Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Wiener Forum für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft / Vienna Forum for Theology and the Study of Religions Band 16 Herausgegeben im Auftrag der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Wien, der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Wien und dem Institut für Islamisch-Theologische Studien der Universität Wien von Ednan Aslan, Karl Baier und Christian Danz Die Bände dieser Reihe sind peer-reviewed. Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz (eds.) Yoga in Transformation Historical and Contemporary Perspectives With 55 figures V&R unipress Vienna University Press Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISSN 2197-0718 ISBN 978-3-7370-0862-4 Weitere Ausgaben und Online-Angebote sind erhältlich unter: www.v-r.de Veröffentlichungen der Vienna University Press erscheinen im Verlag V&R unipress GmbH. Published with the support of the Rectorate of the University of Vienna, the Association Monégasque pour la Recherche Académique sur le Yoga (AMRAY) and the European Research Council (ERC). © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, D-37079 Göttingen / www.v-r.de Dieses Werk ist als Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der Creative-Commons-Lizenz BY-SA International 4.0 („Namensnennung – Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen“) unter dem DOI 10.14220/9783737008624 abzurufen. Um eine Kopie dieser Lizenz zu sehen, besuchen Sie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den durch diese Lizenz zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Titelbild: Four-armed Patañjali holding a sword. Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, Pune. © Dominik Ketz, www.dominikketz.de Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Contents Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Part A. Yoga in South Asia and Tibet Dominik Wujastyk Chapter 1: Some Problematic Yoga Sūtra-s and Their Buddhist Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Philipp A. Maas Chapter 2: “Sthirasukham Āsanam”: Posture and Performance in Classical Yoga and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Jason Birch Chapter 3: The Proliferation of Āsana-s in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts . . 101 James Mallinson Chapter 4: Yoga and Sex: What is the Purpose of Vajrolı̄mudrā? . . . . . 181 Marion Rastelli Chapter 5: Yoga in the Daily Routine of the Pāñcarātrins . . . . . . . . . 223 Catharina Kiehnle Chapter 6: The Transformation of Yoga in Medieval Maharashtra . . . . 259 Philipp A. Maas / Noémie Verdon Chapter 7: On al-Bı̄rūnı̄’s Kitāb Pātanğal and the Pātañjalayogaśāstra . . 283 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 6 Contents Ian A. Baker Chapter 8: Tibetan Yoga: Somatic Practice in Vajrayāna Buddhism and Dzogchen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Part B. Globalised Yoga Karl Baier Chapter 9: Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co. . . . . 387 Joseph S. Alter Chapter 10: Yoga, Nature Cure and “Perfect” Health: The Purity of the Fluid Body in an Impure World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Maya Burger Chapter 11: Sāmkhya in Transcultural Interpretation: Shri Anirvan (Śrı̄ ˙ Anirvāna) and Lizelle Reymond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 ˙ Anand Amaladass Chapter 12: Christian Responses to Yoga in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Beatrix Hauser Chapter 13: Following the Transcultural Circulation of Bodily Practices: Modern Yoga and the Corporeality of Mantras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 Anne Koch Chapter 14: Living4giving: Politics of Affect and Emotional Regimes in Global Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Suzanne Newcombe Chapter 15: Spaces of Yoga: Towards a Non-Essentialist Understanding of Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 Gudrun Bühnemann Chapter 16: Nāga, Siddha and Sage: Visions of Patañjali as an Authority on Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz Introduction 1. Context, Scope and Structure of the Present Volume Ever since the emergence of yoga-related practices and teachings in South Asia around 500 BCE, yoga has shown a protean flexibility and creativity, constantly reproducing itself in dependence on changing social, cultural and religious contexts. Thus, the history of yoga is a complex and multifaceted one, and still remains far from having been exhaustively investigated. Furthermore, the roughly two decades of academic research on yoga since the late 1990’s have brought new insights, methodological approaches and questions concerning the history of premodern yoga, the interpretation of yoga-related literature, and the early impact of the phenomenon on other Asian cultures. What is more, the investigation of modern transnational yoga has established itself as a multidisciplinary field of study in its own right. Studies on the history and contemporary state of modern yoga have caused ongoing public and academic debates about the relation between so-called traditional and modern yoga