138-739: The Yogashikha Upanishad ( Sanskrit : योगशिखा उपनिषत्, IAST : Yogaśikhā Upaniṣad) is a Sanskrit text and one of the minor Upanishads of Hinduism . It is one of twenty Yoga Upanishads in the four Vedas . Two versions of the Yogashikha Upanishad exist, one short that is attached to the Atharvaveda in some anthologies, and a long version which is often found attached to the Krishna Yajurveda in Telugu language anthologies. The long version consists of six chapters, and
276-489: A common body of practices, including Vedic elements. Yoga-like practices are mentioned in the Rigveda and a number of early Upanishads , but systematic yoga concepts emerge during the fifth and sixth centuries BCE in ancient India's ascetic and Śramaṇa movements, including Jainism and Buddhism. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali , the classical text on Hindu yoga, samkhya -based but influenced by Buddhism, dates to
414-631: A composite model in which a pre-Aryan yoga prototype existed in the pre-Vedic period and was refined during the Vedic period. According to Gavin D. Flood, the Upanishads differ fundamentally from the Vedic ritual tradition and indicate non-Vedic influences. However, the traditions may be connected: [T]his dichotomization is too simplistic, for continuities can undoubtedly be found between renunciation and vedic Brahmanism, while elements from non-Brahmanical, Sramana traditions also played an important part in
552-636: A day leads to liberation" in verse 8 of the short version. 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 the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from
690-423: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Yoga Traditional Yoga ( / ˈ j oʊ ɡ ə / ; Sanskrit : योग , Sanskrit pronunciation: [joːɡɐ] , lit. "yoke" or "union")
828-433: 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
966-591: 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
1104-658: 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
1242-454: 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
1380-479: 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
1518-546: 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
SECTION 10
#17327733847731656-578: 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
1794-486: 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
1932-578: A sequential growth from an Aryan genesis"; traditional Hinduism regards the Vedas as the source of all spiritual knowledge. Edwin Bryant wrote that authors who support Indigenous Aryanism also tend to support the linear model. The twentieth-century scholars Karel Werner , Thomas McEvilley , and Mircea Eliade believe that the central figure of the Pashupati seal is in a Mulabandhasana posture, and
2070-439: 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
2208-481: A specific tradition: According to Knut A. Jacobsen , yoga has five principal meanings: David Gordon White writes that yoga's core principles were more or less in place in the 5th century CE, and variations of the principles developed over time: According to White, the last principle relates to legendary goals of yoga practice; it differs from yoga's practical goals in South Asian thought and practice since
2346-600: Is a form of spiritual experience. The human body, metaphorically asserts the text, is the temple of Vishnu , as Brahman . It is incorrect to regard one's eternal Atman (self, soul) to be same as the temporal body. The Upanishad explains Brahma Granthi as the first knot of the Kundalini , being situated in the Muladhara chakra (the root chakra). Tantric texts are different from Yogashikha Upanishad, states Harish Johri, because they identify Brahma Granthi to be positioned in
2484-471: Is a group of physical , mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated in ancient India , aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as practiced in the Hindu , Jain , and Buddhist traditions. Yoga may have pre- Vedic origins, but is first attested in the early first millennium BCE. It developed as various traditions in the eastern Ganges basin drew from
2622-642: Is about forty times longer than the short version. The short version appears interspersed within the first chapter of the long version. The Yogashikha is an ancient text, states Mircea Eliade , who suggests a relative chronology. He dates it to the same period when the following Hindu texts were composed – Maitri Upanishad , the didactic parts of the Mahabharata , the chief Sannyasa Upanishads and along with other early Yoga Upanishads such as Brahmabindu, Brahmavidya, Tejobindu , Yogatattva , Nadabindu, Kshurika, Dhyanabindu and Amritabindu . These texts along with
2760-516: 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
2898-682: Is available in the Vedas themselves is scanty and indirect. Nevertheless the indirect evidence is strong enough not to allow any doubt about the existence of spiritually highly advanced wanderers. According to Whicher (1998), scholarship frequently fails to see the connection between the contemplative practices of the rishis and later yoga practices: "The proto-Yoga of the Vedic rishis is an early form of sacrificial mysticism and contains many elements characteristic of later Yoga that include: concentration, meditative observation, ascetic forms of practice ( tapas ), breath control practiced in conjunction with
