Yoga The Art of Transformation at Sackler Gallery

yoga
The Art of Transformation
YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 1
2 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION
Debra Diamond
yoga
The Art of Transformation

David Gordon White Tamara I. Sears Carl W. Ernst James Mallinson Joseph S. Alter Mark Singleton Sita Reddy
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY
Molly Emma Aitken Christopher Key Chapple Robert DeCaroli Jessica Farquhar B. N. Goswamy Navina Haidar Amy Landau Holly Shaffer Tom Vick
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Copyright 2013, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved. Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, October 19, 2013January 26, 2014. Organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the exhibition travels to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, February 22May 18, 2014, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 22September 7, 2014. On the cover: Vishnu Vishvarupa (detail), India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, ca. 18001820, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Mrs. Gerald Clark, IS.33-2006 (cat. 10b). Frontispiece details: Kedar Ragini, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978.540.2 (cat. 18e); Three Aspects of the Absolute, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2399 (cat. 4a); Jalandharnath at Jalore, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 4126 (g. 7, p. 74); Satcakranirupanacitram, Wellcome Library, P.B. Sanskrit 391 (cat. 25b); The Knots of the Subtle Body, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.27 (cat. 11a); Gaur Malhara Ragini, Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5523 (cat. 18i); Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon, Chester Beatty Library, In 65.7 (cat. 18h); Lakshman Das, Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins (cat. 20a); Kumbhaka, Chester Beatty Library, In 16.25a (cat. 9h); The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana, Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.8 (cat. 8c).
Cloth edition (ISBN 978-1-58834-459-5) distributed by Smithsonian Books and may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write: Smithsonian Books, Special Markets, P.O. Box 37012, MRC 513, Washington, DC 20013. Typeset in Locator and Eksja Designed by Studio A, Alexandria, Virginia Printed in Italy by Arti Grache Amilcare Pizzi Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Diamond, Debra. Yoga : the art of transformation / Debra Diamond ; with contributions by David Gordon White ... et al. p. cm. Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, October 19, 2013January 26, 2014. Organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the exhibition travels to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, February 22May 18, 2014, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 22 September 7, 2014. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-934686-26-6 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-58834-459-5 (hardback) 1. Yoga in artExhibitions. 2. Art, IndicThemes, motivesExhibitions. I. White, David Gordon. II. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution) III. Freer Gallery of Art. IV. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. V. Cleveland Museum of Art. VI. Title. N7301.D53 2013 709.54074753dc23 2013025537
t h e s m i t h s o n i a n s m us e u m s o f as i a n a rt
Sponsors
This publication is made possible with the generous support of:
Yoga: The Art of Transformation is organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution with support from:
Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Ebrahimi Family Foundation Catherine Glynn Benkaim Together Were One crowdfunding campaign
Media sponsor:

16 Foreword 18 Acknowledgments 20 21 23
Essays
Yoga: The Art of Transformation Debra Diamond Yoga in Transformation David Gordon White From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India Tamara I. Sears Muslim Interpreters of Yoga Carl W. Ernst Yogis in Mughal India James Mallinson Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness Joseph S. Alter Globalized Modern Yoga Mark Singleton
Contents

35
Map: Indian Subcontinent A Note on the Transliteration

47

59

69

85

95

106 114
Catalogue
PART ONE THE PATH OF YOGA
Manifestations of Shiva Portraying the Guru Nath Siddhas Jain Yoga: Nonviolence for Karmic Purication Yoga and Tapas: The Buddhists and Ajivikas
230 236 250 258 266 275 284
PART FOUR YOGA IN THE TRANSNATIONAL IMAGINATION, 18TH20TH CENTURY
Company Paintings Colonial Photography The Bed of Nails: The Exotic Across Borders and Media Fakirs, Fakers, and Magic
PART FIVE MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS
118 Yoginis 128 131 138
142 Austerities 146 Meditation 150 Asana 160 166 172 176 180
Vivekananda and Rational Spirituality Medical Yoga Modern Postural Yoga
The Cosmic Body The Subtle Body The Militant Ascetic Body Illusion and Reality in the Yoga Vasishta
PART TWO LANDSCAPES OF YOGA

293
Reference Material
Exhibition Checklist Endnotes to the Catalogue Selected Bibliography
301 Glossary 304 318
Ashram and Math The Cremation Ground

PART THREE YOGA IN THE INDIAN IMAGINATION, 16TH19TH CENTURY
190 Pilgrimage 196 202 214 223
320 Contributors 322 Credits 324 Index
Yogis in the Literary Imagination Transcendence and Desire in Ragamala Paintings Mughal Albums
Foreword
Yoga: The Art of Transformation invites wonder at Indias extraordinary artistic heritage. It also inaugurates a eld of scholarly inquiry. By examining yoga as an enduring practice that adapts to changes in place and time, this exhibition seeks to illuminate a central, though still imperfectly understood, facet of Indian culture. The scope of this project is ambitious, determined by the wealth of objectsranging from temple sculptures to medical textbooksthat manifest yogic constructs and the perceptions of its practitioners. These objects constitute a visual archive which offers abundant evidence that yoga is more than a philosophical school, a purely Hindu tradition, a spiritual science, or an exercise regimen. By bringing together radically disparate objects, The Art of Transformation prompts us to look beyond such calcied categories as wonder and resonance, high art and popular culture, indigenous and exogenous, authentic and exploited, and to consider how yoga unfolded in history. Let me invite you to contemplate two objects in the exhibition. One is a magnicent sculpture of the deity Bhairava from a thirteenth-century Hindu temple (cat. 1b), the other a garish early twentieth-century postcard that depicts a yogi on a portable bed of nails (cat. 22g). Although wildly dissimilar, both project yogic identities that were, when they were made, novel. The Bhairava, a masterpiece of carving from the Hoysala dynasty in the Karnataka, demonstrates one of the means through which orthodox Hinduism incorporated the transgressive teachings of Tantric yoga. The postcards photograph records a recently created performative practicethe aerial yoga, if you will, of its day. Produced by a Baptist missionary society, it was part of a ood of mass-produced images that identied yogis (and Hinduism and India) as superstitious and backward. It is a troubling artifact; however, the aspirations of yogis who posed on spiked beds and the role of mechanical reproduction in creating dubious stereotypes cannot be summarily ignored. They are part of yogas history. The Art of Transformation acknowledges the importance of yogas Hindu traditions, while being fully attentive to the disciplines multiple manifestations within diverse sectarian, religious, courtly, and popular settings. This broad approach sheds light on yogas core constructs and transformations over some two thousand years on the subcontinent, including its more recent emergence in the transnational arena. Today, yoga is universal. Deeply meaningful to Indians who cherish it as their legacy and to practitioners around the world who recognize its transformative potential, it also lies at the center of heated debates over authenticity and ownership. Shining light on yogas manifold visual expressions, the exhibition does not dene a singular yoga or determine authenticity. Rather, it aspires to enrich dialogue and inspire further learning about yogas profound traditions and enduring relevance.
To our great delight, the exhibition will travel to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Cleveland Museum of Art; I warmly acknowledge their directors, Jay Xu and David Franklin respectively, for this latest in a series of collaborations to expand the study and appreciation of Asian art in the United States. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generosity of lenders to Yoga: The Art of Transformation. Fionnuala Croke, director, and Elaine Wright, curator, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; David Franklin, director, and Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, curator, Cleveland Museum of Art; Maharaja Gaj Singh II and Kr. Karni Singh Jasol of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur-Marwar; and Martin Roth, director, and Rosemary Crill and Susan Stronge, curators, Victoria & Albert Museum, have been unstinting in their loans of key artworks. In Europe, we also thank Neil MacGregor, director, British Museum; Klaas Ruitenbeek, director, Museum fr Asiatische Kunst; Albert Lutz, director, Museum Rietberg Zrich; Mechtild Kronenberg, head of department, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Christoph Rauch, head of the Oriental department, Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin; and Ted Bianco, acting director, Wellcome Trust, London. In Australia, we acknowledge Tony Ellwood, director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Our American lenders are no less appreciated for being closer to home. We sincerely thank Atlantic Art Partners; James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; Graham W. J. Beal, director, president, and CEO, Detroit Institute of Art; Thomas P. Campell, director and CEO, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Malcolm Rogers, Ann Graham Gund Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Jake Homiak, director, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; Donald A. B. Lindberg, director, National Library of Medicine; Katie Luber, Kelso Director, San Antonio Museum of Art; Marianne Quinn, secretary, Vedanta Society of Northern California; Benjamin W. Rawles III, president, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Foundation and Alex Nyerges, director and CEO, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Julia MarciariAlexander, executive director, Walters Art Museum. The exhibition is also richer for the generosity of several extraordinary private collectors. We sincerely thank Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer, Robert J. Del Bont, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, Cynthia Hazen Polsky, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, and Dr. Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins. Neither the exhibition nor the catalogue could have been realized without the support of foundations, corporations, and individuals. We gratefully acknowledge H. E. Nirupama Rao, Indias ambassador to the United States and Smt. Chandresh Kumari Katoch, Indias minister of culture, for their assistance. A 2009 Scholarly Studies Grant from the Smithsonian enabled the scholarly colloquia that underlie the projects unprecedented cross-disciplinary focus. Mary and Fred Ebrahimi supported critical research and exhibition preparation over the following years. Art Mentor Lucerne Foundation and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund underwrote this publication, which we hope you will nd is a delight for both eyes and mind. Whole Foods Market, lululemon athletica, and Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer provided critical exhibition support. Media partner Yoga Journal and our Together Were One campaign and its Yoga Messengers were instrumental in raising public awareness. The seeds for this exhibition were planted, appropriately, when Debra Diamond, our associate curator of South and Southeast Asian art, was working on our exhibition in 2008, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Her scholarship, research, and passion for the material helped create an extraordinary aesthetic experience for multiple audiences. While Debra has led the charge, it is my pleasure to thank the entire staff of the Freer and Sackler. They combine the highest levels of expertise with a passionate commitment to the museums goals, and have been critical to this projects success. These are challenging times for many museums, ours included, and yet our staff have tackled this ambitious project with unparalleled creativity, demonstrating an equanimity and dedication worthy of true yogis. Julian Raby The Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art
FOREWORD | 17
Acknowledgments
If yoga is individual and embodied, personal bonds and communities have long been central to its transmission and relevance. Thus it is tting that Yoga: The Art of Transformation has been a deeply collaborative project. It has been my great fortune to have worked with superb scholars, teachers of yoga, and museum colleagues to shape the project and its presentation. I rst realized that visual culture had the potential to illuminate yogas historical manifestations during my dissertation research on Jodhpur paintings related to the Nath lineage, which led ultimately to the 20082009 exhibition Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. In 2008, the broader scope of Yoga: The Art of Transformation was hammered out in numerous conversations with Sita Reddy, who argued persuasively for juxtaposing high and popular art, and with Annapurna Garimella, who insisted that the exhibition should simultaneously represent the importance of perfecting the body and acting in the world. Two interdisciplinary colloquia in the summer of 2009 further contributed to the projects development. I am deeply grateful to Joseph S. Alter, Carl W. Ernst, Sita Reddy, Tamara I. Sears, Mark Singleton, and David Gordon White for their initial enthusiasm and continuing involvement as authors or advisors. James Mallinson, who joined the team in 2011, and David Gordon White were patient teachers who read and edited much of the text in this catalogue. I will never be able to adequately thank all the colleagues, teachers, and friends who have offered insights, corrected errors, graciously opened storerooms, or ooded my inbox with images and texts. However, I cannot fail to mention Vidya Dehejia, whose scholarship on yogini temples is an enduring inspiration, Milo Cleveland Beach, Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Allison Busch, Nachiket Chanchani, Christopher Key Chapple, Rosemary Crill, Barbara Croissant, William Dalrymple, Robert J. Del Bont, Janet Douglas, Stephen Eckerd, Jessica Farquhar, Swami Vidyadhishananda Giri, John Guy, Shaman Hatley, Carol Huh, Karni Singh Jasol, Padma Kaimal, Cathryn Keller, Dipti Khera, Angelika Mallinar, Daniel McGuire, Sheldon Pollock, Kenneth Robbins, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, John Seyller, Holly Shaffer, Maharaja Gaj Singh II, Sonika Soni, Stanley Staniski, Susan Stronge, Chandrika Tandon, Wheeler M. Thackston, and Elaine Wright. I have beneted enormously from conversations with all fteen catalogue authors and with Neil Greentree, my partner in all endeavors. Planning the exhibition tour with curators Qamar Adamjee and Forrest McGill at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and Sonya Quintanilla at the Cleveland Museum of Art was a joy. Durga Agarwal and Amanda Casgar
graciously opened doors to yoga communities, and Rajan Narayanan (Life in Yoga), Suhag Shukla (Hindu American Foundation), and Linda Lang, John Schumacher, and many other wonderful yoga teachers provided important guidance. It is an honor to work at the Freer and Sackler Galleries. The project is immeasurably better for the guidance of the museums director, Julian Raby, and Massumeh Farhad, chief curator. Editor Jane Lusaka, exhibition designers Jeremiah Gallay and Nancy Hacskaylo, and Elizabeth Cheng, Maya Foo, Katherine Fow, Miranda Gale, Andrew Harrington, Howard Kaplan, Nancy Micklewright, Allison Peck, Karen Sasaki, Joelle Seligson, and Hutomo Wicaksono continually bowled me over with their expertise, humor, and creative solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. The meticulous and intelligent assistance of Najiba Choudhury, Mekala Krishnan, and Elizabeth Stein kept me bouyant; thanks are also due to interns Shelby Allen, Madeleine Boucher, Bronwen Gulkis, and Carole LeRoy. Richard Skinner must be applauded for magically lit galleries, skillfully installed by Bill Bound and his production team, and I am grateful to Antonio Alcal and Carol Beehler for their splendid catalogue design. None of this would have been possible without the tireless fundraising efforts of Katie Ziglar, Jaap Otte, and Team Koringa; exhibition staff Cheryl Sobas and Kelly Swain; educators Elizabeth K. Eder and Michael Wilpers; and conservator Jennifer Bosworth. I also respectfully acknowledge those staff members who became more deeply engaged with the project by beginning or recommitting themselves to the practice of yoga. The affective bonds of yoga community became beautifully apparent while developingThe Art of Transformation. Critical research, study visits and exhibition planning were made possible by Mary and Fred Ebrahimi, Catherine Glynn Benkaim, and a Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Studies Grant. More than six hundred individualsboth old friends and new well-wisherscame together to support the exhibition. I warmly thank the Freer|Sackler Department of External Affairs, the Yoga Messengers of the Together Were One crowdfunding campaign, Ambassador Nirupama Rao, Robert Siegel, Susan Stamberg, Yoga Journal, and Yoga Alliance for helping to gather this community. Perhaps my only true insight studying yoga has been that we are all only ever students. Every discovery opens new vistas and raises more questions. And, given the current state of research, Yoga: The Art of Transformation does not seek to provide a denitive account of yogas visual culture. Much remains unknown. In the coming year, this emerging eld will be further explored in four university courses, conference panels, and a Freer|Sackler symposium, which promise to yield new insights, unexpected connections, and surprising discoveries. I await them, as we all do, with delight. Debra Diamond Associate Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 19
Indian Subcontinent
Afghanistan
Harwan Peshawar
Jammu and Kashmir
P U N JA B H I L L S ANCIENT GANDHAR A
Nurpur Lahore
Himachal Pradesh
Kangra Mandi Bilaspur Kedaranath
T I B E TA N P L AT E AU
Mount Kailash
Pakistan
I N D US R I V E R VA L L E Y
Haryana
R us ive r
Uttarakhand
Thaneshwar
Mankot
A
New Delhi
Ind
Bikaner Nagaur
Nepal
Uttar Pradesh
Gan ges Rive r
aR
Y A
Mohenjo-Daro
Rajasthan
Marwar
Mount Abu Jodhpur
Jaipur Batesara
Kannauj
Yam un
Sirohi Udaipur
Bundi Mewar Kota (Kotah)
ive
Thaneshwar Allahabad
Chunar Rewa (Gurgi)
Bihar
Bodhgaya
Madhya Pradesh
Bhadreshwar Sanchi
Bangladesh
Gujarat
India
Nagpur
West Bengal
Kolkata (Calcutta)
Maharashtra
Mumbai (Bombay) Lonavala (Lonavla)
D E C C A N P L AT E AU
Orissa
Arabian Sea
Bijapur Srisailam
Bay of Bengal
Karnataka
Andhra Pradesh
Chennai (Madras) Kanchipuram Salem
Tamil Nadu
la Kera
Kochi (Cochin)
Thanjavur
Sri Lanka
Indian Ocean
A Note on Transliteration
Within the essays and entries, we transliterated Sanskrit, Persian, and Indian regional language words according to standard diacritical conventions. For maximum comprehension, we retained standard or phonetic spellings for words that are familiar to many readers (e.g., chakra instead of cakra), and employed English sufxes (e.g., sutras, tantric) and commonly accepted English spellings for both contemporary and historical places. However, we have retained the historical names of cities for published books and prints. Within the footnotes, we used diacritics that will enable interested readers to most easily locate primary sources and scholarly texts.
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLITERATION | 21
22 | ESSAYS
Yoga emerged in India as a means to transcend suffering. Over generations, countless individuals seeking enlightenment or empowerment rened its metaphysics and techniques. Today, it is widely recognized around the world as a source of health and spiritual insight. But few outside scholarly and advanced practitioner circles are familiar with yogas rich, protean diversityits varied meanings for both practitioners and those who encountered and interacted with themover the last 2,500 years. This narrowing of yogas breadth lies partly in the malleability of the term, for every group in every age redened yoga and reshaped its means and goals.1 Our rmest evidence for yogas origins lie in North India. Between the fth and the third centuries BCE, self-aware renouncers realized that their bodies and minds contained the potential to perceive reality correctly and rise above the suffering of existence. Known as shramanas, munis, and yatis, they radically reshaped their relationship with ordinary life to devote themselves to meditation and austerities.2 Over time, practitioners of yoga built upon this foundation, incrementally honing the techniques of physical and metaphysical transformation. They not only drew upon their own insights, they also responded to philosophical developments and the changing social, religious, and political landscapes of India. By the seventh century CE, the core concepts, practices, and vocabulary of almost every yoga system were established, though variations and expansions continue to the present day.3 Like a rope composed of many different threadssome of which are present at any given moment, but none of which are always thereyogas history has been one of continual modications and transformations. Treatises and commentaries written between the third century BCE and the present day offer a coherent overview of yogas philosophical depth and developments. In contrast, objects and images foreground how yoga, despite the inherently individual experience at its core, has always been embedded in culture.4 Made by professional artists working for sectarian groups, royal and lay patrons, or within commercial networks, these artworks are situated at the interface of yogic knowledge with received visual traditions and the interests of diverse communities.5 Yoga: The Art of Transformation considers what visual culture can tell us both about yoga as an embodied process of transformation and its varied manifestations in history. This dual focus recognizes that perfecting the mind-body and being an agent in the world were (and are) simultaneous and intertwined activities.6 The project thus examines works that illuminate, in historically
Debra Diamond
YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 23
Yoga: The Art of Transformation
specic ways, yogic concepts, practices, and social interactions as well as their circulation within the popular imagination. Although the visual corpus of yoga potentially extends across Asia and the world, Yoga: The Art of Transformation focuses on Indias wonderfully abundant archive. Created over some two millennia in diverse religious and secular contexts, these works open windows onto yogas centrality within Indian culture and religion, its philosophical depth, its multiple political and historical expressions, and its trans-sectarian and transnational adaptations. The pictorial tradition, which has never been holistically explored, reveals that yoga was not a unied construct or the domain of any single religion, but rather decentralized and plural. While most objects emerged out of Hindu contexts or depict Hindu practitioners, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, and Su images illuminate patterns of trans-sectarian sharing. Illustrated philosophical treatises and diagrams convey various conceptions of the yogic body. Representations of divinized gurus, erce yoginis, militant ascetics, and romantic heroes epitomize the uidity of yogic identity across sacred and secular boundaries and elucidate patterns of interaction between renunciants (or renouncers) and householders. Photographs, missionary postcards, magic posters, medical illustrations, iconographic manuals, and early lms shed light on the enormous shifts in yogic identity and reception during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Widely circulated, these printed materials chart the transnational denigration of yoga during the colonial period and its response, the creation of modern yoga in India.
Fig. 1 Enlightened beings oat in a sea of gold in Three Aspects of the Absolute, folio 1 from the Nath Charit. By Bulaki, 1823. India, Jodhpur. Merhangarh Museum Trusta
Signicant aspects of yoga were too transgressive or internalized to have found their way into visual form, and not all visual traditions survived the passage of time.7 With 143 objects (and fty illustrations in the essays)a pond in the ocean of yogas visual culturethis exhibition catalogue cannot claim to be comprehensive. Instead, it seeks to enrich our understanding of yogas plural congurations by examining key constructs, the mechanisms through which yoga became deeply and diversely engrained within Indian culture, and the contexts within which the modern practice emerged.
Melting, Expansion, and Radiance

If Yoga: The Art of Transformation seeks to uncover histories of yoga and how they evolved dynamically in response to religious and sociopolitical landscapes, it is also designed to allow for direct encounters with splendid works of art. Its focus on sculptures and paintings that invite aesthetic delectation has particular relevance. One of Indias greatest philosophers, Abhinavagupta, wrote in the tenth century that sensitive viewersthose who can literally taste the essence (rasa) of artexperience an aesthetic pleasure akin to the bliss of expanded consciousness.8 Abhinavaguptas rasa theory is steeped in Kashmiri Shaivism, which itself draws on two intellectual traditions central to yogas development: Advaita Vedanta, in which the ultimate goal is
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Fig. 2 (left) Jina. India, Rajasthan, dated 1160. Virginia Museum of Fine Artsb
Fig. 3 (above right) Meditating Sikh Ascetic. India, Jammu and Kashmir, probably Mankot, ca. 1730. Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
Fig. 4 (bottom) Siddha Pratima Yantra (detail). Western India, 1333. Freer Gallery of Artc
26 | DEBRA DIAMOND
to experience the unity of the self with the Absolute (brahman), and Tantra, which prescribes rituals for attaining this luminous awareness. In describing a spectators response to drama, Abhinavagupta observed that a viewer with emotional capacity (sahridaya, literally, one with heart) loses sense of time, place, and self. Thus transcending the limitations of ego-bound perception, the sensitive viewer has a foretaste of enlightened detachment, which takes the form of melting, expansion, and radiance.9
Representing the Yogic Body

Reecting the importance of the body in yoga as well as the centrality of the gure in Indian art, yogic representations center largely on the human form.10 Premodern yoga treatises, such as the fteenthcentury Light on Hatha (Hathapradipika), describe the yogic body as steady, healthy, and supple.11 Vidya Dehejia has observed that the ideal of the yogic body is visibly evident in all Indian sculptures in their smooth non-muscular torsos, expanded chest and shoulders, and relaxed stomachs.12 Artists treatises contain no specic guidelines for representing the yogic body, but we nd that sculpted deities, enlightened beings, and yogic masterseven those who have undergone severe austeritiestypically have healthy and idealized bodies that convey their attainment.13 In contrast, only the fasting Buddha, a few erce goddesses, and some human practitioners have attenuated limbs bearing traces of self-mortication. If classical Indian aesthetic theory, of which Abhinavagupta is the most inuential author, did not explicitly address visual art, it did establish a horizon of expectations among cultured audiences that permits some general observations. Melting, expansion, and radiance are almost uncannily represented in artworks made in vastly different periods, places, and materials, such as a folio from a Jodhpur manuscript that depicts enlightened beings oating in shimmering elds of gold (g. 1, cat. 4a). Philosophers focused on the aesthetic emotion of quiescence (shanta rasa) frequently note that the presence of meditating ascetics (i.e., in dramatic performances or literary compositions) will trigger the emotional response of luminous detachment. And all treatises agree that aesthetic emotion arises only when characters conform to generalized types, an imperative seemingly echoed in the smoothly idealized bodies of innumerable Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain icons. In the Jain tradition, for example, Jinas (great liberated souls) are invariably represented meditating to convey how they attained omniscience and provide a model for devotees.14 Through rigorous symmetry and rhythmically abstracted forms, a twelfth-century Jina from western India simultaneously embodies the complete cessation of the minds uctuations and alert energy (g. 2, cat. 5d). The warmly radiant marble evokes the luminosity that imbues the realized body of a Jina; its whiteness signies a soul unfettered by karma. Like the marble Jina, a Sikh yogi (or Udasi) meditates in lotus posture (padmasana) with his eyes raised in inward concentration (g. 3 and page 24). To depict the Udasi and the intensity of his practice, the artist mobilized the aring forms, crisp contours, and bold palette of eighteenth-century paintings from Mankot, a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills of northwest India, accentuating the centered stability and upward energy of the ascetics posture by echoing its form in the curved shape of the reed hut. Other images convey more specic conceptions of the yogic body. Many reveal how Hindu yogis marked their physical bodies to purify and prepare themselves for practice and to signal their status as renunciants, signify their sectarian afliation, or emulate divine archetypes (especially Shiva and Bhairava; see cats. 1ac). Representations of the subtle body delineate the energy stations (chakras) that are crucial knowledge for hatha yoga practitioners, while juxtapositions of subtle and anatomical bodies chart yogas insertion into Western medical discourse (see cats. 12ac and 25b). Advanced Jain practitioners (siddhas) who had achieved disembodied liberation were sometimes represented as an absent presence, perceptible only as the negative space cut from a sheet of copper (g. 4,
cat. 5e).In even more abstract ways, geometric diagrams (yantras) and sacred syllables (mantras) visually invoked in countless images of yogis holding prayer beadsare powerful equivalents of divine bodies (gs. 3 and 7; see also cat. 9b). Indeed, so central was the construct and transformative potential of the body that many yogic traditions conceptualized higher planes of existence or the entirety of the universe as bodies (see cats. 11bd).
Identifying Yogic Practitioners

The porous boundaries between practitioners of yoga and other ascetics, as well as the myriad names by which they were historically known, begs an explanation of how they were identied and the terminology employed within this book. We use ascetic for representations made prior to the second- to the fourth-century watershed, when yoga began to crystallize into distinctive traditions, each with its own rigorous metaphysics. Among the earliest images of ascetics are those found at Buddhist sites, such as the relief from the Great Stupa (reliquary mound) at Sanchi, circa 5025 BCE (g. 5). It depicts two renunciantsone with a yoga strap (yogapatta) around his kneesseated in front of their leaf-capped huts. Although the narrative context of the panel is unknown, the forest retreat and the ascetics scanty garb distinguish them from the robed Buddhist monks who appear in other Sanchi reliefs. They would have been understood as renunciants who sought release from the cycle of rebirth through meditation and austerities. Favoring caution, we also use ascetic or sage for individuals whose practice most probably included yoga and for legendary gures who were re-identied as yoga practitioners in later historical contexts. An eighteenth-century painting from Mankot, a kingdom in the Pahari foothills of northwest India, demonstrates how yogas transformative potential shaped already established identities. It represents the seven sages (saptarishi) extolled within Hindu sources as the authors of the Vedas and the stars in the Big Dipper (g. 6).15 Because they were popularly believed to have attained their semidivine status through exceptional devotion and extraordinary ascetic feats, it is not surprising that the Mankot artist represented them by drawing upon the appearances of local holy men. Clustered around a smoldering campre, the lotus-eyed sages constitute a localized and historically contingent typology of ascetic practice that includes an orthodox Hindu wearing a sacred thread and resting his outstretched arm on a ritual vessel (Vasishta, center right) and a dusky practitioner of hatha yoga inverted in a headstand (Bharadvaja, bottom register).16 Though hatha yoga took form long after the sages became legend, the painting reveals the extent to which transcendence-seeking ascetics existed together in the Mankot collective consciousness as members of allied traditions. Yogi rst appears between the second and fourth centuries as a term for Hindu ascetics seeking omniscience through the cultivation of body and mind. Later historical sources also generally identify renunciants who may or may not practice the techniques commonly understood to constitute yoga as yogis. We therefore use yogi to designate gures with the long, matted jata (dreadlocks) and ash-covered bodies of Hindu ascetics, such as those who cluster around a campre in a genre scene painted circa 1625 for a Mughal emperor (g. 9). Govardhan, who excelled in the naturalistic style favored by the Mughal court at this time, depicted them as renunciants who live apart from society yet have communal bonds, following a path that includes meditating in lotus posture and reciting sacred verses (one holds prayer beads). Two superb character studiesthe holy man cocooned in long jata who gazes gently into the distance and the
Fig. 5 Great Stupa at Sanchi. India, Madhya Pradesh, Sanchi, ca. 5025 BCEd Fig. 6 The Seven Great Sages. Attributed to the Master at the Court of Mankot. India, Jammu and Kashmir, Mankot, 16751700. Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarhe
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Fig. 7 Yogini. India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchipuram, ca. 900975. Arthur M. Sackler Galleryf Fig. 8 Koringa. Reco Brothers Circus poster, England, 1946. Collection of Mark Copland/The Insect Circus
one at left who glares ercely at usconvey how yogis were understood, in this period, as both spiritual gures and beings with the potential for destructive displays of supernatural power. Govardhans holy men may have self-identied with any number of general terms for Hindu renouncers, including yogi. Throughout the catalogue, we apply more specic designations when they are known or more appropriate. These other appellations refer to ascetics associated with particular religious traditions (e.g., Hindu sadhus or Muslim fakirs) or indicate gendered identities (e.g., female sadhvis and yoginis), sectarian afliations (e.g., Nath or Dasnami), or levels of accomplishment (e.g., guru, teacher, or siddha, literally, perfected one). Many of these terms were used interchangeably and over time, almost all gained multiple and even contradictory meanings. The valence of yogi ranged from positive to derogatory and from general to specic (e.g., when it became a term of self-identication for members of the Nath sectarian order). Moreover, yogi and fakir were often transposed in Indo-Islamic and colonial contexts.17 Both mortal women and goddesses associated with yoga were often known as yoginis, a term that conveyed different meanings in diverse sociohistorical contexts. Yoginis emerged around the eighth century within esoteric, often transgressive, rites as the human consorts of Tantric practitioners. The construction of stone yogini temples across the subcontinent between the tenth and fourteenth centuries marked their reinscription as goddesses. Sponsored by kings who sought yoginis powers to protect their kingdoms, the Hindu temples were often situated to invite the visits of both Tantric adepts and broader communities. Inside were stone icons with the idealized bodies and frontal faces of Hindu deities. Their attributeslike the skull cup, snake and crocodile earrings, and wildly radiating hair of the yogini from Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu (g. 7, cat. 3a)marked them as dangerous. Based upon the icons material form and scattered texts, art historians have long identied them as erce goddesses.18 Recently discovered treatises about the temples, which describe Tantric adepts serving as ritual ofciants and devotees offering food and owers (as they would within orthodox temples), conrm the yoginis divine identities.19 Combining aspects of Tantric and mainstream Hindu practice in unprecedented fashion,20 the temples demonstrate how material culture can shape (rather than merely illustrate) traditions. New meanings of yogini arose as yoga entered other courtly and commercial arenas. Paintings from the Bijapur Sultanate (in Central India) that were made in the decades bracketing 1600 are among the copious evidence that Indo-Islamic rulers propitiated yoginis21 (cats. 3b, 3c). Four centuries later, Koringa, a magicienne billed as the only female yogi in the world, astonished audiences in France, England, and the United States by wrestling crocodiles and reading minds (g. 8; see also cats. 23b, 23c). Born Rene Bernard in southern France, she assumed an Indian identity to enhance the allure of her act. Her untamed hair, seated posture, and bare torso uncannily recall the iconography of the Sackler Gallery yogini.22 Whether Koringa saw any of the Kanchipuram sculptures when they were taken to C. T. Loos gallery in Paris in 1927,23 or whether she picked upon on exotic signiers that had oated freely across Europe since the mid-nineteenth century is unknown.24 Though Koringa was no yogini, her assumed identity is signicant to yogas history, because it was partly against such stereotypes that modern yoga delineated its core traditions.
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Essays and Catalogue Entries

Written by scholars from the elds of art history, philology, religion, and sociology, the essays and catalogue entries in this book constitute an interdisciplinary conversation about the visual culture of yoga. The inevitable differences in emphases, terminology, and periodization provide insight into the diverse scholarly histories and primary sources that contribute to our rapidly evolving knowledge of yoga. The essays provide deeper contexts for objects that are central to yogas visual culture. To broadly orient readers, David Gordon Whites introductory essay assesses yogas origins, lays out the continuities and differences between classical and Tantric traditions, and demonstrates how contemporary denitions of yoga have been colored by negative perceptions from centuries ago. The subsequent essays are in rough chronological order. Tamara I. Sears explores the porous boundary between yogic adept and deity by examining the ideal and real places in which yoga was practiced; her study illuminates how medieval Indian imagery and architecture were fundamental in transforming Hindu aspirants into divinities. Carl W. Ernst traces the rich but lesser known engagement of Muslim thinkers with yoga and elucidates important intellectual and practical spheres in which signicant aspects of yogas visual culture emerged after the sixteenth century. The development of todays most important sectarian orders is assessed by James Mallinson, whose essay combines philological, visual, and ethnographic analysis for new insights into Mughal painting and yogas histories. Joseph S. Alter sheds light on yogas transformation into an Indian system of physical tness and self-development by examining how Swami Kuvalayananda and other key gures navigated tradition, modernity, and nationalist aspirations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mark Singleton provides a case study in the globalization of yoga. Surveying the United States over the last century and a half, he examines the countercultural, glamorous, and commercial contexts through which yoga became deeply rooted within American culture. Following the essays, thematically grouped catalogue entries explore key yogic practices, identities, and perceptions that entered the visual record. Some entries focus on tightly related groups, such as Jain images or medical illustrations. Other entries extend across temporal, regional, and religious boundaries in order to more fully elucidate yogic concepts and historically situate differences. Respecting yogas protean manifestations, the authors have paid particular attention to strategies of translation (across practice, text, and image); moments of cross-cultural contact or innovation; patronage imperatives; and arenas of reception. They give equal consideration to formal qualities and materiality to illuminate the distinctive languages and communicative power of visual culture. It is our hope that the juxtaposition of image and text throughout the catalogue will contribute to the readers experience of chamatkara, the astonishment or wonder that Abhinavagupta identied as common to both aesthetic experience and enlightenment.25
Fig. 9 Five Holy Men, folio from the Saint Petersburg Album. Attributed to Govardhan. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 162530. Formerly collection of Stuart Cary Welch, current location unknowng
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Notes
Notes on the captions

a. Selected publications include Debra Diamond, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), pp. 17475, cat. 40. b. Selected publications include Joseph Dye, The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2001), pp. 15253, cat. 31; and Michael Brand, The Vision of Kings: Art and Experience in India (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1995), p. 76, cat. 50. c. Selected publications include Pratapaditya Pal, The Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994), p. 124, cat. 14. d. This image has been identied by John Huntington (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ Indo-Eurasian\_research/message/7621). e. Selected publications include B. N. Goswamy, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1992), pp. 1067, cat. 40. f. Selected publications include An Exhibition of the Sculpture of Greater India (New York: C. T. Loo and Co., 1942), cat. 38; Vidya Dehejia, Yogini Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition (New Delhi: National Museum, 1986), p. 181; Padma Kaimal, Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis, ed. Martha Ann Selby, Asia Past and Present (Ann Arbor: Association of Asian Studies, 2012), p. 29, g. 2. g. Selected publications include The Stuart Cary Welch Collection. Part One: Arts of the Islamic World (London: Sothebys, April 6, 2011), pp. 11415, cat. 94; Stuart Cary Welch, A Flower from Every Meadow: Indian Paintings from American Collections (New York: Asia Society, 1973), pp. 1045; Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 16001660 (Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1978), pp. 12021, cat. 41.
6. I am grateful to Annapurna Garimella for rst suggesting this dual focus. 7. Tantric treatises from the seventh to the ninth century, for example, describe antinomian practices restricted to initiated adepts; some of these Tantric rituals required supports (such as geometric diagrams, or yantras) but they were made from ephemeral materials. And the material culture of Buddhist yogic practice in India, which may have been substantial, did not survive the passage of time. 8. Locana 2.4: This enjoyment is like the bliss that comes from realizing [ones identity] with the highest Brahman, for it consists of repose in the bliss which is the true nature of ones own self in Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and M. V. Patwardhan, The Dhvanyaloka of nandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 222. 9. Ibid. Locana 2.4 in Ingalls, Masson, and Patwardhan, The Dhvanyaloka of nandavardhana, p. 222. 10. For the idealized and adorned human body across visual art, literature, inscriptions, and poetry see Vidya Dehejia, The Body Adorned: Dissolving Boundaries Between Sacred and Profance in Indias Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 11. Hahapradpik 1.17 lists the qualities of sthairyam, rogya (literally, freedom from disease), and agalghanam (literally, lightness of limb). 12. Vidya Dehejia and Daryl Yauner Harnisch, Yoga as a Key to Understanding the Sculpted Body, in Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian Art, ed. Vidya Dehejia (New Delhi: Kali for Women in association with The Book Review Literary Trust), pp. 6881. Dehejia builds upon Stella Kramrischs pioneering work on the Indian sculptural aesthetic as a manifestation of a cultural ethos in which yoga was central. Kramrisch rst suggested that the controlled breathing (pryma), which dissolved the gross body into the weightless subtle body was given concrete shape by art, in planes and lines of balances stresses and continuous movement (p. 75). Dehejia, however, more specically assesses yogic postures in sculpture. 13. Michael W. Meister, Art and Hindu asceticism: iva and Vishnu as masters of Yoga, Art and Archaeology of Southeast Asia: Recent Perspectives (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts and Aryan Books, 1996), p. 315. 14. Sonya Quintanilla, History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, Ca. 150 BCE100 CE (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 97141. 15. The seven sages, all sons of Brahm is inscribed on top border in takri characters; their names appear on the recto. From the upper middle, clockwise, they are: Jamadagni, Gautama, Vasiha, Atri, Bharadvja, Kayapa, and Vivmitra. B. N. Goswamy and Erberhard Fischer, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of India, Artibus Asiae Supplementus 38, cat. 40, pp. 1067.
16. More precisely, he appears to be a Dasnmi Sannyasi; for Dasnmi iconography, see James Mallinsons essay in this volume. 17. See David Gordon Whites essay in this volume, n. 17. 18. See, for example, Vidya Dehejias seminal book Yogin Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition (New Delhi: National Museum, 1986). 19. Shaman Hatley, Goddesses in Text and Stone: Temples of the Yogins in Light of Tantric and Purnic Literature, in History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, ed. Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann (Oxford, UK: Routledge, forthcoming). 20. Hatley, ibid. 21. Debra Diamond, Occult Science and Bijapurs Yogins, in Indian Painting: Themes, History and Interpretations (Essays in Honour of B. N. Goswamy), ed. Mahesh Sharma (Ahmedabad, India: Mapin Publishing, forthcoming). 22. In another poster, for the Bertram Mills Circus in the 1930s, crocodiles and snakes are depicted below Koringas (disembodied) head, recalling the earrings of the Kanchipuram yogin. 23. Padma Kaimal, Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yogins, no. 8 of Asia Past and Present, ed. Martha Ann Selby (Ann Arbor, MI: Association of Asian Studies, 2012), p. 73. 24. See cats. 23ae on fakirs, fakers, and magic in this volume. 25. Camatkra, cited in David L. Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rgnug Bhakti Sdhan (New York: Oxford University Press), 1988, p. 21.
Notes on the text

1. David Gordon White, Yoga in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 2. 2. Release from the cycle of rebirth differs from the aim of rebirth in heaven, the goal of even earlier Brahmanical ascetics as articulated in the Vedas. Geoffrey Samuel, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 119 in particular and more broadly pp. 11965. 3. White, Yoga in Practice, p. 12. 4. Even renunciation is shaped, in part, by how it rejects social norms. 5. Those yogic practitioners who made yantras and mandalas (sacred diagrams), ritual implements, and humble dwellings likely employed impermanent materials, and the role of monastic elites in designing architectural programs is unknown.
34 | ESSAYS
David Gordon White
Yoga in Transformation
A vibrant and highly creative segment of global societyidentiable by their distinctive beliefs, behavior, clothing, and languagemodern-day practitioners of yoga may be said to constitute a subculture, an identiable subgroup within a society or group of people, especially one characterized by beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger group.1 It may be argued that the ancient and medieval practitioners of yoga also constituted a subculture. In the modern case, the larger group comprises the mainstream cultures of an increasingly globalized urban society. In the ancient and medieval case, the larger group was, for the most part, the mainstream culture of South Asia. What do these two yoga subcultures have in common? Most modern yoga practitioners tend to assume that, apart from clothing styles, modern accessories, or adaptations (yoga with dogs, laughter yoga) on the original Indian template, very little has changed. Most believe that the perennial elements of yoga practiceits spiritual foundations; postural practice; the goals of a healthy mind and body; and yoga as a means to self-transformation, harmonizing with nature, and discovering the transcendent withinremained the same in India through the millennia before their introduction to the West. In fact, yoga grew out of several often unrelated South Asian traditions that were combined over the centuries into a small number of unied traditions. Over the past 120 years, these traditions have been adapted by both Indian and Western culture brokers into the many yoga brands familiar to modern practitioners: Raja Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Anusara Yoga, and so forth. In other words, the complex of transformative practices that we know as yoga today is itself the product of some four thousand years of transformation.
Early Developments
According to a commonly held assumption, the earliest evidence we have for yoga is a clay seal from the Indus River Valley archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro, dated to the latter portion of the third millennium BCE. What one sees on the seal is a yogi seated in a cross-legged posture (g. 1); however, since we nd ancient images of gures in identical postures from such far-ung places as Scandinavia and the Near East, we cannot assume that any of them were intended to represent yoga practitioners. Furthermore, in the earliest literary references to yoga, found in the circa fteenth-century BCE Rig Veda, the word yoga did not denote either meditation or the seated posture, but rather a war chariot,
YOGA IN TRANSFORMATION | 35
Fig. 1 (left) Yogi seal. Indus civilization, ca. 2600 1900 BCE. National Museum of India Fig. 2 (center) Seated Buddha. Afghanistan or Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Hadda, 1st century320. Cleveland Museum of Art Fig. 3 (right) Head of a Rishi. India, Mathura, 2nd century. Cleveland Museum of Art
comprising the wheeled vehicle, the team of horses pulling it, and the yoke that held the two together. (The Sanskrit word yoga is linguistically related to the English yoke.) According to ancient Indian warrior traditions, as attested in early strata of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata (circa 200 BCE100 CE), a hero who died ghting on the battleeld would be borne up to heaven and transformed into a god when he pierced the sun on a vehicle called a yoga.2 Later strata of the Mahabharata (circa 200400 CE) record another, more familiar, use of the term yoga, which developed in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain circles during the latter half of the rst millennium BCE. During this period, wandering ascetics developed a system of practices for controlling the body and breath as a means for stabilizing the mind (gs. 2 and 3). While these practices were referred to as meditation in early Buddhist and Jain sources,3 the Hindu Kathaka Upanishad, a scripture dating from about the third century BCE, describes them within the context of a set of teachings on yoga. In these teachings, the link between meditation as a means for reining in the mind and the yoga of the ancient chariot warrior is a clear one. We read that the disciplined practitioner who has yoked the horses and chariot of his body and senses with the reins of his mind rises up to the world of the supreme god Vishnu.4 Three other points made in the Kathaka laid the groundwork for much of what came to constitute yoga in the centuries that followed. First, its teaching on yoga introduced a subtle physiology, calling the body a fort with eleven gates and evoking the soul or Self as a person the size of a thumb who, dwelling inside, is worshiped by all the gods.5 This and other Upanishads also introduced the breath channels (nadis) that would become so fundamental to the transformative practices of the medieval tradition of hatha yoga. Second, the Kathaka identied the individual Self with the Universal Self (brahman): this non-dualist metaphysics would be taken up in several later yoga traditions, beginning with those revealed by the supreme god Krishna in the 200400 CE Bhagavad Gita, a late portion of the Mahabharata.6 Finally, the Kathaka introduced the hierarchy of mind-body constituentsthe senses, mind, intellect, and so forththat comprise the foundational categories of samkhya, the dualist metaphysical system grounding the circa 325 CE Yoga Sutras (YS).7
The Yoga Sutras and Allied Traditions

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali was a pivotal compilation of all of these prior yoga and meditation traditions, which it framed within the broader context of a unied and rigorous metaphysics. As was the case in nearly every other Indian religious and philosophical system, the underlying purpose of the YSs metaphysics was to resolve the problem of suffering existence. And, like most of those other systems, the YS viewed the mind as both the crux and the potential solution to that problem. Because the mind is attached and addicted to the ego-self and the material, death-laden body with which it identies, it is blind to the Selfs true identity, which is immortal and unfettered. However, if the mind can be untethered from the body and the senses, and made to turn inward, toward the luminous Self, it can be freed from its dysfunctional habits. The principal means to this end is meditation, and the YSs program of meditation tracks closely with those found in earlier Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu works. While most of the YS is a disquisition on the nature of the universe and the Self, the workings of the mind, and the way to salvation, it also contains practical and supernatural components that mirror contemporary developments in both Buddhism and Jainism and anticipate later yoga systems. Here, Patanjalis presentation of eightfold (ashtanga) yoga may be contrasted with an alternative set of practices known as sixfold (shadanga) yoga.8 Both systems have ve components in common: the progressive stages of breath control (pranayama), withdrawing the senses (pratyahara), meditation (dharana), xing the mind (dhyana), and perfect contemplation (samadhi). What distinguishes the two is the insertion of seated postures (asana) in the YS, in the place of rational inquiry (tarka) or recollection
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(anusmrti) in the sixfold system. In addition, the YS foregrounds this group of six with two bodies of ethical practice: the inner and outer restraints (yama and niyama). These two may have been inspired by Jain monastic vows from an earlier time; furthermore, early Jain works also present the way to liberation as an ascending path of ever-deepening meditative states.9 Nearly the entirety of the YSs third book is devoted to the so-called supernatural powers (vibhuti) acquired through the practice of yoga. These include the power to know past lives, to read peoples minds, to enter into other creatures bodies, and to y.10 According to the YSs metaphysics, they are entirely natural abilities, inherent in a practitioner whose mental functions have expanded beyond the limits of the physical body. Identical accounts of these sorts of powers are found in early Buddhist and later Hindu literature, which also correlate consciousness-raising on a cognitive level to an actual visionary ascent through ever-expanding realms of cosmic space.11 Other Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sources also refer to the ability of yogic practitioners to imitate the powers of gods and Buddhas, whose cosmic bodies ll the entire universe (see cat. 10a).12
Tantric Yoga and Hatha Yoga

Two centuries after the YS, a new current of religious thought emerged in Buddhist and Hindu circles in South Asia. Scriptures called the Tantras identied self-deication and supernatural power as the goals of religious life, employing yoga as an overarching term for the entire range of Tantric practice.13 One means to achieve this end was through a transformative process in which male practitioners tapped into and appropriated the boundless energy of the divine feminine (g. 4 and page 34). According to several Tantric scriptures, this inner energy was concentrated in the sexual uids of women who embodied the creative power of the great Goddess. They were known as Yoginis, Female Messengers (Dutis), Mothers, Great Seals (Mahamudras), or simply Goddesses.14 In initiation and other Tantric rites, the principal sacramentsoften consumed by practitioners in nocturnal, cremation-ground ritualswere alcohol, meat, and the sexual uids produced through ritualized sex.15 Over time, these ritual practices were internalized, with the Tantric practitioners female consorts becoming the goddesses of his subtle body.16 In Hindu works, these multiple Tantric goddesses coalesced into a serpentine energy most often called Kundalini (She who is coiled).17 Practitioners gradually innovated the body of techniques known as hatha yoga18: through a combination of xed postures, breath control, locks (bandhas), and seals (mudras), the hatha yogi transformed his body into a hermetically sealed system within which breath, energy, and uids were stabilized and forced upward through the central channel of the subtle yogic body. Linking this to all earlier forms of yogic practice was its nal outcome: supernatural powers, including the power of ight and bodily immortality. While there are several possible readings for the word hatha,19 the most plausible is that it denoted the force of its practices in effecting the transformation of the body.20 The most important foundational technical works on the subject are attributed to a twelfth-century gure named Goraksha or Gorakhnath. These include Sanskrit-language treatises and a vernacular corpus of mystic poetry on yogic experience.21
Fig. 4 Yogin with Six Chakras. India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, late 18th century. National Museum of India Fig. 5 King Suraghu Visits Mandavya, folio from the Yoga Vasishta. India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, Mughal dynasty, 1602. Chester Beatty Library
Yogis
According to tradition, Gorakhnath founded the ascetic order known as the Naths (Lords).22 In his poems, he simply refers to himself and his followers as yogis, and both he and his fellow yogis were the subject of a rich body of legend. Well before Gorakhnaths time, several early and important worksincluding the Bhagavad Gita, Maitri Upanishad, Yoga Sutras, Yoga Vasistha, and a Jain work titled The Bhaktis23had employed the term yogi to denote the ideal subject or agent of yoga practice. In these works, the yogi was portrayed as a person broadly embodying the virtues of conventional types of yoga practice: medFig. 6 The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva (detail). Attributed to Payag. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 163035. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Fig. 7 Tantric Feast. India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 1790. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
itating, renouncing, wandering, and seeking to nd God within (g. 5). This is the image most modern people have of Indias yogis: peaceful, meditative holy men, living in harmony with nature in hermitages and caves, and on mountaintops. With the advent of Tantra, however, this idealized image of the yogi was replaced by a darker one, which has persisted down to the present day in rural South Asia.24 In the fantasy and adventure literature of medieval South Asia, the consorts of the Tantric yogis, often called yoginis, were cast as their lovers, with their rites described as wholesale orgies taking place on cremation grounds in the dead of night: Yogis, drunk with alcohol, fall upon the bosoms of women; the Yoginis, reeling with liquor, fall upon the chests of men.25 This was, however, a dangerous game, because, as the Tantric texts themselves unambiguously state, persons not empowered by Tantric initiations to consort with them generally became food for the Yoginis. These yoginis were generally identied with the creatures of the charnel groundsnot human women at all, but carrion-feeding jackals and vultures that devoured the bodies of the dead, whose esh fueled their powers of ight. Through his initiation, however, the Tantric yogi became transformed into a second Shiva,26 who, like
Fig. 8 A Royal Ascetic. India, Karnataka, possibly Bijapur, ca. 1660. British Library
the great god himself, was able to control the hordes of yoginis who formed his macabre entourage. More than this, he was able to see through their horric appearances and visualize them as embodiments of Shivas divine consort, the lovely and terrible goddess Bhairavi.27 A remarkable 1630 Mughal painting seems to depict just such a transformation (g. 6). In a cremation ground, a Tantric yogi whose transformation into a second Shiva is indicated by the glow of the crescent moon surrounding his headis shown pronouncing mantras, represented by the puff of ame emitting from his mouth. Through his mantra, the goddess Bhairavi, who had previously haunted the cremation ground in the form of one of the jackals pictured in the foreground, shows herself to him in her true form, as a ravishing, albeit horric goddess-cum-yogini. Here, the artist has ingeniously adorned Bhairavis hair with arrow points to indicate her transformation from a jackal, whose pointed ears they mimic. Often, Tantric yogis were described as amassing worldly powers at the expense of other people. A prescriptive account of this practice, called subtle yoga, is found in the Netra Tantra, a ninth-century Hindu Tantra, whose eleventh-century commentary asserts that a person becomes a yogi when his activities result in [control over] the movement of every limb of the person [whose body has been] invaded by him.28 Nothing more or less than a battery of techniques for entering into and taking over other peoples bodies, the theory and practice of subtle yoga fused teachings from the YS with Tantric subtle body constructs. On the one hand, the YS authorized such practices,29 and on the other, the energies and channels of the subtle body made them technically possible. While such powers could be used for goodto initiate and thereby assure the salvation of a Tantric novicethey were most often portrayed as a predatory technique.30 No doubt due to the notoriety of such practices, the Tantric yogi became a stock gure in medieval literature, playing the villainous evil wizard who worked his nefarious designs on kings, princes, and innocent maidens, but was undone in the end by his own evil (g. 7). Even today, parents in rural South Asia may scold naughty children with the words, Be good, or the yogi will come and take you away.
Yoga and Yogis in the Modern World

Prior to the nineteenth century, when European explorers and empire-builders began to learn of yogas philosophical depth, most Western writers described the yogis and fakirs they encountered as degenerates engaging in sexual excesses or as weapon-carrying mercenaries. Indeed, by the eighteenth century, armed ascetics formed the great bulk of the north Indian military labor market. A number of generals in these armies styled themselves after Shiva, the Lord of Yogis, such as the royal warrior described in a medieval chronicle: [A]ppearing like the Lord of Yogis, [he] was armed with a dagger; his ensigns were an axe in his hand and a tall trident, and a leather cloak. With a coil of matted hair on his head, and a musical horn, and ashes of cow dung, he was altogether like Hara [Shiva], the destroyer of all. With a powerful voice he cried and from his odd eye he scattered masses of re. On his throne he might be seen [sitting] in the midst of his own congregation [of yogis], bearing on his head the moon with the nectar of the immortals.31 A seventeenth-century painting from the Deccan portrays a warrior in just such a guise, wearing the patchwork robe of a yogi (albeit nely tailored here), with the tiger skin and crescent moon halo indicating his identity with Shiva (g. 8). So powerful were these armed ascetics that throughout the nal decades of the eighteenth century, the British found themselves pitted against a yogi insurgency that would come to be known as the Sannyasi and Fakir Rebellion.32
For much of the eighteenth century, the British East India Company was also stymied by yogis in its attempts to regulate and control north Indian commerce. Cartels of Hindu ascetics and mercenaries exploited their status as holy men to transform pilgrimage routes into networks of trade; by the 1780s, yogis had become the dominant money-lenders and property-owners of several north Indian trading hubs. Some translated their economic clout into political dominance. In 1768, power-brokering Nath Yogis were instrumental in the unication of Nepal and the founding of the Gurkha (named after Gorakhnath) dynasty.33 In 1803, Nath Yogis did the same in Jodhpur, in western India, outmaneuvering the British in the process.34 In 1823, the British Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke discovered the YS and with it the textual foundation of Indias yoga traditions. Seven decades later, Swami Vivekananda (see cats. 24a-h) introduced yoga to the Western masses as one of the grandest of sciences, which had been nearly lost to the world through the machinations of tantric yogis, who made it a secret [to keep] the powers to themselves.35 With the separation of Indian yoga from Indias yogis, the doors were thrown open to the brave new world of the modern yoga subculture.
Notes
1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. subculture. 2. David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 4854, 6061, 6771. 3. Johannes Bronkhorst, The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 1993), pp. 15,1924. 4. Khaka Upaniad (KU), 3.39, in Valerie Roebuck, The Upanihads (London: Penguin Books, 2003). 5. KU 4.12; 5.1,3 6. KU 5.5, 810; Bhagavad Gt 4.17.30; 10.112.20, in The Bhagavadgt in the Mahbhrata, A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. J. A. B. Van Buitenen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 7. KU 3.1011; 6.78. On the date of the Yoga Stra, see Philipp Andr Maas, Samdhipada: Das erste Kapitel des Ptajalayogastra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert (Aachen, Germany: Shaker Verlag, 2006), pp. xvxvi. 8. Patajalis discussion of eightfold yoga is found in YS 2.283.3. Sixfold yoga is discussed in the Maitri Upaniad (6.18) and other Hindu sources, as well as the Buddhist canon of the Highest Yoga Tantras. On this, see Vesna Wallace, The Six-phased Yoga of the Abbreviated Wheel of Time Tantra (Laghuklacakratantra) According to Vajrapi, in Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 201), pp. 20422. 9. On these possible Jain inuences, see Christopher Key Chapple, Yoga and the Luminous: Patajalis Spiritual Path to Freedom (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008), pp. 9699. 10. YS 3.18,19, 21, 33, 38, 39, in Barbara Stoler Miller, Yoga, Discipline of Freedom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 11. On early Buddhist systems, see Robert Gimello, Mysticism and Meditation, in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Stephen T. Katz (London: Sheldon Press, 1978), pp. 18286. On later Hindu systems, see White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 99108. 12. White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 16790. 13. Such was the case in the Buddhist Yoga Tantras and Highest Yoga Tantras as well as in the Hindu Mlinvijayottaratantra, which cast its entire path to salvation as yoga. Somadeva Vasudeva, The Yoga of the Mlinvijayottaratantra (Pondicherry: Institut Franais de Pondichry, 2004). 14. For example, in the Hindu Kaulajnaniraya and the Buddhist Caamahroana and Hevajra Tantras. For discussions, see David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 10614; and David Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors, vol. 1 (Boston: Shambhala, 1987), pp. 25664. 15. Today, this is popularly and reductively known as Tantric Sex.
16. David Gordon White, Yogin, Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 825. 17. In Buddhist Tantras, the names Avadht and Cl (terms for the outcaste women who often served as Tantric consorts) were most commonly used. 18 David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 184334. 19. The term is rst encountered in the eighthcentury Buddhist Guhyasamja Tantra; Jason Birch, The Meaning of haha in Early Hahayoga, Journal of the American Oriental Society 131, no. 4 (2011), p. 535. 20. Birch, Meaning, p. 548. 21. For a listing of yogic, tantric, and alchemical works attributed to Gorakhnth, in both Sanskrit and vernacular languages, see White, Alchemical, pp. 14041. For a detailed discussion of the Gorakaataka, see James Mallinson, The Original Gorakaataka, in Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 25772. 22. They are also known as Nth Yogis, or knphaas (split-eared) for the distinctive way they wore their signature earrings, through the cartilage of the ear. In Buddhist and Jain sources, these yogis were most often called siddhas (perfected beings) or Nths, while Islamic authors identied them as yogis, prs (masters), or fakirs (poor men). Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism. A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 173340; White, Alchemical Body, pp. 19, 8081, 8485, 33132; and Simon Digby, Wonder-Tales of South Asia: Translated from Hindi, Urdu, Nepali and Persian (Jersey: Orient Monographs, 2000), pp. 22133. 23. John E. Cort, When Will I Meet Such a Guru? Images of the Yog in Digambar Hymns (unpublished paper, Jaina Studies Conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, March 2010). Traditionally, the third of the twelve Bhaktis in these works is titled the Yog Bhakti. As Cort notes, the dating of The Bhaktis is problematic, with the earliest Prakrit-language versions likely predating the sixth century. 24. In the world of medieval Hindu Tantra, there was a certain division of labor, which distinguished between practitioners whose gnostic meditative practice led to identity with the divine, i.e. selfdivinization, as opposed to those whose goal was supernatural power in the world. Here, the former were known as jns (knowers), and the latter yogis. This is not to say that Tantric yogis were uninterested in the jns transformative knowledge: they simply maintained that it could be attained directly through Tantric initiation, by drinking the uid gnosis of their female consorts sexual emissions. White, Kiss of the Yogin, pp. 10614. 25. Somadeva Vasudeva, The Transport of the Hasas: A kta Rsall as Rjayoga in Eighteenth-Century Benares, in White, ed., Yoga in Practice, p. 250.
26. White, Alchemical Body, pp. 31214. 27. White, Kiss of the Yogin, pp. 24751. 28. Netra Tantra 20.2836, with the commentary of Kemarja. For a discussion, see White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 16164. 29. Yoga Stra 3.38: From loosening the fetters of bondage to the body and from awareness of the bodys uidity, entering into the body of another. 30. White, Sinister Yogis, pp.16166. 31. A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, trans., The Prithirja Rsau of Chand Bard, Bibliotheca Indica, n.s., no. 452 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1881), pp. 4950. 32. White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 22026, and William Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 82102. 33. Vronique Bouillier, The King and His Yog: Pthivinrya h, Bhagavantanth and the Unication of Nepal in the Eighteenth Century, in Gender, Caste and Power in South Asia: Social Status and Mobility in a Transitional Society, ed. John P. Neelsen (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1991), pp. 121. 34. White, Kiss of the Yogin, pp. 16869; and Sinister Yogis, pp. 219, 239. See also Debra Diamond, Catherine Glynn, et al., Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), pp. 3149, 14171, 28086. 35. Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1896; rev. ed. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1973), p. 18.
46 | ESSAYS
Tamara I. Sears
FROM GURU TO GOD | 47
From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India
It is hard to imagine the history of Indian art without envisioning a meditating yogi or sage deep in contemplation, seated in lotus pose or standing in the absolute stillness that is achieved only upon nal emancipation from worldly bonds. Among the most enduring of Indias visual tropes, the image of the yogic master signies far more than it shows. In the past, yoga was not a publicly available practice that could be studied either casually or with varying degrees of seriousness. Rather, it was a highly exclusive ritual activity that could lead either toward liberation or to the acquisition of powerful magical abilities, otherwise known as siddhis. While the path to obtaining siddhis was potent enough to turn a sage into a sorcerer, the path to liberation often constituted a dramatic ontological shift at the level of the soul. Because knowledge of yoga gave the practitioner the potential to transcend the realm of human existence and enter a state akin to becoming divine, it was restricted to highly accomplished gurus and their most dedicated pupils. The transformative potency of yoga was not limited to human practice. By the early centuries of the rst millennium, Hindu gods too came to be represented as masters of the discipline. Deities were understood to be living presences who made and remade the world through the power of yoga. Like their human counterparts, they drew strength from yoga, in the form of a ery heat (or tapas) that enabled them to act efcaciously in the world. Shiva was seen as the quintessential sage who, seated on the lotus at the center of the cosmos, created the world through his practice. Vishnu took on the form of Nara, an ideal sage, whose ascetic practice was represented visually as producing Narayana, or the form responsible for cosmic generation (g. 2).1 By the turn of the rst millennium, prominent gurus and yogis had become canonized as divine incarnations and remained alive and present in their images long after their lifetimes on Earth.
Mythological Landscapes and the Poetics of Practice

One of the best known depictions of yogas power is found in a relief sculpted across the vast faade of an unnished rock-cut temple in the southern Indian village of Mamallapuram, not far from the shores of the Bay of Bengal, facing toward the sea (g. 1). Created in the seventh century during the reign of the Pallava kings, the monument has long presented a striking visual enigma, as its imagery suggests more than one story.2 Some have interpreted it as representing the descent of the Ganges River through
Fig. 1 Descent of the Ganges. India, Tamil Nadu, Mamallapuram, ca. 7th century
Fig. 2 Nara and Narayana, Vishnu Temple, relief from the east side. India, Uttar Pradesh, Deogarh, ca. 500 CE
the intervention of King Bhagiratha, who became an ascetic and performed penance to obtain Shivas assistance in bringing the river goddess Ganga down from the heavens so that he could appropriately perform the nal rites for his dead ancestors. Others have argued that it better ts an account from the Mahabharata in which the Pandava Prince Arjuna wandered the wilderness as an ascetic, seeking Shiva in order to acquire a magical weapon that would help him recover his lost kingdom. What is striking is not the differences in the two narratives but their primary points of convergence on the level of composition and theme. (For more on Prince Arjuna, see cat. 10a.) Both narratives center on a king or prince who becomes a sage in order to ultimately fulll his worldly duties. Through the performance of bodily austerities and meditation, he is able to directly encounter the supreme god, who, appeased by the sages yogic prowess, grants him a boon that redresses past wrongs and restores cosmic order. In both interpretations, the key moment can be located in the reliefs upper left quadrant, where we encounter a penitent sage performing a rigorous yogic practice. The iconography of the sages stance has been interpreted as representing either the penance of gazing into the sun (suryopasthana tapas) or the penance of the ve res (panchagni tapas) performed to conquer passion, anger, greed, attachment, and jealousy.3 Here, the external iconography evokes the internal process: the sages eyes and arms are raised to the sky as he stares up into sun. Once he is king, the sage becomes a true ascetic, marked as such by such iconographic features as his long beard and matted locks of hair (jata), the noticeable gauntness of his body, and his simple attire, consisting only of a loincloth and sacred thread (yajnopavita). Besides him stands none other than the god Shiva, fully manifest in anthropomorphic form, marked as both a deity, possessing four arms and a sacred trident, and a powerful ascetic, sporting similarly matted locks of hair. The efcaciousness of the practice is indicated most clearly by the iconography of Shivas response: the supreme gods lower left hand extends outward in a boon-granting gesture (varada mudra), communicating to the viewer that the sage has been successful in procuring his desired favor. The lush and sacred setting for both stories can be understood as an ideal landscape for yoga, populated by gods, sages, and animals of the forest, and watered by the Ganges River situated in the cleft at the reliefs center. While the ascetic performing penance in the reliefs upper left quadrant demonstrates the ability to access Shiva on a heavenly plane, the scene just below constitutes a landscape of yogic aspiration and emphasizes the importance of practice in the human world (g. 1). The action unfolds around a hermitage so idyllic that even normally inimical animals, seen here as lions and deer, can reside peaceably side by side. The most prominent human gure, a solitary sage in a moment of deep meditation, sits leaning forward, facing the Vishnu temple that dominates the scene. Below and to the right is a group of three seated sages. The rst wears a yoga strap (yogapatta) prominently around his legs. Further below and toward the river, at the center of the relief, are others worshiping at the river. The rst of this group, to the viewers far left, stands upright in urdhvabahu (raised arm) pose, which, in this context, functions as a less masterful mirror of the panchagni tapas performed by the ascetic high above. It may well be that we are witnessing multiple iterations of the same sage, caught at different moments in the process of perfecting his practice. Scholars have offered various interpretations of the gures in this lower portion of the relief. One reading identied the overall setting as the Badari hermitage, home of Vishnus incarnation as Nara and Narayana, which too was positioned near the banks of the Ganges. Textual accounts of Arjunas penance, which were known to the reliefs patrons, described Arjuna as worthy of wielding Shivas weapon because Arjuna had been Nara in one of his previous lives. If this were the case, it seems certainly meaningful that the temple housing the icon is directly below, and the sage is performing penance before Shiva above, which creates a visual analogy between the perfected human practitioner and an icon of god.4 Proponents of the Descent of the Ganges story have since posited the alternative theory that the solitary meditating gure to the left of the temple may represent
48 | TAMARA I. SEARS
Bhagiratha thanking the god Vishnu in his form as the sage Kapila, who set in motion the events leading to the quest. In addition to emphasizing the ways in which yoga could set the world in good order, the relief at Mamallapuram includes one nal scene that reminds us that not every yogi was necessarily honorable. To the immediate right of the river-cleft, just opposite the gures praying at the banks near the forested hermitage, is a small but carefully delineated gure of a yogic cat, standing upright in imitation of the human practitioners on the left. Like the perfected sage in the upper left quadrant, he is depicted as an ascetic with a protruding ribcage. But his practice yields a very different effect. He is not accompanied by Shiva or Vishnu, but by a ock of worshipful mice blindly holding their paws together in anjali mudra, or the gesture of devotion. Rather than representing the power of yoga to illuminate truth, this vignette emphasizes the danger of false gurus whose practice is directed primarily toward quelling their own worldly hungers.5 While the trope of the hypocritical cat was quite common in wellknown classics such as the Hitopadesha, the trope of the false guru, particularly associated with antisocial Tantric groups like the Kapalikas, was frequently found in dramatic parodies such as the Mattavilasa (Drunken Games) and the Bhagavadajjukya (The Hermit and the Harlot), which were popular in the nearby Pallava court at Kanchipuram.6
Establishing Real Places for Yogic Practice

The ideal landscapes associated with yoga were not merely poetic tropes conned to the spheres of visual and literary representation. They were real places of natural beauty whose sanctity encouraged the establishment of temples and ascetic abodes. It is no coincidence that the small Vishnu temple in the Mamallapuram relief closely resembled contemporary temples built at the same site, which unlike the capital at Kanchipuram, functioned both as idyllic retreat and growing port town. Elsewhere in India, the seventh and eighth centuries witnessed the formalization of new kinds of Hindu monasteries (mathas), presided over by head gurus whose authority was rooted in their mastery of sacred scriptures and yoga. By the turn of the rst millennium, monasteries had grown signicantly through royal patronage, and in some cases had become large-scale multifunctional centers, serving variously as colleges, rest-houses, charitable distribution centers, hospices, and foci for worship.7 Despite the increasing institutionalization of ascetic practice, great attention was given to establishing places that could provide an idyllic locale for austerities and yoga. A good case in point can be seen in the survival of a Shaiva monastery in the village of Chandrehe, located in the modern-day central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (gs. 3ad). Situated not far from the banks of the holy Son River, the monastery was intended to serve as a quiet and peaceful retreat. An inscription still afxed to the front verandah reveals a delightfully complex history.8 According to the inscription, the spacious and lofty monastery was built in 973 by a guru named Prabodhashiva, who intended it to accompany a temple established a generation earlier by Prashantashiva, his spiritual teacher and predecessor. Prashantashiva, in turn, had intended the site to be one of two remote hermitages; the other one was located along the Ganges River at the famed pilgrimage city of Varanasi (Banaras or Benares).9 Both of the hermitages established by Prashantashiva were meant to be places of peaceful respite from
Figs. 3ad Plan and views of Shaiva Monastery. India, Madhya Pradesh, Chandrehe, ca. 973
the more centralized monastery at Gurgi, which had been built a generation earlier at an enormous expense by the emergent Kalachuri King Yuvarajadeva I (reigned 91545) in conjunction with a large royally sponsored temple.10 At Gurgi, resident sages inevitably became involved in the administration of state religious affairs. But the retreats at Varanasi and Chandrehe were reserved for siddhas and tranquil yogins, who were intent on destroying all obstacles to achieving clarity of mind and success at meditation, with the goal of reaching nal liberation.11 Fittingly, both Prashantashiva and Prabodhashiva were described in ways that emphasized their yogic prowess. In the Gurgi inscription, Prashantashiva was praised as a highly learned sage who had mastered [all] the asanas and who felt the inner joy that comes from keeping his steady mind absorbed in the meditation of Shiva seated in the midst of the lotus of his heart.12 The text from Chandrehe similarly described the sage Prabodhashiva as practicing austerities even in his boyhood on the bank washed by the river [Son] and as having realized God through the performance of religious austerities and meditation, and living on fruits [priyala and amalaka], greens, and lotus roots [shaluka].13 The yoga practiced at Chandrehe was not one of the radical variations associated with esoteric Tantric sects, but rather part of a more mainstream strand. Prashantashiva and Prabodhashiva belonged to a prominent lineage, the Mattamayuras or Drunken Peacocks, within a broader, pan-Indic, religious tradition known as Shaiva Siddhanta and associated with a body of ritual manuals, the Shaiva Agamas (or, more broadly, Tantras).14 Although today Shaiva Siddhanta is widely associated with southern India, it may have emerged as early as the eighth or ninth century in the northern region of Kashmir, and then spread through Central India in subsequent centuries.15 In the Shaiva Agamas, yoga formed one of four major categories referred to as four feet (chatushpada), the other three of which included knowledge (jnana), action (kriya), and proper conduct (charya). Together, these four were understood as essential components in the attainment of liberation. Jnana led to a state of union with God (sayujya); kriya brought about a nearness to God (samipya); yoga helped one attain the form of God (sarupya); and charya ensured that the soul attained residence in the region of God (salokya).16 Within Shaiva
Siddhanta, yoga was a distinct discipline or an individual practice, taught only to those initiated at the right level, and it was considered essential for the achievement of nal liberation. The power of yoga to help one attain immortality after death was articulated beautifully in a contemporary inscriptional verse from a related site, where the head guru, described as the foremost among Shaivas went [to his rest] in the place of Shiva, the eternal station, through yoga.17 Situated near the banks of holy rivers, the Ganges and Son respectively, Varanasi and Chandrehe may have been envisioned as ideal spaces for performing yoga. While Varanasi was a holy city long associated with a sacred geography, Chandrehe offered a forested setting not entirely unlike that depicted in the lower left quadrant of the relief at Mamallapuram. Even as Prabodhashiva was actively making the monastery more accessible to travelersthrough an infrastructure of roads and bridges, described as a wonderful way through mountains [and] across rivers and streams, and also through forests and thickets,18Chandrehe remained fairly removed, even in modern terms. The real geography of the site may have resonated quite well with the poetics of its inscription, which described Chandrehe as a place where herds of monkeys kiss the cubs of lions [and] the young one of a deer sucks at the breast of the lioness, and where other hostile animals forget their [natural] antipathy [to one another]; for the minds of all become tranquil in penance-groves.19 Such a locale may have evoked not only the poetics of ideal landscapes but also the pragmatics of practice as articulated in Shaiva ritual manuals. The Sarvajnanottara Agama, for example, dictates that the student, pure, after performing his bath and ablutions, should bow his head to Shiva, salute [his lineage of] preceptors of yoga, and [then] engage in yoga in an empty building, or in a delightful monastery, or in an auspicious temple. Or [he may practice] on the bank of a river, in a desolate spot, an earthen hut or in a forest; [provided it is] sheltered, windless, noise-free and unpopulated, free from obstacles to yoga, free from doubt [about its ownership] and not too hot.20
Fig. 4 Guru and Disciples, Lakshmana Temple. India, Madhya Pradesh, Khajuraho, ca. 954
Chandrehe offered both a delightful monastery and an auspicious temple, located near the bank of a river in a fairly secluded and forested landscape. Moreover, it was a place that remained thoroughly under the ownership and purview of the resident monastic community, a place where one could practice highly potent rituals without fear of interruption at a critical moment. It may well be that such monastic sites formed the real world analogue for visual and literary representations of landscapes populated by sages practicing yoga.
Portraying Divine Teachers

