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Patañjali

पतञ्जलि · Patañjali · पातञ्जलयोगशास्त्र · பதஞ்சலி

Historicity debated

The name of the author of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, the treatise containing the Yogasūtra, founding text of the classical school of yoga, and of the grammarian who wrote the Mahābhāṣya, the great commentary on Pāṇini. Tradition regards them as one person, an incarnation of the serpent Śeṣa, and also ascribes medical works to him; scholarship distinguishes the grammarian (2nd century BCE) from the yoga author, whom Philipp Maas dates between 325 and 425 CE. The life of neither is known.

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Patañjali como encarnación de Ādiśeṣa (imagen de culto)

Patañjali como encarnación de Ādiśeṣa (imagen de culto) · CC BY-SA 3.0

In their words

«Now the exposition of yoga [is to be made].»

Yogasūtra 1.1; trad. inglesa de James Haughton Woods (1914, dominio público); versión española del investigador

Yoga Sūtras (The Aphorisms of Yoga) — Patañjali

Their central idea

Stilling of the movements of the mind (cittavṛttinirodha): This is the definition of yoga in the second aphorism.

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Biography

4 min read

A name at the foot of a book

Few works of ancient India have had so wide a posterity as the Yogasūtra, and few have so elusive an author. Patañjali is, first of all, a name at the foot of a text: that of whoever, according to the manuscript colophons, composed the "treatise on yoga of Patañjali" (Pātañjalayogaśāstra). Indian tradition has turned that name into a threefold figure —the grammarian who commented on Pāṇini, the master of yoga and the physician who revised Caraka's treatise— and has deified him as an incarnation of Śeṣa, the cosmic serpent on whom Viṣṇu rests. The first source to combine the three roles in a single person is the commentary of King Bhoja of Dhārā, in the eleventh century; modern scholarship has almost entirely undone that unity.

The grammarian of the second century BCE

The best-dated Patañjali is the author of the Mahābhāṣya, the "great commentary" on Pāṇini's grammar and on Kātyāyana's remarks (vārttika). It is a dialogic prose of objections and replies that opens with the formula "now, the instruction in words" and reasons about the aims of grammar, the relation between word and meaning and the eternity of language. Its grammatical examples let slip the news of the day: "here we perform the sacrifice for Puṣyamitra", "the Greek besieged Sāketa". Puṣyamitra, founder of the Śuṅga dynasty, reigned around 185–149 BCE, and the siege alludes to the Indo-Greek incursions of those years; scholars therefore place the work in the mid-second century BCE. Bhartṛhari, in the fifth century, recalls that the study of the Mahābhāṣya nearly died out before it was restored, and from then on it was the supreme authority of Sanskrit grammar.

One Patañjali or two?

That the grammarian and the author of the yoga text were the same person is a conviction of the tradition, not a fact. James Haughton Woods, in the first complete scholarly translation (1914), concluded that nothing in the Mahābhāṣya compelled that identification, and Louis Renou rejected it in 1940 after comparing the vocabulary of both texts; Surendranath Dasgupta, by contrast, leaned towards it. Most specialists today distinguish two authors several centuries apart. Woods also observed that the Yogasūtra argue against an idealist doctrine that looks like that of vijñānavāda Buddhism, which would make them later than the fourth century; Edwin Bryant points out that other scholars have proposed earlier dates and that the question remains open.

One book: aphorisms and commentary

Research in recent decades has changed the question. While preparing the first critical edition of the first chapter (2006), Philipp Maas found that the manuscripts transmit the aphorisms and their commentary as a single work, the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, sometimes also called "an exposition of Sāṃkhya" (sāṃkhyapravacana). The attribution of the commentary to a different author, Vyāsa, appears in later sources. Following a suggestion by Johannes Bronkhorst, Maas argues that Patañjali gathered aphorisms from earlier traditions and wrote their explanation himself, and he dates the whole between 325 and 425 CE. Many translators keep the traditional distinction between Patañjali's sūtras and Vyāsa's bhāṣya; this entry records both positions.

What the text teaches

The Yogasūtra comprise 195 or 196 aphorisms, depending on the edition, divided into four chapters (pāda): concentration (samādhi), means (sādhana), powers (vibhūti) and isolation (kaivalya). The second aphorism gives the definition that has travelled the world: yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind. When they cease, the seer rests in its own form; while they do not, it is confused with them. To achieve this the text proposes sustained practice and detachment, describes the afflictions (kleśa) that feed suffering and arranges the path in eight limbs, from moral restraints to absorption. Its metaphysics is dualist and close to Sāṃkhya: a pure consciousness (puruṣa) over against an active nature (prakṛti), and an īśvara, a special puruṣa never touched by the afflictions, to whom one may surrender. Its vocabulary is in dialogue with scholastic Buddhism, and its five restraints —non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, non-possession— coincide with the great Jain vows.

On posture the text says very little: that it should be "steady and easy". The sequences of postures of modern yoga come from other traditions, above all medieval haṭhayoga and the physical culture of the twentieth century.

The legend

A late hagiography grew around the name. A popular etymology explains it as "fallen (pata) into the cupped hands (añjali)" of a woman offering water to the sun; the tradition of the Chidambaram temple makes him, with the sage Vyāghrapāda, a witness of the dance of Śiva Naṭarāja; and the Patañjalicarita of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, a poem composed at the Tanjore court in the late seventeenth century, shows him teaching grammar to a thousand disciples from behind a curtain so that they would not see his thousand serpent heads. These are devotional narratives expressing reverence for the author; they tell us nothing about his life.

