Peterson,
2660-411: Is an integral part of asanas . According to section 1.38 of Haṭha yoga pradipika , Siddhasana is the most suitable and easiest posture to learn breathing exercises. The different Haṭha yoga texts discuss pranayama in various ways. For example, Haṭha yoga pradipka in section 2.71 explains it as a threefold practice: recaka (exhalation), puraka (inhalation) and kumbhaka (retention). During
2800-722: Is associated in popular tradition with the Yogis of the Natha Sampradaya . Almost all hathayogic texts belong to the Nath siddhas , and the important ones are credited to Gorakhnath or Gorakshanath (c. early 11th century), the founder of the Nath Hindu monastic movement in India, though those texts post-date him. Goraknath is regarded by the contemporary Nath-tradition as the disciple of Matsyendranath (early 10th century), who
2940-406: Is attributed to Sharngadhara, but it is not clear if he was same as the author of Sharngadhara-paddhati : the author of Sharngadhara-Samhita does not provide any information about himself, except his name. Sharngadhara, who was a poet himself, often states the names of the poets and works against the verses included in his anthology. However, he attributes some of the verses to "somebody". Some of
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#17327804339823080-542: Is celebrated as a saint in both Hindu and Buddhist tantric and haṭha yoga schools, and regarded by tradition as the founder of the Natha Sampradaya. Early haṭha yoga works include: The earliest haṭha yoga methods of the Amṛtasiddhi , Dattātreyayogaśāstra and Vivekamārtaṇḍa are used to raise and conserve bindu ( semen , and in women rajas – menstrual fluid) which was seen as the physical essence of life that
3220-495: Is complex and requires certain characteristics of the yogi. Section 1.16 of the Haṭha yoga Pradipika , for example, states these to be utsaha (enthusiasm, fortitude), sahasa (courage), dhairya (patience), jnana tattva (essence for knowledge), nishcaya (resolve, determination) and tyaga (solitude, renunciation). In Western culture, Haṭha yoga is typically understood as exercise using asanas and it can be practiced as such. In
3360-563: Is crucial in all yogas, but it is the mainstay of Haṭha yoga. Mudras and certain kundalini-related ideas are included in Haṭha yoga, but not mentioned in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali . Patanjali yoga considers asanas important but dwells less on various asanas than the Haṭha yoga texts. In contrast, the Haṭha yoga texts consider meditation as important but dwell less on meditation methodology than Patanjali yoga. The Haṭha yoga texts acknowledge and refer to Patanjali yoga, attesting to
3500-401: Is described by Haṭha yoga texts in terms of divine sounds, and as a union with Nada-Brahman in musical literature of ancient India. Haṭha yoga is a branch of yoga. It shares numerous ideas and doctrines with other forms of yoga, such as the more ancient system taught by Patanjali . The differences are in the addition of some aspects, and different emphasis on others. For example, pranayama
3640-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to
3780-482: Is one of the most influential texts of Haṭha yoga. It was compiled by Svātmārāma in the 15th century CE from earlier Haṭha yoga texts. Earlier texts were of Vedanta or non-dual Shaiva orientation, and from both, the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpika borrowed the philosophy of non-duality (advaita). According to Mallinson, this reliance on non-duality helped Haṭha yoga thrive in the medieval period as non-duality became
3920-601: Is practice alone that leads to success. Sectarian affiliation and philosophical inclination are of no importance. The texts of Haṭha yoga, with some exceptions, do not include teachings on metaphysics or sect-specific practices. Haṭha yoga represented a trend towards the democratization of yoga insights and religion similar to the Bhakti movement . It eliminated the need for "either ascetic renunciation or priestly intermediaries, ritual paraphernalia and sectarian initiations". This led to its broad historic popularity in India. Later in
4060-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in
4200-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
4340-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of
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4480-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside
4620-542: The Dattātreyayogaśāstra , including five of its ten mudras . It then describes Markandeya's variety, adding yama and niyama to make up eight limbs of yoga . A verse in the Sharngadhara-paddhati states that the anthology includes 6300 verses. However, the now-extant part of the anthology contains only 4689 verses, divided into 163 sections (each called a paddhati ). The 18th century anthology Brihat-Sharngadhara-paddhati ( IAST : Bṛhat-Śārṅgadhara-paddhati )