The development of monastic communities such as the one at Chandrehe corresponded with the increasing proliferation of sculpted images of gurus actively engaging in the dissemination of religious teachings (g. 4). Known as shikshadana scenes, such images typically featured a guruusually shown with a large belly indicating the retention of breath, and seated upon a special cushion or thronefacing a group of disciples who express their devotion through anjali mudra. Sometimes he was accompanied by male and female attendants holding ritual implements; at other times he was surrounded on all sides by his students. Often the guru would hold his hands in the dharmachakra mudra, indicating the act of teaching, or touch the head of a disciple, suggesting perhaps a more personal act of devotion or even possibly the conferral of initiation.21 The scenes were typically framed as distinct architectural spaces. The entrance was sometimes indicated through the presence of an armed gatekeeper, and the gurus spot was frequently differentiated through the presence of a pillared hall or overhanging canopy. In addition to emphasizing the prominence of the guru, shikshadana scenes evoke the structure of ascetic communities in ways that were analogous to the real space of the monastery. Within the dwelling at Chandrehe, for example, were spaces specially designated for a range of ritual activities,
Figs. 5 and 6 Lakulisha in a central wall niche. India, Madhya Pradesh, Batesara, ca. 8th century
including teaching, worshiping, and meeting individually with the guru. Of particular interest is a set of sculpted gures found in the center of the door lintel marking entrance to the room that likely served as the primary seat of the resident guru (g. 3). Although positioned in a spot normally reserved for an icon of a deity, the group instead featured a guru anked by two worshipful disciples, one of whom is no longer visible. Both gures are portrayed as bearded ascetics, clad only in loincloths, and wearing tall matted locks of hair. But only the guru faces frontally, like an icon, engaging the viewer; he holds a palm-leaf manuscript, embodying spiritual knowledge, in his surviving hand. The room may have been analogous to a space sometimes found in monasteries today, specially designated as the place where the [gurus] mind is always xed on God, where he sits meditating on Shiva, and where he performs yoga.22 In the context of the matha at Chandrehe, it may have further resonated with the notion of a sage who had achieved a divine stature through the practice of austerities, meditation, and yoga.23 The idea that once-living sages could be perceived and treated as manifestations of divinity has a long history in the Indian subcontinent. In early centuries, the Buddha himself took on a deity-like persona, even though he was understood to be technically human. In Hindu mythology, sages such as Nara were fundamentally understood as humans who were in fact manifestations of god. But an even clearer comparison can be found in Lakulisha, the human founder of the Pashupata sect, who, by the middle of the rst millennium, had already been transformed into a fully endowed manifestation of the god Shiva.24 His identity as a human aspirant was established most clearly through his distinctive iconography (g. 5). He was typically portrayed as a two-armed yogi, holding a club and a rosary (akshamala), and seated in meditation, his legs crossed in lotus posture. Occasionally his right hand was positioned in dharmachakra mudra to signify his function as a religious teacher. But his status as a deity was established through texts and visual contexts. After the Puranas incorporated him into the mythology of Shiva by considering him the twenty-eighth manifestation of the great god and teacher of yoga, his image began appearing in key places on Hindu temples. Beginning around the seventh and eighth centuries and persisting well through the eleventh and twelfth, it was not uncommon to position elaborately framed images of Lakulisha on temple walls, in locations traditionally reserved for a fully manifest image of the god himself (g. 6). This transition from human sage to manifestation of divinity was in keeping with broader transitions mapped out at many other places. Yoga, which had emerged initially as a highly individualized and often esoteric practice reserved only for renunciants, had become both a discursive strategy and a source of power. Prominent gurus seated at the head of growing monastic lineages almost universally claimed mastery of yoga and established a network of centers intended to facilitate yoga as a practice. The transformation of human aspirant to divinized and often royally patronized agent was articulated forcefully through the history of visual imagery and architectural interventions into wilderness landscapes. The slippage between humanity and divinity, and between worldly and spiritual, was embodied at places such as Mamallapuram and Chandrehe. At Mamallapuram, the ambiguity in the portrayal may have been a means to encompass the kings multiple dutiesas military commander charged with protecting his kingdom (as in the case of Arjunas penance) and as a pious individual seeking to perform the rites associated with the death of his ancestors (as in the case of the Descent of the Ganges). At Chandrehe, the sages Prashantashiva and Prabodhashiva remained closely connected both to larger royal centers and to a prominent lineage of rajagurus, or royal religious preceptors. In medieval India, the power of yoga was known for its multiple potentials, for its ability not only to fulll spiritual desires, but also to achieve worldly ends. However, in the end, the true power of yoga remains rooted in its ability to transform the body and mind of the practitioner in deeply powerful ways, which has ensured its longevity through the present day.
Notes
1. See, for example, Michael Meister, Art and Hindu Asceticism: iva and Vihu as Masters of Yoga, in Art and Archaeology of South Asia: Essays Dedicated to N. G. Majumdar, ed. Debala Mitra (Calcutta: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal, 1996), pp. 31521, esp. p. 319. 2. Interpreters of the narrative relief at Mamallapuram have included the following: Michael D. Rabe, The Great Penance at Mamallapuram: Deciphering a Visual Text (Chennai: Institute of Asian Studies, 2001), and The Mmallapuram Praasti: A Panegyric in Figures, Artibus Asiae 57, nos. 3/4 (January 1, 1997), pp. 189241; Padma Kaimal, Playful Ambiguity and Political Authority in the Large Relief at Mmallapuram, Ars Orientalis 24 (January 1, 1994), pp. 127; Marilyn Hirsh, Mahendravarman I Pallava: Artist and Patron of Mmallapuram, Artibus Asiae 48, nos. 1/2 (January 1, 1987), pp. 10930; Mary-Ann Lutzker, A Reinterpretation of the Relief Panel at Mmallapuram, in Chhavi II: Festschrift in Honor of Rai Krishnadas, ed. Anand Krishna (Banaras: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1981), pp. 11617; Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreu, La Descente de la Gag Mahabalipuram, tudes dOrientalisme 2 (1932), pp. 29397; A. H. Longhurst, Pallava Architecture, pts. 1 and 2, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 17 (1924) and 33 (1928) (repr. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1982), pp. 4044; Michael Lockwood, Gift Siromoney, and P. Dayanandan, Mahabalipuram Studies (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1974), pp. 3441; Victor Goloubew, La Falaise dArjuna de Mavalipuram et la Descente de la Gag sur la Terre, selon le Rmyaa et le Mahbhrata, Journal Asiatique, 2nd ser., vol. 4 (1914), pp. 21012. 3. Kaimal, Playful Ambiguity, p. 5; Rabe, The Mmallapuram Praasti, p. 191. 4. Ramachandran, The Kratrjunyam, pp. 6977. Michael Rabe has written more recently in support of this interpretation in The Mmallapuram Praasti, pp. 19496. 5. Ananda Coomaraswamy noted this image quite early in his History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927; repr. New York: Dover, 1985), p. 103. Michael Rabe suggests that this hypocritical cat serves as a foil to the righteous practice of the human practitioners, and to the Pallava patron king Narasihavarman, who he somewhat controversially identies as the central gure with the yogapaa in the lower left quadrant of the relief. See Rabe, The Mmallapuram Prashasti, pp. 22627.
6. The Hitopadea (Instructions in Well-Being) is a compendium of Sanskrit fables of great antiquity that was based on the earlier Pacatantra (Five Texts), compiled around 300 BCE. Because the stories are narrated by animals, they are often categorized as childrens literature, even though the narratives are deeply satirical. The Mattavilsa, which is often attributed to the Pallava king Mahendra Vikrama Varma (reigned 600630 CE) has been edited and translated many times. See L. D. Barnett, Matta-vilsa: A Farce, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London 5, no. 4 (January 1, 1930), pp. 697717; Michael Lockwood and Vishnu Bhat, eds. and trans., Mattavilasa Prahasana: The Farce of Drunken Sport (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1981); and David N. Lorenzen, trans., A Parody of the Kplikas in the Mattavilsa, in Tantra in Practice, ed. David White (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 8196. The Bhagavadajjukya has been translated by A. B. van Buitenen in The Hermit and the Harlot, Mahl 7, nos. 3/4 (October 1, 1971), pp. 14966. 7. See Prasanna Kumar Acarya, A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture: Treating of Sanskrit Architectural Terms (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), pp. 46367; R. K. Sharma, The Kalachuris and Their Times (Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1980), pp. 196202; J. Van Troy, The Social Structure of the aiva-Siddhntika Ascetics (7001300 A.D.), Indica 2, no. 2 (1974), pp. 8184; J. Ramayya Pantulu, Malkapuram Stone-Pillar Inscription of Rudradeva (Rudrmba), Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society 4 (1929), pp. 14762. 8. The inscription from Chandrehe has been edited and translated by V. V. Mirashi, Inscriptions of the Kalachuri-Chedi Era, vol. 4, pt. 1, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (Ootacamund, India: Gov. Epigraphist for India, 1955), no. 44, pp. 198204. 9. This second hermitage is described by in an inscription from the royal center of Gurgi, which has been edited and translated by Mirashi, Inscriptions, pp. 22433, no. 46. 10. On the extent of the archaeological remains at Gurgi, see Sir Alexander Cunningham, Reports of a Tour in Bundelkhand and Rewa in 188384; and of a Tour in Rewa, Bundelkhand, Malwa, and Gwalior, in 188485 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1885), pp. 14954; H. B. W. Garrick, Report of a Tour Through Behar, Central India, Peshawar, and Yusufzai, 188182 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing), 1885, pp. 8590; R. D. Banerji, The Haihayas of Tripur and Their Monuments, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 23 (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1931), pp. 4147. 11. Gurgi inscription, verse 13. 12. Gurgi inscription, verse 15. 13. Chandrehe inscription, verse 11. Prantaiva is described just a few verses earlier as living on fruits, lotus-stalks and roots (verse 7).
14. For more on the Mattamayras, see V. V. Mirashi, The aiva cryas of the Mattamayra Clan, Indian Historical Quarterly 26 (1950), pp. 116; R. N. Mishra, The Saivite Monasteries, Pontiffs and Patronage in Central India, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, vols. 6466 (1993), pp. 10824; Richard Davis, Praises of the Drunken Peacocks, in Tantra in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 13145. Tamara Sears, Worldly Gurus and Spiritual Kings: Architecture and Asceticism in Medieval India (under review). 15. On the pan-Indic nature of aiva Siddhnta, see Richard H. Davis, Ritual in an Oscillating Universe: Worshiping iva in Medieval India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 1419, and Aghoraivas Background, Journal of Oriental Research, vols. 5662 (198692), pp. 36778); Karen Pechilis Prentiss, A Tamil Lineage for aiva Siddhnta Philosophy, History of Religions 35, no. 3 (February 1996), pp. 23234; Helene BrunnerLachaux, Somasambhupaddhati (Pondicherry, India: Institut franais de Pondichry, 1998), pp. xliiilii. Also signicant are Devangana Desais recent arguments for understanding the central Indian temple site of Khajuraho, located to the west of Chandrehe, as a aiva Siddhnta site (Religious Imagery, pp. 5760, 14974). On aiva Siddhnta in Kashmir, see Alexis Sanderson, The aiva Age, in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo (Tokyo: Sankib Busshorin, 2009), pp. 41349; Alexis Sanderson, The aiva Exegesis of Kashmir, in Mlanges Tantriques la Mmoire dHlne Brunner. Tantric Studies in Memory of Hlne Brunner, ed. Dominic Goodall and Andr Padoux (Pondicherry, India: Institut franais dindologie, cole francaise dExtrme-Orient, 2007), pp. 231442. 16. R. N. Misra summarizes these in Beginnings of aiva Siddhnta and Its Expanding Space in Central India, in Smarasya: Studies in Indian Arts, Philosophy: Interreligious Dialoguein Honour of Bettina Baumer, ed. Sadanand Das and Ernst Furlinger (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2005), pp. 275306. See also Dominic Goodall, ed. and trans., Bhaa Rmakahas Commentary on the Kiraatantra (Pondicherry, India: cole Franaise dExtrmeOrient, 1998), p. xxxvii. 17. Verse 10 of a tenth-century inscription discovered at the Mattamayra monastic site of Kadwaha, edited by V. V. Mirashi and Ajay Mitra Shastri, A Fragmentary Stone Inscription from Kadwaha, Epigraphia India 37, no. 3 (1967), pp. 11724. 18. Chandrehe inscription, verse 13. 19. Chandrehe inscription, verse 14. It is notable that such evocations mirrored the representation of ideal places of practice seen in Mmallapuram, where lion and deer sit peaceably and in close proximity to the forest hermitage in the lower left quadrant of the Descent of the Ganges relief.
20. As translated by Somadeva Vasudeva, The Yoga of Malinivijayottaratantra: Chapters 14, 711, 1117 (Pondicherry, India: Institut francais de Pondichery; cole Francaise dExtrme-Orient, 2004), pp. 25051. In addition, Somadeva Vasudeva compiled a range of idealized places from other aiva texts, including a quiet, pleasant cave or earthen hut, free from all obstructions (Mlinvijayottaratantram), a cave or inaccessible spot on a mountain, in a aiva temple or in a house or in an auspicious site (Kiraatantra), a secluded, level, clean, agreeable and remote place free from all obstructions (Matagapramevara), and a secluded spot frequented by Yogins, avoiding areas that have been damaged by malevolent sorcerers (klita) or are guarded (Svyambhuvastrasagraha) (ibid., pp. 24752). For comparable sources, see Dominic Goodall, Parakhyatantram: The Parakhyatantra, A Scripture of the Saiva Siddhanta (Pondicherry, India: Institut francais de Pondichery; cole Francaise dExtrme-Orient, 2004). 21. Thomas Donaldson has also identied a great number of such scenes in Orissa. For further discussion, see Thomas E. Donaldson, Lakula to Rjaguru: Metamorphosis of the Teacher in the Iconographic Program of the Orissan Temple, in Studies in Hindu and Buddhist Art, ed. P. K. Mishra (Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1999); Tamara Sears, Encountering Ascetics On and Beyond the Indian Temple Wall, in History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, ed. Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 22. Glenn E. Yocum, A Non-Brhma Tamil aiva Mutt: A Field Study of the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam, in Monastic Life in the Christian and Hindu Traditions, ed. Austin Creel and Vasudha Narayanan (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), pp. 25052. 23. Yocum, A Non-Brhma Tamil aiva Mutt, pp. 25052. 24. For more on Lakula, see D. R. Bhandarkar, An Ekligj Stone Inscription and the Origin and History of the Lakula Sect, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay 22 (1906), pp. 15165; M. C. Choubey, Lakulisa in Indian Art and Culture (Delhi: Sharada Pub. House, 1997).
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Carl W. Ernst
Muslim Interpreters of Yoga
Yoga is perhaps the most successful Indian export in the global marketplace of spirituality. In terms of religious associations, it is most often juxtaposed with the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, though it is also presented today as a generic or stand-alone form of spiritual or physical practice. Because of the way that modern identity politics have played out in recent years, most people may be quite surprised to nd yoga connected with Islam in any way. Yet there is a long and complex history of Muslim interest in yoga, going back 1,000 years to the famous scholar al-Biruni (died 1048), who not only wrote a major Arabic treatise on Indian sciences and culture, but also translated a version of Patanjalis Yoga Sutras into Arabic.1 Over the centuries, other Muslim gures followed al-Biruni in seeking to understand the philosophical and mystical teachings found in India. Such efforts were part of a long tradition of intercultural engagement that resulted in a vast series of translations of Indian texts into the Persian language, the lingua franca of government and culture throughout much of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. This translation movementwhich covered subjects ranging from the arts and sciences to politics and metaphysics for roughly eight centuriesis comparable in scope and signicance to the translation of Greek philosophy and science into Arabic, or the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese and Tibetan.2 Alongside this wide-ranging interest in Indian culture was a more specialized focus on the meditative practices and occult powers of Indian ascetics and mystical adepts known as yogis (or jogis, in North Indian pronunciation). A good part of this interest was very practical, and it is obvious from royal chronicles and travelers accounts that a number of Muslims were intrigued by the benets to be found in the wonderworking practices of yogis.3 This fascination is especially noticeable in the case of Muslim rulers in South Asia; like other kings, they were always eager for any kind of special knowledge or power (such as astrology, magic, or medicine) that would give them an edge. Thus when the fourteenth-century North African traveler Ibn Battuta was in Delhi, he observed Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq interviewing a yogi who was successfully demonstrating his ability to levitate in the air. In a similar fashion, the Mughal emperor Jahangir regularly met with the Hindu ascetic Gosain Jadrup, as depicted in his memoirs (g. 1). Since narratives about the amazing powers of yogis pervaded much of Indias popular literature, it is not surprising that Muslims in South Asia were familiar with and sought greater acquaintance with this lore. It is fair to say that Muslim interest in yoga ranged from the quest for
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philosophical knowledge to engagement with spiritual practices to simply the desire for occult powers. Indian ascetics were assimilated to the model of the Muslim fakir or dervish. They were labeled with those Persian terms, and they frequently appeared in illustrated Mughal histories, Persian translations of Sanskrit texts, and album paintings. On the philosophical side, the primary framework for understanding Indian religions was the Ishraqi form of Neoplatonic thought known as Illuminationism, developed by the Persian thinker Suhrawardi (died 1191). In this formulation, the degrees of being that emanate from the divine source of the cosmos are identied as more or less intense manifestations of light. At the same time, following the philosophical theory of prophecy articulated by the philosophers Farabi and Ibn Sina, religions were considered to be symbolic explanations of philosophical truths in forms that the uneducated masses could comprehend. From this perspective, it was not difcult to view yogic or Vedantic teachings as one more example of the adaptation of philosophy to local traditions. There are quite a few indications of the popularity of the Illuminationist philosophy among intellectuals in Mughal India, some of whom indeed speculated on Indian religious thought and practice.4 Some Vedantic texts were quite popular in Persian translations, particularly the Yoga Vasishta, one copy of which features an important series of illustrations (g. 2).5 From the perspective of Susm (Islamic mysticism), yoga was also a subject worth exploring. These two traditions often have been brought together in a consideration of comparative mysticism, and many scholars have assumed that Susm must have been derived from yoga in some way or other. First proposed in the late eighteenth century by early Orientalists, starting with Sir William Jones, this theory rested upon a deep conviction that all Eastern doctrines are ultimately the same, along with the axiomatic assumption that Islam was a harsh and legalistic religion incompatible with spirituality. It is in fact impossible to make a convincing historical case that Susm somehow originated from Indian sources; Islamic mysticism is actually Islamic, and it took shape primarily in Baghdad and Khorasan before arriving in India around the eleventh or twelfth century.6 Yet by a curious coincidence, just as the Sus arrived, ascetics practicing hatha yoga assumed new roles of dramatic importance in the theater of Indian religions. Because those yogis had undergone ritual death and were not bound by the purity restrictions of upper-caste Hinduism, they were free to drop in on the open kitchens that were often maintained by Su masters at their retreats in India, much like the charitable serai depicted in the Hindi Su romance Mrigavati (g. 3). For this reason, from an early date we have numerous examples of conversations and reections on yoga in the writings of Indian Sus. Sometimes, this is limited to the observation that breath control is a helpful adjunct to meditation. But in other cases, it is obvious that Sus paid close attention to more sophisticated yogic teachings involving the subtle physiology of chakras and the power of mantras, which were arguably
Fig. 1 (opposite) Jahangir converses with Gosain Jadrup, from the Jahangirnama. Attributed to Payag. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1620. Muse du Louvre Fig. 2 The King and Karkati Discuss Brahman, from the Yoga Vasishta. By Iman Quli. India, Allahabad, 1602. Chester Beatty Library
Fig. 3 The feast of the yogis from the Mrigavati. India, Allahabad, 16034. Chester Beatty Library
quite similar to the subtle centers (lataif) of Su meditation and the zikr formulas consisting of the Arabic names of God. Indeed, one of the most important Sus, Muìn al-Din Chishti (died 1236), founder of the Chishti Su order in India, is credited with the authorship of a widely circulated Persian text on yoga and meditation, variously known as the Treatise on the Human Being or the Treatise on the Nature of Yoga, among other titles. There is some question about the authorship of the text, since none of the manuscripts are older than the seventeenth century, and Muìn al-Dins successors maintained that he wrote no books of any kind. Nevertheless, the popularity of this work in Su circlesand its association with the supreme spiritual experiences of a founding gure of Indian Susmreinforced the notion that yoga in some respects was fundamentally compatible with Susm, or at least could be interpreted in that way.7 The rst major Persian text devoted to the subject of yoga was composed by an anonymous author in the fourteenth century, with the Hindi title, The Fifty Verses of Kamarupa (Kamaru panchasika).8 The title alludes to Kamarupa (the kingdom of Assam in northeastern India), traditionally considered the source of magic and wonders; it also invokes scriptural authority in a rather mysterious fashion. The texts date and wide circulation is established by the appearance of an excerpt in an important Persian encyclopedia compiled in Shiraz by Sharaf al-Din Amuli (died 1353). Appearing in the category of natural sciences, the quoted sections dealt with breath control for predicting the future and meditative practices involving the chakras.9 The Italian traveler Pietro della Valle acquired a complete version of the text (now preserved in the Vatican Library) while traveling in southern Persia in 1622; the fact that he obtained this manuscript from a group of provincial Persian intellectuals indicates that it was still popular outside of India. This fuller text reveals, in addition to the material on breath control and chakra meditations, extensive practices involving the summoning of sixty-four yoginis, whom the translator refers to as spiritual beings (ruhaniyat). Particular prominence is given to the goddess Kamak Devi (Sanskrit: Kamakhya), who was associated in various Indo-Islamic texts with the symbolism of plantain and cave, which appear in a painting of a yogini from the court of Bijapur (g. 4). While the tradition of yogic physiology is present in the text to some extent, the main concern is the practical benet to be gained by summoning the yoginis by using powerful mantras that can deliver to the practitioner whatever he desires. The translator maintains that he rendered this material from the most famous book of the Hindus (although no trace of it appears to survive in any Indian language), and he attempts to use the language of Islamic literary scholarship (and other Islamizing touches) to give credibility to what seem to be oral teachings. The key terms that he uses to describe these practices are magical imagination (Arabic: wahm) and ascetic discipline (Persian: riyazat); the latter term is the regular Persian equivalent for yoga (jog).10 Della Valle claimed to have employed the practices described in the text with some success, and announced his intention to translate it into Italian, though he never seems to have accomplished that task.
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Fig. 4 Yogini by a Stream. India, Bijapur, ca. 160540. Victoria and Albert Museum
Fig. 5 Tratak posture, from the Bahr al-hayat. AH 11 Rabi al-awwal, 1130 (February 12, 1718). University of North Carolina Rare Book Collection
But by far the most important work on yoga by a Muslim author is an Arabic text known by several different titles: The Mirror of Meanings for the Comprehension of the Human World; Do-It-Yourself Medicine; and, most commonly, The Pool of the Water of Life (Hawd ma al-hayat, often shortened to Hawd al-hayat or The Pool of Life). This popular text, composed by an anonymous author, claims to have originated in the transitional moment when Turkish armies conquered the eastern limits of Bengal in 1212. It is ostensibly a translation of a famous Sanskrit work known as Amritakunda or The Pool of Nectar (although here too there is no trace of any such original text).11 The later history of The Pool of Nectar is complex. There are two different versions of the Arabic translation, one containing more Indic material and the other demonstrating a noticeable degree of Islamization. The Arabic text was translated into Ottoman Turkish twice and was popular among members of the Mevlevi order (the Whirling Dervishes) in Istanbul in the late nineteenth century. Many manuscript copies in Istanbul libraries are erroneously attributed to the famous Andalusian Su master Ibn Àrabi (died 1240), although other copies are simply classied as Indian magic. The next major step in the transmission of these teachings took place in sixteenth-century India, when the noted Su master of the Shattari order, Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari (died 1563), translated the Arabic version of The Pool of Nectar into Persian, under the title The Ocean of Life (Bahr al-hayat).12 This expanded and revised version probably drew upon oral communications from contemporary yogis, and there are also signs that it was based on an earlier Arabic version than the text we currently possess. Several copies of the Persian translation are lavishly illustrated, with twenty-one paintings depicting yogic postures; by way of comparison, the Persian text of this chapter is four times as long as the Arabic original, which only describes ve postures.13 Known as asanas in yogic traditions, these postures are named by two joined terms, the Hindi shabda (word) and the Persian dhikr (recollection), in the Persian translation, which suggests that mantra chants rather than physical postures are the key element. But for conveniences sake, I will continue to refer to them as postures. (The oldest illustrated copy, in the Chester Beatty collection, is nely done, while the later manuscripts exhibit a much simpler style; see g. 5). Close study of half a dozen manuscripts of the fourth chapter of The Ocean of Life, where the illustrations are found, calls for some new observations.14 There are major verbal discrepancies and even lacunae in the manuscripts; an entire folio is missing from the Chester Beatty manuscript after folio 22.15 This gap has obscured the fact that the text actually describes twenty-two postures, not the twenty-one that were announced, suggesting the possibility that there may have been another illustration (for the bodhak position, whose description is likewise missing). Beyond that, there are wide variations in the names of these practices among the manuscripts (which is all too predictable in scribal transcriptions of difcult technical terms). Even where discrepancies can occasionally be claried by terms spelled in Devanagari script (as found in India Ofce, Eth 2002), the names of positions in The Ocean of Life often differ signicantly from the names of the same yogic postures found in later Sanskrit texts on hatha yoga, and the descriptions in Persian frequently provide details that are otherwise unavailable. In other words, the text of The Ocean of Life provides a valuable historical documentation on yogic practices and terminology that is an important supplement to the Sanskrit tradition. The last major Persian sources to be considered for documenting the practice and depiction of yoga were not written by Muslim authors, but by Hindu munshis (secretaries) working in the administration of the Mughal Empire, and later for the British. Deeply immersed in the Islamicate and Persianate culture of the time, these Hindu scholars contributed to the gazetteer literature modeled on the Ain-i Akbari by the Mughal minister Abul Fazl, providing not only revenue statistics for the empires provinces, but also information about the customs and beliefs of Indian religious groups. From the mid-eighteenth century to roughly 1830, when Persian was the language of colonial administration, British ofcials commissioned a considerable number of Hindu scholars to write Persian treatises on the religions of India. Several of these Anglo-Persian compositions included depictions of
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yogis and ascetics in the Company style, providing a sort of eld guide to the identication of these groups. Two notable examples are The Chain of Yogis (Silsila-i jugiyan), composed by Sital Singh in 1800, and The Gardens of Religions (Riyaz al-mazahib), written by a Brahmin named Mathuranath and commissioned by John Glyn in 1812 as a guide to the religions of Varanasi. The history and character of the portrayals of yogis have yet to be fully explored, but it is safe to say that these late Persian texts connected Mughal understandings of Indian religions to the colonial religious categories enacted by the census, the courts, and Orientalist scholarship.16 The long history of Muslim interest in the philosophy and practice of yoga is a helpful corrective to the blinders that we often bring to the understanding of religion today, which is frequently dened in purely scriptural terms without reference to history and sociology. Current ideological oppositions between Islam and Hinduism, which are strongly underpinned by nationalist agendas, leave no room for understanding the intercultural engagements that have taken place across religious lines over the centuries. The transmission of yogain Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu translations and through imagesis an important reminder that the history of Indian religions needs to take account of a wide range of sources, including those Muslim interpreters who were so fascinated by yoga.
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Notes
1. Bruce B. Lawrence, Brn, Ab Rayn, viii, Indology, Encyclopaedia Iranica 4 (1990), pp. 28587; www.iranicaonline.org/articles/biruni-abu-rayhanviii. 2. Carl W. Ernst, Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Persian and Arabic Translations from Sanskrit, Iranian Studies 36 (2003), pp. 17395. All my articles cited here are available online at www.unc.edu/~cernst/articles.htm. For further documentation of Persian literature on India, see the Perso-Indica project, http://perso-indica.net. 3. Carl W. Ernst, Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2008), pp. 40926. 4. Carl W. Ernst, The Limits of Universalism in Islamic Thought: The Case of Indian Religions, Muslim World 101 (January 2011), pp. 119. A notable example is a Persian treatise on Vedanta attributed to the poet Fayzi, The Illuminator of Gnosis, which links Greek and Indian wisdom to explain Krishna as the manifestation of the divine reality. See Carl W. Ernst, Fayzis Illuminationist Interpretation of Vedanta: The Shariq al-Ma`rifa, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, no. 3 (2010), pp. 15664. 5. See Wendy Doniger OFlaherty, Dreams, Illusion and Other Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), and my review of the latter in Journal of Asian and African Studies 20 (1985), pp. 25254. 6. Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Susm: The Formative Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Carl W. Ernst, Situating Susm and Yoga, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., vol. 15, no. 1 (2005), pp. 1543. 7. Carl W. Ernst, Two Versions of a Persian Text on Yoga and Cosmology, Attributed to Shaykh Muìn al-Din Chishti, Elixir 2 (2006), pp. 6976, 12425; rev. ed. by Scott Kugle, in Su Meditation and Contemplation: Timeless Wisdom from Mughal India (New Lebanon, NY: Suluk Press/Omega Publications, 2012), pp. 16792. 8. Kazuyo Sasaki, Yogico-tantric Traditions in the Hawd al-Hayat, Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies 17 (2005), pp. 13556. Sasakis reading of this title is more convincing than my earlier suggestion, Kamrubijaksa or The Kamarupa Seed Syllables. 9. Carl W. Ernst, A Fourteenth-Century Persian Account of Breath Control and Meditation, in Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White, Princeton Readings in Religions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 13339. 10. Carl W. Ernst, Being Careful with the Goddess: Yoginis in Persian and Arabic Texts, in Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India, ed. Pallabi Chakrabarty and Scott Kugle (Delhi: Manohar, 2009), pp. 189203.
11. Carl W. Ernst, Fragmentary Versions of the Apocryphal Hymn of the Pearl in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Urdu, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 32 (2006), pp. 14488; and The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., vol. 13, no. 2 (2003), pp. 199226. None of the Arabic manuscripts is older than the seventeenth century. This work is framed by a complicated narrative about yogis who convert to Islam and introduce Muslim scholars to the Amrtakunda, followed by an excerpt from an ancient Gnostic text and a passage from the Illuminationist philosopher Suhrawardi. These texts introduce the practices of yoga, which are recounted in ten successive chapters, including descriptions of yogic postures, control of subtle physiology, the macrocosm and the microcosm, mantras, predicting the time of death, and meditations involving chakras and yoginis. In all likelihood, the author was a sixteenth-century intellectual who drew upon Persian philosophical teachings to explain the religions of India; there is also evidence that he was familiar with the earlier Persian Kamaru pancasika, which is mentioned by name in the preface of the best and oldest manuscript of the Arabic text (Paris Ar. 1699). His interpretive strategy was to translate yogic references into Islamic equivalents, either by equating mantras with the Arabic names of God or by identifying yogis and deities with the prophets of Islam. 12. Carl W. Ernst, Susm and Yoga according to Muhammad Ghawth, Su 29 (spring 1996), pp. 913; Nazir Ahmad, The Earliest Known Persian Work on Hindu Philosophy and Hindu Religion, in Islamic Heritage in South Asian Subcontinent, vol. 1, ed. Nazir Ahmad and I. H. Siddiqui (Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 1998), pp. 118. 13. The oldest of the illustrated copies is the Chester Beatty manuscript described elsewhere in this volume. Three other copies, which clearly follow the same illustration program, are found in (1) the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rare Book Collection (dated 1718); (2) the Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad (Madhahib Farsi 1, dated 1815); and (3) reportedly in the collection of the late Simon Digby. 14. The manuscripts I have consulted, in addition to the Chester Beatty copy, are India Ofce, Eth 2002; Ganj Bakhsh 6298, Islamabad; Liyaqat Memorial Library 46, Karachi; British Library Or. 12188; and India Ofce, Ashburner 197. 15. Conrming the suggestion of Sir Thomas Walker Arnold and J. V. S. Wilkinson, The Library of A. Chester Beatty, A Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures, vol. 1 ([London]: Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 82. 16. Carl W. Ernst, Anglo-Persian Taxonomies of Indian Religions, keynote address at conference on Indian Pluralism and Warren Hastingss Orientalist Regime, Tregynon, Wales, July 1820, 2012.
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James Mallinson
Yogis in Mughal India
Artists in the ateliers of the Mughal emperors (reigned 15561857) produced a wealth of paintings of yogis,1 drawing their subjects from life or from memory after observing them rsthand. Some were created to depict historical events or specic sites; others became archetypes that circulated over decades in genre scenes and illustrated literary texts, in particular epic romances.2 Sixteenthand seventeenth-century Mughal paintings of yogis have enormous value as historical documents. The consistency of their depictions and the astonishing detail they reveal allow us to esh outand sometimes rewritethe incomplete and partisan history of yogis that can be surmised from texts, travelers reports, hagiography, and ethnography.3 The paintings conrm two contrasting features of premodern Indian asceticism suggested by other sources. First, a variety of traditions shared an ascetic archetype and freely exchanged doctrines and practices. Second, increasing sectarianism came to accentuate the differences between the yogi lineages, gradually giving rise to the clearly demarcated ascetic orders of today.
The Ascetic Archetype

Early Mughal paintings bear witness to an ascetic archetype (see cat. 2a) whose elements are attested in sources from the rst millennium BCE. Yogis have long matted hair and beards, are naked or nearly so, and smear their bodies with ashes.4 In addition, Mughal-era yogis display more recent traits and practices: they wear hooped earrings,5 sit around smoldering res,6 and drink suspensions of cannabis.7 Both types appear on an early seventeenth-century folio from the Gulshan Album: archetypal ascetics are represented in the lower landscape; the two gures at the top share their basic attributes but are covered with sectarian markers (g. 1, cat. 19a). The sharing of attributes by what are, as we shall see below, different yogi traditions is paralleled by the lack of emphasis on sectarianism in the texts of the early hatha yoga corpus. A thirteenth-century text, the earliest to teach a yoga explicitly called hatha, declares: Whether a Brahmin, an ascetic, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Skull-Bearer or a materialist, the wise one who is endowed with faith and constantly devoted to the practice of [hatha] yoga will attain complete success.8
Fig. 1 Folio 6b from the Gulshan Album (detail). India, Mughal dynasty, early 17th century. Staatsbibliothek, Berlin
YOGIS IN MUGHAL INDIA | 69
The Two Traditions of Yoga

A close reading of the corpus of Sanskrit texts that taught hatha yoga in its formative period (approximately the eleventh to the fteenth century) shows that it consisted of a variety of ancient physical techniques aimed at achieving liberation by controlling the breath, mind, and semen. Overlaid onto those techniques were more recently developed Tantric visualizations of the ascent of Kundalini up the bodys central column through a series of chakras.9 This blend of yogic methods became widely accepted as the essence of yoga, but the heirs of the two traditions, even though they both practiced the hybrid hatha yoga, remained distinct. The ancient traditionwhose yoga practice was linked to long-attested ascetic techniques of bodily mortication, such as holding both arms in the air for years on endwas represented by forerunners of the two biggest Indian ascetic orders today, the Dasnami Sannyasis and Ramanandis, while the Tantric tradition was, and is, represented by the Nath Yogis.10
Nath Yogis
The development of hatha yoga is closely associated with the master yogi Gorakhnath,11 who probably lived in South India in the eleventh or twelfth century.12 Nath hagiography has Gorakhnath establishing the Nath order, but external historical sources provide no evidence that the orders twelve subdivisionsmany of which trace their origins to other yogi guruswere conceived of as a single entity before the sixteenth century. The same sources suggest that Gorakhnaths hegemony over these disparate lineages was not established until perhaps the eighteenth century. The Naths of the Mughal era were closely linked with the Sant tradition of holy men and, like many of them, believed in a formless, unconditioned Absolute.13 This theological openness, which manifested in, among other things, a disdain for the purity laws adhered to by more orthodox Hindu ascetics, allowed them to mix more freely with mlecchas, barbarians, such as the Muslim Mughals. Furthermore, the Naths were not militarized,14 unlike certain subdivisions of the Sannyasi yogi tradition, whose belligerence would have proved an impediment to interaction with the Mughals. The Naths greater inuence on Susm and the Mughal court is borne out by the predominance of Naths in Mughal depictions of ascetics15 and the foregrounding of their doctrines in Persian yoga texts produced during the Mughal period.16 Naths appear in two illustrations from a circa 1590 manuscript of a Baburnama (gs. 2 and 3) in the British Library. These depict a visit made in 1519 by the future Emperor Babur (reigned 152630) to a monastery at Gurkhattri in modern-day Peshawar, Pakistan. The illustrated manuscript was commissioned by Baburs grandson, Emperor Akbar (reigned 15561605), who visited Gurkhattri twice in 1581,17 so the illustrations are likely to depict the monastery and its inhabitants at that later date.18 Until the 1947 partition of India, Gurkhattri was an important center of the Nath ascetic order, and there is still a Gorakhnath temple there today. While many such shrines have changed hands over time, and Baburs text calls the monasterys inhabitants jogi(s)19a vernacular form of the Sanskrit yogi that could refer to any asceticthe illustrations suggest that the site was in the hands of Naths during Akbars time. Almost all of the ascetics in the illustrations wear horns on threads around their necks (see, for example, g. 3, specically, the yogi wearing a yogapatta or meditation band around his legs on the left). The single most reliable indicator of membership in todays Nath order is the wearing of such horns,20 which Naths now call nads but were formerly known as singis, and, as the following evidence suggests, this appears also to have been the case in the medieval period. Yogis wearing horns are identied as Nath gurus in inscriptions on several seventeenth-century Mughal paintings.21 In medieval Hindi literature, singis are frequently mentioned among the accoutrements of yogis, and often those yogis are identied as followers of Gorakhnath.22 In keeping with their lack of sectarianism,
Fig. 2 (left) The Yogis at Gurkhattri in 1505, from Vakiat-i Baburi (The Memoirs of Babur). By Gobind. India, Mughal dynasty, 159093. British Library Fig. 3 (right) Baburs Visit to Gurkhattri in 1519. By Kesu Khurd. India, Mughal dynasty, 159093. British Library
70 | JAMES MALLINSON
Sanskrit texts on hatha yoga, even those associated with Gorakhnath, make few mentions of sect-specic insignia, and none of singis, but other Sanskrit sources do associate yogi followers of Gorakhnath with the wearing of horns. An early sixteenth-century South Indian Sanskrit drama describes a Kapalika or Skull Bearer ascetic as uttering Goraksha, Goraksha and blowing a horn,23 and a Sanskrit narrative from Bengal dated to no later than the second half of the sixteenth century24 describes the yogi Chandranatha as being awoken from his meditation by other yogis blowing their horns.25 From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, travelers to the regions in which the earliest references to Gorakhnath are found26 often reported the use of horns by yogis.27 A Jesuit account allows us to identify the necklace and llet (headband) worn by three of the ascetics in the British Library Baburnama folio (g. 2) as an attribute of Nath yogis during this period.28 At the end of the sixteenth century, the Jesuit traveler Monserrate visited Balnath Tilla, a famous Nath shrine in the Jhelum district of Pakistani Punjab, which was the headquarters of the order until the partition of India.29 Describing the Tillas monastic inhabitants, Monserrate noted, The mark of [the] leaders rank is a llet; round this are loosely wrapped bands of silk, which hang down and move to and fro. There are three or four of these bands.30 This description seems to conate two items of apparel often depicted in Mughal paintings of yogis: a simple llet worn around the head and a necklace, from which hang colored strips of cloth (Monserrates silk bands).31 These indicators of membership of the Nath orderhorns, llets, and necklacesenable ascetics in a large number of early Mughal paintingsincluding those in a lightly colored drawing of yogis gathered beneath a banyan tree (g. 4)to be identied as Naths.32 They also make it possible to identify a number of other Nath attributes, which are not found in representations of other ascetics of the period. These include the wearing of cloaks and hats, the accompaniment of dogs, and the use of small shovels for moving ash. By identifying Nath yogis in Mughal paintings, we may correct mistaken ideas about Nath identity and history. The Naths have been said by some historians to be the rst Hindu ascetic order to develop a militarized wing. Yet, corroborating a historical record in which Naths are never named as combatants in the many ascetic battles reported between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries,33 no depictions of Naths (Mughal or later) show them ghting or bearing weapons.34 In contrast, the Dasnami Sannyasis are portrayed armed and ghting bloody battles from the sixteenth century onward (g. 9). By now the reader acquainted with the Naths will perhaps have wondered why little mention has been made of their earrings. Todays Naths are known for wearing hooped earrings through the cartilages of their ears, which are cut open with a dagger at the time of initiation (g. 5). This practice has earned the Naths the name kanphata, split-eared, a name they themselves eschew.35 Historians of yogis have accepted uncritically the Naths assertion that the practice originated with Gorakhnath in the twelfth century. The pictorial record tells a different story: it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that Naths were depicted wearing their earrings kanphata-style. In earlier representations, their earrings were worn through their earlobes. Furthermore, in the Mughal era, this practice was not restricted to Nath Yogis: other ascetics, such as the Sannyasis ghting in gure 9, were also depicted with hooped earrings in their earlobes. The adoption of kanphata-style earrings sometime around 1800 appears to have been associated with Gorakhnath becoming the titular head of the order and is always associated with him
Fig. 4 A Party of Kanphat Yogis Resting around a Fire. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1700. British Library, India Ofce
Fig. 5 Balak Nath Kothari wearing antelope horn kanphata earring. Jvalamukhi, November 8, 2012
Fig. 6 (opposite) Jlandharnth at Jalore (detail). By Amardas Bhatti. India, Rajasthan, Marwar, Jodhpur, ca. 180510. Mehrangarh Museum Trust Fig. 7 Aughar and Kanphata Yogi, from Tashrih al-aqvam. India, Delhi or Haryana, 1825. British Library
in legend. The transition can be seen most clearly in paintings from Jodhpur. Depictions of Naths from the early part of the reign of Maharaja Man Singh (reigned 180343) show them with earrings through their earlobes (e.g., g. 6), but from approximately 1815 onward, their earrings are worn kanphata-style (cat. 4a).36 In the Jodhpur paintings, we also see a lengthening of the threads on which the Naths horns are worn, to such an extent that they come to resemble the brahminical sacred thread. This change was probably connected with the Naths rise in status at the maharajas court and their associated adoption of high-caste ways. The new kanphata earring and brahmin-style thread appear to have been embraced rapidly by the Naths. They are worn by two ascetics in a painting on page 399 of the Tashrih al-aqvam (g. 7), an account of various Indian sects, castes, and tribes commissioned by Colonel James Skinner and completed in 1825. These two Naths appear in other contemporaneous pictures, and are named in one of them. The one on the left is said to be an Aughar Jogi, i.e., a yogi who is yet to take full Nath initiation; the one on the right is a full initiate named Shambhu Nath.37
Yogi Followers of Shiva and Vishnu

The most signicant fault line in Hindu theology is the division between Shaivasthose who hold that the supreme being is Shiva or his consort, Deviand Vaishnavas, those who hold that it is Vishnu or one of his incarnations (avataras), most usually Rama or Krishna. This division was at its most violent in the eighteenth century, when battles between the military wings of two yogi orders, the Shaiva Dasnami Sannyasis and the Vaishnava Ramanandis, resulted in the deaths of thousands of ascetics. To this day, the sadhu camps at the triennial Kumbh Mela festivals are divided into the army of Shiva and the army of Rama. Today, the Naths are avowedly Shaiva, but the pictorial record again indicates a historical shift. Naths are not shown sporting Shaiva insignia such as rudraksha beads and horizontal forehead markings until the late eighteenth century.38 The Naths roots in Shaiva Tantric traditions make this
Fig. 8 Naga Sannyasis at the 1995 Allahabad Ardh Kumbh Mela
absence surprising; perhaps it is symptomatic of their devotion to a formless Absolute, evident in the vernacular texts attributed to them and prevalent among ascetic orders in late medieval North India.39 Even more surprising is that the Sannyasis depicted in Mughal-era paintings also show no Shaiva sectarian markings. Indeed, there are no Shaiva insignia in any Mughal images of ascetics.40
Dasnami Sannyasis
The Dasnami Sannyasis are the best known of Indias ascetic orders, with pictures of their naked or Naga subdivision parading at Kumbh Mela festivals broadcast around the world every three years (g. 8). Among their number are several practitioners of hatha yoga, and some of the most inuential teachers of yoga in the modern period have been afliated with the order, including Swami Shivananda and Satyananda Sarasvati. As noted above, nowadays the Dasnami Nagas are doggedly Shaiva, but Mughal paintings provide us with compelling evidence that they were originally Vaishnava.41 In 1567, Emperor Akbar witnessed a battle between two rival yogi suborders, who were ghting over the best place to collect
Fig. 9 Akbar Watches a Battle between Two Rival Groups of Sannyasis at Thaneshwar (detail). By Basawan and Tara the Elder. India, possibly Pakistan, Mughal dynasty, 159095. Victoria and Albert Museum
alms from pilgrims attending a festival.42 In the Akbarnama, author Abul Fazl describes the battle and names the combatants as Puris and Giris, which remain two of the ten names of the Dasnami or Ten-named Sannyasis.43 A large number of the Sannyasis in a depiction of the battle in an illustrated Akbarnama dated circa 159095 clearly wear urdhvapundras, the distinctive V-shaped Vaishnava forehead markings (g 9 and cat. 12b). The most detailed Mughal representation of an ascetic encampment is the St. Petersburg Album folio painted circa 1635 (g. 10). Although there is no context to conrm that its subjects are Sannyasis, it depicts two of their modern-day practices. First, an ascetic at the bottom left has undertaken the ancient penance of permanently holding one or two arms in the air (Sanskrit: urdhvabahu). Second, two of the ascetics, including the gure performing the urdhvabahu penance, are naked. Six of the ascetics in the picture, including the mahant or abbot in the center, have Vaishnava urdhvapundras on their foreheads. (To see the full painting, see the expanded version of this essay at www.asia.si.edu/research.) It might be supposed that such markings were merely a conceit or that the artists were depicting forehead markings indiscriminately. Butleaving aside the remarkable naturalism and consis-
Fig. 10 Mughals Visit an Encampment of Sadhus (detail), from the St. Petersburg Album. Attributed to Mir Sayyid Ali. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1635. St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, folio 47r
tency of Mughal depictions of ascetics, and the complete absence of Shaiva forehead markings in all such paintingsother Vaishnava features of Dasnami Sannyasi identity are legion: all Dasnami ascetics greet one another with the ancient Vaishnava eight-syllable mantra, om namo narayanaya (Homage to NarayanaNarayana is another name for Vishnu); Shankara, the putative founder of their order, was Vaishnava; prior to the sixteenth century, the Dasnami nominal sufx Puri was only appended to the names of Vaishnava ascetics44; and today the tutelary deities of the two biggest akharas or regiments of the Dasnamis are Dattatreya and Kapila, both of whom are included in early lists of the manifestations of Vishnu.45 It is not clear how, why, or when the Dasnamis acquired an overarching Shaiva orientation. It is likely to have been the result of a variety of historical processes, including both the formalization of the order, in particular its afliation with the southern Shringeri monastery, whose doctrinal principles, a blend of Advaita Vedanta and Shrividya tantric Shaivism, were adopted by the Dasnamis, and the contemporaneous (and connected) attribution of the founding of the order to Shankaracharya, who by the seventeenth century was said to have been a Shaiva. Their Shaiva orientation further hardened in reaction to the extreme Vaishnavism of their arch-rivals, the Ramanandis.
Ramanandis
The Rama-worshiping Ramanandis are the largest ascetic order in India and, like the Dasnamis, include among their number some expert hatha yogis. The Ramanandis were not formalized as an order before the early eighteenth century, but ascetics who worship Rama have been part of the North Indian religious landscape since at least the twelfth century.46 Our Mughal paintings, however, have shown us only Dasnami Sannyasis and Naths. Where were the ascetic worshipers of Rama hiding? Close inspection tells us that they were right before our eyes: the Ramanandis were originally Sannyasis. In addition to their Vaishnava insignia, some of the yogi warriors in the Akbarnama depiction of the battle at Thaneshwar have words written on their bodies. Only one is discernible, on the chest of the Sannyasi in the bottom right-hand corner (see cat. 12b): it is ram, presumably a mistake for rm. And on the body of the Vaishnava ascetic depicted in the upper left of the Gulshan folio (g. 1), we nd more writing. The words are not clearone wonders how good the Mughal court painters Devanagari orthography wasbut rm again is the most likely intended reading. Certain features of the Sannyasis depicted in Mughal paintings argue against their being the Ramanandis forerunners because they are shunned by the Ramanandis of today. These include nakedness, the urdhvabahu penance, and the wearing of ochre-colored cloth. A key aspect of Ramanandi identity as it coalesced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the adoption of the ultra-Vaishnavism associated with the various bhakti or devotional orders that came together during that period under the banner of the char sampraday or four traditions of Vaishnavism. The differences between the Ramanandis and Dasnami Sannyasis can all be understood as parts of this process. Thus, to highlight those evident from Mughal painting, the new ultra-Vaishnavas wore white cloth, eschewing the saffron of traditional (now Shaiva) renouncers, which modern Ramanandis claim is stained with the menstrual blood of Parvati, Shivas wife. They will not perform penances such as urdhvabahu because they may permanently deform the body, rendering it unt for the Vedic rituals that they, unlike the Sannyasis, perform. And they never go naked, claiming that to do so offends Lord Rama.47 In matters of doctrine, the Sannyasi tradition is now most closely associated with the rigorous monism of Advaita Vedanta. But bhakti, devotion, has held an important, if overlooked, place in their teachings, and some sixteenth-century North Indian Sannyasi gurus were renowned for their devotion to Rama.48 The formalization of the Dasnami Sannyasi order involved the incorporation of a broad variety of different renouncer traditions, all of whose followers considered themselves to be honoring
Fig. 11 Ramanandi Yogiraj Jagannath Das at the 2010 Haridwar Kumbh Mela
the ancient tradition of renunciation (sannyasa). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the generic name for a renouncer, Sannyasi, became associated with this particular formalized order. When the Ramanandis seceded from the order, in the course of their adoption of ultra-Vaishnavism, their ascetics differentiated themselves from the Sannyasis by calling themselves Tyagis, which is an exact Sanskrit synonym of Sannyasi. In a similar fashion, as a Nath corporate identity solidied in the eighteenth century, the name yogi came to be associated exclusively with the Naths and was shunned by the Sannyasis and Ramanandis.
Mughal Painting: Windows onto the History of Yoga and Yogis

