AW: [INDOLOGY] Yoga Body, a book by Mark Singleton

[George Thompson]

The claim  that there are manifold yogas is 2000 years old and it is found
in the Gita, so talk about multiple yogas is a lot older than 100 years, and
we don't need Hopkins [or any of the others mentioned] to tell us so.  That
was one of the fundamental messages of the Gita: there are multiple yogas,
three in fact, according to that not-minor, and not-late, text, at least by
Farmer's standards.

By the way, are those of us who are non-Vedicists aware of the fact that
there is an interesting claim from Oberlies that the term 'yoga' in the
compound yoga-kshema [a hapax] refers to periods of rest [kshema] vs.
periods of mobility [i.e., warfare, cattle-raiding] in the RV?  So, does
this imply that the term 'yoga' has some roots in Vedic terrorism [well, if
we don't want to go there, how about 'Vedic aggression']?  I have suggested
in print some years ago [before Oberlies] that indigenous  Indic yoga
tradition may have had its roots in Vedic martial arts tradition.

What I detect in Singleton's careful choice of words in his book is that he
wants to suggest that among all of the known homonymical yogas in the
universe, the main one is this new one invented a hundred years ago by
Euro-occultists, which was subsequently embraced by neo-Hindu yogins.

No, I don't buy his claim.  "Yoga" has been a significant topic of
discussion in India for more than 2000 years.  It wasn't a discourse
invented by 19th cent. British gymnasts.  I agree with Singleton's take on
the development of the hatha-yoga fad among Euros.  But I think that his
suggestion that 'yoga' is an orientalist invention is probably a deliberate,
and also a stupid, provocation.

So now the Hindutva mobs will hate us even more.

 Okay,  I guess, if we have to....

George