4760-546: The Yogatattva Upanishad teaches a system that includes all aspects of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and all additional elements of Haṭha yoga practice. Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to
4900-551: The Bihar School of Yoga ; and Swami Satchidananda of Integral Yoga . The Bihar School of Yoga has been one of the largest Haṭha yoga teacher training centers in India but is little known in Europe and the Americas. Theos Casimir Bernard 's 1943 book Hatha Yoga: The Report of A Personal Experience provides an informative but fictionalised account of traditional Haṭha yoga as a spiritual path. Yoga as exercise , of
5040-460: The Buddha describes pressing the tongue against the palate for the purposes of controlling hunger or the mind, depending on the passage. However, there is no mention of the tongue being inserted further back into the nasopharynx as in true khecarī mudrā . The Buddha also used a posture where pressure is put on the perineum with the heel, similar to modern postures used to stimulate Kundalini . In
5180-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created
5320-672: The Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in
5460-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c. 350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c. late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in
5600-554: The Mahāsaccaka sutta ( MN 36), the Buddha mentions how physical practices such as various meditations on holding one's breath did not help him "attain to greater excellence in noble knowledge and insight which transcends the human condition." After trying these, he then sought another path to enlightenment . The term haṭha yoga was first used in the c. 3rd century Bodhisattvabhūmi , the phrase na haṭhayogena seemingly meaning only that
5740-701: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
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5880-532: The Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
6020-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
6160-530: The Yogabīja teach a yoga based on raising Kundalinī (through śakticālanī mudrā). This is not called haṭha yoga in these early texts, but Layayoga ("the yoga of dissolution"). However, other early Nāth texts like the Vivekamārtaṇḍa can be seen as co-opting the mudrās of haṭha yoga meant to preserve bindu. Then, in later Nāth as well as Śākta texts, the adoption of haṭha yoga is more developed, and focused solely on
6300-464: The bodhisattva would get his qualities "not by force". The earliest mentions of haṭha yoga as a specific set of techniques are from some seventeen Vajrayana Buddhist texts, mainly tantric works from the 8th century onwards. In Puṇḍarīka's c. 1030 Vimalaprabhā commentary on the Kālacakratantra , haṭha yoga is for the first time defined within the context of tantric sexual ritual: when
6440-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of
6580-881: The siddhis are symbolic references to the cherished soteriological goals of Indian religions. For example, the Vayu Siddhi or "conquest of the air" literally implies rising into the air as in levitation, but it likely has a symbolic meaning of "a state of consciousness into a vast ocean of space" or "voidness" ideas found respectively in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some traditions such as the Kaula tantric sect of Hinduism and Sahajiya tantric sect of Buddhism pursued more esoteric goals such as alchemy (Nagarjuna, Carpita), magic, kalavancana (cheating death) and parakayapravesa (entering another's body). Mallinson, however, disagrees and suggests that such fringe practices are far removed from
6720-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
6860-586: The "dominant soteriological method in scholarly religious discourse in India". The text lists 35 great yoga siddhas starting with Adi Natha (Hindu god Shiva) followed by Matsyendranath and Gorakshanath. It includes information about shatkarma (six acts of self purification), 15 asana (postures: seated, laying down, and non-seated), pranayama (breathing) and kumbhaka (breath retention), mudras (internalized energetic practices), meditation, chakras (centers of energy), kundalini , nadanusandhana (concentration on inner sound), and other topics. The text includes
7000-528: The "higher spiritual path of Raja yoga ". This common disdain by the officials and intellectuals slowed the study and adoption of Haṭha yoga. A well-known school of Haṭha yoga from the 20th century is the Divine Life Society founded by Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh (1887–1963) and his many disciples including, among others, Swami Vishnu-devananda – founder of International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres ; Swami Satyananda – of