There has long been confusion over the identity of the yogis depicted in Mughal paintings. This has resulted from a lack of understanding of the complex and constantly changing makeup of yogi sects in the early modern period, and the concomitant absence of terminological rigor in both Indian and foreign descriptions of yogis from the Mughal period to the present day. Yet a close reading of these pictures together with other historical sources allows us to identify the sectarian afliations of the yogis depicted, and thereby to cast new light on their history and the nature of the yoga they practiced. The pictures naturalism and the associated consistency of their depictions mean that seemingly trivial details, such as the position of an earring, are of great signicance. Mughal paintings provide evidence forand have inspiredmany new ways of looking at Indian yogis and their history. Doubtless some of the theories proposed in this essay will be rejected or rened in the light of further research, whether textual, ethnographic, or art historical, but the details shown in these beautiful images, hitherto overlooked in histories of yoga and yogis, need to be addressed by historians. They bear testament to the uidity of Indias religious landscape and the transformations undergone by her yogis as they adapted to the changes around them. An expanded and more extensively referenced version of this essay, with more illustrations, can be found online at www.asia.si.edu/research.
Notes
1. In this essay I use the word yogi with the same lack of specicity used in many historical sources, both within the yogi tradition and without. Thus it refers to an asceticsomeone who has renounced the norms of conventional society in order to live a life devoted to religious endswho may or may not practice the techniques commonly understood to constitute yoga. While not all these yogis practice yoga as such, it is among their number that practitioners of yoga par excellence are found. 2. Of the large number of paintings of yogis produced under the patronage of the Mughal courts, very few depict them actually practicing yoga, whether seated in meditational postures or holding more complex nonseated sanas. Exceptions include the beautiful illustrations to manuscripts of the Bahr al-ayt andYogavsiha, both in the collection of the Chester Beatty Library (mss. 16 and 5 respectively; see also cats. 9aj and 13 in this volume). 3. Many aspects of yogis lives are rarely, if ever, recorded in writing; often these paintings are our only historical sources. See, for example, Hope Marie Childers, The Visual Culture of Opium in British India (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011), p. 18, on depictions of drug consumption by ascetics in premodern India. 4. What cloth they do wear is saffron in color; painters typically used a pinkish coral to depict this. 5. The earliest references to the wearing of earrings by ascetics are in the context of rst-millennium Mahayana Bodhisattvas and Tantric siddhas. 6. The ascetic practice of sitting in the sun surrounded by res is attested in textual and visual sources from before the Common Era. But the quintessential ascetic practice of living around a smoldering dhni re, found to this day, is neither shown in images prior to the Mughal period nor mentioned in textual sources. Orthodox brahmin ascetics are enjoined to renounce the use of re, but it seems fair to assume that heterodox ascetics living away from society have always used re to cook and keep warm, and that only the depiction of thisnot the practice itselfwas an innovation of the Mughal era. 7. The consumption of cannabis arrived in India with Islam. It rst appears in Ayurvedic texts in the eleventh century; G. J. Meulenbeld, The search for clues to the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts as illustrated by the history of bhag, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 15 (1989), p. 64; D. Wujastyk, Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine. yurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure (Lisbon and Pune: Centro de Histria del Alm-Mar, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), pp. 4573. It was probably introduced into the ascetic milieu by Madariyya fakirs in the fourteenth or fteenth centuries; Alexis Sanderson, The aiva Religion among the Khmers. Part I, Bulletin de lcole Franaise dExtrme-Orient 9091 (20034), p. 365, n. 43. Prior to the arrival of tobacco in India at the beginning of the seventeenth century, cannabis was eaten or drunk, not smoked, and I know of no
pictures of ascetics smoking cannabis that date to earlier than the eighteenth century. 8. Dattatreyayogasastra, 41a42b: brhmaa ramao vpi bauddho vpy rhato thav| kpliko v crvka raddhay sahita sudh|| yogbhysarato nitya sarvasiddhim avpnuyt| From an unpublished critical edition by the author, based on the following witnesses: Datttreyayogastra, edited by Brahmamitra Avasth, Svm Keavnanda Yoga Sasthna (1982); Man Singh Pustak Prakash nos. 1936; Wai Praj Phal 6/4399, 6163; Baroda Oriental Institute 4107; Mysore Government Oriental Manuscripts Library 4369; Thanjavur Palace Library B6390. The edition was read by Professor Alexis Sanderson, Jason Birch, Pter-Dniel Sznt, and Andrea Acri at Oxford in early 2012, all of whom I thank for their valuable emendations and suggestions. 9. James Mallinson, ktism and Hahayoga, in The kta Traditions (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 10. The combination of the two types of yoga was universally accepted, but to this day the two yogi traditions each display a predilection for the methods they originated. Thus sana-practice is found among the Rmnands and Dasnmis, but is almost absent among the Nths, while the latter are renowned for their mastery of Tantric ritual and yoga. Mallinson, ktism and Hahayoga. 11. Gorakh or Gorakhnth is his Hindi name; in Sanskrit he is known as Goraka or Gorakantha. 12. On the history of the Nth order, see James Mallinson, Nth Sapradya, entry in Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 3, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 40728. 13. On the Sants, see Karine Schomer, and W. H. McLeod, eds., The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987). 14. See n. 35. 15. Mughal paintings of Nths other than those discussed in this essay are listed in n. 33. 16. See Carl W. Ernst, The Islamization of Yoga in the Amtakua Translations, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, no. 2 (2003), pp. 123, and Kazuyo Sakaki, Yogico-tantric Traditions in the awd al-ayt, Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies 7 (2005), pp. 13556. 17. H. Beveridge, The Akbar-nma, translated from Persian, vol. 3. Bibliotheca Indica: A Collection of Oriental Works published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Delhi: Rare Books, 1972), pp. 514, 528. 18. As noted by Ellen S. Smart, Paintings from the Baburnanama: a study of the sixteenth-century Mughal historical manuscript illustration (PhD diss., University of London, 1977), pp. 22140, the illustration of Baburs visit to Gurkhattri in g. 3 (folio 320 in a British Library manuscript of the Bburnma [Or. 3714]) is likely to be a derivative of that in a single folio from the text now found in the Victoria and
Albert Museum (IM 262-1913). There are no signicant differences in the two paintings depictions of the yogis features under consideration in this essay. 19. Annette Susannah Beveridge, The Babur-nama in English (London: Luzac and Co., 1922), p. 230. 20. I note here some rare exceptions to this principle. The Nth followers of Mastnth eschew wearing the sig, claiming to have internalized it; Rje Dkit, r Navnth Caritr Sgar (Delhi: Dehati Pustak Bhar, 1969), p. 22, Hazrprasd Dvived, Nth Samprady (Ilhbd, India: Lokbhrat Prakan, 1996), p. 17. The image of Bb Blaknth and the Daanm Sanys priests at his temple at Dyot Siddh in Himachal Pradesh wear very small sigs even though, according to legend, Bb Blaknth was avowedly not a Nth; he defeated Gorakhnth in a magical contest. On March 24, 2009, I asked the current mahant, Rajendra Giriwho sports a ne golden sig and is, as his name suggests, a member of the Giri suborder of the Daanm Sanyss why he wore what I thought was a Nth emblem. He told me that the sig itself has no particular sectarian connotation. It may be that Bb Blaknths lineage constituted one of the mahi divisions of the Giri suborder of the Daanm Sanyss. All twenty-seven of the Giri mahis have names ending in -nth and are said to trace their lineage back to Brahm Giri, who defeated Gorakhnth in a display of siddhis, after which he took the name Augharnth; r Mahant Ll Pur, Daanm Ng Sanys eva r Pancyat Akh Mahnirv (Prayg, India: r Pancyat Akh Mahnirv, 2001), pp. 6669. Bb Blaknth is sometimes identied with Jlandharnth, and this myth may represent the still unsettled rivalry between the more Tantric Jlandharnth and the reformist/heretical Gorakhnth: there are followers of the former who refuse to accept the latter as the founding guru and tutelary deity of the Nth order (personal communication Kulavadhuta Satpurananda, July 16, 2010; see also http://tribes. tribe.net/practicaltantra/thread/1e75639b-474a4ed6-872e-0675b3b286c0). The Siddhant Patal, a ritual handbook used by the Rmnands and attributed to Rmnand, mentions sigs three times (pp. 2 l.2, 9 l.2, 17 l.1). A Rmnand ascetic, Blyog r Rm Blak Ds, informed me on October 27, 2012, that this referred to tigers claws when worn in pairs as an ornament on a Rmnands ja or dreadlocks. odasamudr, of which I have seen a single circa The S seventeenth- or eighteenth-century manuscript, includes the srngi among the accoutrements of a yogi but makes no mention of anything specically Nth. The text is ascribed to uka Yog. uka, son of Vysa, is said to practice yoga in the Mahabharata (12.319), and the Bhagavatapuran a is framed as a discourse by Shuka to King Parkit. He is not included in Nth lineages but is mentioned frequently in those of the Rmnands, e.g., Monika Horstmann, The Rmnands of Galta (Jaipur, Rajasthan), in Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of Rajasthan, ed. Lawrence A. Babb, Varsha Joshi, and Michael W. Meister (Jaipur, India: Rawat Publications, 2002), p. 173, and is among the traditional teachers
(cryas) of the Daanm Sanyss; Matthew Clark, The Daanm-Sanyss: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 116 n. 46; Pur, Daanm Ng Sanys, p. 21. 21. Two ascetics wearing horns are identied as Matsyendra (Gorakhnths guru) and Gorakhnth in An Assembly of Dervishes, a painting of the annual Urs festival of Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer completed in the 1650s (Elinor Gadon, Note on the Frontispiece, in The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India, ed. Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987], p. 420) and now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, I.S.941965. A horn-wearing ascetic in a painting dated to 1610 in the collection of the Chester Beatty Library (2.209) is identied as Gorakhnth in a later notation above the picture. 22. See Miragavati 106g; Padmavati 12.1.4; Madhumalati 173 (Aditya Behl, and Simon Weightman, with Shyam Manohar Pandey, Madhumlat: An Indian Su Romance [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], p. 72); Dadu sakhi 25.20, pads 213.2, 214.2; Kabir granthavali pads 142.3, 172.1; Namdev pad 52.1; Hardas pads 1.3, 25.0; Gorakh pad 19.3, 60.4; Sundardas pads 122.2, 144.2; Gurugranth 145.1, 208.5, 334.18, 360.2, 605.12, 730.11, 730.17, 877.9, 886.14, 907.15, 908.13, 970.16. Pac Matra 11, 15, 19. 23. Bhavanapurusottama, p. 98. I am grateful to Pter-Dniel Sznt for pointing out this reference to me. 24. Sekasubhodaya, introduction, pp. xxi. This text is a ctitious account of a Muslim shaykh (seka) overcoming yogis and brahmins. 25. Harimohan Mishra, the editor of the early fteenth-century Maithili Goraksavijaya, suggests that sigs may be referred to in that texts third git, although the reading is unclear (p. 28). The circa 1700 Siddhasiddhantapaddhati, a Nth sectarian text, includes simhanada among the accoutrements of the yogi (5.15). 26. The earliest references to Gorakhnth are from South India, in particular the Deccan. Mallinson, Nth Sapradya, p. 411. 27. Mahdi Husain, The Rela of Ibn Battta (Baroda, (Baroda, India: Oriental Institute, 1953), p. 166; George Percy Badger, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1863), p. 112; Vasundhara Filliozat, Vijayanagar as seen by Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz (16th Century Portuguese Chroniclers) and others (Delhi: National Book Trust, 1999), p. 79; Mansel Longworth Dames, The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants, written by Duarte Barbosa, and completed about the year 1518 a.d., vol. 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1918), p. 231. 28. Neither of these insignia is currently worn by Nths and my eld enquiries about them have drawn a blank. 29. For historical accounts of Blnth Till, see William R. Pinch, Nth Yogs, Akbar, and Blnth T ill, in Yoga in Practice, ed. D. G. White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 27388. It later came to be known as Gorakh Till as the various disparate
Nth lineages united under Gorakhnth (on which, see Mallinson, Nth Sapradya). The earliest reference to it by this name that I have found is from the Sanys Purn Puris account of his travels in the second half of the eighteenth century, in which it is referred to as Gorakh-tala; Purn Puri, Oriental Observations, No. XThe Travels of Prn Puri, a Hindoo, who travelled over India, Persia, and part of Russia, 1792. Reprinted in The European Magazine and London Review, vol. 57 (1810), p. 269. 30. J. S. Hoyland, The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J., On His Journey to the Court of Akbar (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), p. 114. 31. Monserrate himself wrote: Dignitatis insigne, est, infula bombycinis fasciolis, fastigio, per gyrum infulae, ordine afxis, quae impendeant, et facile moueantur tribus, quattuorue || ordinibus, a fastigio, ad extremam infulae oram, quae frontem cingit (Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius, p. 597). Hoyland omits from his translation the last part of Monserrates description of the bands of silk: ordinibus, a fastigio, ad extremam infulae oram, quae frontem cingit, i.e., in rows, from the top to the edge of the llet, they encircle the forehead. Such a headpiece is not shown in any Mughal depictions of yogis, which only show a similar item worn as a necklace, but in the early eighteenth-century picture from Jodhpur reproduced in g. 6, Jlandharnth appears to be wearing one. Perhaps they could be worn as necklaces and also wrapped around the head if so desired. 32. Among the earliest examples (pre-1605) are the following: Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan collection M.286 (Sheila R. Canby, Princes, Poets and Paladins: Islamic and Indian Paintings from the Collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan (London: British Museum Press, 1998), p. 109; Rajesh Bedi and Ramesh Bedi, Sadhus: The Holy Men of India (Delhi: Brijbasi, 1991), p. 94 (this picture is said in the text to be in the Jaipur Savai Man Singh II Museum, but staff there are currently unable to locate it); British Library, J.22,16; Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, Gulshan Album, f.13b, cat. 12b; the Chester Beatty Librarys Bahr al-ayt manuscript (see cats. 9aj); San Francisco Museum of Asian Art, 1988.27; Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard, 2002.50.29; Chester Beatty Library, In44.3, Yogavsiha 128v, and Mrigvat In37 f.25r, f.28v, f.44r; Walters Art Museum, W.596 f.22b (dated 1593, another illustration of the Bburnma description of Baburs visit to Gurkhattri); Bburnma, Cynthia Hazen Polsky Collection, New York; Bburnma, Victoria and Albert Museum, IM 262-1913; Bburnma, British Library, Or. 3714, f.197r. 33. See Clark, The Daanm-Sanyss, pp. 6164, for a summary of these reports. 34. It is thanks to the perennial confusion caused by the ambiguity of referents of the name yog that various scholars have alleged that the Nths were Indias rst organized military order (see, e.g., David Lorenzen, Warrior Ascetics in Indian History, Journal of the American Oriental Society 98 (1978), p. 68; cf. Vronique Bouillier, La Violence des Nonviolents ou les Asctes au Combat, Pururtha 16 (1993), p. 218, who is surely correct when she writes of non-Muslim ascetics Ce sont donc les Dasnami Sannyasis qui sont les premiers ainsi instaurer
dans leurs rangs une branche combatante. With some early localized exceptionssuch as the warrior yogis in the service of the king of the yogis on Indias west coast in the early sixteenth century (Badger, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, pp. 27374) and the armies of yogis mentioned in two Su romances, the Padmavati (Jogi khand) and Kanhavat (342)there are no indications that Nths were ever organized into ghting forces. Two or three Nths are seen on the edges of the battle depicted in gure 9, but they are not involved in the action. There has long been a friendly interaction between the Sanyss and Nths, and at some point it appears that certain Nth lineages were absorbed into the Sanyss, in particular their Giri suborder (see n. 21). It may be that Sanys military units were joined by some early isolated groups of militarized proto-Nths, such as those encountered by Tavernier in 1640 (V. Ball, trans., Travels in India by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne [1676, repr. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995], pp. 6668), who were perhaps members of the army of the Malabar king of the yogis, exiled after the oppression of his monastery at Kadri by Vekappa Nyaka. A single warrior in the thick of the action in the Akbarnma depiction of Sanyss ghting at Thanesar (Thaneshwar; g. 9) can be seen to be wearing a sig, an archetypal piece of Nth insignia. On being initiated, todays Nths vow not to keep dangerous weapons (H. A. Rose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, vol. 2 [Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1911], p. 401), and the rst Sanskrit Nth text written after the formalization of the order, the Siddhasiddhantapaddhati, scorns those who carry arms (6.94). 35. See Vronique Bouillier, Itinrance et vie monastique: Les asctes Nth Yogs en Inde contemporaine (Paris: ditions de la Maison des sciences de lhomme, 2008), pp. 2223, on the wearing of earrings by ascetic Nths. On Rajasthani householder Nths, see Daniel Gold, Experiences of Ear-Cutting: The Signicances of a Ritual of Bodily Alteration for Householder Yogis, Journal of Ritual Studies 10, no. 1 (1996), pp. 91112; Gold, Nth Yogis as Established Alternatives: Householders and Ascetics Today, Journal of Asian and African Studies 34, no. 1 (1999), pp. 6888; and Gold, Yogis Earrings, Householders Birth: Split Ears and Religious Identity among Householder Nths in Rajasthan, in Religion, Ritual and Royalty, ed. N. K. Singhi and Rajendra Joshi (Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1999), pp. 3553. See also George Weston Briggs, Gorakhnth and the Knphaa Yogs (1938, repr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989), pp. 611; Hazrprasd Dvived, Nth Samprady (Ilhbd, India: Lokbhrat Prakan, 1996), pp. 1516. 36. Three Aspects of the Absolute, folio 1 from the Nath Charit, by Bulaki, 1823, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2399. See Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), cat. 40, pp. 17477, detail on p. 176. 37. The same two yogis are accompanied by four more ascetics in a painting dating to circa 182025 by an artist of Ghulam Ali Khans circle. All six ascetics are named in accompanying inscriptions; I thank Bruce Wannell for transcribing them. The larger painting is reproduced in Archeologie, Arts dOrient,
July 2, 1993, p. 61, no. 185, and Joachim K. Bautze, Interaction of Cultures: Indian and Western Painting 17801910: The Ehrenfeld Collection (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 1998), pp. 5657. The ascetic on the right is depicted on his own in a picture from a private collection reproduced in Christopher Bayly, ed., The Raj: India and the British 1600 1947 (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1990), p. 223, pl. 283, in which his earrings are in the lobes of his ears, not knphaa-style. On page 323 of the Tashrh al-aqvm is a picture of a Sanpera or snake charmer with earrings in the cartilages of his ears. Several snake-charmer castes claim afliation with the Nth tradition, which became an umbrella organization for a broad variety of religious specialists with roots in the Tantric traditions. Snake charmers have an old Tantric pedigree, as evinced by references from as early as the sixth century to a category of texts called Grua Tantras, which are primarily concerned with curing snakebites; Michael J. Slouber, Grua Medicine: A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012). A slightly earlier painting (181520), also in the British Library collection (Add. Or.114), shows a Kaun Fauttah (Beggar) in Varanasi with earrings in the cartilages of his ears. Pramod Chandra also noticed the absence of knphaa-style earrings in early Mughal pictures: Actually, and rather surprisingly, I have yet to see an early Mughal representation of the split ear and I wonder what to make of it. Could it be possible that the practice is more modern than is commonly thought? Pramod Chandra, Hindu Ascetics in Mughal Painting, in Discourses on iva: Proceedings of a Symposium on the Nature of Religious Imagery (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1985), p. 312. 38. The earliest depiction of Nths with aiva insignia of which I am aware is a circa 1780 Kishangarh painting of four Nths by a dhni re in front of a iva liga reproduced in Daniel J. Ehnbom, Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1985), pl. 75, in which the yogis all sport aiva tripura or horizontal forehead marking. the S The rst overtly sectarian Nth Sanskrit text, the Siddhasiddhntapaddhati, which can tentatively be dated to approximately 1700, enjoins the yogi to wear a tripura (5.16). 39. The lack of importance of a aiva orientation for Nth identity in the premodern era is demonstrated by occasional references to, and depictions of, Vaiava Nths. The Nth holding a peacock-feather fan in gure 4 sports the Vaiava V-shaped forehead marking. Gorakh pad 12.6 says that King Rma pervades the body; thus one can know the place of Hari, i.e., Viu, cf. Gorakh sakhi 162. Bharthari, Goraknths disciple, is a devotee of Nrayna in the eighteenth-century Bhartrharinirveda; Louis H. Gray, The Bhartharinirveda of Harihara, Now First Translated from the Sanskrit and Prkrit, Journal of the American Oriental Society 25 (1904), pp. 197230. George Weston Briggs, Gorakhnth and the Knphaa Yogs (1938, repr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989), pp. 2035, relates a version of the famous Nth legend of Gopcand in which at his initiation ve Vaiavas came and dressed him in a loincloth and put a Rama rosary around his neck. When he broke a fast, he said, Shri Krishna. But there are many more references to Nths worshiping iva, in particular as Adintha, the primal Nth. Nth
conceptions of the Absolute as formless are found in many of their texts, both Sanskrit and vernacular, and in the circa 1650 Dabistan, in which yogi followers of Gorakh are said to call god Alka (i.e., Alakh, the imperceptible) They believe Brahma, Vichnu, and Mahadeva to be subordinate divinities, but they are, as followers and disciples, addicted to Gorakhnath; thus, some devote themselves to one or the other of the deities. David Shea and Anthony Troyer, The Dabistn or School of Manners, vol. 2 (London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843), pp. 12728. 40. The earliest North Indian paintings of ascetics aiva forehead markings that I have seen wearing S are late seventeenth-century Rajput miniatures (e.g., Smart et al., Indian Painting, pp. 5051, cf. the depiction of Vishvamitras tapas in a seventeenth-century Rajput illustrated Ramayana in the British Library [MS 15295 f. 173] and The Seven Great Sages, Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh 1343, g. 7 in Debra Diamonds introductory essay in this volume). 41. In addition to the paintings discussed in this essay, Mughal pictures of Sanyss include the following: San Diego Museum of Art 1990:355; British Museum 1941,0712,0.5; British Museum 1920,0917,0.38; Harvard 1983.620r (pl. 231 in The St. Petersburg Muraqqa); Two Ascetics, Museum Rietberg, 2012.132 (see cat. 7b). 42. The battle took place at Kurukshetra, 150 kilometers north of Delhi. 43. There are three accounts of this encounter, in which the combatants are referred to inconsistently as both Jogis and Sanyss. Ahmad and Al-Badauni say that they are Jogis and Sanyss. Nizamuddin Ahmad, Tabakat-i Akbari, trans. H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, in The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. 5 (London: Trubner and Co, 1873), p. 318. Al-Badauni, Muntakhabu-t-Tawrkh, vol. 2, trans. W. H. Lowe (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1898), p. 95. Abul Fazl says that both sides are Sanyss, identifying one group as Kurs, the other as Puris; H. Beveridge, The Akbar-nma, translated from Persian, Bibliotheca Indica: A Collection of Oriental Works published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 2 (Delhi: Rare Books, 1972), p. 423. Kur is a corruption, resulting from Persian orthography, of Giri. This is supported by the list of the Daanms ten names given in the Dabistan, where in the place of Giri we nd Kar; Shea and Troyer, The Dabistn, pp. 139 (cf. 14748, which mentions a Sanys called Madan Kir). hvara Puri, the mantra guru of the 44. For example, I Gauya Vaiava guru Caitanya Mahprabhu and hvara Puris guru Madhavendra Pur. On other early I Vaiava ascetics with the nominal sufx Pur, see Stuart Mark Elkman, Jva Gosvmins Tattvasandarbha: A Study on the Philosophical and Sectarian Development of the Gauya Vaiava Movement (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), pp. 1617. 45. Sattvatasamhita 9.98109 in Sanjukta Gupta, Yoga and Antaryga in Pcartra, Ritual and Speculation in Early Tantrism: Studies in Honour of Andr Padoux (New York: New York University Press, 1992), pp. 175208. V. Krishnamacharya, ed., Lakmtantra (Madras: Adyar Library, 1959), 11.1925.
46. This is the date of the Agastyasamhita, the earliest text to teach devotion to Rama. Hans Bakker, An Old Text of the Rma Devotion: The Agastyasahit, in Navonmea (Varanasi, India: M. M. Gopinth Kaviraj Centenary Celebration Committee, 1987), pp. 300306. 47. The Rmnands disavowal of nakedness is somewhat specious. Members of their military divisions (like the Daanm warriors) are still called Ng, naked, and they and their Tyg brethren often sport loincloths that leave little to the imagination. 48. See, for example, Anand Venkatkrishnan, Mms, Vednta, and the Bhakti Movement, paper published online at academia.edu (2012), p. 10, on the Sanys Rmatirtha. A signicant difference between Rma-bhakti traditions, from the time of the twelfth-century Agastyasamhita onward, and other Vaiava ascetic traditions is the formers use of the six-syllable Rma mantra as opposed to the eight-syllable o namo nryaya. But the same sixteenth-century Sanys teachers who had no difculty with Rma-bhakti also admit to chanting the name of God, whether that name be Hari or Rma (or iva, etc.), as a means to religious goals; Venkatkrishnan, p. 13.
84 | ESSAYS
Joseph S. Alter
YOGA , BODYBUILDING, AND WRESTLING | 85
Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness
Despite the cognitive dissonance produced by the visual contrast between yoga, bodybuilding, and martial arts, these seemingly disparate domains of practice are intimately linked on a number of different levels. The invention of postural yoga in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India1 is directly linked to the reinvention of sport in the context of colonial modernity and also to the increasing use of physical tness in schools, gymnasiums, clinics, and public institutions.2 Prior to the early nineteenth century, yoga was understood as a practice that focused on the acquisition of power, which involved the manipulation of supernatural and natural elements, both physical and ecological, gross and subtle.3 As such, metaphysical mysticism and meditation, while important, were always grounded in the more encompassing and complicated problem of materialism. Given that yoga is now conceptualized in terms of balanced holistic health, spirituality, and esoteric mysticism, it is important to appreciate the extent to which a range of premodern and early modern practices were focused on radical embodied ideals of physical and metaphysical self-transformation. This essay is divided into three sections. After briey highlighting the structure of early modern ideals and how they reect an understanding of the body, perception, and nature in relation to physiology, sexuality, and power, I will provide a broad contextualization of modern practice through an examination of the role played by three key gures: Swami Kuvalayananda, Sri Yogendra, and (to a lesser extent) Sri Krishnamacharya. It is directly in relation to these early twentieth-century gures and a number of others who transformed yoga into a system of Indian physical tness and self-developmentthat we can understand how and why athleticism, sport, and yoga came together in modern life. This practice is exemplied by Dr. Shanti Prakash Atreya, philosopher of yoga and mid-century Uttar Pradesh wrestling champion, and Bishnu Charan Ghosh, bodybuilder and Bengali innovator of muscular yoga. Atreya was the son of a professor of Sanskrit at Banaras Hindu University, the institution from which he earned a PhD. Ghosh was the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (18931952; g. 2), whose iconic Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) has come to dene what many people in the West want to see when they look past the body toward a mystical, otherworldly India. In essence, my argument is that the science of medical physiology and physical education did for the body subject to colonialism and nationalism what alchemy did for bodies animated by the biopolitics of medieval kings, councilors, and world renouncers. Atreya in particular conceptualized the physical power he embodied as a champion Indian wrestler in terms of the material essence of ojas (supernatural vitality) and semen, thus
Fig. 1 Five athletes, symbolizing a musical mode (Deshakha raga). India, ca. 18801900. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Fig. 2 Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship
inverting and internalizingin yogic termsthe externalized logic of bodybuilding and muscle control exemplied in asana performances. Because of the canonical status of Patanjalis Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, and because of the way in which yoga involves, but seems to disarticulate, physical discipline and metaphysical speculation, yoga has come to mean a phenomenal range of different things to different individuals and groups. As David Gordon White has shown, the history of yoga is often a history of misinterpretation and the morphing of highly malleable meanings.4 The way in which Patanjalis somewhat arcane second-century aphorisms leave room for endless, almost unrestricted translation and interpretation helps to explain why yoga has such varied meanings in the public culture of modernity. Signicantly, this is very different from understanding the history of ideas and practices that are linked to interpretations of philosophical commentaries on the Yoga Sutras, which provide a much clearer and more coherentif less popularperspective on systematic and logical intellectual transformations and metaphysical developments in practice.5 A key point that seems to have been lost in translation, but that helps to explain a number of otherwise incomprehensible details in modern and early modern practice, is what White refers to as yogic perception.6 As the rst commentary on the Sutras makes clear, and as other commentaries would clarify over the course of a millennium, yogic perception is metaphysical in that the sensessight in particularchange the nature of reality, effecting a synthesis of the process in the material structure of consciousness rather than reproducing a cognitive representation of the world as it appears to be. Yoga is concerned with the material embodiment of a perceptual change in the nature of realitynot a change of perception but a change in perception. Perception is both means and end, and the body is both the medium and the message. What appears to be magic in the Yoga Sutras, and what appears to be the erotic alchemy of sexual transubstantiation in medieval literature is, quite literally, the physical and metaphysical matter of perception rather than a matter of mental perception.7 In this sense, the physical nature of yoga encompasses more than postures and breathing exercises, since mind and thought derive from the same material substance as the rest of the body. Yoga entails practice, which is inherently embodied. In these terms, textual representations of yoga are removed from practice, similar to what occurs when the love of wisdom in representations of classical Greek philosophy is extracted from the intimacy of the gymnasium. Yoga is, in essence, what yogis do; and what they were doing, according to texts from the early modern period, was using the material nature of their bodies to exercise various forms of authority in relation to peoples perception of power.8 These included yogis embodying alchemical transubstantiation to change the nature of time; changing the nature of their bodies to change the dynamics of space; entering into other peoples bodies to change their perception of reality; and using their own bodiesand peoples fear of their down-toearth supernatural powerto ght as mercenaries to secure gold, silver, and land.9 As documented in accounts of practice, early modern yogis were often viewed as sinister characters whose fearsome power was manifest in their ability to weave their own images in the illusion of realityand weave the illusion of reality into their own imagesand convince people that they should be perceived as powerful.10 In this light, late medieval hatha yoga texts explain how the physical manipulation of the body comes into the play of power. The texts provide a way to understand metaphysical tness as the matter of perception rather than to misperceive what they say about magic and
86 | JOSEPH S. ALTER
eroticism in light of modern sensibilities. In the late nineteenth-century reading of the texts, modern sensibilities held sway, such that the moral opprobrium of black magic and the perversity of eroticism produced large measures of misunderstanding, even though sanitized asana and pranayama were easily adapted into the rubric of early twentieth-century physical culture. Jagannath Gune was one of the rst to sanitize, systematize, and professionalize hatha yoga, drawing inspiration from Vivekanandas assertive masculine Hinduism11 as well as the project of nationalist swaraj (self-rule). Gune, who later became better known as Swami Kuvalayananda (1883 1966), drew directly on lessons learned from his guru, Paramahansa Madhavadasji (17981921), a Bengali barrister who renounced the world, wandered in the Himalayas for many years, and then settled in Gujarat and prescribed yoga asana, kriya, and pranayama for the treatment of medical problems. While studying in Baroda, Gune joined the newly designated Vyayam Mandir (Temple of Exercise) established by Professor Rajratna Manikrao, who taught physical tness, athletics, and paramilitary drills with the aim of challenging British political authority and cultural hegemony. Manikrao sought to develop a program of modern Indian physical culture, drawing directly on nineteenth-century traditions as well as twelve years of training in wrestling and martial arts in Jummadadas akhara, a gymnasium under the patronage of the maharaja of Baroda (g. 1). In addition, as the moniker professor suggests, Manikrao took direct inspiration from modern principles of physical culture and masculine self-development that captured the middle-class imagination in many parts of the British Empire. Gune became a devotee of Madhavadasji while engaged in educational development under the auspices of the Kandesh Education Society, which was located near the ashram. Having already taken a vow of celibacy under Manikraos tutelage, he renounced his professional ambitions, adopted the title Swami Kuvalayananda, and committed himself to the study and practice of yoga. Based on Madhavadasjis application of yoga therapy for the treatment of health problems, his own athletic predilections, and a strong inclination toward scientic research, Kuvalayananda began a project to demystify yoga, prove its medical efcacy, and, perhaps most important, establish asana and pranayama as the basis for a national scheme of physical education and tness.12 While other practitioners, such as Krishnamacharya and his disciples, captured the limelight, it was Kuvalayananda who established the institutional infrastructure for the broad-based national integration of yoga into schools and clinics and also theorized the interface of the gross and the subtle body by focusing on physiology and metaphysical tness (g. 3). In doing so, he drew directly on Manikraos mass-drill program of nationalist martial arts and physical education.13 As was the case with supporters of Ayurveda, advocates for the modernization of asana and pranayama were often conicted about whether and to what extent science was necessary to claim legitimacy, with the further complication that the modernization of yoga required contortions of logic with regard to magic, sex, and supernatural power.14 What is perhaps most signicant about Kuvalayanandas project is his resolute insistence on trying to identify the illusive connections between gross physiology and subtle forms of power. This led him to conduct numerous experiments to identify, quantify, and measure the effects of breath retention, dhauti (internal and external cleaning and self-purication), and samadhi (perfect contemplation).15 The results of these experiments are less signicant than the way in which they reect a history of modern practice that is, perhaps in spite of itself, consistent with medieval alchemy and with Patanjalis understanding of perception. On a number of different levels, Kuvalayananda was concerned with power, the embodiment of power, and the material manipulation of what is perceived to be supernatural. In the context of colonialism, Kuvalayananda developed a program of asana and pranayama physical education, integrating programs of mass drill into schools in Gujarat and Maharashtra and the outline of a comprehensive plan for yoga physical education in Uttar Pradesh soon after independence. Beyond popularization and demystication, what is most signicant about his project is
that it established a logic of cultural translation in which embodied practices coded to alchemy took on meaning within a framework of tness, health, and power.16 While Kuvalayananda was engaged in institution building and scientic research, another of Madhavadasjis disciples was engaged in a parallel effort to promote asana and pranayama physical culture.17 As a boy, Manibhai Haribhai Desai (18971989) had developed into a strong wrestler after turning to the popular rural sport in western Maharashtra to treat a serious, debilitating illness. To the dismay of his Brahmin father, his propensity for athleticism was encouraged by his schoolteachers and principals, who took their mission of muscular Christianity quite seriously.18 While studying at St. Xaviers College in Bombay, Desai heard Madhavadasji give a talk and almost immediately left school to follow his guru, once again to his fathers great disappointment. Like Gune, Desais thinking was profoundly shaped by his experience at Madhavadasjis ashram in Malsar, Gujarat. Correspondingly, he reshaped his body through the practice of asana and pranayama, transforming a wrestlers body into that of a yogi, but not losing sight of power in the process of translation and transubstantiation. Leaving Malsar, Desai made his way to Bombay where he impressed a number of businessmen with his adept prowess and started teaching asana and pranayama and prescribing yoga as therapy. In doing so, he was among the rst to fully integrate yoga with the nature cure, a form of alternative European medicine that was gaining widespread popularity in middle-class circles in India.19 With nancial backing from wealthy Bombay patrons, Desai traveled to New York to teach and popularize yoga. During this time, he prescribed asana and pranayama therapy, but also became increasingly focused on the development of a yoga physical tness program based on the principles of gymnastic athleticism. Returning to Bombay in 1923, Desainow calling himself Yogendradeveloped the Yoga Institute as a center for research, teaching, and physical education. As
Fig. 3 Yoga asanas, from The Yoga Body Illustrated by M. R. Jambunathan. India, 1941. Library of Congress
publications from the institute indicate, primary emphasis was placed on the practice of simple, regimented, rhythmic yoga for tness and health.20 As was the case with Kuvalayananda, Yogendras program of simplied asana and yoga personal hygiene had a larger cultural impact on the shape and form of modern yoga in India. Since Desai established it in the early 1920s, the Yoga Institute has been training certied yoga instructors, many of whom have taken up teaching positions in schools and nature cure clinics around the country. As such, all of these instructors teach permutations of rhythmic asana and pranayama within the rubric of physical education and athletics. Yogendra and Kuvalayanda are less well known internationally than Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (18881989), who is often regarded as the father of modern yoga, largely due to the profound inuence two of his disciplesB. K. S. Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois21have had on contemporary practice all over the world. But like his pioneering contemporaries in western India, Krishnamacharya was strongly inuenced by gymnastic physical culture, organized athletics, and the nature cure, especially after he was recruited by the maharaja of Mysore in the early 1930s to teach and provide physical education training.22 With royal patronage, he established a gymnasium for yoga training that emphasized physical strength, stamina, and muscle tone. Along with many Indian physical culturists of the time, such as Kodi Ramamurty Naidu and Bhishnu Charan Ghosh, Krishnamacharya put on demonstrations of physical prowess that blurred the line between natural and supernatural power, for example, stopping both his pulse and moving cars as well as lifting heavy objects while performing difcult asanas. Physical strength and stamina notwithstanding, Krishnamacharya focused his training on postural movement and pranayama, which nds dynamic expression in the form of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga developed by Jois. In light of the history of modern postural yoga in India, it is clear that Joiss and Iyengars success on the global stage was, in part, a result of their focus on adept athletic asana gymnastic
Fig. 4 and 5 Yogi Selvarajan Yesudian, Bodybuilding and muscle control poses, 1958
Fig. 6 British muscle man Eugene Sandow posing as the Farnese Hercules, 1897 Fig. 7 Buddha Bose, a student of yoga master Bishnu Ghosh, shows his skills at a yoga exercise demonstration, London, ca. 1930s
performance, whereas Kuvalayananda, Yogendra, and others, such as Selvarajan Yesudian (19161998; gs. 4, 5), highlighted how physical education and tness were institutionalized. All, however, worked within the same rubric of athleticism, physical culture, and muscular Christianity23 even though there is a tendency to forget this and represent modern movements as the perfect reection of what looks like an ancient tradition. It is relatively easy to perform a difcult asana and make it look as though it is both supernatural and mystically archaic but more challenging to make it t explicitly into the rubric of modernity and modern physiology. Here, the case of Bishnu Charan Ghosh (19031970) is important. Ghosh, the younger brother of Swami Yogananda, was directly involved in the development of Yogoda physical tness as an integral component of the Self-Realization Fellowship, both in India and the United States.24 Yogoda was a hybrid form of postural practice similar to Yogendras rhythmic exercises and Kuvalayanandas mass-drill asana program, but was intended for school curricula. In 1930, Ghosh established Ghoshs College of Yoga and Physical Culture in Calcutta and began to experiment with bodybuilding exercises combined with asana. As documented in Barbell Exercise and Muscle Control,25 Ghosh achieved significant physical development and muscular denition, clearly establishing himself as a bodybuilder in the mold of Eugene Sandow (18671925; g. 6) and a spectrum of other bodybuilders in India, such as Professor K. V. Iyer, Professor J. Chandrashekhar, Swami Shivanand Teerth, Manotosh Roy, Ramesh Balsekar, Chit Tun and the iconic Monohar Aich, who started his career as a strong man in P. C. Sorcars traveling magic show. Ghosh modied asana routines to produce muscle denition and control, including the articulation of abdominal recti, which is distinctive of nauli kriya (one of the shatkarma cleansing procedures that involves isolating and rotating the abdominal recti muscles; g 7). His legacy is most clearly visible in his most famous student, Bikram Choudhury, who was a bodybuilder and weightlifting champion in India before the global success of Bikram Yoga put him in the international spotlight, placing emphasis on the athletic body in a way that brought asana directly back into focus and linked it to muscle control. With this in mind, one can better appreciate the signicance of Dr. Shanti Prakash Atreyas (19171990) perspective on yoga and the way in which the martial art of wrestling ts into the history of modern Indian postural practice. What Atreyaa yoga philosopher and wrestling championdoes, in essence, is invert the logic of Kuvalayananda and Yogendras innovation as well as Krishnamacharyas synthesis of asana and gymnastics, making the argument that wrestling is yoga with a slight twist and that the body of the wrestler reects the material essence of yogic power. His perception of how this power is embodied in the material essence of ojas and semen is thus inside out relative to Ghoshs outside in perspective on bodybuilding and muscle control. Atreya himself sought to embody his theory of yogic wrestling and did so quite successfully, both in terms of athletic success in tournaments and by becoming one of the most articulate, authoritative, and respected voices in the arena of nationalistic rhetoric concerning the development of nonviolent, muscular, moral masculinity.26 From the mid-1960s until his death in 1990 he published extensively, primarily in a specialized magazine dedicated to the promotion of wrestling in India.27 That Atreya is not nearly as well known as Jois and Iyengar (or even Ghosh) is due to many issues, including social class and the language of publication and communication, but it also points directly to the relative marginality of the history of wrestling as a sport in relation to yoga metaphysical philosophy. While the importance of wrestling has waned since the golden age of Platos dialogues in the gymnasium, yoga has unambiguously risen on the tide of colonial and postcolonial popular Orientalism.28 In any event, that Atreya is relatively unknown should not be taken as a reection on the signicance of his insights, especially given the profound and wide-ranging inuence of athleticism on modern yoga. In a number of books and articles, Atreya draws on the architecture of samkhya philosophy to structure an approach to physical and moral development within a framework of vigorous
Fig. 8 A yogi practicing yoga in Benares (Varanasi), Uttar Pradesh, India
athletic self-discipline that accords with the logic of yoga if not with the form of common practice manifest in asana.29 As explained in a series of articles by a disciple and historian of wrestling, Ramchandra Kesriya,30 one of Atreyas points of entry into the logic of physical and moral self-development is through pranayama; a second point of entry is through elemental transubstantiation, semen, and a conceptualizing of embodied power that crosscuts subtle and gross domains of experience and perception.31 In terms of pranayama, Atreyas reasoning is simple and straightforward, and clearly indicates the extent to which power is manifest in the dynamic interface of gross and subtle dimensions of embodiment. Regimented breathing can be understood as a way to exercise and develop the dynamics of this interface such that the subtle power of prana promotes the development of energized stamina, which can be understood in terms of various gross physiological measurements and the ability to wrestle for hours at a time. Similarly, the practice of celibacy one of the coordinates of self-restraint in yoga practice generates ojas, the subtle essence of radiant strength that, in terms of samkhya, is the metabolic distillate of dhatu transubstantiation. Based on an Ayurvedic interpretation of samkhyan ecological physiology, Atreya reasons that a combination of exercise and diet generates an efcient and dynamic transformation of specialized foodsmilk, ghee, and almondsinto semen and ojas, which manifests as the hybrid articulation of gross and subtle power called shakti. Not only is the quantity of food increased proportional to the proposed development of shaktiAtreya advocates consumption of milk, ghee, and almonds in liter and kilogram measuresbut it is produced by sets of physiological exercises that develop physical strength as a derivative expression of semen, given that semen is metabolized in the body by means of specic exercises. As one of the two primary exercises in the wrestlers regimen of training, Atreya advocates dandas as a kind of modied yogic exercise that results in semen control. Depending on ones perception, dandas can be seen as identical to the rhythmic articulation of Yogendras asana gymnastics in so far as they take shape in practice by combining several postures, includingto use contemporary parlancea sequence that moves the gross body from downward dog to plank to cobra and back to downward dog. Wrestlers are instructed to do as many as a thousand of these ojas-building exercises every day. In many ways Atreyas argument is that wrestling is more yogic than various forms of modern postural yoga that place emphasis on the gross features of muscle control, exibility, and physical tness (g. 8). In any case, his argument is perfectly consistent with a history of many perceptive innovations, extending from Patanjali through to Bikram, and highlights the way in which yoga in modern India must be understood with a clear perspective on the material nature of metaphysical tness.
Notes
1. See Globalized Modern Yoga by Mark Singleton and cats. 26ai on modern postural yoga in this volume. 2. Joseph Alter, Yoga and Physical Education: Swami Kuvalayanandas Nationalist Project, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, 3 (2007), pp. 2036; Alter, Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011). Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 3. David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); White, Yoga in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). A distinction between gross (material and tangible) and subtle (ethereal and intangible) elements and physiology is integral to the practice of yoga. Thus breathing gross air is a form of exercise (pranayama) whereby the body internalizes and transubstantiates the element into its subtle form as pran. Similarly the subtle form of gross semen is embodied through the practice of various yoga techniques. 4. White, Yoga in Practice, p. 2. 5. White, Yoga in Practice. 6. White, Sinister Yogis. 7. David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 8. Joseph Alter, Sacrice and Immortality: Theoretical Implications of Embodiment in Hathayoga, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 35, no. 2 (2012); White, Yoga in Practice. 9. White, Sinister Yogis. 10. White, Sinister Yogis. 11. For more on Vivekananda, see cats. 24ah and Singletons discussion in Globalized Modern Yoga. 12. Swami Kuvalayananda, sana (Lonavala: Kaivalyadhama SMYM Samithi, 1924); Kuvalayananda, Yoga Therapy: Its Basic Principles and Methods (New Delhi: Government of India, 1963). 13. Alter, Yoga and Physical Education. 14. See Jean Langford, Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalances (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Dagmar Wujastyk and Frederick Smith, Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008); Mark Singleton, Body at the Centre: The Postural Yoga Renaissance and Transnational Flows, in The Magic of Yoga: Conceptualizing Body and Self in Transcultural Perspective, ed. Beatrix Hauser (Heidelberg: Springer, 2012).
15. Joseph Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Philosophy and Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Dhaut involves a number of different procedures for cleaning the bodysuch as swallowing a cloth and then pulling it back outto prepare oneself for other forms of yoga practice, including procedures that ultimately culminate in samdhi, a state of embodied transcendence in which the individual self is realized in the cosmic, Universal Self. 16. Joseph S. Alter, Yoga and Physical Education: Swami Kuvalayanandas Nationalist Project, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3 (2007), pp. 2036; Joseph S. Alter, Yoga at the Fin de Sicle: Muscular Christianity with a Hindu Twist, International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 5, (2006) pp. 75976. For an analytical discussion of embodied alchemy, see Joseph S. Alter, Sacrice and Immortality: Theoretical Implications of Embodiment in Hathayoga, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 35, no. 2, pp. 40833. 17. Joseph Alter, Sri Yogendra: Magic, Modernity and the Burden of the Middle-Class Yogi, in Gurus in Modern Yoga, ed. Mark Singleton (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 18. See John MacAloon, Muscular Christianity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds (London: Routledge, 2007). 19. Other forms of alternative healing were becoming popular in many parts of the world, and there are interesting and important links between Theosophy, New Thought, Swedenborgianism, and health reform and physical culture in India, Europe, and the United States. Some of these issues are examined in Joseph S. Alter, Gandhis Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), and are being explored in a current research project on the integration of ecology, yoga, and nature cure in contemporary India. 20. Sri Yogendra, Yoga Personal Hygiene (Bombay: Yoga Institute, 1930); Yogendra, Yoga sanas Simplied (Bombay: Yoga Institute, 1991). 21. B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga (New York: Schocken Books, 1976); K. Pattabhai Jois, Yoga Mala (New York: North Point Press, 2002). 22. See cats. 26ai, especially the discussion on the 1938 archival lm of Krishnamacharya performing and demonstrating sanas that was sponsored by the Mysore maharaja. 23. See Joseph Alter, Yoga at the Fin de Sicle: Muscular Christianity with a Hindu Twist, in Muscular Christianity and Colonialism, ed. John J. MacAloon (New York: Routledge, 2007). 24. The Self-Realization Fellowship was established by Paramahansa Yogananada in 1920 to develop a spiritual way of life based on meditation, prayer, and various forms of yoga exercise. See the section on Yogananda in Globalized Modern Yoga.
25. Keshab Chandra Sen Gupta and Bishnu Charan Ghose, Barbell Exercise and Muscle Control (Calcutta: Published by the authors, 1930). 26. Brij Dube, Kut ke chrya, Bhratya Kut 27, no. 11 (1990), pp. 5762; Ramchandra Kesriya, Aise the Mahtm treya, Bhratya Kut 26, no. 11 (1990), pp. 3946; Govardandas Mahrotra, Bhu ym Vyaktitva ke Dhan the, Bhratya Kut 27, no. 11 (1990), pp. 7178. Pranab Singh, Mahtm j aur , Bhratya Kut 27, no. 11 (1990), pp. 7983. maim 27. Shanti Prakash Atreya, Malla iromai, r Ka, Bhratya Kut 9, nos. 10, 11, 12 (1972), pp. 3135; Atreya, Sacch Pahalvn Devt Hot Hai, Bhratya Kut 10, nos. 7, 8, 9 (1973), pp. 2126; Atreya, Brahmchrya, Bhratya Kut 10, nos. 10, 11, 12 (1973), pp. 2134; Atreya, Kuhlgate, Rjpur Kut Praikan Kendra Chunne k k Yoga evam Vii Rahasiya, Bhratya Kut 18, nos. 10, 11, 12 (1981), pp. 6264; Atreya, Bharat me rrik ika, Bhratya Kut 31, no. 12 (1993), pp. 3762. 28. Joseph Alter, Sex, Askesis and the Athletic Perfection of the Soul: Physical Philosophy in the Ancient Mediterranean and South Asia, in Subtle Bodies, ed. Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnson (London: Routledge, 2013). 29. Shanti Prakash Atreya, Yoga Manovigyn k Rp Rekh (Moradabad, India: Darshan Printers, 1965). Skhya is one of the six classical schools of philosophy that dates to the early centuries CE. It is based on the dualist principle that purua, a perfect and transcendent animating principle, is categorically distinct from prakti, all that is inanimate, material, and manifest in the world. Skhya philosophy provides the logical structure for understanding how yoga physiology relates to the more abstract, encompassing and ecological dynamics of purua and prakti. 30. Ramchandra Kesriya, Hahayoga yukt Pahalwn, Bhratya Kut 30, no. 12 (1992), pp. 3546; Kesriya, Hahayoga yukt Pahalwn, Bhratya Kut 31, no. 3 (1993), pp. 6582; Kesriya, Hahayoga yukt Pahalwn, Bhratya Kut 31, no. 12 (1993), pp. 6372; Kesriya, Hahayoga yukt Pahalwn, Bhratya Kut 34, no. 2 (1996), pp. 3548; Kesriya, Hahayoga yukt Pahalwn, Bhratya Kut 34, no. 11 (1996), pp. 4558. 31. See also Atreya, Brahmchrya, Bhratya Kut 10; Brahmchrya, Bhratya Kut 11; and Brahmchrya, Bhratya Kut 24, no. 12 (1987), pp. 2552. Based on skhya philosophy, one can understand the relationship with semen as a highly rened and more or less subtle derivative of prakritic elements and ojas, that element of embodied experience that reectsas the most rened of all elementsthe transcendence of purua.
94 | ESSAYS
Mark Singleton
Globalized Modern Yoga
For the rst several thousand years of its development, yoga was largely conned to South Asia, i.e., the geographical region corresponding to the modern nation states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. Although there is evidence of exchanges of yogic knowledge and practice outside this region through the centuries, it is only in the modern period that yoga began to be transmitted in a systematic and widespread fashion in other parts of the world. By the beginning of the twenty-rst century, yoga had become a truly global phenomenon, with yoga classes available in virtually every metropolis in the worldmost prominently in North America, Europe, and Australasia, but also in Central and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of Africa. Yoga is now a household word far from its place of origin, although in its modern forms and modalities it can be quite distinct from the South Asian forebears commonly invoked as their source and authority. There is a great deal of variety in the content and mode of yogas global transmissions, and variation also in the claimed or actual links to Indian tradition. This article will consider some of the most important historical stages of this globalization process as well as several of the ways in which yoga has adapted and accommodated itself to the modern, transnational world.
The Modern Yoga Renaissance

The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a reconstruction of the cultural and religious foundations of Hinduism by certain sections of the Indian intelligentsia. This reworking of the basic concepts and principles of Indian religious traditiona result of the encounter with new ideas and concepts from the Westis sometimes referred to as neo-Hinduism.1 The Bengali cultural association known as the Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1828 by Rammohan Roy (17741833), repositioned Hinduism as a universalist, rational faith that could synthesize ancient Indian religious culture with the insights of contemporary science, philosophy, and comparative religion. Roy propounded an earthly, utilitarian religion and was fascinated by the teachings of Christianity, in particular the tenets of Unitarianism (he helped establish the Unitarian Mission in Bengal in 1821). He was also inuential in spreading Hindu ideas abroad, including to Emersonian transcendentalists in the United States. It was out of such revisionist enterprises that certain modern, transnational yoga forms took shape.2
Fig. 1 Yoga on the National Mall, Washington, DC, May 2013
GLOBALIZED MODERN YOGA | 95
Keshubchandra Sen (18381884), who joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1857, was instrumental in furthering the dialogue between neo-Hinduism, Western esoteric and occultist culture, Unitarianism, and American transcendentalism. He also propounded new ways of thinking about yoga.3 Speaking in 1881, Sen declared, We Hindus are specially endowed with, and distinguished for, the yoga faculty, which is nothing but this power of spiritual communion and absorption [] Waving the magic wand of yoga we command Europe to enter into the heart of Asia, and Asia to enter into the mind of Europe, and they obey us, and we instantly realize within ourselves a European Asia and an Asiatic Europe, a commingling of oriental and occidental ideas and principles.4 In many respects, Sens explicitly synthetic conception of yoga as a melding of Asia and Europe predicted yogas later development and laid the foundations for the inuential experiments undertaken subsequently by another Brahmo member, Swami Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta, 18631902). In 1893, Vivekananda visited the Parliament of the Worlds Religions in Chicago and was an instant success (see g. 2 and cats. 24ah).5 He was adopted by the esoteric avant-garde of East Coast America and subsequently authored a number of books inuenced by this audience and written with them in mind. He became the rst teacher of yoga in the West.6 His Raja Yoga (1896) is one of the most important foundational documents in the history of modern, transnational yoga. It is in part a translation of the ashtanga (eight-limb) yoga section of Patanjalis Yoga Sutras,7 and in part an elaboration of practical yoga techniques. De Michelis has argued that Vivekanandas teachings in Raja Yoga and elsewhere were strongly inuenced by the currents of Brahmo-style neo-Hinduism, and represent an amalgam of Western esotericism, modern European philosophy, and classical yoga.8 Vivekananda was also greatly inuenced by the teachings of the now famous Bengali saint, Sri Ramakrishna, who was his guru. Vivekanandas work was to form a blueprint for many of the global experiments in yoga that followed.
Fig. 2 Swami Vivekananda on the platform of the Parliament of the Worlds Religions, September 11, 1893. Vedanta Society, V16
96 | MARK SINGLETON
Also vital to the modern, global transformation of yoga was the Theosophical Society, an esoteric spiritual organization founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (18311891; g. 3) and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (18321907).9 Theosophical constructions of yoga were far-reaching, and the societys literary output immense. It is not without considerable reason that Blavatsky could claim in 1881 that neither modern Europe nor America had so much as heard of yoga until the Theosophists began to speak and write.10 Theosophical yoga author Rama Prasad, in a 1907 Theosophical edition of the Yoga Sutras, even went so far as to claim that whatever knowledge Hindus within the society possessed was due to their contact with and the inuence of Western brothers.11 The societys profoundly inuential interpretations of yoga did much to disseminate a Western esoteric understanding of the disciplines theory and practice. It also republished the earliest book-length study of yoga as medicine, by N. C. Paul, thus contributing another signicant strand to the development of modern understandings of yogas function and goals.12 Other immensely inuential gures in the global transmission of yoga include: Swami Sivananda (18871963), who borrowed signicantly from Vivekanandas model of yoga and whose Divine Life Society produced many pamphlets and books that were distributed around the world13; Paramahansa Yogananda (18931952; g. 4), who arrived in the United States in 1920 and went on to found the Self-Realization Fellowship and publish one of the most inuential books on yoga ever written, the inspirational Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)14; and Sri Aurobindo Ghose (18721950) whose work has also had a profound effect on global conceptions of yoga.15
Fig. 3 Madame Blavatsky, 1870
New Thought, Globalized Metaphysics, and Perennialism

Vivekanandas emphasis on universalism, and his openness to popular spiritual currents of the day, made his yoga highly compatible with the heterogeneous array of beliefs and practices that ourished within and around the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, Mary Baker Eddys Christian Science, and the hugely popular Mind Cure movement, better known as New Thought. Elements of these popular esoteric doctrines were ubiquitous in practical yoga primers intended for the European and American reading public, and it seems to have been widely taken for granted that positive thinking, auto-suggestion, and the harmonial, this-worldly belief framework of New Thought were not so much contributions to yoga as its full expression. Conversely, it was largely assumed that yoga was the perennial, exotic repository of these newly (re-)discovered truths. Transcendentalism, Christian Science, and New Thought enacted a popular revolution in personal religious belief. Many assumptions of what it means to practice yoga in the West today can be traced back to these beginnings. Perhaps the clearest example of this merger of popular Western spirituality and yoga is the slew of books Swami Ramacharaka authored between 1903 and about 1917. Ramacharaka was the pen name of prolic Chicago lawyer and New Thought guru William Walker Atkinson (18621932).16 Yoga has ourished globally within the framework of the perennial philosophy, a theological position that asserts that, despite differences at the level of ritual, doctrine, and institutional reality, all religions are one at their mystical core. This beliefclosely related to the spiritual but not religious commitments of Unitarianism, New Thought, and various Hindu revivalist movementshas a history with roots in the more distant past, but which began to predominate after the Second World War, with the publication of Aldous Huxleys The Perennial Philosophy in 1945 and Joseph Campbells The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949. Huston Smiths The Worlds Religions, which rst appeared in 1958 as The Religions of Man, also promoted a perennialist vision of religion.17 Perennialism has enormous global currency today, and provides an underpinning belief system to many expressions of modern yoga, which exist in what Catherine Albanese describes as an intercepted Asia, caught in complex thickets between separate Asian pasts, Westernized Asian presents, and American polysemous perceptions.18
Fig. 4 Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship
Yoga and Magic

The yogi was the object of an intense fascination for European occultists, who naturally emphasized the wondrous magical powers that such gures could acquire through yoga, often claiming personal experience and mastery of these techniques. Many early twentieth-century books on yoga emphasize magical powers and are full of fortune-tellers, sorcerers, and miracle workers. They appeal to an esoteric audiences thirst for stories about the yogic magicians of the mystical East, but are rarely reliable when it comes to information regarding the techniques and belief frameworks of traditional yogins. One of the most famous of these Western yoga magicians was Aleister Crowley (g. 5), who was referred to in Ernest Hemingways A Moveable Feast as the wickedest man in the world.19 Crowleys fascination with yoga and Tantra contributed to a generalized identication of them with magic, especially sex magick.20
Yoga, Health, and Physical Culture

The popular postural component of globalized yoga practice, asana, tended to be absent from early formulations in the yoga renaissance. This may have been because of the connection between posture and the gure of the hatha yogin, who was often associated with backwardness, magic, and superstition. Hatha yoga in this mode was not in keeping with the modern, scientic, and respectable face of modern, transnational yoga, as presented by Vivekananda and others. The revival of postural yoga forms from the 1920s and 1930s onward saw asana incorporated into the predominant discourse of physical culture, healthism, and keep t. In this model, the more esoteric or abstruse Tantric elements of hatha yoga were replaced by an interpretive framework borrowed from modern medicine, health science, bodybuilding, and gymnastics. Innovators like Swami Kuvalayananda (18831966) and Sri Yogendra (18971989) established the worlds rst yoga institutes, dedicated to developing yoga as a health and tness regimen on the one hand, and as a system of medicine on the other. Another inuential teacher of the time, Sri T. Krishnamacharya (18881989; g. 6), innovated similar rigorous, health- and healing-oriented modes of posture practice, varieties of which became immensely inuential around the world through his famous disciples: B. K. S. Iyengar (born 1918), the eponymous founder of Iyengar Yoga (g. 7); Sri K. Pattabhi Jois (19152009), who taught the dynamic jumping system known as Ashtanga Vinyasa; Indra Devi (18992002), a Latvian woman who helped to popularize yoga in America with the help of high-prole Hollywood students like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and Marilyn Monroe (g. 10); and Krishnamacharyas son, T. K. V. Desikachar. It was due to the efforts of early innovators like Kuvalayananda, Yogendra, and Krishnamacharya that globalized yoga came to be associated so strongly with postural practice (see cats. 26a26i).21 As yoga spread to the West, it interacted with traditions of spiritual gymnastics that arose in Europe and America during the nineteenth century, often developed by and for women. These forms of purposive exercise (i.e., exercise done for the sake of cultivating the body, in contrast to manual labor, etc.) used stretching and deep, rhythmical breathing to open up the body to divine inuences. The theoretical basis for these practices (especially in America) often came from the same unchurched, para-protestant, spiritual milieus that underpinned New Thought and Christian Science. In both Europe and America, womens exercise was increasingly associated with stretching, as opposed to the more masculine modalities of weight resistance, tumbling, and balancing. Many popular hatha yoga classes of the twenty-rst-century urban West are in some sense a continuation of these womens gymnastic forms and their spiritual framework.22
Fig. 5 Aleister Crowley as Paramahamsa Shivaji
98 | MARK SINGLETON
Fig. 6 Sri T. Krishnamacharya (18881989), Chennai, India, 1988
Fig. 7 Indian yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar demonstrates four postures, 1930s
Fig. 9 Peace Pilot (Vishnudevananda), Palam Airport, New Delhi, India, October 26, 1971
Fig. 8 Swami Muktananda Arrives in Santa Monica, California, 1980
The 1960s and Counterculture

In the 1960s, the rise of ower power brought yoga to the attention of a generation of young Americans and Europeans. The wholesale embrace of Indian metaphysics and yoga by many countercultural iconssuch as the Beatles spiritual romance with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (g. 11)reinforced yogas position in the popular psyche and inspired many to join the hippy trail to India in pursuit of alternative philosophies and lifestyles. Indian gurus arriving in America from 1965 onward brought a fresh infusion of Eastern wisdom into the American psyche. These included Swami Muktananda (19081982), founder of Siddha Yoga (g. 8); A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (18961977), founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, more commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement; Amrit Desai (born 1932), who in 1965 founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania, later renamed Kripalu in honor of Desais guru, Swami Kripalvandanda (19131981); and two disciples of Swami Sivananda: Swami Satchidananda (19142002), who founded the Integral Yoga Institute, and Swami Vishnudevananda (1927 1993), who established International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta centers around the world and published the highly inuential postural manual The Complete Book of Yoga (1960; g. 9). Increased media attention brought yoga closer to the mainstream, and printed primers and television series throughout the 1960s and 1970s, such as Richard Hittlemans Yoga for Health (rst broadcast in 1961), encouraged many to take up posture-based yoga in the comfort of their own homes.23
Post-1960s
The 1970s and 1980s were a period of consolidation for yoga in the West with the establishment and expansion of a signicant number of dedicated schools and institutes. The period also saw a further and enduring rapprochement of yoga with the burgeoning New Age movement, which in many ways represented a new manifestation of yogas century-old association with currents of esotericism. In con-
Fig. 10 Yoga Curl (Marilyn Monroe), 1948
100 | MARK SINGLETON
trast, some postural yoga schools developed more secular models of practice, distancing themselves from the often controversial religious gurus of the 1960s. B. K. S. Iyengar and his organizations work with adult education authorities in the United Kingdom make an interesting case in point.24 By the mid-1990s, posture-based yoga had become thoroughly acculturated in many urban centers in the West. More athletic, dynamic systems began to gain in popularity, often based on Joiss Ashtanga Vinyasa method. These systems are one of the predominant modes of yoga practice in the United States today, and are variously referred to as Vinyasa Yoga, Flow Yoga, and Power Yoga. They are characterized by dynamic, owing series of postures and repetitive, linking sequences (known as vinyasas, a usage coined by Joiss guru, T. Krishnamacharya).25 Bikram Yoga, founded by Bikram Choudhury (born 1946), also gained massive popularity in the 1990s and into the 2000s. This physically demanding system comprises twenty-six asanas performed twice through in temperatures of at least one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. In 2003 Choudhury, who claims to have brought hatha yoga to the West, took controversial measures to franchise his brand of yoga, taking out lawsuits against unauthorized teachers.26
Fig. 11 The Beatles and the Maharishi, Rishikesh, Dehradun, India, March 1, 1968
Fig. 12 Heat Wave Hits New York City on the First Day of Summer by John Moore, June 20, 2012
The Contemporary Yoga Boom

A U.S. poll suggests that more than six million Americans (approx. 3.3 percent of the population) were practicing yoga in 1994, 1.86 million of them regularly.27 Ten years later, another national poll estimated that fteen million Americans were practicing yoga regularly, while the proportion interested in yoga had also risen substantially.28 The popular magazine Yoga Journal estimated in 2003 that approximately 25.5 million Americans (12 percent of the population) were very interested in yoga. A further 35.3 million people (16 percent) intended to try yoga within the next year, and 109.7 million (more than one-third of the American population) had at least a casual interest in yoga.29 A 2008 Yoga Journal market study suggests that while the U.S. population practicing yoga has stabilized, spending on classes, yoga vacations, and products has almost doubled.30 The 1990s boom turned yoga into an important commercial enterprise, with increasing levels of merchandising and commodication (g. 12). In response, many contemporary teachers have challenged the commercialization of yoga by offering donation-based classes or encouraging social activism as an antidote to the perceived narcissism of the contemporary yoga marketplace.31 What yoga will become in the future is unknown, but it will doubtless continue to grow and adapt in tension between its ancient roots and pressing contemporary concerns such as these.
102 | MARK SINGLETON
Notes
1. See Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 21920. 2. See David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 3. See Elizabeth De Michelis, A History of Modern Yoga: Patajali and Western Esotericism (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 50. 4. Keshubchandra Sen, Lectures in India I (London: Cassell, 1901), pp. 48485. 5. Richard Hughes Seager, The Worlds Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 6. Dermot Killingley, Manufacturing Yogis: Swami Vivekananda as a Yoga Teacher, in Gurus of Modern Yoga, ed. Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 7. Yoga Sutras II.28 to III.8, 325425 CE. 8. De Michelis, A History of Modern Yoga. 9. See Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). 10. H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. III: 18811882 (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982), p. 104. 11. Ram Prasad, Self-Culture; or, the Yoga of Patanjali (Madras: Theosophical Ofce, 1907), p. 11. 12. Nobin Chunder Paul, A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy (1850, repr. Bombay: Tukaram Tatya for the Bombay Theosophical Fund, 1888). 13. See Sarah Strauss, Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts across Cultures (Oxford: Berg, 2005). 14. See Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness by Joseph Alter in this volume. 15. Ann Gleig and Charles Flores, Remembering Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: The Forgotten Lineage of Integral Yoga, in Gurus of Modern Yoga. 16. See H. W. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement (London: Harrap, n.d.); Carl T. Jackson, The New Thought Movement and the Nineteenth Century Discovery of Oriental Philosophy, Journal of Popular Culture 9 (1975), pp. 52348. 17. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1945); Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York, London: Pantheon/Allen & Unwin, 1949); Huston Smith, The Religions of Man (New York: Harper, 1958).
18. Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 334. For a useful summary of the arguments against perennialism as a valid philosophical/religious position, see the introduction to Stephen Protheros God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the Worldand Why Their Differences Matter (New York: HarperOne, 2010). 19. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 2009), p. 80. 20. See Hugh B. Urban, Magia sexualis: sex, magic, and liberation in modern Western esotericism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006). 21. See Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 22. Singleton, Yoga Body, pp. 14462. 23. See Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West (New York: Doubleday, 2010); and Stefanie Syman, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). 24. See Suzanne Newcombe, The Institutionalization of the Yoga TraditionGurus B.K.S. Iyengar and Yogini Sunita in Britain, in Gurus of Modern Yoga. 25. See Benjamin Smith, With Heat Even Iron Will Bend: Discipline and Authority in Ashtanga Yoga, in Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Mark Singleton and Jean Byrne (London: Routledge Hindu Studies Series, 2008), pp. 14160; and Jean Byrne, Authorized by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois: The Role of Parampar and Lineage in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in Gurus of Modern Yoga. 26. Allison Fish, The Commodication and Exchange of Knowledge in the Case of Transnational Commercial Yoga, International Journal of Cultural Property 13, pp. 189206. For an insider account of Bikram Yoga, see Benjamin Lorr, Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga (New York: St. Martins Press, 2012). 27. Anne Cushman, Guess Whos Coming to Yoga? Yoga Journal 118 (September/October 1994), pp. 4748. 28. M. Carter, New Poses for Macho Men, The Times Body & Soul Supplement, May 22, 2004; available at http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk. 29. K. Arnold, Were Listening, Yoga Journal 174 (May/June 2003), p. 10. 30. Yoga Journal Releases 2008 Yoga in America Market Study; http://www.yogajournal.com/advertise/press_releases/10; accessed January 2009.
31. See, for example, Yoga to the People, which offers classes by donation (yogatothepeople.com; accessed March 2013); Seane Cornes yoga activist movement Off The Mat (offthematintotheworld.com; accessed March 2013); and the organization Yoga Activist (yogaactivist.org; accessed March 2013).
THE PATH TO YOGA
The Path of Yoga
Part One
Manifestations of Shiva
1A Shiva as Bhairava
India, Tamil Nadu, 11th century Granite, 108 47.9 28.4 cm The Trustees of the British Museum, Brooke Sewell Permanent Fund, 1967.1016.1
The Hindu traditions known as Shaiva are based on the teachings of the deity Shiva; their texts are known as Tantras and Agamas. Shaivas understand the revelations of yogic knowledge by Bhairava and Sadashiva, two manifestations of Shiva, as particularly rened and effective.
4
held in his lower left hand, (now missing). With an elongated torso and a dignied air, the granite Bhairava epitomizes the restrained aesthetic of eleventh-century Chola dynasty sculptors. In contrast, a Bhairava from thirteenth-century Karnataka displays the elaborate ornamentation favored by patrons during the Hoysala dynasty (cat. 1b). Its sculptor exploited the softness of freshly quarried schist to create extraordinary detailssuch as the snake slithering up the shaft and in and out of the deep orices of the skull atop the khatvanga staffwithout losing the plump volumes and sinuous stance of the gods body. Bhairava has numerous manifestations, and his attributes are shared by the guardian deities (kshetrapalas) who protect orthodox Shaiva or goddess temples. Therefore Bhairava images often resist precise identication.7 Whether Bhairava or kshetrapala, the quality and size of both the Chola and Hoysala sculptures strongly suggest that they were made for temples commissioned by rulers. Royally patronized temples across India were sites of orthodox (i.e., brahmanic) ritual and personal devotionalism. The Bhairava sculptures thus exemplify the incorporation of erce Tantric deities within the gentler and more inclusive arena of medieval Indian temple worship. A devotional verse by the Tamil saint Appar captures Bhairavas layered identity as a terrifying and grace-bestowing deity: Holding the trident its prongs ashing like the rays of the sun with resounding drum in hand he came in the guise of Kala-Bhairava [black Bhairava] he ripped apart the elephants skinseeing Uma shrink in fear his beautiful mouth widened into laughter thus did he shower his grace the beauteous lord of Tirucherai goal of the Vedas.8
1B Shiva Bhairava
India, Karnataka, Mysore, 13th century Chloritic schist, 116.6 49.23 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1964.3691
Bhairava (Sanskrit: horric) is one of the most widely worshiped Hindu gods.5 His many identities, which have long coexisted in lived practices and popular perceptions, range from erce Tantric deity to powerful protector of devotees, temples, villages, and cities. For yogis, the Bhairava who transgresses social norms and bestows superhuman powers is both deity and archetype. In the large corpus of texts known as the Bhairava Tantras, he reveals the teachings of yoga and prescribes initiation rituals in which adepts become immortals with unlimited powers. Yogis expressed their identication with Bhairava by imitating his appearance and his transgressive habits; like the god, they haunted cremation grounds, which provided the ashes they smeared on their bodies and the skull cups that they carried. Carrioneating dogs were often their companions.6 Two medieval temple sculptures and an eighteenth-century devotional painting each display some of Bhairavas characteristic attributes (cats. 1a, 1b, 1c). His third eye, waisted drum, trident, and crescent moon signify his association with Shiva; his fangs, aming aureoles, and skull ornaments and bowls convey terrifying power. Like his Tantric followers, he wears matted locks, and his body is smeared with ashes. In the superb tenth-century temple sculpture from Tamil Nadu (cat. 1a), Bhairava appears as a naked ascetic with the four arms of a god; his canine companion appears in the place reserved for the gentle bull Nandi in contemporaneous sculptures of Shiva. A gentle smile tempers the dangerous power implied
1C Bhairava
India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, ca. 1800 Opaque watercolor on paper, 27.9 17.6 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.45.1954
1D The Five-Faced Shiva

India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, ca. 173040 Opaque watercolor on paper, 26.6 18.2 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Col. T. G. Gayer-Anderson and Maj. R. G. Gayer-Anderson, Pasha, IS.239-19522
1E Sadashiva
India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 1670 Attributed by B. N. Goswamy to Devidasa Opaque watercolor, gold, and applied beetle-wing on paper, 19.1 18.4 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection3
1a Shiva as Bhairava
by Bhairavas fangs, his aming halo of wildly radiating locks, and the skull bowl
106 | THE PATH OF YOGA
MANIFESTATIONS OF SHIVA
1b Shiva Bhairava
ENTRY NAME GOES HERE | 109
For Tantric yogis, Bhairava was both transcendent guru and the god they became through initiation and practice. These living Bhairavas were a pervasive presence within the religious landscape of medieval India, engendering respect and disgust for their deliberately polluting ways. For contemporary audiences who may not have encountered Tantric yogis (though they are still ourishing on the subcontinent), the smear of red ritual paste on the third eye of the Hoysala Bhairava and the whitish surface of the schist, which lends his body the appearance of being ash-covered, intensify the gods uncannily human and horrifying affect. During the eighteenth century, powerful paintings of Shivas manifestations as Bhairava and Sadashiva were produced in the Rajput kingdoms of the Punjab hills of northwest India. Those from the Mandi court have bluntly outlined forms, matte surfaces, deep and smoky colors, and an often hyperarticulated stippling technique. The distinctively earthy style, which emerged under Raja Sidh Sen (reigned 171927), a Tantric initiate widely credited with magical powers, persists in this slightly oversize devotional image of Bhairava painted circa 1800 (cat. 1c). With Shivas third eye and crescent moon upon his forehead, and adorned in severed limbs, the four-armed Bhairava holds a sword over his left shoulder and a skull cup
1c Bhairava 1d The Five-Faced Shiva
lled with blood; his right hands display the gestures of have no fear and generosity.9 His apron of arms suggests Mandis location in a broader Himalayan religious arena in which bone aprons were typical garb for Buddhist and Hindu Tantric deities.10 Spattered with reddish pigment, the painting may have once been placed on an altar and worshiped with ritual paste. Sadashiva, one of Shivas most transcendent forms, gures in several yoga traditions. Within the Agama texts of orthodox Shaivism (Shaiva Siddhanta),
MANIFESTATIONS OF SHIVA
MANIFESTATION
he is the supreme deity and a higher level of the cosmos in which there are no distinctions among person, body, and world.11 His ve heads represent ve streams of knowledge, ranging from the highest Siddhanta teachings to the least venerated Vaishnava Tantras.12 This rened yet idiosyncratic image of Sadashiva from Mandi (cat. 1d) was painted shortly after the death of Raja Sidh Sen in 1727. The artist began the work by loosely setting forms with translucent washes of color (visible in the lower left area because of loss of the paintings topmost layer). He then applied stippled daubs of paint to create fuzzy volumes that eccentrically play off the crisply silhouetted forms. The paintings imagery is equally distinctive: it combines standard iconography with local idioms and what are perhaps the artists personal emphases. Characteristically, Sadashiva has ve heads (the fth invisible at the back), a third eye, an ascetics garb, and the attributes (here, clockwise from the top right) of mace, conch shell, discus or noose, lotus, shield, snake, sword, skull cup, drum, and trident. Regional traits include Sadashivas hirsute corpulence, which is based on Sidh Sens body type as recorded in his portraits, the horn whistle necklace of a Nath yogi, and a lower garment fashioned from a precious snow-leopard skin.13 Other elements emphatically invoke canonical Shaiva myths. By including two elephant skins (one draped over the altar and the other over the gods shoulder), the artist reminds the viewer of Shivas slaying of the elephant demon Gajasura. The long tuft of black hair that dangles from the skull cup is the topknot of a brahmin. Its presence here recalls Shiva/Bhairavas decapitation of Brahmas fth head.14 To atone, the god wandered with the head stuck to his hand for twelve years, a penance that yogis of the Tantric Kapalika sect emulated by carrying skull cups as
1e Sadashiva
One of Sadashivas most important acts was the transmission of teachings from subtle realms into language that could be accessed by humans.15 Because the Tantras were typically structured as conversations between a deity and his consort, this marvelous painting from Nurpur (cat. 1e), a Rajput kingdom in the Punjab Hills, evokes Sadashivas role as the revealer of yogic knowledge. Sadashiva sits with the goddess on a pink-petaled lotus oating against a wine-colored ground. His large, ashwhite body dominates the composition, the center of attention for the viewers attention as well as that of the goddess, whose gaze is fervid and alert. Although the purpose of the painting is unknown, it may have been made as a focus for meditation. DD
their begging bowls.
NS OF SHIVA
Portraying the Guru

2A The Guru Vidyashiva
India, Bengal, 11th12th century Stone, 129.5 66 15.2 cm Pritzker Collection1
2B Matsyendranath
India, Karnataka, Bijapur, ca. 1650 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 16.5 20.3 cm Collection of Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins
2C Gosain Kirpa Girji Receives Sheeshvalji and His Son

India, Rajasthan, Marwar or Jodhpur, mid-18th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 34.9 24.8 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection2
2a The Guru Vidyashiva
Portrayals of venerable yogis have a long history in southern Asia. Images of perfected sages, or masters of meditation, not only were present from a very early moment, they formed the basis for much of Indias ancient gural imagery. From the Buddha at Bodhgaya to Satya Sai Baba today, the icon of the guru has served as a reminder of a teacher and recipient of devotion. In Hinduism, it is often hard to discern the line between visual representations of a yogi as a generic auspicious gure and a portrait of a specic human teacher. Beginning around the fth or sixth century, prominent teachers, such as the Shaiva sage Lakulisha, were deied after death and incorporated into pantheons of major Hindu deities. At the same time, generic images of gurus engaged in the act of religious instruction became increasingly common on temple walls. The two or three centuries following the turn of the rst millennium introduced new kinds of images identiable as portraits of historic human teachers.3 Often identied by name and sampradaya (religious order), they were nonetheless deied and understood to have acted as manifestations of Shiva on Earth while still alive. A particularly well-preserved example can be seen in an eleventh- or twelfth-century sculpted gure of a Shaiva ascetic teacher, identied as the guru Vidyashiva in an inscription along its base, originally from Bengal (cat. 2a).4 Framed wonderfully through architecture, the guru sits in his own beautifully rendered pavilion, surrounded by worshipful disciples holding their hands in anjali mudra. The frontal format and scale of the relief suggests that it was intended to be a primary icon inserted into a wall niche or shrine. Like contemporary images of deities, the guru sits on a lotus throne in meditation, his legs crossed in the lotus position (padmasana). The intermediary spaces are lled with vyalas (mythical lions), and attendant demigods (vidyadharas) whose ight upward culminates in a magnicent face of glory (kirtimukha), positioned centrally above the gurus head. At rst glance, the bearded sage could be mistaken for a generic Shaiva ascetic with tall, matted hair (jatamukuta). However, the inscription on the base indicates that the image is a portrait5 of a specic sage, Vidyashiva, who lived perhaps a few generations earlier and whose disciples came to be favored by the Pala rulers of northeastern India (circa 7501174 CE) in subsequent generations.6 Although once human, Vidyashiva is marked as divine through
2b Matsyendranath
PORTRAYING THE GURU | 115
the presence of a third eye at the center of his forehead. In contrast to the public nature of sculpted portraits, visible on the exterior of a temple wall, were smaller painted images of gurus commissioned by patrons for more private viewing. Many such paintings survive from after the seventeenth century. An image of a sage wearing a patchwork dhoti is likely from the Deccani sultanate of Bijapur, circa 1650 (cat. 2b). In it, we encounter the guru as a solitary gure, depicted in strict prole, seated in a cross-legged posture, and endowed with a protruding belly, long beard, and matted locks, carefully tied back in an elaborate ochre turban. Lying before him is a crutch and a water pot. The Persian inscription on the recto identies the guru as Matsyendranath (or Matsyendra), the circa eighthcentury exponent of the Western stream of Kaula Shaivism. Whether or not the use of Persian is indicative of a Muslim patron is unknown, particularly since the inscription may not necessarily be contemporary with the painting. At the same time, the image clearly allies itself with Mughal conventions of portraiture through its solid teal background, which rst emerged during Akbars reign (15561605), and the halo, which became standard in imperial portraiture under Jahangir (reigned 160527). A portrait of the guru Gosainji Kirpal Girji (cat. 2c) exhibits the attened surfaces and olive and pink palette that are characteristic of paintings produced circa 1720 in the region of Nagaur (northern Marwar). Seated cross-legged on a tiger skin in a wooded enclave near a pond overowing with lotuses, the guru is a pensive gure, with a powerful hooked nose and deep-set eyes that intensify his gaze as he formally receives two followersthe patron, a Rajput nobleman named Sheeshvalji, and his son. Behind the guru are his companions: a dog wearing an elaborate red collar, a disciple seated on an antelope skin,
and a servant holding a peacock-feather fan and a cloth. While the three ochre lines along his forehead mark him as a Shaiva, his name more specically indicates his membership within the Dasnami sampradaya.7 Mediating between the courtly and the ascetic is a gilded hookah, likely a gift, which is situated meaningfully just below the visiting patrons. Despite his engagement with worldly things, Gosainji Kirpal Girji remains a renunciant, his body smeared with ashes and clad only in a loincloth that enables the viewer to clearly see his large belly, long interpreted as indicating the retention of yogic breath.8 The presence of devotees, who make the act of guru-worship visible, can be compared to the sculpted gure of Vidyashiva, whose frontality invites the audience to participate in a direct visual exchange. The meeting between guru and shishya (disciple) depicted in cat. 2c may reveal a pattern of devotion that Vidyashiva himself may have received, both in person during his lifetime and after death through the worshipers encounter with his image on a temple wall. In both, the portrait represents a specic historical Shaiva guru, who was either still alive at the time of the images commission or removed by at most a few generations, yet still linked to a living lineage of sages. By contrast, the Bijapur painting of Matsyendranath, a long-past and highly mythologized gure, follows the form of a traditional portrait made for a royally sponsored album, an object that could be appreciated for its painterly nesse rather than as a focus for devotion. TS
2c Gosain Kirpa Girji Receives Sheeshvalji and His Son
Yoginis
3AC Three Yoginis
India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchipuram or Kaveripakkam, ca. 900975 Mac igneous stone,1 height approx. 116 cm. 3A Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Gift of Arthur M. Sackler, S1987.905 3B Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, L.A. Young Fund, 57.88 3C Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund, 60.21
Like yoga or indeed any aspect of Indias Hindu traditions, the identities of yoginis (female embodiments of yogic power) reveal continuous and multiple transformations over time and across sectarian, religious, lay, and geographic boundaries. Hindu and Buddhist Tantras of the seventh to twelfth century blur the distinction between human and divine, identifying yoginis as both powerful goddesses and the mortal women who ritually became those deities. These
2
royally patronized temples mark the entry of the Tantric hordes into both visual culture and more conventional forms of Hindu worship.10 These life-size granite goddesses once graced a yogini temple near Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu (cats. 3ac).11 Each has four arms connoting divine status.12 Combining auspicious and dangerous iconography, the gently smiling yoginis are full-breasted, slimwaisted, and lithe. Yet they also have unbound hair (a marker of female wrath), fangs, and skull cups for drinking liquor or blood. Of the three, the ercest brandishes a club and shield, her brows are curved in anger, and cobras coil around her torso and upper arms; the headless corpse carved on the pedestal invokes the charnel grounds of Tantric ritual (cat. 3b). Long-beaked birds, vehicles that signal ight, are lightly incised on the bases of the two crowned yoginis (cats. 3a, 3c). Snake and crocodiles ornament the ears of the goddess wielding the harvesting implements of winnower and broom; the yogini with tattoos on her face and shoulders carries a jar and wand that may indicate her healing ability.13 Carved from a hard igneous rock and dated by style to the last quarter of the tenth century, they exhibit the elongated and relatively unadorned idiom of Chola dynasty stone sculptures (see cat. 1a). A tenth-century yogini from Uttar Pradesh in north India has weapons and bared teeth as well as the voluptuous body and neatly coiled hair of a benign goddess (cat. 3d).14 Seated with legs audaciously akimbo, she inserts two ngers into the corners of her open mouth to make a piercing noise. In the context of a royal temple, her sword, shield, and war-cry whistle would have resonated as martial and protective emblems. Flight was foremost among the powers sought by Tantric practitioners, and thus her owl vehicle identies her as the archetypal yoginia sky traveler (khechari).15 Although her specic identity is unknown,
3D Yogini
India, Uttar Pradesh, Kannauj, rst half of the 11th century Sandstone, 86.4 43.8 24.8 cm San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with the John and Karen McFarlin Fund and Asian Art Challenge Fund, 90.92
yoginis offered Tantric adepts the fruits of yoga, and the ability to subjugate the three-fold (i.e., entire) universe.3 Hindu Kaulas were inuential in dening them as potentially dangerous hordes of ying goddesses who could, when ritually placated, bestow upon mortals the powers to y and transcend time and death.
4
3E Saha
Folio 242r from The Stars of the Sciences (Nujum al-Ulum) India, Karnataka, Bijapur, dated 157071 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 25.8 16 cm (folio), 8.6 9.7 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 02 f.242a
Classed as Tantric because their primary goal was power (rather than spiritual liberation), Kaulas gave access to their radical teachings only to initiated disciples. These adepts invited the erce yoginis to enter circlesmore specically, yogini chakras and more broadly, yantras (tool in Sanskrit)that they mentally or physically constructed, then propitiated them with liquor or animal esh and blood.
6 5
3F Yogini with Mynah

India, Karnataka, Bijapur, ca. 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 39.2 27.6 cm (folio with borders), 19.3 11.6 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 11A.31
For Kaulas, the detachment necessary to cross boundaries and integrate polarities, such as the social distinction between pure and impure, was a critical step in attaining a higher state of being. By the late ninth century, Hatha yogis, orthodox Hindus, and monarchs began appropriating and domesticating Tantric yoginis. Kings seeking worldly control were among their most prominent devotees.7 Across the Indian subcontinent, they constructed large stone yogini temples that were often prominently situated upon hills or close to orthodox temples.8 Open to the sky, many were constructed on round plans akin to yogini chakras, with forty-two to 108 sculptures of yogini goddesses set
3a Yogini
into niches on their interior walls. The

9
YOGINIS | 119
3b Yogini
3c Yogini
YOGINIS | 121
3d Yogini
YOGINIS
3e Saha
she is likely one of the yoginis whose names roughly translate as she who makes a loud noise. The sculptors
16
al-ulum), dated 157071), the sultan described 140 yoginis, an astounding number that exceeds all known Hindu lists.19 Exemplifying the cultural heterogeneity of Bijapur and the sultans desire to edify his diverse courtiers, the text collectively identies them as yoginis and individually retains their Indic names, mudras (gestures), attributes, and yantras (geometric diagrams), but integrates them into the already-established Islamic occult category of ruhaniya (earth spirits). The Stars of the Sciences was arguably Bijapurs most ambitious illustrated manuscript, and all 140 ruhaniya were depicted both anthropomorphically and geometrically as yantras.20 Because Hindu astrological and yogini manuscripts were probably diagramatic or unillustrated, the illustrations may constitute the rst detailed set of paintings representing yoginis.21 Following the sultans text, a court artist depicted the fourth ruhaniya, Saha, as a standing crowned woman carrying a water jug and stringed instrument (cat. 3e). Centered against a patterned ground of uidly drawn foliage clusters, Saha is also copiously draped in gold and pearl ornaments. The adjacent yantra is highlighted on a red eld with curling gold clouds. Its central square is inscribed this chakra is named Saha, and the gold cartouches name the cardinal directions. The manuscripts uniquely comprehensive yogini group and its iconographically replete images reveal a transformation in yogini identity accomplished through the integration of Tantric, Islamic, and local beliefs about divination, the cosmos, and astrology. Ibrahim Adil Shah II (reigned 15791627), the nephew and successor of Ali Adil Shah II, not only inherited his uncles splendid Stars of the Sciences but also commissioned paintings of yoginis for inclusion within albums.22 Because the sultan and his courtiers knew of semidivine ruhaniya, they may have understood the painted yoginis as agents of otherworldly powers.23 Yogini with
ability to balancewithout fussinessthe yoginis smooth limbs with the very precisely realized cuticles of her ngernails, individually carved litle teeth, and crisply delineated owl feathers is masterful. He superbly exploited the softness and warm golden color of sandstone to convey the organic quality of plump esh; pearl-studded ornaments curve around her body to further emphasize its rounded volumes. A rigorous yet rhythmic geometryseen for example in the radiating movement outward from her bowlike eyebrows to the circle of tightly curled hair and thick tubular halolends dynamism to the whole. Notable too are the sculptures volumes and shadows: the fully three-dimensional realization of the pearl-edged sash below her elbows allows us to sense the suppleness of her spine, while the calculated undercutting of her mouth makes it appear menacingly deep. Although Hindu kings ceased to construct yogini temples after the twelfth century, Indian rulers of all religions sought the favor of yoginis so they would intercede in military affairs throughout the medieval period. For Indo-Islamic sultans seeking practical ways to consolidate power between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, propitiating yoginis, along with astrology and other divinatory sciences, were common tactics. From at least the fourteenth century
17
onwards, yoginis were known within Islamic intellectual circles as immortal beings who could mediate events on Earth (see Muslim Interpreters of Yoga by Carl W. Ernst). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, yoginis were accessed by the Muslim rulers of Bijapur, a sultanate in the Deccan Plateau of central India (cats. 3e, 3f). Securing military victories was the stated goal of yogini propitiation for Sultan Ali Adil Shah II (reigned 155779). In chapter 6
18
of his Stars of the Sciences (Nujum
Mynah (cat. 3f) epitomizes the supernal intensity and nesse of Bijapur painting achieved at the court of Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Through formal means, its otherworldly affect suggests a being who provided supernatural assistance in worldly affairs. Its artist, the Dublin painter, created the visionary image through daring manipulations of space, theatrical backlighting, and an improbable palette that plays modulated passages of salmon pink, smoky lavender, and dusky whites off brilliant orange, raspberry, and forest greens. Impossibly elongated, the yogini has the ash-covered skin and the dreadlock (jata) topknot of female ascetics associated with the deity Shiva and is laden with jewels like the immortal yoginis described in Persian translations of Tantric texts or illustrated on the pages of the Stars of the Sciences.24 Surrounded by surreally surging hillocks and hugely blooming owers, she stands quite still, almost spellbound, though her gold sashes furl and the delicate tendrils of hair around her tilted head quiver. Her cool bluish complexion heightens the effect of her heavy-lidded gaze, slight smile, and intimate communion with the mynah. Later Deccani and North Indian paintings of yoginis, such as cat. 18f, romanticize and even eroticize yoginis; early twentieth-century images (cats. 23b, 23c) reveal how yogini powers emerged on the global stage in exotic magic acts. DD
3f Yogini with Mynah
Nath Siddhas
4AC Three folios from the Nath Charit
Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1823 (Samvat 1880) Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 47 123 cm Merhangarh Museum Trust 4A Three Aspects of the Absolute Folio 1 from the Nath Charit RJS 23991 4B The Transmission of Teachings Folio 3 from the Nath Charit RJS 2400 4C The Transmission of Teachings Folio 4 from the Nath Charit RJS 2401
These hypnotic images open the Stories of the Naths (Nath Charit), a compendium of legends about the divinized masters of yoga known as siddhas (great perfected beings) within the Nath tradition. The Naths are closely associated with classical hatha yoga, which internalized the complex (and often transgressive) rituals of Tantra into the body of the practitioner. Hatha yoga
2
reference deities, but over the centuries as the order organized, the Naths gradually became almost wholly oriented toward the Hindu god Shiva. Stories of the Naths was composed and illustrated in 1823 for Maharaja Man Singh of Jodhpur (reigned 1803 43), an ardent devotee of the siddha Jalandharnath and an unstinting patron of the Nath sectarian order.4 Its cosmological cycle demonstrates a historical development in Nath identity and beliefs. To rmly situate siddhas as transcendent beings, the text adapts a Shaiva metaphysics: it re-identies the limitless Absolute (brahman) as a divine Nath and his (i.e., the universes) rst emanations into matter and consciousness as siddhas.
developed between the thirteenth and fteenth centuries by synthesizing two earlier yogic traditions: one that focused on physical techniques for retaining semen and another based on visualization techniques for raising energy (kundalini) through the subtle body (see cats. 11ac). Early Nath works on yoga rarely
3
Vertical rules divide the monumentally sized folios, each almost four feet in width, into segments representing the siddhas as successive emanations of being from a self-effulgent [Nath] without beginning, limit, form or blemish. To
5
hat of Nath yogis; the most subtle and respected beings, like Bliss-form Nath and Jalandharnath seen in the center and right panels respectively of folio 1 (cat. 4a), also have halos and ashen-blue bodies.7 Silvery waters owing from Jalandharnaths body constitute the next, more material, ground of creation, the cosmic ocean in (or perhaps on) which the Naths on folios 3 and 4 (cats. 4b, 4c) companionably converse. Virtually identical, they are depicted as teachers connected in a hierarchical chain of authoritative revelation.8 In Indian philosophical systems, the greatest spiritual authorities are those who have directly perceived ultimate reality (pratyaksha), which is visually indicated here by the left
4a Three Aspects of the Absolute, folio 1
meet the conceptual challenge of evoking the immaterial, Bulaki, a master artist in Man Singhs atelier, began the creation sequence with an undifferentiated eld of shimmering gold pigment (cat. 4a, left). The radical abstraction is an innovation of the Jodhpur workshop; although the formless Absolute is a conception central to many Hindu traditions, it had rarely entered the realm of the visual.
6
Each saffron-clad siddha wears the horn necklace and triangular black
NATH SIDDHAS | 129
4b (above) The Transmission of Teachings, folio 3 4c (below) The Transmission of Teachings, folio 4
to right sequence of progressively more material (and hence lesser) emanations.9 Several Naths touch their forengers to their thumbs in a gesture of imparting knowledge (vitarka mudra); on the far right of folio 4, the deity Shiva joins two of his four hands in worshipful respect. Bulaki exploited the mesmerizing affect of repetitive forms and gleaming surfaces to convey the transcendent divinity of the siddhas. Enigmatically hovering and effortlessly emerging, replicating, and regrouping on the highest cosmic plane, they galvanize what would
become a standard Nath conception of siddhas and demonstrate the role of the visual in shaping historical transformations. DD
Jain Yoga: Nonviolence for Karmic Purication