and about issues like authenticity, authority and ownership. Moreover, the motives and experiences of contemporary practitioners and their global networks are being investigated with methods of the social sciences and cultural anthropology.1 In view of these vibrant developments, the editors of the present volume convened an international conference on “Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on a Global Phenomenon” at the University of Vienna, which took place on 19–21 September 2013.2 For the sake of coherence and optimisation of synergies, its focus was on the exploration of the phenomenon of yoga from the point of view of South Asian studies, the study of religions, 1 The pertinent literature is far too comprehensive to be reviewed here. However, in combination the reference sections of the individual chapters of the present volume will provide a good overview of the recent special and general literature on the above-mentioned aspects of yoga research. 2 See http://yogaintransformation.wissweb.at (accessed 3 November 2017). Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 8 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz sociology, cultural studies, theology and history of religions. The investigation of yoga from the perspectives of psychology and medicine, interesting and relevant as they may be, thus remained outside the scope of the conference. The editors were fortunate to attract many of the key players in current yoga research of the described types as well as acknowledged specialists in the afore-mentioned areas of yoga-related research to the conference, either as speakers or as participants in the panel discussions. The vast majority of them also kindly agreed to elaborate and expand their papers and turn them into chapters of a book on the conference topic. The present volume is the fruit of their combined labours. In line with the conference agenda, it explores yoga from a broad perspective, but definitely does not aspire to be encyclopedic. Thus, the volume examines different strands and specific issues of South Asian and Tibetan yoga in the premodern period as well as developments within its practices and theories. It also investigates forms of modern yoga in their complex historical contexts and addresses recent developments and the current transformation of transnational modern yoga. Moreover, it considers aspects of the encounter of the Islamic and Christian traditions with the theory and practice of yoga in the past and present. In general, in keeping with the current trend in yoga-related studies emphasis has been put on the practice of yoga and its immediate theoretical underpinnings. Thus, even though several papers inevitably also touch upon philosophical aspects of yoga and consider, next to the social and religious contexts, also the philosophical context of the development and transformation of yoga practice, the philosophy, or rather: philosophies of yoga properly speaking do not play a prominent role in the present volume. The volume consists of altogether sixteen chapters that make up its two parts of approximately equal size and with different historical and geographical foci. Part A, “Yoga in South Asia and Tibet”, is mainly devoted to the study of premodern yoga on the basis of primary sources in several South Asian languages, in Arabic and in Tibetan, whereas Part B, entitled “Globalised Yoga”, deals with aspects of modern and post-modern forms of yoga that are investigated primarily on the basis of sources in European languages and with empirical methods. The following survey is meant to provide an overview of the content of the individual chapters and at the same time to show their coherence and interrelatedness. 2. Synopsis of Part A: “Yoga in South Asia and Tibet” The initial contribution, “Some Problematic Yoga Sūtra-s and Their Buddhist Background” by Dominik Wujastyk emphasises the importance and need of an informed historical and philological approach in order to arrive at a full understanding of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, Patañjali’s masterpiece on yoga which Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 9 Introduction was composed from a Brahmanical perspective. Drawing special attention to the three technical Sanskrit terms asampramosa, anantasamāpatti and dharma˙ ˙ megha that occur in the sūtra text of Pātañjalayogaśāstra 1.11, 2.46–47 and 4.49, respectively, Wujastyk demonstrates that these sūtra-s were frequently misunderstood throughout the reception history of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra due to a lack of awareness on the part of its interpreters about the original meaning of the above terms which were actually coined and used in the Buddhist tradition of South Asia. By drawing upon parallels to the employment of the three technical terms in Buddhist literature, Wujastyk highlights the deep intellectual influence of Buddhism on Patañjali. In this way, he defines familiarity with South Asian Buddhist thought, religious concepts and meditation practices as a necessary condition for an appropriate understanding