Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Sāṃkhya: With Sanskrit Text and English Translation of Pātañjala Yogasūtra-s, Vyāsa Bhāsya and Tattvavaiśāradī of Vācaspatimiśra.
March 2019
Book Reviews
The Vedanta Kesari
44
by Gerald James Larson Published by Motilal Banarsidass, 40-41UA Bulngalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi - 110 007. Email: mldb@mldb.com. 2018, hardcover, pp.1024+xv, Rs.3295. Professor Gerald James Larson’s aim in writing this text is to present a clear analysis of classical Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophy, grounded in a systematic and full translation of the three most significant texts of Yoga: the Yogasūtras of Patañjali, the early short commentary (Bhāṣya) attributed to Veda Vyāsa and the later exposition of Vācaspatimiśra called Tattvavaiśāradi (“A Skilled Clarification of the Truth” [of Yoga]). Professor Larson is eminently qualified for this task. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Saṃkhya philosophy, and this most recent book completes the work of a lifetime. His meticulous scholarship reveals an unusually deep and thorough knowledge of the material at hand. Professor Larson is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara as well as Rabindranath Tagore Professor Emeritus of Indian Culture and Civilization at Indiana University, Bloomington. Having retired from active teaching and with the time to invest in a magnum opus, Professor Larson decided to work on a project he had long contemplated— an accessible English translation of the Yogasūtras along with its two principal commentaries. Serious scholars of Indian philosophy and scholarly institutions will be grateful for this rigorous and thoughtful work, which is also Larson’s labor of love— twelve years in the making and over 1,000 pages in length. But this book is not only for scholars: it is for all those who would like to make a serious study of the Yogasūtras in the context of its authentic philosophical tradition. Translations of the Yogasūtras abound, of course, but some are out of date and employ abstruse terms, while others are inaccurate, and still others
For review in The Vedanta Kesari, publishers need to send us two copies of their
latest publication.
are based on Vedanta philosophy or on New Age assumptions outside the philosophical tradition of classical Sāṃkhya-Yoga. Few modern translations offer the clarity, philosophical accuracy, and scholarly rigor of this remarkable volume. The volume is divided into a number of sections. The main section and the bulk of the book— labeled “The Translation”—contains the Sanskrit texts and translations of the Yogasūtras along with the two classical commentaries. Perhaps the most important contribution of this work is the full text (in Devanāgarī) of these three works together with a new English translation of the complete Tattvavaiśāradī commentary. To help readers get an overview, near the beginning of the volume, there is a stand-alone section with an outline translation of all the verses of the Yogasūtras without the Sanskrit text and the commentaries. In addition to the Sanskrit texts, commentaries, and translations, the volume includes a short Preface, a thirty-five page Introduction, and a further sevenpage explication titled “A Brief Preliminary Note to the Reader.” In these three sections Prof. Larson provides an interesting description of the historical, textual and philosophical setting of the Yogasūtras along with all of its main commentaries, not just the two key commentaries included in this volume. One of these other commentaries, as some readers may be aware,
