"This volume fills a vacuum in yoga studies. An indispensable resource for teachers and students, it is also of immeasurable value to every thinking yoga practitioner. Through an astute selection of key texts, White effectively demonstrates that yoga is a collection of vibrant, disparate, and distinctive traditions, and he also highlights continuities that unite ideas and practices of yoga through two thousand years of history."--Suzanne Newcombe, Inform, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Contents by Tradition vii Contents by Country ix Contributors xi Introduction by David Gordon White 1 Note for Instructors by David Gordon White 24 Foundational Yoga Texts 29 Chapter 1. The Path to Liberation through Yogic Mindfulness in Early Apyurveda by Dominik Wujastyk 31 Chapter 2. A Prescription for Yoga and Power in the Mahabharata by James L. Fitzgerald 43 Chapter 3. Yoga Practices in the Bhagavadgita by Angelika Malinar 58 Chapter 4. Ptanjala Yoga in Practice by Gerald James Larson 73 Chapter 5. Yoga in the Yoga Upanisads: Disciplines of the Mystical OM Sound by Jeffrey Clark Ruff 97 Chapter 6. The Sevenfold Yoga of the Yogavasistha by Christopher Key Chapple 117 Chapter 7. A Fourteenth-Century Persian Account of Breath Control and Meditation by Carl W. Ernst 133 Yoga in Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu Tantric Traditions 141 Chapter 8. A Digambara Jain Description of the Yogic Path to Deliverance by Paul Dundas 143 Chapter 9. Saraha's Queen Dohas by Roger R. Jackson 162 Chapter 10. The Questions and Answers of Vajrasattva by Jacob P. Dalton 185 Chapter 11. The Six-Phased Yoga of the Abbreviated Wheel of Time Tantra (Laghuklacakratantra) according to Vajrapni by Vesna A. Wallace 204 Chapter 12. Eroticism and Cosmic Transformation as Yoga: The Atmatattva of the Vaisnava Sahajiyas of Bengal by Glen Alexander Hayes 223 Chapter 13. The Transport of the Hamsas: A Sakta Rasalila as Rajayoga in Eighteenth-Century Benares by Somadeva Vasudeva 242 Yoga of the Nath Yogis 255 Chapter 14. The Original Goraksasataka by James Mallinson 257 Chapter 15. Nath Yogis, Akbar, and the "Balnath Tilla" by William R. Pinch 273 Chapter 16. Yogic Language in Village Performance: Hymns of the Householder Naths by Ann Grodzins Gold and Daniel Gold 289 Yoga in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods 307 Chapter 17. The Yoga System of the Josman?s by Sthaneshwar Timalsina 309 Chapter 18. Songs to the Highest God (Isvara) of Samkhya-Yoga by Knut A. Jacobsen 325 Chapter 19. Yoga Makaranda of T. Krishnamacharya by Mark Singleton, M.Narasimhan, and M. A. Jayashree 337 Chapter 20. Theos Bernard and the Early Days of Tantric Yoga in America by Paul G. Hackett 353 Chapter 21. Universalist and Missionary Jainism: Jain Yoga of the Terapanthi Tradition by Olle Qvarnstrom and Jason Birch 365 Glossary of Foreign Terms 383 Index 389