The afterlife of the text

For centuries the Pātañjalayogaśāstra was a philosophical reference work. It was commented on by Vācaspati Miśra, King Bhoja, the author of the Vivaraṇa attributed to Śaṅkara and Vijñānabhikṣu, and around 1030 the Persian scholar al-Bīrūnī adapted it into Arabic as the Kitāb Bātanjal. David Gordon White has shown that it later lost weight in living practice and that its present fame is largely modern: the first partial English translation, by James Ballantyne, appeared in 1852; in 1896 Swami Vivekananda included it in Raja Yoga, the book that presented it to the West as the science of yoga, and Woods's edition (1914) established it in the university. Today it is the founding text invoked by yoga schools all over the world, even though many teach something very different from what it describes.

Sources: Maas, Philipp André. Samādhipāda. Das erste Kapitel des Pātañjalayogaśāstra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert / The First Chapter of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra for the First Time Critically Edited. Aachen: Shaker, 2006 (Geisteskultur Indiens 9). · Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas. · Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators. Nueva York: North Point Press, 2009. ISBN 9780865477360. · White, David Gordon. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 (Lives of Great Religious Books). ISBN 9780691143774. · Cardona, George. Pāṇini: A Survey of Research. La Haya / París: Mouton, 1976 (reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980 y 1997); sobre la fecha del Mahābhāṣya y su transmisión.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 150 BCE

    The Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali the grammarian

    Composition of the great commentary on Pāṇini and Kātyāyana. Its examples allude to the sacrifice of Puṣyamitra Śuṅga (c. 185–149 BCE) and to the Indo-Greek siege of Sāketa, which date it to the mid-second century BCE.

    Probable

  2. c. 325 – 425

    Composition of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra

    Date proposed by Philipp Maas for the complete work (aphorisms and commentary) of the yoga Patañjali. Woods (1914) proposed 300–500 for the sūtras; Bryant notes that other scholars argue for earlier dates.

    Disputed

  3. c. 450

    Bhartṛhari and the restoration of the Mahābhāṣya

    The grammarian-philosopher Bhartṛhari (5th c.) relates in the Vākyapadīya that the study of the Mahābhāṣya had declined almost to extinction and was then restored; from that time on it is the authority of the grammatical school.

    Probable

  4. c. 850

    Vācaspati Miśra's Tattvavaiśāradī

    The first great surviving sub-commentary on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, translated by Woods together with the text in 1914. Vācaspati's date ranges, according to different scholars, from the mid-ninth to the late tenth century.

    Probable

  5. c. 1030

    Al-Bīrūnī renders the yoga text into Arabic

    The Persian scholar al-Bīrūnī, who accompanied Maḥmūd of Ghazni in India, composes the Kitāb Bātanjal, an Arabic adaptation of the text with a commentary, before completing his book on India (c. 1030).

    Documented

  6. c. 1040

    Bhoja and the threefold Patañjali

    In the opening verse of his Rājamārtaṇḍa commentary, King Bhoja of Dhārā compares himself to "the lord of serpents" for having written on grammar, yoga and medicine: it is the first source that presupposes a single Patañjali as author in all three fields.

    Documented

  7. c. 1575

    Vijñānabhikṣu's Yogavārttika

    Vijñānabhikṣu, in the sixteenth century, comments on the text from a Vedāntic synthesis; it is the last great premodern exegesis.

    Probable

  8. c. 1690

    The Patañjalicarita

    Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, a poet at the Tanjore court under Śāhajī I (1683–1712), composes a poem in eight cantos on Patañjali's legendary life as an incarnation of Śeṣa.

    Probable

  9. 1852

    First English translation

    James R. Ballantyne publishes at Allahabad an English translation of the first two chapters of the aphorisms with extracts from Bhoja's commentary.

    Documented

  10. 1896

    Vivekananda's Raja Yoga

    Swami Vivekananda publishes Raja Yoga in London and New York, with his annotated translation of the aphorisms; the book makes the text the reference work of yoga in the West.

    Documented

  11. 1914

    Woods's translation

    James Haughton Woods publishes in the Harvard Oriental Series the first complete scholarly translation of the aphorisms, the commentary and Vācaspati Miśra's gloss, and argues against identifying the two Patañjalis.

    Documented

  12. 2006

    The first critical edition

    Philipp Maas publishes the critical edition of the first chapter, based on more than twenty manuscripts, and argues that aphorisms and commentary form a single work by one author.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Yoga Sūtras (The Aphorisms of Yoga) — Patañjali

Written work · c. 325

Yoga Sūtras (The Aphorisms of Yoga)

योगसूत्र (Yogasūtra), en los colofones पातञ्जलयोगशास्त्र (Pātañjalayogaśāstra)

A treatise in 195 or 196 aphorisms (the number varies in the third chapter) divided into four pādas: Samādhi (51), Sādhana (55), Vibhūti (55 or 56) and Kaivalya (34). It defines yoga as the stilling of the movements of the mind and describes the states of concentration, the afflictions that cause suffering, the eight-limbed path, the powers that accompany absorption and the final isolation of consciousness from nature. It is the base text of the Yoga school, one of the six orthodox "views", and today the founding work invoked by yoga schools throughout the world.

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20 editions

Yogabhāṣya (Commentary on the Yoga) — Patañjali

Traditional attribution · c. 325

Yogabhāṣya (Commentary on the Yoga)

योगभाष्य (Yogabhāṣya, también Vyāsabhāṣya)

The prose commentary that accompanies the aphorisms in all manuscripts and without which many of them are unintelligible. It develops the psychology of mental states and latent impressions, quotes earlier masters of Sāṃkhya and yoga such as Pañcaśikha and Jaigīṣavya, and argues with the Buddhist schools. All later exegesis —Vācaspati Miśra, the Vivaraṇa, Vijñānabhikṣu— in fact comments on the combined aphorisms and commentary.