of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra before its intellectual backdrop and in its original intellectual milieu in late fourth- or early fifth-century South Asia. The chapter by Philipp A. Maas, “‘Sthirasukham Āsanam’: Posture and Performance in Classical Yoga and Beyond”, is also largely devoted to the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and the history of its reception. More specifically, Maas investigates Patañjali’s treatment of yogic postures (āsana), starting with a contextualisation of the role of āsana-s within the yogic path to liberation. He then analyses the passage Pātañjalayogaśāstra 2.46–48 and demonstrates that the two sūtra-s 2.46 and 2.47 should be understood as a single sentence. This is followed by a discussion of the list of posture names in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra as well as of the possible nature of the postures themselves from a philological perspective. Maas’ critical edition of the text of Pātañjalayogaśāstra 2.46 provides the basis for a detailed comparison of various descriptions of posture performance in medieval commentaries on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and in the authoritative Jaina yoga treatise by Hemacandra. This comparison reveals that designations of āsana-s and the descriptions of their performance may differ from source to source. However, all analysed sources agree in presenting āsana as a complex of psycho-physiological practices meant to enable the yogi to undertake long sessions of exercises, such as breath control, and of various kinds of meditation, rather than mere performances of bodily configurations as means in themselves. “The Proliferation of Āsana-s in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts” by Jason Birch continues the investigation of yogic posture practice, which he carries on to the historical setting of late medieval South Asia. Birch bases his exposition on newly discovered Sanskrit manuscripts that list and describe a considerably larger number of yogic postures than earlier sources. Their descriptions are here for the first time analysed and compared with descriptions of āsana-s in earlier and roughly contemporary Hatha and Rāja Yoga texts. In the final analysis, Birch’s ˙ presentation and interpretation of the newly discovered manuscript evidence shatters the belief in a recent historical narrative concerning the origin of many Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 10 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz modern yogic postures. According to this narrative, a radical historical rupture of āsana practice occurred in colonial India when all of a sudden a large number of previously undocumented complex and physically demanding postures became fashionable, exactly at the time when European body building and gymnastic exercises appeared on the stage of physical culture in South Asia. Birch’s research reveals that many of the physical yoga practices allegedly introduced during the colonial period were actually not innovations, but had predecessors in the tradition that have so far remained unnoticed simply because they are not to be found in the widely known published Hatha Yoga texts. ˙ The aim of the chapter “Yoga and Sex: What is the Purpose of Vajrolı̄mudrā?” by James Mallinson is also to overcome a wide-spread preconception concerning the history of Hatha Yoga, namely, the view that the origins of hathayogic ˙ ˙ practice have to be sought in Śaiva tantric sex rituals. The evidential basis for this narrative is usually considered to be the vajrolı̄mudrā, the practice of drawing up liquids through the urethra. The vajrolı̄mudrā figures prominently in Hatha ˙ Yoga, and it seems to have an obvious connection with sex. However, by taking into consideration textual, ethnographic, experiential and anatomical data in order to determine the history, method and purpose of vajrolı̄mudrā, Mallinson arrives at the conclusion that this practice was most probably developed in a celibate ascetic milieu. Its purpose in Hatha Yoga is the absorption of semen in ˙ the body of a practitioner who wants to enjoy intercourse, even after ejaculation. Thus, vajrolı̄mudrā emerges from Mallinson’s research as a means for yogis to have sex and yet remain continent, rather than a component of tantric sex rituals. In “Yoga in the Daily Routine of the Pāñcarātrins” Marion Rastelli leads her readers to the religious ambience of tantric Vaisnavism or, more specifically, to ˙˙ that of the Pāñcarātra tradition of South India. Rastelli describes in great detail the performance, role and meaning of yoga as the fifth and final constituent of the “five times” or “five time periods”, i. e., the five daily ritual duties performed by a Pāñcarātra devotee. In doing so, she surveys a wide spectrum of pertinent sources comprising the Pāñcarātra Samhitās, Veṅkatanātha’s Pāñcarātraraksā ˙ ˙ ˙ and Purānic literature. In her final analysis, Rastelli demonstrates convincingly ˙ that yoga is an essential part of life for all followers of the Pāñcarātra tradition. Yoga may figure as a set of ritual techniques or as an autonomous