The rise, fall, and modern resurgence of an enigmatic book revered by yoga enthusiasts around the worldConsisting of fewer than two hundred verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is today extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice. As David Gordon White demonstrates in this groundbreaking study, both of these assumptions are incorrect. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic status-and translated into more than forty languages-only in the course of the past forty years.White retraces the strange and circuitous journey of this confounding work from its ancient origins down through its heyday in the seventh through eleventh centuries, its gradual fall into obscurity, and its modern resurgence since the nineteenth century. First introduced to the West by the British Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke, the Yoga Sutra was revived largely in Europe and America, and predominantly in English. White brings to life the improbable cast of characters whose interpretations-and misappropriations-of the Yoga Sutra led to its revered place in popular culture today. Tracing the remarkable trajectory of this enigmatic work, White's exhaustively researched book also demonstrates why the yoga of India's past bears little resemblance to the yoga practiced today.

Dramatis Personae viiPreface xv
Chapter 1 Reading the Yoga Sutra in the Twenty-First Century: Modern Challenges, Ancient Strategies 1
Chapter 2 Patanjali, the Yoga Sutra, and Indian Philosophy 18
Chapter 3 Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the Western "Discovery" of the Yoga Sutra 53
Chapter 4 Yoga Sutra Agonistes: Hegel and the German Romantics 81
Chapter 5 Rajendralal Mitra: India's Forgotten Pioneer of Yoga Sutra Scholarship 92
Chapter 6 The Yoga of the Magnetosphere: The Yoga Sutra and the TheosophicalSociety 103
Chapter 7 Swami Vivekananda and the Mainstreaming of the Yoga Sutra 116
Chapter 8 The Yoga Sutra in the Muslim World 143
Chapter 9 The Yoga Sutra Becomes a Classic 159
Chapter 10 Ishvara 172
Chapter 11 Journeys East, Journeys West: The Yoga Sutra in the Early Twentieth Century 182
Chapter 12 The Strange Case of T. M. Krishnamacharya 197
Chapter 13 Yoga Sutra 2.0 225
Notes 237
Suggestions for Further
Reading 249
Index 261