5A Seated Jina Ajita 1
India, Tamil Nadu, 9th10th century Bronze, 18.5 14.5 9.3 cm Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Gift of Arthur M. Sackler, S1987.162 5a Seated Jina Ajita
5B Jina
India, Rajasthan, 10th11th century Bronze with silver inlay, 61.5 49.5 36.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2001.883
5C Standing Jina
India, Tamil Nadu, 11th century Bronze, 73.7 69.2 17.5 cm Private Collection, LT164
5D Jina
India, Rajasthan, probably vicinity of Mount Abu, 1160 (Samvat 1217) Marble, 59.69 48.26 21.59 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2000.985
5E Siddha Pratima Yantra

Western India, dated 1333 (Samvat 1390) Bronze, 21.9 13.1 8.9 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.336
5F Jain Ascetic Walking

India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1600 Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper, 14.7 9.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.244
The Jain tradition arose more than 2,700 years ago on Indias Gangetic Plain. Its earliest surviving text, the Acharanga Sutra (circa 300 BCE),7 species that the path to spiritual liberation requires the careful practice of nonviolence. Jainism acknowledges twenty-four great teachers known as tirthankaras (forders of the karmic stream) or Jinas (victors). These great liberated souls successfully conquered the difculties inherent in the cycle of rebirth and suffering (samsara), expelled all fettering karmas, and taught for many years before ascending to the eternal abode of perfect energy, consciousness, and bliss. The cornerstone of Jain thought and practice can be found in the rela-
tionship between soul and karma. Karma in Jainism has physical qualities: it is material, sticky, and colorful. The most difcult karmas densely coat the soul, and hence prevent the soul from manifesting good qualities. Souls are found everywhere: in clumps of dirt, in gusts of wind, in the ames of a bonre, in the lives of plants, in the bacteria on our skin, and, of course, in all living beings, including insects and humans. Each act of violence toward any one of these souls causes an inux of karma.8 All souls are born repeatedly until they are reborn as humans who can, through daily meditation and twice-monthly fasting, release karmas, lending brightness and lightness to their visages. The Jains seek to
JAIN YOGA | 131
gradually shed all karmas, allowing ascent of the soul to a state of eternal, solitary blessedness and awareness, known as moksha or kevala. Jainism has employed the word yoga for more than two millennia and has been in constant dialogue with yoga as a spiritual discipline.9 In the early Jain tradition, from the time of the Acharanga Sutra until the sixth century CE, yoga referred to the process by which material karmas stick to and hence obscure the innate luminosity of the soul. According to Jain physiology, karma sets the body off balance, forming asymmetrical deposits in the connective tissues.
5b Jina 5c Standing Jina
In the sixth century, the Jain scholar Haribhadra Virahanka began to use yoga in its more general sense of spiritual practice.10 For nearly 1,400 years, Jains have composed many texts that discuss their religious practice in terms of yoga, such as the Yogabindu of Haribhadra Viranhaka, the Yogadrstisamuccaya of Haribhadra Yakiniputra (eighth century), and the Yogashastra of Hemacandra, which provided one of the earliest descriptions of asana and pranayama (eleventh century).11 From their earliest representation (circa 300 BCE),12 Jinas have been depicted in meditation, because it is a state in which no violence can be committed. Seated Jinas always appear in the elegant and perfect accomplishment of padmasana, the most famous of all yoga postures (known as lotus) with each foot folded onto the opposite thigh. A small ninth-century bronze from Tamil Nadu, probably from a home shrine, represents Ajita, the second Jina, meditating within this posture of perfect stillness (cat. 5a). By reecting upon this representation of deep repose, aspiring Jains are inspired to bring similar serenity into their own lives. Many Jains assume this or a similar position for at least forty-eight minutes per day, emulating the liberated ones and perhaps chanting praise about their accomplishments. By disciplining oneself into this pose, in which one is of like measure on each side, karmas will be excreted. Thus sculpted Jinas are always completely symmetrical and harmoniously proportioned. Their bodies are constructed of idealized forms that further convey the commonality within meditative consciousness. The only way to distinguish the twenty-four great teachers from one another is through insignia sometimes found at the base of their thrones or through inscriptions.13 Inlaid with silver, a gleaming bronze Jina with an extraordinarily gentle smile radiates not only peace but also the
Through the steady practice of meditation, one is able to expel these karmas and bring the body back into alignment.
JAIN YOGA | 133
vibrant energy associated with sustained meditation practice (cat. 5b). The raised emblem on his chest, known as an urna, symbolizes love and compassion. His eyes are wide open, indicating the undying consciousness associated with the realized and puried soul. In western India, where marble is plentiful, Jain temples are often totally constructed of the luminous white stone, evoking the all-important emphasis on purity. A radiant marble Jina (cat. 5d) bears the vestiges of years of daily worship with red and amber powders that are used in the eight-part ritual of Jain worship.14 Because clothing of any type entails violence, both in its production and its usage, the Jina is completely naked. He sits on an elaborately decorated pillow that not only signies the honor in which he was held, but also emphasizes through contrast how the body of a Jina, stripped of ornamentation and garments, articulates the power of nonpossession (aparigraha), the ability to ourish even after surrendering all attachments.15 Perhaps the earliest extant Jain sculpture is the 2,300-year-old torso from Lohanipur of a naked gure standing in the Kayotsagara pose, which involves manifesting the body upward and is critical for the expulsion of karmas. Even today, Jains are as likely to meditate in the standing Kayotsagara pose as in the seated lotus pose. Epitomizing the perfection achieved by bronze casters in Tamil Nadu during the Chola dynasty, the perfectly smooth and unadorned body of the Jina standing in Kayotsagara (cat. 5c) evokes both the solitary, quiet nature of meditation and the radiant, accomplished state of total freedom (kevala). The elaborate aureole, evoking the realm of nature and karma, is distanced from his body, while it symmetrically radiates his energy outward. In this stance, the Jina and the practicing Jain herself embody the very form of the universe. According to Jain cosmology, the world takes the shape of the human
16
body. In the lower realms of the cosmic legs and feet, one can nd the various hells. In the middle realm of the torso, one enters the realm of Jambudvipa, the continent that houses the elemental, microscopic, plant, and animal life forms. The realm above the shoulders contains various heavens. And above the head are realms of perfect freedom. Standing still, arms slightly away from the torso and the legs, Jains meditate on the ascent of the soul beyond the connes of the body. During this process, many fettering karmas disperse, cleansing the soul. Evoking the true nature of a liberated siddha, a small bronze shrine (cat. 5e), slightly worn from repeated acts of ritual touching, conveys the presence of consciousness in a fascinating a uniquely Jain manner. Rather than showing the physicality of the body, this depiction of the adept or siddha represents his body as a negative space. The sheet of copper that frames the empty space of the body symbolizes the karmic materiality that gives shape and form to the body, while the empty space of the silhouette in Kayotsagara signals immersion in the ineffable space of pure consciousness. The cutout of the inverted crescent adds a lovely ourish, perhaps indicating that the realm of consciousness, normally depicted with the horns of the move turned upward, has gracefully upended itself, descending into the full awareness of the enlightened siddha. The whisks on either side give homage to the great accomplishment of surmounting the difculties of karma, providing the comfort of coolness. The abstract openings below the siddha suggest that moments of insight and freedom can occur, inspiring the aspirant with sparks of beauty. In its totality, this bronze shrine invites the meditator to allow the spaciousness of freedom to interlace with the world of materiality. All Jains, lay or monastic, strive to cleanse their souls of the fettering karmas through adherence to ve vows:
5d Jina
JAIN YOGA | 135
5e Siddha Pratima Yantra
5f Jain Ascetic Walking
nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, sexual propriety, and nonpossession. A sensitively observed image of a Jain monk wandering on foot (cat. 5f), which was painted around 1600, documents several of the ways that these goals were embodied and invites further speculation. Carrying his only possessionsa container in which to receive food freely given, a walking stick, and most likely a bookhe is garbed in white, which symbolizes the purest form of karma.17 His hair has been plucked short in order to reduce possible harm to the bacteria and insect life that can develop within it. The rmly drawn contours of his legs and the sense of feet rmly planted on the dark grassy foreground seem to convey the strength and determination of Jain monks (and nuns) who spend
most of their lives walking because any other form of locomotion might harm animals or insects. In contrast, the monks upper body is only imperceptibly outlined. His diaphanous shawl and wispy locks seem to meld into the misty landscape in a gentle manner that suggests the Jain monastics vow to exist in the world with as little disturbance of it as possible. Walking is an important part of the Jain spiritual path and of Jain yoga itself, and this image conveys the movement, strength, and determination of Jain monks and nuns.19 In the modern era, the Jain and yoga vows of nonviolence and truthfulness found their most renowned expression in the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Though a Hindu, Gandhi drew deep inspiration from his Jain friend and teacher
18
Raichandbai. The Jain religious leader Acharya Tulsi also served as an advisor to Gandhi. Tulsis successor, Acharya Mahapragya, developed a new form of Jain yoga meditation, Preksha Dhyana, that is taught worldwide. The Jains have played a central role in the history and development of yoga. The study of Jainism continues to shed light on the intricacies of yoga karma theory and the many ways in which yoga can be practiced. By examining these images of wandering monks and Jina gures in seated and standing meditation positions, we are reminded of the insights and inspirations to be gained from this tradition, which is both ancient and very much alive. CKC
JAIN YOGA | 137
Yoga and Tapas: The Buddhists and Ajivikas

6A Head of the Fasting Buddha
Pakistan or Afghanistan (Gandhara), ca. 3rd5th century Schist, 13.3 8.6 8.3 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel Eilenberg Collection, Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987, 1987.142.73
Identifying physical evidence for the early practice of yoga poses certain difculties. The distinctive postures (asanas) that are well known in contemporary practice are, with rare exceptions, absent from the early sculptural corpus. This
3
Shatapatha Brahmana (700500 BCE) tied these concepts to self-purication while making it explicit that the practice of tapas is when one abstains from food.5 Such descriptions call to mind a well-known, though rare, emaciated form of the Buddha.6 Such images have been produced sporadically throughout the history of Buddhism, showing up among the widespread Tantric Buddhist traditions of the Himalayas as well as in East and Southeast Asian contexts. However, it was in Gandhara, which now encompasses parts of northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, that the earliest examples were produced. The Head of the Fasting Buddha (cat. 6a) is typical of these early works. Most scholars have connected these skeletal images with a six-year period of fasting that took place prior to Prince Siddhartha Gautamas attainment of Buddhahood.7 After abandoning his privileged life at court, Gautama adopted the life of an ascetic and endured years of intense self-mortication alongside a group of like-minded hermits. During this time he surpassed his teachers in rigor and self-discipline, taking the intense traditional practices to selfpunishing extremes. The Maha Saccaka Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya provides a visceral description, stating that: because I ate so little, my protruding backbone became like a string of balls My gaunt ribs became like the crazy rafters on a tumbled down shed.8 The passage culminates with the hauntingly poetic image of Gautama reaching for his stomach and feeling his spine beneath the sagging skin. A diminutive ivory created for personal worship in eighth-century Kashmir (cat. 6b), portrays this period of self-
absence is not surprising, given that the oldest textual sources on yoga emphasize inner processes of the mind rather than external actions.4 Rened mental states are understandably difcult to convey through the visual arts. Despite these challenges, one fruitful avenue for exploring the topic of yoga in early art might be found in the concept of tapas, or inner heat. As described in both yoga manuals and the late Vedic literary tradition, tapas is the byproduct of intense physical and mental austerities that manifests as a reserve of potent, purifying, spiritual energy, and as literal heat. One of the most frequently encountered techniques for producing tapas, and the purication it engenders, involves undertaking periods of fasting. As early as the Rig Veda (17001000 BCE), the concepts of heat and hunger were already associated, and the
6B Fasting Buddha
India, Kashmir, 8th century Ivory, 12.4 9.5 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, 1986.701
6C Base for a Seated Buddha with Figures of Ascetics

Pakistan or Afghanistan, ancient Gandhara, ca. 150200 CE Gray schist, 38 36.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski, 1976.152
6D Tile with Impressed Figures of Emaciated Ascetics and Couples Behind Balconies
India, Jammu and Kashmir, Harwan, ca. 5th century Terracotta, 40.6 33.6 x 4.1 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, 1987, 1987.424.262
6a Head of the Fasting Buddha 6b Fasting Buddha
mortication and its eventual conclusion. In three superbly carved vignettes, the sculptor represents Gautamas early
experimentation with austerities (center), his despair at their futility (left), and his decision to accept a food offering that restores his robust body and sets him on the nal path towards omniscience (right). After attaining his enlightenment, the Buddha made the decision to share his teachings, and among the rst to convert were the hermits alongside whom he had practiced asceticism. This moment of conversion appears to be the subject of a late second-century pedestal fragment from Gandhara (cat. 6c).9 Two gaunt ascetics with matted hair look upward to the Buddha and hold their hands to their mouths, most likely indicating their decision to accept sustenance. Shaped by both his time as prince and an ascetic, the Buddhas Middle Way was unique in seeking to balance the ideal of nonattachment with legitimate bodily needs such as food, medicine, and clothing. By depicting the hermits breaking their fasts, the artist presents a visual indication of their resolution to adopt the Buddhas moderate path. Similarly emaciated renunciants appear on a fth-century terracotta panel from Harwan (cat. 6d). Their bony forms make a striking contrast to the hardy, bejeweled householders depicted in the upper register. This panel was part of a series that covered the lower walls of an enigmatic temple in Kashmir. The unusual nature of these decorations has led scholars to suggest that they may be linked to an important ascetic group known as the Ajivikas.10 The Ajivikas emerged as an inuential school of thought prior to the third century BCE. Their importance is attested by a handful of royal inscriptions dating to the Mauryan dynasty (third century BCE) including inscriptions at Nagarjuni, near Barabar, which name them as the recipients of at least three of the rock-cut caves sponsored by King Dasharatha.11 Unfortunately, no texts written by the Ajivikas remain. What we know
about them comes exclusively through the words of their rivals and should, therefore, be read with some caution. For instance, the Jains and Buddhists both characterize the Ajivikas as strict fatalists as well as practitioners of exceptionally intense austerities. Contemporary scholarship has pointed out the possible contradiction inherent in accepting both these claims, since self-mortication makes little sense if it can have no impact on ones predetermined destiny.12 Although the Ajivikas eventually died out, Buddhism continued to thrive and develop into new forms, including Tantra. Tantric practitioners redened the role of yoga and tapas within Buddhism, but still identied meditative processes as central to transcendence. Today, these late traditions survive mostly outside of India. RDC
6c Base for a Seated Buddha with Figures of Ascetics 6d Tile with Impressed Figures of Emaciated Ascetics and Couples Behind Balconies
YOGA AND TAPAS | 141
Austerities
7A Vishvamitra Practices His Austerities
Folio 61a from the Freer Ramayana Mushq India, sub-imperial Mughal, 15971605 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 26.5 15.6 cm Freer Gallery of Art, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1907.271.611
From as early as the fth century BCE, shramana renouncers meditated and mortied their bodies to produce a purifying heat (tapas) that engendered spiritual knowledge and power. Later, the
3
in austerities (cat. 7b) was produced in Mandi, a small kingdom in the Himalyan foothills, during the reign of Raja Siddh Sen (16841727), a Tantric practitioner who identied himself with Shiva.7 The yogis nakedness, as well as his ash and red-sindur body markings (the tripundara tilak of three horizontal lines), indicate that he is a Shaiva Sannyasi. With his legs crossed, back exceedingly arched, and ngers extended in a ritual gesture (mudra), the Sannyasi is immobilized, his body molded into a form that both enables and expresses his transaction with higher worlds.8 A roughly contemporaneous painting from Mewar (present-day Rajasthan) features a similar depiction of a Sannyasi (cat. 7c) His back arched over a large bolster, he is attended by a young disciple (chela) bearing a peacock-feather whisk (center right). The bolsters and the presence of chelas (who took care of their gurus every need) suggest that the senior ascetics are akash-munis (sky-sages) whose austerity is prolonged staring at the sky. The two images suggest that the austerity, which emerged no later than the eighth century, was a fairly widespread Sannyasi practice some thousand years later.9 A veritable compendium of austerities, this painting depicts a band of Sannyasis enduring the rigors of immobilization and inversion. To localize the sacred, it layers the lakeside palaces of Mewars capital city Udaipur onto the Himalayan abode of Shiva. Though rough in its realization, the painting is an important document that records one way in which asanas increased in number over time: it depicts ancient austerities that, by the sixteenth century, were categorized as asanas within yogic treatises. In the yellow vale at the paintings center, an ascetic hangs upside down from a tree in tapkar asana (the heat-producers posture), which was rst described in the Pali canon as the bat penance.10 The re beneath the inverted ascetics head is either the
Yoga Sutras (second to fourth century CE) listed austerities (tapas) among the observances (niyama) that perfect the body, expand consciousness, and yield supernatural powers (siddhis). The Hindu epics and Puranas (second century BCE to tenth century CE) tell about great sages like Vishvamitra undertaking austerities and celibacy to force the gods to grant them boons. Vishvamitras status was raised to that of a divine sage. So boundless was the
4
7B Two Ascetics
India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, 172550 Opaque watercolor on paper; 15.5 22.5 cm (page), 13 18 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, Gift of Barbara and Eberhard Fischer
7C Shiva and Parvati on Mount Kailash

India, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, late 18th century Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 28.7 20.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Felton Bequest, 1980, AS242-19802
potency generated by austerities that the gods went to inordinate lengths to derail accomplished seers from their penances. For example, in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, the deity Indra persuades Rambha, a celestial beauty, to seduce Vishvamitra in order to dissipate the power he had accumulated over millennia. In a sixteenth-century illustration from a Persian translation of the Sanskrit epic, Vishvamitra sits, his legs bound by a yogapatta (yoga strap), enduring the heat from a circle of ames (cat. 7a). As the sage recites mantras, Rambha approaches from the paintings lower left corner. Vishvamitra easily rejects
5
the divinely orchestrated temptations of the lush springtime day and the celestial seductress, but in anger (his innate weakness) furiously curses Rambha. Because losing ones equanimity, like losing ones seed, destroys the fruits of tapas, Vishvamitra is compelled to undergo another thousand years of unparalleled and virtually impossible austerities to become the greatest of sages.
6
Many, but by no means all, yogic regimes adopted austerities as methods for breaking bonds with society, perfecting the body, and acquiring omniscience or supernatural powers (siddhis). A roughly painted image of an ashsmeared and talon-nailed yogi engaging
7a Vishvamitra Practices His Austerities
AUSTERITIES | 143
7b Two Ascetics 7c Shiva and Parvati on Mount Kailash
artists literalization of heat production or a textually unattested variant on the posture. The akash-muni Sannyasi (described above) is echoed to his left by the renunciant seated on a tiger skin, who appears to be a patal-muni immobilized in a perpetually downward gaze. This logic of doubling may explain the self-decapitation, an unattested yogic austerity, of a second inverted ascetic embedded within a sequence of interrelated events in the upper register.11 The sequence, which repeats key characters to signal successive events, begins on the left with the origin story of Ganeshs elephant head. While the goddess Parvati bathed (here, in a yellow courtyard), Shiva mistakenly beheaded their son Ganesh, who is represented, crumpled and bleeding, in front of the palace and then again in its gateway, restored to life with an elephant head. To the left of the palace are Shiva and Parvati, riding the bull Nandi, and the yogi suspended above a linga-yoni (the aniconic form of the divine couple) adorned with ower offerings. A moment later, and even further to the left, his head lies among the owers. This doubling, the paired
beheadings, linked by their witness Nandi, provide a mythic dimension to the ascetics offering. DD
Meditation
8A Yoga Narasimha, Vishnu in His Man-Lion Avatar
India, Tamil Nadu, ca. 1250 Bronze, 55.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski, 1973.1871
Meditation as a means to transcend the suffering of existence seems to have emerged in northern India around the fth century BCE. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (second to fourth century CE), it is key to stilling the uctuations of the mind, which obscure pure consciousness and higher awareness.4 Patanjali identies three phases of meditation: the concerted xing of the mind (dharana); effortlessly centered concentration (dhyana); and the transformative realization that the seer and the seen are one (samadhi). With variations, such as focusing the mind on a deity as revealed by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, meditation became a pillar of most later yoga traditions. South Asian artists often represented great sages, enlightened beings, and deities in the act of meditation to convey their spiritual attainment. The most ubiquitous signiers of meditation, visible in sculptures and paintings throughout this catalogue, are the symmetrical, motionless postures of sitting in padmasana or standing with upright spine and arms extended downward. Here, two sculpted images reveal how the iconography of the yogapatta (yoga strap) was employed to convey the specically yogic personae of Hindu gods with multiple identities.6 The practice of meditating on a deity receives explicit attention in the discussion of The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana. In one of his salvic interventions to restore order on Earth, Vishnu manifested as the half-lion and half-man Narasimha to protect the young devotee Prahlada from his murderous demonfather. The Bhagavata Purana, a canonical sacred text, relates that Narasimha then taught Prahlada bhakti yoga, the path of worshipful devotion.7 From the ninth century onwards, South Indian sculptures often depict Narasimha seated with a yogapatta.8 The icono5
Energy ows uidly through a brilliantly realized bronze Narasimha (cat. 8a), which was created in Tamil Nadu during the Chola dynasty. From the stable base of crossed legs held tautly by a yogapatta, the gods tapered waist rises smoothly toward broad shoulders. The leonine ruff encircling Narasimhas neck and the mane curling down his shoulders seamlessly connect the powerful conical mass of his crowned head to the long diagonal of his frontal arms relaxed in meditation. Narasimhas two rear hands bear the aming chakra disc and conch (now missing) of Vishnu; the large prongs on the base were made to support a separately cast aureole (mandorla). Hanuman, the beloved monkey general of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, is most widely worshiped as an exemplary devotee of Rama. The simian god is also recognized as a great yogi (mahayogi) with extraordinary powers of healing.9 These identities are not incompatible. We nd, for example, that the mahayogi Hanuman is a divine exemplar for the Vaishnava renouncers known as Ramanandis, whose path combines hatha yoga with ardent devotion (bhakti) to Vishnu and his incarnation Rama (see cats. 19ab). Indeed, for Ramanandis, Hanuman is equally an incarnation of Shiva and Ramas paramount devotee.10 A vigorously carved teak relief (cat. 8b) represents Hanuman meditating with a yogapatta around his knees and his arms and eyes raised adoringly. Its sculptor effectively contrasted the gods sturdy limbs with the laser-sharp folds of swirling garments so that Hanumans body appears to thrust forcefully forward and upward. Conveying Hanumans nature as both powerful yogi and ardent devotee, the panel once adorned the ceiling of a temple hall in Kerala.11 With pulsating intensity, The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana (cat. 8c) depicts the gentle form that the erce goddess
8B Hanuman as Yogi
India, Kerala, Cochin, early 19th century Teak wood and color, 37.6 37 9.5 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.2564E-18832
8C The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana

From a Tantric Devi series India, Pahari Hills, ca. 166070 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 21.3 23.1 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.83
8a Yoga Narasimha, Vishnu in His Man-Lion Avatar
graphic type conveys that the divine man-lion is meditating; it may also signify that he is teaching bhakti yoga.
8b Hanuman as Yogi
assumed in response to the meditation of the sage.12 On its left, the bearded Chyavana holds a strand of prayer beads that suggests he is reciting mantras (sacred syllables) as he gazes xedly at the shimmering golden-skinned goddess. Bhadrakali, her lotus-eye tinged in red, wears a crown adorned with emeralds cut from the iridescent wings of beetles and holds the attributes of the god Vishnulotus, conch shell, mace, and discusin her four hennaed hands. She sits on a bloated corpse that invokes her cremation ground haunt (see cat. 16). Created for a Tantric practitioner (sadhaka) in northwest India during the seventeenth century, the painting is one from a series representing manifestations of the great goddess (Devi).13 A dhyana verse, a description of Bhadrakali that guides ritual visualization to invoke
her presence, is inscribed on the paintings verso in Takri script.14 In its totality, the folio thus makes the goddess visible in three ways: to the practitioner who recites the verse while meditating upon her form; to the sage Chyavana (within the painting); and to those who view the image today. DD
8c The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana
MEDITATION | 149
Asana
9 Ten folios from the Bahr al-hayat (Ocean of Life)
India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, 16001604 Opaque watercolor on paper, 22.7 13.9 cm (folio) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin1
9H Kumbhaka (Persian, kunbhak)

8 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.25a
Yoga today is often identied with the practice of a broad range of bodily postures called asanas. This identication has been traced to the twentieth century, when new technologies of reproduction circulated both yoga systems and asana imagery across the globe.2 However, the earliest known treatise to systematically illustrate yoga postures,3 the Bahr al-hayat (Ocean of Life), dates to the turn of the seventeenth century. This essay examines the specic conditions for the production of this unprecedented treatise and considers its twenty-one asanas, which are almost all seated postures for meditation on various unconditioned forms of the absolute, within a broader historical trajectory of the development of asanas. The Sanskrit word asana (aa-suhnuh) is a noun meaning seat or the act of sitting down derived from the verbal root s, which means to sit or to remain as one is. Until the end of the rst millennium CE, when used in the context of yoga, asana referred to simple seated postures to be adopted for meditation. This is true for all formulations of yoga, including those of the classical tradition rooted in Patanjalis Yoga Sutras (circa 325425 CE)4 and those of the Tantric tradition, whose earliest extant asana teachings date to the sixth century.5 It is in the hatha method of yoga, which was codied in texts from the eleventh century onward, that the more complex, non-seated asanas that have become synonymous with yoga practice gain prominence. Two thirteenth-century texts, the earliest to teach asana as part of hatha techniques, proclaim that there are eighty-four lakh (8,400,000) asanas, but describe only two, both of which are seated postures.6 The fteenth-century Light on Hatha (Hathapradipika),7 the best known Sanskrit text on hatha yoga and the rst to be devoted solely to the subject, describes fteen asanas, of
9I Sthamba (Persian, thambasana)

13.6 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.26b
9A Virasana (Persian, sahajasana)

13.3 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.10a
9J Untitled (Persian, sunasana)

11.5 7.7 cm (painting) In 16.27b Note: The italicized words represent how the posture was rendered in the Persian text of the Chester Beatty Library Bahr al-hayat.
9B Garbhasana (Persian, gharbasana)

9C Nauli Kriya (Persian, niyuli)

Attributed to Govardhan 9.5 8 cm (painting) In 16.19a
9D Headstand (Persian, akucchan)

9E Untitled (Persian, nashbad)

13.5 7.6 cm (painting) In 16.21b
9F Untitled (Persian, sitali)

9G Khechari Mudra (Persian, khechari)

9g Khechari Mudra
which seven are non-seated positions
for meditation. Some of its verses teach non-seated asanas found in earlier works. The peacock posture, mayurasana,8 has the oldest heritage. Its description in the Light on Hatha is taken from a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century yoga manual composed in a Vaishnava milieu, i.e., among followers of the Hindu god Vishnu,9 but can be traced back through other Vaishnava texts to one from approximately the ninth century.10 The Light on Hathas description of the cock posture, kukkutasana,11 also can be traced to earlier Vaishnava works.12 The practices of hatha yoga are often said to have originated among Tantric Shaivas, i.e., followers of Shiva, but these early references to non-seated asanas in Vaishnava works suggest different origins for at least some hatha yogic techniques; the absence of non-seated asanas in Shaiva works prior to the Light on Hatha further increases the likelihood of them having originated outside of Tantric milieus. In a circa thirteenth-century collection of teachings ascribed to the Kaula Tantric guru Matsyendra,13 one of the rst gurus of the Nath order of yogis, both the peacock and cock are included among the asanas of yoga, but they are seated positions quite different from the non-seated postures of the same name found in the Vaishnava tradition. One of the asanas taught in the Light on Hatha is the corpse pose, shavasana, classed in an earlier work as one of the secret techniques of laya yoga, the visualization-based yoga of dissolution taught by Shiva.14 This is an early example of a phenomenon that becomes more and more common, namely the classication as asanas of physical practices that did not originate as such. Thus some of the techniques called mudras taught in the earliest texts of hatha yoga, such as mahamudra (the great seal) and viparitakarani (the inverter), become asanas in later works, with the latter, in which the body is inverted, becoming either sarvangasana,
ASANA | 151
9b Garbhasana
9c Nauli Kriya
ASANA | 153
9a Virasana
9d Headstand
9e Untitled
9f Untitled
ASANA | 155
9h Kumbhaka
9j Untitled
the shoulder stand, or shirasasana, the headstand. Similarly, the ancient ascetic technique of suspending oneself upside down from a tree, the bat-penance dismissed by the Buddha,15 resurfaces as the ascetics asana (tapkar asana) in an eighteenth-century Braj Bhasha yoga manual.16 (The tapkar asana is illustrated in cats. 7c and 20c.) As part of this same process, gymnastic exercises from a variety of traditions, both Indian and foreign, have been included under the asana rubric over the course of the twentieth century.17 The purpose of the earliest seated asanas was to provide a steady and comfortable position for meditation.18 In the Light on Hatha and later texts, asanas primary purpose is to make the body supple and strong.19 This is in keeping with the generally positive attitude toward the body evinced by such works, but the practice of difcult physical postures has also long been associated with ascetic cultivators of tapaspower from austerity. In Indias greatest epic, the Mahabharata (200 BCE300 CE), the same ascetics who practice yoga often also cultivate tapas, with the techniques of the latter taking the form of various self-mortications, including the holding of difcult postures, such as inversions,20 for long periods. These physical techniques are ascribed to yoga-practicing ascetics in a wide variety of subsequent texts, in particular the Puranas, and they also occur regularly in foreign descriptions of the practices of Indian ascetics, from that of Alexanders companion Onesicritus21 to medieval travelers tales to early modern reports. It is likely to be from such older ascetic traditions that non-seated asanas rst became part of yoga practice.24 With asana becoming the repository of all yogic techniques that involve physical postures, the compilers of texts on yoga started to describe them in large numbers. The seventeenthcentury Sanskrit String of Jewels of Hatha
22 23
(Hatharatnavali) is the earliest text to name eighty-four asanas, the number that came to represent their totality, or to be written in Sanskrit, the classical language of Hindu text learning.25 A contemporaneous or perhaps slightly earlier text, the Wish-Fullling Gem of Yoga (Yogachintamani), describes thirtyve asanas in its published edition. A manuscript of the same text dated 1660 lists 110 asanas and describes fty-ve. It is unlikely that any of these texts were illustrated. The Persian Bahr al-hayat, which not only describes but also depicts twenty-one yogis performing seated as well as more complex asanas, is one of several texts on yogic subjects commissioned by Prince Salim, the future Mughal Emperor Jahangir (reigned 160527). Multiple cross-cultural encounters shaped the production of the illustrated manuscript. The text itself was composed around 1550 in Gujarat by the prominent Su Shaykh Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari (died 1563). His purpose was to teach his disciples hatha practices compatible with Su goals of spiritual transformation.26 Ghawth based his Persian treatise on an earlier Arabic translation of passages from a variety of Sanskrit texts, clarifying its ambiguities and increasing the number of asanas from six to twenty-one.27 The Su must have consulted with living yogis, perhaps Naths, because none of the asanas in the Bahr al-hayat are taught in any earlier Hindu text, and their descriptions are much more detailed than those found in the Wish-Fullling Gem of Yoga manuscript.28 Indeed, such detailed teachings on asana are not found in any Hindu texts, whose terse descriptions invariably require the elucidation of a teacher. By 1600, some fty years after its composition, Ghawths treatise could have come to Prince Salims attention through a number of avenues: its prominence among Sus, the prestige of its author, orbecause Ghawth was a condant of the rst two Mughal emperors29
through a copy already in the imperial library. A more signicant question is why Salim chose to have the treatise recopied, illustrated, and bound. Born in 1569, Salim was raised in the ecumenical, intellectual milieu fostered by his father, Akbar (reigned 15561605), for whom the Yoga Sutras, the Yoga Vasishta, and other Hindu texts had been translated or summarized. Salims establishment of a satellite court at Allahabad between 1600 and 1605 perhaps intensied the princes interest in yogic traditions. Allahabad was the Mughal name given to Prayag, an ancient city located at the sacred conuence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. For yogis, it was (and remains) a gathering place of consummate importance. Indeed, the illustrations attest direct contact between local yogis and the artists of Salims atelier. Lightly colored in translucent washes, they retain the directness of drawings made from living models. And although Mughal painters often copied motifs and gures from other Mughal or European artworks, many of the Bahr al-hayat folios represent intricate postures that have no precedent in earlier images. In folio 19a, Govardhan, the artist responsible for the manuscripts most accomplished images, depicted a seated yogi performing the Nauli kriya (or process) of isolating and revolving the stomach muscles like someone swiftly weaving a garment (cat. 9c). Before accompanying Salim to Allahabad, Govardhan had developed in Akbars imperial workshop a markedly naturalistic style through the study of European printsa training that resurfaces in the adepts frontal face, pensive expression, and softly tousled hair and beard, which were almost certainly based on a Christ gure. A small passage of shading, the roughly vertical oblong darkening on the left side of the yogis belly, suggests that Govardhan attempted to convey abdominal motion. Although subtle, it does not
ASANA | 157
9i Sthamba
appear in any of the artists other images of bare-chested yogis. A folio representing garbhasana, in which the body is folded into a fetal (Sanskrit, garbha) posture, more emphatically reveals direct observation (cat. 9b). Remarkable in its lucidity, the complex posture meticulously corresponds with the Persian text, which stipulates placing the left foot on the right foot, holding the buttocks on both feet, holding the head evenly between the two knees, placing both elbows under the ribs, putting the hands over the ears, [and] bringing the navel toward the spine.30 The artist, moreover, acutely observed and darkened the contours of the yogis left knee, imparting volume to the leg, and clearly articulating its location in front of the more thinly outlined left hand and partially obscured torso. Additional evidence for direct encounter lies in those illustrations that deviate signicantly from the text. A folio (cat. 9g) depicts a yogi with his hands on his thighs in what appears to be virasana, but Ghawth describes a meditation in which the shins are crossed and the hands are clasped.31 It appears that the yogi model substituted a practice he knew for one that was unfamiliar.
32
simpler than many contemporaneous Allahabad manuscripts. For example, the lavishly illustrated philosophical narrative the Yoga Vasishta (cat. 13) features richly colored and full-page paintings with multiple gures in complex landscapes. Based on Mughal manuscript hierarchies rmly established by 1600, art historians might surmise that the relative expediency of the Bahrs production is evidence of Salims preference for a text that explicates Vedanta philosophy over that of a practical treatise. It may be more productive, however, to consider the manuscripts utilitarian design as evidence of its classication within the scientic genre.34 Each illustrated folio contains a concise and faithfully descriptive image bordered, at top and bottom, by a portion of Ghawths didactic text. The adjacency of text and image suggests that the purpose of the commissionits translation of somatic practices from the realm of the esoteric and sectarian into the arena of the visual and courtlywas to elucidate and edify. Two later copies of the illustrated Bahr al-hayat manuscript were produced. But although long lists of complex asanas were common in texts on yoga from the seventeenth century onward, the next signicant development in visualizing them was not until the early nineteenth century. This period saw the painting of eighty-four siddhas or adepts in different asanas on the walls of the Mahamandir temple in Jodhpur and the creation of illustrated manuscripts of the Jogapradipika (a Braj Bhasha reinterpretation of the Light on Hatha that teaches eighty-four asanas) and Sritattvanidhi (a Sanskrit work from Mysore that teaches 122 asanas). Over the course of the twentieth century, as yoga came increasingly to be identied with asana, the notion of a group of eighty-four or more complex asanas became widely accepted. Twentieth-century yoga manuals accordingly teachand include illustrations oflarge numbers of asanas. Perhaps
33
the most inuential of all, B. K. S. Iyengars Light on Yoga describes more than 200 postures. Most are intended to bring physical benets, although links are maintained to the esoteric aims of the practices from which some of these asanas developed. In this respect they are more in the tradition of the difcult postures of tapas-practicing yogis than those of the Bahr al-hayat and Tantric and classical formulations of yoga, whose asanas provide a foundation for contemplative practices. JM and DD
Similarly, Ghawth generically identied his informants as yogis or meditators. But Salims painters depicted eleven of the twenty-one yogis with attributes of the Nath sectarian order. Their horn whistles, cloth llets, and canine companions demonstrate both the Mughal fascination with the appearance of the real and a marked Nath presence in Allahabad. The illustrated Bahr al-hayat thus bears the traces of two encounters with yogis, the rst in Gujarat circa 1550 and the second in Allahabad, 16024. Both were complex acts of translation across sectarian and courtly as well as textual, oral, and visual traditions. In this regard, we might note that Salims Bahr al-hayat, with its plainly composed half-page illustrations on unpolished paper, is far
ASANA | 159
The Cosmic Body

10A Krishna Vishvarupa
India, Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur, ca. 1740 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 19.8 11.7 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection 1
In many yoga systems, the equivalence of the Self and the Absolute (brahman) constitutes ultimate reality. If we understand the work of representation as the attempt to make something visible, the representation of yogic insight is a paradoxical challenge. Beyond the comprehension of ordinary individuals, ultimate reality can be perceived only by advanced adepts. Four paintings from Northwest and Central India reveal how artists rose to this challenge when they represented masters of yoga embodying the universe. The earliest conception of the cosmos as body appears in the Rig Veda (15001000 BCE) and becomes linked with yogic practice in subsequent Hindu traditions. Between the third century
5
tion of scaleboth Krishnas vastness and his supremacy over all other Hindu gods and sages. Four of Krishnas heads, shaded the same lavender-blue as his body, are vertically stacked at the center of his body; his lowest mouth is spiky with fangs. The heads probably relate to the gods successive manifestations to his devotee Arjuna, the warrior prince who appears at the paintings lower right, his hands raised in the gesture of worship.11 As the hair on Arjunas arms bristles in terror, Krishna abandons his human form and becomes the cosmic creator, universal sovereign, and Kala, who is time and death. To perceive and withstand the wondrous revelation, Krishna grants Arjuna the divine sight of an accomplished yogi. With its delicate line, luscious sherbet colors, and especially Krishnas gentle expressions as he meets the gaze of his devotees, the painting transcends literal illustration of the Gitas eleventh chapter to convey the broader context of bhakti devotion in which Krishnas compassion is accessible to all.12 Among the Gitas multiple, metaphorical, and poetic descriptions of vishvarupa are the sun and moon eyes and re-blazing mouth seen in a small but powerful image from Jaipur, a Rajput kingdom in present day Rajasthan (cat. 10b). With four arms holding discus, conch, mace, and lotus, and the multiheaded serpent Shesha as a footrest, the painting represents the Hindu deity Vishnu as the cosmos.13 Deities cluster in his upper torso, the phenomenal worlds are target-like circles at his waist, and seven demonic netherworlds are located along his legs. An exuberantly realized folio from Nagpur (Maharasthra) visualizes Vishnus cosmic multiplicity through the interplay of discretely bounded images, words, and texts (cat. 10c). In the upper register, under cusped arches that schematically invoke a palace, its painter anthropomorphically represented the knowledge
10B Vishnu Vishvarupa

India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, ca. 18001820 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 38.5 28 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Mrs. Gerald Clark, IS.33-20062
10C Forms of Vishnu

Folio from the Jnaneshvari India, Maharashtra, Nagpur, 1763 (Samvat 1856) Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 37.7 25.4 cm (folio) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 91.9.1-6283
10D Equivalence of Self and Universe

Folio 6 from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1824 (Samvat 1881) Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 122 46 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 23784
BCE and the fth century CE, the great deities Shiva and Krishna come to be known as Masters of Yoga when they manifest themselves as the universe; the Mahabharata also equates the bodies of empowered yogis with the magnicent cosmos.6 Tantric and hatha yoga later systematize paths for advanced adepts to embody this expansive equivalence. The Bhagavad Gita (200 BCE300 CE) presents a spectrum of yogic doctrines and practices within a framework of personal devotion (bhakti) to Krishna.7 As the Lord of Yoga (yogeshvara), Krishna uses his yogic powers for the welfare of all beings. The Gitas eleventh chapter
8
describes this aspect of Krishna as he reveals his innite cosmic form (vishvarupa) encompassing all time and the whole world, moving and unmoving, lling all the horizons and brushing the sky. An eighteenth-century
9
artist from the Punjab Hills kingdom of Bilaspur sought to evoke the limitless and proliferating universe by extending Krishnas sixty multicolored heads and forty-four pinwheeling arms to the very borders of the painting (cat. 10a). Within
10
the golden dhoti that wraps around his waist, a miniaturized mountain landscape conveysthrough the juxtaposi-
10a Krishna Vishvarupa
THE COSMIC BODY | 161
10b Vishnu Vishvarupa
10c Forms of Vishnu
contained within the Samaveda as a divine musician and the Vedic deity Indra as an enthroned king. In the niches at right, the words man (mind; Sanskrit: manas) and chetana (consciousness) are written in gold Devanagari script to convey the Gitas litany of who and what Krishna is in the universe. The divine ascetic Shiva, attended by the goddess Parvati and the bull Nandi, meditates on Mount Kailash in the more fully realized Himalayan landscape at bottom. The folio belongs to an eighteenthcentury luxury manuscript of the Jnaneshvari, a vernacular commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that demonstrates one of the continuous transformations of yoga in history. Composed in the regional language of Marathi in the thirteenth century by the poet-saint Jnanadeva, the commentary is framed as Lord Vishnus exposition of Shivas esoteric knowledge. It elucidates and glosses the Gitas Sanskrit verses (here, in gold script) with vernacular explications (here, in black) that include Shiva among Krishnas manifestations as well as hatha yoga teachings, such as techniques for raising Kundalini energy through the subtle body. Made for a Maratha nobleman or merchant, the illustrated Jnaneshvari is characterized by a decorative vigor and representational heterogeneity that reects the spirit of the synthetic commentary, which made hatha yoga accessible to broader (i.e., non-initiated and Marathi-speaking) audiences. Almost four feet in height, a monumental folio from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, an illustrated hatha yoga treatise, depicts an advanced adept (siddha) blissfully experiencing his equivalence with the universe (cat. 10d). At the core of hatha yoga is the understanding that everythingfrom the limitless Absolute to the lowest forms of inert matteris essentially one, yet is manifested differently. This essential sameness allows the yogic practitioner to progressively convert his gross body
into subtle matter and become an even greater being than a god. With the sun and moon (sometimes identied with the ha and tha of hatha yoga) as his cheeks, the siddha stands with his eyes crossed in meditation. Reecting its patronage by a maharaja, the folio is lavishly gilded, and each of the universes fourteen worlds is depicted as a white palace city.14 The artist masters the paradox of representing yogic insight by situating the viewer of the painting as an imperfect witness of the transcendent cosmos. The palace walls, which create the paintings only areas of tangible depth, are simultaneously negated by the atly rendered gures, the paintings gleaming surface, and the high relief of the yogis pearls.15 The image oscillates between surface and depth, between materiality and illusion. What the yogi perfectly knows, the viewer only eetingly apprehends in the paintings icker and glare. DD
10d Equivalence of Self and Universe and detail
The Subtle Body

11A The Knots of the Subtle Body
India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 16901700 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 20 14 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1966.271
The physiology of yoga is centered on the subtle body (sukshma sharira), the interface between the individual body composed of gross matter and the formless Absolute (brahman). By manipulat4
Reecting Nath goals, each chakra is presented as a focus for meditation that yields a specic attainmentsuch as universal admiration, release from the cycle of rebirth, or supernatural abilities.10 The canonical text was rst illustrated in 1824 at the Jodhpur court during the reign of Maharaja Man Singh (reigned 180343), a devotee of the siddha Jalandharnath and a patron of the Naths. On its fourth folio (cat. 11b), the nine chakras are arrayed on the body of an adept with his eyes crossed in inward meditation. Monumental in size, nely painted with glowing colors, the chakras shaded to increase their glowing quality, the folio exemplies Man Singhs conspicuous piety. There is no known visual precedent for this highly abstracted set of chakras, although the evidence of other contemporaneous Jodhpur manuscripts strongly suggests that learned Nath yogis guided the court artists who represented, for the rst time, esoteric concepts such as absolute emptiness (shunya). Here, shunya, the profound void that is the sixth chakra (located near the palate) is depicted as a black circle on the yogis chin.11 Other chakras are more guratively realized: the goddess who sits just atop the serpent-belt securing the yogis lower garment corresponds to the texts description of the third chakra as Kundalini Shakti seated within ve coils. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, illustrated chakra charts were also produced in the form of long scrolls. In these, the horizontal span of the paper, rather than a human body, serves as the ground on which chakras are aligned along a gently winding sushumna channel. Over twelve feet long, a grand scroll from Kashmir depicts twelve chakras and seven underworlds disposed along a narrow golden channel (cat. 11c).12 The rst (and lowest) chakra is conventionally represented with its four sacred syllables on the four red petals of a lotus; at its center Ganapati (Ganesha) sits with his two wives.13 The third chakra located at the navel reveals how the forms and
ing the subtle body through meditation, physical practices, or a combination of the two, the yogic practitioner sought to rene his consciousness and become one with the Absolute.5 A diagram of the subtle body from Nurpur (Himachal Pradesh) represents the kingdoms ruler, Raja Mandhata (reigned 1661/16671700), engaged in yogic practice (cat. 11a). With a lotus6
11B The Chakras of the Subtle Body

Folio 4 from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, dated 1824 (Samvat 1881) Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 122 46 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 23762
11C Scroll with Chakras

India, Kashmir, 18th century Opaque watercolor, gold, silver, and ink on paper, 376.7 17 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.8-19873
tipped crown and the mustache of a warrior, the king sits with his legs crossed in what may be siddhasana, in which the lower heel is pressed against the perineum. In hatha yoga, siddhasana was used to raise the breath to pierce three subtle loci known as knots (granthi): the Brahma granthi located at the base of the spine, the Vishnu granthi at the heart, and the Rudra granthi between the eyebrows.7 Here, they are depicted with the conventional iconography of the Hindu gods with whom they are identiedfour-headed Brahma, blue-skinned Vishnu, and Rudra (Shiva), who appears as a two-armed yogi with ash-pale skin and a jata-topknot adorned with the crescent moon. An unconventional ruler
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portrait and a rare depiction of the three granthi, the Nurpur painting not only suggests that Mandhata was a committed practitioner, it also points to the key role that kings played in creating the visual archive of yoga. Most hatha yoga systems map the energy centers, or chakras (rather than granthis) of the subtle body. Chakras are invariably located in a vertical hierarchy along the bodys central channel (sushumna nadi), but are somewhat differently conceptualized in various yoga treatises, and can number anywhere from six to fourteen. For example, the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati (SSP), a foundational Nath treatise, describes nine chakras.
9
deities of chakras varied across systems.14 In the SSP, it is the energy center of the goddess Kundalini; in the Kashmiri scroll, it is identied as the divine couple Vishnu and Lakshmi, who are depicted within a ten-petaled golden lotus that also extends along the golden channel to a coil, an embryo in a womb, and a yogic adept. If they vary in details, both the SSPs fourth folio and the scroll demonstrate the inherent continuity between the subtle and macrocosmic bodies. The SSP stipulates knowledge of the subtle body as a prerequisite for realizing the self as cosmos. In the Jodhpur manuscript, visual similitude links the somatic conceptions, illustrated respectively on folios 4 and 6 (cats. 11b, 10d): the two are the only vertical pages in the manuscript, and both similarly adorned and scaled bodies were created from a single master drawing (no longer extant). The Kashmiri scroll suggests the continuity along its vertical axis and the sushumna that connects the chakras to seven underworlds. Located directly beneath the Ganapati chakra, each ovoid world contains two white pavilions in a mountain landscape that is supported by an animal or an enthroned goddess seated within a pink lotus. The scroll concludes with a diagrammatically mapped universe represented as an ethicized hierarchy from its highest heaven to its lowest underworld; the name of each world is written in Sharada script within a red circle.
11a The Knots of the Subtle Body
Today, seven is widely accepted as the standard number of chakras, and their symbols are xed.15 Differing in number and iconography, these images reveal that a multiplicity of subtle body systems ourished in medieval and early modern India. DD
THE SUBTLE BODY | 167
11b The Chakras of the Subtle Body and detail
THE SUBTLE BODY | 169
11c Scroll with Chakras Full scroll (far left) and details
The Militant Ascetic Body

12 Battle at Thaneshwar
Bifolio from the Akbarnama India, Mughal dynasty, 159095 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In the din of blaring conch shells and clashing weapons, rampaging yogis engage in a raucous battle that bursts dramatically across two paintings. They open a window onto armed asceticism, a phenomenon of the early modern yogic landscape, and the historical evolution of sectarian identities. Mughal and European accounts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relate that bands of armed yogis provided protection for their orders, battled over bathing priorities, and served as mercenaries. By the eighteenth century, larger yogic armies with more disciplined and specialized troops were hired by Mughal emperors, Hindu rajas, the Marathas, and the British East India Company. As the military economy changed yet again with the consolidation of British power in the nineteenth century, organized ascetic armies disappeared. Although twentieth-century scholars consistently identify militant ascetics as devotees of Shiva, these paintings add to a growing body of evidence that at least some armed yogic orders in Mughal India were Vaishnava.3 This impressively detailed bifolio was composed for an illustrated Akbarnama, the history of the reign of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar (reigned 15561605). One of Akbars most ambitious commissions, the imperial history was innovative in its emphasis on contemporary events. Its author, Abul Fazl, either saw the events himself or compiled and cross-checked eyewitness accounts, while shaping the whole into a panegyric. The scene represents a battle that Akbar, returning from a hunting expedition, observed in 1567 at Thaneshwar, a Hindu holy site on the banks of the Saraswati River about 160 kilometers north of Delhi. It was the day of a solar eclipse, a particularly auspicious time for devout Hindus to bathe in sacred rivers.4 When Akbar arrived at the site, two bands of armed ascetics, one small and one large, were
arguing about the choice locationrepresented as a diamond-shaped tank on the left foliothat would enable them to immerse themselves at the most favorable moment and receive the lions share of alms from devotees. (Beneath the banyan tree at the upper left, lay pilgrims proffering largesse with outstretched arms allude to the material benets of a prime bathing spot.) Abul Fazl relates that Akbar was unable to resolve the conict between the two opposing gurus, Kisi Puri and Anand Giri.5 The emperor ung out the jewels of advice and counsel but it was like casting pearls on the ground (Akbarnama, pages 2831), so he allowed the Puri and Giri bands to ght it out. Akbars master artist Basawan created a composition that invokes the emperors agency and incorporates ethnographic and historical information. To portray Akbar as charismatic, Basawan composed the upper register to convey the rulers movement across imperial territory. Akbar, with his characteristic droopy mustache and small turban, appears on horseback between two topographic markers, the distant city at right and a cluster of red tents, the imperial encampment, on the left.6 The battleeld below is a tangle of yogis wielding swords, spears, bows, sharp iron discs known as chakras, axes, clubs with iron rings, and daggers.7 Among them are the Mughal soldiers Akbar sent to turn the tide of the battle by beheading the leader of the larger group, Anand Giri. Basawan marks this culminating moment by splaying out Anand Giris body in the lower center of the right folio. The difference between the limp, horizontal gure of Anand Girialmost choked by jostling adversariesand the relatively isolated and upright emperor situates Akbar as the prime mover of the event. He is not simply observing the battle, he is also majestically inuencing its outcome.
12A
Left folio Composed by Basawan; painted by Basawan and Tara the Elder 32.9 18.7 cm IS.2:61-18961
12B
Right folio Composed by Basawan; painted by Asi 38.1 22.4 cm IS.2:62-18962
12 Battle at Thaneshwar
The ash-smeared complexions; dreadlocks, worn loose or gathered up in large buns; and animal-skin wraps or saffron garments of the Hindu yogis appear in many other Akbari paintings (e.g., cat. 14c). More unusually, Basawan, or the two junior artists who colored the paintings, depicted many of the yogis with forehead markings (tilaks) that specify sectarian identity. The yellow sandalwood-paste tilaks are V-shaped, which identify the combatants as devotees of Vishnu. (Shaiva tilaks are usually three horizontal lines.) Only one of the armed asceticsa Nath in a black, patchwork robe carrying a ringed club over his shouldercan be securely identied by his clothing as Shaiva (bottom right, cat. 12a). Could Akbars artists have gotten
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subgroups of the Dasnamisdevotees of Shiva and hatha yoga practitioners with an acknowledged history of militant asceticism. Recent scholarship by James Mallinson has recovered the Vaishnava pasts of some groups that now rmly self-identify as Shaiva.9 Among these are the Giris and Puris of the Dasnami order. In the Akbarnama folios, the Vaishnava V-shaped tilaks worn by the battling Giris and Puris require not only a reconsideration of militant asceticism in the Mughal period, but also modes of marking the yogic body. The combatants tilaks are an early instance of sectarian forehead marks, which became increasingly prevalent over the following centuries as smaller ascetic groups coalesced into todays larger Vaishnava and Shaiva orders. Today, those marks are nearly ubiquitous. DD
12a Battle at Thaneshwar, left folio (detail) 12b Battle at Thaneshwar, right folio (detail) Following pages:
the tilaks wrong? Vaishnava ascetics are now regarded as peaceful renunciants. Moreover, the Akbarnama account of Thaneshwar names the two yogic sects as Giris and Puris. Today, both are
THE MILITANT ASCETIC BODY | 173
ENTRY NAME GOES HERE
Illusion and Reality in the Yoga Vasishta

13 The Sage Bhringisha and Shiva
Folio 304b from the Yoga Vasishta Attributed to Keshav Das India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, 1602 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 27 18.5 cm (folio); 15.9 9.9 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 05, f.304b1
The Yoga Vasishta (Teachings of the Sage Vasishta) is an important and highly popular philosophical work composed in Kashmir between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Eventually, it eclipsed the Yoga Sutras as the most widely copied manuscript in all of India on the topic of yoga. The Yoga Vasishtas great attraction surely lies in the fact that it presents its highly abstruse philosophical positions through engrossing stories involving kings, mysterious yogis, powerful women, and a host of other colorful characters.2 The lesson of these stories is grounded in the Yoga Vasishtas unique philosophy, which combines Advaita Vedanta, Buddhist idealism, and the metaphysics of the Kashmiri Tantric school known as Trika. Advaita Vedanta, which had become the leading philosophical doctrine by the time of the Yoga Vasishta, is characterized by its nondualist metaphysics, according to which there is only one self in the universe, the absolute Self known as brahman. However, due to cosmic illusion (maya) or ignorance (avidya), humans believe that they are possessed of unique individual selves that, independent of brahman, enliven their bodies. The Yoga Vasishtas central concern is to explain how, through ignorance, individual minds (or egos) actually project or create the illusory phenomenal world they mistake for reality. The waking reality that the mind experiences is likened to dreams, which appear real when ones mind projects them, or the ights of fancy of the creative imagination. Yet all
3
Muslim, had commanded that the Sanskrit treatise be translated into Persian, the court language, because he recognized it as one of the famous books of the Brahmins of India and found it compatible with Su mysticism.4 The luxurious manuscript includes forty-one delicately colored paintings by some of the nest artists who accompanied Salim to his court at Allahabad between the years 1600 and 1605. In the penultimate book of The Teachings of the Sage Vasishta, Shiva the god that the Trika school identied with the absolute brahmanreveals to Bhringisha, an accomplished renouncer, the means for attaining embodied liberation. When this happens, one dwells in a state released from oneness or twoness neither in nirvana nor not in nirvana, [shining] brightly, outwardly free, inwardly free, free like the piece of sky in a jar.5 The painter Keshav Das represented Shivas appearance to Bhringisha as an encounter between a Tantric yogi and a gaunt and aged renouncer6 (cat. 13). A master of the naturalistic style favored by the Mughals, Keshav Das created a vertical landscape of convincing depth by diminishing the size of distant objects and bathing the furthest vistas in a hazy mist. By placing darker forms directly behind the heads of Shiva and Bhringisha, he made the pair palpably three-dimensional and emphasized the intensity of their mutual gaze. The softly craggy peaks bending toward each other in the middle distance further underscore their communion. If Bhringishas sunken belly and attenuated limbs recall the earliest images of ascetics (see cats. 6c, 6d), the bony volumes of the sages skull, the convincing weight of his elbow on his thigh, and the eshy soles of his upturned feet speak to the Mughal interest in the appearance of the real. In his representation of Shiva, Keshav Das tellingly accentuates the characteristics bluish, ash-smeared body; topknot of dreadlocks (jatamukuta); and tiger-skin
are fundamentally illusory. The yoga of the Yoga Vasishta is the practice by which the philosopher-practitioner deconstructs these illusions and recovers the universal reality of the one absolute Self. This yoga is taught through stories, such as the one illustrated here. The Yoga Vasishta was rst illustrated in 1602 at the court of the Mughal Prince Salim (the future Emperor Jahangir, reigned 160527). Salim, a
wrapthat the god shares with mortal yogis. He also minimizes the gods divine qualities: Shiva has two arms; his lightly drawn third eye looks like a sectarian forehead mark; and the snakes that writhe around his shoulders and the garland of skulls hanging from his neck seem to be plausibly real, if exotic, ornaments. DD
ILLUSION AND REALIT Y IN THE YOGA VASISHTHA | 177
178 | LANDSCAPES OF YOGA
Part Two
Landscapes of Yoga
Ashram and Math

14A Shiva Blesses Yogis on Kailash
By an artist in the rst generation after Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler India, Punjab Hills, 17801800 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 21.5 19.8 cm Museum Rietberg Zrich, Gift Horst Metzger Collection, RVI 21271
To correctly perceive reality, the yoga practitioner must rst settle the body. The Bhagavad Gita describes how concentrating the mind begins on a clean spot [where the yogi] builds for himself a rm seat, neither too high nor too low, covered with cloth, deer-skin or kusha grass.6 Though yogis might establish their seats anywhere, the inherent power of certain places was understood to increase the fruits of practice. Among the most perennially potent were mountain peaks, the conuence of rivers, remote caves, isolated huts (kuti), verdant hermitages (ashrams), and cremation grounds. Before the mid-sixteenth century, South Asian sculptors and painters only schematically represented spatial contexts, focusing their attention on the human or divine body. But in the Mughal atelier under Emperor Akbar (reigned 15561605), painters began to represent believable, at times specic, places as the stages for human activities.7 As the new interest spread to other courts, artists increasingly depicted yogis within detailed and symbolically charged settings. These pictorial imaginings of place are typically tranquil and verdant. More unusual are images of the large, bustling monastic communities in which many yogis spent some time or lived; the icy landscapes of Himalayan pilgrimage; and the bone-strewn charnel grounds of Tantric practice (see cats. 15ad, cat. 16). Here, we consider how court painters envisioned the communal spaces of hermitage (ashram) and monastery (math) in the early modern period (sixteenth to nineteenth century). Ashrams are the archetypal refuges for study and contemplation. Their sacred campres (dhuni), straw-roofed huts, and fecund natural settings entered the visual record as early as the rst century CE. A magical painting (cat.
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Kailash to honor Shiva as Yogeshvara (the lord of yogis) and his wife Parvati under a brilliantly starry sky. The ashwhite Shiva, whose entourage includes celestial beauties and animal-headed musicians rendered with visionary clarity, affectionately gazes toward the sages for whom he is the yogic archetype. The three ascetics who eagerly lean forward with ower-garland and leaf-cup offerings organically connect the ashram in the lower valley with the clearing in which the gods appear, emphasizing that it too is suffused with the sacred. Nestled between a gold sky and silvery river, the verdant ashram in a Mughal painting (cat. 14b) invokes the lush riverside locations that were extolled in literature and inscriptions as particularly suited to expanding consciousness.9 In the clearing, an aged female guru sits on an antelope skin that bets her senior status and quietly converses with a disciple wearing jata wrapped neatly atop her head. Ashrams were and are often segrated by gender, and Mughal paintings of womens ashrams are unusual.10 In contrast, male ascetics were a popular subject for imperial painters, who often represented Mughal princes and princesses visiting Hindu yogis in sylvan settings. Many were lightly tinted drawings that enabled artists to display their facility in rendering anatomy, as in the delicately shaded and sepia-toned bodies of three ascetics on the right of a seventeenth-century composition (cat. 14c). The youngest, a disciple, charmingly peers out from a doorway of what seems to be small monastic complex. By the sixteenth century, pilgrimage and trade networks provided monasteries with wealth, political power, and transregional visibility. Akbars fascination with yogis underlies a pictorial interpretation of his grandfather Baburs 1519 visit to Gurkhattri (cat. 14d), a math outside Peshawar (Pakistan), as described in the latters memoirs.11 The painting,
14B Female Guru and Disciple

India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1650 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 37.5 25 cm (page), 12 x 7.8 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, RVI 9872
14C Three Women Present a Young Girl to Aged Ascetics

India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 167080 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 39.5 27.5 cm (folio with borders), 21.9 14.8 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 73.3
14D Babur and His Retinue Visiting Gor Khatri

Folio 22b from the Baburnama (Book of Babur) India, Mughal dynasty, 1590s Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 32 21 cm The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, W.5963
14E Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar Visiting Savina Khera Math

India, Rajasthan, Mewar, ca. 1725 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 60.3 73 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Charles Bain Hoyt Fund, 1999, 1999.944
14F Maharana Sangram Singh II Visiting Gosain Nilakanthji after a Tiger Hunt
India, Rajasthan, Mewar, ca. 1725 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 65 48.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Felton Bequest, 1980, AS92-19805
14a) from a small Hindu court in the Himalayan foothills depicts yogis leaving their ashram and ascending Mount
14a Shiva Blesses Yogis on Kailash
produced in the imperial workshops of the late sixteenth century, is a gloss on Baburs disappointing visit, when he encountered no yogis and saw only a small, dark chamber like a monks cell with heaps of hair that devotees had offered for religious merit.12 Deviating from Baburs account, Akbars painters depicted Gurkhattri teeming with yogis. In an open courtyard, ash-blue and scantily clad yogis companionably await their dinner, as the maths corpulent abbot converses with Babur, his royal guest, on a raised platform. Baburs retinue gesture excitedly as they approach the ascetic community. Politics and intellectual curiosity at Akbars court infuse the paintings artistic
expansion of Baburs penned narrative. The emperor was inqusitive, respectful of Hindu knowledge, and acutely aware of the challenges of creating broad support in a diverse empire. Throughout his reign, he sought out accomplished sages for personal audiences, provided material support to yogis, and had Sanskrit texts translated into Persian (the language of the court) and beautifully illustrated. With a meeting between
13
ascetic order was starting to formalize. Most of the yogis have no sectarian markings, but one (on the left, with outstreched hands and a red loincloth) wears the deer-horn whistle of a Nath around his neck.14 Two impressively large early eighteenth-century paintings from Mewar, a Hindu kingdom (in present-day Rajasthan), document the visits of its king, Maharana Sangram Singh II (reigned 171634) to the monastery of his guru, a Shaiva sannyasi (ascetic). Known as Savina Khera Math, the monastery was constructed in the rst decade of the eighteenth century, when the Mewar ruler Rana Amar Singh II (reigned 170010) endowed its rst two abbots (gosains)
the dynastys founder and a holy man at its center, the image seems to project Akbars engagements with Hindu traditions, practices, and communities rather than Baburs actual visit. The painting probably reects the signicance of the math in Akbars time, when the Nath
ASHRAM AND MATH | 181
14b Female Guru and Disciple
with lands that yielded an annual income. Amar Singhs descendants continued their support and visited Savina Khera on ritually set days for guru worship.15 In turn, the gosains came with their yogis to court for all important religious rituals; paintings also document their attendance at royal entertainments and court assemblies.16 The relationship was mutually legitimating: religious devotion was essential to proper Hindu kingship, and royal patronage played a signcant role in the perpetuation of yogic lineages. Both paintings ingeniously deploy multiple perspectives in a cartographic mode. In cat. 14e, the court artist deployed a planimetric view to articulate the relative locations of each structure in the bustling math. Atop this ground plan, outer walls, buildings, pavilions, and gures are rendered in elevation view. Beneath the tree at the paintings center, the maharana, adorned with a gold halo, sits in audience with the yogi Bhikarinath.17 By the pavilion adorned with sacred tulsi leaves and red ags, the maharana appears again, having the white-haired gosain Nilakanth weighed against gold that he will present as a gift to the order. Demonstrating both yogic detachment and the compatibility of different spheres of Hindu religiosity, the sannyasis go about their daily activities, unperturbed by the visiting king, the Brahmin priests in the forecourt performing a Vedic ritual, or the weighing ceremony in the pavilion. Their bodies gray from the application of ash, some rest amicably in the shade; others, including an urdhvabahu (one whose austerity is permanently upraised arms) mill about, two meditate with prayer beads in their hands, and one worships a lingam (an icon of Shiva) in a small domed shrine. Sangram Singh appears again in a boldly abstract yet cartographically precise painting of the semi-arid hunting grounds between the capital city Udaipur and Savina Khera math (cat. 14f). The artist vertically aligned the maharanas procession to chart its southward movement against the scrubby terrain. The stout ruler can be quickly identied by his ceremonial feather standard, a bold black circle with a bright white center. He appears rst approaching the math on horseback and then again, on foot and with his hands raised (both gestures of respect), as he receives the blessing of the white-haired gosain. DD with AL
14c Three Women Present a Young Girl to Aged Ascetics
14d Babur and His Retinue Visiting Gor Khatri
14e Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar Visiting Savina Khera Math (detail, following pages)
MANIFESTATIONS OF SHIVA | 187
14f Maharana Sangram Singh II Visiting Gosain Nilakanthji after a Tiger Hunt
Pilgrimage
15 Four folios from a Kedara Kalpa
Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper, approx. 36 49 cm
Like the lotus that is never sullied by its surroundings, so is the pilgrim, he who treads the Great Path: no sins remain attached to him, no evil pursues him. These words are spoken by Shiva to his divine consort Parvati as they sit on Mount Kailash and occur in the Kedara Kalpathat elusive and only recently identied Sanskrit text that extols the virtues of the Kedara pilgrimage. Different versions of this undated but late medieval text can be found, but they all consist of forty-four chapters, and speak of the greatness of the KedaraKailasha region and the unmatched merit of undertaking a pilgrimage to the icy abode of Shiva. the Kedara Kalpa text are known; both are from painters workshops active at Kangra in the Pahari region, with one somewhat older than the other and rendered by more skilled hands. But the works are now dispersed, and neither series is complete. The paintings reproduced here belong to the earlier series, whose dispersal is more complete; there is at least a sizeable group from the lesser series, consisting of eleven paintings, in the National Museum of India. The scenes and episodes depicted in both series bear strong similarities: ve yogendraseminent among yogisappear in folio after folio, almost always more than once within the same painting, as they traverse snow-clad mountains, worship at shrines, and bathe in sacred rivers. Temptations are strewn in their
2 1
resolve. The ve who had set themselves on the Great Path nally reach their goal with their physical bodies intact, not as spirits that have already attained mokshaa state of eternal, solitary blessedness and awarenessand gain the blessed sight of Shiva seated majestically on Kailasha with his consort. Early in the text, Shiva relates that the Kedara pilgrimage should begin with purifying rituals. The painter makes us witness the ve sadhaka-yogendras, esh barely stretched over bony frames, who bathe in the icy Mandakani stream after tonsure; bow low before the linga (emblem) of Shiva at Bhadreshwar, mentioned in the thirteenth chapter of the text; immerse themselves again in a different stream; and then proceed out of the frame of the painting at top left (cat. 15a). The remarkably cool palette makes palpable the icy cold of the region, but the renunciants bear it as naturally as do the local Gaddi shepherds, one playing ute and another with a child in the basket slung on his back. Bright grassy patches, little birds itting about a lushly blossoming tree, and a panting sheepdog, keeping eye on his ock of mountain goats, convey the relatively low altitude at which the pilgrimage begins. In the fourteenth chapter, Shiva prescribes an elaborate ritual, identifying specic mantras to be recited for securing the blessings of the goddess Gauri (another name for Parvati), for whom a pilgrimage site near to Kedarnath is named (cat. 15b). As the painter envisions the scene, the ascetics look surprisingly old, with matted hair and long beards; yet they briskly cleanse themselves in a glacial stream before offering obeisance to the enshrined goddess. Then, under a owering tree, they meditate all night with prayer beads in hand. Behind them looms a great mountain range, with deer and leopards almost hidden within its criss-crossing, pastel-colored peaks. In the foreground, darkly sinister crags rise from the stream
15A Himalayan Pilgrimage of the Five Siddhas

Folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper, 36.2 48.9 cm (folio), 29.8 42.5 cm (image) Cynthia Hazen Polsky, New York, 8070 IP
15B Ascetics before the Shrine of the Goddess

Folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper, 36.5 49.2 cm (folio) The Walters Art Museum, Gift of John and Berthe Ford, 2001, W. 859
Two major series of paintings illustrating
15C Worship of Shiva

Folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.2 48.9 cm (folio), 30 42.2 cm (image) Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5733
15D Five Sages in Barren Icy Heights

Folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.2 48.3 cm (folio), 35.7 48.1 cm (image) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, 85.1548
path, for rulers of celestial domains offer them vast treasures, if only they would desist from proceeding further. But with single-minded purpose, the sadhakas men with unwavering resolvedecline each enticement and keep moving on. Along the way, they turn old and young again, shave their bony heads, grow long beards, or change from one scanty animal-skin garment to another. What does not change is the rmness of their
15a Himalayan Pilgrimage of the Five Siddhas
PILGRIMAGE | 191
15b Ascetics before the Shrine of the Goddess
as if hinting at the dangers that lie in the pilgrims path. Among the wondrous sights that greet the sadhaka-yogendras in the barren, icy region are celestial cities. The ve are dazzled when they come upon a kingdom with gem-studded walls of gold, possibly the one described in the twentieth chapter of the text (cat. 15c). Warmly welcomed by rulers of different domains along the pathKing Shankhapal at one place, Queen Champa or Champika at another, and so on, all symbolizing hindrances on the waythey are invited to remain with offers of untold wealth, comely maidens, elephants, and palanquins. As the gaunt ascetics pay
homage to Shivas linga, the air is unmistakably that of celebration. Exquisitely garbed celestial maidens pour sacred water over the emblem and dance to the music of sitars, trumpets, drums, and clarinets. Other women, much like those in a Himalayan village, draw water from a well, carry pitchers on their heads, or peer down curiously from balconies. In a superbly rendered icy eld, the mouth of a great cave yawns, and bluish rocks rise from the waters below like curious walruses (cat. 15d). Although dressed in the barest of clothing, the ve sadhaka-yogendras look younger and seem supremely comfortable in the arctic air. Where a cave appears, they
take it to be nothing less than sacred and circumambulate it, the painter deftly obscuring the two at its other end. At higher altitude they come upon a crescent moonalthough the text speaks only of a moon-shaped rangebut take this emblem of Shiva as if it were the most natural of phenomena, making as if to lift it or feel its texture with their bare hands. Wonderstruck when they rst entered the glacial plateau at the bottom right, they ultimately move off with rm steps along the bed of a very thin stream. The journey to still higher ranges continues; the Great Path is never abandoned. The Kedara Kalpa can be attributed by style to the family workshop of Purkhu
of Kangra,2 an ancient kingdom located in the Himalayan foothills, but quite farmore than 186 milesfrom the Kedara pilgrimage circuit. The subject clearly touched off something within the painters. The manner in which they added visually to the textdepicting the pilgrims feeling or lifting the moon, introducing shepherds and village women, and giving each landscape its own exquisite light and palettespeaks of the exhilaration they must have experienced in taking a fresh text where no other painters from their region had gone. BNG
15c Worship of Shiva
PILGRIMAGE | 193
15d Five Sages in Barren Icy Heights
PILGRIMAGE | 195
The Cremation Ground