practice that is largely disconnected from ritual contexts. It may be performed in many different forms daily before sleep, between two phases of sleep, or after sleep. The benefit that Pāñcarātrins derive from yoga consists in mental training, an awareness of the nature of God, and insights concerning God’s relationship to man, particularly to his devotees. The time period before falling asleep and an interval of wakefulness between two phases of sleep suggest themselves as ideal times for yoga practice, because then the insights provided by yoga can be intensified during the following phase of sleep. The specific contents of these yogic insights, Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 11 Introduction however, depend on the theology propounded by the devotee’s particular tradition or sub-tradition. “The Transformation of Yoga in Medieval Maharashtra” by Catharina Kiehnle is focussed on yoga in the context of another Vaisnava tradition, different ˙˙ from the one discussed by Rastelli. Kiehnle deals with the role of yoga in the socalled “nominal Vaisnavism” of the Vārkarı̄ religious movement, which devel˙˙ oped in Maharashtra during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Her study is based on the Marathi-language Jñāndev Gāthā, a collection of songs attributed to the poet–saint Jñāndev. In these songs, multiple and partly conflicting attitudes towards yoga and other forms of religious practice are reflected. Kiehnle suggests that the Bhakti Yoga (“yoga of devotion”) of the Vārkarı̄s was developed for lay practitioners as an alternative to forms of yoga that were practised mainly in ascetic circles. In the Haripāth and related literature of the Vārkarı̄s an outright ˙ rejection of yoga can even be observed. This dismissive attitude may be explained as a result of the missionary endeavour of early Vārkarı̄s who wanted to convince as many potential followers as possible of the advantages of their less demanding way towards liberation. In the chapter “On al-Bı̄rūnı̄’s Kitāb Pātanğal and the Pātañjalayogaśāstra” by Philipp A. Maas and Noémie Verdon the thematic focus shifts from the description and analysis of yoga in individual religious and philosophical traditions of premodern South Asia to the cultural transfer of yoga from South Asia to the Arab intellectual world in the Middle Ages. After providing an introduction to the life and work of al-Bı̄rūnı̄, the famous Perso-Muslim polymath who lived at the turn of the first millennium CE and spent some years in north-western South Asia, Maas and Verdon survey previous scholarly attempts to identify the Sanskrit source of his Kitāb Pātanğal, an Arab rendering of a yoga work in the tradition of Patañjali. The two authors arrive at the novel hypothesis that alBı̄rūnı̄ may have used the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (i. e., the Yogasūtra together with the so-called Yogabhāsya) as the main source of the Kitāb Pātanğal. This finding ˙ provides the basis for a new assessment of this work as the result of different literary transformations, some of which necessarily had to be highly creative in order to transfer the philosophical and religious content of a Sanskrit yoga work of the late fourth or early fifth century into the intellectual culture of medieval Islam. Taking into consideration these creative aspects of the Kitāb Pātanğal, Maas and Verdon demonstrate that the aspiration of the Perso-Muslim author was not merely to provide a translation faithful to the wording of its source text, but to make the spiritual dimension of yoga accessible to his Muslim readership. Also Ian A. Baker’s “Tibetan Yoga: Somatic Practice in Vajrayāna Buddhism and Dzogchen” deals with a cultural transfer of yoga, namely, the transfer of hathayogic practices from South Asia to Tibet. Baker highlights the early oc˙ currences of the word hathayoga and of hathayogic techniques in South Asian ˙ ˙ Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 12 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz Buddhist tantric literature in works such as the Guhyasamājatantra and the Amrtasiddhi. He then describes five practices, namely the “axis of awareness”, ˙ “yoga of breath and movement”, the “heart essence of Tibetan yoga”, “yoga of spontaneous presence”, and “yoga of active perception”, all of which occur in Buddhist tantric sources like the Kālacakratantra, the commentarial literature on them and further tantric treatises composed by Tibetan scholars. Baker then contextualises these yoga techniques in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes his detailed account of Tibetan somatic practices by suggesting that the “yoga of active perception” may be the quintessence of Tibetan yogic practice with a large potential to alter embodied experiences and to create “forms of awareness that transcend perennially limiting perspectives and preoccupations”. 