Not available View the book

4 editions

Traditional attribution · c. 150 BCE

Mahābhāṣya (The Great Commentary)

व्याकरणमहाभाष्य (Vyākaraṇa-Mahābhāṣya)

A commentary in dialogic prose on Pāṇini's grammar (Aṣṭādhyāyī) and on Kātyāyana's critical remarks. It discusses the aims of grammatical study, the eternity of the word, the relation between word and meaning and the notion of sphoṭa, and defends or corrects hundreds of rules. Its examples are a historical source on Śuṅga India. It was the supreme authority of Sanskrit grammar, commented on by Bhartṛhari, Kaiyaṭa and Nāgeśa.

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3 editions

Complete works (11)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

Now the exposition of yoga [is to be made].

atha yogānuśāsanam

VerifiedYogasūtra 1.1; trad. inglesa de James Haughton Woods (1914, dominio público); versión española del investigador

1 / 9
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (2)

  • «When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, and you discover yourself to be a great person by far.»

    It is the line most often quoted under his name on English quotation sites, but it corresponds to no aphorism of the Yogasūtra nor to any passage of the commentary: it does not appear in the complete translations of Woods or Bryant, and its vocabulary ("project", "great person") belongs to modern self-help literature. Its first appearance has not been traced.

  • «I bow to Patañjali, the noblest of sages, who removed the impurities of the mind by yoga, of speech by grammar and of the body by medicine.»

    A Sanskrit verse (yogena cittasya padena vācāṃ…) recited at the start of many yoga classes as if it were an ancient invocation. It is not by Patañjali but in praise of him, and it is late: Meulenbeld places it in a tradition that begins with King Bhoja's commentary (11th c.), the first source to unite the three disciplines in a single person.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

There is no record of his last words or of his death. The biography of none of the authors named Patañjali is known; the Tamil traditions that point to the place of his "samādhi" (Rameswaram, Tirupattur, Chidambaram) are devotional and late.

Source: White, David Gordon. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 (Lives of Great Religious Books). ISBN 9780691143774.

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    Ishvara is a special purusha, not a creator; liberation is isolation

    No creator GodStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras start from Samkhya dualism: there are pure consciousnesses (purusha) and a nature (prakriti) that nobody created. Within that frame Patanjali introduces Ishvara in I.23–26 as a special purusha, untouched by the afflictions, by karma and its fruits, the seed of omniscience, teacher even of the ancients and designated by the syllable OM. But Ishvara does not create the world nor is he the ground from which souls proceed, and surrender to him is presented as one path among others: sutra I.23 begins with an ‘or’. The goal, kaivalya, is not union with God but the isolation of consciousness, which rests in its own form. Classical yoga thus admits a Lord worthy of devotion without making either the cosmos or liberation depend on him.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    I am the seer: pure consciousness, distinct from the mind it observes

    The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

    For the Yoga Sutras the true self is purusha, the seer (drashtri): pure consciousness that does not change, does not act and does not mix with the contents of the mind. What we ordinarily call the self is a confusion: the sense of ‘I am’ (asmita), one of the five afflictions, consists in identifying the power that sees with the instrument through which it sees (II.6). The mind (citta) belongs to nature and is in itself unconscious; it only seems conscious because it reflects purusha. When its movements cease, the seer rests in its own form (I.3). That rest is the goal of yoga and Patanjali’s answer to the question: I am the witness, not the witnessed.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    The root of pain is avidya: confusing the seer with the seen

    Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras offer one of the most precise aetiologies of suffering in ancient India. There are five afflictions (kleshas): ignorance, sense of self, attachment, aversion and clinging to life (II.3). Ignorance is the field of the others (II.4) and consists in taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self for permanent, pure, pleasant and self (II.5). For the discerning, everything is painful, because of change, anxiety and the impressions it leaves (II.15). But future pain can be avoided (II.16), and its cause is the conjunction of seer and seen (II.17), whose origin is ignorance (II.24). When ignorance ceases through discernment, that conjunction ceases too: that is isolation (kaivalya).

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  • What happens after death?

    The store of karma ripens as birth, lifespan and experience

    Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras presuppose rebirth and explain it with technical precision. The store of karma (karmashaya), rooted in the afflictions, is experienced in visible and invisible births (II.12); while the root exists, it ripens into three fruits: the type of birth, the length of life and the experience of pleasure or pain (II.13). Among the afflictions is clinging to life (abhinivesha), present even in the wise (II.9), which Vyasa interprets as the trace of previous deaths. Latent impressions (vasanas) persist through lives (IV.8–10). Only when discernment burns the seeds of the afflictions does the cycle cease, and consciousness attains isolation.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Constant practice and detachment: the eight limbs of yoga

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras are above all a manual of practice. The stilling of the mind’s movements is achieved through practice (abhyasa) and detachment (vairagya) (I.12), and practice becomes firm when cultivated for a long time, without interruption and with devotion (I.14). The second book sets out the eight limbs: ethical restraints (non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, non-possession), observances, posture, regulation of breath, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption (II.29). Surrender to Ishvara is also offered as a path (I.23), but within a programme of discipline. The fruit is discernment between consciousness and nature, which leads to isolation.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    He names only Ishvara, as teacher of the ancients

    Did not address it

    The Yoga Sutras do not deal with the relationship between human master and disciple. The only mention of a teacher is theological: Ishvara, unlimited by time, is the guru even of the ancients (I.26). The text presupposes, without saying so, the context of oral transmission in classical India, in which a sutra was studied with a teacher’s explanation; its very form, aphorisms almost unintelligible without commentary, requires it. Among the observances is study (svadhyaya), which Vyasa’s commentary understands as recitation and study of texts of liberation. But Patanjali does not say whether there is a path without a human teacher; anyone wishing to attribute a doctrine of the guru to him must look for it in later tradition.

