What Is Yoga Mythology?

Yoga postures have been given different names of Indian origin, such as Vira-asana, Svana-asana, Manjara-asana, Galava-asana, and Surya-namaskar. Some of these are easily translated as the hero pose, dog pose, or cat pose, but some are proper nouns and make sense only if you are familiar with Hindu mythology. Some names may describe a pose, like if they mimic an animal as in the dog or cat pose, which may or may not refer to a deity’s sacred animal or mount (vahana). Some names for poses can also be random labels that create a sense of the exotic and carry a stamp of authenticity. Some believe the names directly identify the yogi who invented the pose, such as Ruchika-asana (the pose of Ruchika), or are instructing people to develop a particular attitude, such as Virabhadra-asana (the righteous warrior pose). By seeking out the stories underlying the names, one gets a sense of Indian mythology in which yoga was nurtured over thousands of years. This book aims to present those stories in a systematic way, so that readers can not only enjoy the stories, but also appreciate the underlying philosophy.

This book uses various yoga postures as inspiration to leap into the world of Hindu mythology, with occasional detours into Jain and Buddhist mythology. These three mythologies that emerged from the Indian subcontinent are all based on the concept of rebirth, and all three of them value yoga as a technology that prepares the body to realize its highest physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, mystical, and occult potential.

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In Hindu mythology, the word tapasya is often used interchangeably with yoga. Tapasya means churning of tapa, or mental fire, to burn the knots of the mind and throw light on the mystical and occult secrets of the universe. Various gods, demons, sages, and humans perform tapasya to invoke gods and change the world and their life. Bhagirath, a prince of the solar dynasty, does tapasya until he is able to get the celestial river Mandakini to flow down on earth as the river Ganga. Mahisha, an Asura, performs tapasya until he

Fire-ascetic and gets the boon that he cannot be killed water-nymph by man, god, demon, mineral, plant, or animal. (He forgets to include women on the list and is eventually slain by Durga.)

The greatest threat to the tapasvin, the one who churns mental fire, is the celestial damsel known as apsara. She tempts him and causes him to lose control of his senses and spurt out semen, a popular metaphor for loss of mental control. If tapa refers to fire and tapasvin to the fire-ascetic, then apsa refers to water and apsara to the water-nymph. The tension between the two is the tension between our body and the temptations that end up knotting our mind. It is the same tension seen between Siddhartha Gautama and the demon of desire, Mara, in Buddhist mythology. After defeating Mara, Siddhartha Gautama becomes the Buddha. In Nath-yogi mythology, the

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celibate yogis shun the enchanting yoginis who seek to entrap them in the enchanted banana orchard.

Sadly, these stories are often taken literally and women are seen as embodiments of temptation. The female biology was seen as incapable of reaching the highest levels of spiritual growth. For that, it was believed women would have to be reborn with a male body, one that produced semen whose flow could be restrained and reversed through Jain monk yoga. In Sukhavati, the pure land, the heaven of enlightened beings in Mahayana Buddhism, every resident is male, born not from a woman’s womb but from a lotus flower. In Jainism, too, the most aware beings, the Jinas, are all male.

Tapasya is effort (shrama) and so tapasvins are also called shramanas, though this word is often restricted to Buddhist and Jain monks. Yoga, or tapasya, is seen as the tool to achieve omniscience (kaivalya) in Jain tradition, oblivion (nirvana) in Buddhist tradition, liberation through union with the Buddha divine (moksha) in Hindu tradition, and siddhi (occult powers) in Tantric traditions of Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. And

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so, all holy men of India were seen as yogis (or jogis in local parlance) and holy women as yoginis (or as the restrained jogan or the wild jogini in folklore). Yogis and yoginis are also known as gosain and gosani, masters of the cow, a common Indian metaphor for the senses that “graze on the pasture” of external stimuli.

People often wonder where the various yoga positions came from. Most of the positions we see today are about 100 years old, designed in the royal courts of India and influenced by European gymnasiums. But in traditional Hindu lore, the yogis of India have been practicing these positions for thousands of years. That is what gave them insights into the world and made them not only healthy and wise, but also granted them supernatural powers known as siddhi. In mythology, this wisdom comes from nature, from plants and animals, and from the gods, seers, and ascetics, some of whom were more powerful than the gods.

