Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharananda Ara?ya and Sa?khyayoga

by Knut A. Jacobsen

Overview

The Sāṃkhyayoga institution of Kāpil Maṭh is a religious organisation with a small tradition of followers which emerged in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in Bengal in India around the renunciant and yogin Hariharānanda Āraṇya. This tradition developed during the same period in which modern yoga was born and forms a chapter in the expansion of yoga traditions in modern Hinduism.

The book analyses the yoga teaching of Hariharānanda Āraṇya (1869-1947) and the Kāpil Maṭh tradition, its origin, history and contemporary manifestations, and this tradition’s connection to the expansion of yoga and the Yogasūtra in modern Hinduism. The Sāṃkhyayoga of the Kāpil Maṭh tradition is based on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, on a number of texts in Sanskrit and Bengali written by their gurus, and on the lifestyle of the renunciant yogin living isolated in a cave. The book investigates Hariharānanda Āraṇya’s connection to pre-modern yoga traditions and the impact of modern production and transmission of knowledge on his interpretations of yoga. The book connects the Kāpil Maṭh tradition to the nineteenth century transformations of Bengali religious culture of the educated upper class that led to the production of a new type of yogin. The book analyses Sāṃkhyayoga as a living tradition, its current teachings and practices, and looks at what Sāṃkhyayogins do and what Sāṃkhyayoga is as a yoga practice.

A valuable contribution to recent and ongoing debates, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Indology, Indian philosophy, Hindu Studies and Yoga Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367593704
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/14/2020
Series:	Routledge South Asian Religion Series
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Knut A. Jacobsen is professor in the study of religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. His research focuses on Yoga, Sāṃkhya, and Hindu conceptions and rituals of space and time. He is the editor in chief of the six volumes Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009-2015) and he is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India (2016).

Table of Contents

List of figures vi

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 Samkhya, Yoga, and Samkhyayoga 11

2 Encounters with a living Samkhyayoga tradition 23

3 Kapila as the originator of Yoga 36

4 The rebirth of Yoga and the emergence of the bhadralok yogin 52

5 Gurus, book printing, and the Samkhyayoga lineage 69

6 The textual tradition of the Kapil Math institution 88

7 Samkhyayoga meditation instructions of the Kapil Math tradition 124

8 Monastic life and recitation of Sanskrit stotras 155

9 The material religion of Samkhyayoga 177

10 The Kapil Math tradition and modern scholarship on Yoga 189

Conclusion 202

Appendix: Some publications of the Kapil Math tradition 209

Glossary 214

Bibliography 217

Index 228