7140-405: The 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi , comes from a tantric Buddhist milieu. The oldest texts to use the terminology of hatha are also Vajrayana Buddhist. Hindu hatha yoga texts appear from the 11th century onward. Some of the early hatha yoga texts (11th-13th c.) describe methods to raise and conserve bindu (vital force, that is, semen , and in women rajas – menstrual fluid). This was seen as
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#17327804339827280-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
7420-417: The 20th century, states Mallinson, this disconnect of Haṭha yoga from religious aspects and the democratic access of Haṭha yoga enabled it to spread worldwide. Between the 17th and 19th century, however, the various urban Hindu and Muslim elites and ruling classes viewed Yogis with derision. They were persecuted during the rule of Aurangzeb ; this ended a long period of religious tolerance that had defined
7560-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
7700-467: The Buddhist elements (such as the deity Chinnamasta which appears in the earliest manuscripts and was originally a Buddhist deity, only appearing in Hindu works after the 16th century). However, the earliest manuscript makes it clear that this text originated in a Vajrayana Buddhist milieu. The inscription at the end of one Amṛtasiddhi manuscript ascribes the text to Mādhavacandra or Avadhūtacandra and
7840-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on
7980-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with
8120-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of
8260-434: The Indian and Tibetan traditions, Haṭha yoga integrates ideas of ethics, diet, cleansing, pranayama (breathing exercises), meditation and a system for spiritual development of the yogi. The aims of Haṭha yoga in various Indian traditions have included physical siddhis (special powers, bodily benefits such as slowing age effects, magical powers) and spiritual liberation (moksha, mukti). According to Mikel Burley , some of
8400-476: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that
8540-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
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#17327804339828680-532: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around
8820-496: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support
8960-452: The Nath siddhas , and the important early ones (11th-13th c.) are credited to Matsyendranatha and his disciple, Gorakhnath or Gorakshanath (11th c.). Early Nāth works teach a yoga based on raising kuṇḍalinī through energy channels and chakras , called Layayoga ("the yoga of dissolution"). However, other early Nāth texts like the Vivekamārtaṇḍa can be seen as co-opting the hatha yoga mudrās. Later Nāth as well as Śākta texts adopt
9100-499: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of
9240-638: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
9380-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into
9520-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to
9660-881: The West were K. Pattabhi Jois famous for popularizing the vigorous Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga style, B. K. S. Iyengar who emphasized alignment and the use of props in Iyengar Yoga , and by Indra Devi and Krishnamacharya's son T. K. V. Desikachar . Krishnamacharya-linked schools have become widely known in the Western world. Examples of other branded forms of yoga, with some controversies, that make use of Haṭha yoga include Anusara Yoga , Bikram Yoga , Integral Yoga , Jivamukti Yoga , Kundalini Yoga , Kripalu Yoga , Kriya Yoga , Sivananda Yoga and Viniyoga . After about 1975, yoga has become increasingly popular globally, in both developed and developing countries. Haṭha yoga practice
9800-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
9940-475: The belief that these aerate and assist blood flow to targeted regions of the body. Before starting yoga practice, state the Haṭha yoga texts, the yogi must establish a suitable place. This is to be away from all distractions, preferably a mathika (hermitage) distant from falling rocks, fire and a damp shifting surface. Once a peaceful stable location has been chosen, the yogi begins the posture exercises called asanas . These postures come in numerous forms. For
10080-484: The best diet is one that is tasty, nutritious and likable as well as sufficient to meet the needs of one's body and for one's inner self. It recommends that one must "eat only when one feels hungry" and "neither overeat nor eat to completely fill one's stomach; rather leave a quarter portion empty and fill three quarters with quality food and fresh water". According to another text, the Goraksha Sataka , eating