SECTION 20
#17327733847733036-486: Is composed in poetic verse style. The chapter 1, the longest, includes a discussion of the role of yoga in achieving moksha , that is liberation while living ( Jivanmukta ), and contrasts it to Videhamukti (liberation in afterlife). The first chapter asserts Om to be Mula-Mantra (root mantra), and describes it to be part masculine Shiva and part feminine Shakti . It asserts that anger, greed and such psychological states to be defects that ultimately lead to sorrow, that
3174-413: Is derived from the root yuj, “to yoke,” probably because the early practice concentrated on restraining or “yoking in” the senses. Later the name was also seen as a metaphor for “linking” or “yoking to” God or the divine." Buswell and Lopez translate "yoga" as "'bond', 'restraint', and by extension "spiritual discipline." Flood refers to restraining the mind as yoking the mind. Yoga is a cognate of
3312-411: Is difficult to distinguish between the early Jain school and elements derived from other schools. Most of the other contemporary yoga systems alluded to in the Upanishads and some Buddhist texts have been lost. The Upanishads, composed in the late Vedic period , contain the first references to practices recognizable as classical yoga. The first known appearance of the word "yoga" in the modern sense
3450-452: 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
3588-500: Is in the Katha Upanishad (probably composed between the fifth and third centuries BCE), where it is defined as steady control of the senses which – with cessation of mental activity – leads to a supreme state. The Katha Upanishad integrates the monism of the early Upanishads with concepts of samkhya and yoga. It defines levels of existence by their proximity to one's innermost being . Yoga
3726-532: 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
3864-479: 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,
4002-589: 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
4140-606: Is upright, the breath is restrained and the mind is meditatively focused, preferably in a cave or a place that is simple and quiet. The Maitrayaniya Upanishad , probably composed later than the Katha and Shvetashvatara Upanishads but before the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali , mentions a sixfold yoga method: breath control, introspective withdrawal of the senses, meditation ( dhyana ), mental concentration , logic and reasoning , and spiritual union . In addition to discussions in
4278-472: Is viewed as a process of interiorization, or ascent of consciousness. The upanishad is the earliest literary work which highlights the fundamentals of yoga. According to White, The earliest extant systematic account of yoga and a bridge from the earlier Vedic uses of the term is found in the Hindu Katha Upanisad (Ku), a scripture dating from about the third century BCE ... [I]t describes
Yogashikha Upanishad - Misplaced Pages Continue
4416-540: 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
4554-673: The Satipatthana Sutta (the four foundations of mindfulness sutta) and the Anapanasati Sutta (the mindfulness of breathing sutta). The chronology of these yoga-related early Buddhist texts, like the ancient Hindu texts, is unclear. Early Buddhist sources such as the Majjhima Nikāya mention meditation; the Aṅguttara Nikāya describes jhāyins (meditators) who resemble early Hindu descriptions of muni ,
4692-703: The Atharvaveda and in the Brahmanas (the second layer of the Vedas, composed c. 1000–800 BCE). According to Flood, "The Samhitas [the mantras of the Vedas] contain some references ... to ascetics, namely the Munis or Keśins and the Vratyas." Werner wrote in 1977 that the Rigveda does not describe yoga, and there is little evidence of practices. The earliest description of "an outsider who does not belong to
4830-580: 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
4968-496: The English word "yoke," since both are derived from an Indo-European root. According to Mikel Burley , the first use of the root of the word "yoga" is in hymn 5.81.1 of the Rigveda , a dedication to the rising Sun-god, where it has been interpreted as "yoke" or "control". Pāṇini (4th c. BCE) wrote that the term yoga can be derived from either of two roots: yujir yoga (to yoke) or yuj samādhau ("to concentrate"). In
5106-613: 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
5244-471: The Katha Upanishad , dated to the fifth to first centuries BCE. Systematic yoga concepts begin to emerge in texts dating to c. 500–200 BCE, such as the early Buddhist texts , the middle Upanishads, and the Mahabharata 's Bhagavad Gita and Shanti Parva . According to Geoffrey Samuel , the "best evidence to date" suggests that yogic practices "developed in the same ascetic circles as
5382-699: 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
5520-531: 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
5658-442: The jnana yoga of Vedanta . While yoga is often conflated with the "classical yoga" of Patanjali's yoga sutras, Karen O'Brien-Kop notes that "classical yoga" is informed by, and includes, Buddhist yoga. Regarding Buddhist yoga, James Buswell in his Encyclopedia of Buddhism treats yoga in his entry on meditation, stating that the aim of meditation is to attain samadhi, which serves as the foundation for vipasyana , "discerning
