The relationship between modern yoga and premodern hatha yoga
This article is an essay I have written for my graduation in the Oxford Center for Hindu Study, Certificate History of Yoga (July 2019 session).
The modern yoga is the result from a radical overhaul of the tradition of haṭha yoga during the 18th and 19th c. The transoceanic transmission of yoga, in particular in the United States, have deeply rebranded the philosophical and spiritual background of haṭha yoga, which is today redefined as a system of heterogenous practices coming from, on one hand, the Vedanta philosophy and traditions that incorporated some of the techniques and terminology found in earlier Tantras, and on the other hand, the cultural appropriation of these practices by Westerners. This cultural appropriation has been leading to a misrepresentation of the huge complexity of the construction of yoga thorough the centuries, and what we have really inherited from this long evolution.
To discuss the relationship between modern yoga and premodern haṭha yoga, we will introduce our work with some general remarks about the evolution of yoga before and during the 18th c. (I). Then, we will examine the new definition of yoga in the 19th c. and the early 20th c. (II).
I. General remarks about the evolution of yoga before and during the 18th c.
Before analyzing the premodern yoga in the 18th c., a retrospective look of the late medieval period from the 15th c. to the 18th c is needed.
A. The variety of yogas practiced during the late medieval period (15th c.-18th c.)
The change of Indian society booted by the British conquest cannot be appreciated without reminding that the different forms of yoga practiced since the medieval period suffered from a lack of ‘unity’. It is not exaggerated to talk about the variety of yogas, in plural, to emphasize this complexity.
In the premodern period, the definition of haṭha yoga was not fixed : many texts considered haṭha yoga as the yoga of the « effort », the « forceful yoga ». At the opposite, the rāja yoga was considered as the most efficient form of yoga because of its effortless methods.
In the 15th c., the rivalry between haṭha yoga and rāja yoga was finally abandoned, in particular thanks to the Haṭhapradīpikā. This text proposes a synthesis of the techniques of haṭha yoga and develops different ‘modern’ elements such as the reference to cakra system and the introduction of complex breathing and cleansing techniques. The Haṭhapradīpikā molds haṭha yoga and rāja yoga as a complete system in which both methods are interdependent. According to this system, ‘without the practice of haṭha yoga, rāja yoga is unattainable, and without the attainment of rāja yoga, haṭha yoga remains fruitless’.
Alongside this essay of systematization of the practices of haṭha yoga, it is important to understand that haṭha yoga was not the only form of yoga to be practiced in the medieval period. Textual sources identified varied forms of practices ; rāja, lāya, karma, jñāna, mantra yoga, etc. would still have an important role during this period.
B. Yoga and the British conquest : the dangerous liaisons
As it has been demonstrated above, the British conquest took place in a complex background. At first, the main impact of the British colonization on yoga is that it would severely deteriorate its image.
Before the 19th c. when European explorers begin to understand the philosophic depth of yoga, most of the Westerners described in their travel stories the yogis and fakirs they met as degenerated people. Yoga was a kind of curiosity associated with transgression and the yogis were considered as a fringe group.
Yogis were also militaries : in the 18th c., Indian army recruited soldiers among armed ascetics. These people were operative since the 15th c. and were so powerful that they organized an insurrection against the British Government. This insurrection took place in 1769, when Bengal was under the double domination of the Iranian Nabab and the English East India Company. A starvation stalked the country. It was so terrible that thousands of men and women were forced to abandon their homes, to live off roots and grass, to sell their children and sometimes to eat human flesh. The victims of this disaster were estimated at one third of the Bengal population. This event is often called the Sannyasi Rebellion. The British administration responded in the 18th c. by banning wandering ascetics in Bengal and outlawing mendicancy.
These ascetic mercenaries were from different religious backgrounds. According to Mark Singleton, the first major religious group to organize militarily were the haṭha yoga practicing Nāths yogins. By considering this historical background, it is easily understandable that the haṭha yoga practitioners had a bad reputation during the period of the British colonization : perceived as a threat by the employees of the Company, the term ‘yogi’ designated the ascetic marauder but this connotation led to a confusion between violent ascetics and the ‘true’ practitioners of haṭha yoga.
Nevertheless, the British colonization is also the time of a slow rediscovery of traditional Indian culture. It has been initiated by the orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrook (1765-1837). This accomplished Sanskritist ‘discovered’ the Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra in 1823. He wrote the first major study on Indian philosophical schools. It was a three-part study and the first part was devoted to the philosophy of samkyha and yoga. So, he introduced the yogic philosophy to the Westerners. Although Colebrook was not particularly concerned about the Yoga-Sutra, he gave him account of them, in a very small number of pages - about six. His book was an opened door to the philosophy of yoga. Some historians consider that his work has permitted the break initiated by Swami Vivekānanda in the late 19th c.