The modern obsession with specialization and expertise assumes that yoga was known only to yogis, but in ancient times, this kind of classification did not exist. In the past, the philosopher was also an alchemist, a sorcerer, a storyteller, a shaman, a problem-solver, a teacher, a coach, a psychiatrist, and a doctor. Similarly, yogis were also seen as experts in medicine, mysticism, astrology, and the occult, as well as various art forms, from painting to singing to dancing. For instance, Shiva, the yogi,

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is also Nataraja, the lord of dance and theatre. It is known that many soldiers of ancient India exercised through dance. Dance helped the soldiers remain fit and focused and work together as teams. It also kept them entertained. And through dance, stories of gods were shared. Many of the gestures that we see in yoga today probably originated from these dance steps.

Asanas are usually divided into those that focus on stillness and those that focus on movement. Postures that promote meditation were popular amongst the yogis who would sit still in one position and spend their time observing, meditating and contemplating on the mysteries of the universe. Dynamic postures came from the yoginis who were also dancers. A circle of dancing yoginis is an integral part of traditional Hindu temples. Ironically, the contribution of women to yoga has been largely ignored. India has a vast oral tradition, and the reliance on textual evidence restricts our knowledge to the written word of elite groups dominated by men. Since, for these male writers, Shiva is the primal yogi and his students are also male, they conveniently overlook the primal yogini, Shakti, and her companions, some of whom form the female collective of Matrikas and Mahavidyas. Parvati, the princess of the mountains, was Shakti, the primal yogini who made Shiva reveal the secrets of yoga in words as well as through postures. The words were documented by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra, and the Yogini

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gestures by Bharata in his Natyashastra. We remember the male God, the male scholars, and the male gurus, but we forget the Goddess and the independent women—ganikas, devadasis, and natis who nurtured India’s dance tradition in temples, until they were abused as “prostitutes” in the puritanical Victorian era and completely sidelined.

The sources of yoga mythology are mostly oral. But there are many textual versions too. In India, writing became common only 2,300 years ago, after the reign of King Ashoka, who used the Brahmi script to write his edicts. From linguistic analysis, we know that the oldest hymns are the Vedas, which are over 3,000 years old. Then came the Upanishads, which are over 2,500 years old and full of metaphysical and philosophical content. Then came the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, about 2,000 years ago, and the chronicles known as the Puranas, which are about 1,500 years old.

Buddhist stories come from the Jatakas, which were put down in writing at the same time as the Hindu epics. Jain stories come from the Jain Puranas and Jain retellings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are as old as Buddhist tales but were put down in writing much later, about 1,000 years ago.

Hindu texts were composed mostly in Sanskrit. Jains and Buddhists chose to write in Prakrit and Pali, though later Mahayana Buddhists and Jain acharyas switched to Sanskrit. In the last 1,000 years, many of these stories have been retold in regional

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languages as songs and ballads, orally transmitted by bards and performers, as well as visualized on temple walls as sculptures, frescoes, and murals.

Faith Story source Content

Hindu Vedas Collection of hymns and rituals to Vedic deities

Hindu Ramayana Story of Ram, greatest king of the solar dynasty

Hindu Mahabharata Story of the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas of the lunar dynasty

Hindu Puranas Story of the Hindu trinity (male and female)

Buddhist Jatakas Rebirth stories of the Buddhato-be

Jain TrishashtiShalakaPurush-Charitra Stories of sixty-three great men who appear in every eon

In the eighteenth century, European Orientalists privileged Sanskrit, which Hindus consider to be the language of the gods, equating it with Latin. They also privileged texts over orality. That is why the history of yoga is often sought through textual traditions, an idea that makes little sense to Hindus, who prefer the words of their gurus, the teachers and transmitters of living knowledge. For Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, yoga has always been part of their history, as their mythologies constantly refer to yogis and yoginis, tapasvis and tapasvinis, gosains and

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