Yogashikha Upanishad - Misplaced Pages Continue
5796-406: 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
5934-500: 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
6072-414: 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
6210-532: 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
6348-507: The Brahminic establishment" is found in the Keśin hymn 10.136, the Rigveda 's youngest book, which was codified around 1000 BCE. Werner wrote that there were ... individuals who were active outside the trend of Vedic mythological creativity and the Brahminic religious orthodoxy and therefore little evidence of their existence, practices and achievements has survived. And such evidence as
6486-547: The Buddha borrowed from the śramaṇa tradition. The Pāli Canon contains three passages in which the Buddha describes pressing the tongue against the palate to control hunger or the mind, depending on the passage. There is no mention of the tongue inserted into the nasopharynx , as in khecarī mudrā . The Buddha used a posture in which pressure is put on the perineum with the heel, similar to modern postures used to evoke Kundalini . Suttas which discuss yogic practice include
6624-425: 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
6762-591: The Colebrooke's version of 52 Upanishads, popular in north India, it is listed at number 22. The Narayana anthology, popular in South India, also includes this Upanishad at number 22 in Bibliothica Indica . In the collection of Upanishads under the title "Oupanekhat", put together by Sultan Mohammed Dara Shikhoh in 1656, consisting of a Persian translation of 50 Upanishads and who prefaced it as
6900-532: 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
7038-521: 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
SECTION 50
#17327733847737176-626: The Hath yoga literature such as the Yogabīja . Atman , Brahman There is no god higher than one's own Atman (soul), there is no worship higher than its investigation, there is no happiness higher than inner satisfaction. – Verses 2.20–2.21 The immediate cause of the phenomenal world is no other than the Brahman. Hence this phenomenal world in its entirety is the Brahman alone and nothing else. – Verses 4.3–4.4 — Yogashikha Upanishad The text
7314-476: 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
7452-519: 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
7590-508: The Kesin and meditating ascetics, but the meditation practices are not called "yoga" in these texts. The earliest known discussions of yoga in Buddhist literature, as understood in a modern context, are from the later Buddhist Yogācāra and Theravada schools. Jain meditation is a yoga system which predated the Buddhist school. Since Jain sources are later than Buddhist ones, however, it
7728-515: The Manipura Chakra which is the third chakra. The text, states Georg Feuerstein , suggests Yoga is a journey and recommends a steady spiritual practice with a Guru (teacher). The Upanishad calls one's Guru as the one who is a spiritual guide and one worthy of devotion, praising the Guru as Brahman, Vishnu, Achyuta, identical to one's Atman (soul), declaring that there is no one greater in
7866-532: 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
8004-496: 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
8142-683: The Principal Upanishads, the twenty Yoga Upanishads and related texts (such as Yoga Vasistha , composed between the sixth and 14th centuries CE) discuss yoga methods. Alexander the Great reached India in the 4th century BCE. In addition to his army, he brought Greek academics who wrote memoirs about its geography, people, and customs. One of Alexander's companions was Onesicritus (quoted in Book 15, Sections 63–65 by Strabo in his Geography ), who describes yogis. Onesicritus says that
8280-499: 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
8418-578: 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
SECTION 60
#17327733847738556-758: The Upanishads (composed during the late Vedic period ). Alexander Wynne agrees that formless, elemental meditation might have originated in the Upanishadic tradition. An early reference to meditation is made in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (c. 900 BCE), one of the Principal Upanishads . The Chandogya Upanishad (c. 800–700 BCE) describes the five vital energies ( prana ), and concepts of later yoga traditions (such as blood vessels and an internal sound) are also described in this upanishad. The practice of pranayama (focusing on
8694-447: 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
8832-451: 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
8970-661: The Yogashikha Upanishad, adds Eliade, were composed earlier than the ten or eleven later yogic Upanishads such as the Yoga-kundali, Varaha and Pashupatabrahma Upanishads. Gavin Flood dates this text, along with other Yoga Upanishads, to be probably from the 100 BCE to 300 CE period. Meditation The Unpracticed one will be pulled out of meditation by the senses, even if he forcefully tries to control them. — Yogashikha Upanishad Georg Feuerstein calls
