Ayurveda and Yoga in Indian Temple Sculptures

Temples in India, especially those from the medieval period, often feature figures performing yoga asanas, demonstrating yoga's enduring significance in the cultural and spiritual landscape. These sculptures are not just artistic representations but are symbolic of the yogic journey-a blend of physical, mental, philosophical, and spiritual systems. Sculptures depicting many Sahaja asanas and Hatha Yoga postures in temples are visual guides and reminders of ancient heritage, yoga, and spiritual paths. This article explores the significance of many Hatha Yoga postures that lack inscriptional evidence to support this approach.

Journal of Yoga Studies, 2018

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.

Yoga and the Traditional Physical Practices of South Asia: Influence, Entanglement and Confrontation. Edited by Daniela Bevilacqua and Mark Singleton, 2023

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.

Journal of the History of Science in South Asia , 2018

The research for this article was prompted by the question: were Yoga and Āyurveda as intimately connected in premodern times as both seem today? It attempts to give a preliminary answer by assessing the shared terminology, theory and praxis of a corpus of mediaeval Yoga texts with the classical texts of Ayurveda. The date of the Yoga corpus ranges from the eleventh to the nineteenth century CE, and all of its texts teach physical techniques and an ascetic state of dormant meditative absorption (samādhi), either as auxiliaries within a system of Yoga or as autonomous systems in themselves. The physical techniques became known as Haṭhayoga and the ascetic state of samādhi as Rājayoga, and the texts in which they appear posit the practice (abhyāsa) of Yoga as the chief means to liberation (mokṣa). The article begins with a discussion of the terminology in these texts that is also found in the Bṛhattrayī, that is, the Carakasaṃhitā, the Suśrutasaṃhitā and Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā. It proceeds to discuss the relevant theory (digestive fire, humoral theory, vital points, herbs) and praxis (āsana, ṣaṭkarma and therapy or cikitsā) of the yoga texts in question in order to assess the possible influence of Āyurveda.

kamaḍha 'penance, yoga', rebus kammaṭa 'mint'. A tribute to Thomas McEvilley for Archaeology of Yoga and the shape of Ancient Thought Thomas McEvilley realized the significance of yoga postures in defining ādhyātmikā or philosophical foundations of a civilization. These foundations are firmly anchored in Veda texts, which are enquiries into phenomena, which are knowledge systems. postures of penance are Indus Script hypertexts, signifiers of kamaḍha 'penance', rebus kammaṭa 'mint' -- an institutional structure of artisan śreṇi , 'guilds', to create wealth of a nation. This tribute is in memory of an ātman, Thomas McEvilley, who wrote about Archaeology of Yoga (1981) and The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (2001). Thomas McEvilley (July 13, 1939 – March 2, 2013) was an American art critic, poet, novelist, and scholar. He was a Distinguished Lecturer in Art History at Rice University and founder and former chair of the Department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Thomas McEvilley did not live to see the initiative of Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi to popularise Yoga worldwide as a knowledge system, as a practitioner's Kriya or aṣṭānga, 'eight limbs' Yoga. Thomas McEvilley's Archaeology of Yoga which appeared in Spring 1981 Journal RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology draws upon the evidence of Indus Script hypertexts. The archaeological evidence used by Thomas McEvilley are images on Indus Script seals; he cites the following images from Indus Script Corpora with the observation that the yogāsana polstures should have continued into the historical periods from the days of the civilization which produced these images on seals and tablets: Text on obverse of the tablet m453A: Text 1629. m453BC Seated in penance, the person is flanked on either side by a kneeling adorant, offering a pot and a hooded serpent rearing up. फड, phaḍa, 'cobra hood' rebus: फड, phaḍa 'Bhāratīya arsenal of metal,metasls manufactory' . Horned deity seals, Mohenjo-daro: a. horned deity with pipal-leaf headdress, Mohenjo-daro (DK12050, NMP 50.296) (Courtesy of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan); b. horned deity with star motifs, Mohenjo-daro (M-305) (PARPOLA 1994:Fig. 10.9); courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India; c. horned deity surrounded by animals, Mohenjo-daro (JOSHI – PARPOLA 1987:M-304); courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India. If Thomas McEvilley is alive today, he would have been fascinated by the meanings of the Indus Script hypertexts on such seals and tablets proclaiming the wealth creation through wealth accounting ledgers of metalwork of the Bronze Age by artisans and seafaring merchants of the Civilization. For meanings of the hypertexts on the seals and tablets with yogāsana polstures see Annex A kamaḍha 'penance', an Indus Script hieroglyph on 16 Ancient Near East inscriptions signifies kammaṭa 'mint, coiner The article of Thomas McEvilley's on An Archaeology of Yoga (1981) provides the foundation for his tour de force -- Shape of Ancient Thought (2001) Thomas McEvilley, An Archaeology of Yoga in: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 44-77 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2016665

Revista do Fórum Internacional de Ideias, v.5, n.1, 2018

Yoga in Brazil has grown tremendously and it is now practiced in almost all countries and, although books and publications on the theme are abundant, Indian history is still scarcely recognized in our universities (which can be quickly verified in our Ancient History classes). It is in this space that the subject “History and Cultural Heritage” aims to establish these connections, away from the “commonplace” in history and historiography that is already covered in course programmes. We have really been working on making this discussion happen.

Volume 4 (2023): Special Issue of the Journal of Yoga Studies.Yoga and the Traditional Physical Practices of South Asia: Influence, Entanglement and Confrontation, 2023

This volume is the outcome of a workshop held at SOAS University of London in November 2019, under the auspices of the five-year, ERC-funded Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP). The workshop was organised because of several questions that had been on our minds for some time: considering the centuries-long presence of multiple embodied traditions in India, what was the relationship between the physical practices of yoga and other physical disciplines that bear certain similarities to yoga, at least in appearance? Had there been interchange or even influence across and between different physical disciplines and the practices of yoga? Could such a perspective on the history of yoga help to understand better any of its developments?

2007

This paper discusses the importation of Yoga into the

Asian Med (Lieden). 2009 January 1; 4(1): 201–248. doi: 10.1163/157342109X423793 "A widely-known painting currently in the Wellcome Library (Iconographic 574912i) depicts an anatomical view of the male human body according to the tenets of classical Indian medicine, or ayurveda. The painting is surrounded by text passages in the Sanskrit language on medical and anatomical topics. In this paper, the Sanskrit texts are identified, edited, translated and assessed. I establish a terminus a quo for the painting, and explore the relationship of text and image. Keywords Ayurveda, anatomy, painting, India, Sanskrit, medicine, Bhāvamiśra, Bhāvaprakāśa, Suśruta, Suśrutasaṃhitā, history, South Asia." Open Access publication, available from UKPMC here: http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC2772122