Rajayoga

[Dermot Killingley]

Can anyone help me with the history of the term rAjayoga?

De Michelis (History of Modern Yoga p. 178), and D. G. White (Yoga in Practice p. 
20) say that in modern yoga movements it's identified with Patanjali, and that this 
started with Blavatsky. Theosophical writers also oppose rAja-yoga (spiritual and 
superior) to haTha-yoga (physical and inferior) (e.g. Sinnett Esoteric Buddhism p. 
27). This usage, especially the identification with Patanjali, is followed by 
Vivekananda, who owed more to Theosophy than he liked to admit.

Going further back, the haTha-yoga-pradIpikA (HYP 2.76) says rAja-yoga and 
HaTha-yoga should be practised together, but also lists rAja-yoga as one of the terms 
for the highest state (HYP 4.3-4). 

White (Yoga in Practice p. 17) says that according to HYP haTha-yoga leads to jIvan-
mukti and rAja-yoga leads to videha-mukti, but I don't find this in the text.

Further back again, the yoga-tattva-upanishad lists mantra-yoga, laya-yoga, haTha-
yoga and rAja-yoga (Dasgupta Hist Ind Phil vol 1 p. 229; Eliade Yoga p. 129).

And has the term rAja-yoga anything to do with the mahIpAla-vidhi (MBh 12.308.25) 
which Edgerton observes "agrees perfectly with the Gita's usual definition of yoga" 
("The meaning of sAMkhya and yoga" (American Journal of Philology vol. 45) p. 45)?

Can anyone fill any of the many gaps in this story? For instance, granted that 
Blavatsky popularised the identification of rAja-yoga with Patanjali, she can't have just 
invented it, so where did she get it from?

Dermot Killingley