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  • Is the world real?

    Nature is real and changing, and exists for the seer

    Natural order in transformationStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras are realist: the seen, nature (prakriti) made up of the three qualities (gunas), truly exists and undergoes constant transformation. Its purpose is the experience and liberation of the seer (II.18): nature unfolds for the sake of purusha. When a consciousness is freed, the seen ceases to exist for it, but does not disappear, because it remains common to others (II.22). In the fourth book Patanjali argues against those who reduce objects to mind: the same object is perceived differently by different minds, so it does not depend on a single mind (IV.15–16). The world is not an illusion but a real process to be understood in order to disengage from it.

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  • What is love?

    Friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity clear the mind

    Boundless compassionStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras do not treat love as a theme, but they propose cultivating four attitudes towards others: friendliness to the happy, compassion to those who suffer, gladness at the virtuous and equanimity towards wrongdoers. Through them, says sutra I.33, the mind becomes clear and serene. These are the same four abodes known to Buddhism. The first ethical restraint, non-harming (ahimsa), has an effect described in sutra II.35: in the presence of one firmly established in it, hostility ceases. Attachment (raga), by contrast, is listed among the afflictions (II.7). The love that counts for Patanjali is therefore a benevolence without attachment.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    Impressions condition, but future pain can be avoided

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras describe in detail how the past conditions the present: actions leave impressions (samskaras) and latent tendencies (vasanas) that ripen into birth, lifespan and experience (II.13), and persist even when separated by time, place or birth (IV.9). But the whole system presupposes that this conditioning can be broken. Pain not yet come can be avoided (II.16), constant practice creates new impressions that counteract the old, and discernment burns the seeds of the afflictions until they no longer sprout. The yogi’s karma, says IV.7, is neither white nor black. Freedom is the goal, and practice the means of winning it.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Concentration, meditation and absorption until the seer is discerned

    Seeing reality as it isStated explicitly

    For the Yoga Sutras meditation is the heart of the method. The last three limbs of yoga, concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana) and absorption (samadhi), together form samyama (III.1–4). Samadhi has degrees: with and without an object as support, with and without discursive thought (I.17–18, I.42–51). Its fruit is truth-bearing wisdom (I.48) and, above all, discernment (viveka-khyati) between pure consciousness and nature, which is the means of removing ignorance (II.26). Meditation does not serve to obtain pleasant states, nor even the powers listed in the third book, which it regards as obstacles: it serves to see exactly what the seer is and what it is not.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    Perception, inference and testimony are movements of the mind

    The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

    The Yoga Sutras recognise three valid means of knowledge: perception, inference and reliable testimony or scripture (I.7). But they classify them among the movements of the mind (vrittis) that yoga sets out to still (I.6). Above them they place a wisdom that arises in the purest absorption, truth-bearing (ritambhara prajna), whose object differs from that of inference and testimony because it concerns the particular rather than the general (I.48–49). The supreme knowledge is discernment, culminating in an omniscience born of discrimination (III.54). Reason and scripture are valid in their domain, but the ultimate is known only when the mind is stilled.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Detachment, withdrawal of the senses and final isolation

    Withdraw in order to findInferred from their doctrine

    The Yoga Sutras do not speak of society or politics, nor do they expressly prescribe leaving family life. But their logic is one of withdrawal: detachment (vairagya) is, together with practice, the fundamental means (I.12–16); withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara) draws the mind away from its objects (II.54); and the goal is called kaivalya, isolation, the definitive separation of consciousness from nature. The ethical rules (yamas), such as non-harming or non-possession, have a social reach, but are presented as personal disciplines and, when observed without exception of place, time or circumstance, as a great vow (II.31). Classical yoga looks inward, not towards transforming the world.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Documentedmediados del s. II a. C.

The Greek who besieged Sāketa

To explain when Sanskrit uses the imperfect —the tense for something that happened in the recent past and that the speaker could have witnessed— the grammarian needed an example all his readers would recognise. He wrote: "the Greek (yavana) besieged Sāketa; the Greek besieged Madhyamikā". A few rules later, to illustrate the present, he gave another: "here we perform the sacrifice for Puṣyamitra". Without intending it, he left in a grammar manual two pieces of news from his time: the incursions of the Indo-Greek kings into the Ganges valley and the reign of Puṣyamitra Śuṅga, the general who overthrew the Maurya dynasty around 185 BCE and restored the great Vedic sacrifices. Those two examples are the basis on which Indology dates the Mahābhāṣya to the mid-second century BCE, and with it the only Patañjali whose period can be fixed.

Origin of the story: Examples from the Mahābhāṣya itself (commentary on Pāṇini 3.2.111 and 3.2.123 in Kielhorn's edition), discussed by Cardona as a dating argument.

Source: Cardona, George. Pāṇini: A Survey of Research. La Haya / París: Mouton, 1976 (reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980 y 1997); sobre la fecha del Mahābhāṣya y su transmisión.

Oral traditionsin fecha

Fallen into the cupped hands

A pious woman, whom some versions call Gonikā, was offering water to the sun in her cupped hands, as the morning rite prescribes, and praying for a son. At that moment a tiny serpent fell from the sky into her hands and took human form: it was Ādiśeṣa, the serpent on which Viṣṇu rests, who had resolved to be born on earth to teach mankind. Hence his name: pata, "fallen", and añjali, "the hollow of joined hands". The story is told today in yoga schools all over the world as if it were Patañjali's biography. It is in fact a popular etymology turned into legend; traditional iconography, which shows him with a serpent's body from the waist down and a crown of cobra heads, gives it visual form.

