On the Eve of International Day of Yoga: A Few Questions About How Yoga's History is Being Told
The Rubin Museum recently published an article titled "Virūpa and the Cross-Religious History of Haṭha Yoga." The article makes several important observations and draws attention to the Amṛtasiddhi , a text that has rightly received considerable scholarly attention in recent years. Reference: https://rubinmuseum.org/virupa-and-the-cross-religious-history-of-hatha-yoga/ Among its key assertions are that: "Haṭha Yoga has a cross-religious history" and that "One of the earliest texts to teach Haṭha Yoga was the Buddhist Amṛtasiddhi." These are significant claims and deserve careful consideration. Yet they also raise a number of methodological questions. No serious student of Yoga would deny the existence of interaction between Buddhist, Śaiva, Nātha, and other ascetic traditions in medieval India. The history of Yoga is indeed a history of dialogue, exchange, adaptation, and innovation. However, does acknowledging cross-sectarian interaction justify t...