Seth Powell

This chapter aims to broaden our understanding of the visual record of yogis carved upon the temple pillars and walls of several Vijayanagara-era temple sites in the Deccan-including major temple complexes at Hampi, Śrīśailam, Śṛṅgerī, Lepākṣī, and Śravaṇabeḷagola. The yogi sculptures are a key feature of a broader visual program of artistic temple production that spanned across these Vijayanagara temple sites during the 15th and 16th centuries. I argue that the pervasive sculptural presence of yogis performing complex āsanas in the Deccan during this period is a testament to the physical presence of lived yogis in and around these south-Indian temple sites. In several cases, the sculptures of particular āsanas predate and anticipate textual evidence thereof, providing unique insight into "on the ground" yoga traditions. Renditions of certain contortionist postures and those involving physical "props" may also be indicative of a shared performative community of physical culturalists (including yogis, dancers, and gymnasts) who were active at such temples, especially during annual festivals. The assessment of this material record of yoga practice is crucial for our understanding of the historical development and geographical location of physical yoga traditions in precolonial South India.

This article reassesses the history of postural yoga in precolonial India by drawing attention to recently discovered visual material evidence of non-seated postures carved onto the pillars of Vijayanagara temples at Hampi in Karnataka. Based on inscriptional evidence dating to the early 1500s CE, these sculptures represent important and overlooked early visual evidence for the practice of standing postures, inversions, and complex “pretzel-shaped” balancing postures in late-medieval South India. A number of sculptures bear a marked similarity to certain non-seated āsanas featured in more modern postural yoga systems, and might represent some of the earliest evidence of their existence. To contextualize these images and understand their significance within the larger history of yoga, the article begins with a preliminary genealogy of āsana and postural yoga traditions, highlighting a particular shift from seated to non-seated āsanas that is evinced in both the textual and visual-sculptural record. The author suggests that this shift in psychophysical functionality and praxis of yogic āsana may have opened up new anatomical potentials for engaging the body within a yogic context, and that this shift, alongside intermingling with much older traditions of asceticism (tapas), may partially explain the surge in complex non-seated āsanas featured in many yoga texts following the sixteenth century. Drawing upon other archeological sites, textual, epigraphical, and visual materials, the article makes the case that some of the ascetic figures in complex yogic postures sculpted at Hampi are depictions of Nātha yogis performing the techniques of Haṭhayoga.

This article will provide a small window onto the longue durée of the yogapaṭṭa, or “yoga strap,” and introduce a brief selection of the textual, visual, and material sources available for constructing its history. It will demonstrate that although the use of a yoga strap in postural yoga is typically credited as an “invention” of BKS Iyengar in the 1960s, the notion of a cloth strap used to support one’s physical yogic practice turns out to be just about as old as the discipline of yoga itself.

Guest blogpost for The Luminescent. Original form can be found here: https://theluminescent.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-ancient-yoga-strap-yogapatta.html

The aim of this exam is to provide a strong foundation and overview of the academic study of Śaivism and tantric traditions. The exam draws upon a variety of disciplinary approaches including philology, art history, philosophy, and religious studies, and considers how they may be brought together most fruitfully. The exam has been heuristically divided into six sections. The first four provide a broad overview of: 1) general and early Śaivism; 2) general studies of tantra, including Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions; 3) tantric Śaivism; and 4) the tantric body. The final two sections of the exam provide surveys of particular Śaiva/tantric orders or religious movements: 5) Nātha, Siddha, and Mahāsiddha traditions; and 6) Vīraśaiva or Liṅgāyata traditions.

This exam aims to provide a comprehensive survey of the academic study of yoga — from yoga's shrouded origins as an ascetic discipline in ancient India, to the popular rise of modern transnational yoga around the globe. It examines the history, theory, and praxis of yoga and yogīs, with a particular focus on the systematization of Indic yoga traditions produced through the codification of prescriptive Sanskrit yoga texts. Undergirding this exam is the theoretical position which asserts that the idea of " yoga " is one that has undergone constant transformation over the past 2,500 years, and yet it asks, as the theory and techniques of yoga were continually innovating and adapting, what, if any, are the key elements that have remained the same over time — that indeed, make a discipline " yogic? " Finally, how has the study of yoga in the academy advanced since Eliade's landmark study, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958)? What are the key debates, lacunae, and future directions in the field of yoga studies? The exam is divided heuristically into the following eight sections: 1) general yoga studies; 2) pre-Vedic and Vedic antecedents of yoga; 3) yoga in the Epics, Purāṇas, and Dharmaśāstras; 4) Sāṅkhya and Pātañjalayoga; 5) tantric yoga, both Buddhist and Hindu; 6) medieval and early modern yoga; 7) non-Hindu yoga, particularly Jaina and Islamic formulations of yoga; and lastly, 8) modern yoga studies.