10220-475: The best known collections of the subhashita -genre poems. It contains a description of Hatha Yoga . James Mallinson calls the text's analysis of yoga "somewhat confused", noting that it splits Hatha Yoga into two types, namely Gorakhnath 's and Markandeya 's, and then equates Hatha Yoga with Gorakhnath's six limbs of yoga, which are asana , pranayama , pratyahara , dharana , dhyana , and samadhi . The text then describes what these are with verses taken from
10360-622: The body and gaining most benefits from the practice of Haṭha yoga. Eating, states the Gheranda Samhita , is a form of a devotional act to the temple of body, as if one is expressing affection for the gods. Similarly, sections 3.20 and 5.25 of the Shiva Samhita includes mitahara as an essential part of a holistic Haṭha yoga practice. Verses 1.57 through 1.63 of the critical edition of Haṭha Yoga Pradipika suggests that taste cravings should not drive one's eating habits, rather
10500-531: The body involved and in the procedures required, as in Mula Bandha , Mahamudra , Viparita Karani , Khecarī mudrā , and Vajroli mudra . The Haṭha Yoga Pradipika text dedicates almost a third of its verses to meditation . Similarly, other major texts of Haṭha yoga such as the Shiva Samhita and the Gheranda Samhita discuss meditation. In all three texts, meditation is the ultimate goal of all
10640-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era
10780-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on
10920-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in
11060-601: The contradictory goals of raising Bindu, inherited from the Amritasiddhi , and of raising Kundalini, inherited from the Kubjikamatatantra . Post- Hathayogapradipika texts on Haṭha yoga include: According to Mallinson, Haṭha yoga has been a broad movement across the Indian traditions, openly available to anyone: Haṭha yoga, like other methods of yoga, can be practiced by all, regardless of sex, caste, class, or creed. Many texts explicitly state that it
11200-653: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting
11340-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and
11480-471: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in
11620-460: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes
11760-455: The earliest formulations, Haṭha yoga was a means to raise and preserve the bindu, believed to be one of the vital energies. The two early Haṭha yoga techniques to achieve this were inverted poses to trap the bindu using gravity, or mudras (yogic seals) to make breath flow into the centre channel and force bindu up. However, in later Haṭha yoga, the Kaula visualization of Kuṇḍalini rising through
11900-490: The early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in
12040-530: The exhalation and inhalation, the text states that three things move: air, prana and yogi's thoughts, and all three are intimately connected. It is kumbhaka where stillness and dissolution emerges. The text divides kumbhaka into two kinds: sahita (supported) and kevala (complete). Sahita kumbhaka is further sub-divided into two types: retention with inhalation, retention with exhalation. Each of these breath units are then combined in different permutations, time lengths, posture and targeted muscle exercises in
12180-548: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to
12320-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as
12460-470: The goals of bubhukshu (seeker of enjoyment, bhoga). Some Haṭha texts place major emphasis on mitahara , which means "measured diet" or "moderate eating". For example, sections 1.58 to 1.63 and 2.14 of the Haṭha Yoga Pradipika and sections 5.16 to 5.32 of the Gheranda Samhita discuss the importance of proper diet to the body. They link the food one eats and one's eating habits to balancing
12600-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in
12740-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with
12880-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as
13020-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It
13160-429: The latter's antiquity. However, this acknowledgment is essentially only in passing, as they offer no serious commentary or exposition of Patanjali's system. This suggests that Haṭha yoga developed as a branch of the more ancient yoga. According to P.V. Kane, Patanjali yoga concentrates more on the yoga of the mind, while Haṭha yoga focuses on body and health. Some Hindu texts do not recognize this distinction. For example,
13300-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and
13440-514: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
13580-568: The mainstream Yoga's goal as meditation–driven means to liberation in Indian religions. The majority of historic Haṭha yoga texts do not give any importance to siddhis . The mainstream practice considered the pursuit of magical powers as a distraction or hindrance to Haṭha yoga's ultimate aim of spiritual liberation, self-knowledge or release from rebirth that the Indian traditions call mukti or moksha . The goals of Haṭha yoga, in its earliest texts, were linked to mumukshu (seeker of liberation, moksha). The later texts added and experimented with
