Description
Writing in Varanasi in the sixteenth century, when the Mughal empire was at the height of its power, the monk Śivānandasarasvatī composed an extensive Sanskrit compendium on yoga entitled “The Wish-fulfilling Gem of Yoga” (Yogacintāmaṇi). Śivānanda was an initiate of a sannyāsin lineage descending from the great philosopher Śaṅkarācārya (fl. ca. 800). Śivānanda was among the first to combine Pātañjalayoga with Haṭha and Rājayoga. In the seventeenth century, an anonymous redactor used Śivānanda’s work to create a unique compilation of yoga postures (āsana), many of which are not found in other yoga texts. Arguably the largest surviving pre-modern compilation of its kind, it includes six postures that the redactor attributed to Mohan of Mewar, who was a disciple of Dādū and a practitioner of Haṭhayoga and breath prognostication (svarodaya). These postures were part of a collection that was appropriated and repurposed by Sufis, translated into Persian and illustrated for a royal treatise commissioned by Prince Salīm, the future Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (r. 1605–1627 ce). This book presents this unique compilation,transmitted to us in a manuscript written in the redactor’s own handwriting.
About the Author
Jason Birch (DPhil. Oxon.) is a co-Director of the Yogacintāmaṇi project at the University of Massachusetts Boston and an associate of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. His recent publications include The Amaraugha and Amaraughaprabodha of Gorakṣanātha: The Genesis of Haṭha and Rājayoga, a critical edition of the Haṭhapradīpikā (with colleagues of the Light on Haṭha project) and On the Plastic Surgery of the Ears and Nose: The Nepalese Version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā (with colleagues of the Suśruta Project). At SOAS University of London (2015–2023), hewas a Senior Research Fellow of the Light on Haṭha project and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow of the Haṭha Yoga Project. He is a founding member of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies and the peer-reviewed Journal of Yoga Studies.
