,•,r,.lGlo~ " . ?.. ,,,, .,.:.. BRILL Asian Medicine 3 (2007) 177-188 www.brill.nl/asme Endpiece Geoffrey Samuel The contributions in this issue provide a useful opportunity to reflect on the whole question of yoga, both in its own right and in relation to lndic medical traditions. Probably, for many western lay readers, for whom 'yoga' means primarily postural yoga and relaxation, the connection between the two appears obvious and straightforward. Yoga is seen, and indeed widely repre­ sented, as centrally about health. This is not only a western perception. It also corresponds to the official policy of the modern Indian state, which recognises yoga as one of a number oflndian systems of medicine, supported along with naturopathy and homeopathy as State-sponsored alternatives to biomedicine. 1 In the description of the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), however, we can already see some ambivalence about presenting yoga purely as a practice for health: Yoga is primarily a way of life propounded by Patanjali in a systematic form. It consists of eight components, namely, restraint, observance of austerity, physi­ cal postures, breathing exercise, restraining of sense organs, contemplation, meditation and samadhi. These steps in the practice of Yoga have potential for improvement of social and personal behaviour, improvement of physical health by encouraging better circulation of oxygenated blood in the body, restraining the sense organs and thereby inducing tranquility and serenity of mind. The practice of Yoga prevents psychosomatic disorders/diseases and improves individual resis­ tance and ability to endure stressful situations. Though Yoga is primarily a way of life, nevertheless, its promotive, preventive and curative interventions are efficacious. 2 AYUSH's view of yoga is undoubtedly closer to 'Modern Yoga,' in Elizabeth de Michelis's terminology, than to 'Classical Yoga'. 3 The practice of yoga is 1 AYUSH is a department of the Government of India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It was established as the Department of Indian Systems of Medicines and Homoeopa­ thy (ISM and H) in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in March 1995 and renamed in November 2003 (AYUSH 2006, p. I). 2 AYUSH 2006, p. I 0. 3 De Michelis 2004; see also her article in the present issue. © Konink.lijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157342107X207263 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 12:45:39PM via free access 178 G. Samuel I Asian Medicine 3 (2007) 177-188 justified here in thoroughly modern terms: it leads co an 'improvement of social and personal behaviour' as well as 'improvement of physical heal ch'. As a number of recent studies have pointed out, chis kind of picture of yoga resulcs from the systematic removal of elements chat are nevertheless still present beneath the surface. As Joseph Alter put it in a previous issue of Asian Medicine, The power attributed to yoga as medicine and as a regimen of public health is intimately linked to tenth and eleventh-century ideas about sex, magic and alchemy, even though these ideas have, for the most part, been systematically and self-consciously purged from the discourse and practice of yoga. 4 The first four pieces in the present issue all deal in various ways with chis trans­ formation by which yoga became modern. De Michelis's article provides a valuable survey of the literature on chis topic, a literature co which she, along with Alter, Suzanne Newcombe and Mark Singleton, has already made nota­ ble contributions. Alcer's piece here focuses on the problematic attempts co transform yoga into a programme of physical training linked co the growing nationalise movement. Yoga might fie with Gandhi's Swadeshi movement, but the need for a more strongly muscular and masculine physical training pro­ gramme in pose-Independence India led co a progressive marginalisation. Newcombe and Singleton deal with the western side of the creation of mod­ ern yoga, focusing on Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, and the USA in the early twentieth century, respectively. What is evident-if hardly surprising­ in both of these articles is chat yoga in the West was adopted for reasons, and used in ways, chat derived their logic from western society, not from India. The adoption was doubcless often made easier because yogic practices were already being reshaped in response co modernity in the Indian context. This was barely visible, of course, co most of the western enthusiasts, who tended co cake claims of age-old tradition at face value. This is not co say chat the western adoption of yoga or of Indian spiritual traditions more generally was necessarily superficial, lee alone 'inauthentic' or invalid. Modern yoga has become a significant pare of contemporary western practices of bodily culcivacion, and it should be judged in its own terms, not in terms of its closeness co some presumably more authentic Indian practice. le is important co appreciate, though, chat the process both at the Indian and at the western ends was and is one of creative adaptation rather than of literal transmission. Thus yoga as a healing practice, in the forms in which we know it today, both Asian and Western, is largely a produce of modernity. Ac the same time, 4 Alter 2005, p. 120. Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 12:45:39PM via free access G. Samuel I Asian Medicine 3 (2007) 177-188 179 many, if not all, of the practices that have been variously classified as or con­ nected with yoga clearly do have health implications; they are technologies of the body as well as of the self. Historically, too, some at least of them were undoubtedly practised for healing purposes. It may be useful to attempt an overall sketch of the history of yogic practices as we are beginning now to understand it, as a more general background to the material in this volume. The following pages summarise parts of a forthcoming book on the early his­ tory of yoga and tantra, while also attempting to take my argument there a little further (Samuel in press). I will conclude with some further comments on the assimilation of yoga within the modern, global context. To begin with, I note that it is important to take 'yoga' in a wide sense, and to include the variery of related Buddhist and Jain practices, which may or may nor be called yoga, as well as the yogic and tantric traditions within the various religious currents that eventually led to modern Hinduism. As we will see, developments within these various traditions were closely entwined with each other. A useful starting point is provided by the work of Johannes Bronkhorst, who has sketched a picture of early yogic and ascetic practices on the basis of Buddhist, Jaina and Brahmanical sources. According to Bronkhorst, the Brah­ manical sources describe two traditions of ascetic practice, a semi-renunciate style, pursued by unmarried or married practitioners who live in the forest and subsist on forest produce while maintaining a ritual fire like a normal Vedic household, and a fully renunciate type who have no sacred fire. This first type seems to correspond to the ja_tila or matted-hair Brahmins who are described in the Buddhist texts as being regarded by the Buddha with considerable respect. 5 In later times such forest-dwelling practitioners (vdnaprastha, vaikhdnasa, etc) became little more than a literary conceit, asso­ ciated mainly with the idea of the Vedic rfis. In the period referred to by these Brahmanical and Buddhist sources, however, there seems to be at least a mem­ ory of them as real people. The two types are generally described as having different aims, the first being concerned with the attainment of rebirth in heaven, the second with libera­ tion from the cycle of rebirth. The terminology for the types of practitioner in the Dharma Si"mas and other early texts is variable, and in fact the Dharma Sutras disapprove of both types; it seems to be only at a considerably later stage that they became legitimised through inclusion as the third and fourth stages of a sequence of four dframas. 6 5 Bronkhorst 1998; Tsuchida 1991, pp. 54-7. 6 Cf. Olivelle 1993. Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 12:45:39PM via free access 180 G. Samuel I Asian Medicine 3 (2007) 177-188 Both types seem, however, to have been part of a shared ascetic sub-culture, among which were Brahmanical ascetics and also members of the various framm:za sub-groups, including early members of the Buddhists, Jains and Ajivikas or their ancestors. We have indications of a body of teaching stories and instructions shared among these groups, such as the Jaina text known as the lsibhasaiyam, the story of the conversion of the materialist king Paesi or Payasi, or the stories of the early ascetic king Nami or Nimi.7 We also have indications of a common body of practices, though in the early Brahmanical and Jaina sources, there appears little in the way of detailed instruction; the aim is to stop the activities of the body and mind, a process that is also often associated with stopping breathing.8 This is a form of ascesis (tapas) which may generate great power, but it also may lead to a holy death, as is familiar from the Jaina practice of sallekhana or fasting to death, a process in which 'the body is "scoured out" (sallikhita) of its negative factors and the mind can focus solely upon spiritual matters as death approaches'. 9 There are indications too of mental disciplines shared by these various early practitioners. Thus the four Brahmic States (brahmavihara), a well-known set of practices involves the cultivation of maitri (P.