16 The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva
Attributed to Payag (act. 15951655) India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 163035 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 18.5 26.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2011, 2011.4091
This powerful image, attributed to the Mughal master Payag, depicts the fearsome goddess Bhairavi seated on a headless corpse in a cremation ground with decomposing bodies.2 Her counterpart Shiva appears beside her in the guise of an ash-covered devotee, whose breath of ame likely indicates the uttering of a sacred mantra. Images of
3
a burning corpse, newly revealed under high magnication. The charnel setting suggests that the artist was aware of European scenes of heavenly ascension, judgment, and crucixion with a comparable scattering of body parts across the ground, particularly in the arrangement of the angled severed head and long bones and the falling gures in the margin.9 European inuence is also evident in the handling of the gure of Shiva.10 The subtle reddening of the corners of Shivas eyesas seen in the inlaid eyes of temple icons appears in other Mughal paintings of Hindu gods.11 Smoke plumes extend from the main painting into the impressionistically executed margin scenes, which include carrion-eating jackals and the goddesss lion mount. Two gures, one with tall ears and bushy tail, the other with horns, appear to be the same vanquished demons seen in a folio of an early Mughal Devi Mahatmya.12 The Shah Jahani sword held by the Devi and the grooved spear or dagger tips that emerge from her head elsewhere emanate divine light, as in one of Payags portraits of his patron, and serve as a reminder of the imperial Mughal context of this image.13 NH
erce goddesses must have been known to the seventeenth-century Mughal world.4 Bhairavis iconography, however, remains rare, even in the eighteenth century when erce goddesses become well established in Pahari and Rajput painting. In this case, helpful identication is provided in a Devanagari inscription above, added later at Mewar, where the painting was known to have been.5 In addition, the deitys red body (rendered with a notably lavish application of cinnabar with touches of Indian yellow) distinguishes her from Kali or other Mahavidyas6 with whom she is sometimes associated. It has been suggested that Jagat Singh of Mewar (reigned 162852) was particularly devoted to the worship of Bhairavi and may have received this painting as a gift from Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (reigned 162858). There is at least one other parallel tradition at the Rajput court of Kishangarh, which says that a portrait of the spiritual leader Sri Vallabhacarya by the Mughal artist Hunhar was given to the Kishangarh ruling family as a gift in the Shah Jahan period.7 The funereal landscape seems to have been based on multiple sources, including Payags own imagination and understanding of the profundity of the subject matter. Here the varying stages of decayfrom heads to skulls and from esh to boneintroduce a sense of temporality,8 while the headless corpse whose toes dig into the ground suggests yogic ideas about the coexistence of life and death. Among the seven funeral pyres (attributes of Agni), one on the right contains the concealed gure of
16 The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva (detail, following pages)
THE CREMATION GROUND | 197
200 | YOGA IN THE INDIAN IMAGINATION
Part Three
Yoga in the Indian Imagination 16th19th Century
Yogis in the Literary Imagination

17A Rama Enters the Forest of the Sages
From the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (15321623) India, Jodhpur, ca. 1775 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 62.7 134.5 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 25241
17G The Prince in Danger

From the Mrigavati Attributed to Haribans India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 15.2 9.5 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.28r6
Literature played a critical role in embedding diverse perceptions of yogis within the popular imagination. From at least as early as the Hindu epic Mahabharata (200 BCE400 CE), tales of wise and dangerous yogis instructed, amused, and horried listeners and readers as they were retold across time, place, languages, and narrative genres. These eight folios from illustrated manuscripts created for Hindu and Muslim rulers in the sixteenth to eighteenth century represent historical and localized intersections of text and image. Each, therefore, invites us to consider what yogis meant to both artists and those audiences at court who viewed the paintings while reading or listening to the stories. Prince Ramas victories over evil and restoration of harmony on Earth are the crux of both the great Sanskrit epic the Ramayana (second to fourth century CE) and its retelling in Hindi verse, the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (late sixteenth century). Tulsidas Ramayana8 soon became the most inuential and popular telling of the epic in northern India.9 By the second half of the eighteenth century, Hindu kings sponsoring recitations and reenactments of the Hindi Ramayana were its most prominent patrons. In this milieu, Maharaja Vijai Singh of Jodhpur (reigned 177293) commissioned an ambitious illustrated manuscript of Tulsidas Ramayana with ninety-one folios of unprecedented size. Two fancifully verdant landscapes (cats. 17ab) depict the blue-skinned Rama and his brother Lakshmana (armed with bows but dressed as renunciants in leaf-skirts) multiple times to convey successive events. The divine heroes leave the kingdom of Ayodhya with its palaces and hunts (on the left of cat. 17a) to enter uncultivated forests where holy men and animals live together peaceably amid lush groves and winding silver rivers. In contrast to the Ramayanas generalized descriptions of forest-dwelling sages, Vijai Singhs
17H The Feast of the Yogis

From the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 14.2 9.7 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 44r7
17B Rama in the Forest of the Sages

From the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (15321623) India, Jodhpur, ca. 1775 Opaque watercolor on paper, 62.7 134.5 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2527
17C Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to His House
Folio from a Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza) Attributed to Dasavanta and Mithra India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1570 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on cotton, 67.5 70.8 54.9 cm (folio) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1924, 24.48.12
17D The Tale of Devadatta

From the Kathasaritasagara India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 158590 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 13.8 13.6 cm Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, 68.8.553
17E The Prince Begins His Journey

From the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 18.2 9.2 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.23v 4
17F The Raj Kunwar on a Small Raft

From the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 15.3 9.5 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.27r5
artists represented the holy men as eighteenth-century yogis from distinct sectarian traditions. Several are Shaiva Naths, including the ash-blue wanderer accompanied by a dog in the upper register of cat. 17a, and the yogis wearing vertically stitched, long-sleeved white robes (one of whom bears a trident) in cat. 17b. Presumably because Vijai Singh was an ardent devotee of Vishnu (of whom Rama is an incarnation), Vaishnava
that Prince Rama must protect to restore order on Earth. Other literary genres spin tales around more worldly interactions between yogis and kings. Since at least the second century, undercover spies disguised as holy men, and ascetics who freelanced as spies, gathered intelligence, fomented dissension, and assassinated enemies for Indic rulers.10 The practice continued under Mughal Emperor Akbar (reigned 15561605),
sannyasis vastly outnumber the Nath followers of Shiva in both folios. For example, naked or scantily clad sannyasis dominate the large group of yogis who, in cat. 17b, petition Ramas aid by showing him the decapitated heads and bleached bones of sages slain by demons. Other sannyasis perform austerities and asanas both spectacular (such as swinging vehemently back and forth through a re in cat. 17b) and sedate (in the hermitage nestled in the peach-colored hillocks at the center of cat. 17a). For a more detailed discussion of these practices, see cats. 8ac, Austerities. In the Jodhpur Ramcharitmanas, the forest-dwelling yogis represent an ideal
whose generals were advised to employ mendicants of tangled hair and naked of foot as covert agents.11 A ctional yogispy, a trickster named Parran, appears on a folio from the Hamzanama, a Persian adventure story illustrated for Akbar (cat. 17c).12 Parran sits (at left) within a sandstone lodge in which swords, daggers, shields, and animal hidesthe tools and garb of militant asceticsare prominently displayed.13 Like a Hindu yogi, he wears dreadlocks (wound tightly around his head), a tiger-skin wrap, and a saffron dhoti. In contrast, the gnarly antelope horn slung over his shoulder is the type worn by Su dervishes.14 Parrans disguise thus combines codes
17a Rama Enters the Forest of the Sages (detail, following pages)
YOGIS IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION | 203
of Hindu and Muslim asceticism, pointing to the slippage between Su and yogic identities in both daily life and the literary imagination on the subcontinent.
15
Akbars manuscript (cat. 17d), Jalapada sits commandingly atop an outcrop at the compositions upper right.18 His unwilling disciple, Devadatta, crosses the rocky landscape carrying the bloody embryo of a demurely veiled demon-princess, who sits in the landscapes lower corner with blood pooling beside her slit-open belly. Jalapada consumes the embryo a literary embellishment of the Tantric practice of conjoining male and female
Sinister yogis with unbounded desire for ever-greater powers (siddhis) were a favorite trope in both folktales and the rened tradition of Sanskrit poetry (kavya). Such stories drew upon and fed the fascination and fear engendered by Tantras more extreme prac-
17b Rama in the Forest of the Sages
tices.16 Roguish Tantric yogis identied as wizards (vidyadhara), for example, gure in Somadevas voluminous Kathasaritsagara (Oceans of Rivers of Stories). The great Sanskrit story cycle was composed in Kashmir in the eleventh century to lift the sorrows of a queen. Some ve hundred years later, Akbar, a great fan of adventure tales (such as the Hamzanama), had it translated into Persian and read to him through the night. Reecting the anxieties that Tantric practices engendered among broad publics, one story in the Kathasaritsagara tells of a Kapalika yogi named Jalapada who tricks a Brahmins son into helping him become a wizard.17 In a folio from
substances to gain supernormal powersbecomes a wizard, and ies off. In a pattern typical of the Kathasaritsagara stories, Jalapada is punished for his dastardly ways: his Brahmin disciple ultimately becomes a wizard-king, marries the demon-princess, and dispatches the wicked Kapalika back to earth. A far more benign yogic archetype, the yogi-prince, pervades Hindu folk stories, Nath hagiographies, and the romances composed by Su poets between the fourteenth and nineteenth century.19 The Mrigavati (Magic DoeWoman), a classic of early Hindi literature, was penned by the Su shaykh Qutban Suhravardi in 1503. Its hero, Rajkunwar, is a Hindu prince who seeks
his beloved Princess Mrigavati in the guise of a Nath yogi: He donned the sandals, the girdle, and patched cloak. His locks became matted. He assumed the discus, the yogis earrings, the necklace for telling his prayers, the staff, the begging bowl, and the lion-skin. He wore the clothes of a yogi, the basil beads, took up the [T-shaped] armrest and the trident, and rubbed his body all over with ashes. He blew the horn whistle [singi] and went on the path, reciting the divinely beautiful ones name as his support. He took the ascetics viol in his hand, and applied his mind to the practices of solitude.20 The Mrigavati was illustrated for the Mughal Prince Salim (Akbars son, the future Emperor Jahangir) in 16034. Three folios depict the lovelorn princeturned-yogi embarking on his quest, crossing a vast ocean and evading a monstrous sea serpent (cats. 17eg). Because several painters worked on the manuscript, the heros appearance changes from folio to folio, but his yogic disguise consistently includes the ashblue complexion, jata topknot, and cloak of a Hindu yogi, and he is always young and handsome. The genre of the Su romance emerged in North India, where Hindu yogis and Sus mingled at hostels and lodges, vied for the respect of lay communities, and shared some practices and terminology. Cat. 17h depicts a lodge for wandering holy men, which the prince established to learn the whereabouts of his beloved (see also g. 3 in Muslim Interpreters of Yoga). Inside its walls, Naths with straggly beards and a blackgarbed Su gather for a meal. Within this landscape of competitive appropriation and assimilation, Su audiences who heard Qutbans verses would have understood the Mrigavatis yogi protagonist and the texts yogic references (e.g., to the subtle body, mantra, and Tantra) as elements within an allegorical quest for spiritual perfection.21 In contrast, the painted folios of Salims manuscript foreground youthful beauty, romantic passion, and heroic deeds. DD
17c (opposite) Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to His House 17d The Tale of Devadatta
17e The Prince Begins His Journey
17f The Raj Kunwar on a Small Raft
17g The Prince in Danger
17h The Feast of the Yogis
Transcendence and Desire in Ragamala Paintings

18A Kedar Ragini
From the Chunar Ragamala India, Uttar Pradesh, Chunar, 1591 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 22.5 15 cm Freer Gallery of Art, Michael Goedhuis Ltd., F1985.21
18G Bhupali Ragini

From the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 1760 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 35.2 26.3 cm (folio with borders), 23.3 16.1 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.44
Yogis were a cherished theme of painting, in which they were an intriguing foil to the arts materialism. In illustrated ragamala paintings, each of which depicts a scene associated with a musical mode, images of holy men infuse music and painting, love and pleasure with divinity, lifting aesthetic delectation into a more serious register. With its strange contrasts, Bhairava Raga perfectly exemplies the frisson that the aesthetic and the ascetic can arouse together (cat. 18b). The Hindu god Shiva, smeared in ash, sits with a yogapatta clasped around his bent legs, vina in hand, a garland of severed heads around his neck. He is the ascetic god, king of the cremation grounds, of abstinence and renunciants. Yet as he reaches a hand out to clasp the ngers of the woman before him, he apparently succumbs to her amorous enticements and her world of sinuously necked wine bottles, richly patterned textiles, cooling fountains, and restless peacocks, one of whom struts on the roof above, searching for his mate. Or does Shiva draw her to himself and his world of death and extremes? At the heart of the painting, Shiva and his music tease mortals with a seemingly impossible collaboration between material desire and its transcendence that wells up again and again in Indias raga and ragini paintings. Ragamala paintings illustrate poetic verses associated with musical modes. Traditionally in India, musicians do not perform written compositions. Instead, a musicians every performance is a unique improvisation on a framework of musical patterns called a raga or ragini. A raga or ragini is dened by the mood it conveys as well as by a wide variety of musical specications that include the notes assigned to it, which notes are dominant, whether certain notes are sharp or at, how its notes rise and fall, and characteristic melodic motifs. By the fourteenth century, ragas and raginis were being organized into families. A common system recognized six raga husbands, each
18H Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon

From the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 176073 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 34.9 25.9 cm (folio with borders), 23.2 15.8 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.75
18B Bhairava Raga

From the Chunar Ragamala India, Uttar Pradesh, Chunar, 1591 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 25.5 15.7 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.40-19812
18C Megha Malar Ragini

India, Rajasthan, Bundi, ca. 1600 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 30.2 24 cm Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5698
18I Gaur Malhara Ragini

India, Rajasthan, Kotah, 18th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 14 18.3 cm Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5523
18D Sarang Raga

From the Sirohi Ragamala India, Rajasthan, Sirohi, ca. 168090 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 23.2 17.8 cm Freer Gallery of Art, Purchase, F1992.18
18E Kedar Ragini

Ruknuddin (active ca. 165097) India, Rajasthan, Bikaner, ca. 169095 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 14.9 11.9 (image), 25.6 18.7 cm (page) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Findlay, 1978, 1978.540.2
18F A Yogini in Meditation

From the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 1760 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 35.1 24.3 cm (folio with borders), 22 14.3 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.23
18b Bhairava Raga
TRANSCENDENCE AND DESIRE IN RAGAMALA PAINTINGS | 215
18e Kedar Ragini 18a Kedar Ragini; opposite,
18d Sarang Raga
18c Magha Malar Ragini
18i Gaur Malhara Ragini
married to ve ragini wives for a total of thirty-six ragas and raginis. Families of musical modes sometimes included sons or ragaputras as well. A complete set of ragas and raginis was called a ragamala (or garland of ragas). Each raga, ragini, or ragaputra was associated with a verse or verses describing it as a hero, heroine, ascetic, or deity, and with an image that depicted it. The compositions and iconographies of ragamala images quickly became fairly xed and easily recognizable. The composition of Bhairava Raga with his beloved in cat. 18b, for example, appeared repeatedly in subsequent illustrations. Nevertheless, all elements of the ragamala were subject to change and many variations exist.6
Music was an intrinsic feature of religious devotion in India, as is clear from the yogis and yoginis who play or listen to music there. Bhaktithe intense personal devotion to God, which requires no intermediaries and takes the form of powerful human emotions, particularly of erotic loveis often expressed musically. (Saints like Mira Bai, for example, are typically pictured with an instrument in hand, singing their verses of loving praise to God. In addition, the god Krishna was often the hero of ragamala verses and pictures, where he was portrayed with a beloved or playing his ute and dancing with his devotees, avoring the music with divine ecstasy.)
The theme of erotic love frequently intersected with the theme of transcendence in ragamala illustrations featuring yogis and yoginis. Megha Malar Ragini is described in some ragamala texts as the god of love and in others as an ascetic. Cat. 18c recapitulates the curious collision of longing and renunciation that is so intriguing in Bhairava Raga (cat. 18b). A buzzing surge of verdant fecundity, sparked by lightning and fed by a torrid rain, drives the weaver birds to mate, the lotuses to swell and bloom, and the shes to agitate; even the pavilion seems to twist anxiously and the artists line to ache for resolution. It is desire that drives the lone ascetic to austerities in this image: separation from the beloved
YOGA AND TAPAS | 219
18f A Yogini in Meditation
18g Bhupali Ragini
is a kind of penance that promises redemption. Saindhavi Ragini (cat. 18h), in a common ragamala verse, longs for her lover as well and is maddened by his absence; the verses imply that it is the god Shiva she adores. Though graced by the delicate beauty of a princess, she wears the garb of a yogini; she rests her arm on a stand to support her as she ngers her mala (rosary) in prayer and listens attentively to an old sages music, no doubt hoping to nd peace in a spiritual oneness with the god who has deserted her. Meanwhile, in cat. 18g, Bhupali Raginis longing in separation makes her a model for the young prince and the sage who listen to her song: Bhupali, belonging to the quiescent mood,
a woman in the splendor of beauty, lovely, with a face like the moon, a full bosom, her body anointed with saffron, pained by the separation, remembers her beloved.7 Quiescence is implied by the balance of elements symmetrically arrayed on either side of the heroine and by the gentle grays of the starry night. A crescent moon, as if extracted from the gleaming white of her dress, recalls the verses associated with this ragini. In another poets words, it is as if she were the moon, carved and aked.8 The crescent also recalls Shiva, for whom it is emblematic, implying that the yoginis anguished separation is also a devotional longing for God. Yet, other images of saints take us beyond the agonies of desire. Kedar
Ragini (cats. 18a, 18e) is one of the most peaceful of the musical modes. Typically it is accompanied by a scene of a sage singing to the music of a vina before a prince or another holy man. Night has fallen, the moon shines in a deep blue night sky, and the auditors eyes grow heavy or close. In penance, adorned, gray [with ashes], dark, a young man beauteous in every limb, [this is] Kedar.9 Kedar comes last in most ragamala series, and its somber colors, spare ornament, and mood of release from attachment and struggle bring the musical cycle to a tting close, as if one were being invited to slide from music into a dreamless beyond. In the late sixteenth century, numerous illustrated ragamalas were made
18h Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon
in the Deccan and at the courts of the Hindu rulers called Rajputs, who ruled in Central India, Rajasthan, and the Pahari Hills. The Mughals also took an interest in the subject. Abul Fazl, the minister and chronicler of Mughal Emperor Akbar (reigned 15561605), noted that ragas and raginis were supposed to originate with the Hindu god Mahadeva [Shiva] and [his wife] Parvati: Shiva is, of course, the quintessential ascetic. Although
10
God.14 It is not surprising, therefore, to nd that Abd al-Rahim had his ragamala paintings interspersed with Su verses, among other texts and images, in what has come to be known as his Laud Ragamala Album. By the mid- to late seventeenth century, the Mughals were also understanding ragamalas to have health benets and began to commission their own illustrated renditions more frequently.15 No doubt the Kedar Ragini, for example, was understood to bring calm to the ery heat of the warriors disposition. Even today, one encounters in India the idea that ragas and raginis can rebalance the body and spirits. The iconography of the ragamala should be taken to have been somewhat open ended. The lover can be a mortal or a god. The beloved is a girl lled with a sexual longing that could also be spiritual. In the Mughal mehl (assembly) where Hindus and Muslims sat side by side to enjoy dance, music, wine, poetic verses, and paintingsno doubt debates transpired about the modes of achieving divine transcendence. The yogis and yoginis of ragamala paintings would have been exotic to all. They belonged to a world beyond the social pale, of men and women who had left home and family to engage in extreme practices, acquire
13
neither Akbar nor his successor Jahangir (reigned 160527), both of whom appreciated this music, is known to have commissioned illustrated ragamalas, the commander of Akbars armies, Abd al-Rahim, had a set of ragamala paintings made from compositions he seems to have acquired from the rulers of Bikaner.11 Persian inscriptions on the British Museums roughly contemporaneous Manley Ragamala suggest it too was owned by a Muslim connoisseur, so that these paintings emerged in an atmosphere of Muslim and Hindu social concord and exchange.12 What would the Hindu imagery of the ragamala have meant to Mughal viewers? Mughal gentlemen took a keen interest in Su ideas, and many Sus, in turn, studied Hinduism. In Indian Susm, the stories of Krishna and Radha were plumbed for hidden spiritual meanings. The Hindu woman who longs for her beloved, whether he be a man or god, could be viewed as the embodiment of the lower or sensual self or, alternatively, as a model of the soul passionately yearning for God. Thus the yogini of the ragamala, who physically wastes away as she concentrates her mind on her lord, could be viewed from a Su point of view as a model of devotion. Meanwhile, the Sus took a keen interest in the yogic practices of Indias holy men, particularly their techniques of meditation and breath control. Though Su and yogic aims differed, the Sus respected yogic techniques as potentially powerful means for attaining a state of blissful union with
mysterious powers, and come to a closeness with God that no gentleman could hope to obtain. In a musical context, they conveyed bhavas or emotions not encountered in daily life, tantalizing with the possibility of a different path and a taste of the beyond. However, ragamala paintings show that that taste started in the world, with the visible, audible, touchable, tasteable, and scentable, as is so eloquently expressed by the young yogini in cat. 18f who rests against a swing, having vowed to remain standing, smelling a small, pink rose in the iconic gesture of the rened connoisseur. MEA
Mughal Albums
19AB Bifolio from the Gulshan Album
India, Mughal dynasty, rst quarter of the 17th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 53.5 40 cm Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Orientabteilung, Libri pict. A 117, ff. 6b, 13a
Manuscripts and albums (muraqqa ) commissioned by the Mughals, the IndoIslamic dynasty that ruled much of the subcontinent from 1526 to 1857, reveal that yogis were variously embedded within the intellectual, aesthetic, and emotive arenas of the court. The albums of Emperor Jahangir (reigned 160527) and Shah Jahan (reigned 162757) sympathetically deployed the gure of the yogi to project a vision of a diverse and harmonious empire. Mughal albums created for Jahangir and Shah Jahan typically feature pairs of paintings, known as bifolios, which are linked by similar subject matter, size, and borders and convey meaning without reference to texts.2 Dazzling in its jewel-like colors, palpably present yogis,
and atmospheric landscapes, this bifolio (cat. 19ab) was created for Jahangirs great Gulshan Album. A river winding across both paintings and a border of brightly colored birds itting among golden owers on dyed peach paper unies the whole.3 Simultaneously, shifting perspectives and juxtapositions of scale (most strikingly, an immense mother cat) reveal that each painting was composed from separate vignettes. The left folio features, clockwise from top left, a Ramanandi yogi with a peacock fan and a dramatically billowing saffron wrap, a black-robed Nath with his brown dog, a group of ash-covered yogis gathered companionably in a banyan trees shade, and the mother cat with her kittens.4 Diagonal pairings structure its facing
19C Prince and Ascetics

Painting attributed to Govardhan, borders attributed to Payag India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1630 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 37.5 25.2 cm (sheet), 20.3 14.3 cm (painting) The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1971.791
19ab Bifolio from the Gulshan Album, detail 19a
MUGHAL ALBUMS | 223
19ab Bifolio from the Gulshan Album
MEDITATION | 225
19c Prince and Ascetics
folio: on one axis, brown-robed itinerant Naths detached from familial ties are represented; on the other, a mother cow licking her calf invites consideration of the bonds connecting a Nath guru with his young disciple and the mother and child who await his blessing. The artist who assembled the pages for Jahangirs enjoyment playfully obscured some seams with thickly painted leaves or rocky outcrops while drawing attention to others: a brown dog sniffs at a vertical seam, shallow landscapes abut distant vistas, and visual pairings ricochet within each painting and across both folios. The sophisticated formal organization locates the compositions within a Persian album-making tradition that consciously invited reection on the meanings of juxtapositions.5 Scholar Sunil Sharma has described the Mughals identication of yogis and their social networks, practices, and beliefs in literary and visual genres as proto-
ethnographic because it transcends the gathering of data to convey larger social meanings and interrelationships. Here, the aggregate of Vaishnava and Shaiva yogis alongside scenes of mother animals nurturing their young portrays Hindu ascetics as members of an amicable collective. Artists in the atelier of Jahangirs son, Shah Jahan, employed a different formal strategy to construct this exquisite page (cat. 19c) as a space that unites diverse social types. Within a bucolic landscape attributed to Govardhanan artist who excelled in sensitive depictions of holy men; see also g. 6 in Yoga: The Art of Transformationa musician sings devotional verses to a youthful imperial prince and an aged Hindu renunciant with long dreadlocks. The folios ower-strewn outer border features perceptive studies of variously quirky and beatic yogis along with a courtier by another Mughal master, Payag. While the
6
exquisite folio is a paradigm of imperial ideology, its individual elements would have resonated on multiple levels. In Govardhans painting, for example, the intricately knotted roots of the sheltering tree not only create an aureole of light around the holy mans bald pate, they also draw our attention to the minute portal of his cell. By 1630, even this small motif was deeply implanted within Mughal consciousness as a signier of yogic attainment. Jahangir, for example, drew an explicit connection between austerities and spiritual accomplishment when informing his audience about the yogi Chitrup (Jadrup in Persian).7 He approvingly recorded the miniscule dimensions of Chitrups rock-cut dwelling, and also commissioned several paintings that record his and his father Akbars visits to the holy mans abode8; (see g. 1 in Muslim Interpreters of Yoga). DD
MUGHAL ALBUMS | 227
228 | YOGA IN THE TRANSNATIONAL IMAGINATION
Part Four
Yoga in the Transnational Imagination 18th20th Century
Company Paintings
20A Lakshman Das
Folio from the Fraser Album India, Delhi, ca. 1825 Watercolor and ink on paper, 25.4 14.6 cm Collection of Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins
In the early nineteenth century, East India Company1 ofcials ventured to India, accompanied by centuries of accumulated information directing their perceptions and a desire to document and classify the manners, customs, costumes, and landscape of people and scenes they witnessed, or expected to see. Though some drew and wrote
2
Company art, artists offered a complex aesthetic that knowingly incorporated Indian regional painting traditions with European ones, while offering choice subjects tailored to their patrons interests, such as the uid category of the yogi.3 Inuenced by Persian, Hindi, and Western texts, Europeans associated yogis with the strange, marvelous, and changeable.4 In the artworks discussed here, yogis equally slip between portraiture, typology, and divinity, and also reveal the relationship between
20B Kala Bhairava

In an album of ninety-one paintings India, Thanjavur, ca. 1830 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 22.6 17.6 cm The Trustees of the British Museum, 1962,1231,0.13.70
themselves, many patronized Indian and European artists and purchased art available in the bazaar or in local publications. In such works, often termed
20C Ascetics Performing Tapas

South India, ca. 1820 Opaque watercolor on paper, 23.5 29 cm (page) The Trustees of the British Museum, Bequeathed through Francis Henry Egerton, 2007,3005.4
20D An Abdhoot
Balthazar Solvyns (17601824) Hand-colored etching on paper, 52 38 11 cm In Balthazar Solvyns, A Collection of Two Hundred and Fifty Colored Etchings: descriptive of the manners, customs and dresses of the Hindoos (Calcutta: [Mirror Press], 1799) National Library of Medicine, WZ 260 S692c Note: In the listings above, historical titles are indicated by quotation marks.
20a Lakshman Das 20b Kala Bhairava
Indian and European artistic practice and patronage. A painting of the yogi Lakshman Das (cat. 20a) portrays a historical gure in a limber posture, ngering a rosary with an inward, off-center gaze. The artist, likely trained in Delhi in the late-Mughal style, builds this ascetics body through shadows of awkwardly arranged bones and stipples of hair, emphasizing his individualism through observation. The inscription identies him as Lutchmun Dos, a Brahmin, and a religious mendicant of the Hindoo cast called Byragee [Vairagi].5 This painting is associated with a particular patron. When Company ofcial William Fraser was posted in Delhi, he commissioned Indian artists to paint scenes from his life in India as well as local gures, such as ascetics, for his brother James Baillie Fraser, who desired them as studies for his own works.6 However, Lakshman Das also appears in Tashrih al-aqwan or The Description of Peoples (1825), a manuscript by Colonel James Skinner, a friend of the Fraser brothers. This was a compilation of Sanskrit sources on castes and mendicant orders that Skinner translated into Persian and had illustrated by Indian artists.7 Here, though Lakshman Das remains a portrait of an individual the Frasers and Skinner likely encountered, or at least shared a painting of, he also illustrates a general category of Hindu ascetica Vaishnava Vairagi.8 The boundaries between the gods who revealed yoga and the ascetics who emulated them were porous long before the colonial period; however, this ambiguity persisted into the eighteenth and nineteenth century and can be tracked through the style and iconography of some Company paintings. In an album from Thanjavur, Shiva as Kala Bhairava strides red-skinned, dreadlocked, adorned with golden ornaments and a garland of skulls. He carries a trident across his strapping shoulders, which taper to a slim waist, while his lean blue
20c Ascetics Performing Tapas
COMPANY PAINTINGS | 233
20d An AbdHoot
dog stretches nimbly behind (cat. 20b).9 His circular face, with its unblinking almond eyes, and ideal gure conform to the South Indian style of depicting deities during this period10; yet, like the human ascetics he mimics, he has only two arms, a dog, and a simple loincloth.11 Company ofcials were aware of such slippages between gods and men. As part of their education, they learned Indian languages from Persian and Hindi literary texts, and read works in translation, many of which contained tales about Kala Bhairava and the powerful chimeric yogis who were devoted to him.12 This painting of Bhairava adds to the gods complex and layered identity by drawing on both a South Indian visual model and a European one, placing him, and most of the ninety-one other deities in the album, against a blank scientic background.13 It is possible that the album was made for a specic patron, or, since there is a nearly identical copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum, that this type of album was in circulation as a catalogue of the gods.14 A painting of ten vignettes of Hindu ascetics performing penance (tapas)15 (cat. 20c) shows them standing in the midst of res (panchagni), maintaining xed poses, and practicing levitation, breath control, meditation, and immersion in a lotus-lled pond.16 Rather than individuals, these ascetics are generalized types stify demonstrating a diverse array of austerities and postures within a classicatory grid. It seems to be a straightforward, Company-style depiction; set within a picturesque landscape, such as a framing tree and low horizon, each yogi is centered on the page and recognizable by his signifying trait. Paintings of ascetics are regularly found in Company albums, publications, and collections, often cut into single folios and sometimes placed alongside relevant descriptive letters, indicating consistent production and replication. These
17
sixty-three paintings, likely produced for a wealthy European patron in Tamil Nadu, that includes portraits of goldembellished Hindu gods and scenes of Indian religious ceremonies and devotees.18 Signicantly, the folios are painted in different styles. While the artists used dense bright colors to form iconic sculptural poses, similar to that seen in the Kala Bhairava, they incorporated European techniques and compositions into their regional training to create the images of nature and men. Here then, the subdued European landscape palette of blues, greens, and browns places ascetics rmly within the natural world, perhaps relegating the classicatory grid, as much as the ascetics, to human knowledge rather than divine. In his hand-colored etching of an Abdhoot or avadhuta (cat. 20d), an ascetic who has left worldly activity,19 the Belgian artist Balthazar Solvyns focuses on a single gure. Lithe, with his head and eyes tilted towards the sky, he wears Vaishnava sect marks on his body and carries a backscratcher and perhaps a gomukha (bag) to count rosary beads. The text is deceptively simple; the ascetic is one of a sect of Faquirs, that sometimes go intirely without cloaths, though here he wears a loincloth.20 In the Paris edition, the avadhuta is depicted nude, and the text explains that his female devotees seek his blessings for fertility; the woman and child standing in the hut might allude to this aspect.21 Though Solvyns likely drew an avadhuta from life, the descriptive text and overall project renders the gure a type rather than a portrait. He is one of Ten Prints of Faquirs or Holy Mendicants in Solvynss compendium of 250 etchings descriptive of the manners, customs & dresses, of the Natives of Bengal: particularizing every character in the different casts, with the peculiar attribute of each,22 which was published in Calcutta likely by subscription from Indian and European buyers. The classicatory grid thus
stretches into an immense tome. It is unclear if Solvynss etchings are sympathetic to their subjects, or whether his encyclopedia was conceived to enable the colonialist to exert social control, from the servants employed in his home to anyone encountered in the environment, such as this ascetic.23 HS
ascetics are part of a loose portfolio of
COMPANY PAINTINGS | 235
Colonial Photography
21A Untitled
John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros., 1858 Albumen print, 14 10 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04604500
21I Untitled
India, Orissa, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.6 9.9 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII S-SOA NLS 1
21Q Untitled
India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai), ca. 1880 Albumen print, 14.3 9.9 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.1522
21J Untitled
Westeld & Co. India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 9.4 5.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C 3315
21B Untitled
John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros., 1858 Albumen print, 13.7 9.5 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04565100
21R Untitled
India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai), or Orissa, ca. 1880 Albumen print, 14.8 9.7 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1473
21C Untitled
John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros., 1858 Albumen print, 13.5 10.2 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04566000
21K Untitled
21S Group of Yogis

Colin Murray for Bourne & Shepherd, ca. 1880s Albumen print, 22.2 29.2 cm Collection of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, 2011.02.02.0004
21D Untitled
John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros., 1858 Albumen print, 14 10.2 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04565500
21L Untitled
21T Untitled
Edward Taurines (act. 18851902) India, Bombay, 1890 Albumen print, 23.5 19 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.8007b
21E Kurrum Doss

in The People of India (186875), volume 4, folio 158 ca. 1862 34.3 25.4 cm Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection
21M Untitled
21F Bairagees, Hindoo Devotees, Delhi

in The People of India (186875), volume 3, folio 203 Charles Shepherd for Shepherd & Robertson, 1862 34.3 25.4 cm Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection
21N Untitled
Westeld & Co. India, Calcutta, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.1 9.5 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3313
21G Untitled
Charles Shepherd for Shepherd & Robertson, 1862 Albumen print, 19.6 16 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1419
21O Untitled
India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai), ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.5 9.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1474
21H Untitled
India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 10.7 14.2 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C 447
21P Untitled
India, Tamil Nadu, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 12.7 17.4 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C158
21a Untitled
21b Untitled
21c Untitled
21d Untitled
COLONIAL PHOTOGRAPHY | 237
21e (left) Kurram Doss 21f (right) Bairagees, Hindoo Devotees, Delhi
21g (opposite) Untitled
The British fascination with images of Indian ascetics was well established in colonial drawings and painting before photography was introduced in India. Company paintings and early travelogues are rife with representations and descriptions of exotic yogis. A description of photographic portraits by John Nicholas (cat. 21ad) in the 1858 Madras Photographic Societys annual exhibition reveals that the preoccupation with the exotic yogi other carried over into photography: Some portraits of religious mendicants were also exhibited by Mr. Nicholas. These are curious in their way, and the selection of subjects were excellent. One party had a wire passed through his cheeks. Two others had large square iron frames riveted to their necks. The pictures were well executed, and copies are for sale at Mr. Nicholas Studio.
1
Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British colonial administration increasingly documented various Indian populations, producing The People of India, a photographically illustrated protoethnography, between 1868 and 1875. Its eight volumes contain 480 photoportraits accompanied by descriptive and historical text, a product of two editors, three separate authors, and no fewer than fteen different photographers.2 Evidence suggests that the inspiration for the mammoth publishing project originated in a photographic series compiled in India and sent to Britain for display at the Great London Exhibition of 1862.3 Contrary to the account provided in the preface of the volumes, at no point in its thirteen-year production did The People of India have either a clearly articulated objective or coherent process. The resulting collection comprises nearly one thousand photographic portraits
21h Untitled
of varying standards; most contributors were amateurs stationed in India as military ofcers or agents of the colonial administration. Though originally supported by the British colonial government, the completion of the later volumes became a private venture, personally funded by the editors, Forbes Watson and John William Kaye. Despite their massive efforts, The People of India was unenthusiastically received by the burgeoning anthropological community (on the grounds of inconsistent and arbitrary typologies) and the purchasing public. The publication as a whole fell into obscurity by the turn of the twentieth century.4 Today, however, it is recognized as the rst large-scale attempt to employ photography in the context of an ethnographic publication. Epitomizing the British suspicion of Indians after the 1857 Rebellion, it represents an early instance of the linking of photographic technology to surveillance and categorization in order to justify racial supremacy and colonial domination.5 Yogis and yoga-practicing ascetics are among the various native types rep-
resented in thepublication. In volume 3, plate 158, Kurrum Doss (cat. 21e) is described as a landlord in the holy city Hardwar. His tilak (forehead mark) and surname identied him to contemporary viewers as an Udasi, a Sikh ascetic. Doss is one of only a few named subjects in the publication, and the entry betrays a tension between individual and type as well as the limitations of colonial British understanding of yogas rich diversity. Such limitations are intimated in the text, which attempts to reconcile the image of Doss, a comfortable looking individual clad in a quilted chintz tunic with the naked and emaciated yogi type known to the British. Noting that he doesnt have long matted hair wound round his head, his nger nails like claws, the author is unable to fully identify Doss as a yogi and speculates that he is either enlightened or false. Though The People of India was a failure, many of the types represented in the volumes (and indeed some of the images) persisted and proliferated in the arena of commercial photography. Commercial studios in the midnineteenth century provided a range
of photographs to a public hungry for views of foreign lands and people. To thrive, a rm needed a stock of images that would appeal to a purchasing public. The itinerant nature of many South Asian ascetics proved advantageous for commercial photographic studios that wanted to capitalize on the British fascination with the exotic yogi. In the early 1860s, commercial photographers preferred the collodion glass-plate negative because of its ability to register great detail without requiring a prolonged exposure time. But the sensitivity of collodion demanded that mobile darkrooms and volatile chemicals had to be transported along with the camera and glass plates.6 The logistical difculties limited the viability of impromptu or site-specic photography for much of the nineteenth century; traveling yogis lled the gap. After the introduction of the cartede-visite format by Frenchman A. A. Disderi in 1854, photography became affordable to a broader public.7 Cartede-visites became so popular that in England alone, 300 million to 400 million cartes were sold every year between 1861 and 1867.8 The affordability of the carte-de-visite and subsequent copyrighting of carte-de-visite albums facilitated the proliferation of Native Views as collectable images in the West. Quick to cash in on the phenomenon, photographic studios based in India offered sets of portrait views of Indian ascetics. A series of portraits by the commercial rm Westeld & Co. were most likely sold in this manner (cats. 21j21n). The commonplace marketing of carte-de-visite/cabinet-card series of Indian ascetics under catchall titles makes it near impossible to identify original titles for individual photographs. Commercial catalogues listed photos for sale by negative number or set name, and it is likely that cats. 21o, 21q, 21r, and 21t were never titled beyond a generic term.9
21i Untitled
21j (top left) Untitled 21k (top right) Untitled 21l (lower left) Untitled 21m (lower right) Untitled
21n Untitled
21o (opposite) Untitled 21p Untitled
Over time, with advancements in photographic technology, photographers were free to venture outside of the studio without cumbersome equipment. At that point, site-specic images of ascetic practice, such as cat. 21p or Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta (see cat. 22c), were captured with frequency and zeal. As studios continued to produce Native Views throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, backdrops and props became more elaborate, and the identity of the represented individuals increasingly questionable. Instead of practitioners photographed in the studio, anonymous individuals donned costumes and accouterments and posed against painted backdrops and fabricated outdoor scenes. In Group of Yogis (cat. 21s), a Bourne & Shepherd photograph, circa 1880, a group of men with standard yogi attire and attributes are posed against a painted jungle scene amid potted plants and a grass mat. Though
a seemingly standard studio portrait, the tall, bald character second from the right may not be a yogi at all. He sports white body markingsfour horizontal stripesthat bear no relationship to any Hindu tradition. The dubious marks throw the subjects identities and the elaborate staging into question. Indeed, a dening characteristic of commercially generated yogi-type photo-portraits in the nineteenth century is that they are laden with attributes but entirely devoid of context. JF
21q (opposite) Untitled 21r Untitled
21s Group of Yogis 21t Untitled
MEDITATION | 249
The Bed of Nails: The Exotic Across Borders and Media

22A Diverses Pagodes et Penitences des Faquirs (Various Temples and Penances of the Fakirs)
Bernard Picart (16731733) 1729 Copper-plate engraving on paper, 48 52.4 cm From Jean-Frdric Bernard and Bernard Picart, Crmonies et coutumes religieuses des Peuples Idolatres (Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Idolatrous Peoples), vol. 2 (Amsterdam: J. F. Bernard, 1728) Robert J. Del Bont collection, E442
22F Hindu Fakir on Bed of Spikes, Benares

Baptist Missionary Society India, early 20th century Postcard, 8.6 13.5 cm Collection of Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins
22G Fakir Sitting on Nails

India, late 19th century Painted clay, 11.4 20.3 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by the Indian High Commission, IS.196-1949 Note: In the listings above, historical titles are indicated by quotation marks.
22B Images of Yogis

John Chapman (act. 17921823) September 1, 1809 Copper-plate engraving on paper, 26.7 x 21.6 cm From Encyclopdia Londinensis or, Universal Dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature vol. 10 (London: J. Adler, 1811) Robert J. Del Bont collection, E1232
22C Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta

James Ricalton (18441929) ca. 1903 Stereoscopic photograph on paper, 8.9 17.8 cm From James Ricalton, India through the Stereoscope: A Journey through Hindustan (New York and London: Underwood & Underwood, 1907) Robert J. Del Bont collection, SV49
22D Hindu Fakir: for thirteen years this old man has been trying to nd peace on this bed of spikes
Young Peoples Missionary Movement New York, early 20th century Postcard, 8.9 x 14 cm Collection of Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins
22E Fakir on Bed of Nails

D. Macropolo & Co. India, Calcutta, early 20th century Postcard, 8.9 14 cm Collection of Kenneth X. and Joyce Robbins
22a Diverses Pagodes et Penitences des Faquirs
THE BED OF NAILS | 251
From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the Indian ascetic lying supinely and unaffectedly on a bed of nails was repeated in prints, paintings, photographs, and clay. Often one of a group of ascetics engaged in various physical austerities or tapas, he became particu1
postures and painful practices of ascetics seen in Picarts print continued over the next two centuries. Publications reveal awe mixed with fear, condescension, and distrust, especially related to the bed of nails. Jonathan Duncans Account of Two Fakeers, published in Asiatic Researches 5 (1799), includes one of the earliest printed portraits of a yogi on a bed of nails. In 1792, Duncan, the British East India Company resident at Benares (Varanasi), interviewed two renowned fakeers, Purana Poori (Puran Puri) and Perkasanund (Prakashanand), and employed an Indian artist to draw them from the life.9 Duncan was enthralled by Purana Pooris description of his travels, his choice of penance (raised arms or urdhvabahu10), and his espionage for the Company. However, Duncans awe turned to disbelief when it came to Perkasanund, whom he interviewed principally on account of the strange penance [of] xing himself on his serseja, or bed of spikes.11 The ascetic on a bed of thorns or arrows has a long history in India,12 but it is likely that Perkasanund popularized it in the colonial period perhaps through the repetition of his printed image. It was unknown to Duncan, who assumed it to be repentance for a crime. Perkasanund refuted the accusation by citing its antiquity, claiming its origin in ascetics who performed the ser-seja (sara-sayya) discipline, including the warrior Bhishma who lay on a bed of arrows in the Mahabharata.13 Perkasanunds use of the term arrow-bed, ser-seja, rather than the more commonly used thornbed (kantaka-sayya), not only links him to Bhishma, it also indicates that the bed of nails might have been his particular adaptation. Perkasanunds illustrated story circulated in multiple publications, each increasingly skeptical about the bed of nails.14 For example, the Encyclopedia Londinensis (1811) entry on Fakeers, or Devotees describes Perkasanund and his ilk as wretched beings in the shape
22b Images of Yogis
larly associated with the exotic, if not the charlatan. Travelers to India had encountered itinerant holy men since antiquity; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, reports of yogis and fakirs, as they were uidly termed,2 rapidly increased in the accounts of European merchants and missionaries. Aided by print, they gained a wide audience. The publisher Jean-Frdric Bernard and the engraver Bernard Picart compiled such reports in their volumes on comparative religion, Crmonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde representes (Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World, 172337). They provided
3
copious Description[s] of Indian ascet4
ics in particular, as illustrated in one of Picarts engravings (cat. 22a), based on the French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Taverniers earlier account and print.5 It depicts a scene of temples, devotees, and ascetics in fantastic Postures, such as maintaining the same attitude, being surrounded by res, or leaning upon a cord under a banyan tree. Throughout
6
the text, these and other austerities are enumerated, including an ascetic who walkd in Wooden Shoes stuck full of Nails in the Inside, an early European
7
textual reference to the penance that became the bed of nails phenomenon. The authors interpreted these severe Penances as a means of controlling the body to gain powers, such as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis); as a way to attract fame and therefore alms; and also, within a Christian framework, as penance for sins.
8
European fascination, if not obsession, with documenting the novel
22c Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta
22d Hindu Fakir: for thirteen years this old man has been trying to nd peace on this bed of spikes
22e Fakir on Bed of Nails
22f Hindu Fakir on Bed of Spikes, Benares
22g Fakir Sitting on Nails
of man who disgrace the police of any country, by a life of total inutility, under the name of pious austerity (cat. 22b). Portions of the text are excerpted from Duncans article, but the Londinensis author elaborates on the bed of nails, portraying this type of fakeer as a freeloader living on the generosity of the English government and as a performer who is carried about to all of the great festivals, sitting bare-breeched on a seat of iron-spikes, from the punctures of which they frequently contrive to let the blood ow.16 Western descriptors of Indian ascetics as militants, mendicants, layabouts, and showmen are intimately related to their changing social circumstance.17 In the early modern period, myriad types of ascetics gained their livelihoods by being mercenaries, rural priests, or participants in religious orders.18 In the late
15
eighteenth century, the British created an inhospitable atmosphere for ascetics, fearing their military might, which disrupted trade routes and diplomacy and led to skirmishes in Bengal, which became known as the Sanyasi and Fakir Rebellion. Wandering ascetics also congregated in public, performing fantastic feats for alms or simply begging. This change in status was related to the decreasing religious role that ascetics played from the sixteenth century onward, concurrent with an increase in bhakti (devotion to a personal god), and also to specic eighteenth-century British laws that identied ascetics within Company territories as criminals and beggars rather than religious gures.19 By the early twentieth century, the ascetic lying on a bed of nails in a public space had become a stock gure in Western photographs, postcards, and
books. In 1907, photographer James Ricalton published India Through the Stereoscope for the American rm Underwood and Underwood, which specialized in boxed sets of stereograph views of familiar and exotic locales.20 In Ricaltons views of India, Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta (cat. 22c) would have been viewed between Horrid Goat Sacrices to Hindu Goddess Kali and a caged tiger labeled Famous Man-Eater. Within the text, Ricalton dismisses the emaciated ascetic as a beggar practicing a stunt for alms, drawing attention to the one big English penny deposited on a white cloth.21 However, by including the photograph Ricalton enacts his own voyeuristic stunt, offering a view of the strange, awesome, and ferocious for Americans to condescend to and consume.22 Postcards united spectacle, ethnography, and even missionary activities. At the turn of the century, missionary movements sought to educate young Americans for religious work. As part of the process they published postcards, such as cats. 22df. A postcard published by the Young Peoples Missionary Movement (cat. 22d), for instance, displays an ascetic ngering his rosary while seated with one knee up on a bed of nails. He is described as trying to nd peace, yet the empty bed of nails at his side and the hovering crowd implies the opposite. Is he blameless and harmless, even a potential convert? Or is he insincere and given to various modes of deception, as another Young Peoples publication, J. M. Thoburns The Christian Conquest of India (1906), declared about devotees in India, including a fakir on a bed of spikes.23 The ascetic on a bed of nails reiterates as one of several hundred clay gurines amassed by C. G. Sanders, a fur merchant who lived in India (cat. 22g). Made by two Indian sculptors, the gurine is within an entire schema of the many varied ethnic types of India and
Burma,24 a trend related to cataloguing Indian people by caste or trade to display in world exhibitions.25 Rather than emaciated, its body appears muscular and toned, perhaps a nod to modern innovations that intertwined physical tness and yoga.26 Indeed, the small clay gure holds its own: it is jaunty, comfortable, and hints at the dual dependence of the fakir on Europeans for funds, and Europeans on the fakir for exoticism. HS
Fakirs, Fakers and Magic

23A Thurston the famous magician, East Indian rope trick
Otis Lithograph Company United States, ca. 1927 Color lithograph, 104 x 35 cm Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, POS-MAG-.T48 no.14 (C size)
Fakirs. The word evokes a bewildering range of associations in the Indian colonial contextfrom Su ascetics to ash-smeared hatha yogis; from magicians and tricksters to circus performers; from Gandhi to the Kumbh Mela.1 An exotic foreign word, it came to stand for practices that were themselves variously perceived by European visitors to India as exotic and foreign, but also fascinating, confusing, and frightening since the seventeenth century.2 The very word fakir, as it is used in India, rests on an etymological confusion, shifts in meaning over centuries pointing as much to changing colonial and transnational perceptions (or misperceptions) as to its continued hold on popular imaginations. Derived from the Arabic word for poor (from the noun faqr, poverty), fakir originally referred to Muslim Su wandering dervishes and then gradually expanded to include a range of Hindu yogis who deed easy categorization, even if they were increasingly (and mistakenly) glossed by colonial administrators under one umbrella: mendicant caste orders; militant warrior ascetics who disrupted East India Company trade routes; itinerant renouncers who wandered from shrine to shrine; and, most especially, magicians, contortionists, and yogis who engaged in spectacular self-mortication practices on the street and in other public spaces.3 Of all these groups, it is this last categorythe performing fakir-yogis in public spacesthat attracted diametrically different responses inside and outside India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In India, yogas scholarly revivalists dismissed contemporary fakir-yogis and their magical practices as the unworthy, degenerate heirs of a classical yoga tradition in need of urgent reform.4 By reverse logic, magic in the Indian context became intertwined in the popular European imagination with fakir-yogis, many of whom had been forced by colonial laws against militant asceticism to take on mendicant life-
styles in temple complexes and street fairs.5 Meanwhile, outside of India, fakirs became objects of intense fascination for European and American occultists, who celebrated the magical powers these gures could acquire through yoga. Popular accounts of fakirs in the early twentieth-century Euro-American print and cinematic media reect some of this ambivalence. While portrayals of yogis, real and imaginary, routinely relied on Orientalist stereotypes of India or the mystical East as the source of supernatural power, there were an equal number of attempts to debunk and expose specic fakirs and yogis as inauthentic fakers, charlatans, and frauds who were duping a gullible public. This essay briey describes ve fakir-yogis and performers who captured the worlds imagination in the early twentieth century, using examples drawn from the rich world of lithographic posters and early lms, two based on real magicians, three on ctional composites. The older of the two posters, Thurston the famous magician, East Indian rope trick (cat. 23a), features Howard Thurston, a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio. As a child, he ran away to join the circus and eventually became one of the most successful performers of his time. His traveling magic shows routinely drew on an undifferentiated India as the authoritative source of magical power. This vertical lithographic poster reects and mimics his most popular actthe great Indian rope trickwhich is announced in the typical hyperbole of the carnival busker: Worlds Most Famous Illusion. First Time-out-of-India. On the right, Thurston stands below that legend and against a monument of indeterminate origin, the minarets being the only geographical clue that it is the East. Suavely dressed in coat and tails, the magician cuts a crisp contour against the misty nightscape, and his raised arm signals that he has just caused the rope to magically arise from the snake basket
23B Koringa
W. E. Barry Ltd. United Kingdom, Bradford, ca. 1938 Print, 74.4 x 50.9 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, S.128-1994
23C Mystery girl: why cant she be killed?

Look Magazine, September 28, 1937 Des Moines, Iowa, United States 34.1 26.6 cm Private Collection
23D Hindoo Fakir

Edison Manufacturing Company United States, 1902 Film, transferred to DVD, 3 minutes General Collections, Library of Congress, NV-061-499
23E The Yogi Who Lost His Will Power

Song clip from the lm Youre the One (1941) Johnny Mercer (lyrics); Mercer-Mchugh; Jerry Cohonna with Orrin Tucker and his Orchestra Clip from YouTube, loop at 314: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixwmfoZJHq8 LC Recorded Sound 578945 Columbia 35866
on the lower left, rather like a conductor orchestrating a native performance. The young, bare-chested boy in turban and dhoti who climbs the freestanding rope is another visual nod to India and the East. Meanwhile, the Indian conjurers in attendance are represented with broad painted strokes and dramatic shadows, their yellow and gray tonalities rendering them as unsubstantial as the swirling smoke and distant mosque. Ironically, just a few years after this poster was printed, and when the popularity of the trick was at its peak, the Indian rope trick was roundly denounced in the Chicago Tribune and other media as the worlds greatest hoax of all time, even as some analysts later identied the Tribune itself as the perpetrator of the hoax in the rst place.6 Koringa, a female magician or magicienne who performed in France, England, and the United States during the 1930s, invoked Indian referents through both performance and persona. Her photograph on a 1937 cover of Look, an American magazine (cat. 23c), the source for a 1938 English circus poster (cat. 23b), reveals how she creatively reimagined yogic attributes. Her unruly halo of hair recalls the wild tresses of medieval yogini goddesses (cats. 3ac), her chic bathing suit is styled on the tiger-skin garment of a yogi, and the off-center dot on her forehead hovers between a bindi and a protective mark against the evil eye.7 Touted alternately as the worlds only female fakir and only female yogi, Koringas acts included hypnotism and defying death practices historically identied with yogic siddhis supernatural powersby wrestling crocodiles and being buried alive.8 Koringas stage identity represents a performative transformation of yoga in culture and in history. Her promotional materials state that she was born in Rajasthan, orphaned at the age of three, and raised by fakirs who taught her supernatural skills.9 In reality, she
23a Thurston the famous magician, East Indian rope trick
FAKIRS, FAKERS, AND MAGIC | 259
was born Rene Bernard in Bordeaux in southern France. It is likely that Bernard took the name Koringa and adopted an Indian identity because British and French audiences had been ardent fans of theatrical displays of Indian magic and Oriental pomp since the second half of the nineteenth century.10 In spite of its Orientalist overtones, Bernards yoginifakir identity parallels the practices of Indian magicians. For centuries, Indian magicians intentionally capitalized on the supernatural powers that were reputedly held by ascetics. Descriptions from nineteenth-century and more recent ethnographies note that magicians wore Shaivite sectarian ash marks and rudraksha beads; claimed their powers came from ascetic practice or were learned in the cremation grounds frequented by Tantric practitioners; and whispered incantations that sounded like sacred mantras, such as yantru-mantru jadugili tantrum.
11
cal authority for real fakirs, the lm and sound clips described in this section touch on the authenticity and conversely, the loss of power, of ctional fakir-yogis. Almost from its inception, cinema developed a relationship with magicrst as a curiosity included in magic acts, and later as a device for creating new kinds of illusions. Film pioneers in the European contextlike George Mlis,12 who would go on to become one of the most famous trick lm specialists in the world, as well as Dadasahib Phalke, director of Indias rst feature lm Raja Harischandra (1913)were magicians.13 Indeed, Phalke, can even be seen performing magic tricks in a short lm, Professor Kelphas Magic (1916). Early subjects in this cinema of attractions14 ranged from views of foreign lands to scenes from popular Broadway shows to trick lms that mixed magic routines with special effects. Meanwhile, in part because of increased cultural exchange due to the British Raj, audiences in the West
23b Koringa
If the Thurston and Koringa posters reference India as the source of magi-
23c Mystery girl: why cant she be killed?
were fascinated by exotic India. Words like yogi and fakir were part of the pop-culture lexicon, and the gure of the fakir-yogi became an important presence in early lmic representations of India. Indeed, the rst-ever American lm about India was a 1902 trick lm produced by Thomas Edisons Edison Manufacturing Company titled Hindoo Fakir (cat. 23d), which united these two developments in early cinema: the magical trick lm and ethnographic representation.15 The magician in Hindoo Fakir is very likely A. N. Dutt, who sometimes performed using that name, and also toured the United States under the name Ram Bhuj. Hardly a fakir at all, he had been born into a middle-class Indian family and was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine. But, without telling his family, he embarked on a show-business career instead.16 Like other Indian magicians of the time, Dutt took illusions that can be traced back to Indian yogis and retooled them as magic acts on the European and American stage.17 The basket trick performed in the lm, for instance, is a staple of Indian street magicians (jaduwallahs), who have performed it for centuries. Another trick, in which his assistant lies on the points of several upturned swords, has a visual echo in a medieval relief carving on a temple at Srisailam, which depicts a yogi sitting on sword-points.18 The wonders of ancient India meet the magic of the movies in a third trick that depends entirely on special cinematic effects. In it, the fakir puts some seeds into a pot, and thanks to the magic of superimposition, a giant ower grows before our eyes, which in turn becomes his assistant, hovering on huge buttery wings. This is actually a variation on another jaduwallah standard, in which a mango tree appears to grow to full
23d Scenes from Hindoo Fakir
as fakir-yogis.19 If all lms are documentaries in that they reect the tastes and prejudices of their times, Hindoo Fakir ts the bill in a number of ways. It delights in showing off the new illusions cinema could create through editing and superimposition, and it documents popular magician-performers of the time. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, mainstream American cinema was thoroughly familiar with the fakir-yogi as a media trope. The 1941 lm Youre the One, for example, features a song with lyrics by the great Hollywood songwriter Johnny Mercer, The Yogi Who Lost His Willpower,20 which was remarkable in at least two respects for the cultural work that it accomplished. First, the song humorously brings together at one stroke all the Orientalist stereotypes that might ever have been associated with yogis, potentates, and adventure tales from Indiabeds of nails, magic carpets, crystal balls, turbans and dhotis, levitation, rope tricks, maharajasand weaves them into a single narrative. Second, the song domesticates and humanizes the fakir-yogi by making him fall in love but fail at it, by giving him the ability to predict the future but not his own emotional fate. While Mercers lyrics end on a painful noteWhat became of the yogi? No one knowsthe fakiryogi has the last theatrical word in the version popularized by Orrin Tucker and his orchestra (cat. 23e). After peering one last time into his crystal ball, the fakir-yogi gets ready for his ultimate act and his nal goodbye. He throws off his cloak as a rope emerges from the oor and levitates its way upright. In the midst of a swirl of smoke, the yogi clambers up the rope, gives a nal ourish, and disappears. Fakirs may well have lost their willpower in early twentieth century America, the scene seems to suggest, but they are not now nor ever in danger of losing their supernatural ones. Whether fakirs or fakers, their magic outlives them. SR and TV
height in minutes, but here the illusion is created entirely by cinematic technology. Canny Indian magicians like Dutt made careers out of performing jaduwallah tricks while playing up their exotic origins
The Yogi Who Lost His Willpower Lyrics by Johnny Mercer There was a yogi who lost his willpower He met a dancing girl and fell in love. He couldnt concentrate, or lie on broken glass He could only sit and wait for her to pass Unhappy yogi, he tried forgetting, but she was all that he was conscious of. At night he stretched out on his bed of nails He could only dream about her seven veils His face grew ushed and orid every time he heard her name And the ruby gleaming in her forehead set his oriental soul aame. This poor old yogi, he soon discovered She was the Maharajahs turtle dove. And she was satised, she had an emerald ring, an elephant to rideand everything. He was a passing whim. Thats how the story goes. And what became of the yogi, nobody knows
23e Scenes from The Yogi Who Lost His Willpower
264 | MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS
Part Five
Modern Transformations
Vivekananda and Rational Spirituality

24A The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali
M. N. Dwivedi, trans. Theosophical Publication Fund, Bombay, India, 1890 Book, 21 37 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6.P267 1890 Copy 1 Not illustrated
24G Neelys History of the Parliament of Religions and the Religious Congresses at the Worlds Columbian Exposition
Walter R. Houghton, ed. Chicago, United States, 1893 Book, 22.5 37 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BL21.W8N4
In the late 1800s, India experienced a yoga revival focused on the teachings and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda, which culminated in a foundational moment for modern transnational yoga: the publication of Raja Yoga in 1896 (cat. 24h).1 Scholars of modern yoga all agree on the critical importance of this event. Elizabeth DeMichelis suggests that modern yoga did not begin or take tangible form until Vivekanandas publication of Raja Yoga. Mark Singleton argues that practice-oriented Anglophone yoga manuals emerge as a genre only after this date.2 David Gordon White states that Vivekanandas synthesis set the agenda for the modern yoga movement.3 With its combination of classical yoga, Western philosophy, and esotericism, Raja Yoga did indeed lay the formative steps toward yogas globalized revival. Even so, it is important to bear in mind that the publication, even if wildly successful, did not occur in isolation but built on a prior history of similar attempts at translation, synthesis, and syncretism of a new rational, scientic yoga for the modern age. Born Narendranath Dutta and initiated by his teacher Ramakrishna Paramahamsa at a young age, Vivekananda (18631902) chose yoga as the platform for spearheading larger goals of religious reform. His Raja Yoga was a remarkable and brilliant synthesis of practical meditative breathing techniques and philosophy, which, importantly, excluded hatha yoga asanas even as it harked back to ancient texts for inspiration, in particular Patanjalis Yoga Sutras. In this classic golden-age invocation of the distant past to repudiate contemporary yogic practice and lay the ground for the future, Vivekanandas reformist arguments had much in common with those of his fellow nationalist reformers in pre-independence India. As outlined in Raja Yoga, his thesis on the revival of yoga had two distinctive but interlinked parts: rational spirituality and Hindu reform. Both of these tenets built
24H Raja Yoga

Swami Vivekananda Advaita Ashram, India, 1944 [1896] Book, 18.5 27 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.V3 V58
24B Swami Vivekananda and Narasimhacarya

United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, V17
24C Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Photograph (original), approx. 15.2 10.2 cm Vedanta Society of Northern California, V21 Inscription (recto): One innitepure & holy beyond thought, beyond qualities, I bow down to thee.Swami Vivekananda
24I Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V27
24J Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Scan of a halftone print Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V20
24D Swami Vivekananda on the Platform of the Parliament

United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, V16
24K Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V23 Inscription (recto): Samata sarvabhuteshu etanmuktasya lakshanam. Equality in all beings this is the sign of the freeVivekananda
24E Swami Vivekananda, Hindoo Monk of India

United States, 1893 Poster (color lithograph), copy of original from Goes Lithographing Company, Chicago Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V22 Inscription (recto): To Hollister SturgesAll strength and success be yours is the constant prayer of your friend, Vivekananda
24L Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V24 Inscription (recto): Thou art the only treasure in this worldVivekananda
24F Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament

United States, 1893 Photograph (original), approx. 15.2 10.2 cm Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V26 Inscription (recto): Eka eva suhrid dharma nidhanepyanuyati yah. Virtue is the only friend that follows us even beyond the grave. Everything else ends with death. Vivekananda
24M Swami Vivekananda

United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V25 Inscription (recto): Thou art the father the lord the mother the husband and loveSwami Vivekananda
on a public rejection of the legitimacy and power of miracles of contemporary yogis on the one hand, and a valorization of the ancient texts, particularly the Yoga Sutras, on the other. Vivekananda began by showing that Hinduism had departed from its rational, philosophical, and scientic roots as afrmed in the Vedas and Upanishads. But he also added other elements to this synthesis, which set the agenda for modern yoga. In sharp contrast to scholars of the period who tended to foreground the magical and mystical within yoga, Vivekanandas emphasis on the rational and the scientic sprang from his distinctive antimysticismhis call to reverse the mystery and secrecy in yoga practices the very things, he claimed, that had destroyed contemporary yoga.4 These lectures and writings linked yoga instead with the monistic, rationalist spirituality
of the neo-Vedantists,5 while ignoring (or giving a wide berth to) both Patanjalis comparatively dualistic Samkhya-based metaphysics as well as hatha yoga practices themselves. In this reinterpretation, Raja yoga was the supreme contemplative path to self-realization, in which the self was the supreme self, the absolute brahman or god-self within.6 Yoga was thus, before all else, nonsectarian, a unifying sign of the Indian nationand not only for national consumption but for consumption by the entire world.7 For all its novelty and innovation, this idea of a universalist, rational, and scientic text-based yoga as laid out in Raja Yoga did not come out of the ether, but relied on a long history and genealogy of previous works by others. Vivekanandas gradual consolidation of this thesis built not only on earlier scholarship on yoga philosophy (which
24b (left) Swami Vivekananda and Narasimhacarya
24c (right) Swami Vivekananda
VIVEKANANDA AND RATIONAL SPIRITUALIT Y | 267
had reached Anglophone transnational audiences), but also on his own triumphant travels and talks in America and the United Kingdom, where he had begun to reframe yoga as a form of spiritual empiricism.8 There were two key moments of public dissemination as this emerging yoga synthesis built momentum in the late 1800s, each of which emphasized different aspects of the doctrine: the late nineteenth-century spate of Theosophical Society translations of ancient texts; and the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where Vivekananda presented himself as the Hindoo monk of India but framed yoga as a scientic and rational spiritual system for the world. At least since the 1870s, there had been a history of scholarly syncretism and invention of yogic tradition through texts and translations of classical works, much of this under the aegis or sponsorship of the Theosophical Society and its publishing wings.9 In the context of yoga scholarship, all of these were published well before Vivekanandas 1893 Parliament address, and thus anticipated, in some cases by a decade, his Raja Yoga synthesis of scientic rationality. One of the earliest English translations of the Yoga Sutras, for example, was by Manilal Dwivedi, shown here in an early 1890 edition (cat. 24a). Dwivedis volume laid the ground for a Theosophical Publication series titled Sacred Books of the Hindus, including the rst translations and expositions of seminal yogic texts (Gheranda Samhita, Siva Samhita), all of which Vivekananda would have had access to decades later. Sirisa C. Vasu was a pioneering author in this series. His translation and teachings on Siva Samhita (1893) should be seen as part of the earliest international efforts to reconcile science with religion in the yogic context, while his Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (1893) repeatedly condemns the hatha yogis, the contemporary contortionists, and the beggars and street performers as the
natural enemy of the true Yogi. What comes across collectively from these Theosophical Society translations is a redenition of the yogi in which the grassroots practitioner of hatha methods has no part. The modern yogi, in other words, must be rational and scientic, whereas the hatha yogi was clearly not. The Sacred Books of the Hindus series was a response to scholar Max Mullers Sacred Books of the East series. Mullers views on yoga could be summarized as a Reformationist vision of Indian religious history. He was critical of both Vivekanandas debut at the Worlds Parliament as well as his inclusion of practical, nonintellectual yoga techniques in Vedanta philosophy. But his insistence on the philosophical sophistication of Indian thought and his uncompromising rejection of hatha yogis as exemplars of sin and darkness helped to lay the ground for Vivekanandas spiritual synthesis decades later. By the time Vivekananda traveled to Chicago to address the 1893 Worlds Parliament of Religions,10 the scene was set for a public presentation about yoga that was tied closely to a message on Hindu reform. Some of this shows in Vivekanandas deliberate sartorial presentation of himself as a Hindoo monkclad in red robes and saffron turbanat once playing into but also defying Orientalist stereotypes of asceticism and regality.11 The photographic record of Vivekanandas address at Parliament is relatively sparse even though the number of reproductions from the few existing prints is quite voluminous. Of the existing photographs, the Vedanta Society has among the most comprehensive collections chronicling Vivekanandas visit to Chicago as well as other locations in the United States. Two photographs from the Vedanta Society of Northern Californias Rare Images Archive are relatively unposed, casual shots taken shortly before Vivekanandas now-famous address to the Parliament.
Swami Vivekananda and Narasimhacarya (cat. 24c) is one of the earliest photographs of Vivekananda in America. While there is no accompanying date, it features a turbaned Vivekananda seated at a desk writing, with fellow Indian delegate Narasimhacarya (who also represented Hinduism at the Parliament) looking over his shoulder, in a room marked No. 1keep out, which was a room in the Congress Art Palace where the speakers repaired between sessions. The second, more evocative photograph is a group picture, Swami Vivekananda on the Platform of the Parliament (cat. 24d), taken on the afternoon of the opening day, September 11, 1893. Vivekananda is surrounded by a group of delegates, who appear to be listening to other sessions. A long turban pleat over one shoulder, shoulders tense, he appears pensive, even apprehensive.
As suggested by the notes in the Rare Images Archive, he remained seated through the proceedings, meditative and prayerful, letting his turn to speak go by time and again. It was not until after the afternoon session, after four other delegates had read their prepared papers, that he was urged to begin by the French pastor G. Bonet Maury, who is seen seated next to him. And thus it was that Vivekanandawearing his signature robebowed to the goddess Saraswati and rose to speak to the Congress and, through it, the world. His address, delivered without notes, and beginning Brothers and sisters of America was rapturously received, making him an overnight celebrity. A more formal, posed set of studio photographs known collectively as the Harrison series, also from the Vedanta Society (V20V27, cats. 24e, 24im),
24d Swami Vivekananda on the platform of the Parliament
24e Swami Vivekanandal, Hindoo Monk of India
24f Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament
24g (left) Neelys History of the Parliament of Religions and the Religious Congresses at the Worlds Columbian Exposition
24h (opposite) Raja Yoga
takes its name from a photography studio in Chicago owned by Thomas Harrison.12 Here we see Vivekanandas presentationcomplete with saffron robes and elaborate turbanas the Hindoo monk, the title that was featured on posters for the duration of the fair and by which he came to be known in Chicago and across the world. A cabinet card-sized original photograph, Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24c) from the Harrison series shows Vivekananda in what photographers referred to as the Chicago posearms folded across his chest, three-quarters of his turbaned face visible as he looks sternly toward the left. The photograph was inscribed by the swami in Bengali and English along its sides: One innite pure and holybeyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee. The poster
shown here, Swami Vivekananda: The Hindoo Monk of India (cat. 24e), based on the original Chicago pose photograph, was printed by Goes Lithographing Company in 1893. Vivekanandas distinctive orange robe and turban are clearly visible because of the vivid reproductions possible through chromolithographic technology, while the typographic below the image loudly announces him as the Hindoo monk of India. This poster, whose original is currently in the Vedanta Society collection, is one of the most iconic images of Vivekananda available. It instantly captured some of the visual contradictions of his Chicago address a recognizably Indian swami signaling both ethnic particularism and Hinduisms inherent universalism. But in so doing, it circulated a powerful meta-picture that would continue to shape imaginations
about yoga, religion, even spirituality in the West for the next century. A second cabinet card photograph from the Harrison series, Vivekananda at Parliament (cat. 24f), features the swami striking a different, more determined pose. His arms akimbo, he gazes off in the distance, seemingly ready to take on the world. The photograph bears the following inscription in Sanskrit and English: Eka eva suhrid dharma nidhanepyanuyati yah. Virtue is the only friend that follows us beyond the grave. Everything else ends with death. It was rst published in Neelys History of the Parliament of Religions and Religious Congresses at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in 1893, bearing the caption Swami Vivekananda. Neely, it should be pointed out, published more photographs of Vivekananda than of any other
delegate to the parliament. It is not surprising that the same photograph, printed to show a full-length image of Vivekananda, is also featured in Walter Houghtons book on Neely (cat. 24g). The adjoining page describes in some detail the substance of the swamis address to the Parliament as well as some of the subsequent responses. Taken together, the Harrison series suggests how the photographic record of Vivekanandas visit to Chicago has dominated visual memory of yogas transnational journey. While the swamis philosophical teachings on yoga changed between 1893 and 1896, and thus cannot be pinned down without oversimplication, it is the imagery that has remained constant and forever etched in our minds. Swami Vivekanandas presentation of self in Chicago offered an iconography
for transnational yoga that would last for well over a century in Americaat once timeless and universal but also singular and culturally specic; nonsectarian but also Hindu; scientic but lled with spirit. SR
24i Swami Vivekananda
24j Swami Vivekananda
24k Swami Vivekananda
24 l Swami Vivekananda
24m Swami Vivekananda
Medical Yoga
25A Anatomical Body
India, Gujarat, 18th century Ink and color on paper, 60.5 58.5 cm Wellcome Library, London, Asian Collections, MS Indic Delta 74
25G Yoga Mimansa

Vol. 2, no. 2, page 116 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama, Lonavla, India, 1926 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661
From at least the end of the rst millennium CE, yogic and Tantric traditions in India began to evolve the idea of an alternative anatomy, which mapped the subtle body(sukshma sharira) as a locus of spiritual energies and points of graduated awakeningchakras (wheels) or padmas (lotuses)arranged along a vertical axis (sushumna) through a network of channels (nadis). By the late nineteenth century, printed images of these yogic bodies reected a slow but visible transformation through encounters with the world of science and medicine. Partly due to the increasing prevalence of anatomical dissections and textbooks in Indian medical schools after 1836,1 partly due to the increasing number of yoga advocates who were also medical professionals, representations of yoga began to reect a new way of seeing the yogic body through anatomical eyes. They also revealed a growing visual engagement with the vocabularies, concepts, symbols, and measures of science as a new source of legitimizing authority. This essay traces the medicalization of yogic imagery through a few key examples, ranging from indigenous paintings to textbooks to depictions of scientic yoga by two of its leading advocates in the early twentieth century: Swami Kuvalayananda and Shri (or Sri) Yogendra. One of the earliest known indigenous medical paintings is a monumental eighteenth-century image of yogic anatomy superimposed on a medical body (cat. 25a).2 The painting was derived from the Persian tradition of anatomical illustration known as Tashrih-i-Mansuri, which was popular in Iran and spread to South Asia. As Dominik Wujastyk suggests, it is primarily a medical image, not a Tantric or a yogic one, emphasizing the veins, arteries, and intestinal tract of the body.3 Even so, there is what he terms a discernible Indianization of the medical body in the superimposition of six chakras faintly drawn onto the spinal
25B Satcakranirupanacitram
Swami Hamsasvarupa Trikutvilas Press, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India, 1903 Book, 26.2 34.5 cm Wellcome Library, London, Asian Collections, P. B. Sanskrit 391
25H Yoga Personal Hygiene