9108-609: The Yogashikha Upanishad, as the "Crest of Yoga" and the "most comprehensive of the Yoga Upanishads". The ideas found in Yogashikha are shared in many Hatha Yoga texts such as those by Gorakhnath . Some manuscripts of the text are titled as Yoga-sikhopanisad (योगशिखोपनिषत्). It is listed at number 63 in the serial order of the Muktika enumerated by Rama to Hanuman in the modern era anthology of 108 Upanishads. In
9246-459: 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
9384-465: The analysis, understanding and cultivation of those altered states of awareness that lead one to the experience of spiritual liberation." Another classic understanding sees yoga as union or connection with the highest Self ( paramatman ), Brahman, or God, a "union, a linking of the individual to the divine." This definition is based on the devotionalism ( bhakti ) of the Bhagavad Gita, and
9522-545: The beginning of the Common Era in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools. James Mallinson disagrees with the inclusion of supernatural accomplishments, and suggests that such fringe practices are far removed from the mainstream Yoga's goal as meditation-driven means to liberation in Indian religions. A classic definition of yoga comes from Patanjali Yoga Sutras 1.2 and 1.3, which define yoga as "the stilling of
9660-410: The best book on religion, the Yogashika is listed at number 20 and is named Djog Sank'ha. According to Alain Daniélou, this Upanishad is one of the 12 Raja Yoga Upanishads, seven of which are attached to the Krishna Yajurveda and five to the Shukla Yajurveda . The text was influential on medieval Hindu literature such as in section 1.2 of the early 12th-century encyclopedic text Manasollasa , and
9798-399: The body for toil in order that his opinions may be strengthened", that "there is no shame in life on frugal fare", and that "the best place to inhabit is one with scantiest equipment or outfit". According to Charles Rockwell Lanman , these principles are significant in the history of yoga's spiritual side and may reflect the roots of "undisturbed calmness" and "mindfulness through balance" in
9936-518: The breath) is mentioned in hymn 1.5.23 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses) is mentioned in hymn 8.15 of Chandogya Upanishad. The Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana (probably before the 6th c. BCE) teaches breath control and repetition of a mantra . The 6th-c. BCE Taittiriya Upanishad defines yoga as the mastery of body and senses. According to Flood, "[T]he actual term yoga first appears in
10074-419: The broad array of definitions and usage in Indian religions, scholars have warned that yoga is hard, if not impossible, to define exactly. David Gordon White notes that "'Yoga' has a wider range of meanings than nearly any other word in the entire Sanskrit lexicon." In its broadest sense, yoga is a generic term for techniques aimed at controlling body and mind and attaining a soteriological goal as specified by
10212-440: 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
10350-527: 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
10488-614: 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
10626-567: The context of the Yoga Sutras , the root yuj samādhau (to concentrate) is considered the correct etymology by traditional commentators. In accordance with Pāṇini, Vyasa (who wrote the first commentary on the Yoga Sutras ) says that yoga means samadhi (concentration). Larson notes that in the Vyāsa Bhāsy the term "samadhi" refers to "all levels of mental life" (sārvabhauma), that is, "all possible states of awareness, whether ordinary or extraordinary." A person who practices yoga, or follows
10764-449: The cosmology and anthropology of a much older pre-Aryan upper class of northeastern India [Bihar] – being rooted in the same subsoil of archaic metaphysical speculation as Yoga, Sankhya , and Buddhism, the other non-Vedic Indian systems." More recently, Richard Gombrich and Geoffrey Samuel also argue that the śramaṇa movement originated in the non-Vedic eastern Ganges basin, specifically Greater Magadha . Thomas McEvilley favors
10902-653: 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
11040-467: 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
11178-554: The development of a number of yoga satellite traditions. It and other aspects of Indian philosophy came to the attention of the educated Western public during the mid-19th century. Heinrich Zimmer was an exponent of the synthesis model, arguing for non-Vedic eastern states of India . According to Zimmer, yoga is part of a non-Vedic system which includes the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy , Jainism and Buddhism : "[Jainism] does not derive from Brahman-Aryan sources, but reflects
11316-471: 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
11454-460: 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
11592-425: The early śramaṇa movements ( Buddhists , Jainas and Ajivikas ), probably in around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE." This occurred during India's second urbanisation period. According to Mallinson and Singleton, these traditions were the first to use mind-body techniques (known as Dhyāna and tapas ) but later described as yoga, to strive for liberation from the round of rebirth. Werner writes, "The Buddha