Origin of the story: A devotional story of modern circulation (biographies of teachers and yoga schools) based on a popular etymology of the name. It has not been located in ancient Sanskrit sources; the Mahābhāṣya quotes a Gonikāputra as an authority distinct from its author, and the identification with him is late and uncertain. The identification of Patañjali with Śeṣa is, however, presupposed in Bhoja's verse (11th c.).

Source: White, David Gordon. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 (Lives of Great Religious Books). ISBN 9780691143774.

Hagiographic accountsin fecha (textos medievales)

The dance at Chidambaram

According to the tradition of the great Śiva temple at Chidambaram, in Tamil Nadu, Śeṣa heard Viṣṇu speak rapturously of Śiva's cosmic dance and longed to see it. He came down to earth as Patañjali and withdrew to the Tillai forest, where he met another ascetic, Vyāghrapāda, "tiger-foot", who had been given claws to climb trees and gather unblemished flowers for worship. The two waited together through years of austerity, until Śiva Naṭarāja danced for them in the golden hall of the temple. That is why the images at Chidambaram show both sages at the feet of the dancing god, Patañjali with his serpent tail, and why the temple priests regard him as part of their own sacred history.

Origin of the story: The foundation myth of the Chidambaram temple, transmitted in medieval Sanskrit and Tamil texts praising the temple, studied by David Smith (1996). It has no documentary connection with the author of the Mahābhāṣya or that of the Yogasūtra.

Source: Smith, David. The Dance of Siva: Religion, Art and Poetry in South India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 9780521482349 (sobre los mitos del templo de Chidambaram, Patañjali y Vyāghrapāda).

Hagiographic accountrelato compuesto a finales del s. XVII

A thousand disciples behind a curtain

Patañjali, the poem says, taught the great grammar to a thousand disciples at once, and to do so he took his true form: the thousand-headed serpent, one head for each pupil. Since his breath was poisonous, he taught hidden behind a curtain and forbade anyone to look or leave the hall. One day an impatient disciple lifted the cloth: the serpent's breath burned all those present. Only one survived, who had slipped out; for his disobedience he was cursed to become a wandering spirit until he could pass on the teaching he had received. The poem identifies him with Gauḍapāda, the master of the Advaita tradition, so that the legend links Patañjali to Śaṅkara's lineage.

Origin of the story: The Patañjalicarita of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita (Tanjore court, late 17th c.; Kāvyamālā 51). Specialists on the Indology list point out that it is the only written source linking Gauḍapāda with Patañjali. A literary legend with no biographical value.

Source: The Pandit Project, «Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita» (ficha biográfica: nacido en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII cerca de Kumbakonam, protegido de Śāhajī I de Tanjore); el Patañjalicarita está impreso en la serie Kāvyamālā (n.º 51), Bombay, Nirṇaya Sāgara Press.

Documentedc. 1017–1030

Yoga in Arabic

In the early eleventh century Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī, a Persian astronomer and polymath in the service of Maḥmūd of Ghazni, spent years in north-western India learning Sanskrit with local scholars. Among the books he chose to render into Arabic was Patañjali's. His Kitāb Bātanjal is not a literal translation: it recasts the text as questions and answers between a disciple and a master, incorporates explanations from a commentary and adapts concepts such as īśvara to Islamic theological vocabulary. Al-Bīrūnī later quotes it in his great work on India as a source for explaining the Hindu doctrine of liberation. It is the first witness to the Yogasūtra outside the Indic world and evidence of its prestige in the eleventh century.

Origin of the story: Arabic text preserved in an Istanbul manuscript, edited by Hellmut Ritter (Oriens, 1956) and translated and studied by Shlomo Pines and Tuvia Gelblum (BSOAS, 1966–1989).

Source: Pines, Shlomo, y Tuvia Gelblum. «Al-Bīrūnī's Arabic Version of Patañjali's Yogasūtra: A Translation of his First Chapter and a Comparison with Related Sanskrit Texts». Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 29, n.º 2 (1966): 302–325; continuado en BSOAS 40 (1977), 46 (1983) y 52 (1989).

Documented1895–1896

Raja Yoga, New York, 1896

In 1895 and 1896 Swami Vivekananda, who had dazzled the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, was teaching meditation classes in a small New York apartment. For his American students he translated and commented on Patañjali's aphorisms, and in 1896 he published them with his lectures under the title Raja Yoga. The book presented yoga as an experimental science of the mind, compatible with modern science and free of dogma, and proclaimed Patañjali its great systematiser. It was a lasting success: according to David Gordon White, this is where the modern fame of the Yogasūtra begins, as it passed from a specialists' text to the founding scripture of a worldwide movement.

Origin of the story: Preface and text of Raja Yoga (1896) and White's analysis (2014).

Source: White, David Gordon. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 (Lives of Great Religious Books). ISBN 9780691143774.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Stilling of the movements of the mind (cittavṛttinirodha)citta-vritti-nirodha
This is the definition of yoga in the second aphorism. Citta is the mind in the broad sense, the inner organ in which all representations arise; vṛtti are its "turnings" or movements, which the text classifies as five: valid knowledge (perception, inference, testimony), error, verbal construction without an object, deep sleep and memory; nirodha is their stilling or restraint. Yoga therefore does not consist in adding extraordinary states but in calming the activity that makes consciousness identify with its contents. While the mind moves, the seer takes the form of those movements; when they cease, it rests in its own form (1.3–1.4). The stilling has degrees: concentration with support, which still has an object, and the one that remains only as latent impression, without object. Commentators debate whether nirodha means suppression or rather mastery of the mind.

Yogasūtra 1.2–1.11 and commentary; foundation of the whole classical school.

Source: Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas.