Shri Yogendra The Yoga Institute, Bombay, India, 1940 Book, 21.5 27 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6.Y63
25C The Chakras, a Monograph

Charles W. Leadbeater (18541934) Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, United States, 1972 ( 1927) Book, 31 26 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BP573.C5 L4 1972
25D The Mysterious Kundalini

Vasant Gangaram Rele D. P. Taraporevala Sons and Co., Bombay, India, 1929 Book, 21 26.5 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6 R4a Copy 1
25E Popular Yoga: Asanas

Swami Kuvalayananda C. E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, United States, 1972 (1931) Book, 22 31 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6.K787
25F Yoga Mimansa

Vol. 1, no. 1, page 57 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama, Lonavla, India, 1924 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661
MEDICAL YOGA | 275
column and the kundalini serpent coiled at the base of the spine below the outline of the body. The text offers a few further clues on this visual juxtaposition of medical and indigenous iconographies. While the text surrounding the image is a mixture of Sanskrit and old Gujarati (which places the painting in Western India) and describes the subtle, mystical yogic body of Tantric meditation, the text on the body is a mixture of Sanskrit and Persian medical terms in Persian and Devanagari scripts, and presents a mixture of ideas from medical as well as yogic views of the body. Wujastyk notes that despite the predominantly medical content and non-Indian background of the Tashrih tradition, the paintings Indian artist may have been motivated to integrate his own artistic and cultural background with the more typical indigenous Tantric image of the body, featuring chakras and nadis or conduits, such as ida and pingala, through which the breath (prana) travels and the coiled energy (kundalini) ascends.4 By the early twentieth century, artists were engaging in a more literal interpretation that argued for the physical reality of the yogic or subtle body. Swami Hamsasvarupas Satcakranirupanacitram includes eight color plates that show a visual rapprochement between yogic physiology as described in early texts, and the anatomically correct body that was being discovered by Western medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the foreword of the book that Mircea Eliade described as the most authoritative treatise on the doctrine of the cakras,6 Sri Hamsasvarupa suggests that it was intended for educators at colleges that emerged during nationalist efforts to revive indigenous medicine in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. The image shown here, plate 2 (cat. 25b), comes from a ne 1903 edition. The yogic and anatomical bodies are shown side by side; the former assumes
5
a seated asana (marked by the title as simhasanam, or lion pose) while the anatomical body makes clear the physical locations of the associated chakras and nadis.7 While subtle body depictions of the chakras were based on traditional iconography, a somewhat different visual interpretation was introduced in the West by the Theosophists, beginning with Charles W. Leadbeater. A founding member of the Theosophical Society (along with Annie Besant) who championed the New Thoughtled rediscovery of Eastern mysticism and spirituality, Leadbeater was a key conduit for the public dissemination of the Tantric chakra doctrine that became popular in print circles. His book The Chakras, rst published in 1927, sold more copies outside India than any other Theosophical text at the time. The image shown here (cat. 25c) represents an early twentieth-century depiction of yogic anatomy that became iconic in subsequent metaphysical, Theosophist, and New Age thought whether the more elemental classic seated pose,8 or the ubiquitous standing pose with anatomically recognizable organs. Titled LHomme Terrestre Naturel Tnbreux,9 Leadbeaters image makes two visual statements. First, it was one of the early instances of a schematic of the yoga body that used prevailing ideas of chakra images to give readers a potent and poetic visual metaphor for spiritual awakening as a kundalini force: a snake moving as a brilliant thread along the central sushumna nadi, piercing six lotus chakras, located not necessarily in a straight line but linked with elements (humors) and within anatomically recognizable organs in the body (heart, liver, lungs, bladder). It also made the visual case for yogic and subtle body clairvoyance, i.e., that the chakras can be perceived through psychic vision or a form of stylized yogic visualization. This Theosophical idea of clairvoyance implies that the chakras have an
25a Anatomical Body
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25b Satcakranirupanacitram
independent objective existence in the subtle bodies and can be perceived by anyone who has developed the appropriate tools. The Chakras thus laid out a visual physics of the yogic body in which chakras were presented as energy transformers or centers of consciousness (vortexes) that physically linked the various subtle bodiesthe etheric, astral, and mental bodies and enabled a person to assimilate cosmic consciousness. Like his predecessor Vivekananda who, in Raja Yoga, was the rst in the West to use a schematic chakra image (see cat. 24h)11Leadbeater turned the process of yogic samadhi (heightened consciousness) into a physiological process akin to digestion. Dr. Vasant Rele, the author of The Mysterious Kundalini (1929), took this idea further and did the same with the neurological body. A biomedical doctor, Rele was one of the earliest scientizers of the kundalini phenomenon, and his books were among the rst to establish and popularize a scientic basis for yogic physiology and hatha yoga practice. The Mysterious Kundalini contains anatomical illustrations, small black-and-white photo plates of a yogi demonstrating various asanas, and an illustration of the kundalini serpent in the center of an inverted triangle radiating energy with the following inscription beneath: The Kundalini is sleeping above the Kanda dispensing liberation to Yogis and bondage to fools. He who knows her knows yoga.
12 10
Plate 10 (cat. 25d) presents the yogic subtle body as the neurological body, through detailed anatomical diagrams of the nervous system, neurons, ganglia, and synapses that are typically made visible only through dissection. While scholars may disagree on the earliest antecedents of medical yoga,13 there is remarkable consensus around the role of its key popularizers in the early twentieth century: Swami Kuvalayananda and Shri Yogendra. Kuvalayananda was a critically important gure in the modern renaissance of yoga as therapeutic cure for disease. In 1921, using the paraphernalia, technology, and equipment of modern medical science electrocardiograms, x-ray machines, sphygmometers, spectroscopes Kuvalayananda and his researchers at the Kaivalyadhama Institute attempted to measure the physiological effects of asana, pranayama, kriya, and bandha and then used their ndings to record, present, and develop therapeutic approaches to a range of illnesses. The physiological experiments were widely disseminated through publications, journals, and pamphlets and through mass yogic exercise schemes in schools and government committees in Bombay. The institutes journal, Yoga Mimansa, rst published in 1924, was both a scientic review of these efforts and a practical illustrated manual that appealed to medical authority for legitimacy, although its assimilations of the modern were often partial, incomplete, and merely symbolic. The images shown here (cats. 25f, 25g) demonstrate this form of cultural syncretism: a 1920s photograph of a yoga practitioner doing the sh pose (matsyasana) with arrows marking the anatomical location of the thyroid; and a 1926 graphical chart measuring blood pressure during headstand pose (sirsasana). Kuvalayanandas book Popular Yoga: Asanas (1930) further consolidated his role as scientic champion of yoga for health. It includes an image of anatomical
In his preface, Rele wrote that the intended audience for the book was the medical community and an educated general audience familiar with some scientic and anatomical terminology. The book is a scientic exposition of yogic physiologygoing one step beyond anatomical descriptionand includes several rsts: the rst-ever clinical case note for yogic treatment and the rst description of the physiology of the pranic yogic body, not through the endocrinological system but its neurological equivalent.
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25c The Chakras, a Monograph
25d The Mysterious Kundalini
25e Popular Yoga: Asanas
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25f Yoga Mimansa
25g Yoga Mimansa
25h Yoga Personal Hygiene
musculature (cat. 25e) that is unremarkable except for the fact that it bore only a simple caption, The Muscles, in a popular yoga book meant not just for medical students or yoga practitioners but the general public. Clearly, by 1930, the medical yogic body could translate culturally and take on modern identities on the printed page, without breaking stride. A similar mission of yoga as medicine for the masses was led by Sri Yogendrathe self-styled householder yogiwho founded the Bombay-based Yoga Institute of Santa Cruz in 1918 for the scientic corroboration of curative yoga. The institute produced a large body of research on the practical benets of yoga for physical tness and public health and created basic yoga classes for the public.14 Beyond his considerable
reach in Bombay, Yogendra also left an important legacy abroad. He traveled to the United States in 1919 and established the Yoga Institute of America in New York, working with Western doctors and naturopaths,15 while presenting and performing what some have described as the earliest asana demonstrations in America in 1921.16 Yogendras books Yoga Asanas, Simplied (1928) and Yoga Personal Hygiene (1931)brought together many ideas on yoga for health. The latter in particular was a pioneering text that salvaged the curative aspects of hatha yoga (cat. 25h). Unlike Vivekananda, who dismissed hatha yogis as mystics and charlatans, Yogendra refashioned hatha yoga as medicine, a project that was at once reformist but also rational, utilitarian, and scientic.
The book, and indeed Yogendras project itself, was an early forerunner of the kind of public health and tness regimens that would take over transnational yoga circles in years to come. Medical yoga may have become a global commonplace in the twenty-rst century, but its foundations and contours were laid in the work of these early pioneers. SR
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Modern Postural Yoga

26A Fakire und Fakirtum im Alten und Modernern Indien
Richard Schmidt Germany, 1907 Book, 24.8 34.3 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BL2015.F2 S3
26H Yoga Mimansa

Vol. 2, no. 4, July 1926 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama Institute, Lonavla, India Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661
Visual genealogies of yoga are rarely seamless, revealing themselves most clearly at times of change, through visual eruptions1 of earlier images into the present. Nowhere are these changes and eruptions more apparent than in the emergence of modern postural yoga.2 The visual record suggests that what we take for granted today in modern yogathe emphases on asana (posture), vinyasa (sequential movement), and even specic sequences (such as surya namaskar or sun salutation)are neither millennia old nor rooted in ancient texts, but of relatively recent vintage. It also suggests that the rapid expansion of print technologies and the ready availability of photography and lm in the rst decades of the twentieth century not only made yoga accessible to mass audiences, they enabled the visualization of postures, sequences, and yogic bodies in specic ways that transformed practice.3 One of the earliest illustrated compilations of yoga asanas comes from an unlikely source: a 1907 history of fakirs in German by Richard Schmidt titled Fakire und Fakirtum im Alten und Modernern India. Fakire und Fakirtum was unusual because it included not only negative perceptions of yogis as petty thieves and swindlers, as was common in Western popular media and travelogues of the time, but also a reclamation of classical, text-based yoga.4 Its comprehensive account of hatha yoga included eighty-seven watercolors of asanas drawing on artistic styles of early nineteenth-century illustrated manuscripts, such as the Jogapradipika painted in the Kangra style or the Mysore Palaces Tanjore-style Sritattvanidhi.5 Each asana in Fakire und Fakirtum is isolated and labeled, as shown in plates 2 and 3 (cat. 26a), in which two gures, clad in simple orange and white dhotis, perform simhasana (lion pose) and padmasana (lotus pose), identied in Devanagari script above each image. The watercolor medium and unpainted
26I T. Krishnamacharya Asanas

India, Mysore, 1938 Sponsored by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodiyar Digital copy of a lost black-and-white lm, 57 min. Courtesy of Dan Mcguire
26B Yogasopana Purvacatushka

Narayana Ghamande Tukarama Book Depot, Bombay, India, 1951 Book, 22 22 cm National Library of Medicine, QT 255 G411y
26C Surya Namaskars

Apa Pant Orient Longmans, Bombay, India, 1970 (1929) Book, 21 27.3 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RA 781.P28
26D The Ten-Point Way to Health: Surya Namaskars

Balasahib Pandit Pratinidhi, Rajah of Aundh Edited by Louise Morgan J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1938 Book, 18.3 12.6 1.8 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins
26E Massage and Exercises Combined

Albrecht Jensen New York, United States, 1920 Book, 25 26 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RM 721.J4
26F The Yoga Body Illustrated

M. R. Jambunathan Jambunathan Book Depot, Madras, India, 1941 Book, 19 19 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RA781.7 J35
26G Yoga Mimansa