3. Synopsis of Part B: “Globalised Yoga” In the initial chapter of the second part of the volume, “Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co.”, Karl Baier investigates the role of yoga within the occultist movement that flourished in Vienna during the last decades of the Habsburg Empire. The focus of this chapter is on the industrialist and occultist Carl Kellner. Kellner and other members of his milieu displayed a positive attitude towards Hatha Yoga, although many influential theosophical publications ˙ of the time warned against body-centered yoga practices. Baier shows that the interpretation of yoga within the occultist movement was prompted by the teaching of certain physical exercises in the Rosicrucian tradition represented by Johann B. Krebs and Alois Mailänder. Furthermore, Baier substantiates a hypothesis concerning yoga practice and ritual sex within the so-called Inner Occult Circle of the Sovereign Sanctuary, a high-degree masonic order in which Kellner operated as financial sponsor and spiritual teacher. This small group plays an important role within the historiography of modern occultism, as time and again it is considered to be the hotbed of the later Ordo Templi Orientis. The coda of the chapter examines Herbert Silberer’s views on yoga. Silberer was the most talented representative of second-generation Viennese occultism and his work foreshadows later developments such as Carl Gustav Jung’s interpretation of alchemy and the Eranos circle. Joseph S. Alter’s “Yoga, Nature Cure and ‘Perfect’ Health: The Purity of the Fluid Body in an Impure World” discusses the correlation between purification and embodied perfection to highlight how postures (āsana), breathing techniques and exercises (prānāyāma) came to be understood within the framework of ˙ nature cure in modern India. Alter argues that the combination of nature cure and yoga provided a practical solution to the problem of contingency in health care. Nature cure shaped the practice of yoga and, in turn, yoga provided a Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 13 Introduction justification not only of different body-centred purifying practices, but also for the purification of mind by means of meditation practices. Without doubt, this synthesis of yoga and nature cure had an enormous impact on the global practice of yoga, but it also initiated a historical development within modern India that continues until the present day. Alter builds a bridge between Swami Sivananda – an Indian medical doctor who in the first half of the twentieth century integrated elements of yoga and nature cure, renounced the world and established the Divine Life Society – and more recent political innovations in India, namely, the establishment of the Central Council for Research on Yoga and Naturopathy (CCRYN) and its incorporation under the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH). A bridge of a different kind is addressed in the chapter “Sāmkhya in Trans˙ cultural Interpretation: Shri Anirvan (Śrı̄ Anirvāna) and Lizelle Reymond” by ˙ Maya Burger. Burger analyses the writings of the Bengali author Shri Anirvan (1896–1978) and the Swiss author of books on Indian spirituality Lizelle Reymond (1899–1994), who was Shri Anirvan’s disciple and translator. Burger demonstrates in a paradigmatic way the tight connections between India and Europe in the modern interpretation of yoga. In this context, she draws special attention to the concepts of Sāmkhya philosophy that Shri Anirvan employed in ˙ order to explain his experience of yoga. Steeped in the local tradition of the Bauls of Bengal, Shri Anirvan also enjoyed a classical training in Sanskrit. He was interested in modern science and (e. g., as translator of the works of Aurobindo into Bengali) familiar with Indian thinkers who reflected the confluence of cultures. Reymond was one of the intellectuals who introduced French-speaking Europe to the spiritualities of India, founding a book series that later became the important series “Les spiritualités vivantes”. Burger investigates the reinterpretation of yoga that took place in the collaboration of Shri Anirvan and Reymond by analysing key terms like prakrti and purusa as well as the concept of the “void” ˙ ˙ that was inspired by the Greek–Armenian occultist George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. She concludes that Shri Anirvan and Reymond presented a psychological and mystical interpretation of Sāmkhya that made this ancient Indian philosophical ˙ tradition suitable for the modern world. In “Christian Responses to Yoga in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century” Anand Amaladass addresses a further bridge provided by yoga, not between regional or national cultures, or between tradition and modernity within the same culture, but between two different religious traditions, namely, the Hindu and Christian traditions. However, his chapter shows that the Christian reception of yoga during the last century was not only rather ambiguous but by and large negative. The explanation that Amaladass offers for this state of affairs draws upon the Orientalistic typology of “the West” and “the East”. Influential intellectuals like Carl Gustav Jung and Hermann Hesse, who were interested in Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 14 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz