Rajayoga

[Walter Slaje]

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

Jason Birch can.
See his excellent study "The Meaning of hatha in Early Hathayoga", JAOS 131, 
4 (2011): 527-554.

Kindly,
WS

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dermot Killingley" <dermot at GREVATT.FORCE9.CO.UK>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2012 11:55 AM
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Rajayoga


> 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
>

--------------------------
Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
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