Practice and detachment (abhyāsa and vairāgya)abhyasa-vairagya
The two means proposed in the first chapter for stilling the movements of the mind (1.12–1.16). Practice is repeated effort to keep the mind steady, and it becomes firm when cultivated for a long time, uninterruptedly and with devotion. Detachment is the mastery of one who no longer thirsts for objects, whether seen or promised by scripture; its supreme form is indifference even to the qualities of nature, born of the vision of the self. The two complement each other: practice orients the mind towards stillness and detachment removes the impulse that drags it outward. The commentary compares them to the two banks of a river channelling a current that can flow towards good or towards evil.

Yogasūtra 1.12–1.16 and commentary.

Source: Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas.

Afflictions (kleśa)klesha
The second chapter lists five afflictions that feed the cycle of karma and suffering (2.3–2.9): ignorance (avidyā), which takes the impermanent for permanent, the impure for pure, pain for pleasure and what is not the self for the self; the sense of I (asmitā), which confuses consciousness with the instrument that knows; attachment, aversion and clinging to life, which exists even in the sage. Ignorance is the field of the others. The afflictions may be dormant, weakened, interrupted or active; the practice of kriyāyoga weakens them and meditation removes their manifestations, but their root disappears only with discrimination between consciousness and nature. The list has close parallels in the Buddhist analysis of mental defilements.

Yogasūtra 2.2–2.11; the Buddhist parallels are discussed by Maas and Bryant.

Source: Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators. Nueva York: North Point Press, 2009. ISBN 9780865477360.

The eight limbs (aṣṭāṅga)ashtanga-yoga
Aphorism 2.29 arranges practice in eight limbs: the restraints (yama: non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity and non-possession), the observances (niyama: purity, contentment, austerity, study and surrender to īśvara), posture (āsana), breath control (prāṇāyāma), withdrawal of the senses (pratyāhāra), fixation of attention (dhāraṇā), meditation (dhyāna) and absorption (samādhi). The first five are external means; the last three, practised on a single object, form saṃyama. Of posture the text requires only that it be steady and easy, and describes none. The restraints, when observed without exceptions of place, time or circumstance, constitute the "great vow", and coincide in content and name with the five vows of Jain monasticism. In modern yoga, aṣṭāṅga also names a method of postures that takes its name from the text.

Yogasūtra 2.28–3.8; on the Jain parallel, Chapple (2003).

Source: Chapple, Christopher Key. Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadra's Collection of Views on Yoga. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. ISBN 9780791458990.

Īśvara, the lordishvara
Īśvara appears in the first chapter as one of the ways to concentration: "or by surrender to īśvara" (1.23). The text defines him as a special puruṣa, a consciousness never touched by afflictions, actions, their fruits or their latent deposits; in him lies the unsurpassed seed of omniscience, he is the teacher even of the ancients because he is not limited by time, and his expression is the syllable om, whose repetition with attention to its meaning removes obstacles. He is not a creator of the world, and his role in an otherwise dualist system has been much debated: for some he is a devotional addition, for others an essential piece that distinguishes Yoga from Sāṃkhya. Surrender to īśvara reappears among the observances and in kriyāyoga.

Yogasūtra 1.23–1.29, 2.1, 2.32, 2.45.

Source: Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators. Nueva York: North Point Press, 2009. ISBN 9780865477360.

Absorption (samādhi)samadhi
The first chapter is entitled samādhi, and the word designates both the last of the eight limbs and the state of concentration in general. The text distinguishes absorption "with cognition" (samprajñāta), accompanied by deliberation on gross objects, reflection on subtle objects, joy or the sense of I, from absorption "without cognition" (asamprajñāta), in which only latent impressions remain. Later it describes absorption "with seed" and "without seed" and the clarity that culminates in a "truth-bearing" insight (ṛtambharā prajñā). In the eighth limb, meditation becomes samādhi when the object alone shines forth, as if empty of the meditator's own form. The terminology of the absorptions has correspondences with the jhānas of early Buddhism.

Yogasūtra 1.17–1.51 and 3.3.

Source: Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas.

Isolation (kaivalya)kaivalya
This is the goal of classical yoga and the title of the fourth chapter. Kaivalya literally means "being alone": the puruṣa, pure consciousness, is separated from nature (prakṛti) and its three qualities, with which it had been confused. It is not union with God or with the absolute, as in Vedānta, but isolation: when discrimination between consciousness and what is not consciousness becomes uninterrupted, the qualities of nature, which existed to serve the experience and liberation of the puruṣa, have fulfilled their purpose and are reabsorbed into their source. The last aphorism says so with two equivalent formulas: reabsorption of the qualities, or the power of consciousness established in its own form. The doctrine shares its dualist structure and vocabulary with Sāṃkhya.

Yogasūtra 2.25–2.26, 3.50–3.55 and 4.25–4.34.

Source: Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali | Prof. Edwin Bryant

    Lecture· EN· 2018· 106 min

    Vedanta Society of New YorkOfficial channel

  • YSP 11 Philipp Maas | The Pātañjalayogaśāstra and its Textual History

    Interview· EN· 2021· 99 min

    Yogic Studies

  • The Yoga Sutras in Depth - Dr. Philipp Maas

    Interview· EN· 2022· 51 min

    Keen on Yoga

  • Once More on Postures in the Pātañjala Yogaśāstra by Philipp Maas

    Lecture· EN· 2016· 53 min

    Loyola Marymount University, BCLA Yoga StudiesOfficial channel

  • Thinking with the Yoga Sūtra, Opening by Dr Christopher Key Chapple, Chair

    Lecture· EN· 2016· 39 min

    Loyola Marymount University, BCLA Yoga StudiesOfficial channel

  • MIPodcast #13: What's the "Yoga Sutra of Patanjali," featuring David Gordon White

    Interview· EN· 2015· 67 min

    Maxwell InstituteOfficial channel

  • Historical, Popular, and Scholarly Constructions of Yoga with David Gordon White

    Interview· EN· 2016· 37 min

    Religious Studies Project

  • What is Yoga?