11730-464: The early Upanishads of the first half of the first millennium BCE, with expositions also appearing in Jain and Buddhist texts c. 500 – c. 200 BCE . Between 200 BCE and 500 CE, traditions of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophy were taking shape; teachings were collected as sutras , and a philosophical system of Patanjaliyogasastra began to emerge. The Middle Ages saw
11868-426: The early Vedic period and codified between c. 1200 and 900 BCE, contain references to yogic practices primarily related to ascetics outside, or on the fringes of Brahmanism . The earliest yoga-practices may have come from the Jain tradition at ca. 900 BCE. The Rigveda 's Nasadiya Sukta suggests an early Brahmanic contemplative tradition. Techniques for controlling breath and vital energies are mentioned in
12006-586: The early centuries of the Common Era . Hatha yoga texts began to emerge between the ninth and 11th centuries, originating in tantra . Yoga is practiced worldwide, but "yoga" in the Western world often entails a modern form of Hatha yoga and a posture-based physical fitness, stress-relief and relaxation technique , consisting largely of asanas ; this differs from traditional yoga, which focuses on meditation and release from worldly attachments. It
12144-548: 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
12282-438: The formation of the renunciate ideal. The ascetic traditions of the eastern Ganges plain are thought to drew from a common body of practices and philosophies, with proto-samkhya concepts of purusha and prakriti as a common denominator. According to Edward Fitzpatrick Crangle, Hindu researchers have favoured a linear theory which attempts "to interpret the origin and early development of Indian contemplative practices as
12420-412: 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
12558-537: 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
12696-536: The hierarchy of mind-body constituents—the senses, mind, intellect, etc.—that comprise the foundational categories of Sāmkhya philosophy, whose metaphysical system grounds the yoga of the Yogasutras, Bhagavad Gita, and other texts and schools (Ku3.10–11; 6.7–8). The hymns in book two of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (another late-first-millennium BCE text) describe a procedure in which the body
12834-431: 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
12972-486: 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
13110-432: 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
13248-589: The later works of Patanjali and Buddhaghosa . Nirodhayoga (yoga of cessation), an early form of yoga, is described in the Mokshadharma section of the 12th chapter ( Shanti Parva ) of the third-century BCE Mahabharata . Nirodhayoga emphasizes progressive withdrawal from empirical consciousness, including thoughts and sensations, until purusha (self) is realized. Terms such as vichara (subtle reflection) and viveka (discrimination) similar to Patanjali's terminology are used, but not described. Although
13386-412: 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
13524-514: 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 ,
13662-455: 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
13800-429: 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
13938-401: 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
14076-602: 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
14214-409: 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 ,
14352-465: The movements of the mind," and the recognition of Purusha, the witness-consciousness, as different from Prakriti, mind and matter. According to Larson, in the context of the Yoga Sutras , yoga has two meanings. The first meaning is yoga "as a general term to be translated as "disciplined meditation" that focuses on any of the many levels of ordinary awareness." In the second meaning yoga is "that specific system of thought (sāstra) that has for its focus
14490-435: 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 the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of
14628-545: 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,
14766-403: 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
14904-464: The origins of yoga. The linear model holds that yoga has Vedic origins (as reflected in Vedic texts), and influenced Buddhism. This model is mainly supported by Hindu scholars. According to the synthesis model, yoga is a synthesis of indigenous, non-Vedic practices with Vedic elements. This model is favoured in Western scholarship. The earliest yoga-practices may have appeared in the Jain tradition at ca. 900 BCE. Speculations about yoga are documented in
15042-431: 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
15180-523: The performance of the sacrifice " may be precursors of yoga. "The ecstatic practice of enigmatic longhaired muni in Rgveda 10.136 and the ascetic performance of the vratya-s in the Atharvaveda outside of or on the fringe of the Brahmanical ritual order, have probably contributed more to the ascetic practices of yoga." According to Bryant, practices recognizable as classical yoga first appear in