India and Indian studies, were nonetheless averse to Europeans having recourse to Asian methods of prayer and meditation in general and to yoga in particular. Additionally, many Christians may have had an especially reserved attitude towards yoga due to their theological presuppositions. The Christian “missionary” thrust aims at giving a unique message to the whole world, but Christian traditions were frequently not ready to receive inspiration from outside. Moreover, the distinction Christian theologians made between their “revealed” religion and all other “natural” religions put them in an asymmetrical position – religiously and culturally. The negative response to yoga is a consequence of these attitudes. Nevertheless, there were exceptional individuals who wrote appreciatively on yoga from a Christian perspective, both in India and abroad. They took to its practice seriously and profited personally from it. In line with their experiences, some Christian authorities interpreted yoga as a helpful discipline that may be resorted to by Christians for their spiritual development and can be adapted within a Christian theological framework. Concerning the broad, truly transnational dissemination of yoga and its theoretical aspects, Beatrix Hauser’s “Following the Transcultural Circulation of Bodily Practices: Modern Yoga and the Corporeality of Mantras” is particularly critical of two models: that of a linear and primarily bilateral transfer from India and that of a global distribution in the form of global distribution networks. She proposes to replace these conceptualisations by introducing recent theories of global flows into Modern Yoga Studies. In her theorisation of global flows, Hauser argues that a consideration of the sentient human body as a source of recontextualisation and meaning production in its own right is of essential importance. The ethnographical part of her study investigates the chanting of mantras in contemporary yoga classes in Germany. Teachers explain the usage of mantras not only with reference to tradition but also with reference to sound as a type of energy that prompts attentiveness towards various sensorial spaces within the body. The latter point corresponds to older therapeutic concepts that were developed in Germany at the crossroads of voice training, breath therapy and autosuggestive techniques. The idea of chanting mantras for mental and physical benefit has seemingly superseded earlier concepts of vocal therapy. Hauser takes this as a confirmation of the view that yoga practitioners assess any of their somatic sensations in relation to previous experiences and sociocultural categories that shape the experiential repertoire. The chapter “Living4giving: Politics of Affect and Emotional Regimes in Global Yoga” by Anne Koch explores socio-political aspects of modern yoga. She discusses a prominent social manifestation of contemporary yoga, namely the Yoga Aid World Challenge (YAWC). This public yoga event gathers thousands of people across nearly thirty countries worldwide every year. On a certain day, yoga teacher teams compete for donations by offering yoga classes in public spaces Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 15 Introduction around the globe. Koch examines the political economy of this new form of organised global yoga and explains how neoliberal elements like competition permeate it. The success of YAWC depends on several factors: an emotional regime in the sense of a recognisable subcultural pattern, virtual and marketing communication, a corporate identity aesthetics, and the imagination of a global yoga space created by joint body practices. According to Koch, this new configuration of yoga is based on a transformation of social belonging and the offer of a specific purpose in life. By means of a certain “politics of affect” altruistic behaviour is generated as something distinct from late-modern spirituality that at the same time presents itself as a kind of self-empowerment concordant with it. Similar to Beatrix Hauser’s chapter, Suzanne Newcombe’s “Spaces of Yoga: Towards a Non-Essentialist Understanding of Yoga” interlinks questions of methodology and conceptualisation with a more empirical objective. Drawing on Jim Knott’s spatial analysis of religion, she examines the physical and social spaces of contemporary yoga. At the same time Newcombe argues for an approach to yoga that introduces instrumental and situational terms instead of essentialist definitions. On this note she presents the different locations and spaces connected with the practice of yoga: the stage used for yoga performances, public schools, typical contemporary yoga studios in cosmopolitan, multicultural areas, and, last but not least the yoga mat as a sacred ritual space where physical and psychological re-orientation take place. In this way she enquires not so much into what yoga is but into where yoga is practised and into the different meanings that emerge when yoga is practised in these different spaces. Her close look at the spaces yoga occupies in contemporary society reveals a great variety. Furthermore, Newcombe