    Analysis· EN· 2024· 50 min

    Let's Talk Religion

  • Lecturas en Español. De los Aforismos de Yoga de Patañjali

    Lecture· ES· 2017· 87 min

    Instituto Cervantes Rio de JaneiroOfficial channel

  • Los Yoga Sutras de Patamjali | Conferencia | 21/11/2024

    Lecture· ES· 2024· 58 min

    Instituto Cervantes Nueva DelhiOfficial channel

  • Les Yogas-Sutras - Erik Sablé : Les yoga-sutras de Patanjali - Jeudis Philo

    Lecture· FR· 2022· 138 min

    Ancrages Éditions

  • Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, Samarthāhnikam: Lecture-1, Part-2

    Lecture· EN· 2019· 116 min

    RKMVERI - Deemed UniversityOfficial channel

  • Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years

    Documentary· EN· 2022· 6 min

    Cambridge UniversityOfficial channel

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • SA · Devanagari · c. 325–425 d. C. (Maas)

    पातञ्जलयोगशास्त्र (Yogasūtra con bhāṣya)

    Surviving witness
    Manuscrito sin fecha, anterior a 1900
    Custodian
    National Library of India, Rare Books Division (Calcuta) · Th 217

  • SA · Devanagari · mediados del s. II a. C. (Mahābhāṣya); s. XI (Pradīpa)

    व्याकरणमहाभाष्य with महाभाष्यप्रदीप (Mahābhāṣya con el Pradīpa de Kaiyaṭa)

    Surviving witness
    Copia sin fecha en formato de «doble libro»
    Custodian
    University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections · Ms. Coll. 390
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Influenced by

    Pāṇini

    The grammarian Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya is the great commentary on Pāṇini's grammar.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Kātyāyana

    The Mahābhāṣya discusses one by one Kātyāyana's critical remarks (vārttika) on Pāṇini.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

    The yoga text shares vocabulary and schemes with scholastic Buddhism (afflictions, absorptions, the four attitudes of friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity) and argues against an idealist Buddhist school; the exact debt is debated (Maas, Bryant).

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Mahāvīra

    The five restraints of aphorism 2.30 (non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, non-possession) coincide with the five great vows of Jain monasticism, and the text calls them the "great vow" when kept without exception; Chapple (2003) studies this kinship.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Contemporary of

    Nāgārjuna

    Woods (1914) noted that Nāgārjuna does not mention Patañjali although he knew a school of yoga; if the Yogasūtra are later than Buddhist idealism, as Woods and Maas argue, Patañjali wrote after him. No contact is documented.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Adi Shankara

    Tradition ascribes to Śaṅkara a sub-commentary on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (the Vivaraṇa), whose authorship is disputed; in the Brahmasūtra commentary (2.1.3) Śaṅkara refutes the dualist metaphysics of yoga while accepting its techniques.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Swami Vivekananda

    He translated and commented on the aphorisms in Raja Yoga (1896), the book that made the text known in the West.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Paramahansa Yogananda

    In Autobiography of a Yogi (1946, ch. 26) he quotes the aphorisms on kriyāyoga and breath control to present his lineage's Kriya Yoga as a continuation of Patañjali.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Al-Bīrūnī

    He adapted the text into Arabic as the Kitāb Bātanjal (c. 1030).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Vācaspati Miśra

    Author of the Tattvavaiśāradī, the great classical sub-commentary, translated by Woods.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Bhoja de Dhārā

    King and author of the Rājamārtaṇḍa commentary (11th c.), first source of the threefold Patañjali.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Vijñānabhikṣu

    Author of the Yogavārttika (16th c.), a Vedāntic reading of the text.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Bhartṛhari

    He commented on the Mahābhāṣya and related its decline and restoration (5th c.).