Vol. 1, no. 3, October 1925 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama Institute, Lonavla, India Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661
ground is typical of nineteenth-century Company School paintings, which native artists produced for foreign patrons (see cats. 20ad). Seen individually, the paintings are unremarkable, executed in what Partha Mitter calls the conceptual mode of art followed by Indian artists since antiquity6: shallow, at, two-dimensional outlines of gures that lack Western perspective. But, taken together, Fakire und Fakirtums watercolors offer an expanded visual archive of the classical asanas outlined in medieval hatha yoga texts, such as Hathapradipika and Gheranda Samhita. This archive was possibly the earliest inspiration for Indian yoga pioneers like Swami Kuvalayananda and T. Krishnamacharya, who developed what would become modern postural yoga practice.7 Schmidts Fakire und Fakirtum can be seen as a precursor of the instructional manuals of asanas published in the 1920s, when gurative, two-dimensional, conceptual models gave way to
the naturalistic, objective representations of photographic realism as yoga was assimilated into the modern. A key transitional text in this visual history is Yogasopana Purvacatushka, compiled by Yogi Ghamande in 1905described by Mark Singleton as perhaps the rst and only self-help yoga manual to use this (half-tone block print) reproduction technique.8 Yogasopana (literally, stairway to heaven) includes thirty-seven detailed black-and-white line drawings of asanas, all modeled by Ghamande himself.9 Shown here (cat. 26b) is a detail of matsyendrasana (lord of the sh pose) with all the subtle gradations of light and shade needed to render a naturalistic body. Yogasopana broke new ground in depicting naturalistic, muscled, yogic bodies, preguring photographic asana manuals by two decades.10 Yogasopana is particularly important to a visual genealogy of yoga because it was conceived not just as a practical manual but as a work of art.11 More than
26a Fakire und Fakirtum in Alten und Modernern Indien
MODERN POSTURAL YOGA | 285
26b Yogasopana Purvacatushka
other illustrated yoga texts, it embodies the aesthetic intersection of modern hatha yoga representation and modern Indian art. The drawings mark a clear departure from the conceptual, subtle body of earlier artistic renderings toward the Western, perceptual model popularized by Raja Ravi Varma.12 Given Varmas pioneering use of chromolithographic techniques to make available cheap naturalistic reproductions of his mythological art, it is not surprising to learn that Yogasopanas half-tone blocks were in fact crafted by his clerk, Purushottam Sadasiv Joshi. A clear institutional intersection between modern art and modern yoga is visible here: Jaganmohan Palace, home to the rst gallery of modern art in India, the Mysore chitrasala (picture hall), also housed the most inuential studio of modern postural yoga in the twentieth century, namely T. Krishnamacharyas famous yogasala (yoga hall).13 As with art, so with reinventions of asana. If there is a single text (and eponymous asana series) in the early twentieth century that embodies the
intersection of yoga, bodybuilding, and physical culture through an asana sequence, it is Pratinidhi Pants Surya Namaskars, rst published in 1929 and revised and republished ve times before 1940.14 The books title refers to the sun salutation exercise that may well be the single best-recognized asana sequence or yoga meme in postural yoga today. It is routinely invoked by contemporary practitioners as an ancient feature of Indian civilization, although it is thoroughly modern. While it is often difcult to trace the exact genealogy of specic sequences, historians agree that the creation of the modern surya namaskar system can be attributed to Pratinidhi Pant, who was the raja of Aundh.15 Pant chose to illustrate the rst edition of Surya Namaskars with monochromatic prints of schematic, two-dimensional gures performing ten asanas in the original series. Later editions include photographs of all ten asanas, evidence of the new photographic realism that was changing perceptions of yogic bodies in the early twentieth century. Seen here are the
26c Surya Namaskars 26d The Ten-Point Way to Health: Surya Namaskars
26e Massage and Exercises Combined
26f The Yoga Body Illustrated
cover photograph from a 1938 edition by Pant, titled The Ten-Point Way to Health (cat. 26d), and photographic sequence of asana positions 2 and 3 from a later, instructional edition of Surya Namaskars (cat. 26c). Surya Namaskars sits at an important historical nexus of yoga, bodybuilding, and physical education in India during the early twentieth century. Pants project of health reform clearly t with ongoing political, medical, and cultural trends, but was also unique in its emphasis on the relationship between body discipline and nationalism in modern India. He was a devoted bodybuilder and practitioner of the Eugene Sandow method who popularized the surya namaskar asana sequence as an indigenous bodybuilding technique.16 In gymnasia, this sequence became a practical expression of the unique blend of yogaphysical tness through an internal regimen of body conditioning on the one
hand and indigenous bodybuilding on the other. It was only later, in the 1930s, that it was absorbed into yoga routines, in some part due to the popularity of Pants book. Other illustrated yoga manuals made similar connections with Western models of physical culture, such as the Scandinavian Ling exercise system.17 A classic case in point is M. R. Jambunathans 1941 The Yoga Body Illustrated (cat. 26f), which promised the reader a strong and beautiful body through the practice of yoga. One of the best-known among early printed asana manuals, this publication presented yoga asanas as body-conditioning techniques that could lead to bodily perfection and, therefore, happiness. Jambunathans book exemplies the absorption of postural yoga by physical culturalists in the early twentieth century, the promotion of hatha yoga exercise as part of a larger, highly aestheticized physical culture
26g (left) Yoga Mimansa 26h (right) Yoga Mimansa
26i Scenes from T. Krishnamacharya Asanas in which the father of modern yoga demonstrates a series of yogic exercises
regime based on Western models. During this period, books like The Yoga Body Illustrated reected an identiable shift in yogic body practicefrom hatha yogas perfection of the body (the conquest over the material) to modern tness models based on Western ideals of physique and strength. Swami Kuvalayanandas Yoga Mimansa, which rst made the link between yoga, health, and science in the 1920s, was a classic case in point, as seen in two images shown here: the chaturdandasana (plank pose) and a standing gure exing his biceps (cats. 26h, 26g). As such, these manuals anticipated by several decades all the other photographic manuals of asanas that followed: Theos Bernards Hatha Yoga in 1941 and, later in the 1960s, works by Indra Devi, B. K. S. Iyengar, and Vishnudevananda.18 Similar attempts to link hatha yoga with physical culture and muscle control occurred in the transnational context. During the rst decades of the twentieth century, early proponents of yoga in the United States included Yogendra, Ramacharaka, Yogi Gherwal, and Yogi Wassan, but they also extended to alternative healthcare practitioners who drew on New Thought philosophies. An early example of this therapeutic synthesis is Albrecht Jensens 1920 Massage and Exercise Combined (cat. 26e). The
book, endorsed by American alternative health luminary W. A. Kellogg, identied psychophysiological methods of muscle control as Indian yoga techniques. It thus recast yoga as a muscle-based physical culture for a new generation of American alternative health enthusiasts, who would not have easily encountered hatha yoga through other routes. For all their transformative potential in producing new forms of asana, static print and photographic technologies of visual reproduction were thoroughly eclipsed by the extraordinary reach of moving images and lm in the early twentieth century, especially when these new media were used by a legendary practitioner to disseminate yogas dynamic potential as sequential movement. Such was the case in 1938 when the Mysore maharaja, Krishnaraja Wodiyar, sponsored an early lm of T. Krishnamacharyathe father of modern yogademonstrating a series of owing asana sequences. For the rst time in history, these sequences could be showcased around the country to non-students: imagined communities in pre-independence India, united through shared pasts and invented futures (cat. 26i).19 Partly lmed in black-and-white and partly in color, this archival ftyseven-minute silent lm is a composite of rare footage showing a fty-year-
old Krishnamacharya demonstrating advanced postures in linked sequences that are both hypnotic and inspiring. He is accompanied by several other practitioners, young and old, male and female, including his then-student B. K. S. Iyengar. In the grainy, eight-minute opening sequence, the camera focuses on a young Iyengar, who performs a series of difcult seated asana positions, what seems to be a modied version of Ashtanga Advanced A Series, in an unidentied outdoor location (see page 99). The next segment (ten minutes long) features close-ups of Krishnamacharya doing a series of seated nauli and pranayama exercises, the grace and elegance of the linking vinyasas matched only by the control required to sustain each position. In the short sections that follow, the camera moves indoors to feature two women and two children (performing asanas synchronously), ending in a sequence where Krishnamacharya demonstrates a set of balancing exercises with the children, more reminiscent of an acrobatic circus act. The lm ends with a black-and-white sequence outdoors, against a backdrop of unidentied mountains, in which Krishnamacharya dazzles the viewer with a tightly choreographed series of difcult inversions and headstands.
At the time the lm was made, Krishnamacharya was the resident teacher in the Mysore Palace, where he created his own yoga synthesis, combining hatha yoga practice, British and Swedish calisthenics, and the gymnastic and wrestling traditions of Karnataka. Moving images or silent lm offered the perfect dynamic and public medium through which these vinyasas could be presented for the rst time in pre-independence India. This impulse to spread the gospel of new yoga through regular demonstrations was both democratizingit introduced yoga to unprecedented new audiencesand competitive, attracting students who might otherwise have gone the way of Western gymnastics. The maharaja sent Krishnamacharya all over South India on this propaganda work, and the teachers debut on celluloid was conceived as part performance piece, part spectacular enticement to introduce yoga to mass audiences. Throughout the lm, the slow, almost languorous, aesthetic of unfolding asanas complements the cameras rigorous focus on the practitioner; the dynamic linking vinyasas provide both sequential narrative and connective tissue for the story of modern postural yoga in India. The lm achieves many things at once: it is cultural archive as
21 20
well as museum artifact; live theater as well as historical documentation of a tradition in the making. In the late 1930s, it was a cinematic innovation in visualizing modern yogic practice, but also part of a larger project of public dissemination that relied heavily on a nationalist physical culture.22 Located somewhere between documentary and ethnography, the lms narrative-free sequences of asanas encode their own hidden visual histories, much like a palimpsest. It can be seen as a performative spectacle that recalls earlier performances of fakirs and yogis but was reinvented for nationalist audiences eager to see yoga as indigenous exercise. If this lm footage suggests one thing, it is that new ways of representing asana led directly to new ways of perceiving yoga, and therefore, of practicing asanas, performing yogic identities, and inhabiting yogic bodies. In a world marked by increasing media cacophony and image saturation, we are reminded that visual technologies can change practice, media sometimes do create the message, and yogic lives can, and often do, imitate yogic art. SR
292 | REFERENCE MATERIAL
Exhibition Checklist
Note: Items marked with an asterisk (*) are not illustrated in this catalogue.
Venues Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Sackler) October 19, 2013January 26, 2014 Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (SFAAM) February 22May 18, 2014 The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) June 22September 7, 2014
Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection Gosain Kirpal Girji Receives Sheeshvalji and His Son (cat. 2c) India, Rajasthan, Marwar or Jodhpur, mid-18th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 34.9 24.8 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection Venues: All Krishna Vishvarupa (cat. 10a) India, Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur, ca. 1740 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 19.8 11.7 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection Venues: All Sadashiva (cat. 1e) India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 1670 Attributed by B. N. Goswamy to Devidasa Opaque watercolor, gold, and applied beetle-wing on paper, 19.1 18.4 cm Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection Venues: All Photos: John Tsantes
Kurrum Doss (cat. 21e) in The People of India (186875), volume 4, folio 158 ca. 1862 Photograph, 34.3 25.4 cm Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection Venues: Sackler, SFAAM The People of India, volume 2* India, 1868 Book, 34.3 25.4 cm Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection Venues: All Photos: John Tsantes
The British Museum, London Ascetics Performing Tapas (cat. 20c) South India, ca. 1820 Opaque watercolor on paper, 23.5 29 cm (page) The Trustees of the British Museum, Bequeathed through Francis Henry Egerton, 2007,3005.4 Venues: All Bhairava (cat. 20b) in an album of 91 paintings India, Thanjavur, ca. 1830 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 22.6 17.6 cm The Trustees of the British Museum, 1962,1231,0.13.70 Venues: All Shiva as Bhairava (cat. 1a) India, Tamil Nadu, 11th century Granite, 108 x 47.9 28.4 cm The Trustees of the British Museum, Brooke Sewell Permanent Fund, 1967.1016.1 Venues: All
Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection Bairagees, Hindoo Devotees, Delhi (cat. 21f) in The People of India (186875), volume 33, folio 203 Charles Shepherd for Shepherd & Robertson, ca. 1862 Photograph, 34.3 25.4 cm Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer Collection Venue: CMA
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST | 293
The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Ten folios from the Bahr al-hayat (Ocean of Life) (cat. 9) India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, 16001604 Opaque watercolor on paper, 22.7 13.9 cm (folio) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Virasana (Persian, sahajasana) (cat. 9a) 13.3 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.10a Venues: All Garbhasana (Persian, gharbasana) (cat. 9b) 10.6 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.18a Venues: All Nauli Kriya (Persian, niyuli) (cat. 9c) Attributed to Govardhan 9.5 8 cm (painting) In 16.19a Venues: All Headstand (Persian, akucchan) (cat. 9d) 9.6 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.20a Venue: Sackler Untitled (Persian, nashbad) (cat. 9e) 13.5 7.6 cm (painting) In 16.21b Venues: All Untitled (Persian, sitali) (cat. 9f) 12.6 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.22a Venues: All Khecari Mudra (Persian, khechari) (cat. 9g) 10.6 8.5 cm (painting) In 16.24a Venues: All Kumbhaka (Persian, kunbhak) (cat. 9h) 8 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.25a Venues: All Sthamba (Persian, thambasana) (cat. 9i) 13.6 7.8 cm (painting) In 16.26b Venues: All Untitled (Persian, sunasana) (cat. 9j) 11.5 7.7 cm (painting) In 16.27b Venues: All Bhupali Ragini (cat. 18g) from the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 1760 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 35.2 26.3 cm (folio with borders), 23.3 16.1 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.4 Venues: SFAAM, CMA The Feast of the Yogis (cat. 17h) from the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 14.2 9.7 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37, f.44a Venues: All
The Prince Begins His Journey (cat. 17e) from the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 18.2 9.2 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.23b Venues: All The Prince in Danger (cat. 17g) from the Mrigavati Attributed to Haribans India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 15.2 9.5 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.28a Venues: All The Prince Meets Rupman* from the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 15.3 9.5 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.29b Venues: SFAAM, CMA The Raj Kunwar on a Small Raft (cat. 17f) from the Mrigavati India, Mughal dynasty, 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 28.3 17.5 cm (folio), 15.3 9.5 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 37.27a Venues: All The Sage Bhringisha and Shiva (cat. 13) folio 304b from the Yoga Vasishta Attributed to Keshav Das India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, 1602 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 27 18.5 cm (folio), 8.6 9.7 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 05, f.304b Venues: All Saha (cat. 3e) folio 242a from The Stars of the Sciences (Nujum al-Ulum) India, Karnataka, Bijapur, dated 157071 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 25.8 16 cm (folio), 8.6 9.7 cm (painting) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 02 f.242a Venues: All Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon (cat. 18h) from the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 176073 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 34.9 25.9 cm (folio with borders), 23.2 15.8 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.7 Venues: All
Three Women Present a Young Girl to Aged Ascetics (cat. 14c) India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 167080 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 39.5 27.5 cm (folio with borders), 21.9 14.8 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 73.3 Venues: All A Yogini in Meditation (cat. 18f) from the Impey Ragamala India, Bengal, ca. 1760 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 35.1 24.3 cm (folio with borders), 22 14.3 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 65.2 Venues: All Yogini with Mynah (cat. 3f) India, Karnataka, Bijapur, ca. 16034 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 39.2 27.6 cm (folio with borders), 19.3 11.6 cm (painting without borders) The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 11a.31 Venues: All
The Cleveland Museum of Art Base for a Seated Buddha with Figures of Ascetics (cat. 6c) Pakistan or Afghanistan, ancient Gandhara, ca. 150200 CE Gray schist, 38 36.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski, 1976.152 Venues: All Fasting Buddha (cat. 6b) India, Kashmir, 8th century Ivory, 12.4 9.5 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, 1986.70 Venues: All Head of a Rishi (g. 3, p. 39) India, Mathura, 2nd century Stone, 27.7 24 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1971.41 Venues: All Jain Ascetic Walking (cat. 5f) India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1600 Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper, 14.7 9.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.244 Venue: CMA Jina (cat. 5b) India, Rajasthan, 10th11th century Bronze with silver inlay, 61.5 49.5 36.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2001.88 Venues: SFAAM, CMA
The Knots of the Subtle Body (cat. 11a) India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 16901700 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 20 14 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1966.27 Venues: All Prince and Ascetics (cat. 19c) Painting attributed to Govardhan; borders attributed to Payag India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1630 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 37.5 25.2 cm (sheet), 20.3 14.3 cm (painting) The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1971.79 Venues: All Shiva and Devi on Gajasuras Hide* India, ca. 1680 Ink and color on paper, 23.5 16.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1952.587 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Shiva Bhairava (cat. 1b) India, Karnataka, Mysore, 13th century Chloritic schist, 116.6 49.23 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1964.369 Venues: All Yoga Narasimha, Vishnu in His Man-Lion Avatar (cat. 8a) India, Tamil Nadu, ca. 1250 Bronze, 55.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski, 1973.187 Venues: All
Images of Yogis (cat. 22b) John Chapman (act. 17921823) September 1, 1809 from Encyclopdia Londinensis or, Universal Dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature vol. 10 (London: J. Adler, 1811) Copper-plate engraving, 26.7 21.6 cm Robert J. Del Bont collection, E1232 Venues: All
Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection Group of Yogis Colin Murray for Bourne & Shepherd, ca. 1880s Albumen print, 22.2 29.2 cm Collection of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, 2011.02.02.0004 Venues: All Photo: John Tsantes
Detroit Institute of Arts Yogini (cat. 3b) India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchipuram or Kaveripakkam, 900975 Possibly dolerite, 116.8 76.2 45.7 cm Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, L.A. Young Fund, 57.88 Venues: All
Library of Congress, Washington, DC The Chakras, a Monograph (cat. 25c) Charles W. Leadbeater (18541934) Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, United States, 1972 ( 1927) Book, 31 26 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BP573.C5 L4 1972 Venues: All Fakire und Fakirtum im Alten und Modernern Indien (cat. 26a) Richard Schmidt Germany, 1907 Book, 24.8 34.3 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BL2015.F2 S3 Venues: All Hindoo Fakir (cat. 23d) Edison Manufacturing Company, United States, 1902 Film, transferred to DVD, 3 minutes General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington DC, NV-061-499 Venues: All Massage and Exercises Combined (26e) Albrecht Jensen New York, United States, 1920 Book, 25 26 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RM 721.J4 Venues: All The Mysterious Kundalini (cat. 25d) Vasant Gangaram Rele D. P. Taraporevala Sons and Co., Bombay, India, 1929 Book, 21 26.5 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6 R4a Copy 1 Venues: All Neelys History of the Parliament of Religions and the Religious Congresses at the Worlds Columbian Exposition (cat. 24g) Walter R. Houghton, ed. Chicago, United States, 1893 Book, 22.5 37 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, BL21.W8N4 Venues: Sackler, CMA
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana (cat. 8c) from a Tantric Devi series India, Pahari Hills, ca. 166070 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 21.3 23.1 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.8 Venue: Sackler Kedar Ragini (cat. 18a) from the Chunar Ragamala India, Uttar Pradesh, Chunar, 1591 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 22.5 15 cm Freer Gallery of Art, Michael Goedhuis Ltd., F1985.2 Venue: Sackler Sarang Raga (cat. 18d) from the Sirohi Ragamala India, Rajasthan, Sirohi, ca. 168090 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 23.2 17.8 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1992.18 Venue: Sackler Siddha Pratima Yantra (cat. 5e) Western India, dated 1333 (Samvat 1390) Bronze, 21.9 13.1 8.9 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.33 Venue: Sackler Vishvamitra Practices His Austerities (cat. 7a) folio 61a from the Freer Ramayana Mushq India, subimperial Mughal, 15971605 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 26.5 15.6 cm Freer Gallery of Art, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1907.271.61 Venue: Sackler Photos: Neil Greentree, Robert Harrell, John Tsantes
Robert J. Del Bont Collection Diverses Pagodes et Penitences des Faquirs (Various Temples and Penances of the Fakirs) (cat. 22a) Bernard Picart (16731733) 1729 from Jean-Frdric Bernard and Bernard Picart, Crmonies et coutumes religieuses des Peuples Idolatres (Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Idolatrous Peoples), vol. 2 (Amsterdam: J. F. Bernard, 1728) Copper-plate engraving, 48 52.4 cm Robert J. Del Bont collection, E442 Venues: All Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta (cat. 22c) James Ricalton (18441929) ca. 1903 from James Ricalton, India through the Stereoscope: A Journey through Hindustan (New York and London: Underwood & Underwood, 1907) Stereoscopic photograph, 8.9 17.8 cm Robert J. Del Bont collection, SV49 Venues: All
Popular Yoga: Asanas (cat. 25e) Swami Kuvalayananda C. E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, United States, 1972 (1931) Book, 22 31 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B 132.Y6.K787 Venues: All Raja Yoga (cat. 24h) Swami Vivekananda Advaita Ashram, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India, 1944 (1896) Book, 18.5 27 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.V3 V58 Venues: All Surya Namaskars (cat. 26c) Apa Pant Orient Longmans, Bombay, India, 1970 (1929) Book, 21 23.7 cm (open) General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RA 781.P28 Venues: All Thurston the famous magician, East Indian rope trick (cat. 23a) Otis Lithograph Company United States, ca. 1927 Color lithograph, 104 35 cm Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, POS-MAG-.T48 no.14 (C size) Venues: Sackler, CMA The Yoga Body Illustrated (cat. 26f) M. R. Jambunathan Jambunathan Book Depot, Madras, India, 1941 Book, 19 19 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, RA781.7 J35 Venues: All Yoga Personal Hygiene (cat. 25h) Shri Yogendra The Yoga Institute, Bombay, India, 1940 Book, 21.5 27 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B 132. Y6.Y63 Venues: All The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali (cat. 24a)* M. N. Dwivedi, trans. Theosophical Publication Fund, Bombay, India, 1890 Book, 21 37 cm General Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, B132.Y6.P267 1890 Copy 1 Venues: All
Equivalence of Self and Universe (cat. 10d) folio 6 from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1824 (Samvat 1881) Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 122 46 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2378 Venues: All Jalandharnath Flies over King Padams Palace* from the Suraj Prakash India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1830 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 23.3 38.6 cm (image) Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 1644 Venues: SFAAM, CMA The King Praises Jalandharnath as His Enemies Drown* from the Suraj Prakash Amardas Bhatti India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1830 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 23.3 38.6 cm (image) Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 1641 Venues: SFAAM, CMA The Practice of Yoga* folio 5 from the Siddha Siddhanti Paddhati Amardas Bhatti India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1824 (Samvat 1881) Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 46 122 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2377 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Rama Enters the Forest of the Sages (cat. 17a) from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (15321623) India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, ca. 1775 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 62.7 134.5 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2524 Venues: All Rama in the Forest of the Sages (cat. 17b) from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (15321623) India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, ca. 1775 Opaque watercolor on paper, 62.7 134.5 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2527 Venues: All Three Aspects of the Absolute (cat. 4a) folio 1 from the Nath Charit Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1823 (Samvat 1880) Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 47 123 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2399 Venues: All The Transmission of Teachings (cat. 4b) folio 3 from the Nath Charit Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1823 (Samvat 1880) Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 47 123 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2400 Venues: All
The Transmission of Teachings (cat. 4c) folio 4 from the Nath Charit Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1823 (Samvat 1880) Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 47 123 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2401 Venues: All Water Springs Forth from the Power of Jalandharnaths Mantra* from the Suraj Prakash Amardas Bhatti India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1830 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 23.3 38.6 cm (image) Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 1640 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Photos (except 4a, 4b): Neil Greentree
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva (cat. 16) Attributed to Payag India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 163035 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 18.5 26.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2011, 2011.409 Venue: Sackler Head of the Fasting Buddha (cat. 6a) Pakistan or Afghanistan (Gandhara), ca. 3rd5th century Schist, 13.3 8.6 8.3 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel Eilenberg Collection, Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987, 1987.142.73 Venues: All Kedar Ragini (cat. 18e) Ruknuddin (act. ca. 165097) India, Rajasthan, Bikaner, ca. 169095 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 14.9 11.9 cm (image), 25.6 18.7 cm (page) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Findlay, 1978, 1978.540.2 Venue: Sackler Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to His House (cat. 17c) folio from a Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza) Attributed to Dasavanta and Mithra India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1570 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on cotton, 70.8 54.9 cm (folio) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1924, 24.48.1 Venue: Sackler Tile with impressed gures of emaciated ascetics and couples behind balconies (cat. 6d) India, Jammu and Kashmir, Harwan, ca. 5th century Terracotta, 40.6 33.6 4.1 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, 1987, 1987.424.26 Venues: All
Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur The Chakras of the Subtle Body (cat. 11b) folio 4 from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati Bulaki India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, 1824 (Samvat 1881) Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 122 46 cm Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2376 Venues: All
Minneapolis Institute of Arts Yogini with a Jar (cat. 3c) India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchipuram or Kaveripakkam, ca. 900975 Metagabbro, 114.3 72.39 39.37 cm Lent by Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund, 60.21 Venues: All
Shiva Blesses Yogis on Kailash (cat. 14a) by an artist in the rst generation after Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler India, Punjab Hills, 17801800 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 21.5 19.8 cm Museum Rietberg Zrich, Gift Horst Metzger Collection, RVI 2127 Venues: All Two Ascetics (cat. 7b) India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, 172550 Opaque watercolor on paper; 15.5 22.5 cm (page), 13 18 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, Gift of Barbara and Eberhard Fischer Venues: All
Shiva and Parvati on Mount Kailash (cat. 7c) India, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, late 18th century Opaque watercolor, gold, and tin alloy on paper, 28.7 20.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Felton Bequest, 1980, AS242-1980 Venues: All
National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD An Abdhoot (cat. 20d) in Balthazar Solvyns, A Collection of Two Hundred and Fifty Colored Etchings: descriptive of the manners, customs and dresses of the Hindoos (Calcutta: [Mirror Press], 1799) Balthazar Solvyns (17601824) Hand-colored etching, 52 38 11 cm National Library of Medicine, WZ 260 S692c Venues: All Yoga Mimansa (cat. 25f) vol. 1, no. 1, page 57 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama, Lonavla, India, 1924 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661 Venues: All Yoga Mimansa (cat. 26g) vol. 1, no. 3 (October) Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama Institute, Lonavla, India, 1925 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661 Venues: All Yoga Mimansa (cat. 26h) vol. 2, no. 4 (July) Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama Institute, Lonavla, India, 1926 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661 Venues: All Yoga Mimansa (cat. 25g) vol. 2, no. 2, page 116 Shrimat Kuvalayananda, ed. Kaivalyadhama, Lonavla, India, 1926 Periodical (quarterly), 23.5 16.1 cm National Library of Medicine, W1 Y0661 Venues: All Yogasopana Purvacatushka (cat. 26b) Narayana Ghamande Tukarama Book Depot, Bombay, India, 1951 Book, 22 22 cm National Library of Medicine, QT 255 G411y Venues: All
Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, Berlin Gaur Malhara Ragini (cat. 18i) India, Rajasthan, Kotah, 18th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 14 18.3 cm Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5523 Venues: All Megha Mahlar Ragini (cat. 18c) India, Rajasthan, Bundi, ca. 1600 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 30.2 24 cm Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5698 Venue: Sackler Worship of Shiva (cat. 15c) folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.2 48.9 cm (folio), 30 x 42.2 cm (image) Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5733 Venues: All
National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Untitled (cat. 21a) John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros, 1858 Albumen print, 14 10 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04604500 Venue: Sackler Untitled (cat. 21b) John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros, 1858 Albumen print, 13.7 9.5 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04565100 Venue: Sackler Untitled (cat. 21c) John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros, 1858 Albumen print, 13.5 10.2 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04566000 Venue: Sackler Untitled (cat. 21d) John Nicholas for Nicholas Bros, 1858 Albumen print, 14 10.2 cm National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NAA INV 04565500 Venue: Sackler
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar Visiting Savina Khera Math (cat. 14e) India, Rajasthan, Mewar, ca. 1725 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 60.3 73 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Charles Bain Hoyt Fund, 1999, 1999.94 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM
Museum Rietberg Zrich Dara Shikoh Visiting a Yogi and Yogini* India, Mughal dynasty, 17th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 36.2 34 cm (folio), 21 14.2 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, Collection Barbara and Eberhard Fischer, RVI 0954 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Female Guru and Disciple (cat. 14b) India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1650 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 37.5 25 cm (page), 12 7.8 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, RVI 987 Venues: All Monkeys in the Cave of Swayamprabha* folio 46 from the Mankot Ramayana India, Himachal Pradesh, Mankot, ca. 1720 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 19.8 31 cm (folio), 16.2 26.8 cm (painting) Museum Rietberg Zrich, Collection Barbara and Eberhard Fischer, REF 25 Venues: SFAAM, CMA
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Maharana Sangram Singh II and Gosain Nilakanthji* India, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, ca. 1725 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 45.5 62.4 cm (sheet), 35.5 54.8 cm (painting) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Felton Bequest, 1980, AS97-1980 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Maharana Sangram Singh II Visiting Gosain Nilakanthji after a Tiger Hunt (cat. 14f) India, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, ca. 1725 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 65 48.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Felton Bequest, 1980, AS92-1980 Venues: All
Cynthia Hazen Polsky Himalayan Pilgrimage of the Five Siddhas (cat. 15a) folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.2 48.9 cm (folio), 29.8 42.5 cm (image) Cynthia Hazen Polsky, New York, 8070 IP Venue: Sackler
Pritzker Collection The Guru Vidyashiva (cat. 2a) India, Bengal, 11th12th century Stone, 129.5 66 15.2 cm Pritzker Collection Photo by Hughes Dubois Venues: All
The Ten-Point Way to Health: Surya Namaskars (cat. 26d) Balasahib Pandit Pratinidhi, Rajah of Aundh Edited by Louise Morgan J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1938 Book, 18.3 12.6 1.8 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: All Photos: Neil Greentree
Untitled (cat. 21g) Charles Shepherd for Shepherd & Robertson 1862 Albumen print, 19.6 16 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1419 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Untitled (cat. 21r) India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai) or Orissa, ca. 1880 Albumen print, 14.8 9.7 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1473 Venue: Sackler Untitled (cat. 21o) India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai), ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.5 9.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C1474 Venue: CMA Untitled (cat. 21q) India, Tamil Nadu, Madras (currently Chennai), ca. 1880 Albumen print, 14.3 9.9 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.1522 Venue: SFAAM Untitled (cat. 21n) India, Calcutta, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.1 9.5 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3313 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM Untitled (cat. 21k) Westeld & Co. India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 9.4 5.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3314 Venue: CMA Untitled (cat. 21j) Westeld & Co. India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 9.4 5.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3315 Venue: SFAAM Untitled (cat. 21l) Westeld & Co. India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 9.4 5.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3316 Venue: SFAAM Untitled (cat. 21m) Westeld & Co. India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 9.4 5.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C3317 Venue: CMA
Private Collection Standing Jina (cat. 5c) India, Tamil Nadu, 11th century Bronze, 73.7 69.2 17.5 cm Private Collection, LT16 Photo by Maggie Nimkin Venues: All
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Seated Jina Ajita (cat. 5a) India, Tamil Nadu, 9th10th century Bronze, 18.5 14.5x 9.3 cm Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Gift of Arthur M. Sackler, S1987.16 Venues: SFAAM, CMA Yogini (cat. 3a) India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchipuram or Kaveripakkam, ca. 900975 Metagabbro, 116 76 43.2 cm Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Gift of Arthur M. Sackler, S1987.905 Venues: All Photos: Neil Greentree, Robert Harrell, John Tsantes
Private Collection Mystery girl: why cant she be killed? (cat. 23c) Look Magazine, September 28, 1937 Des Moines, Iowa, United States 34.1 26.6 cm Private Collection Venues: All
Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Collection Fakir on Bed of Nails (cat. 22e) D. Macropolo & Co., Calcutta, early 20th century Postcard, 9 14 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: All Hindu Fakir: For thirteen years this old man has been trying to nd peace on this bed of spikes (cat. 22d) Young Peoples Missionary Movement, New York, early 20th century Postcard, 8.3 13.6 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: All Hindu Fakir on Bed of Spikes, Benares (cat. 22f) Baptist Missionary Society, early 20th century Postcard, 8.6x 13.5 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: All Lakshman Das (cat. 20a) folio from the Fraser Album India, Delhi, ca. 1825 Watercolor and ink on paper, 25.4 14.6 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: SFAAM, CMA Matsyendranath (cat. 2b) India, Karnataka, Bijapur, ca. 1650 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 16.5 20.3 cm Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Venues: All
San Antonio Museum of Art Yogini (cat. 3d) India, Uttar Pradesh, Kannauj, rst half of the 11th century Sandstone, 86.4 43.8 24.8 cm San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with the John and Karen McFarlin Fund and Asian Art Challenge Fund, 90.92 Venues: All
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum Untitled (cat. 21t) Edward Taurines (act. 18851902) India, Bombay, ca. 1890 Albumen print, 23.5 19 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.8007b Venues: Sackler, SFAAM Untitled (cat. 21p) India, Tamil Nadu, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 12.7 17.4 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C158 Venue: CMA Untitled (cat. 21h) India, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 10.7 14.2 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII.C 447 Venue: CMA
Untitled (cat. 21i) India, Orissa, ca. 1870 Albumen print, 14.6 9.9 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, VIII S-SOA NLS 1 Venues: SFAAM, CMA
Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24m) United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V25 Inscription (recto): Thou art the father the lord the mother the husband and loveSwami Vivekananda Venues: All Swami Vivekananda and Narasimhacarya (cat. 24b) United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, V17 Venues: All Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament (cat. 24f) United States, 1893 Photograph (original), approx. 15.2 10.2 cm Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V26 Inscription (recto): Eka eva suhrid dharma nidhanepyanuyati yah. Virtue is the only friend that follows us even beyond the grave. Everything else ends with death. Vivekananda Venues: All Swami Vivekananda, Hindoo Monk of India (cat. 24e) United States, 1893 Poster (color lithograph), copy of original from Goes Lithographing Company, Chicago Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V22 Inscription (recto): To Hollister SturgesAll strength and success be yours is the constant prayer of your friend, Vivekananda Venues: All Swami Vivekananda on the Platform of the Parliament (cat. 24d) United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, V16 Venues: All
Bhairava Raga (cat. 18b) from the Chunar Ragamala India, Uttar Pradesh, Chunar, 1591 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 25.5 15.7 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.40-1981 Venues: All The Five-Faced Shiva (cat. 1d) India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, ca. 173040 Opaque watercolor on paper, 26.6 18.2 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Col. T. G. Gayer-Anderson and Maj. R. G. Gayer-Anderson, Pasha, IS.239-1952 Venues: All Hanuman as Yogi (cat. 8b) India, Kerala, Cochin, early 19th century Teak wood and color, 37.6 37 9.5 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.2564E-1883 Venues: All Koringa (cat. 23b) W. E. Barry Ltd. Bradford, United Kingdom, ca. 1938 Print, 74.4 50.9 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, S.128-1994 Venues: All Scroll with Chakras (cat. 11c) India, Kashmir, 18th century Opaque watercolor, gold, silver, and ink on paper, 376.7 17 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.8-1987 Venues: All Vishnu Vishvarupa (cat. 10b) India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, ca. 18001820 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 38.5 28 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Mrs. Gerald Clark, IS.33-2006 Venues: All Fakir Sitting on Nails (cat. 22g) India, late 19th century Painted clay, 11.4 20.3 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by the Indian High Commission, IS.196-1949 Venues: All
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Bifolio from the Gulshan Album (cats. 19ab) India, Mughal dynasty, rst quarter of the 17th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 53.5 40 cm Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Libri pict. A 117, ff.6b, 13a Venue: Sackler
Vedanta Society of Northern California Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24c) United States, 1893 Photograph (original), approx. 15.2 10.2 cm Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V21 Inscription (recto): One innitepure & holy beyond thought, beyond qualities, I bow down to thee. Swami Vivekananda Venues: All Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24i) United States, 1893 Photographic print, copy of original Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V27 Venues: All Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24j) United States, 1893 Scan of a halftone print Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V20 Venues: All Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24k) United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V23 Inscription (recto): Samata sarvabhuteshu etanmuktasya lakshanam. Equality in all beings this is the sign of the freeVivekananda Venues: All Swami Vivekananda (cat. 24l) United States, 1893 Photographic negative Vedanta Society of Northern California, Harrison series, V24 Inscription (recto): Thou art the only treasure in this worldVivekananda Venues: All
Victoria and Albert Museum, London Battle at Thaneshwar (cat. 12) bifolio from the Akbarnama India, Mughal dynasty, 159095 Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper Venues: All Left folio (cat. 12a) Composed by Basawan; painted by Basawan and Tara the Elder 32.9 18.7 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS2:61-1896 Right folio (cat. 12b) Composed by Basawan; painted by Asi 38.1 22.4 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.2:62-1896 Bhairava (cat. 1c) India, Himachal Pradesh, Mandi, ca. 1800 Opaque watercolor on paper, 27.9 17.6 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.45.1954 Venues: All
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond Five Sages in Barren Icy Heights (cat. 15d) folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.2 48.3 cm (folio), 35.7 48.1 cm (image) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, 85.1548 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM Forms of Vishnu (cat. 10c) folio from the Jnaneshvari India, Maharashtra, Nagpur, 1763 (Samvat 1856) Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 37.7 25.4 cm (folio) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 91.9.1-628 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM
Jina (cat. 5d) India, Rajasthan, probably vicinity of Mount Abu, 1160 (Samvat 1217) Marble, 59.69 48.26 21.59 cm Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2000.98 Venue: Sackler The Tale of Devadatta (cat. 17d) from the Kathasaritasagara ca. 158590 Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 13.8 13.6 cm Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, 68.8.55 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM
T. Krishnamacharya Asanas (cat. 26i) India, Mysore, 1938 Sponsored by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodiyar Digital copy of a lost black-and-white lm, 57 min. Courtesy of Dan McGuire Venues: All
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Ascetics before the Shrine of the Goddess (cat. 15b) folio from the Kedara Kalpa Attributed to the workshop of Purkhu India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, ca. 1815 Opaque watercolor on paper; 36.5 49.2 cm (folio), 24.7 47.3 cm (image) The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland (Gift of John and Berthe Ford, 2001), W. 859 Venues: All Babur and His Retinue Visiting Gor Khatri (cat. 14d) folio 22b from the Baburnama (Book of Babur) India, Mughal dynasty, 1590s Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper, 32 21 cm The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, W. 596 Venues: Sackler, SFAAM
Wellcome Library, London Anatomical Body (cat. 25a) India, Gujarat, 18th century Ink and color on paper, 60.5 58.5 cm Wellcome Library, London, Asian Collections, MS Indic Delta 74 Venues: All Satcakranirupanacitram (cat. 25b) Swami Hamsvarupa Trikutvilas Press, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India, 1903 Book, 26.2 34.5 cm Wellcome Library, London, Asian Collections, P.B. Sanskrit 391 Venues: All
Film Clips Note: Hindo Fakir (cat. 23d) is listed under Library of Congress. Yogi Who Lost His Will Power (cat. 23e) Song clip from the lm Youre the One (1941) Johnny Mercer (lyrics); Mercer-Mchugh; Jerry Cohonna with Orrin Tucker and his Orchestra Clip from YouTube, loop at 314: youtube.com/watch?v=ixwmfoZJHq8 LC Recorded Sound 578945 Columbia 35866 Venues: All
Glossary
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, direct translations are of Sanskrit terms.
Adil Shah dynasty rulers of the Bijapur Sultanate on the Deccan Plateau between 1490 and 1686. Advaita Hindu philosophical school that postulates the identity between the individual soul and the unique ground of all being, called brahman. Because this schools metaphysics is based on the non-dualist teachings found in certain Upanishads, it is also known as Advaita Vedanta. See brahman, Vedanta. Agamas scriptural canon of orthodox Shaivism, whose works date from the sixth to the thirteenth century CE. See also Shaiva Siddhanta. Akbar Mughal emperor who reigned from 1556 to 1605. anjali mudra gesture of respect in which the palms are pressed together with the ngers pointing upward. asana (seat or the act of sitting down) a yogic posture. ashram hermitage. austerities various forms of asceticism, such as celibacy and self-mortication, that lead to the correct perception of reality and generate spiritual power. Bahr al-hayat (Persian: The Ocean of Life) yoga text written circa 1550 by Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari, a Su master of the Shattari order; illustrated at the Allahabad court of the Mughal Prince Salim, circa 16001604. See Su, Salim. Bhagavad Gita a circa 200400 CE portion of the Mahabharatas sixth book, comprising the divine revelations of the great Hindu god Krishna concerning three paths of practice called yogas: karma (activity), jnana (insight), and bhakti (devotion to God). See Mahabharata, Vishvarupa.
Bhairava god often considered to be a particularly erce or terrible form of Shiva or the Buddha; the divine founder or leader of several Tantric orders and revealer of several Tantric scriptures. See Kapalika. bhakti Hindu tradition that emphasizes an intense and personal relationship with God. brahman according to Hindu thought, the Absolute; the self-existent, Universal Self; the ground of all being; the innite power of eternal being and becoming. Brahman is distinct from Brahma (a Hindu god) and Brahmin (a member of the highest Hindu caste). Brahmin member of the highest of the four Hindu castes; a Hindu priest. British East India Company trading company with shareholders and the largest standing army in Asiathat gradually extended its control over India between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. British Raj British rule of India from 1858 to 1947. Buddhist person whose way of life is grounded in the teachings of Gautama Buddha, the fth-century BCE founder of Buddhism, as well as the canon of doctrines and practices attributed to subsequent Buddhist teachers and holy men. chakra (wheel, circle) one of the energy centers aligned along the spinal column of the yogic body. The number of chakras varies from one tradition to another, with several traditions extending chakras into the space above the top of the head. Chakra also refers to the discus that is one of Vishnus primary emblems and the circular weapon wielded by militant ascetics.
Chola dynasty rulers of an empire that extended over much of South India and Sri Lanka between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. Dasnamis (ten-named) confederation of ten ascetic orders that are today Shaiva. According to Dasnami tradition, they were founded by the ninth-century teacher Shankara (also known as Shankaracharya). See Giri, Puri, Shaiva. dhoti garment wrapped around the waist. fakir (Arabic: poor man) Muslim religious mendicant; also spelled faqir, fakeer. Gandhara region that extended over parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan; a Buddhist kingdom under the Kushan dynasty from the rst to the fth century. Giri one of the ten Dasnami suborders, whose initiates are given the surname Giri. Goraksha, Gorakh, Gorakhnath twelfth- to thirteenth-century founder of the Nath sampradaya and purported author of several Sanskrit and vernacular works on the practice of hatha yoga and the mystic experiences of the yogi. See Matsyendranath. guru religious preceptor or teacher. A guru initiates shishyas or chelas (disciples) into a lineage, which theoretically extends back to the god or goddess who originally revealed the teachings. hatha yoga body of yogic practice that combines asanas (postures), pranayama (breath control), mudras (seals), bandhas (locks), and techniques of bodily purication, which reverse the normal downward ow of energy, uids, and consciousness in the body, and provide the practitioner with bodily immortality, supernatural powers, and embodied liberation.
GLOSSARY | 301
Hindu person whose way of life is grounded in the foundational doctrines of Hindu revelation (the Vedas, Upanishads, etc.) and tradition (the Bhagavad Gita, Puranas, Tantras), as well as the teachings of Brahmins and other exemplary humans. Hoysala dynasty rulers in the southern Deccan from circa 1006 to 1346. Jahangir Mughal emperor who reigned from 1605 to 1627. See Salim. Jain person whose way of life is grounded in the teachings of Mahavira, the sixth-century BCE founder of Jainism, as well as the canon of doctrines and practices attributed to subsequent Jain teachers and holy men. Jalandharnath illustrious Nath Yogi and siddha who is the subject of a rich body of medieval and modern legend. In the western Indian kingdom of Marwar (modern-day Jodhpur and its environs), Jalandharnath is regarded as a semidivine gure who was instrumental in the rise to power of the early nineteenth-century King Man Singh. jata matted hair or dreadlocks worn by yogis in imitation of the Hindu god Shiva. jatamukuta crown or bun of matted locks. Jina (conqueror) one of the twenty-four legendary founders of Jainism. The last of these was Mahavira, a historical gure who lived in the sixth century BCE. The term jina is used interchangeably with tirthankara (one who has crossed over). jogi in the vernacular languages of north India (Hindi, Rajasthani, etc.), the Sanskrit term yogi was pronounced and written as jogi. In the colonial period, jogi was often used in a pejorative sense to refer to a charlatan or false ascetic. See yogi. Kapalika (Skull bearer) Shaiva yogi who carries a kapala (skull) as a begging bowl during a twelve-year period of itinerancy, as a marker of his membership in a heterodox Tantric order that featured sexual excess and antisocial behavior. The divine exemplar of Kapalika practice is the Tantric god Bhairava, whose iconography features skulls and other bone ornaments. kanphata (Hindi: split-eared) term used for the Nath Yogis, who since the turn of the nineteenth century have worn large hoop earrings (mudras) through the cartilage of their ears. Kathaka Upanishad Hindu scripture, circa third century BCE, in which practices for controlling the body and breath are rst described within the context of a set of teachings on yoga. Kaula (clan-related, son of the clan) elite body of Hindu Tantric practices used specically by the inner circle of the clan of gods, goddesses, and advanced human practitioners. Sons of the clan sought to obtain supernatural powers and bodily immortality through unconventional practices.
Krishnamacharya, Tirumalai (18881989) often regarded as the father of modern postural yoga, Krishnamacharya focused on postural movement and pranayama oriented toward health, tness, and healing. His most famous disciples are B. K. S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, T. K. V. Desikachar, and Indra Devi. Kundalini (She who is coiled) in Hindu hatha yoga and Tantra, the female energy that descends through the yogic body to lie coiled in sleep in the lower abdomen. Through combined yogic techniques, she is awakened and made to rise through the chakras to the cranial vault and beyond. Kuvalayananda, Swami (18831966; born Jagannath Gune) central gure in the emergence of modern yoga. Kuvalayananda sought to demystify yoga through scientic research and establish it as a key component of Indian physical education and tness. laya yoga (yoga of absorption) form of yoga practice involving the absorption of the individual mind or self into the Absolute brahman, often through the experience of subtle sounds. Laya yoga was one component in a fourfold system of yoga introduced in several medieval texts, along with raja yoga, hatha yoga, and mantra yoga. linga, lingam pillar-shaped emblem of the Hindu god Shiva. In most Shiva temples, the lingam is nested in an abstract representation of the great goddess who is his consort. This lingam-yoni conguration harks back to Tantric doctrine, according to which Shiva and the goddess create and maintain the universe through their sexual energy. Mahabharata one of Indias two great epics; the other is the Ramayana. The Mahabharata, which was composed between the second century BCE and the fourth century CE, contains the Bhagavad Gita. maharaja (great king) title for a Hindu ruler. mala rosary or garland. Man Singh maharaja of Jodhpur-Marwar from 1803 to 1843; a devotee of Jalandharnath and great patron of the Nath sectarian order. mantra (mental device; instrument of thought) acoustic formula whose sound shape embodies and reproduces the energy-level of a deity; a spell, incantation, or charm employed in Tantric ritual or sorcery. math, matha Hindu monastery or lodge. Matsyendra, Matsyendranath (Lord of the shes) illustrious Tantric gure who is the subject of a rich body of medieval Hindu and Buddhist legend. Hindus believe that Matsyendra was the founder of the Kaulas, an early Tantric order and the guru of Gorakhnath, the founder of the Nath Yogis. See Kaula and Nath. Mattamayura (Drunken peacock) name of an inuential medieval Shaiva religious order.
mudra (seal) ritually instrumental gesture of the hand or body. In hatha yoga, an internal hermetic seal effected through breath control and other techniques. Among the Nath Yogis, mudras are the great hoop earrings worn through the thick of the ear. More generally, a hand gesture with symbolic meaning, as in anjali mudra, the gesture of respect. Mughal dynasty, ruled 15261857 at the height of Mughal power in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Indo-Islamic empire extended over much of the subcontinent. Nath sampradaya religious order purportedly founded by Gorakhnath. The Nath Yogis (Yogi Lords) were historically known for their distinctive regalia and their roles as advisors to kings in a number of medieval and early modern kingdoms in South Asia. See also Gorakhnath, Jalandharnath, Matsyendranath, mudra, singi. nadi in both Hindu and Buddhist mapping of the yogic body, one of an elaborate network of some 72,000 subtle ducts of the yogic body, through which breath and vital energy are channeled. Of these, the three that run through the center and along the right and left sides of the spinal column are most prominent. om quintessential Hindu mantra, the acoustic expression of the brahman. padmasana lotus posture. Pala dynasty the Palas ruled northeast India (and modern-day Bangladesh) from the eighth to the twelfth century. Pali canon sacred texts of Buddhism and the earliest sources on the religion. Pallava dynasty the Pallavas (sixthninth century) originated in Andhra Pradesh and gradually extended their territories to include Tamil Nadu; their capital at Kanchipuram was a major cultural center. Pashupata name of an early Shaiva sect devoted to Pashupati, a form of Rudra/Shiva. Patanjali author, perhaps legendary, of the circa second- to fourth-century Yoga Sutras. pranayama breath control; the body of techniques for regulating and stilling the breath (prana). Purana medieval canon of Hindu devotional religion. Traditionally eighteen in number, the Puranas are compendia of Hindu mythology, cosmology, and instructions for devotional religious practice. Puri one of the ten Dasnami suborders, whose initiates are given the Puri surname. raga classical Indian musical mode. Some ragas were conventionally illustrated with images of Shiva or yogis. ragamala (garland of ragas) series of thirty-six or forty-two classical Indian musical modes.
raja Hindu king; see also maharaja. raja yoga (royal yoga) term used to designate the system of the Yoga Sutras, identied as classical yoga by Vivekananda and his successors in the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries. Ramanandi Vaishnava ascetic order that was formalized in the early eighteenth century and is today the largest ascetic order in India. From as early as the twelfth century, Ramanandislike other Vaishnava asceticshave been devoted to the god Rama (Hindi: Ram), whose name they often mark on their bodies. Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas sixteenth-century retelling in vernacular Hindi of the Sanskrit Ramayana. Rig Veda earliest (circa fteenth to tenth century BCE) and most prominent of the four Vedas, the original revelations of the Hindu faith. rudraksha beads worn by devotees of Shiva. sadhu Hindu holy man. Salim, Prince the future Mughal Emperor Jahangir (15691627), Prince Salim commissioned yoga manuscripts in his Allahabad court between 1600 and 1604. samadhi (composition, meditative concentration) according to the Yoga Sutras, the nal component and result of ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga, an integrated state of pure contemplation, in which consciousness is aware of its fundamental isolation from materiality and its own absolute integrity. According to the teachings of the Buddha, it is the nal component and result of the practices of the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the extinction (nirvana) of suffering existence. sannyasi renouncer; traditionally a high-caste male Hindu who has entered into the fourth and nal stage of life, in which he has renounced all ties to family, society, and ritual practice by burning his sacricial implements that he has symbolically laid up together (sannyasa) inside his body. In the modern period, members of the Dasnami order refer to themselves as sannyasis, regardless of whether they renounce early or late in life. Sanskrit language of the Vedas and classical Hindu texts as well as a cosmopolitan literary language in South and Southeast Asia. Shaiva follower or devotee of Shiva. The ensemble of philosophical and ritual systems followed by Shaivas is known as Shaivism. Shaiva Siddhanta philosophical and ritual system of orthodox Shaivism. shaykh Su master and teacher. siddha (perfected being) an exemplary superman of Hindu Tantra; an advanced practitioner of Tantra; a fully realized Nath or Jain practitioner.
Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati (Step by Step Guide to the Principles of the Perfected Beings) compendium of Nath metaphysics, cosmology, and subtle physiology, attributed to Gorakhnath. siddhi supernormal power, such as the ability to y, that is a byproduct or goal of yogic practice. Sidh Sen raja of Mandi, a kingdom on the Beas River in Himachal Pradesh, who reigned circa 16841724 and was a Tantric devotee of Shiva. singi horn whistle worn by Nath Yogis; today it is usually called nad due to the sound it produces when blown. Su Islamic tradition that stresses a mystical path and personal relationship with God. In India, several Su ascetic orders interacted with Hindu yogis and adopted yogic techniques. Tantra medieval and modern Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist system of ritual and theory, distinctive in its goal (self-deication) and the means employed to realize that goal: mandala-based visualization and a highly elaborate ritual practice, sometimes involving impure or prohibited substances (sexual uids, alcohol, esh), etc. Tantras medieval scriptures of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Tantra. tapas ascetic practices that generate heat; the heat generated through austerities or yogic practice. tilak mark applied to the forehead or body, either to indicate ones sectarian afliation (in Hinduism) or purely for cosmetic purposes. See also urdhvapundra. Tirthankara see Jina. Udasi (one who is not attached) religious mendicant; member of a Sikh ascetic order whose practices include yoga. Also spelled oodasi. Upanishads nal canon of Vedic revelation dating from the fth century BCE to the third century CE. The Upanishads contain both dvaita (dualist) and advaita (non-dualist) speculations on the relationship between the Absolute brahman and individual souls, between purusha (spirit) and prakriti (matter), and other topics. urdhvabahu the austerity of permanently raising one or both arms in the air; a term for the ascetics who perform this austerity. urdhvapundra V-shaped mark on the foreheads of Vaishnavas. Vaishnava follower or devotee of Vishnu. The ensemble of philosophical and ritual systems followed by Vaishnavas is known as Vaishnavism. Vairagi religious mendicant, devotee, or ascetic, usually Vaishnava. Also spelled Vairagee, Bairagi.
Vedanta (the endantaof the Vedas) the Upanishads, the nal corpus of Hindu revelation; by extension, the philosophical school that takes the Upanishads as the foundation for its teachings. There are three forms of Vedanta philosophy: non-dualist (advaita), dualist (dvaita), and qualied non-dualist (visishtadvaita). See also Advaita, Upanishads. Vishvarupa (Universal Form) the cosmic form that Krishna reveals to Arjuna in the course of his revelation of the Bhagavad Gita, after Arjuna has asked the god to demonstrate his masterful yoga (aishvaryam yogam). Krishnas body is seen to encompass the entire universe, with all of its creatures inside his body. Vivekananda, Swami (18631902, born Narendranath Datta) key gure in the emergence of modern yoga. His publications and public appearances in India, North America, and England disseminated yoga as an ecumenical and philosophically grounded tradition (in which asanas played little part). yantra geometric ritual diagram used by practitioners to summon deities, or to control or subdue the mind, demonic beings, or elements of the phenomenal world. yogapatta band of cloth wrapped around the torso and knees to assist in sitting. Yoga Sutras of Patanjali circa second- to fourthcentury work on yoga philosophy, which also includes practical instructions on the eight successive stages of practice (ashtanga yoga) and discussion of the supernatural powers enjoyed by advanced practitioners. Yoga Vasishta (Vasishthas Teachings on Yoga) Sanskrit philosophical treatise from Kashmir that combined analytical and practical teachings on yoga with vivid mythological accounts that revealed the transformative powers of consciousness. yogi, yogin male practitioner of yoga. yogini goddess belonging to a cohort ranging in number from 42 to 108; in Hindu Tantra, a practitioners female consort.
GLOSSARY | 303
Endnotes to the Catalogue
Catalogue 1 Selected publications include Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), g. 12. Selected publications include Deborah Swallow and John Guy, eds., Arts of India: 15501900 (London: V&A Publications, 1990), p. 147, pl. 126. Selected publications include Stella Kramrisch, Manifestations of Shiva (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1981), p. 194, g. P-30. The title of the entry is in homage to the scholar and curator Stella Kramrisch, who organized an exhibition of the same name at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1981. Manifestations of Shiva was the rst major thematically organized exhibition of Indian art. Bhairava also gures in the Buddhist Tantras. See for example, David Gordon White, At the Mandalas Dark Fringe: Possession and Protection in Tantric Bhairava Cults, in Notes from a Maala: Essays in the History of Indian Religions in Honor of Wendy Doniger (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010), pp. 20015, esp. pp. 2012. David Lorenzen, Religious Movements in South Asia, 6001800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 7781. Bhairava temples appeared in Tamil Nadu as early as the eighth century. Bhairava is closely related by iconography to the ketraplas that were set within niches near the doorways of temples where they were worshipped for protection, to prevent suffering, to remove impediments, and for the fertility of crops; Vidya Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India (New York: American Federation of Arts, 2002), pp. 11819. Vidya Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India (New York: American Federation of Arts, 2002), p. 118. Poem by Appar translated by Vidya Dehejia from
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the French: Appar 4.73.6 in Tevaram: Hymnes Sivaites du pays Tamoul, vol. 2, ed. T. V. Gopal Iyer and Franois Gros (Pondicherry: Institut franais dindologie, 1985), p. 73. For a Mandi painting of Bhairava with the same attributes but wearing the garb of an itinerant ascetic, see B. N. Goswamy, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), p. 213, g. 88. His boyish mien may point to the deitys manifestation as Bla (boy) Bhairava. K. Guha, Bhairon, A Shaivite Deity in Transition, Folklore 1, no. 4 (July-August 1960), pp. 20722. Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Shaivism (New York: Edward Mellen Press, 1993), p. 43. Shaman Hatley, The Brahmaymalatantra and Early aiva Cult of Yogins (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2007), p. 267. Vidya Dehejia notes that Sadiva is visualized as the ve faces of the ligam of iva in devotional images created in South India under the Chola rulers; Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred, p. 91. See, for example, Maharaja Sidh Sen of Mandi as a Manifestation of Shiva, reproduced in Joan Cummins, Indian Painting (Boston: MFA Publications, 2006), p. 180, pl. 100. Retellings of the mythic narrative feature both iva and Bhairava as well as assimilate (the deity) Brahm into (the caste) Brahmin. For the descent of teachings from iva as formless sound to humans, see Hatley, The Brahmaymalatantra, pp. 26770. Catalogue 2 Selected publications include Rob Linrothe, ed., Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas (New York and Chicago: Rubin Museum of Art and Serindia Publications, 2006), p. 389. Selected publications include Jack R. McGregor, Indian Miniature Painting from West Coast Private Collections (San Francisco: Society for Asian Art,
1964), no. 25, pl. XIV; Stuart C. Welch, A Flower from Every Meadow (New York: Asia Society, 1973), no. 26; Rosemary Crill, Marwar Painting (Mumbai: India Book House, 2000), p. 48. 3 See, for example, Thomas E. Donaldson, Lakula to Rjaguru: Metamorphosis of the Teacher in the Iconographic Program of the Orissan Temple, in Studies in Hindu and Buddhist Art, ed. P. K. Mishra (Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1999). 4 Gouriswar Bhattacharya, Inscribed Image of a aivcrya from Bengal, in South Asian Archaeology 1993, ed. Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1994), pp. 9399; Bhattacharya, A New aivcrya with Disciples, Kalyan Bharati 6 (2002), pp. 514; Linrothe, Holy Madness, p. 389, cat. no. 88; Ranjusri Ghosh, Image of a Saiva Teacher and an Inscription on Pedestal: New Evidence for Bangarh Saivism, Pratna Samiksha 1 (2010), pp. 13539. 5 The relationship between image and individual in medieval Indian portraiture was signied most often less through a mimetic physical likeness than through an epigraph identifying the portrayed person explicitly by name. On portraiture, see Padma Kaimal, The Problem of Portraiture in South India, circa 870970 A.D, Artibus Asiae 59, nos. 1/2 (January 1, 1999), pp. 59133; Kaimal, The Problem of Portraiture in South India, Circa 9701000 A.D, Artibus Asiae 60, no. 1 (January 1, 2000), pp. 13979; Vincent Lefvre, Portraiture in Early India: Between Transience and Eternity (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Vidya Dehejia, The Body Adorned: Dissolving Boundaries Between Sacred and Profane in Indias Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 2728, 4142, 6768. That this is not a unique sculpture, but representative of more widespread artistic practices, is hinted at through the fortuitous survival of fragments of similarly large-scale gurus and cryas in archaeological museums across North and Central India. While
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fully preserved images following a typology that one might effectively dub guru-portraiture are relatively rare outside of northeastern India, fragments of such images can still be found in situ in the eld and in museum collections. Over the course of my own research, I have observed them at the Gujri Mahal Museum in Gwalior and the Rani Durgavati Museum in Jabalpur. Klaus Bruhn has noted the particular popularity of the crya motif, which he identies as a subset of the teacher-and-disciple motif, among the reliefs found at Jaina temples at Deogarh, mainly between 1000 and 1150 CE; see Klaus Bruhn, The crya Motif at Deogarh, in Deyadharma: Studies in memory of Dr. D.C. Sircar, ed. Gouriswar Bhattacharya (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1986), pp. 17987. I am also grateful to Nachiket Chanchani for bringing my attention recently to two twelfth- to thirteenth-century gures. Vidyiva is mentioned in an eleventh-century inscription of Mahpal I (reigned 102743) found at Bgah and placed in the lineage of the legendary Durvsas, edited by D. C. Sircar, Bgah stone inscription of the time of Nayapla, Journal of Ancient Indian History 7 (1974), pp. 13558, 264. The legendary Durvsas is mentioned in the Tantrloka (XII, 383) as the source of three mind-born sons, the second of whom (Amardaka) is said to be the promulgator of aiva Siddhnta. For more on Durvsas, see Richard Davis, Ritual in an Oscillating Universe: Worshiping iva in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 15; V. V. Mirashi, Inscriptions of the Kalachuri-Chedi Era, vol. 4, part 1. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. Ootacamund: Gov. Epigraphist for India, 1955), pp. 371, 373; and V. S. Pathak, History of Saiva cults in northern India, from inscriptions 700 A.D. to 1200 A.D. (Allahabad: Abinash Prakashan, 1980), p. 30. On the Dasnmi sampradya , see Matthew Clark, The Daanm-samnyss : The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006). The fullness has traditionally be interpreted as indicating pra , or life breath. The idea may stem from Stella Kramrisch, but has found expression in many subsequent sources. See Stella Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple, vol. 2 (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946), p. 342; Kramrisch, Indian Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 3437; Benjamin Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (London: Penguin Books, 1953), p. 55; Bettina Baumer et al., Vyu, in Primal Elements Mahbhta: Kaltattvakoa, vol. 3, ed. Bettina Baumer and Kapila Vatsyayan (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publisher, 1996), pp. 18384. See also g. 4 in From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India in this volume. Catalogue 3 Petrographic analysis of the Sackler yogin by Freer|Sackler conservation scientist Janet Douglas shows that it is composed of a metamorphosed gabbro; the sculptures in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Art and
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have not been analyzed to date; however, visual study suggests they are composed of basalt. 2 Shaman Hatley, The Brahmaymalatantra and the Early aiva Cult of Yoginis (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2007), p. 24. 3 Hatley, Brahmaymala, v. 52, p. 409 and v. 41, p. 406. Composed in Sanskrit sometime before the ninth century, the Tantric text about yogins is structured as a revelation of the Hindu deity iva in his form as Bhairava. 4 The Kaulas emerged in India in the late seventh century. 5 Distinctive to the Tantric traditions are the goals of moka and bhoga (power, supernatural experience, and supernatural pleasures) as the fruits of practice, rather than moka alone. Yogin veneration, however, typically is oriented towards attainment of powers. Correspondence from Shaman Hatley to the author, October 9, 2012. 6 Kaula ritual included the empowering exchange of bodily uids through ritualized sexual intercourse between male adepts and their female partners, who were also known as yogins. See Yoga in Transformation by David Gordon White in this catalogue. 7 White, Yoga in Transformation. 8 Vidya Dehejias seminal study, Yogin, Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition (New Delhi: National Museum, 1986), examines the extant ruins of medieval yogin temples located in a broad swath from Rajasthan in the west to Orissa in the East and Tamil Nadu in the south. But there must have been more. No yogin temples survive, for example, in Delhi, which was one of the great centers of yogin worship and which was known as Yoginipura or city of yogins. Nor are there any in Assam, which was probably where the yogin cult emerged and where to this day the sixty-four yogins are invoked. 9 Dehejia, Yogin, Cult and Temples, pp. 2, 18586, makes the connection of ground plans to yogin chakras. Margrit Thomsen, Numerical Symbolism and Orientation in Some Temples of the 64 Yogins, in Art and Archaeology Research Papers, March 1980, p. 53, observes that the plans of round yogin temples with extended portals also recall the yoni-shaped bases of iva lingams, cited in Shaman Hatley, Goddesses in Text and Stone: Temples of the Yogins in Light of Tantric and Puric Literature, in History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, ed. Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann(London: Routledge, forthcoming). David Gordon White has suggested that the hypaethral temples were perceived of as landing pads for the ying yogins, Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Contexts. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press),pp. 713, 20418. 10 Reading newly translated Sanskrit texts against material culture, Hatley, in Goddesses in Text and Stone, provides compelling evidence that the temples mark (and indeed enable) a transition from primarily individual and esoteric rites into more public and conventional forms of worship. 11 For more on the temple and its sculptures, see Dehejia , Yogin, Cult and Temples, and Padma Kaimal, Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the
Yogins, in Asia Past and Present, ed. Martha Ann Selby (Ann Arbor: Association of Asian Studies, 2012). Kaimals monograph identies pieces of thirteen extant yogins, three mother goddesses, and four male gures (iva, his son Skanda/Shanmuga, and two guardians); the twelve-armed Skanda was situated at the temples center. 12 Intriguingly, their sloped shoulders deviate from the straight shoulders proscribed for Hindu deities in iconographic manuals (shilpa shastras). A Chola bronze sculpture in the Freer Gallery of Art (F1929.8)which Vidya Dehejia has compellingly proposed is a portrait sculpture of Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi as the goddess Parvati/ Umahas similarly sloped shoulders. Art of the Imperial Cholas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 4, 3639. Whether the rounded shoulders of the Kanchi yogins indicate a regional aesthetic or the uid boundaries between human and divine that characterize yogin identity is a subject for further research. 13 Kaimal, Scattered Goddesses, p. 37, proposes that the iconography of jar and wand might refer to medicine. 14 No sculptures of this quality (or images of yogins) from this period have been found near Kannauj, a city some 190 miles north of the Chandella dynasty capital at Khajuraho. In the tenth century, local Kannauj kings were associated with the Chandella dynasts (tenth to thirteenth century), a political alliance that would have encouraged aesthetic, religious, and cultural connections. The yogin temple at Khajuraho (now without sculptures) was located within walking distance of the main temple complex, and the plump esh, square face, high waist, round breasts, and asymmetrical necklace tassel of the Kannauj yogin recall the female gures on the Khajuraho temples. Yet differences suggest regional production. Dehejia, Yogin, Cult and Temples, p. 48, connects her by style to Naresar. Vishakha Desai and Darielle Mason, Gods, Guardians and Lovers: Temple Sculptures from North India, A.D. 7001200 (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1993), cat. 30, suggest Jhusi in Allahabad; both sites were in the Chandella domain. 15 Hatley Brahmaymala, p. 17. 16 Dehejia, Yogin, Cult and Temples, p. 150 17 Carl W. Ernst,Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 33 (2008), pp. 41114. 18 In 2011, historian Emma Flatt published a groundbreaking analysis of the colophons and text of the Stars of the Sciences, identifying its author as Ali Adil Shah, describing its chapters on astrology, divination and yogins, and outlining the linguistic strategies the sultan employed to make the often esoteric material comprehensible to his diverse court. Emma Flatt, The Authorship and Signicance of the Nujum al-ulum: A Sixteenth-Century Astrological Encyclopedia from Bijapur, Journal of the American Oriental Society 131, no. 2, pp. 22535, and passim. 19 Dehejia, Yogin, Cult and Temples, pp. 5, 187218. 20 It contains 340 folios and 400 paintings in opaque watercolor and gold on paper of
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excellent quality. Chester Beatty Library, MS In2, published in Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol 2 (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995). 21 Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, p. 862. 22 For the group of single-gure yogin paintings, see Deborah Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 8396; for their yogic connections, see Debra Diamond, Occult Science and Bijapurs Yoginis, in Indian Painting: Themes, History and Intepretations (Essays in Honour of B. N. Goswamy), ed. Mahesh Sharma (Ahmedabad: Mapin, forthcoming). 23 In Occult Science and Bijapurs Yoginis, Diamond reviews the art historical literature in which the yogins are consistently interpreted as images of mortal ascetics or princesses in yogic masquerade. 24 The Persian translation of the Kmarpacik describes sixty-four immortal, beautiful and bejewled yogins with supernatural powers. Carl W. Ernst, Being Careful with the Goddess: Yogins in Persian and Arabic Texts, in Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India, ed. Pallabi Chakravorty and Scott Kugle (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2009) , pp. 19196; see also Muslim Interpreters of Yoga by Carl W. Ernst in this volume. For the identication of the Kmarpacik, see Kazuyo Sakaki, Yogicotantric Traditions in the awd al-ayt, Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies 7 (2005), pp. 13556. Catalogue 4 Published in Debra Diamond, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), cat. 40. David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). A close reading of the corpus of Sanskrit texts that taught haha yoga in its formative period (approximately the eleventh to the fteenth century) shows that it consisted of a variety of ancient physical techniques aimed at achieving liberation by controlling the breath, mind, and semen. See James Mallinson, Yogis in Mughal India, in this catalogue. Maharaja Man Singhs lavish patronage included the collecting of existing Nth treatises and the production of new knowledge through the commissioning of texts and illustrated manuscripts. For more on illustrated Nth manuscripts, see Diamond, Garden and Cosmos, pp. 4349; 173254. See n. 6. Deities with comprehensible forms are more visible in Hindu religious practice. Terse descriptions of each cosmic manifestation are inscribed on the verso of the folio: First there is the glorious Nth, whose nature is self effulgent and without beginning, limit, form, or blemish, 1. Bliss-form Nth. Then after many eons, Jallandhar sat down and created vast waters. Thus, he is renowned as lord (a). He is also known as Gorakhnth. The third picture
[represents] this form without attributes. For the Rajasthani verses, see Diamond, Garden and Cosmos, p. 287. Jalandharnth was the focus of devotion for the manuscripts patron, Man Singh. Here, his identication with Gorakhnth bridges a more localized Nth tradition with what James Mallinson has described as an increasingly organized and transregional Nth order that recognizes Gorakhnth as both historical founder and supreme siddha. James Mallinson, The Nth Sapradya, in Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 3, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 40728. 8 The nine and eighteen Nths on folios 3 and 4 refer to canonical groups of siddhas. Mallinson, The Nth Sapradya. 9 On pratyaka, see White, The Alchemical Body. On the ranking of authority, see Wendy Doniger OFlaherty, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities about Yoga: Tales from the Yogavsiha (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 17274. Catalogue 5 Selected publications include Phyllis Granoff, Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2009), p. 210, cat. S26; Thomas Lawton, Asian Art in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), pp. 6263. Inscription: Prosperity! The image of the omniscient Ajidi [was caused to be made] by the honorable ... of [or landlord of] Pullininra-puttur in Vilai-natu. Y. Subbarayalu, translator, Department of Indology, Institut Franais du Pondichry, in Granoff, Victorious Ones, p. 210, cat. S26. Selected publications include The Jina Collection (New York: Frederick Schultz Ancient Art in Association with Peter Marks Gallery, 2001), pl. 13. Selected publications include Granoff, Victorious Ones, p. 216, cat. S29. Selected publications include Joseph Dye, The Arts of India (Richmond: VMFA, 2001), cat. 51. Inscription: In the year VS 1390 [1333] on the eleventh [lunar day) of the dark half of [the month of] Jyaistha [May-June] with a shrine [and] with attendants [was caused to be made] for his own welfare by the merchant Maladeva. the son of the Merchant Devaimha [and his wife] Desatadevi, the son of the merchant Mahicandra, belonging to the illustrious Gurjara family. Selected publications include Pratapaditya Pal, Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India (Los Angeles: LACMA, 1994), cat. 14. Paul Dundas, The Jains, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 23. This karma with its attendant coloring adheres to and obscures ones soul. For instance, domestic violence cloaks its perpetrators and victims with what might seem to be an ashen hue. Some souls commit heinous acts that result in rebirth in one of the many realms of hell; other souls through their goodness ascend after death into a heavenly realm. The relationship between classical yoga and Jainism has a long and glorious history. The ethical principles of yoga, the ve yamas, are the same as found in Jainism. Both yoga and
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Jainism teach the importance of karma. While Patajali says that karma can be black, white, or mixed, Jainism counts six colors of karma that manifest in 148 varieties (see the Tattvrtha Stra, circa 400 CE). It is safe to say that these traditions have been in continual interplay for more than two thousand years. 10 Christopher Key Chapple, Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadras Array of Views on Yoga (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 1538. 11 The Yogastra shows the strong Tantric inuence on medieval Jainism. The sixth chapter, on breath control, also records divination exercises, catalogued under pryma because they partly rely on knowledge of the breath and its movements. Most are geared toward determining the time of death, but some focus on warfare, harvest, and offspring. See Olle Quarnstrm, trans., The Yogastra of Hemacandra: A twelfth century handbook on vetambara Jainsim (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2002). 12 Dundas, The Jains, p. 202. 13 For the rst trthakara, one can nd a bull; for the most recent, Mahvra , one nds a lion. 14 First, the statue is bathed in water. Then sandalwood paste or red kumkum is applied to the to the knees, the forearms, the shoulders, the top of the head, the spiritual center between the eyebrows (j cakra), the heart, and the stomach. Flowers are placed on the body of the Jina, for beauty and as a reminder of impermanence. Incense is lit for its fragrance and to evoke mindfulness of the life in air. A lamp (dpa) is ignited and waved in front of the statue, symbolizing and creating a connection with consciousness. Offerings of rice, food, and fruit to the Jina image constitute the last three aspects of Jain ritual (pj ). In addition, worship takes the form of a meditation involving vocalized prayers. The most widely used mantra of the Jain faith honors the twenty-four Great Victors or Jinas, the saints (siddhas) who have attained perfect freedom, the living heads of religious orders (cryas), living teachers (updhyyas), and the active legions of monks and nuns (sdhus and sdhvs). 15 Like Jinas, monks of the Digambara order traditionally take a vow of total nudity because they are aware that bugs can become trapped and suffocate in clothing. 16 Although similar to the haha yoga pose commonly called dsana, it carries some differences, especially in how the arms are held slightly distant from the body. 17 His white garments further indicate that he is a monastic in the vetmbara order. 18 To ride a horse would hurt the horse; to drive an automobile or ride a scooter or bicycle would kill countless bugs and, in a big accident, result in harm to other humans. 19 Jain monks and nuns also often carry or wear a covering for the mouth so they will not inhale bugs or do damage to microscopic souls in the air as they speak or exhale; they may carry a broom to sweep insects from their path. In contrast, vetmbara trthakaras and living monks of the Digambara order are totally naked.
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Catalogue 6 Selected publications include Michael R. Cunningham, Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, J. Keith Wilson, Masterworks of Asian Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art and Thames and Hudson, 1998), pp. 15253; Pratapaditya Pal, Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure (Berkeley, CA, and Ahmedabad, India: University of California Press and Mapin Publishing, 2003), p. 114, cat. 69. Selected publications include Andrew Topseld, In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India (London: Philip Wilson, 2004), cat. 78. Figures seated with their legs crossed in the manner of the lotus posture (padmsana) are prevalent in early sculpture. Yet we cannot assume these postures are always indicative of introspection, because they are often placed in narrative contexts not involving meditation. As in the Kahaka Upaniad (circa third century BCE) and Yoga Stras (circa 2nd century CE). g Veda I 105, 8 and see Walter O. Kaelber, Tapas and Purication in Early Hinduism, Numen, vol. 26 (December 1979), pp. 198, 204. and atapatha Brhmaa 9.5.1.2-4, 4.5.1.6-9, and 3.1.2.1. Many scholars believe these images represent a time prior to the enlightenment and therefore represent kyamuni as the future Buddha rather than as a fully enlightened being. Alfred Foucher, LArt Grco-Bouddique du Gandhra: tude sur les origines de linuence classique dans lart bouddhique de lInde et de lExtrme-Orient (Paris: E. Leroux, 1905), pp. 38183. Foucher was among the rst to offer this attribution. More recently Robert L. Brown has suggested that many of the earliest images depict events that occur shortly after the end of this rst period of fasting. After being given food and ending his six-year fast, Gautama headed to Bodhgaya where he attained Buddahood. What follows is a second period of fasting that lasted forty-nine days during which a number of miraculous events occurred. See Robert L. Brown, The Emaciated Gandharan Buddha Images: Asceticism, Health, and the Body,in Living a Life in Accord with Dhamma: Papers in Honor of Professor Jean Boisselier, ed. Natasha Eilenberg, M. C. Subhadradis Diskul, and Robert L. Brown(Bangkok:Silpakorn University, 1997), pp. 10515. Mahsaccaka Sutta of the Majjhima Nikya I. 24546. I. B. Horner, trans., The Collection of Middle Length Sayings, vol. 1 (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 2000), p. 300. The exact identity of these gures is unclear. Typical depictions of the Buddhas ascetic companions present them as a group of ve, and most textual sources indicate that his two teachers, Udraka and ra, had died by the time he reached enlightenment. Over his lifetime, the Buddha converted many ascetics. It is possible, therefore, that a different event is depicted. Robert E. Fisher, The Enigma of Harwan, Art International 25, no. 9 (1982), pp. 3334. Aokas Seventh Pillar inscription mentions the jvikas as recipients of royal largesse. See Georg Buhler, Barbar and Ngrjuni Hill-Cave inscriptions of Aoka and Daaratha, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal
vol. 20 (Bombay: 1901), p. 362. See also Heinrich Lders, A List of Brahmi Inscriptions, Appendix to Epigraphia Indica and Record of the Archaeological Survey of India, vol. 10 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1912), pp. 9798, nos. 95456. 12 Johannes Bronkhorst, Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 4041. Catalogue 7 Selected publications include Richard Ettinghausen, Paintings of the Sultans and Emperors of India (New Delhi: Lalit Kal Akademi, 1961), pl. 3; Milo Beach, The Adventures of Rama with Illustrations from a Sixteenth-Century Mughal Manuscript (1983; repr. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Mapin Publishing, 2011), pp. 2021; Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada, The Illustrated Ramayana (New Vrindaban: Palace Publishing,1989), p. 38, g.7; John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: The Freer Ramayana and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of Abd al-Rahim (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1999), pp. 13233, g. 57; Milo Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 2011), p. 90, g. 14e. Selected publications include Andrew Topseld, Paintings from Rajasthan in the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1980), pg. 148, g. 226. For third- to eighth-century images of austerities, see cats. 6ad; for the yogic nature of the ascetic techniques of ramaas mentioned in Buddhist and Jain texts, as well as those practiced by sages in the Rmyaa and Mahbhrata, see James Mallinson, ktism and Hahayoga, in The kta Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). For other images of Vivmitra, see g. 6 in Yoga the Art of Transformation by Debra Diamond in this catalogue. The prayer beads (mla) he holds indicate he is reciting mantras. The Rmyana of Vlmki: An Epic of Ancient India, vol. 1, Blakaa, trans. Robert P. Goldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 64:2, p. 246. See, for example, Raja Sidh Sen of Mandi as a Manifestation of Shiva, Mandi, circa 1725, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Keith Mcleod Fund, 2001.137, reproduced in Joan Cummins, Indian Painting from Cave Temples to the Colonial Period (Boston: MFA Publications, 2006), p. 180, pl. 100. On how the immobilization of the body stops transactions with the world and allows for higher levels of consciousness, see Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Shaivism (New York: Edward Mellen Press, 1993), p. 205 and passim. In the early nineteenth century, Purn Puri identied the ascetics who started at the sun as kamunis in Oriental Observations, No. X: The Travels of Prn Puri, a Hindoo, who travelled over India, Persia, and Part of Russia, in The European Magazine and London Review, vol. 57 (1810), p. 263. A more ancient, related practice of staring at the sun is attested in the Vaikhnasasmrtastra,
v. 8.8., a circa fourth- to eighth-century Vaiava text, as per Jim Mallinson in correspondence dated Sept. 20, 2012. 10 Tapkr sana is named and depicted in the illustrated Jogpradpak of Jayatarma, Gudrun Bhnemann, Eighty-four sanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions with Illustrations (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2007), p. 51. This enables us to identify an earlier representation of the sana from Kulu. Dated circa 172540 by style, it is reproduced in Pratapaditya Pal, The Flute and the Brush: Indian Paintings from the William Theo Brown and Paul Wonner Collection, An Exhibition (Newport Beach: The Museum, 1976), no. 49. See cats. 9aj for the sanas origins in the bat-penance vagguli-vata of ramaa ascetics. 11 E. F. Oaten, European Travellers in India, during the Fifteenth Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries: the evidence afforded by them with respect to Indian social institutions, & the nature, & inuence of Indian governments (New Delhi: J. Jetley for Asian Educational Services, 1991), p. 46, notes ritual decapitation in fteenth-century Vijayanagar by pilgrims who cut off their own head[s], yielding up their lives as a sacrice to their idols. Catalogue 8 Selected publications include Crispin Branfoot, Processions and Presence: Bronze Sculptures from the Temples of Southern India, Arts of Asia 36, no. 6 (2006), p. 68, g. 8; Vidya Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred (New York: American Federation of Arts, 2002), pp. 18687, g. 45; Vidya Dehejia, Chola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2006), pp. 12023, g. 22; Adrian K Locke, Divine Beauty: Sacred Medieval Bronzes from Southern India, Minerva 18, no. 1 (January February 2007), p. 23, g. 6. Selected publications include John Guy, La escultura en los templos indios: el arte de la devocin (Barcelona: Fundacin la Caixa, 2007), p. 229, cat. 184. Guy notes that the Cochin temple was demolished in 1874. Selected publications include Thomas Lawton, Beyond the Legacy: Anniversary Acquisitions for the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), pp. 19093; Vidya Dehejia, Devi: The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art (New York: Prestel, 1999), p. 129, g. 3; B. N. Goswamy, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1992), p. 3839, cat. 8. In Patajalis treatise, meditation is one of eight limbs, or components, of yoga that restrain the uctuations of the mind (Yoga Stra 1.2; yoga citta vtti nirodha). For a philosophically grounded discussion of meditation within the Yoga Stra, see Christopher Key Chapple, Yoga and the Luminous: Patajalis Spiritual Path to Freedom, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008, esp. pp. 61 67. Multiple mythic narratives and philosophical interpretations surround every great Hindu deity. Philip Lutgendorfs magisterial study of Hanuman conveys how the gods diverse messages emerge through the experiences
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and expressions of worshipers, who exercise considerable agency in shaping (and at times contesting) them; hence these messages also reect historical contingencies and may change with time. Philip Lutgendorf, Hanumans Tale: The Message of the Divine Monkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 2829. South Indian traditions also localize the mythic event; in Andhra Pradesh, the temple complex at Ahobilam is identied as the site of the gods slaying of the demon and his bhakti yoga lessons. Lavanya Vemsani, Narasiha, the Supreme Deity of Andhra Pradesh: Tradition and Innovation in HinduismAn Examination of the Temple Myths, Folk Stories, and Popular Culture, Journal of Contemporary Religion 24, no. 1 (January 2009), p. 39. Earlier images of Narasiha, as well as those from other parts of India, generally depict the god standing or in the act of disemboweling the demon with his claws. Hanumans ability to cure diseases is linked to the siddhis (supernatural powers) of yogic attainment in Peter Van der Veer, Gods on Earth: Religious Experience and Identity in Ayodhya (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 92. For a fuller discussion of Hanuman as divine healer, see Sudhir Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1982), pp. 5388. aiva yogis of the Nth tradition also have a Hanuman cult. Peter Van der Veer, Gods on Earth: Religious Experience and Identity in Ayodhya (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 92. The program of the ceiling frieze is the wedding of Rma: twelve panels (IS.2564A-L-1883) can be viewed in the online collections site of the Victoria and Albert (http://collections.vam. ac.uk). Each extant panel depicts a winged deity, although only Hanuman wears a yogapaa. Because the sharp-feathered wings in the upper corners appear on all the other deities in the Kerala temple panels, they may not convey anything specic about Hanuman, although Lutgendorf notes an anomalous story in which the young Hanuman is equipped with wings ; Lutgendorf, Hanumans Tale, p. 191. In a Mughal folio in the Fondation Custodia, Paris collection, Cyvana is represented caught within the nets of shermen who accidentally disturbed his underwater austerities. Although the episode does not appear in the Mahbhrata, the folio is from the Razmnama (Book of War), the 159899 imperial translation of the Sanskrit epic. It is reproduced in Akbar: The Great Emperor of India, exh. cat. Fondazione Roma Museo (Milan: Skira, 2012), p. 216, g. v.22. Like most Hindu manuscripts, the pages of the Tantric Devi series were unbound, and viewers lifted the folios one by one to appreciate them. The central image is protected by painted red borders, whose notations in Takri script identify the goddess, her devotee, and the folios number, 57, within the series. The verse also includes the syllable bhai, Bhadrakls manifestation as a sacred sound. For the verse and a discussion of the series, see
Terry McInerney, in Devi: The Great Goddess, pp. 11936 and p. 391. Catalogue 9 Selected publications include Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings in the Chester Beatty Library, vol. 2 (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), pp. 55664, cat. 5.137. Persian translations here by Carl W. Ernst; for full translation of Persian text and identication of postures, see www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions. Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 8. An ascetic in a position similar to kukkusana, the cock posture, is carved on the outer wall of the Mallikarjuna temple at Shrishailam in Andhra Pradesh that can be dated to 1510, making it the earliest depiction of a non-seated sana. Rob Linrothe, Siddhas and Srailam, Where All Wise People Go, in Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, ed. Rob Linrothe (New York and Chicago: Rubin Museum of Art and Serindia Publications, 2006), p. 138. Philipp Andr Maas, Samdhipda: Das erste Kapitel des Ptanjalayogastra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert (Samdhipda: The First Chapter of the Ptajalayogastra for the First Time Critically Edited), in Studia Indologica Universitatis HalensisGeises kultur Indiens: Texte und Studien 9 (Aachen: Shaker, 2006), p. xix. The earliest extant Tantric text, the Nivsatattvasahit, teaches sana in its Nayastra (4.14c15d). Dominic Goodall, Alexis Sanderson, and Harunaga Isaacson, eds., Nivsatattvasahit (Pondicherry: Publications de lInstitut franais dIndologie, forthcoming). The earliest textual reference to the lotus position (padmsana) is found in the circa third-century Kmastra, which describes a posture to be used for lovemaking as like padmsana (6.30). Pt. Kedrnth, ed., Kmastram of Vtsyyana with the Jayamagal commentary of Yaodhara (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara Press, 1900). The earliest representations of ascetics in meditational sanas date to the last three centuries BCE. An ascetic sitting in yogapasana, i.e., with a band supporting his crossed legs, is depicted in a sculpture found at the Buddhist site of Sanchi (third- to rst-century BCE); see g. 5 in Yoga: The Art of Transformation by Debra Diamond in this volume. The Buddha kyamuni is shown sitting in padmsana in a second-century CE sculpture from Gandhara, reproduced in A Visual Offering: Treasures of Buddhist Art, p. 44, and available at http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/resources/downloads/ webPresentations/Masterpieces.pdf. These texts are the Datttreyayogastra (vv. 3438) and Vivekamrtaa (vv. 58). The former teaches the lotus position (padmsana) to which the latter adds the adepts posture (siddhsana). From an unpublished critical edition by James Mallinson, based on the following witnesses: Datttreyayogastra, edited by Brahmamitra Avasth, Svm Keavnanda Yoga Sasthna (1982); Man Singh Pustak Prakash nos. 1936; Wai Praj Phal 6/4399, 6163; Baroda Oriental Institute 4107; Mysore
Government Oriental Manuscripts Library 4369; Thanjavur Palace Library B6390. The edition was read by Professor Alexis Sanderson, Jason Birch, Pter-Dniel Sznt, and Andrea Acri at Oxford in early 2012, all of whom I thank for their valuable emendations and suggestions. 7 This text has come to be known as the Hahayogapradpik, but in the colophons of its several hundred manuscripts it is more commonly known simply as the Hahapradpik. Svm Digambarj and Dr. Ptambar Jh, eds., Hahapradpik of Svtmrma (Lonavla: Kaivalyadhm S. M. Y. M. Samiti, 1970). 8 For photographs of mayrsana, see James Mallinson, Yogic Identities: Tradition and Transformation, www.asia.si.edu/research/ articles. 9 Hahapradpik 1.30. Swami Maheshananda, B. R. Sharma, G. S. Sahay, R. K. Bodhe, eds., Vasihasahit Yogaka, rev. ed. (Lonval: Kaivalyadhm rmanmdhav Yogamandir Samiti, 2005), 1.7677. 10 rsvmhthrmj, ed., Vimnrcankalpa (paala 96) (Madras: Venkateshwar Press, 1926). On the dating of this text see Grard Colas, Vaiava Sahits in The Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 15367. This may be the earliest example in any Sanskrit text of sana referring to a physical posture other than a seated position. Such usage soon spread to activities other than yoga. The early twelfth-century Mnasollsa teaches sanas for wrestlers (4.1.1049) and also uses the word to describe the various different standing positions of ghting elephants (4.3.61318). G. K. Shrigondekar, ed., Mnasollsa of King Somevara, vol. 2 (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1939). The twelfth- or thirteenth-century Mallapura teaches sanas specic to different types of wrestler (6.4548, 8.1621). B. J. Sandesara and R. N. Mehta, eds., Mallapura (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1964). An early fourteenth-century Maithili text, the Vararatnkara, lists the sanas (and bandhas) of lovemaking; S. K. Chatterji and B. Misra, eds., Vararatnkara of Jyotirvarakaviekharcrya (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1940), p. 29. 11 See g. 11 in Yogis in Mughal India by James Mallinson in this volume for a photograph of Yogirj Jagannth Ds at Haridwar Kumbh Mela in 2010. 12 Hahapradpik 1.23 = Ahirbudhnysahit 31.38, Vasihasahit Yogaka 1.78. 13 Matsyendrasahit 3.8a13b. Csaba Kiss, Matsyendranthas Compendium (Matsyendrasahit): A critical edition and annotated translation of Matsyendrasahit 113 and 55 with analysis (PhD thesis, Oxford University, 2009). 14 Datttreyayogastra 24cd. 15 Jtaka 1, p. 493 (Naguha Jtaka); Jtaka 3, pp. 23237 (Setaketu Jtaka). V. Faussell, ed., Jataka, 4 vols. (London: Trubner & Co., 187787). 16 Jogpradpak vv. 17983. M. L. Gharote, ed., Jogpradpak of Jayatarma (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, 1999). 17 Singleton, Yoga Body, pp. 81162. 18 Yogastra 2.46. Nryaa Mira, ed., Yogastra of Patajali with the commentaries (Bhya, Tattvavairad, and Yogavrttik) of Vysa,
308 | ENDNOTES, PP.14657
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Vcaspatimira, and Vijnabhiku (Benares: Bhratya Vidy Prakan, 1971). Hahapradpik 1.17; cf. e.g., Haharatnval 3.5, Jogpradpak 49. M. L. Gharote, P. Devnath, V. K. Jha, eds., Haharatnval (Lonavla: Lonavla Yoga Institute, 2002). Mahbhrata 1.13.1013; 1.26.2; 1.41.13; 3.94.11 14; 3.185.45; 12.126.18; 13.7.813. V. Sukthankar, S. K. Belvalkar et al., eds., Mahbhrata, 19 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 192759). The heros pose (vrsana) is also mentioned in the Mahabharata 12.292.8, 13.7.13, 13.13.10, 13.13.54, although its form is rst described in a tenth-century commentary on the Yogastra, the Tattvavairad, which on 2.46, n. 21, explains it to be the practice shown in a photograph of Mnav Nth Tapasv (reproduced in Mallinson, Yogic Identities) and which to this day is associated with tapas rather than yoga. Personal communication to James Mallinson from Mnav Nth Tapasv, an itinerant Nth Yogi at Gorakh Dibbi, Jvalamukhi, on November 11, 2011. It may be that the Mahbhratas vrsana is simply an uncomfortable place to sitin the passages in which it is found, there is also mention of the ascetic practice of vraayy, the heroic place to sleepbut a squatting position similar to the virasana of the Tattvavairad is also included among the practices of ascetics dismissed by the Buddha in the Pali canon. See James Mallinson, ktism and Hahayoga, in The kta Traditions (London: Routledge, forthcoming). W. Falconer, trans. The Geography of Strabo, vol. 3 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857), pp. 11213. For example, Berniers seventeenth-century account (Archibald Constable, trans., Travels in the Mogul Empire A.D. 16561668 by Franois Bernier [London: Oxford University Press, 1916], p. 317). In the circa 1590 Ain-i Akbari (H. S. Jarrett, The Ain-i-kbari of Abul Fazl-i-llami, vol. 3 [Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1948], p. 185), it is said that there are eighty-four sanas, of which thirteen are esteemed the most efcacious, and each has a special mode and a separate name. Under their inuence, cold, heat, hunger and thirst are little felt. The practice of the eighty-four sanas, with each to be held for several hours, is included in an eighteenth-century list of eighteen methods of tapas recounted by the famous wandering Sannyasi Puran Puri, Oriental Observations, No. X: The Travels of Prn Puri, a Hindoo, who travelled over India, Persia, and Part of Russia, in The European Magazine and London Review, vol. 57 (1810), pp. 26364; see cat. 22, Bed of Nails. Modern yoga practice often includes sequences of sanas but these are absent in premodern Indian sources on yoga. The seventeenth-century traveler Peter Mundy does not mention sana in his descriptions of ascetics, but does describe acrobats (bzgars) moving from the lotus position to a headstand. Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 16081667. Vol. II: Travels in Asia 16281634 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914), pp. 25455. Forerunners of these ascetics may perhaps be found in the Vedic Vrtyas, who are said to stand upright for a year; Atharvavedasahit 15.3.1. Shankar Pndurang Pandit, ed.,
Atharvavedasahit in the aunakya recension with the commentary (-bhya) of Syacrya (Bombay: Government Central Book Depot, 1895). 25 Haharatnval upadea 3. Of the eighty-four named sanas, thirty-six are described. 26 Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari (MGG) wrote Bahr al-ayt in Gujarat around 1550. Carl W. Ernst, Susm and Yoga according to Muhammad Ghawth, Su 29 (spring 1996), pp. 913. 27 James Mallinson, following Carl W. Ernst, The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, s. 3, vol. 13, no. 2 (2003), pp. 123; and Kazuyo Sakaki, Yogico-tantric Traditions in the awd al-hayt, Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, vol. 7 (2005), pp.13556. The various Persian and Arabic recensions are compilations of translations of passages from various Sanskrit texts, put into an Islamic frame. 28 The twenty-one sanas in the Bahr al-ayt are almost all seated postures for meditation on various unconditioned forms of the absolute, which suggests the Nth traditions greater emphasis on contemplative techniques. In contrast is the predilection for more complex and difcult postures evinced by their counterparts the Sannyasis, who are the heirs of the ancient ascetic tradition in which such practices are likely to have originated. 29 Aditya Behl and Simon Weightman, Manjhan Madhumalati: An Indian Su Romance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xxi xxii. MGG was pivotal in Baburs capture of Gwalior fort from the Afghans in the 1520s, for which he received a land grant. He was also patronized by Humayun. MGG went to Gujarat when Humayan ed to Iran. 30 Posture 4, verse 7. 31 MGG observes that sahajsanain which one meditates, placing one shin over the other clasping both hands together while intoning has and so ha upon exhaling and inhalingis taught by yogis to their students to open the door to the hidden. The hazy form near the yogis folded thighs is a later repair. 32 An even more curious relationship between image and text appears on folio 20a. In presenting the eighth posture, akucan, the text mentions siddhsana, a seated posture, and describes a practice similar to Sanskrit descriptions, such as Haharatnval 2.58, of mlabandha, in which the yogi, often sitting in siddhsana, is told to clench (-kuc) the yoni region, and draw up air. However, the image depicts an inversion. This may be a literalization (or a misunderstanding) of a phrase within the Bahr al-ayts description: One holds the buttocks rmly together and pulls the water-lily up by the feet. 33 The interest of Sus and Muslim rulers in yoga was largely practical rather than philosophical. Carl W. Ernst, Situating Susm and Yoga, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 1 (2005), p. 9; and Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 33 (2008), p. 410. 34 Mughal images of yogis were often drawings or lightly-tinted drawings (Persian, nim qalam); the
reasons for this preference are as yet only hazily theorized. However, the nm qalam illustrations of the Bahr al-ayt manuscript suggest another line of inquiry. In Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages, Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 17395, Carl W. Ernst observes that translations of the practical arts and sciences from Indian languages into Arabic and Persian begin in the ninth century during the Àbbasid caliphate and continue, on the subcontinent, under Sultanate and Mughal patronage. Ernst includes in this category translations of works on mathematics, medicine, toxicology, astronomy, alchemy, divination, auguries, and omens. The illustrated Bahr al-ayt, which describes twenty-one postures with benets ranging from spiritual insight to supernatural abilities to better health, would seem to belong to this category. Art historical studies have heretofore concentrated on the fully colored and burnished paintings that appear in literary and historical manuscripts as well as in Persian translations of Sanskrit epics and metaphysical texts. A comparison of the Bahr al-ayt folios with other illustrated Mughal manuscripts on practical subjects may allow us to better evaluate the importance of the treatise within the intellectual culture of Salims Allahabad court. Catalogue 10 Selected publications include Joan Cummins, Vishnu: Hinduisms Blue-Skinned Saviour (Ahmedabad, India: Mapin, 2011), p. 218, cat. 131; Stuart C. Welch, A Flower from Every Meadow (City: Publisher, 1973), no. 42. B. N. Goswamy, in conversation with the author, May 2012, compared the work with the Devidasas painting, Shiva and Parvati playing Chaupar, Metropolitan Museum of Art, reproduced in B. N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1992, pp. 7071, cat. 26. John Guy, Indian Temple Sculpture (London: V&A Publications, 2007), p. 70, g. 76. Selected publications include Joseph Dye, Arts of India (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2001), pp. 37074, cats. 16264. Burlington Magazine 1991, p. 416, g. 116. Archives of Asian Art 1992, p. 109, g. 41. Selected publications included Debra Diamond, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), cat. 48. David Gordon White, On the Magnitude of the Yogic Body, in Yogi Heroes and Poets: Histories and Legends of the Nths, ed. David N. Lorenzen and Adrian Munoz (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011), pp. 7990. In the Bhagavadgt and the Krma Pura, the great gods Viu and iva are said to practice yoga precisely when they are in the process of internalizing all external phenomena by either manifesting the entire universe within their cosmic bodies or by swallowing all both gods are called Masters of Yoga in this role. White, On the Magnitude of the Yogic Body, p. 88. For early medieval temple reliefs of iva and Viu as Masters of Yoga see Michael W. Meister, Art and Hindu asceticism: iva and
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Vishu as masters of Yoga, in Explorations in art and archaeology of South Asia: essays dedicated to N. G. Majumdar, ed. Debala Mitra (Calcutta: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal, 1996), pp. 31521, pls. 22.1.3. 7 Angelika Malinar, Yoga Practices in the Bhagavadgt, in Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 6162. 8 Malinar, Yoga Practices, p. 59. 9 Bhagavadgt 11. 20, 24. 10 Here, the artist is drawing upon longstanding iconographic traditions that link multiple limbs with cosmic creation to illustrate the manifold arms, bellies, mouths and eyes of Ka Vivarpa; Bhagavadgt 11.16. For more on multiplicity, see Doris Srinivasan, Many Heads, Arms and Eyes: Origin, Meaning, and Form of Multiplicity in Indian Art, Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology 20 (1997). 11 Bhagavadgt 11.24; for a discussion of Kas vivarpa forms, see Angelica Malinar, The Bhagavadgt: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 16387. 12 Malinar, The Bhagavadgt, pp. 18283, observes that visualizing Ka by reciting the Gt or worshiping sculptures and paintings became of central importance in later bhakti traditions. On the Vaiava devotionalism that swept north Indian courts, see Patton E. Burchett, Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvhs, Rmnands, and Nths, circa 15001700 (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012), pp. 3459. 13 Ka is variously the supreme deity or a form of Viu with different Vaiava traditions. See, for example, Srinivasan, Many Heads, Arms and Eyes, pp. 134, 24059. 14 For more on Nth Siddhas and Maharaja Man Singh, who became a devotee of the Siddha Jallandharnth and a great patron and political ally of the Nth order, see cats. 4ac and 11b; for the paintings sociopolitical context, see Diamond, Garden and Cosmos, pp. 3141. 15 The painting was burnished by rubbing the verso with a stone to fuse the pigments, which increases the shine and emphasizes the atness of the surface. Catalogue 11 Selected publications include Stella Kramrisch, Manifestations of Shiva (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1981), p. 232, cat. P-58; Linda Y. Leach, Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1986), cat. 134. Selected publications include Jackie Menzies, Goddess: Divine Energy (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2006), p. 83, cat. 115. Pratapaditya Pal, Arts of Kashmir (Florence: Conti Tricolors, 2007), p. 165, g. 179. Selected publications include Debra Diamond, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008), p. 290, g. 44b. Its earliest foundations lie in the Khaka Upaniad (third century BCE), which posits the essential sameness of the individual with brahman and introduces the physiological
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construct of channels (ns) that carry vital breath through the body. Between the fth and nineteenth centuries, increasingly complex conceptions of the subtle body were articulated within yogic traditions. Common to all haha systems are techniques that arouse the latent energy, the goddess Kualin, lying coiled at the perineum. The yogi raises Kualin up a central channel (suum n) that runs parallel to the spine. As Kualin pierces each chakra, gross matter transforms into subtler essence, reversing the natural tendency toward decay and death. With each transformation, the yogi reaches a higher plane of spiritual awareness and the ability to control the gross matter associated with that energy center. According to the SSP, in the early years, the adept learns to y, see, and hear over great distances; in the middle years, he overcomes disease and becomes immortal; in the penultimate year, he experiences the oneness of the universal macrocosm with his own body; and in the twelfth year, he becomes even greater than the gods. For portraits of Raja Mandhata, see W. G. Archer, Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills, vol. 2 (London and New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1973), p. 303, nos. 5 and 6. James Mallinson, in conversation with the author, December 14, 2013, noted that the three granthis originate with the vyu (breath or wind) technique, which predates the chakras of the subtle body. As evidenced by classic haha yoga treatises, including the Goraksasataka, Amaraughaprabodha, Yogabja, and Amrtasiddhi, the granthis were subsequently adopted into the breath techniques of pranayama. The Nurpur painting (cat. 11a) depicts one of the many haha yogic systems of three granthis that are identied as Brahma, Viu, and Rudra. Tantric works often include these three within larger sets of twelve (e.g., Netratantra, 7.22.25) or sixteen granthis (e.g., Kubjikmatatantra, 17.61.84). The three deities appear in these same locations on the subtle body in a loose folio from an unidentied manuscript from Chamba (Himachal Pradesh), circa 1675, 20.63 x 10.16 cm, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.81.530. James Mallinson, Nath Sampradaya, in Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Volume 3, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 426, dates it to the early eighteenth century. These attainments are identied in the SSP with the second (svdhhna), eighth (nirva) and ninth and highest (ka) chakras, respectively. The small black circle also appears twice to represent the unmanifest universe and individual body on the rst folio of the manuscript (Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2373). The scrolls style and rada script indicate its production in Kashmir for an as-yet-unidentied client. A similar Kashmiri scroll dated to the 1800s in the Ajit Mookerjee collection of the National Museum of India (82.533) is reproduced in Menzies, Goddess Divine Energy, p. 182, g. 114. Two other contemporaneous Jodhpur representations of the mldhra chakra with the same iconography, one elaborately painted and the
other schematic, are reproduced in Diamond, Garden and Cosmos, pp. 18891, g. 44, and p. 290, g. 44a. 14 It is known as both the maipura (jewel city) and nbhi (navel) chakra. 15 See, for example, Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice, 3rd ed. (Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press, 2008), pp. 35355. Catalogue 12 Selected publications include Geeti Sen, Paintings from the Akbar Nama (Lustre Press, 1984), p. 106, g. 43; James Mallinson, Yoga & Yogs, in Nmarpa: Categories of Indian Thought 3, no. 15 (March 2012), pp. 16, 17, 25 (details); Susan Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor: The Art of the Book 15601660 (London: V&A Publications, 2002), pp. 5253, pl. 35. Selected publications include Sen, Paintings from the Akbar Nama, p. 107, g. 44; Mallinson, Yoga & Yogs, p. 15; Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor, pp. 5253, pl. 35. William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 68, 60103, provides the denitive overview of how armed asceticism developed in relation to Indias shifting military landscapes between 1500 and 1900. Abul Fazl, Akbarnama, trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta, 190239), vol. 2, pp. 42324. A large detail from the version of the Thaneshwar battle in the collection of the Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library, Patna, is published in Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 31, g. 2. The term kur that appears in Abul Fazls text is typically interpreted as a reference to the Giri order because gir and kur are very similar in Persian script; Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 42. Akbar can also be recognized through a yak-tail ywhisk, the round imperial standard above his head, a suitably supplicating courtier with outstretched arms, and his relative isolation in space. A Portuguese account of 1503, which William Pinch notes is the rst European account of armed yogis, describes how militant ascetics from Surat (Gujarat) wielded the chakra: Others carry certain iron diskes [sic] which cut all round like razors, and they throw these with a sling when they wish to injure any person. The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema (15038) cited in Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 61, n. 4. Several clearly identiable aiva Nths wearing black robes and hats or necklaces strung with cloth strips appear in the scene as observers. An orange-robed ascetic with a Vaiava tilak wielding a trident in the left folio may indicate that tridents served as non-sectarian weapons as well as aiva emblems. See Yogs in Mughal India in this catalogue and Yogic Identities: Tradition and Transformation at www.asia.si.edu/research/ articles, both essays by James Mallinson. For an earlier identication of the Thaneshwar combatants as aiva Puris and aiva Nths, see Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 43.
Catalogue 13 Selected publications include Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol. 1 (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), p. 191, g. 2.40. A highly engaging study of the Yoga Vsiha narratives is Wendy Doniger OFlaherty, Dreams, Illusion and Other Realities (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984). A clear and accurate discussion of the philosophy of the Yoga Vsiha may be found in the English-language summary presented in Franois Chenet, Psychogense et cosmogonie selon le Yoga-Vsiha: Le monde est dans lme, Publications de lInstitut de Civilisation Indienne, 67.1-2 (Paris: De Boccard, 199899), vol. 1, pp. 923 For more on the translation of the Yoga Vsiha at the Mughal court and within the context of Islamic knowledge, see Carl W. Ernst, Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Persian and Arabic Translations from Sanskrit, Iranian Studies 36 (2003), pp. 17395. Yoga Vsiha V. 66-69, cited in Christopher Key Chapple, The Sevenfold Yoga of the Yogavsiha in Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 132. Keshav Das, also known as Kesu the Elder and Kesu Das, was ranked fth in Abul Fazls list of the best painters in Akbars atelier. He worked for Akbar circa 157099, and then for Prince Salim, 15991604. Amina Okada, Keshav Das, Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), p. 153. Catalogue 14 Selected publications include Milo Beach, ed. Masters of India Painting Vol. II, 16501900 (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), text: p. 692, no. 20c, image: p. 710, g. 22. Selected publications include an article by Monika Horstmann, Kabr: Heiliger Dichter aus Nordindien, in Mystik: Die Sehnsucht nach dem Absoluten, ed. Albert Lutz (Zurich: Museum Rietberg and Scheidegger & Spiess, 2011), pp. 195203, esp. p. 202, g. 93. Selected publications include Ellen Smart, Paintings from the Baburnama: A Study of Sixteenth-Century Mughal Historical Manuscript Illustrations (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1977); S. I. Tuliaev, Miniatures of Babur Namah (Moscow: State Fine Arts Publishing House, 1960); Ellen Smart, Yet Another Illustrated Akbari Baburnama Manuscript, in Facets of Indian Art, ed. Robert Skelton (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986), pp. 10515; M. S. Randhawa, Paintings of the Baburnama (New Delhi, 1983). Selected publications include Joan Cummins, Indian Painting: From Cave Temples to the Colonial Period (Boston: MFA Publications, 2006), pp. 13435, g. 73. Selected publications incldue Andrew Topseld, Paintings from Rajasthan in the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1980), pp. 7375, cat. 76. Bhagavad Gita 6.11. The Mughals built upon a tradition of portraying landscapes inherited largely from Safavid Iran
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and local South Asian schools. For discussions of this inheritance, see, for example, John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2002); and for the development of landscape painting under Akbars successors, see Ebba Koch, Dara-shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1998) and Milo C. Beach, Ebba Koch, and W. M. Thackston, King of the World: The Padshahnama: An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (Washington, DC and London: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Windsor Castle, 1997). See g. 5 in Yoga: The Art of Transformation by Debra Diamond in this volume. See From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India by Tamara I. Sears in this volume. One reason for the scarcity of such images is logistical: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, imperial artists focused on those ascetics, such as Nths, who moved easily within Mughal environs; they would have had less access to the retreats of female ascetics. However, highly idealized and romanticized images of yogins and womens ashrams became a popular trope in Mughal painting in the latter half of the eighteenth century when direct observation was less of an artistic concern (see, for example, cats. 18fh). For further discussion of why Mughal visual cuture privileged particular ascetic groups, see James Mallinson, Yogic Identities: Tradition and Transformation, www.asia.si.edu/research/ articles. The Walters fragmentary copy of the Baburnma, originally composed in Chaghatay Turkish and later translated into Persian under Akbar, contains thirty full-page paintings. Another large fragment of the same manuscript is preserved in the State Museum of Eastern Cultures, Moscow; see Tuliaev, Miniatures of Babur Namah. Other sixteenth-century interpretations of Baburs visit to Gurkattri survive in copies of the Baburnma preserved in the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, both in London. See Baburs references to Gurkattri in W. M. Thackston, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1996), pp. 18687, 285. Gurkattri is depicted in the British Librarys Baburnma, Or. 3714, The Holy Men at Gurkhatri (f. 197r) and Baburs Second Trip to Gor Khatri (reproduced in Smart, Paintings from the Baburnama, pp. 80, 87), and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, I.M. 260-1913, The Yogis at Gurkhatri (reproduced in Smart, p. 47). For important new insights into the Persian translations of Sanskrit texts and their illustrated manuscripts during Akbars reign, see Audrey Trushcke, The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the Sanskrit Mahbhrata, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31, no. 2, pp. 50619, and Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012); Yael
Rice, A Persian Mahbhrata: The 15981599 Razmnama, Manoa, 2010, pp. 12531. 14 For more on Nths in general and this painting, see James Mallinson, Yogis in Mughal India in this volume, and Yogic Identities at www.asia. si.edu/research/articles. 15 Shymaldas, Vir Vinod, vol. 2, p. 764. I am grateful to Sonika Soni for locating and translating this reference. 16 Shymaldas, p. 764, identies Guru Purim and Rakabandhan as the two festivals. 17 An eight-line Rajasthani inscription on the reverse describes the event. Catalogue 15 1 The Kedra Kalpa appears to have been a oating text, and might well have originated in the Kedarnatha region in what is now the Uttarakhand state. My wife Karuna and I have been working on this text and were the rst to establish a connection between it and the series of paintings referred to here, thus putting to rest widely varying speculations about their subjects made by other scholars; we have been able to access two versions of it, both now printed. The one we located rst was without a cover; had a one-page introduction in Hindi by Jwala Prasad Mishra of Dindarpura, Moradabad; and consisted of 200 pages, the last one giving an address in Mumbai from where it could be purchased. It contained a translation of the Sanskrit verses in Hindi. The other version, which differs from the rst one in several respects, was simply titled Kedra Kalpa ; the translator and commentator was Vishalmani Sharma Upadhyaya. It was published in VS 2009 (1952 CE) at Narayankoti, Garhwal and consists of 320 pages. 2 Clues lie in the strong, rich palette; the types of men and women seen in the paintings; that coloring takes precedence over drawing, which shows occasional weaknesses, as in the lax movements of the women dancers; the treatment of foliage with its emphasis on lush oral sprays streaming down from branches; the rendering of the thin ngers of the hands when they are held spread out. It needs to be said that there was not much likelihood of coming and going between the two places, Kangra and Kedarnatha. The members of the Purkhu family artists most certainly were familiar with the Dhauladhar range, which rises behind Dharamsala and are likely to have based their reconstruction of the Kedara landscape on the snowbound peaks they were able to see from their own homes. There is an odd chance that someone may have gone on pilgrimage to Kedarnatha/Badrinath, although the landscapes they created in this series is fairly clearly based on imagination. Catalogue 16 Selected publications include Indian Miniature Painting, to be exhibited for sale by Spink and Son Ltd. (London: Spink and Son, 1987), pp. 3839, no. 16; S. Kossak, Indian Court Painting, 16th19th Centuries (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), p. 52, no. 23; S. C. Welch, The two worlds of Payagfurther evidence on a Mughal artist, in Indian Art and Connoisseurship, ed. J. Guy (New Delhi: Mapin, 1995), pp. 32041,
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pl. 19, p. 293; The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Part Two: Arts of India, Sothebys sale catalogue, London, May 31, 2011, lot 5, pp. 1417; N. Haidar, Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 20102012, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, fall 2012, p. 32. See Welch, The two worlds of Payag, pp. 292, 333, gs. 9, 10, and pl. 19 as convincing evidence for the attribution. See Yoga in Transformation by David Gordon White in this volume. From evidence in early Mughal manuscripts, including an Akbar-period Dev Mhtmya series from circa 1565, and more remotely from longstanding Indian sculptural traditions. B. N. Goswamy, An Akbar-period Dev Mhtmya, in Arts of Mughal India, ed. Rosemary Crill, Susan Stronge, and Andrew Topseld (London and Ahmedabad, India: Victoria and Albert Museum and Mapin, 2004), pp. 5766. The painting contains Mewar inventory numbers on the reverse. The numerals in red (14/45?) correspond to the category of religious or mythological subjects in the jotdan (royal painting store). Andrew Topseld, The Royal Paintings Inventory at Udaipur, in Indian Art and Connoisseurship, pp. 19495. Mahavidya goddesses are a group of Tantric deities, ranging in number from ten to eighteen. Welch, The two worlds of Payag, p. 332. N. Haidar, The Kishangarh School of Painting, c. 16801650, (DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1995), vol. 1, p. 34; K. Khandalava and E. Dickinson, Kishangarh Painting (New Delhi: Lalit Kala, Akademi 1959), p. 6, also makes mention of this. Welch, The two worlds of Payag, pp. 292, 333, gs. 9, 10, and pl. 19. A sense of temporality is also conveyed in the siege scenes from the Windsor Padshahnama, cited by Welch, showing various stages, from warring soldiers to dead bodies to skeletons. The overall impression conveyed is that of a lengthy siege having taken place over time. For related scenes, see The New Holstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 14501700: The Collaert Dynasty, Part 2 (Amsterdam: Sound and Vision Publishers, 2005), p. 126 (350/1), p. 127 (351/1); Maarten de Vos, vol. 45, p. 228 (676), The Wierix Family, vol. 60, part 2, pp. 340, 347. It appears to be related to Govardhans seminude gure in the foreground of an earlier album page depicting a group of sadhus in a smoky landscape. Welch, The two worlds of Payag, p. 336. M. Ekhtiar et al., eds., Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011), p. 350, illustrates a folio from the Harivaa showing Ka with this same subtle treatment of eyes. The folio shows the defeat of Dhumralochan; Goswamy, An Akbar-period Dev Mhtmya, pp. 5766. The same pair of demons is shown in the reference above, p. 60, g. 4. S. C. Welch et al., The Emperors Album: Images of Mughal India (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987), p. 203, no. 59, illustrates Payags equestrian portrait
of Shah Jahan, bearing an almost identical sword, and with a halo of light around the tip of the spear. Catalogue 17 Selected publications that discuss the manuscript include Debra Diamond, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art, 2008), pp. 2130; 11836; Bisheshwar Nath Reu, Rmyana k Kath (Jodhpur: Sardar Museum, 1934). Selected publications include John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in India (London and Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art, 2002), pp. 16869, g. 54; and Steven Kossak, Indian Court Painting 16th19th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), pp. 3233, cat. 7. Selected publications include Heike Franke, Akbars Kathsaritsgara: The Translator and Illustrations of an Imperial Manuscript, in Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World, vol. 27, ed. Gulru Necipoglu (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 31356, see p. 315, g. 7; Joseph Dye, The Arts of India (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2001) p. 24244, cat. 81b. Selected publications include Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), vol. 1, p. 201; image: p. 206, cat. 2.53. Selected publications include Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, p. 201; image: p. 209, cat. 2.56. Selected publications include Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, p. 201; image: p. 211, cat. 2.57. Selected publications include Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, p. 205; image: p. 215, cat. 2.64. Tulsds titled his work the Rmcharitmnas, or the Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama; it is often referred to as the Tuls Rmyana or the Mnas. Even during the poets lifetime, itinerant holy men spread Tulsdss verses from Varanasi in eastern India, where it was composed, to Rajasthan. For more on ascetic spies, from the Arthastra, a second-century Sanskrit treatise on kingship, to a seventeenth-century account by the Venetian Niccolao Manucci, see William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 4651; see also C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 17801870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), passim. A royal spy in the guise of a seedy Tantric yogi is featured in one of the stories in the Jain Yaastilaka, dated 959, cited in Shaman Hatley, Goddesses in Text and Stone: Temples of the Yogins in Light of Tantric and Puric Literature, in History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, ed. Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann(London: Routledge, forthcoming). Abul Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett, with corrections by Jadunath
10
Sarkar (repr. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1989), vol. 2, p. 40, cited in Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 46 and p. 47, n. 41. 12 For more on the context, production and artists of the Hamzanama, see Seyller, Adventures of Hamza. 13 The related text for this episode is lost. Although an inscription on the painting identies the setting as the grocers home, it is more likely the lodge (maha) of Parran the spy. See, for example, the similar architecture and hanging weapons of the lodge of Baba Bakhsha, a militant ascetic and yogi-spy, in another Hamzanama folio (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna, 8.1, 8770/59; reproduced in Seyller, Adventures of Hamza, pp. 19899, g. 64). 14 Dervishes were cast as wily spies in Arabic (and Persian) tales. Peter Health. Ayyar: the Companion, Spy, Scoundrel in Premodern Arabic Popular Narratives, Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on his 65th Birthday Presented by his Students and Colleagues, ed. Beatrice Gruendler (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008). I am grateful to Zeynep Simavi for drawing this source to my attention. 15 The seventeenth-century traveler Jean Baptiste Tavernier identied armed ascetics carrying a sort of hunting horn as dervishes. William Pinch interprets Taverniers account as illustrative of the phenomenon of armed yogis who had accommodated themselves culturally, linguistically, and militarily to Mughal service. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, p. 68 and n. 19. 16 See Yoga in Transformation by David Gordon White in this volume. 17 James Mallinson, The Ocean of the Rivers of Story by Somadeva (New York: New York University Press & JCC Foundation, 2009), vol. 2, pp. 28190, verses 5.3.195-5.3.255. Jalapadas name may be a corruption of Jalandhar, an advanced adept in both Buddhist and Nath traditions. In the story, Jalapada is described as a kplika who performs the great vow (mahvrata), rites (kraam) associated with gaining control over others, and worships Bhairava. 18 Heike Franke identies the manuscripts patron, previously considered to be subimperial, as Akbar in Akbars Kathsaritsgara, pp. 31356. 19 The Mgvat includes explicit references to the princes-turned-yogis Bharthari and Mdhavnala. Aditya Behl, Qutban Suhravards Mgvat: The Magic Doe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 138, verse 267; see also nn. 142, 172. 20 Behl, Qutban Suhravards Mgvat, p. 81, verse 106. 21 Behl, Qutban Suhravards Mgvat, p. 24. Catalogue 18 Selected publications include John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: The Freer Ramayana and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of Abd al-Rahim (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1999); Christies catalogue, November 22 and 23, 1984. 2 Selected publications include Stuart C. Welch, India: Art and Culture 13001900 (New York: 1
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312 | ENDNOTES, PP. 196214
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), p. 342; Deborah Swallow and John Guy, eds. Arts of India: 15501900 (London: V&A Publications, 1990), p. 133, pl. 114; Andrew Topseld, The Indian Heritage: Court Life and Arts under Mughal Rule (London: V&A Publications, 1982), p. 57, cat. 138. 3 Selected publications include Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), p. 676, cat. 6.277. 4 Selected publications include Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, p. 677, cat. 6.284. 5 Selected publications include Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, p. 672, cat. 6.272. 6 For an exceptionally lucid, extended explanation of rgas and rginis, see Joep Bor, The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas (Rotterdam: Nimbus Communications, 1999). To date, the denitive text on illustrated rgamls remains Klaus Ebeling, Ragamala Painting (New Delhi: Ravi Kumar, 1973). 7 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 130. 8 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 142. 9 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 126. 10 Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari III, trans. Colonel H. S. Jarrett (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint, 1978), p. 263. 11 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Laud Or. 149. Molly Emma Aitken, The Laud Rgaml Album, Bikaner, and the Sociability of Subimperial Painting, Archives of Asian Art (forthcoming). 12 British Museum, 1973,0917,0. 156. 13 Francesca Orsini, Krishna is the Truth of Man: Mir Abdul WahidBilgramis Haqiq-i Hind (Indian Truths) and the circulation of dhrupad and bishnupad, Culture and Circulation: Mobility and Diversity in Premodern Literature, ed. Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch (forthcoming). 14 Carl W. Ernst, Situating Susm and Yoga, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 1 (April 2005), pp. 1543. 15 Katherine Schoeld, Hindustani Music in the Time of Aurangzeb, (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003), p. 192. Catalogue 19 Selected publications include Milo C. Beach, Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India 1600 1660 (Williamstown, MA: Clark Art Institute, 1978), cat. no. 22. Facing folios of calligraphy alternate with paired paintings throughout each Mughal albums. The central paintings are strategically placed off center so that the borders appear of equal width when the album is opened and the viewed. See Yogis in Mughal India by James Mallinson in this volume for a more detailed discussion of the sectarian orders depicted in this painting. David J. Roxborough, The Persian Album 14001600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), passim. Sunil Sharma, Representation of Social Groups in Mughal Art and Literature: Ethnography or Trope? in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition, ed. Alka Patel and Karen Leonard, Brills Indological Library, vol. 38 (2011), pp. 1736, passim.
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Jahangirnama, p. 209, 285, 31314. Chitrup/ Jadrup, who was visited by other Mughal courtiers and many Sus, enters recorded history in several Persian language accounts that together provide a remarkably detailed biography. A jewelers son from Gujarat on Indias west coast, he lived from approximately 1559 to 1638. After marriage and children, at the age of twenty-two, he became a renunciant. As a yogi, he practiced austerities, and pryma (breath control) at several sites in North India, mostly along the Ganges. Reputed to have magical powers, he died at about the age of eighty in Varanasi. The Dabistn is the only text that names his order, explaining that Dandaheri yogis follow the teachings of Shankaracharya, wear dreadlocks, and smear ash on their bodies. See Muhsin Fn, The Dabistn, or School of Manners, vol. 2, ed. D. Shea and A. Troyer (Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843), pp. 14248. Wheeler M. Thackston, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 209, 285, 31314. Shireen Moosvi, The Mughal Encounter with Vedanta: Recovering the Biography of Jadrup, Social Scientist (2002), pp. 1223. 8 The paintings are: Portrait of Gosain Jadrup, private collection, Ajmer; published in Coomaraswamy, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, July 1919, pp. 38991. See also M. Abdulla Chaghtai, Emperor Jahangirs interviews with Gosain Jadrup and his portraits, Islamic Culture, vol. 36 (1962), pp. 11930. Jahangir Visiting the Ascetic Jadrup, folio from Jahangirnama, Muse Guimet, no. 7171. Selected publications include Milo C. Beach, B. N. Goswamy, and Ellen Fischer, eds., Masters of India Painting I (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), pp. 32628. Akbar Visits the Hindu Saint Jadrup, circa 162530, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Art Museums, 1937.20.1. Selected publications include Rochelle Kessler, In the Company of the Enlightened: Portraits of Mughal Rulers and Holy Men, Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art (Cambridge, MA: Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 2002), pp. 1742. Unknown, ca. 1650. Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.94-1965. Selected publications include Elinor W. Gadon, Dara Shikohs mystical vision of Hindu-Muslim synthesis, in Facets of Indian Art: A Symposium Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. Robert Skelton, Andrew Topseld, Susan Stronge, and Rosemary Crill (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986, pp. 15357.
Catalogue 20 Around 1600, European nations such as Great Britain and the Netherlands formed joint-stock East India Companies, comprised of shareholders invested in trade abroad, including India. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, however, the British East India Company became a governing body as well as a commercial enterprise. British East India Company rule was transferred to the British government, known as the Raj, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. 2 The European desire to collect, catalogue, and 1
study the peoples and objects of every known culture is a prime factor of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century intellectual movement, the Enlightenment. For an overview see Kim Sloan, ed., Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003). See also cats. 22ag regarding an example of the extensive European print tradition regarding ascetics. 3 Mildred Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992), pp. 1119. Archer denes Company painting as painting by Indian artists who worked for European patrons or the tourist trade and adapted European visual techniques and genres into their works. I am using an expanded denition that includes British as well as Indian artists who similarly adapted their techniques and subject matter. 4 David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), chap. 1 and pp. 23640; and Francis Pritchett, Marvelous Encounters: Folk Romance in Urdu and Hindi (Riverdale, MD: Riverdale Company, 1985), p. 21. 5 See Yogis in Mughal India by James Mallinson in this volume. Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 18011835 (London: Cassell, 1989), p. 123; and Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, ed. William Dalrymple and Yuthika Sharma (New York: Asia Society, 2012). 6 Archer and Falk, India Revealed, pp. 9 and 40. 7 Carl W. Ernst, Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages, Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2003), p. 189. 8 Ernst, Muslim Studies, p. 189, and Norah M. Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings from Persia, India and Turkey in the British Library and British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1977), p. 156, no. 372. 9 See cat. 5.70 in Anna L. Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings: A Catalogue of the British Museums Collections (London: British Museum Press, 2010), p. 90. For an overview of Bhairava in South Asian literary history, see David Gordon White, At the Mandalas Dark Fringe: Possession and Protection in Tantric Bhairava Cults in Notes from a Mandala: Essays in the History of Indian Religions in Honor of Wendy Doniger, ed. Laurie L. Patton and David L. Haberman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010). 10 T. Richard Blurton, Hindu Art, (London: British Museum Press, 1992), p. 89, g.50. 11 White, Sinister Yogis, p. 197. 12 Carl W. Ernst, Accounts of yogis in Arabic and Persian historical and travel texts, in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007), pp. 41921; and White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 23640. Further, the famous story of Ciruttontar, or the Little Devotee, in South India, where this painting was produced, stresses the malleability of the ascetic-god: the Little Devotee sacrices his son at the request of a hungry ascetic who is actually the god Bhairava. See David Shulman, The Hungry God: Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chap. 1; and White, Sinister Yogis, pp. 3337.
13 Kala Bhairava is one of ninety-one paintings of Indian deities identied by Telegu inscription, including visual maps of the principal pilgrimage sites of this period and the murtis (sculptures) housed within. See Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings, p. 74. 14 An almost identical album is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IM 355-1923 to 454-1923). For this information and a detailed provenance of the British Museum album, see Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings, pp. 5556 and 74. 15 For a discussion of tapas, see cats. 7ac, Austerities. 16 See Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings, p. 39, for a detailed explanation of the poses. 17 See Charles Gold, Oriental Drawings (London: Bunney and Co., 1806); Asiatic Costumes Drawn by Captn. R. Smith 44th. Regt. (1826), Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund; and online collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, and British Library. 18 Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings, p. 37. 19 Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., A Portrait of the Hindus: Balthazar Solvyns & the European Image of India 17601824 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 32425; and James Mallinson, Nth Sapradya in Encyclopedia of Religions, volume 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 20 Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, pp. 32425. Solvyns rst published this print in his 250 etchings in Calcutta in 1799. Edward Orme pirated the book and published it as Costume of Hindostan in London in 1807. Solvyns then republished it again in Paris, as Les Hindous, from 1808 to 1812. 21 Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, pp. 32425. The 1808 to 1812 Les Hindous text describes the women offering the avadhuta a linga kiss, which Solvyns described as the manner in which this homage is paid is so disgusting and indecent, that delicacy forbids to describe it. The controversy over depicting this is seen in Picart and his engraving Diverses Pagodes et Penitences des Faquirs. See cats. 22ag and Robert J. Del Bont, From Herodotus Onwards: Descriptions of Unidentied Jainas in Jaina Law and Society, ed. Peter Fluegel (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013). 22 Balthazar Solvyns, Proposals for Publishing, Calcutta Gazette, 1794. See Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 37. 23 See Christopher Pinney, Photography and Anthropology (London: Reaktion, 2011). For example, in his copy of Solvyns (now in the Wellcome Collection, 49015), the nineteenth-century Calcutta merchant Gabriel Gillett noted how many of each type of servant he employed in his home. Catalogue 21 Madras Journal of Literature and Science 7 (April September 1858), p.173. The nal text is a composite of the writings of J. W. Kaye, John R. Melville, and Captain Meadows Taylor. As a result, it is not currently possible to attribute authors to individual entries. Though notes by photographic contributors accompanied many of the prints to London, it remains unknown as to what degree they were consulted during the drafting of the text.
Photographers whose work did not make it in time for the 1862 exhibition: Reverend E. Godfrey and James Waterhouse (Central India), Shepherd & Robertson (Bharatpur), Benjamin Simpson (Nagpur, Sikkim, and Bhutan), Dr. Tressider (Northwest provinces), Captain Fitzmaurice and Lieutenant R. H. De Montmorency (Oudh), T. T. Davies (Hazara), Captain Houghton and Lieutenant Tanner (Bombay and Sind) as well as anonymous material from various sources. Other credited photographers for the photographs are J. C. A. Dannenberg, W. W. Hooper, Captain H. C. McDonald, James Mulheran, Captain Oakes, Reverend G. Richter, Dr. B. W. Switzer, C. C Taylor, and Eugene Clutterbuck Impey. The reason for the shift lay at least partly in a string of unfortunate events, including the bankruptcy of the publishing rm Day & Company and subsequent loss of most of the last two volumes in a re. For an account on the publishing history of The People of India, see John Falconer, A Pure Labor of Love: A Publishing History of The People of India, inColonialist Photography: Imagining Race and Place (New York: Routledge, 2002). For a discussion on the formation of photography and anthropology, see Elizabeth Edwards,Anthropology and Photography: 18601920(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). The plates had to be sensitized, exposed, and developed on location before the collodion dried and became impermeable to the processing solution For a detailed account of photographic processes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Bertrand Lavdrine,Photographs of the Past: Process and Preservation(Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2009). Disderis method could produce eight individually exposed images on a collodion wet-plate negative. After printing, each image is cut out and mounted to a card measuring roughly 21/2 4 inches. The larger quarter-plate format known as the cabinet card was introduced circa 1863 and measures 41/4 61/2 inches. William C. Darrah, Cartes De Visite in Nineteenth Century Photography (Gettysburg, PA: W. C. Darrah, 1981), p. 4. Unlike most commercial studios of the period, Bourne & Shepherd did market their images as individually numbered negatives under the set title Groups of Native Character. Catalogue 22 See cats. 7ac, Austerities. During the colonial period, the denition of yogis (Hindu) and fakirs (Muslim) changed and often did not differentiate between sect and religion. See Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 36. Bernard Picart, Crmonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde ..., 7 vols. (Amsterdam: J. F. Bernard, 172337). In the French edition, volumes 3 (1723) and 4 (1728) relate to India. The India volumes are sometimes independently labeled volumes 1 and 2 with a separate title, Crmonies et coutumes
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religieuses des Peuples Idolatres, as is the case with the volume discussed here. The English translation was published a decade later as The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World , 7 vols. (London: William Jackson and Claude Dubosc, 173339). In the English edition, volumes 3 (1734) and 4 (1733) relate to India. In this essay, I will reference the English translation. Dutch and German editions were also published, among others. Picart, vol. 4, (London, 1733), pp. 46. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Paris, 1679), livre troisieme, chapitre VI, pp. 41923. Though Picarts engraving is primarily based on Taverniers, he added gures possibly copied from Indian paintings in the collection of the Italian Conte Abate Giovanni Antonio Baldini (16541725), notably the central Jain gure with a cloth over his mouth and a broom and the sadhus feeding birds. Other gures, such as the kneeling woman giving an ascetic a liga kiss, were removed from the English and French Catholic editions of Picarts print. See Robert J. Del Bont, From Herodotus Onwards: Descriptions of Unidentied Jainas in Jaina Law and Society, ed. Peter Fluegel (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013). See also Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernards Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 22831; Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, Religionsbilder der frhen Aufklrung (Wabern: Benteli, 2006), p. 189; and R. W. Lightbown, Oriental Art and the Orient in Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 32 (1969), pp. 26579. Picart, vol. 4, pp. 78, the prints key, and Tavernier (1679), pp. 41923. Picart, vol. 4, p. 6, and vol. 3, p. 397. For an example of shoes full of nails, see the pair of fakirs sandals in the Wellcome Library collection (Science Museum A23375). Picart, vol. 3, pp. 39698 and vol. 4, pp. 46; Hunt, pp. 22634; and David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 21112. Jonathan Duncan, An Account of Two Fakeers, With their Portraits in Asiatic Researches 5 (London: J. Sewell, 1799), pp. 3752. For a reproduction of the original watercolor see Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Wonder: Indian Painting During the British Period (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1978), pp. 8081. Similar to the colonial trope of the bed of nails, the image and description of the ascetic with raised arms (rdhvabhu) was repeated in colonial publications from the seventeenth century onward, such as in Tavernier (1679, p. 423) and in another engraving by Picart after Tavernier. See also Balthazar Solvyns, A Collection descriptive of the manners, customs and dresses of the Hindoos (Calcutta, 1799). Duncan, An Account of Two Fakeers, pp. 3752. In early Indian literature, the bed of thorns (kaaka-aya) is included in a list of austerities that a group of jvikas practiced as told in the circa rst-century BC Naguhajtaka (Jtaka,
4 vols., ed. V. Faussell [London: Trbner & Co., 187787], vol. 1, p. 493), and as an austerity practiced by hermits in the Vaikhnasasmrtastra, circa fourtheighth century CE (W. Caland, Vaikhnasasmrtastram [Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1929]). I thank James Mallinson for these references. 13 For the relationship between Bhma and the bed of arrows, see Francesco Brighenti, Hindu Devotional Ordeals and their Shamanic Parallels, Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 19, no. 4 (2012), pp. 6769. 14 See Solvyns, A Collection; Charles Gold, Oriental Drawings (London: Bunney and Co., 1806); Missionary Register for 1819 (London: L. B. Seeley, 1819), pp. 27782; and The World in Miniature: Hindoostan, vol. 2, ed. Frederic Schoberl (London: R. Ackermann, 1822), pp. 20712. 15 Encyclopaedia Londinensis, vol. 10 (London: J. Adlard, 1811), pp. 14748. 16 Encyclopaedia Londinensis, p. 151. 17 See also White, Sinister Yogis, p. 201. 18 White, Sinister Yogis, p. 223. White also postulates that Europeans interacted with itinerant ascetics in public places that drew beggars, which differed from the Mughal experience. For example, Sus would have interacted with religious orders such as the Nth Yogis, and Mughal bureaucrats would have brokered with militant yogis in monasteries or troops (pp. 200201). 19 William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 82103, 211. 20 Christopher J. Lucas, ed., James Ricaltons Photographic Travelogue of Imperial India (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), preface. A stereograph consists of two slightly dissimilar images that merge into 3D when viewed through a stereoscope. 21 James Ricalton, India through the Stereoscope (New York: Underwood & Underwood, 1907), p. 164. 22 For another example of photography and ascetics, including a bed of nails, see John Campbell Omans The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (1903), pp. 4546. Oman similarly wavered in his judgment of ascetics as devout or deceitful, and placed the ascetic on a bed of nails in the latter category of the showman at a fair. For a later iteration of such trickery in song, see the discussion on Johnny Mercers The Yogi Who Lost His Willpower (cat. 23e). 23 Bishop J. M. Thoburn, The Christian Conquest of India, edited under the auspices of the Young Peoples Missionary Movement (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1906), pp. 12122. See also C. V. Vickrey, The Young Peoples Missionary Movement (New York, 1906). 24 See A. J. D. Campbells report in the curatorial les for IS.196-1949, Victoria and Albert Museum. I thank Rosemary Crill for this information. 25 See Susan S. Bean, The Unred Clay Sculpture of Bengal in the Artscape of Modern South Asia in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, ed. Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 60428; Charlotte H. F. Smith and Michelle Stevenson, Modeling Cultures: 19th Century Indian Clay Figures in
Museum Anthropology 33, no. 1 (2010), pp. 3748; Carol A. Breckenridge, Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs in Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 31, no. 2 (1989), pp. 195216. Earlier European publications also sought to catalogue Indian people, specically Hindus; see for example Solvyns, A Collection and Robert L. Hardgrave, Portrait of the Hindus: Balthazar Solvyns & the European Image of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 26 See Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness by Joseph Alter in this volume. Catalogue 23 Neither Gandhi nor the Kumbh Mela will be discussed here in any detail, given the selective focus of this catalogue on yoga as the art of transformation. But for more on Gandhis cultural resonance with yoga and fakirs, including Winston Churchills disparaging comment half-naked fakir, see Joseph Alter, Gandhis Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). Similarly, the Kumbh Mela is perhaps the geographical referent par excellence as the most recognizable social space occupied by fakirs and yogis, both historically and in contemporary life. No reference to fakirs would be complete without mentioning it as a powerful and recurrent visual symbol of yogis gathering in one place, given the longer history of fakirs in meeting grounds, collective movements, and armed rebellions. See William Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Since the seventeenth century, a string of travelers, sojourners, and colonial traders and administrators have depicted these fakirs visually, individually and in groups, in various journals, travelogues, ethnographic accounts, and colonial compendia of native subjects. Some early examples include works by Balthazar Solvyns, Emily Eden, Edward Eastwick, Reverend Tennant, and Charles DOyly. See cat. 20d in this volume and Michael Sappol, ed. Hidden Treasure (New York: Blast Books, 2012), p. 72. For a fuller, scholarly account, see Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr. A Portrait of the Hindus: Balthazar Solvyns & the European Image of India 17601820 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). See cats. 22ag, Bed of Nails. The roots of this revisionism may lie in the early modern period. Patton E. Burchett has demonstrated how the new bhakti attitudes that emerged in north India after 1600 depended on the successful stigmatization and subordination of key aspects of tantric religiosity as magic. Patton E. Burchett, Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvahas, Ramanandis, and Naths, circa 15001750 (Diss., Columbia University, 2012), p. 4 and passim. One reason for the increasing numbers of fakirs in public places in the late nineteenth century was the criminalization of militant yogis and fakirs and warrior ascetics, especially in northwestern India, by colonial administrators who saw armed yogi orders as disruptive, rebellious
7 8
10
11
12
13
3 4
14
15
elements in trade routes and revenue gathering. David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). See also Pinch, Warrior Ascetics, for the rise and demise of warrior asceticism in North India. See Peter Lamont, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 2008) for more on the rise and fall of the Indian rope trick as reected through the prism of the news mediathe rise as it was reported in the general media, the fall as the illusory trick was rst perpetrated and then denounced in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. See Yoga: The Art of Transformation by Debra Diamond in this catalogue. The yogic equivalents of these acts would be the abilities to enter into and control other bodies which David Gordon White writes about in Sinister Yogis, and the miraculous yogic ability to suspend breathing for long periods, which has in the twentieth century even been subjected to scientic scrutiny and measurement. See Joseph Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) on scientic experiments conducted at the Kaivalyadhama ashram). A variant on this story, in which she is the child of a French woman and an Indian fakir, appears in the 1937 issue of Look, p. 35. For more information, see Vanessa Toulmin, Koringa: From Biknar [sic] to Blackpool, Cabinet, no. 26 (summer 2007); http://cabinetmagazine. org/issues/26/toulmin.php. Magician George Mlis, who became the most famous of the trick lm specialists, was present in the audience when the Lumire brothers rst presented their motion pictures in Paris in 1895, and tried to buy a camera from them on the spot. Raja Harischandra is particularly interesting for the visual history of yoga because it features the sage Vishvamitra (see cat. 7a), the militant yogi par excellence, who is part of the long image history linking warrior ascetics to Hindu nationalists. The aim of this cinema of attractions, as Tom Gunning has dubbed it, was to dazzle audiences with showmanship, exotic images, and the wonders of the new technology of cinema. Gunning uses attractions in the sense of carnival attractions, in contrast to the classical narrative cinema, which tries to create the illusion of a ctional world. For more information, see Tom Gunning, The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde, in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (London: BFI Publishing, 1990). For more on early ethnographic lm, see Alison Grifths, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). We are grateful to curatorial assistant Mekala Krishnan for identifying within the lm Dutts signaturesan exotic temple setting, a distinctive turban, and transforming of his assistant into a moth or levitating her on swordsas outlined in Sarah Dadswell, Jugglers, Fakirs, and Jaduwallahs: Indian Magicians and the
16
17
18
19
British Stage, New Theatre Quarterly 23, no. 1 (February 2007). See Dadswell, Jugglers, Fakirs, and Jaduwallahs, p. 4. The double o spelling of Hindu is a colonial variant that is now considered insulting. See Rob Linrothe, Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas (New York: Serindia Publications and Rubin Museum of Art, 2006). The yogi on sword points recalls both the bed of nails motif common among late nineteenth-century ascetics and fakirs (see cats. 22ag) as well as Bhishma lying on a bed of swords in the middle of the Battle of Kurukshetra, another classic trope in Indian cinema. Non-Indian magicians also falsely claimed Indian heritage to give their acts the frisson of authentic mysticism. The music for the 1941 Paramount lm Youre The One was composed by Jimmy Hugh. Catalogue 24 Elizabeth DeMichelis, A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 4, dates her denition of Modern Yoga (in her usage) from this moment. Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 4, suggests that Vivekanandas synthesis was quite possibly the rst expression of transnational Anglophone yoga. Joseph Alter in Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) traces scientic yogas lineage to Vivekanandas antimysticism, among others. See also Globalized Modern Yoga by Mark Singleton in this volume as well as Stefanie Syman, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2011) for this general argument. See Singleton, Globalized Modern Yoga, for more on transnational Anglophone yoga. The phrase indicates that the works were published in English and had transnational reach beyond Indian shores. David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 369. Alter has an excellent discussion on this point; Yoga in Modern India, p. 7. As Syman notes in The Subtle Body, p. 24, despite these theological differences, Vedantists and other schools have long exploited the Yoga Sutra for centuries for its practical instruction, the techniques providing the main avenues for perceiving spiritual truths. Raja Yoga (1896), p. 18. Raja Yoga is the culminating text through which this message of yoga synthesis was rst laid out in detail, although it was anticipated by similar ideas in his teachings and talks. Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 7374. See Syman, The Subtle Body, chap. 4, Swami Vivekanandas Legacy, pp. 6279. The Theosophical Societys work in India was closely tied to the revival of interest in Vedantic philosophy and thought in the pre-independence era. On the Theosophical Societys role in the
spread of yoga, see Singleton, Globalized Modern Yoga. 10 The Worlds Parliament of Religions was convened as part of the Worlds Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. As Syman notes in The Subtle Body, p. 41, the stated purpose of the exposition was to celebrate the quadricentennial of Columbuss discovery; its tacit one was to outdo the French, whose extravagant Exposition Universelle four years prior had astonished the world. While the exposition was thus an afrmation of American science and industryan index of technical and material progress remarked upon by Vivekanandathe Parliament of Religions set out to nd common ground among the various faiths and to discover what religion could offer for pressing social problems of the day (some caused by the expositions very materialism). 11 Stefanie Syman suggests that this was the real secret of Vivekanandas fame: that he simultaneously fullled and debunked Orientalist stereotypes, allowing his audiences to romanticize him and India without abandoning too many of their cherished ideals; The Subtle Body, p. 44. In contrast, as suggested by Marie Louise Burke in Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1958), news reports did not fail to mention that the other Indian delegates to the ParliamentPratap Chandra Mazoomdar, B. B. Nagarkar, and Narasimha Acharyawore what were described as black clothes hardly to be distinguished from European dress (Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West, vol. 1, p. 78). 12 Thomas Harrison was based in Chicago at that time at Central Music Hall, Cor. State & Randolph Sts, the identication stamped at the bottom of all his pictures. From listings in Chicago city directories, Harrison seems to have been in business from about 1873 through 1900, and his studio specialized in cabinet-card photography, the style of portrait photography that came into vogue around 1867. All the original photographs taken of Swami Vivekananda at Harrisons studio were cabinet-card portraits. Catalogue 25 This followed the rst ever anatomical dissection by a native doctor in 1836, as widely written about by medical historians. See David Arnold, Colonizing The Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 2 As Dominik Wujastyk has described, this extraordinary painting has recently come into the collection of the Wellcome Library from the Hamburg collection of Jan Wichers. D. Wujastyk, Interpreting the Image of the Human Body, International Journal of Hindu Studies 13, no. 2 (2001), p. 210. 3 Wujastyk, Interpreting the Image, p. 210. 4 Wujastyk, Interpreting the Image, p. 211. 5 Sacakranirpaacitram translates from the Sanskrit to mean picture or illustration of six chakras body form, which is particularly interesting for two reasons. One, the word citra (picture) in the title signies that it is a pictorial or illustrated treatise on chakras. And two, the number of chakras depicted both in the illustrations and in the title itself. The six chakra 1
10 11
12
13
3 4 5
14
15 16
gures shown here and in the book title may be particularly interesting in this context since the number seems to have become standardized in this period as seven. See cats. 11ac, Subtle Body. Mircea Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 241. Other plates in the book, for example, plate 4 (not shown here), make a similar visual statement by juxtaposing an anatomical crosssection of the brain with a schematic depiction of the thousand-petaled lotus chakra (sahasradala padma) as it opens in the head, its vertical stem, the brahmani, presumably linking it to the network of ns (subtle channels) along the lower body. Comparable books and volumes with chakra body images from the same period include Sir J. Woodroffe, The Serpent Power (Madras, 1924), which shows the classic seated position. The English translation of the title LHomme Terrestre Natural TnbreuxThe Earthly Man with Natural Shadowsis less poetic but points nonetheless to Leadbeaters fascination with shadows, auras, energy vortexes, and cosmic consciousness. Indeed, many of the other images in The Chakras are not anatomical like this one, but abstract, numinous, color-saturated depictions of the vortexes, umbras, and auras of higher states of consciousness. See cats. 11ac, Subtle Body. This point is made by Stefanie Syman in The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2010), p. 56. The Sanskrit term Kanda derives from bulb or knot; in Kualin yoga it refers to a center of the astral body from where the yoga ns spring and carry the skma pra (vital energy) to the different parts of the body. Some scholars trace it back to pioneering work by Major Basu, Anatomy of the Tantras (1888), and Dr. N. C. Paul, A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy (1850). See for instance Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) on the history of medical or health views of the yogic body in India even prior to the early twentieth century. On this point, see Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness by Joseph Alter in this volume. These included natural healthcare luminaries Harvey Kellogg and Benedict Lust. Mark Singleton rst suggests this in Yoga Body, p. 116. But based on subsequent publications on yoga performances and presentations in Americasuch as those by the Great Oom; see Robert Love, The Great Oom (New York: Viking, 2010)and Singletons own revised views on this matter, there may be sufcient evidence to push this date back by at least a decade, if not more. Catalogue 26 Christopher Pinney, The nation unpictured: Chromolithography and popular politics in India, Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3, p. 867. First coined by Elizabeth deMichelis in 2004 in A History of Modern Yoga: Patajali and Western Esotericism (London: Continuum, 2004) as
8 9
an extremely useful but provisional, heuristic typology, the term modern postural yoga may have outlived its use as a working construct. This author follows Mark Singleton in preferring the term postural yoga or yoga in the modern age to avoid overly dichotomizing modern and traditional and to avoid subsuming historical detail, variation, and exception; Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p.19. 3 This is a point rst made powerfully by Singleton in chap. 8 of his Yoga Body. See also his essay, Globalized Modern Yoga, in this volume. 4 Two of the better known among these travelogues and popular accounts of yogis are J. C. Omans Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (1905) and Reverend W. M. Zumbros 1913 article about yogis in National Geographic. Zumbro is a particularly interesting example for visual genealogy, given that the article reproduces with contemporary photographs many of the earlier images of yogis from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European travelogues. For more on this point, see David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), and also cats. 22ag, Bed of Nails, and 23ae, Fakirs, Fakers, and Magic. 5 Accounts of Jogapradpik are described in Gudrun Buhnemann, Eighty-Four sanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2007), while the rtattvanidhi is described by Norman Sjoman, The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1996). For an even earlier historical example of a medieval illustrated sana manuscript, see cat. 9aj on the Bahr-al-ayt. 6 Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 30. 7 This point has been made variously by White, Sinister Yogis; Sjoman, Yoga Tradition. 8 Singleton, Yoga Body, p. 170. 9 The book includes illustrations of six mudrs (gestures) and ve bandhas (locks), also modeled by Ghamande. 10 Yogasopnas potential to reach mass audiences also allowed Ghamande to pioneer new pedagogical models of public dissemination, such as a proto-correspondence course of haha yoga (Singleton, Yoga Body, p. 173). In sharp contrast to the secret transmission of knowledge between guru and disciples, Yogasopna threw open haha yoga to the public and invited readers into a dialogue. 11 A more detailed account of how Yogasopna serves as a work of art can be found in Singletons Yoga Body, chap. 8, The Medium and the Message. 12 Raja Ravi Varma was an Indian modernist artist who pioneered the use of newly available chromolithography techniques to make cheap naturalistic reproductions of scenes from Hindu epics. 13 For more on the Mysore Palaces inuence on yoga, see the discussion about cat. 26i. 14 Subsequent editions were revised by Raja Pratinidhi Pants son, Apa Pant. 15 See Joseph Alter, Yoga in Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2004); Singleton, Yoga Body; Suzanne Newcombe, The Development of Modern Yoga: A Survey of the Field, Religion Compass 3, no. 6 (2009), pp. 9861002, for more on sryanmaskr. It is important to point out that Pant did not claim to have invented the sequence; see Alter, Yoga in Modern India, p. 163. 16 See Joseph Alter, Yoga at the Fin de Sicle: Muscular Christianity with a Hindu Twist, International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 5 (2006), pp. 75976. Pant also introduced sryanmaskr into schools as a form of native education. For more on Sandow, see also Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness by Joseph Alter in this volume. 17 In the early twentieth century, pioneers like K. V. Iyer, Yogacharya Sundaram, and Ramesh Balsekar provided examples of syncretic experiments with the yogic body beautiful and the perfect yogic physique, embodying a general preoccupation with the t body in sana manuals. 18 See Sjoman, Yoga Tradition in a Mysore Palace. For more on this general shift in yogic practice, see the essays by Singleton and Alter in this catalogue. 19 I refer to Benedict Andersons imagined communities (1983) drawn together through print nationalism. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 20 For more on this point, see Singleton, Yoga Body, chap. 9. 21 Sjoman, Yoga Tradition, p. 50. 22 Note that 1938 is also the year that Leni Riefenstahl made Olympia, which in some ways is perhaps the archetypical lm about nationalist physical cultures and the staged presentation of bodies in public space.
Selected Bibliography
Alter, Joseph. Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Behl, Aditya. Qutban Suhravards Mirigvat: The Magic Doe, edited by Wendy Doniger. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Buhnemann, Gudrun. Eighty-four Asanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions with Illustrations. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2007. Chapple, Christopher Key. Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadras Collection of Views on Yoga. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. . The Sevenfold Yoga of the Yogavasishta. In Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White, pp. 11733. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Childers, Hope. The Visual Culture of Opium in British India. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011. Davidson, Ron. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. De Michelis, Elizabeth. A Preliminary Survey of Modern Yoga Studies. Asian Medicine 3, no. 1 (2007): pp. 119. . History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Continuum, 2005. Dehejia, Vidya. The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. New York: American Federation of Arts, 2002. . Yogin, Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition. New Delhi: National Museum, 1986.
Diamond, Debra. Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008. . Occult Science and Bijapurs Yoginis. In Indian Painting: Themes, History and Interpretations (Essays in Honour of B. N. Goswamy), edited by Mahesh Sharma. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, forthcoming. Ernst, Carl W. Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2008), pp. 40926. . Being Careful with the Goddess: Yoginis in Persian and Arabic Texts. In Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India, edited by Pallabi Chakrabarty and Scott Kugle, pp. 189203. Delhi: Manohar, 2009. . Situating Susm and Yoga. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 1 (2005), pp. 1543. . The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, vol. 13, no. 2 (2003), pp. 199226. Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice. Prescott, AZ: Hohm, 2001. Flood, Gavin. Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Saivism. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993. Hatley, Shaman. Goddesses in Text and Stone: Temples of the Yogins in Light of Tantric and Purnic Literature. In History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, edited by Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann.London: Routledge, 2013.
Kaimal, Padma. Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis. Ann Arbor, MI: Association of Asian Studies, 2011. King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the Mystic East. London: Routledge, 1999. Kramrisch, Stella. Manifestations of Shiva. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1981. Linrothe, Rob. Siddhas and Srailam, Where All Wise People Go. In Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, edited by Rob Linrothe, pp. 12543. New York and Chicago: Rubin Museum of Art and Serindia Publications, 2006. Mallinson, James. Haha Yoga. In Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 3, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, pp. 77081. Leiden: Brill, 2011. . Nth Sapradya. In Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 3, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, pp. 40728. Leiden: Brill, 2011. . ktism and Hahayoga. In The kta Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. . The Gheranda Samhita: The Original Sanskrit and an English Translation. Woodstock, NY: YogaVidya.com, 2004. . The Khecarvidy of dhintha: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an Early Text of Hahayoga. London: Routledge, 2007. Meister, Michael. Art and Hindu Asceticism: iva and Vishnu as Masters of Yoga. In Explorations in Art and Archaeology of South Asia: Essays Dedicated to N. G. Majumdar, edited by Debala Mitra, pp. 31521. Calcutta: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal, 1996.
. Image Iconopraxis and Iconoplasty in South Asia. Anthropology and Aesthetics 51 (2007), pp. 1332. OFlaherty, Wendy Doniger. Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Pinch, William. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Ranjan, Neena. Vishvarupa: Paintings on the Cosmic Form of Krishna-Vasudeva. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2008. Samuel, Geoffrey. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Sanderson, Alexis. Saivism and the Tantric Traditions. In The Worlds Religions, edited by S. Sutherland, et al. London: Routledge, 1988. Sears, Tamara I. Constructing the Guru: Ritual Authority and Architectural Space in Medieval India. The Art Bulletin 90, no. 1 (2008), pp. 729. . Encountering Ascetics On and Beyond the Indian Temple Wall. In History and Material Culture in Asian Religions, edited by Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann. London: Routledge, 2013. Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Urban, Hugh. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Vivekananda, Swami. Rja Yoga, or conquering the internal nature: Lectures delivered in New York, winter of 18956. New York: Longmans, Green, 1896. White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. . Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. . Sinister Yogis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. . Tantra in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. . Yoga in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY | 319
Contributors
Molly Emma Aitken (MEA) is associate professor of art history at the City College of New York. She has written and curated on South Asian court paintings, folk art, and jewelry. In her award-winning The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, she takes a wide range of interpretive approaches to seventeenth- to nineteenth-century paintings from Indias Rajput courts. Joseph S. Alter, PhD, is professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and a sociocultural anthropologist in the area of South Asia. His book, the award-winning Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (2004), explores the historical development of yoga as a modern, middleclass form of public health in twentieth-century urban India. Christopher Key Chapple (CKC), PhD, is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University, where he directs the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies program. He is the author of several books, including Reconciling Yogas (with a translation of Haribhadras Yogadrstisamuccaya, 2003) and Yoga and the Luminous (with a translation of the Patanjalis Yoga Sutras, 2008). Robert DeCaroli (RDC), PhD, is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art history at George Mason University and a specialist in the art of early Buddhism. He is the author of Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (2004).
Debra Diamond (DD), PhD, is associate curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Freer|Sackler and the curator of Yoga: The Art of Transformation. Her exhibition catalogue for Garden and Cosmos (2008) received two major awards for scholarship: the College Art Associations Alfred H. Barr award and the Smithsonian Secretarys Award for Research. She has published on yoga imagery, new methods in Indian art history, contemporary Asian art, and various aspects of the Freer|Sackler collections. Carl W. Ernst, PhD, is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the codirector of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. His publications include Su Martyrs of Love: Chishti Susm in South Asia and Beyond (with Bruce B. Lawrence, 2002) and Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (2003), which has received several international awards. Jessica J. Farquhar (JF) is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include nineteenthcentury photography, early Buddhist art, and the historiography of South Asian studies in the Western academic tradition. She is currently writing her dissertation, Beyond Binding: 19th-century photographic technology in the many afterlives of The People of India (18611900).
B. N. Goswamy (BNG) is professor emeritus of art history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, and is currently Rabindranath Tagore Fellow for Cultural Research. He has published extensively; his many works include the groundbreaking Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India and Nainsukh of Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill State. Most recently, with Milo C. Beach and Eberhard Fischer, he put together the two-volume Masters of Indian Painting, 11001900 that accompanied the exhibition Wonder of the Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Navina Haidar (NH) is curator in the Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is the coauthor of Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sultans of the South: Arts of Indias Deccan Courts, 13231687 (both 2011). Amy S. Landau (AL), PhD, is associate curator of Islamic art and manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Her work explores shifts in the visual culture of early modern Iran, with particular emphasis on interaction between Safavid Persia and Europe and the Armenian merchant community of New Julfa. James Mallinson (JM), PhD, is a Sanskritist from Oxford University whose work focuses on the history of yoga and yogis. His publications includeThe Ocean of the Rivers of Story by Somadeva(2007) andThe Khecarvidy of dintha(2007). He and Mark Singleton are collaborating on Roots of Yoga, a collection of translated Sanskrit yoga texts (forthcoming).
Sita Reddy (SR), PhD, is a research associate at the Smithsonians Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. A sociologist of medicine and a museologist by training, she writes, teaches, and curates on topics ranging from the museum repatriation of art, antiquities, and music to heritage disputes around traditional South Asian medical knowledge systems, such as Ayurveda and yoga. She is currently writing a book on the social iconography of fakirs and yogis through the ages. Tamara I. Sears (TS), PhD, is assistant professor of art history at Yale University and the author of Worldly Gurus and Spiritual Kings (forthcoming 2014).She is working on a second book that looks at architecture and landscape as archives for mapping mobility and the transmission of cultural practices in medieval India. Holly Shaffer (HS) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Art, Yale University. Her research interests include intercultural artistic production, collecting practices, and the circulation of prints in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century South Asia and Europe. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation, Men and Gods, and Things: Maratha Art and Moors Hindu Pantheon (1810), under the direction of Dr. Timothy Barringer and Dr. Tamara Sears. Mark Singleton, PhD, teaches at St. Johns College, Santa Fe. He is the author of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (2010) and the coeditor of Yoga in the Modern World, Contemporary Perspectives (2008) and Gurus of Modern Yoga (2013). He is currently preparing a collection of translated Sanskrit yoga texts titled Roots of Yoga (with James Mallinson, forthcoming).
Tom Vick (TV) is curator of lm at the Freer and Sackler Galleries. He is a consultant for the International Film Festival Rotterdam and has served on the juries of the Korean Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, and Filmfest DC. He has contributed essays to World Cinema Directory: Japan, Film Festival Yearbook, Asian Geographic, and other publications. His book Asian Cinema: A Field Guide was published in 2008. He is currently working on a book about Japanese lmmaker Seijun Suzuki. David Gordon White, PhD, is the J. F. Rowny Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His award-winning publications include Yoga in Practice (2011), Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Contexts (2003), Tantra in Practice (2000), and The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (1996).
Freer|Sackler Staff Jane Lusaka, editor-in-chief Joelle Seligson, editor Mekala Krishnan, Elizabeth S. Stein, photo permissions Neil Greentree, John Tsantes, imaging and photo services Najiba Choudhury, proofreader Nancy Eickel, index Howard Kaplan, museum writer Adina Brosnan McGee, Nancy Hacskaylo, production assistance
CONTRIBUTORS | 321
Credits
Note: Credits for the Catalogue section are listed in the Exhibition Checklist. Photos of Freer|Sackler objects by Neil Greentree, Robert Harrell, and John Tsantes.
On the cover: Vishnu Vishvarupa (detail), India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, ca. 18001820, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Mrs. Gerald Clark, IS.33-2006 (cat. 10b). Frontispiece details: Kedar Ragini, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978.540.2 (cat. 18e); Three Aspects of the Absolute, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2399 (cat. 4a); Jlandharnth at Jalore, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 4126 (see below); Satcakranirupanacitram, Wellcome Library, P.B. Sanskrit 391 (cat. 25b); The Knots of the Subtle Body, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.27 (cat. 11a); Gaur Malhara Ragini, Museum fr Asiatische Kunst, MIK I 5523 (cat. 18i); Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon, Chester Beatty Library, In 65.7 (cat. 18h); Lakshman Das, Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins (cat. 20a); Kumbhaka, Chester Beatty Library, In 16.25a (cat. 9h); The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana, Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.8 (cat. 8c). On copyright and sponsor pages: Jlandharnth at Jalore (detail). By Amardas Bhatti. India, Rajasthan, Marwar, Jodhpur, ca. 180510. Opaque water color and gold on paper; 39 29 cm. Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 4126. Photo: Neil Greentree (see also g. 6, p. 74). On contents page: Rama Enters the Forest of the Sages (detail), from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (15321623). India, Rajasthan, Jodhpur, ca. 1775. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 62.7 134.5 cm. Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2524 (cat. 17a).
Essays
Yoga: The Art of Transformation Debra Diamond Fig. 1 (pp. 24, 25) Three Aspects of the Absolute, folio 1 from the Nath Charit. By Bulaki, 1823. India, Jodhpur. Opaque watercolor, gold and tin alloy on paper, 47 123 cm. Merhangarh Museum Trust, RJS 2399. Fig. 2 (p. 26) Jina, probably Shreyamsanatha. India, southern Rajasthan, dated 1160. White marble with traces of polychromy, 59.7 48.3 21.6 cm. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2000.98. Fig. 3 (pp. 22, 26) Meditating Sikh Ascetic. India, Jammu and Kashmir, probably Mankot, ca. 1730. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 19.5 12.9 cm (page), 17.4 11.2 cm (painting). Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection. Photo: John Tsantes. Fig. 4 (p. 26) Siddhapratima Yantra (detail). Western India, 1333. Bronze, copper alloy with traces of gilding and silver inlay, 21.9 13.1 8.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, F1997.33. Fig. 5 (p. 28) Great Stupa at Sanchi. India, Madhya Pradesh, Sanchi, ca. 5025 BCE. Sandstone, Photo courtesy John C. Huntington. Fig. 6 (p. 29) The Seven Great Sages. Attributed to the Master at the Court of Mankot. India, Jammu and Kashmir, Mankot, 16751700. Opaque watercolor on paper; 21.1 20.7 cm (page), 18.9 19 cm (painting). Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, 1343. Fig. 7 (p. 30) Yogini. India, Tamil Nadu, Kanchi, ca. 900975. Metagabbro, 116 76 43.2 cm. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, S1987.905. Fig. 8 (p. 31) Koringa. Reco Brothers Circus poster, England, 1946. Collection of Mark Copland/The Insect Circus (mark@copeland48.freeserve.co.uk).
Fig. 9 (p. 32) Five Holy Men, folio from the Saint Petersburg Album. Attributed to Govardhan. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 162530. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 49 33 cm (page), 24.1 15.2 cm (painting). Formerly collection of Stuart Cary Welch; current whereabouts unknown. Yoga in Transformation David Gordon White Fig. 1 (p. 37) Yogi seal. Indus civilization, ca. 26001900 BCE. Steatite, 3.8 cm (h). National Museum of India. Fig. 2 (p. 37) Seated Buddha. Afghanistan or Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Hadda, 1st century320. Stucco, 36.9 cm (h). Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1967.39. Fig. 3 (p. 37) Head of a Rishi. India, Mathura, 2nd century. Stone, 27.7 24 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward L. Whittemore Fund, 1971.41. Fig. 4 (pp. 34, 38) Yogin with Six Chakras. India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, late 18th century. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 48 27.5 cm. National Museum of India, Ajit Mookerjee Collection, 82.485. Courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales. Fig. 5 (p. 39) King Suraghu Visits Mandavya, folio from the Yoga Vasishta. India, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, Mughal dynasty, 1602. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 27 18.5 cm. Chester Beatty Library, In 5.178V. Fig. 6 (p. 40) The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva (detail). Attributed to Payag (Indian, active ca. 15911658). India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 163035. Opaque watercolor and gold and ink on paper, 18.5 26.5 cm. Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2011, 2011.409. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.
Fig. 7 (p. 41) Tantric Feast. India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, ca. 1790. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 22.54 15.66 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.77.63.1. Fig. 8 (p. 43) A Royal Ascetic. India, Karnataka, possibly Bijapur, ca. 1660. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 19 14.3 cm. The British Library Board, Richard Johnson Collection, J.19,2. From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India Tamara I. Sears Fig. 1 (p. 46) Descent of the Ganges. India, Tamil Nadu, Mamallapuram, ca. 7th century. Stone, 29 m 13 m. Photo: Emma Natalya Stein. Fig. 2 (p. 49) Nara and Narayana, Vishnu Temple, relief from the east side. India, Uttar Pradesh, Deogarh, ca. 500 AD. Photo: Borromeo, Art Resource. Figs. 3ad (pp. 50, 51) Plan and views of Shaiva Monastery. India, Madhya Pradesh, Chandrehe, ca. 973. Photos: Tamara I. Sears. Fig. 4 (pp. 5253) Guru and Disciples, Lakshmana Temple. India, Madhya Pradesh, Khajuraho, ca. 954. Sandstone. Photo: Tamara I. Sears. Figs. 5 and 6 (p. 54) Lakulisha in a central wall niche. India, Madhya Pradesh, Batesara, ca. 8th century. Photos: Tamara I. Sears. Muslim Interpreters of Yoga Carl W. Ernst Fig. 1 (p. 60) Jahangir converses with Gosain Jadrup, from the Jahangirnama. Attributed to Payag (Indian, active ca. 15911658). India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1620. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Muse du Louvre, Paris, Inv. OA7171. Photo: Daniel Arnaudet. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 2 (p. 61) The King and Karkati Discuss Brahman, from the Yog Vasishta. By Iman Quli. India, Allahabad, 1602. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 27 18.5 cm. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 05.73a/r. Fig. 3 (pp. 58, 62) The feast of the yogis from the Mrigavati. India, Allahabad, 16034. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 28.3 17 cm. Chester Beatty Library, In 37.66r. Fig. 4 (p. 63) Yogini by a Stream, from the Clive Album. India, Bijapur, ca. 160540. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 21.4 16.2 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.133.56-1964. Fig. 5 (p. 65) Tratak posture, from the Bahr al-hayat, page 44. AH 11 Rabi al-awwal, 1130 (February 12, 1718). University of North Carolina Rare Book Collection, PK3791.A46 1718. Yogis in Mughal India James Mallinson Fig. 1 (p. 68) Folio from the Gulshan Album (detail). India, Mughal dynasty, early 17th century. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; approx. 42 26 cm. Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, folio 6b.
Fig. 2 (p. 71) The Yogis at Gurkhattri in 1505, from Vakiat-i Baburi (The Memoirs of Babur). By Gobind. India, Mughal dynasty, 159093. Opaque watercolor. The British Library Board, Or. 3714, f. 197r. Fig. 3 (p. 71) Baburs Visit to Gurkhattri in 1519. By Kesu Khurd. India, Mughal dynasty, 159093. Opaque watercolor. The British Library Board, Or. 3714, vol. 3 f. 320. Fig. 4 (p. 72) A Party of Kanphat Yogis Resting around a Fire. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1700. Tinted drawing with gold; on an album leaf with inner border of marbled paper and an outer border of leaf-motifs in blue and gold; 22.4 13 cm (folio), 36.1 24 cm (page). The British Library Board, India Ofce, J.22,15. Fig. 5 (p. 73) Balak Nath Kothari wearing antelope horn kanphata earring, Jvalamukhi, November 8, 2012. Photo: James Mallinson. Fig. 6. (p. 74) Jlandharnth at Jalore (detail). By Amardas Bhatti. India, Rajasthan, Marwar, Jodhpur, ca. 180510. Opaque water color and gold on paper; 39 29 cm. Mehrangarh Museum Trust, RJS 4126. Photo: Neil Greentree. Fig. 7 (p. 75) Aughar and Kanphata Yogi, from Tashrih al-aqvam, p. 399. India, Delhi or Haryana, 1825. Manuscript, watercolor; 31.5 22cm (folio). The British Library Board, Add.27255, f. 399b. Fig. 8. (p. 76) Naga Sannyasis at the 1995 Allahabad Ardh Kumbh Mela. Photo: James Mallinson. Fig. 9 (p. 77) Akbar Watches a Battle between Two Rival Groups of Sannyasis at Thaneshwar (detail of right folio). India, possibly Pakistan, Mughal dynasty, 159095. By Basawan and Tara the Elder. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 32.9 18.7 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.2:61-1896. Fig. 10 (p. 79) Mughals Visit an Encampment of Sadhus, from the St. Petersburg Album. Attributed to Mir Sayyid Ali. India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1635. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 46 29.5 cm. St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, f. 47r. Fig. 11 (p. 80) Ramanandi Yogiraj Jagannath Das at the 2010 Haridwar Kumbh Mela. Photo: James Mallinson. Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness Joseph S. Alter Fig. 1 (p. 84) Five athletes, symbolizing a musical mode (Deshakha raga). India, Deccan plateau, ca. 18801900. Opaque watercolor on paper, 28.3 8.5 cm. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, B 87D19. Fig. 2 (p. 86) Paramahansa Yogananda, Founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, Getty Images #51101235. Fig. 3 (p. 88) Yoga asanas, from The Yoga Body Illustrated by M. R. Jambunathan. India, Karnataka, Bangalore, 1941. Published book, 18.4 24.8 cm (open). Library of Congress, RA781.7.J35.
Fig. 4 (p. 89) Yogi Selvarajan Yesudian, Bodybuilding and Muscle Control Poses, images 67, 7274 between pages 112 and 113, in Selvarajan Yesudian and Elisabeth Haich, Sport et Yoga, 8th ed. (Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Foma, 1958). Fig. 5 (p. 89) Yogi Selvarajan Yesudian, Exercises pour lves avancs, images 63 and 64 between pages 112 and 113, in Selvarajan Yesudian and Elisabeth Haich, Sport et Yoga, 8th ed. (Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Foma, 1958). Fig. 6 (p. 90) British muscle man Eugene Sandow posing as the Farnese Hercules, 1897. Photo: Time Life Pictures/Mansell/Getty Images #50615023. Fig. 7 (p. 91) Buddha Bose, a student of yoga master Bishnu Ghosh, shows his skills at a yoga exercise demonstration, London, ca.1930s. Photo: FPG/Getty Images #109773972. Fig. 8 (p. 92) A yogi practicing yoga in Benares (Varanasi), Uttar Pradesh, India. Photo: Frederick Ayer III. Getty Images #128586602. Globalized Modern Yoga Mark Singleton Fig. 1 (p. 94) Yoga on the National Mall, Washington, DC, May 2013. Photo: Neil Greentree. Fig. 2 (p. 96) Swami Vivekananda on the platform of the Parliament of the Worlds Religions, September 11, 1893. Vedanta Society, San Francisco, V16. Fig. 3 (p. 97) Madame Blavatsky, 1870. Photo: Henry Guttman. Getty Images, Hulton Archive #3324124. Fig. 4 (p. 97) Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. Getty Images, #51101235. Fig. 5 (p. 98) Aleister Crowley as Paramahamsa Shivaji. Ordo Templi Orientalis, New York. Fig. 6 (p. 99) Sri T. Krishnamacharya (18881989), Chennai, India,1988. Courtesy Ganesh Mohan. Fig. 7 (p. 99) Indian yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar demonstrates four postures, 1930s. Scenes from T. Krishnamacharya Asanas. India, Mysore, 1938. Sponsored by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodiyar. Digital copy of a lost black-and-white lm, 57 min. Courtesy of Dan McGuire. Fig. 8 (p. 99) Swami Muktananda Arrives in Santa Monica, California, 1980. Photo: George Rose. Getty Images, #83693441. Fig. 9 (p. 99) Peace Pilot (Vishnudevananda), Palam Airport, New Delhi, India, October 26, 1971, Keystone, Getty Images #3269553. Fig. 10 (p. 100) Yoga Curl (Marilyn Monroe), 1948, John Kobal Foundation. Getty Images #3169150. Fig. 11 (p. 101) The Beatles and the Maharishi, Rishikesh, Dehradun, India, March 1, 1968, Hulton Archive, Getty Images # 73874340. Fig. 12 (p. 102) Heat Wave Hits New York City on the First Day of Summer by John Moore, June 20, 2012, Getty Images # 146597674.
CREDITS | 323
Index
Note: Illustrations appear on page numbers in italics.
A
An Abdhoot, cat. 20d, 234, 235 Abhinavagupta, 24, 27, 32 Abul Fazl, 64, 77, 172, 222 Acharanga Sutra, 131, 132 Advaita Vedanta, 24, 78, 176 Agamas, 106, 110 Aich, Monohar, 90 Ain-i Akbari, 64 Ajita, 132 Ajivikas, 141 akash-munis (sky-sages), 142 Akbar, 70, 76, 117, 157, 172, 18081, 203, 206, 209, 222, 227 Akbarnama, 77, 78, 172, 173 akshamala (rosary), 55 Albanese, Catherine, 97 al-Biruni, 59 Ali Adil Shah II, 124 Allahabad, 157, 159, 176 Alter, Joseph S., 32 Amar Singh II, Rana, 181, 183 Amuli, Sharaf al-Din, 62 anjali mudra (gesture of devotion), 50, 54, 115 Anusara Yoga, 35 anusmrti (recollection), 38 aparigraha (power of nonpossession), 135 Appar, 106 Arabic translations, 59, 64, 66, 157 Arjuna, 48, 55, 160 asanas (seated postures), 36, 52, 64, 86, 132, 138, 142, 203; development of, 87, 8890, 92, 98, 101, 15059, 277, 284, 287, 29091 ascetics, 27, 28, 50, 55, 59, 61; depictions of, 65, 69, 70, 73, 7576, 78, 141, 232, 235, 238, 241, 245, 253, 256, 258; militant, 17273, 203, 256, 258; practice, 50, 138 Ascetics before the Shine of the Goddess, cat. 15b, 190, 192 Ascetics Performing Tapas, cat. 20c, 23233, 235 ashram, 180 ashtanga (eightfold yoga), 36 Ashtanga Vinyasa, 89, 98, 101; yoga, 35, 36, 96
Assam, 62 Atkinson, William Walker, see Ramacharaka Atreya, Dr. Shanti Prakash, 85, 90, 92 austerities, 23, 28, 48, 50, 52, 55, 138, 14157, 203, 219, 227 Autobiography of a Yogi, 97 Ayodhya, 202 Ayurveda, 87
B
Babur, 70, 18081 Babur and His Retinue Visiting Gor Khatri, cat. 14d, 180, 184 Baburnama, 70, 73 Badari, 48 Bahr al-hayat (Ocean of Life), Persian translation, 150, 157; cat. 9aj, 150, 157, 159 Balnath Tilla, 73 Balsekar, Ramesh, 90 bandha (lock), 38 Baroda, 87 Basawan, 17273 Base of a Seated Buddha with Figures of Ascetics, cat. 6c, 140, 141 Battle at Thaneshwar, cat. 12, 172, 17375 Beatles, 100 bed of nails, 25357, 25456 Bernard, Jean-Frdric, 253 Bernard, Rene, see Koringa Bernard, Theos, 290 Besant, Annie, 277 Bhadrakali, 148 Bhagavad Gita, 36, 40, 86, 146, 160, 164, 180 Bhagavadajjukiya (The Hermit and the Harlot), 50 Bhagavata Purana, 146 Bhagiratha, 48, 50 Bhairava, 27, 106, 110, 235 Bhairava, cat. 1c, 110, 110 Bhairava Raga, cat. 18b, 214, 215, 219 Bhairava Tantras, 106 Bhairavi Devi, 40, 42, 190, 196 bhakti (devotional orders), 78, 146, 160, 219, 256
Bhaktis, 40 Bhaktivedanta, Swami A. C., 100 Bharadvaja, 28 Bhikarinath, 183 Bhishma, 253 Bhringisha, 176 Bhupali Ragini, cat. 18g, 220, 220 Bijapur, 30, 62, 117, 124, 125 Bikram Yoga, 90, 101 Blavatsky, Madame Helena Petrovna, 97 Bodhgaya, 115 Brahma, 113, 166 brahman, 27, 36, 160, 166, 176 Brahmo Samaj, 9596 British East India Company, 44, 6465, 172, 230, 232, 253, 258 Buddha, 55, 115, 138, 141, 157 Buddhism, 24, 27, 36, 38, 138; practices, 59, 176 Buddhist Tantras, 118, 138, 141 Bulaki, 24, 129, 130
C
Campbell, Joseph, 97 Crmonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde representes (Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World), 253 Chain of Yogis (Silsila-i jugiyan), 66 chakras, 27, 61, 62, 70, 118, 16667; in medicine, 275, 277, 279 The Chakras, cat. 25c, 277, 279 The Chakras of the Subtle Body, cat. 11b, 166, 167, 16869 chamatkar (astonishment), 32 Chandranatha, 73 Chandrashekhar, Professor J., 90 Chandrehe, 50, 52, 53, 5455 char sampraday (four traditions of Vaishnavism), 78 charya (proper conduct), 52 chatudandasana (plank pose), 290 chatushpada (four feet), 52 chela (disciple), 142
Chishti, Muìn al-Din, 62; Su order, 62 Chola dynasty, 106, 118, 135, 146 Choudhury, Bikram, 90, 101 The Christian Conquest of India, 257 Christian Science, 97, 98 Chyavana, 148 Colebrooke, Henry Thomas, 44 The Complete Book of Yoga, 100 Crowley, Aleister (Paramahamsa Shivaji), 98
D
dandas (yogic exercise), 92 Das, Keshav, 176 Dasharatha, 141 Dasnami (ten-named), 30, 173; sampradaya, 117; Sannyasis, 70, 73, 75, 7678 Datta, Narendranath, see Vivekananda Dattatreya, 78 Dehejia, Vidya, 27 della Valle, Pietro, 62 Desai, Amrit, 100 Desai, Manibhai Haribhai, 88 Desikachar, T. K. V., 98 Devi, 75 Devi, Indra, 98, 290 dharana (meditation), 36, 146 dharmachakra mudra (gesture of teaching), 54, 55 dhatu (transubstantiation), 92 dhauti (self-purication), 87 dhyana (xing the mind), 36, 146 Divine Life Society, 97 Duncan, Jonathan, 253, 256 Dutis, 38 Dutt, A. N., 262 Dwivedi, Manilal, 268
Ganges River, 47, 48, 53 Garbo, Greta, 98 Gardens of Religions (Riyaz al-mazahib), 66 Gaur Malhara Ragini, cat. 18i, 6, 219 Gautama, Siddhartha, 138 Ghamande, Yogi, 285 Gheranda Samhita, 268, 285 Gherwal, Yogi, 290 Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, 97 Ghosh, Bishnu Charan, 85, 89, 90 Giris, 77, 172 Glyn, John, 66 The Goddess Bhadrakali Worshipped by the Sage Chyavana, cat. 8c, 10, 146, 148, 149 The Goddess Bhairavi Devi with Shiva, cat. 16, 196, 19799 Gorakhnath (or Goraksha), 38, 40, 44, 70, 73 Gosain Jadrup, 59 Gosainji Kirpal Girji, 117 Gosain Kirpa Girji Receives Sheeshvalji and His Son, cat. 2c, 116, 117 Govardhan, 28, 30, 157, 227 Great London Exhibition of 1862, 238 Group of Yogis, cat. 21s, 228, 245, 248 Gujarat, 87, 88, 157 Gulshan Album, cat. 19ab, 223, 22325, 227 Gune, Jagannath, see Kuvalayananda Gurgi, 52 Gurkha dynasty, 44 Gurkhattri, 70, 180, 181 guru, 30, 47, 5355, 70, 78, 87, 96, 100, 101, 142, 183; depictions of, 24, 11417, 180, 182, 227; false guru, 50 Guru Vidyashiva, cat. 2a, 114 Gwaliyari, Muhammad Ghawth, 64, 157, 159
Hoysala dynasty, 106, 110 Hunhar, 196 Huxley, Aldous, 97
I
Ibn Arabi, 64 Ibn Battuta, 59 Ibn Sina, 61 Ibrahim Adil Shah, 124, 125 Illuminationism, 61 India Through the Stereoscope, 257 Indra, 142, 164 Integral Yoga Institute, 100 International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta centers, 100 International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), 100 Introduction of Yoga Philosophy, 268 Iyengar, B.K.S., 89, 90, 98, 101, 159, 290, 291 Iyer, K. V., 90
J
Jahangir, 59, 117, 157, 159, 176, 209, 222, 223, 227 Jain, 24, 27, 32, 36, 38, 69; yoga, 40, 13137 Jain Ascetic Walking, cat. 5f, 137, 137 Jalandharnath, 128, 129, 166 Jalandharnath at Jalore, 3, 74 Jalapada, 206 Jambudvipa, 135 Jambunathan, M. R., 289 jata (matted locks of hair), 28, 48, 125 jatamukuta (tall, braided hair), 115, 176 Jensen, Albrecht, 290 Jesuits, 73 Jina (great liberated soul), 27 Jina (Cleveland), cat. 5b, 132, 135 Jina (VMFA), cat. 5d, 26, 134, 135 jnana (knowledge), 52 Jnanadeva, 164 Jodhpur, 27, 44, 75, 129, 159, 166 Jogapradipika, 159 Jois, Sri K. Pattabhi, 89, 90, 98, 101 Jones, Sir William, 61 Joshi, Purushottam Sadasiv, 287
E
Eddy, Mary Baker, 97 Edison, Thomas, 262 Equivalence of Self and Universe, cat. 10d, 164, 165 Ernst, Carl W., 32
H
Hamsasvarupa, Swami, 277 Hanuman, 146 Hanuman as Yogi, cat. 8b, 146, 148 Hare Krishna movement, 100 Harrison, Thomas, 272, 273 Harwan, 141 Hathapradipika (Light on Hatha), 27 hatha yoga, 36, 38, 78, 98, 101, 128, 146, 150, 160, 166, 28990; practice of, 27, 28, 61, 69, 76, 151, 157, 166, 173, 26668, 279, 284; texts about, 64, 6970, 73, 86, 151, 164, 266, 28391; yogis and, 118, 258, 268, 283 Hatha Yoga, 290 Hawd ma al-hayat (The Pool of Life), 66 Head of a Fasting Buddha, cat. 6a, 138, 138 Hemacandra, 132 Hemingway, Ernest, 98 Himalayan Pilgrimage of the Five Siddhas, cat. 15a, 178, 190, 191 Hindoo Fakir, cat. 23d, 262 Hindu, 24, 27, 30, 36, 38, 55, 61, 62, 64, 97, 126; ascetics, 28, 44, 59, 70, 73, 227; deities, 30, 32, 47, 115, 146, 160, 166, 196, 202, 214, 222; practices, 59, 73, 95, 118; reform, 95, 97, 26668; traditions, 28, 59, 64, 87, 106, 118, 129, 142, 160, 172, 181, 206; yogis, 27, 30, 115, 118, 173, 180, 209 Hindu Fakir on a Bed of Spikes, Calcutta, cat. 22c, 245, 254, 257 Hitopadesha, 50 Hittleman, Richard, 100 Houghton, Walter, 273
F
fakir, 30, 42, 61, 257, 25862 Fakire und Fakirtum im Alten und Modernern Indien, cat. 26a, 284, 285 Farabi, 61 Fasting Buddha, cat. 6b, 138, 139 The Feast of the Yogis, cat. 17h, 209, 213 Female Guru and Disciple, cat. 14b, 180, 182 The Fifty Verses of Kamarupa (Kamaru panchasika), 62 Five-Faced Shiva, cat. 1d, 111, 113 Five Sages in Barren Icy Heights, cat. 15d, 192, 19495 Flow Yoga, 101 Forms of Vishnu, cat. 10c, 160, 163 Fraser, James Baillie, 232 Fraser, William, 232
K
Kailash, Mount, 190 Kala Bhairava, cat. 20b, 231, 235 Kalachuri, 52 Kamak Devi (Kamakhya), 62 Kamaru panchasika, 62 Kamarupa, 62 The Kamarupa Seed Syllables (Kamru bijaksa), 62 Kanchipuram, 30, 50, 118 Kandesh Education Society, 87 kanphata (split-eared), 73, 75 Kapalika (skull-bearer), 73, 206 Kapalikas, 50, 113 Kapila, 50, 78 karma, 13132, 135, 137 Karnataka, 106 Kashmir, 52, 141, 166, 176, 206 Kashmiri Shaivism, 24 Kathaka Upanishad, 36 Kathasaritsagara (Oceans of Rivers of Stories), 206 Kaula Shaivism, 117, 118 kavya (Sanskrit poetry), 206 Kaye, John William, 240
G
Gajasura, 113 Gandhara, 138, 141 Gandhi, Mahatma, 137 Ganesha (Ganapati), 144, 166 Ganga, 48
INDEX | 325
Kayotsagara, 135 Kedar Ragini (Freer), cat. 18a, 217, 220 Kedar Ragini (Metropolitan), cat. 18e, 1, 216, 220 Kedara Kalpa, cat. 15, 190, 193 Kellogg, W. A., 290 Kerala, 146 Kesriya, Ramchandra, 92 kevala, see moksha khechari (sky traveler), 118 kirtimukha (face of glory), 115 The Knots of the Subtle Body, cat. 11a, 5, 166, 167 Koringa (Rene Bernard), cat. 23bc, 30, 31, 259, 26061, 261 Kripalu, 100 Kripalvandanda, Swami, 100 Krishna, 36, 75, 146, 219, 222 Krishnamacharya, Sri Tirumalai, 85, 87, 89, 90, 98, 101, 285, 287, 29091, 29091 Krishna Vishvarupa, cat. 10a, 160, 161 kriya (action), 52, 87 Kriya Yoga, 35 kshetrapalas (guardian deities), 106 kukkutasana (cock posture), 151 Kumbh Mela festivals, 75, 76 Kumbhaka, cat. 9h, 156 Kundalini (yogic life force), 38, 70, 128, 164, 166, 167, 277, 279 Kurrum Dos, cat. 21e, 238, 240 Kuvalayananda, Swami, 32, 85, 8790, 98, 275, 279, 285, 290
L
Lakshman Das, cat. 20a, 8, 230, 232 Lakshmana, 202 Lakshmi, 167 Lakulisha, 55, 115 Leadbeater, Charles W., 277, 279 Light on Hatha (Hathapradipika), 27, 15051, 157 Light on Yoga, 159 Loo, C. T., 30
math, matha (Hindu monastery), 50, 55, 180 Mathuranath, 66 Matsyendra, 151 Matsyendranath, 117 Matsyendranath, cat. 2b, 115, 117 matsyendrasana (lord of the sh pose), cat. 26b, 285, 286 Mattamayuras (Drunken Peacocks), 52 Mattavilasa (Drunken Games), 50 Maury, G. Bonet, 269 Mauryan dynasty, 141 mayurasana (peacock pose), 151 medical yoga, cat. 25ah, 27583 Meditating Sikh Ascetic, 22, 26, 27 meditation, 23, 28, 35, 36, 48, 52, 55, 61, 62, 72, 85, 146, 148, 166, 222; Jains and, 131, 132, 135, 137 Megha Malar Ragini, cat. 18c, 219, 219 Mlis, George, 261 Mercer, Johnny, 262 Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to His House, cat. 17c, 203, 208 mlecchas (barbarians), 70 Mohenjo-Daro, 35 moksha (solitary blessedness), 132, 135, 190 Monroe, Marilyn, 98 Monserrate, 73 Mrigavati (Magic Doe-Woman), 61, 206, 209 mudra (hand gesture), 38, 124, 142, 151 Mughals, 28, 42, 59, 61, 64, 66, 6980, 117, 157, 159, 172, 176, 180, 196, 222, 223 Muktananda, Swami, 100 Muller, Max, 268 munis, 23 Muslim connections with yoga, 5966, 124, 206, 222 Mysore, 89, 159; palace, 291 The Mysterious Kundalini, 279
P
padmasana (lotus posture), 27, 115, 132, 146, 284 Pala rulers, 115 Pallava kings, 47; court, 50 panchagni tapas (ve res), 48 Pant, Pratinidhi, 287, 289 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, Chicago (1893), 96, 26869, 273 Parvati, 78, 144, 180, 190, 222 Pashupata sect, 55 Patanjali, 36, 59, 86, 87, 92, 96, 146, 150, 266 Paul, N. C., 97 Payag, 196, 227 The People of India, 238, 240 Perkasnund, 253 Persian, translations, 61, 62, 64, 66, 125, 142, 176, 232; texts, 59, 62, 70, 157, 159, 181, 203, 206, 227, 230, 235, 275 Phalke, Dadasahib, 261 photography, colonial, cat. 21, 23645, 23749; modern, 28489 Picart, Bernard, 253 Pool of Nectar, 64 Pool of the Water of Life, 64 Popular Yoga: Asanas, 279 Power Yoga, 101 Prabodhashiva, 50, 52, 53, 55 Prahlada, 146 pranayama (controlled breathing), 36, 87, 8889, 92, 132, 291 Prasad, Rama, 97 Prashantashiva, 50, 52, 55 pratyahara (withdrawing the senses), 36 pratyaksha (ultimate reality), 129 Preksha Dhyana, 137 Prince and Ascetics, cat. 19c, 22627, 227 The Prince Begins His Journey, cat. 17e, 209, 210 The Prince in Danger, cat. 17g, 209, 212 Puranas, 55, 142 Puris, 77, 78, 172 Purkhu of Kangra, 193
N
nads (formerly singis), 70, 75 nadis (breath channels), 36 Nagarjuni, 141 Nagaur, 117 Naidu, Kodi Ramamurty, 89 Nandi, 106, 144 Nara, 47, 48, 55 Narasimha, 146 Narasimhacarya, cat. 24b, 267, 269 Narayana, 47, 48, 78 Nath Charit, cat. 4ac, 12830, 12830 Naths, 30, 40, 44, 70, 73, 75, 78, 80, 113, 166, 181, 209, 227; siddhas, 12830 Nauli kriya, 90 neo-Hinduism, 95, 96 Nepal, 44 Netra Tantra, 42 New Age movement, 100, 277 New Thought movement, 97, 98, 290 Nicholas, John, cat. 21ad, 236, 238 niyama, 38, 142 Nurpur, 113
M
Madhavadasji, Paramahansa, 87, 88 Madhya Pradesh, 50 Madras Photographic Society, 238 Mahabharata, 36, 48, 157, 160, 202, 253 Mahamudras, 38 Mahapragya, Acharya, 137 Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar Visiting Savina Khera Math, cat. 14e, 183, 18587 Maharana Sangram Singh II Visiting Gosain Nilakanthji after a Tiger Hunt, cat. 14f, 183, 18889 Maharashtra, 87, 88, 160 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 100 Mahavidyas, 196 Maitri Upanishad, 40 Mallinson, James, 32, 173 Malsar, 88 Mamallapuram, 47, 50, 53, 55 Mandhata, Raja, 166 Mandi court, 110, 113, 142 Manikrao, Rajratna, 87 Mankot, 27, 28 mantras, 28, 42, 61, 64 Marathas, 172 Marwa, 117 Massage and Exercise Combined, cat. 26e, 288, 290
Q
Qutban Suhravardi, 206
R
Radha, 222 Ragamala, 21422 Raichandbai, 137 The Raj Kunwar on a Small Raft, cat. 17f, 209, 211 Raja Harischandra, 261 Raja Yoga, 35 Raja Yoga, 96, 266, 279 Rama, 75, 78, 146, 202 Rama Enters the Forest of the Sages, cat. 17a, 202, 203, 2035; cat. 17b, 202, 203, 2067 Ramacharaka, Swami, 97, 290 Ramakrishna, Sri, 96 Ramanandis, 75, 78, 146 Ramayana, 142, 146, 202 Rambha, 142 Ramcharitmanas, 202, 203 Rele, Dr. Vasant, 279 renunciants, 28, 55, 117, 141, 190 Ricalton, James, 257 Rig Veda, 35, 138, 160 Riyaz al-mazahib (The Gardens of Religions), 66 Roy, Manotosh, 90
O
Ocean of Life, 64 Olcott, Colonel Henry Steel, 97 ojas (supernatural vitality), 85, 90, 92
Roy, Rammohan, 95 Rudra (Shiva), 166 ruhaniya (spiritual being), 124
S
Sacred Books of the East, 268 Sacred Books of the Hindus, 268 Sadashiva, 106, 110, 112, 113 Sadashiva, cat. 1e, 112, 113 sadhaka (Tantric practitioner), 148, 190 sadhu (Hindu ascetic), 30 sadhvis (female sadhus), 30 Sage Bhringisha and Shiva, cat. 13, 176, 177 sages, 28, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55, 117, 142, 160, 181, 202; images of, 115, 146, 203 Saha, cat. 3e, 124, 125 sahridaya (emotional capacity), 27 Saindhavi Ragini, wife of Bhairon, cat. 18h, 7, 220, 221 Salim, Prince, see Jahangir salokya (residence in region of God), 52 samadhi (perfect contemplation), 36, 87, 146 Samaveda, 164 samipya (nearness to God), 52 samkhya, 36, 90, 92 sampradaya (religious order), 115 samsara (cycle of rebirth and suffering), 131 Sanchi, Great Stupa at, 28 Sandow, Eugene, 90, 289 Sangram Singh II, Maharana, 181, 183 sannyasa (renunciation), 80 Sannyasis (renouncers, ascetics), 70, 77, 78, 80, 203 Sannyasi and Fakir Rebellion, 42, 256 Sanskrit texts, 38, 59, 61, 64, 70, 73, 142, 150, 157, 164, 176, 181, 190, 202, 206, 232, 277 Sant tradition, 70 saptarishi (seven sages), 28 Sarang Raga, cat. 18d, 218 sarupya (form of God), 52 Sarvajnanottara Agama, 53 Satcakranirupanacitram, cat. 25b, 4, 277, 278 Satchidananda, Swami, 100 Satya Sai Baba, 115 Satyananda Sarasvati, 76 Savina Khera Math, 181, 183 sayujya (godlike being), 52 Schmidt, Richard, 284, 285 Scroll with Chakras, cat. 11c, 166, 17071 Sears, Tamara I., 32 Seated Jina Ajita, cat. 5a, 131, 132 Self-Realization Fellowship, 90, 97 Sen, Keshubchandra, 96 Sen, Raja Sidh, 110, 113, 142 shadanga (sixfold yoga), 36 Shah Jahan, 196, 223, 227 Shaiva, 7576, 78, 106, 113, 115, 117 Shaiva Agamas, 52, 106 Shaiva, monastery, 50; Naths, 203; Sannyasi, 142, 181 Shaiva Siddhanta, 5253, 110, 113 shakti, 92 Shankara, 78 Shankaracharya, 78 shanta rasa (aesthetic emotion of quiescence), 27 Shatapatha Brahmana, 138 shavasana (corpse pose), 151 Sheeshvalji, 116, 117 Shesha, 160 shikshadana scenes, 54 shishya (disciple), 117
Shiva, 27, 40, 42, 47, 50, 52, 53, 55, 128, 130, 142, 144, 160, 165, 180, 183, 190, 220, 222; depictions of, 48, 10613, 10712, 176, 196, 214, 215; followers of, 42, 7578, 172, 173, 203 Shiva and Parvati on Mount Kailash (NGV), cat. 7c, 142, 144, 145 Shiva as Bhairava (British Museum), cat. 1a, 106, 107 Shiva Bhairava (Cleveland), cat. 1b, 106, 108109 Shiva Blesses Yogis on Kailash (Rietberg), cat. 14a, 180, 181 Shivananda, Swami, 76 shramanas (exertions), 23, 142 Shringeri monastery, 78 Shrividya Tantric Shaivism, 78 shunya (absolute emptiness), 166 siddha (adept, perfected one), 27, 30, 52, 12830, 135, 164 Siddha Pratima Yantra, cat. 5e, 26, 135, 136 Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, 164, 16667 Siddha Yoga, 100 siddhasana, 166 siddhis (powerful magical abilities), 47, 142, 206 Sikh, 24 simhasana (lion pose), 284 Singh, Jagat, 196 Singh, Maharaja Man, 75, 128, 129, 166 Singh, Sital, 66 Singh, Vijai, 202, 203 singis (horns), 70, 73 Singleton, Mark, 32, 266, 285 Siva Samhita, 268 Sivananda, Swami, 97, 100 Skinner, Colonel James, 75, 232 Smith, Huston, 97 Solvyns, Balthazar, 235 Son River, 50, 52, 53 Sorcar, P. C., 90 Sritattvanidhi, 159 Standing Jina, cat. 5c, 133, 135 Stars of the Sciences, 124, 125 Stories of the Naths (Nath Charit), 128 String of Jewels of Hatha (Hatharatnavali), 157 subtle yoga, 42 Su, 24, 64, 157, 176, 203, 206, 209, 222, 258; and yoga, 6162, 70, 206 Suhrawardi, 61 sukshma sharira (subtle body), 166, 275, 277 surya namaskar (sun salutation), 284 Surya Namaskars, cat. 26c, 287, 289 suryopasthana tapas (penance of gazing into sun), 48 Swanson, Gloria, 98
Three Women Present a Young Girl to Aged Ascetics, cat. 14c, 180, 183 Thurston, Howard, cat. 23a, 25859 tilak (forehead mark), 142, 173 Tile with Impressed Figures of Emaciated Ascetics and Couples Behind Balconies, cat. 6d, 140, 141 tirthankara (Jain teacher), 131 transcendentalism, 95, 96, 97 Trika, 176 Tucker, Orrin, 258, 262 Tughluq, Sultan Muhammad ibn, 59 Tulsi, Acharya, 137 Tulsidas, 202 Tun, Chit, 90 Two Ascetics, cat. 7b, 142, 144 Tyagis, 80
U
Udasi (Sikh yogi), 27 Unitarianism, 95, 96, 97 Upanishad, 36 urdhvabahu (raised-arm penance), 48, 77, 78, 183, 253 urdhvapundras (Vaishnava forehead markings), 77 Uttar Pradesh, 87, 118
V
Vairagi, 232 Vaishnavas, 75, 76, 7778, 80, 113, 146, 151, 172, 173, 203, 227, 232, 235 Vallabhacarya, Sri, 196 varada mudra (boon-granting gesture), 48 Varanasi, 50, 52, 53, 66 Varma, Raja Ravi, 287 Vasishta, 28, 176 Vasu, Sirisa C., 268 Vedanta Society, 26869, 272 Vedantic teachings, 61 Vedas, 28 vibhuti (supernatural powers), 38 vidyadharas (attendant demigods), 115, 206 Vidyashiva, 115, 117 Vinyasa Yoga, 35, 101 vinyasas (owing, repetitive postures), 284, 291 Virahanka, Haribhadra, 132 Vishnu, 36, 47, 48, 50, 75, 146, 148, 151, 160, 164, 166 Vishnu Vishvarupa, cat. 10b, 160, 162 Vishnudevananda, Swami, 100, 290 Vishvamitra, 142 Vishvamitra Practices His Austerities, cat. 7a, 142, 143 vishvarupa, 160 vitarka mudra (imparting knowledge gesture), 130 Vivekananda, Swami, cat. 24am, 44, 87, 96, 97, 98, 26673, 264, 267, 26974, 279 vyalas (mythical lions), 115 Vyayam Mandir, 87
T
The Tale of Devadatta, cat. 17d, 206, 209 Tamil Nadu, 30, 106, 118, 132, 135, 146, 235 Tantras, 27, 30, 38, 42, 52, 106, 118, 160; Tantric sects, 52; texts, 110, 150; Tantric traditions, 32, 70, 75, 78, 180; Tantric yogis, 40, 42, 44, 70, 110, 206 tapas (inner heat), 47, 138, 141, 142, 157, 235, 253 tapkar asana (heat-producer posture), 142, 157 tarka (rational inquiry), 36 Tashrih-i-Mansuri, 275, 277 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 253 Teerth, Swami Shivanand, 90 The Ten-Point Way to Health, 287, 289 Thaneshwar, 78, 172, 173 Theosophical Society, 97, 268, 277 Three Aspects of the Absolute, cat. 5a, 2, 24, 25, 27
W
Wassan, Yogi, 290 Watson, Forbes, 240 White, David Gordon, 32, 86, 266 Wish-Fullling Gem of Yoga (Yogachintamani), 157 Wodiyar, Krishnaraja, 290 Worship of Shiva, cat. 15c, 192, 193 Wujastyk, Dominik, 275, 277
INDEX | 327
Y
yajnopavita (sacred thread), 48 Yakiniputra, Haribhadra, 132 yantra, 28, 118, 124 yatis, 23 Yesudian, Selvarajan, 90 Yoga, and body, 2728, 70, 8587; and colonialism, 24, 30, 64, 66, 8587; and health, 23, 85, 87 89, 98, 100; means and goals of, 23, 35, 8587, 92, 97; medicine and science, 27583; metaphysics of, 23, 86, 100, 128, 176; metaphysical tness of, 8592; modern, 42, 8592, 95102, 26691; Mughal interest in, 6980, 181, 196, 212, 222; Muslim interpreters of, 5966, 212; origins of, 23, 24, 32, 35 36, 70; and perception, 27, 86, 87, 92, 176; philosophy of, 23, 24, 27, 61, 66, 90; and physical education, 8790, 98, 283, 289; practice of, 5055, 86, 164, 180; practitioners of, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 3538, 48, 55, 62, 76, 166, 176, 180; and religion, 24, 5055, 59; transnational adaptations of, 24, 95102; transnational imagination of, 23063; traditions of, 35, 36 Yoga Asanas, Simplied, 283 The Yoga Body Illustrated, cat. 26f, 288, 28990 Yoga Institute, 8889, 283 Yoga Journal, 102 Yoga Mimansa, cats. 25fg, 26gh, 275, 279, 282, 289, 290 Yoga Narasimha, Vishnu in His Man-Lion Avatar (Cleveland), cat. 8a, 146, 147 Yoga Personal Hygiene, cat. 25h, 283, 283 Yoga Society of Pennsylvania (Kripalu), 100 Yoga Sutras, 36, 40, 42, 44, 59, 86, 96, 97, 142, 146, 150, 157, 176, 26667 Yoga Vasishta (Teachings of the Sage Vasishta), 40, 61, 176 Yogananda, Paramahansa, 85, 90, 97 yogapatta (yoga strap), 28, 48, 70, 142, 146, 214 Yogasopana Purvacatushka , 285, 287 Yogendra, Sri, also see Desai, 85, 8889, 90, 98, 275, 279, 283, 290 Yogeshvara, 180 Yogini (Sackler), cat. 3a, 118, 119 Yogini (Detroit), cat. 3b, 118, 120 Yogini (Minneapolis), cat. 3c, 118, 121 Yogini (San Antonio), cat. 3d, 118, 12223, 124 Yogini with Mynah, cat. 3f, 124, 125, 12627 Yogini in Meditation, cat. 18f, 220, 222 yoginis, 30, 38, 40, 42, 62; depictions of, 11825, 11927, 183, 220 yogins, 52, 98 yogis, 28, 30, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 59, 61; depictions of, 64, 66, 69, 11517, 166, 180, 181, 202, 230, 284, 291; in Mughal India, 6980, 172 Yogoda, 90 Young Peoples Missionary Movement, 257 Youre the One, 262 Yuvarajadeva I, 52
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yoga