15318-529: 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 the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from
15456-414: 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
15594-439: 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
15732-480: 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
15870-434: The pure being is one who is beyond these, a state that can only be achieved through simultaneous pursuit of knowledge and yoga. The Telugu language anthology edition of Yogashikha Upanishad is notable for its discussion of Jnana- Yoga (path of knowledge). Chapters 1 and 5 of the text discuss six kinds of Yoga , Kundalini and five fires within a human body. It asserts that the awareness of Chakra with Hatha Yoga practice
16008-612: The real from the unreal," liberating insight into true reality. Buswell & Lopez state that "in Buddhism, [yoga is] a generic term for soteriological training or contemplative practice, including tantric practice." O'Brien-Kop further notes that "classical yoga" is not an independent category, but "was informed by the European colonialist project." There is no consensus on yoga's chronology or origins other than its development in ancient India. There are two broad theories explaining
16146-472: The recitation of sacred hymns during the ritual, the notion of self-sacrifice, impeccably accurate recitation of sacred words (prefiguring mantra-yoga ), mystical experience, and the engagement with a reality far greater than our psychological identity or the ego." Jacobsen wrote in 2018, "Bodily postures are closely related to the tradition of ( tapas ), ascetic practices in the Vedic tradition"; ascetic practices used by Vedic priests "in their preparations for
16284-609: 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
16422-497: 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,
16560-562: 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
16698-508: The roots of yoga are in the Indus Valley civilisation . This is rejected by more recent scholarship; for example, Geoffrey Samuel , Andrea R. Jain, and Wendy Doniger describe the identification as speculative; the meaning of the figure will remain unknown until Harappan script is deciphered, and the roots of yoga cannot be linked to the IVC. The Vedas , the only texts preserved from
16836-496: 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
16974-556: 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
17112-615: 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
17250-653: 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
17388-516: The universe than one's Guru. The verse 2.22 states that those who have faith in Ishvara and Guru will become great. The last chapter of the Upanishad emphasizes the importance of Dhyana (meditation) on the highest self, Hamsa and Om . The variation in the manuscripts suggest corruption of the text over time, states Deussen, such as the abrupt, non-metric addition of "reciting this text thrice
17526-408: 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
17664-564: 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
17802-403: The yoga philosophy with a high level of commitment, is called a yogi ; a female yogi may also be known as a yogini . The term " yoga " has been defined in different ways in Indian philosophical and religious traditions. "Yoga is skill in action" (2.50) "Know that which is called yoga to be separation from contact with suffering" (6.23) Due to its complicated historical development, and
17940-457: The yogis were aloof and adopted "different postures – standing or sitting or lying naked – and motionless". Onesicritus also mentions attempts by his colleague, Calanus , to meet them. Initially denied an audience, he was later invited because he was sent by a "king curious of wisdom and philosophy". Onesicritus and Calanus learn that the yogis consider life's best doctrines to "rid the spirit of not only pain, but also pleasure", that "man trains
18078-502: 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
18216-408: 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
18354-427: 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
18492-472: 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
18630-738: 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
18768-506: Was introduced by gurus from India after the success of Swami Vivekananda 's adaptation of yoga without asanas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Vivekananda introduced the Yoga Sutras to the West, and they became prominent after the 20th-century success of hatha yoga. The Sanskrit noun योग yoga is derived from the root yuj ( युज् ) "to attach, join, harness, yoke". According to Jones and Ryan, "The word yoga
18906-566: Was the founder of his [Yoga] system, even though, admittedly, he made use of some of the experiences he had previously gained under various Yoga teachers of his time." He notes: But it is only with Buddhism itself as expounded in the Pali Canon that we can speak about a systematic and comprehensive or even integral school of Yoga practice, which is thus the first and oldest to have been preserved for us in its entirety. Early Buddhist texts describe yogic and meditative practices, some of which
19044-442: 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
#772227