The text has been edited for the first time and has never before been accessible to an English speaking readership. It is accompanied by an introduction and an extensively annotated translation. The author has drawn on twenty-seven Sanskrit manuscripts and original fieldwork amongst yogins in India to demonstrate how earlier tantric yogic techniques developed and mutated into the practices of hathayoga. The work sheds new light on the development of hathayoga and explains its practices.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR James Mallinson
JAMES MALLINSON is Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit and Classical Indian Civilization at SOAS, University of London. His research focuses on the yoga tradition, in particular the texts, techniques and practitioners of traditional hathayoga. He has edited and translated several texts on hathayoga from its formative period, the eleventh to fifteenth centuries CE, and published encyclopaedia entries and journal articles on yoga's history. His primary research methods in addition to philology are ethnography and art history. He has spent several years living with traditional Hindu ascetics and yogis in India and was honoured with the title of 'mahant' by the Ramanandi Sampradaya at the 20I3 Kumbh Mela festival. He is currently leading a five-year, six-person research project at SOAS on the history of hathayoga, funded by the European Research Council, whose outputs will include ten critical editions of key texts on hathayoga.
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