    Documented relation

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Wikidata, «Patanjali», QID Q231680 (descrito como «autor o autores» de la gramática, del yoga y de tratados médicos; LCCN n80044780; GND 119387077; BnF 121635181).
  2. Maas, Philipp A. «A Concise Historiography of Classical Yoga Philosophy». En Eli Franco (ed.), Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy. Viena: Sammlung de Nobili, 2013, pp. 53–90.
  3. Maas, Philipp André. Samādhipāda. Das erste Kapitel des Pātañjalayogaśāstra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert / The First Chapter of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra for the First Time Critically Edited. Aachen: Shaker, 2006 (Geisteskultur Indiens 9).
  4. Woods, James Haughton (trad.). The Yoga-System of Patañjali, or the Ancient Hindu Doctrine of Concentration of Mind, embracing the Mnemonic Rules, called Yoga-sūtras, of Patañjali, and the Comment, called Yoga-bhāshya, attributed to Veda-Vyāsa, and the Explanation, called Tattva-vāiçāradī, of Vāchaspati-Miçra. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1914 (Harvard Oriental Series 17). Introducción, §§ 3–5, sobre la identidad de los dos Patañjali y las fechas.
  5. Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators. Nueva York: North Point Press, 2009. ISBN 9780865477360.
  6. White, David Gordon. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 (Lives of Great Religious Books). ISBN 9780691143774.
  7. Bronkhorst, Johannes. «Patañjali and the Yoga sūtras». Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 10 (1984 [1985]): 191–212.
  8. Cardona, George. Pāṇini: A Survey of Research. La Haya / París: Mouton, 1976 (reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980 y 1997); sobre la fecha del Mahābhāṣya y su transmisión.
  9. Meulenbeld, G. Jan. A History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. IA. Groninga: Egbert Forsten, 1999 (sobre los Patañjali médicos y la estrofa de Bhoja).
  10. Larson, Gerald James, y Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (eds.). Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. XII: Yoga: India's Philosophy of Meditation. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2008.
  11. Vivekananda, Swami. Raja Yoga, or Conquering the Internal Nature. Londres / Nueva York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896. Texto en The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 1 (Wikisource).
  12. Pines, Shlomo, y Tuvia Gelblum. «Al-Bīrūnī's Arabic Version of Patañjali's Yogasūtra: A Translation of his First Chapter and a Comparison with Related Sanskrit Texts». Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 29, n.º 2 (1966): 302–325; continuado en BSOAS 40 (1977), 46 (1983) y 52 (1989).
  13. Renou, Louis. «On the Identity of the Two Patañjalis». En Narendra Nath Law (ed.), Louis de La Vallée Poussin Memorial Volume. Calcuta, 1940.
  14. Kielhorn, Franz (ed.). The Vyâkaraṇa-Mahâbhâshya of Patañjali. 3 vols. Bombay: Government Central Book Depôt, 1880–1885 (Bombay Sanskrit Series).
  15. Johnston, Charles (trad.). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: «The Book of the Spiritual Man». Nueva York, 1912. Project Gutenberg n.º 2526.
  16. Dvivedi, Manilal Nabhubhai (trad.). The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali. Bombay: Bombay Theosophical Publication Fund, 1890.
  17. Pujol, Óscar (trad.). Yogasūtra. Los aforismos del yoga. Barcelona: Kairós, 2021. ISBN 9788499884981.
  18. Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. Nueva York: The Philosophical Library, 1946, cap. 26, «The Science of Kriya Yoga».
  19. Chapple, Christopher Key. Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadra's Collection of Views on Yoga. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. ISBN 9780791458990.
  20. The Pandit Project, «Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita» (ficha biográfica: nacido en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII cerca de Kumbakonam, protegido de Śāhajī I de Tanjore); el Patañjalicarita está impreso en la serie Kāvyamālā (n.º 51), Bombay, Nirṇaya Sāgara Press.
  21. Angot, Michel (ed. y trad.). Le Yoga-Sūtra de Patañjali. Le Yoga-Bhāṣya de Vyāsa, avec des extraits du Yoga-Vārttika de Vijñāna-Bhikṣu. París: Les Belles Lettres, 2008. ISBN 9782251720500.
  22. Ritter, Hellmut. «Al-Bīrūnī's Übersetzung des Yoga-Sūtra des Patañjali». Oriens 9, n.º 2 (1956): 165–200 (edición del texto árabe).
  23. Wikimedia Commons, ficheros de imagen citados en images[] (licencias comprobadas por la API imageinfo el 2026-10-25).
  24. Mallinson, James, y Mark Singleton (trads. y eds.). Roots of Yoga. Londres: Penguin Classics, 2017. ISBN 9780241253045.
  25. Smith, David. The Dance of Siva: Religion, Art and Poetry in South India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 9780521482349 (sobre los mitos del templo de Chidambaram, Patañjali y Vyāghrapāda).
  26. Bhatnagar, K. N. (ed.). Nidāna-sūtra of Patañjali. Delhi: Meharchand Lachhmandas, 1971.
  27. Danielson, Henrik (trad.). Ādiśeṣa: The Essence of Supreme Truth (Paramārthasāra). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980. ISBN 9789004061736.
  28. Open Library (openlibrary.org), fichas por ISBN y búsquedas por autor y título consultadas el 2026-10-25 para verificar las ediciones.
Rights holder
Textos sánscritos en dominio público (s. II a. C. y s. IV–V d. C.). Las traducciones modernas tienen derechos propios: Kairós (Pujol; Iyengar), Debate (Bahm), Edaf (Desikachar), Oniro (Hartranft), North Point Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Bryant), SUNY Press (Hariharānanda Āraṇya), Les Belles Lettres (Angot), Integral Yoga Publications (Satchidananda), Vedanta Press (Prabhavananda e Isherwood). Las de Woods (1914), Johnston (1912), Vivekananda (1896) y Dvivedi (1890) son de dominio público.

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Fechas: no hay fecha de nacimiento ni de muerte para ningún Patañjali; se dejan como «unknown» y la línea de tiempo usa las fechas de las obras (Mahābhāṣya, mediados del s. II a. C.; Pātañjalayogaśāstra, c. 325–425 según Maas).
  • Comprobar en el texto de Renou (1940) la paginación exacta del artículo «On the Identity of the Two Patañjalis».
  • Sala de lectura: la traducción de M. N. Dvivedi (1890) en Internet Archive (b28119411) tiene un OCR inservible (reconocido como devanagari); buscar otro escaneo limpio. El Mahābhāṣya de Kielhorn (1880–1885) solo existe en escaneos con OCR deficiente del devanagari. No se ha encontrado ningún texto en español de dominio público (es.wikisource no tiene ninguno).
  • Ediciones: falta ISBN de la edición crítica de Maas (Shaker, 2006) y de las traducciones del Mahābhāṣya de Joshi y Roodbergen; buscar ediciones con ISBN en alemán, italiano, ruso e hindi. La edición española de Raja Yoga (Kier, ISBN 9789501701210) no indica fecha ni traductor en Open Library.
  • Obras: Meulenbeld menciona otros textos médicos y alquímicos puestos bajo el nombre de Patañjali que no se han podido verificar; cotejar con su History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. IA.
  • Vídeo CS2vRfWeFw4 (Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi): identificar al ponente.
  • Anécdota del nacimiento en el «añjali» de Gonikā: localizar su primera fuente escrita.

Researched on 2026-10-25