7. Textual references to the practice of yoga postures

As noted in Section 2, it seems probable that yoga postures were known and practised in South Asia in the second or third millennium BCE, though the evidence is very slight; and it is likely that there has since been a continuous though largely unrecorded tradition of practice among the itinerant yogis of the Indian subcontinent.

Besides Vyasas’s mention of postures (referred to in Section 6), slightly later evidence for the practice of yoga postures dates from the eighth/ninth century CE, when stone carvings around temples were made in south India depicting yogis with large earrings in a number of yoga postures.

Also in the eighth/ninth century, Tirumular, a Tamil siddha, in his Tirumantiram lists eight postures out of what he says are 180 postures.

The Pashupata Sutra, which dates from the around 300 CE, describes the yoga practice of a radical sect of yogis, the Pashupatas, who were almost identical in lifestyle with the Greek cynics.

They lived on the margins of society, in caves, cremation grounds and remote places, covering themselves with ashes, shunning society, sometimes acting crazily, insulting people and getting insulted, practising pranayama and attaining yoga and supernatural powers. (However, by the end of the first millennium CE, the Pashupatas had many monasteries in several countries in Asia, and exerted considerable political influence.)

The Pashupatas were similar in many ways to aghoris, the most radical branch of a sect of yogis called Nath (meaning 'Lord'), Nath-Siddha, or Kanphata ('split ear', from their large earrings), who are still numerous in India and Nepal.

According to tradition, the Naths were organized into twelve branches by Gorakhnath (or Gorakshnath), who may have lived in the thirteenth century.

Gorakhnath's guru was Matsyendranath, who appears in many contexts in South Asian religions, particularly in connection with the transmission of esoteric Tantric texts.

Matsyendranath is also the patron saint of Nepal. Gorakhnath and Matsyendranath are members of a group of nine Naths, a still-popular South Asian tradition (particularly among the lower classes), who are wonder-working magicians and yogis.

Attributed to Naths are a few dozen texts that describe yoga practices and physiology that do not feature in the treatment of yoga by Patanjali. (However, recent work (2009) by James Mallinson indicates that Naths may not have authored many of the texts that are attributed to them.)

Besides the Yoga Sutra, one of the best-known texts on yoga is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika ('An explanation of Hatha Yoga') of Svatmarama. The text probably dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth century; some of its verses are to be found in Gorakshashataka ('The hundred verses of Gorakshnath'), which probably predates the Hatha Yoga Pradipika by about a century or two.

Near the beginning of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (v. 5), Shiva, Matysyendra and Goraksha are included in a list of teachers who have conquered death through the practice of hatha yoga, which is said to be the ladder to the heights of raja yoga. 'Hatha' means 'force' or 'exertion', and hatha yoga generally refers to strenuous physical exercises involving postures, controlled breathing (pranayama), and body-cleaning practices for the purification of nadis (though in some texts hatha yoga only refers to pranayama).

In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, fifteen yoga postures are mentioned. Besides the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and Gorakshashataka, perhaps the two best-known yoga texts, which are also attributed to Naths, are the Shiva Samhita (c. 1400 CE), and the Gheranda Samhita (c. 1700 CE), wherein are described, respectively, four and thirty-three postures.

According to the Shiva Samhita, eighty-four asanas were taught by Shiva; according to the Gheranda Samhita, 8,400,000 asanas. In nearly all texts, the most important asana is padmasana, the ‘lotus posture’.

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