concludes that yoga is neither a necessarily religious or spiritual practice, nor a purely secular activity. It can be private, but sometimes it also assumes social and political dimensions. In the final chapter of the present volume, “Nāga, Siddha and Sage: Visions of Patañjali as an Authority on Yoga”, Gudrun Bühnemann also turns to spaces where yoga is practised nowadays. She points out that statues and other visual representations of Patañjali have become an important component of the visual culture of contemporary yoga. These representations also provide a link between South Asian and globalised yoga. Bühnemann argues that two factors created the modern interest in visual representations of the legendary author of the Yogasūtra: (1) the canonical status that the Yogasūtra has gained in many modern schools of yoga and (2) the recitation of stanzas in praise of Patañjali at the beginning of yoga sessions in globalised yoga studios. Searching for links between tradition and modernity, she traces the development of Patañjali’s iconography, starting with the earliest representations in the tradition of the Natarāja ˙ Temple at Cidambaram in Tamilnadu, South India. Against this backdrop, Bühnemann then examines the more recent iconography of Patañjali in the Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 16 Karl Baier / Philipp A. Maas / Karin Preisendanz tradition of the twentieth-century yoga master Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Furthermore, she treats representations of Patañjali as an accomplished being (siddha) absorbed in meditation, which she considers a distinct phenomenon that may also have originated in Tamilnadu. Bühnemann concludes her chapter with a look at recent representations of Patañjali that experiment with new forms and modes of expression. 4. Acknowledgements At this place, we would like to thank the following institutions and organisations for their generous support of the conference “Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on a Global Phenomenon” mentioned in section 1 above which was the starting point of the present book project: the KatholischTheologische Fakultät, Universität Wien, the Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien, the Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien (MA 7), the Embassy of India to Austria and Montenegro and Permanent Mission of India to the International Organisations in Vienna, the Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde, Universität Wien, the Sammlung De Nobili – Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Indologie und Religionsforschung / The De Nobili Research Library – Association for Indology and the Study of Religion, Vienna, the Berufsverband der Yogalehrenden in Deutschland and the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Religionswissenschaft / Austrian Association for the Study of Religions, Vienna. We are also indebted to the Shanti Yoga Store, Vienna, Yoga Austria – BYO (Berufsverband der Yogalehrenden in Österreich), the Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Wien, and the magazine “Ursache und Wirkung”, Vienna, for their kind support and assistance. The extraordinary commitment of Alexandra Böckle, Ewa Lewandowska and Judith Starecek of the Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde, Universität Wien proved invaluable in the practical planning and organisation of the conference. We would also like to express our special gratitude to Alexandra Scheuba (née Böckle), our editorial assistant, for taking care of the bulk of communication with our speakers and authors, for the professional preparation of the manuscript of the present volume, and for painstakingly copy-editing the text and participating in its proof-reading. Without her dedicated, patient and competent assistance, the volume would not have taken its present shape. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of Camilla Nielsen who assisted us in the copy-editing especially of the chapters by non-native speakers of English. Further thanks go to the reviewers of the volume, Daniel Raveh and Geoffrey Samuel, for their kind readiness to review the voluminous manuscript at rather short notice and for their pertinent comments and suggestions, and to the editorial board of the Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 17 Introduction “Wiener Forum für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft” for accepting the present volume into their series published by the Vienna University Press, a division of V&R unipress of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. Funding for the publication of this book both in print and in digital form as an Open Access resource was kindly provided by the Association Monégasque pour la Recherche Académique sur le Yoga (Monaco Association for Academic Research on Yoga), the European Research Council and the Rectorate of the University of Vienna. Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-SA 4.0 © 2018, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847108627 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737008624