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The body in early Hatha Yoga

by Ruth Westoby | 2024 | 112,229 words

This page relates ‘Vivekamartanda and Hatha Yoga� of study dealing with the body in Hatha Yoga Sanskrit texts.—This essay highlights how these texts describe physical practices for achieving liberation and bodily sovereignty with limited metaphysical understanding. Three bodily models are focused on: the ascetic model of ‘baking� in Yoga, conception and embryology, and Kundalini’s affective processes.

The վ첹ٲṇḍ and Haṭha Yoga

The twelfth-to thirteenth-century վ첹ٲṇḍ is attributed to Ҵǰṣaٳ in its colophons. Mallinson identifies a long recension in his forthcoming critical edition that he dates to the seventeenth-century. The վ첹ٲṇḍ does not use the term to characterise its yoga but does use the term to describe how ṇḍī opens the door to liberation (վ첹ٲṇḍ 35) and the drinking of nectar that has been forcefully () obtained from ṇa (վ첹ٲṇḍ 118).

The earliest known manuscript of the վ첹ٲṇḍ was copied in 1477 by a Jain ascetic in Rajasthan, south of Jodhpur, thus just a few years before the earliest known manuscript of the Ჹṻī辱 (dated 1497). There are more than 200 manuscripts of the վ첹ٲṇḍ under various names including Ҵǰṣaśٲ첹. The վ첹ٲṇḍ has between 171 and 201 verses although a late version attempts a 100-verse é, perhaps to accommodate the name in that context, the Ҵǰṣaśٲ첹. Mallinson differentiates the վ첹ٲṇḍ from the Ҵǰṣaśٲ첹, by which name it is also known, and I follow that differentiation here. He argues that the վ첹ٲṇḍ may have become known as the Ҵǰṣaśٲ첹 through confusion with that earlier text (2012:263).

Briggs included a 101-verse transcription in Ҵǰٳ and the Kānphaṭa ۴Dzī (1938). Kuvalyananda and Shukla published an edition of a different abbreviated recension in 1958. In 1976 Nowotny published an edition of the Ҵǰṣaśٲ첹 based on four seventeenthcentury manuscripts. Here verse references are to Mallinson’s forthcoming critical edition. I include the Sanskrit for the verses I reference from Mallinson’s edition in an appendix.

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