A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language, H.T. Collebrooke, 1805
At the same time, some influential Indologists proposed a modern definition of haṭha yoga. As Jason Birch demonstrated, the sense of the term was based on their understanding of the root haṭh as referring to force or violence. For example,
The force or violence of Haṭhayoga was seen as the ‘self-violence’ of extreme asceticism, and so, in the St. Petersburg Wörter- buch, Haṭhayoga was defined as ‘a form of Yoga which includes great self-torturing’. In the same vein Monier-Williams […] confounded Haṭhayoga with various extreme practices of asceticism (tapas) that appear in the purāṇas, but not at all in the corpus of Haṭha texts used for this study.
To conclude, the stakeholders of the British colonization has mixed their phantasms and idealizations about Asia with an enhanced interest for the Indian culture, legitimated by their scholars analysis. In spite of this enhanced interest, the definition of haṭha yoga was significantly distorted. This lead to a misunderstanding of the content of the haṭha yoga and a misrepresentation of its reality in India.
II. A new vision of yoga during the 19th c. and the early 20th c. : the result of a cultural blending
As Mark Singleton notices in his book, the modern forms of yoga taught today give the primacy to āsana ‘as a system of health, fitness, and well-being’ and the tantric philosophy that underpins traditional expressions of haṭha yoga plays a ‘minor role in popular modern yoga’. This is the result of an important dialogue between traditional Indian culture and European culture imports in the last decades of the 19th c. and the early 20th c.
A. The emergence of ‘neo-hinduism’
One aspect of this dialogue is the emergence of the ‘neo-hinduism’ during the last part of the 19th c.‘Neo-hinduism’ or ‘neo-Vedanta’ designates the rebirth of cultural and religious basis of Hinduism by some figures of the Indian intelligentsia who have been educated in the western style. As example, the Bengali association Brahmo Samaj, created in 1828 by Rammohan Roy (1774-1833), rebranded hinduism as an universalist and rational religion and as a synthesis of traditional Indian religious culture and new knowledge brought by science, philosophy and comparative religions studies. Rammohan Roy was fascinated by Christian principles and wanted to build a pragmatic religion, the right basis for Indian society.
Keshubchandra Sen (1838-1884) had also an important role : he promoted the dialogue between neo-hinduism, occultism and Western esoterism. As Rammohan Roy did, Keshubchandra Sen spread a message of universalism and refused the sectarianism of religions :
Europe, I charge thee to be unsectarian. Asia first’s message to Western nation is - Put the sword of sectarianism adroitly into the sheath. […] It is the demon of sectarianism that estranges individuals and nations, splits God’s family.
Moreover, Keshubchandra Sen proposed a new vision of yoga as a mean to link up Asia and Europe. From these kind of revisionist initiatives emerge some modern forms of transnational yoga, incarnated by Swami Vivekānanda’s book Rāja Yoga (1896). According to Elizabeth de Michelis, his book is one of the most importants documents in history of transnational yoga, influenced by neo-hinduism, Brahmo Samaj’s movement and Ramakrisna’s ideas. The main elements of Rāja Yoga are the explanation of meditation and breathing techniques but the postures didn’t feature in this presentation. Vivekānanda excluded many facets of haṭha yoga and tantric practices. Rāja Yoga is an essential evidence of the transformation of haṭha yoga into an expurgated version that would reach its highest point with the influence of the physical culture.
B. The national physical culture in India
Another aspect of the dialogue between Indian and European cultures is the influence of European physical culture. During the 19th c., there was an unprecedented enthusiasm for athletic and gymnastic disciplines such as wrestling, martial arts, bodybuilding, Swedish exercices, … European people interest in the cultivation of the body : it was a way to regenerate the moral and physical mettle of the nation.
Due to the British colonisation of India, this enthusiasm took hold in British India. This eugenic compulsion, this ‘Muscular Christianity’, fitted well with the Indian nationalist movement : it was a strong argument against the image of effeminate Indian bodies. The nationalism movement included actually the pacifist ideas spread by Gandhi but also the ideas of virile yogic bodies as a site for building nationhood and fighting against the « foreign oppressor ». We mentioned in the first part of this essay the Sannyasi Rebellion. This event has been related by Bankim Chandra Chatterji in his book Ānandamaṭha, published in 1882. This book played an important role in the rise of the Indian nationalism.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee:
Bankim’s novel has often been interpreted as the assertion of a new religio-nationalist heroic identity for (Hindu) Indians, and therefore as a key factor in the creation of a belligerent modern nationalist consciousness.
Mark Singleton, Yoga Body