13720-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of
13860-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India
14000-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created
14140-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around
14280-545: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
14420-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as
14560-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for
14700-417: The peculiar exercises such as reversing seminal fluid flow. The most common list is called the shatkarmas , or six cleansing actions: dhauti (cleanse teeth and body), basti (cleanse rectum), neti (cleanse nasal passages), trataka (cleanse eyes), nauli (abdominal massage) and kapalabhati (cleanse phlegm). The actual procedure for cleansing varies by the Haṭha yoga text, some suggesting
14840-505: The physical essence of life that was constantly dripping down from the head and being lost. Two early hatha yoga techniques sought to either physically reverse this process of dripping by using gravity to trap the bindhu in inverted postures like viparītakaraṇī , or force bindu upwards through the central channel by directing the breath flow into the centre channel using mudras (yogic seals, not to be confused with hand mudras , which are gestures). Almost all hathayogic texts belong to
14980-403: The poets mentioned by Sharngadhara, such as Govinda-raja-deva, are otherwise unknown. Sharngadhara attributes several verses to more than one poets, and two verses to more than two poets. According to an analysis by H. D. Sharma (1937), the anthology mentions the names of 282 authors; another analysis by J. B. Chaudhuri (1941), counts 271 authors and 31 works. The Sharngadhara-paddhati is one of
15120-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and
15260-427: The posture and one's body position, breathes normally in pranayama , and is able to dwell in one's meditation ( anantasamapattibhyam ). The asanas vary significantly between Haṭha yoga texts, and some of the names are used for different poses. Most of the early asanas are inspired by nature, such as a form of union with symmetric, harmonious flowing shapes of animals, birds or plants. According to Mallinson, in
15400-417: The pot). In others, the term Kumbhaka or Prana-samrodha replaces Pranayama. Regardless of the nomenclature, proper breathing and the use of breathing techniques during a posture is a mainstay of Haṭha yoga. Its texts state that proper breathing exercises cleanse and balance the body. Pranayama is one of the core practices of Haṭha yoga, found in its major texts as one of the limbs regardless of whether
15540-416: The practices of hatha yoga mudras into a Saiva system, melding them with Layayoga methods, without mentioning bindu. These later texts promote a universalist yoga, available to all, "without the need for priestly intermediaries, ritual paraphernalia or sectarian initiations." In the 20th century, a development of hatha yoga focusing particularly on asanas (the physical postures) became popular throughout
15680-474: The preparatory cleansing, asanas, pranayama and other steps. The aim of this meditation is to realize Nada- Brahman , or the complete absorption and union with the Brahman through inner mystic sound. According to Guy Beck – a professor of Religious Studies known for his studies on Yoga and music, a Hatha yogi in this stage of practice seeks "inner union of physical opposites", into an inner state of samadhi that
15820-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes
15960-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view
16100-457: The raising of Kundalinī without mentioning bindu. Mallinson sees these later texts as promoting a universalist yoga, available to all, without the need to study the metaphysics of Samkhya-yoga or the complex esotericism of Shaiva Tantra. Instead this "democratization of yoga" led to the teaching of these techniques to all people, "without the need for priestly intermediaries, ritual paraphernalia or sectarian initiations." The Haṭhayogapradīpikā
16240-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly
16380-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,
16520-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with
16660-549: The rule of his predecessors beginning with Akbar, who famously studied with the yogis and other mystics. Haṭha yoga remained popular in rural India. Negative impression for the Hatha yogis continued during the British colonial rule era. According to Mark Singleton , this historical negativity and colonial antipathy likely motivated Swami Vivekananda to make an emphatic distinction between "merely physical exercises of Haṭha yoga" and
16800-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had
16940-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes
17080-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it
17220-570: The son of Damodara and the grandson of Raghavadeva, who was the royal preceptor of Hammirabhupati of Shakambhari. Hammirabhupati can be identified with the Chahamana king Hammiradeva , a descendant of the Shakambhari Chahamanas . Hammiradeva, along with his preceptor Raghavadeva, lived in the late 13th century, so it is conceivable that Raghavadeva's grandson Sharngadhara was alive in 1363. Another text titled Sharngadhara-Samhita
17360-564: The term; it is a tantric Buddhist work, and makes use of metaphors from alchemy . A manuscript states its date as 1160. The text teaches mahābandha , mahāmudrā , and mahāvedha which involve bodily postures and breath control, as a means to preserve amrta or bindu (vital energy) in the head (the "moon") from dripping down the central channel and being burned by the fire (the "sun") at the perineum. The text also attacks Vajrayana deity yoga as ineffective. According to Mallinson, later manuscripts and editions of this text have obscured or omitted
17500-519: The total number of limbs taught are four or more. It is the practice of consciously regulating breath (inhalation and exhalation), a concept shared with all schools of yoga. This is done in several ways, inhaling and then suspending exhalation for a period, exhaling and then suspending inhalation for a period, slowing the inhalation and exhalation, consciously changing the time/length of breath (deep, short breathing), combining these with certain focussed muscle exercises. Pranayama or proper breathing
17640-653: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but
17780-526: The type seen in the West, has been greatly influenced by Swami Kuvalayananda and his student Tirumalai Krishnamacharya , who taught from 1924 until his death in 1989. Both Kuvalayananda and Krishnamacharya combined asanas from Haṭha yoga with gymnastic exercises from the physical culture of the time, dropping most of its religious aspects, to develop a flowing style of physical yoga that placed little or no emphasis on Haṭha yoga's spiritual goals. Among Krishnamacharya's students prominent in popularizing yoga in
17920-468: The undying moment by restraining the bindu [i.e. semen] of the bodhicitta in the vajra [penis] when it is in the lotus of wisdom [vagina]. While the actual means of practice are not specified, the forcing of the breath into the central channel and the restraining of ejaculation are central features of later haṭha yoga practice texts. The c. 11th century Amṛtasiddhi is the earliest substantial text describing Haṭha yoga, though it does not use
18060-409: The undying moment does not arise because the breath is unrestrained [even] when the image is seen by means of withdrawal ( pratyahara ) and the other (auxiliaries of yoga, i.e. dhyana , pranayama , dharana , anusmrti and samadhi ), then, having forcefully ( hathena ) made the breath flow in the central channel through the practice of nada , which is about to be explained, [the yogi] should attain
18200-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines
18340-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit
18480-586: The world as a form of physical exercise . This modern form of yoga is now widely known simply as "yoga". According to the Indologist James Mallinson , some haṭha yoga style techniques practised only by ascetics can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Sanskrit epics (Hinduism) and the Pali canon (Buddhism). The Pali canon contains three passages in which
18620-502: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times
18760-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit
18900-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in
19040-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have
19180-738: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in
19320-454: Was constantly dripping down from the head and being lost. This vital essence is also sometimes called amrta (the nectar of immortality). These techniques sought to either physically reverse this process (by inverted postures like viparītakaraṇī ) or use the breath to force bindu upwards through the central channel . In contrast to these, early Nāth works like the Gorakṣaśataka and
19460-531: Was published in 1888. It is not a critical edition , although it is based on six different manuscripts. Peterson intended to publish a second volume with an introduction, various readings and notes, but this second volume was never published. German Indologist Theodor Aufrecht also edited 264 verses quoted in six other manuscripts, and authored a study titled Ueber die Paddhati von Çârñgadhara (1873). Hatha Yoga Traditional Hatha yoga ( / ˈ h ʌ t ə , ˈ h ɑː t ə / ; IAST : Haṭha-yoga )
19600-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as
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