Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU Philosophy & Comparative Religion Department Faculty Publications Philosophy & Comparative Religion Department 2017 Yoga in the Visnu Purana Sucharita Adluri Ms. Cleveland State University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clphil_facpub Part of the Hindu Studies Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Publisher's Statement Copyright Springer Verlag. https://link.springer.com/journal/10781 Original Citation Adluri, S. (2017). Yoga in the Visnu Purana. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 45(2), 381-402. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy & Comparative Religion Department at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy & Comparative Religion Department Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Yoga in the Visnu Purana Sucharita Adluri Abstract Though scholarship on diverse methods of yoga in the Indian traditions abounds, there has not been sufficient research that examines the traditions of yoga in the puranas. The present paper explores yoga articulated in the Visnu Purana (fourth century CE) and argues that what seems like a unified teaching is a com posite of an eight-limbed yoga embedded within an instruction on proto-Sämkhya. An evaluation of the key elements of yoga as developed in this text as a whole, clarifies our understanding of the emergence of yoga and its relationship to epic formulations on the one hand and to the Classical System of the Yogasiitras of Patafijali on the other.