The Art of Transformation

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 1

2 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 3

4 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 5

6 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 7

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The Art of Transformation

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

12 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

This publication is made possible with the generous support of:

Map: Indian Subcontinent A Note on the Transliteration

230 236 250 258 266 275 284

PART FOUR YOGA IN THE TRANSNATIONAL IMAGINATION, 18TH20TH CENTURY

118 Yoginis 128 131 138

Vivekananda and Rational Spirituality Medical Yoga Modern Postural Yoga

301 Glossary 304 318

Ashram and Math The Cremation Ground

190 Pilgrimage 196 202 214 223

320 Contributors 322 Credits 324 Index

16 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

18 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

Jammu and Kashmir

Kangra Mandi Bilaspur Kedaranath

Bundi Mewar Kota (Kotah)

Chunar Rewa (Gurgi)

Chennai (Madras) Kanchipuram Salem

20 | YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

A NOTE ON THE TRANSLITERATION | 21

Yoga: The Art of Transformation

Melting, Expansion, and Radiance

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 25

Representing the Yogic Body

YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 27

Identifying Yogic Practitioners

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 29

YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 31

Essays and Catalogue Entries

Notes on the captions

Notes on the text

YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 33

David Gordon White

The Yoga Sutras and Allied Traditions

36 | DAVID GORDON WHITE

Tantric Yoga and Hatha Yoga

38 | DAVID GORDON WHITE

40 | DAVID GORDON WHITE

Yoga and Yogis in the Modern World

42 | DAVID GORDON WHITE

44 | DAVID GORDON WHITE

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 45

Mythological Landscapes and the Poetics of Practice

FROM GURU TO GOD | 49

Establishing Real Places for Yogic Practice

YOGA : THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | 51

FROM GURU TO GOD | 53

Portraying Divine Teachers