In the Bhagavadgită, we find that the word yoga has been used not only in conformity with the root "yuj-samādhau" but also with "yujir yoge." This has been the source of some confusion to the readers of the Bhagavadgita. "Yogin" in the sense of a person who has lost himself in meditation is there regarded with extreme veneration. One of the main features of the use of this word lies in this that the Bhagavadgītā tried to mark out a middle path between the austere discipline of meditative abstraction on the one hand and the course of duties of sacrificial action of a Vedic worshipper in the life of a new type of Yogin (evidently from yujir yoge) on the other, who should combine in himself the best parts of the two paths, devote himself to his duties, and yet abstract himself from all selfish motives associated with desires.

Kautilya in his Arthaśästra when enumerating the philosophic sciences of study names Sāmkhya, Yoga, and Lokāyata. The oldest Buddhist sūtras (e.g. the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta) are fully familiar with the stages of Yoga concentration. We may thus infer that self-concentration and Yoga had developed as a technical method of mystic absorption some time before the Buddha. As regards the connection of Yoga with Samkhya, as we find it in the Yoga sūtras of Patañjali, it is indeed difficult to come to any definite conclusion. The science of breath had attracted notice in many of the earlier Upaniṣads, though there had not probably developed any systematic form of prāṇāyāma (a system of breath control) of the Yoga system. It is only when we come to Maitrāyaṇī that we find that the Yoga method had attained a systematic development. The other two Upanisads in which the Yoga ideas can be traced are the Svetāśvatara and the Katha. It is indeed curious to notice that these three Upanisads of Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda, where we find reference to Yoga methods, are the only ones where we find clear references also to the Samkhya tenets, though the Samkhya and Yoga ideas do not appear there as related to each other or associated as parts of the same system. But there is a remarkable passage in the Maitrāyaṇī in the conversation between Śākyāyana and Bṛhadratha where we find that the Samkhya metaphysics was offered

different kinds of asceticism and rigour which passed by the name of brahmacarya were prevalent in the country at the time (Pāņini as Goldstücker has proved is prebuddhistic), but associated with these had grown up a definite system of mental discipline which passed by the name of Yoga.

in some quarters to explain the validity of the Yoga processes, and it seems therefore that the association and grafting of the Samkhya metaphysics on the Yoga system as its basis, was the work of the followers of this school of ideas which was subsequently systematized by Patañjali. Thus Šakyāyana says: "Here some say it is the guna which through the differences of nature goes into bondage to the will, and that deliverance takes place when the fault of the will has been removed, because he sees by the mind; and all that we call desire, imagination, doubt, belief, unbelief, certainty, uncertainty, shame, thought, fear, all that is but mind. Carried along by the waves of the qualities darkened in his imagination, unstable, fickle, crippled, full of desires, vacillating he enters into belief, believing I am he, this is mine, and he binds his self by his self as a bird with a net. Therefore, a man being possessed of will, imagination and belief is a slave, but he who is the opposite is free. For this reason let a man stand free from will, imagination and belief-this is the sign of liberty, this is the path that leads to Brahman, this is the opening of the door, and through it he will go to the other shore of darkness. All desires are there fulfilled. And for this, they quote a verse: 'When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with the mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called the highest state'.'"

An examination of such Yoga Upaniṣads as Śāṇḍilya, Yogatattva, Dhyanabindu, Hamsa, Amṛtanāda, Varaha, Maṇḍala Brāhmaṇa, Nadabindu, and Yogakuṇḍali, shows that the Yoga practices had undergone diverse changes in diverse schools, but none of these show any predilection for the Sāmkhya. Thus the Yoga practices grew in accordance with the doctrines of the

1 Vātsyāyana, however, in his bhāṣya on Nyāya sūtra, 1. i. 29, distinguishes Samkhya from Yoga in the following way: The Sāmkhya holds that nothing can come into being nor be destroyed, there cannot be any change in the pure intelligence (niratiśayāḥ cetanāḥ). All changes are due to changes in the body, the senses, the manas and the objects. Yoga holds that all creation is due to the karma of the purușa. Dosas (passions) and the pravṛtti (action) are the cause of karma. The intelligences or souls (cetana) are associated with qualities. Non-being can come into being and what is produced may be destroyed. The last view is indeed quite different from the Yoga of Vyāsabhāṣya. It is closer to Nyaya in its doctrines. If Vātsyāyana's statement is correct, it would appear that the doctrine of there being a moral purpose in creation was borrowed by Samkhya from Yoga. Udyotakara's remarks on the same sutra do not indicate a difference but an agreement between Samkhya and Yoga on the doctrine of the indriyas being "abhautika." Curiously enough Vātsyāyana quotes a passage from Vyāsabhāṣya, 111. 13, in his bhāṣya, 1. ii. 6, and criticizes it as self-contradictory (viruddha).

Śaivas and Śāktas and assumed a peculiar form as the Mantrayoga; they grew in another direction as the Hathayoga which was supposed to produce mystic and magical feats through constant practices of elaborate nervous exercises, which were also associated with healing and other supernatural powers. The Yogatattva Upanisad says that there are four kinds of yoga, the Mantra Yoga, Laya Yoga, Hathayoga and Rajayoga1. In some cases we find that there was a great attempt even to associate Vedāntism with these mystic practices. The influence of these practices in the development of Tantra and other modes of worship was also very great, but we have to leave out these from our present consideration as they have little philosophic importance and as they are not connected with our present endeavour.

Of the Pātañjala school of Samkhya, which forms the subject of the Yoga with which we are now dealing, Patanjali was probably the most notable person for he not only collected the different forms of Yoga practices, and gleaned the diverse ideas which were or could be associated with the Yoga, but grafted them all on the Samkhya metaphysics, and gave them the form in which they have been handed down to us. Vācaspati and Vijñāna Bhiksu, the two great commentators on the Vyasabhāṣya, agree with us in holding that Patañjali was not the founder of the Yoga, but an editor. Analytic study of the sūtras also brings the conviction that the sūtras do not show any original attempt, but a masterly and systematic compilation which was also supplemented by fitting contributions. The systematic manner also in which the first three chapters are written by way of definition and classification shows that the materials were already in existence and that Patañjali only systematized them. There was no missionizing zeal, no attempt to overthrow the doctrines of other systems, except as far as they might come in, by way of explaining the system. Patañjali is not even anxious to establish the system, but he is only engaged in systematizing the facts as he had them. Most of the criticisms against the Buddhists occur in the last chapter. The doctrines of the Yoga are described in the first three chapters, and this part is separated from the last chapter where the views of the Buddhists are

1 The Yoga writer Jaigiṣavya wrote “Dhāranāśāstra" which dealt with Yoga more in the fashion of Tantra than that given by Patañjali. He mentions different places in the body (e.g. heart, throat, tip of the nose, palate, forehead, centre of the brain) which are centres of memory where concentration is to be made. See Vācaspati's Tātparyaṭīkā or Vātsyāyana's bhāṣya on Nyāya sūtra, 111. ii. 43.

criticized; the putting of an "iti" (the word to denote the conclusion of any work) at the end of the third chapter is evidently to denote the conclusion of his Yoga compilation. There is of course another "iti" at the end of the fourth chapter to denote the conclusion of the whole work. The most legitimate hypothesis seems to be that the last chapter is a subsequent addition by a hand other than that of Patanjali who was anxious to supply some new links of argument which were felt to be necessary for the strengthening of the Yoga position from an internal point of view, as well as for securing the strength of the Yoga from the supposed attacks of Buddhist metaphysics. There is also a marked change (due either to its supplementary character or to the manipulation of a foreign hand) in the style of the last chapter as compared with the style of the other three.

The sutras, 30-34, of the last chapter seem to repeat what has already been said in the second chapter and some of the topics introduced are such that they could well have been dealt with in a more relevant manner in connection with similar discussions in the preceding chapters. The extent of this chapter is also disproportionately small, as it contains only 34 sūtras, whereas the average number of sūtras in other chapters is between 51 to 55.

We have now to meet the vexed question of the probable date of this famous Yoga author Patanjali. Weber had tried to connect him with Käpya Patamchala of Satapatha Brāhmaṇa1; in Katyāyana's Vārttika we get the name Patañjali which is explained by later commentators as patantaḥ añjalayaḥ yasmai (for whom the hands are folded as a mark of reverence), but it is indeed difficult to come to any conclusion merely from the similarity of names. There is however another theory which identifies the writer of the great commentary on Pāṇini called the Mahābhāṣya with the Patanjali of the Yoga sutra. This theory has been accepted by many western scholars probably on the strength of some Indian commentators who identified the two Patañjalis. Of these one is the writer of the Patanjalicarita (Rāmabhadra Diksita) who could not have flourished earlier than the eighteenth century. The other is that cited in Śivarama's commentary on Vasavadatta which Aufrecht assigns to the eighteenth century. The other two are king Bhoja of Dhar and Cakrapāṇidatta, 1 Weber's History of Indian Literature, p. 223 n.

the commentator of Caraka, who belonged to the eleventh century A.D. Thus Cakrapāņi says that he adores the Ahipati (mythical serpent chief) who removed the defects of mind, speech and body by his Pātañjala mahābhāṣya and the revision of Caraka. Bhoja says: "Victory be to the luminous words of that illustrious sovereign Raṇarangamalla who by composing his grammar, by writing his commentary on the Pātañjala and by producing a treatise on medicine called Rājamṛgänka has like the lord of the holder of serpents removed defilement from speech, mind and body." The adoration hymn of Vyasa (which is considered to be an interpolation even by orthodox scholars) is also based upon the same tradition. It is not impossible therefore that the later Indian commentators might have made some confusion between the three Patañjalis, the grammarian, the Yoga editor, and the medical writer to whom is ascribed the book known as Pātañjalatantra, and who has been quoted by Śivadāsa in his commentary on Cakradatta in connection with the heating of metals.

Professor J. H. Woods of Harvard University is therefore in a way justified in his unwillingness to identify the grammarian and the Yoga editor on the slender evidence of these commentators. It is indeed curious to notice that the great commentators of the grammar school such as Bhartṛhari, Kaiyyaṭa, Vāmana, Jayāditya, Nāgeśa, etc. are silent on this point. This is indeed a point against the identification of the two Patanjalis by some Yoga and medical commentators of a later age. And if other proofs are available which go against such an identification, we could not think the grammarian and the Yoga writer to be the same person.

Let us now see if Patañjali's grammatical work contains anything which may lead us to think that he was not the same person as the writer on Yoga. Professor Woods supposes that the philosophic concept of substance (dravya) of the two Patanjalis differs and therefore they cannot be identified. He holds that dravya is described in Vyāsabhāṣya in one place as being the unity of species and qualities (sāmānyaviseṣātmaka), whereas the Mahabhaṣya holds that a dravya denotes a genus and also specific qualities according as the emphasis or stress is laid on either side. I fail to see how these ideas are totally antagonistic. Moreover, we know that these two views were held by