Just how old is yoga?
Well, almost as old as the ancient civilizations of the world over 5,000 years
back. Some even consider it to be older by a further 5,000 years, but there are
no reliable documents to prove that. Since the principles of yoga were largely
conveyed orally and kept hidden from the larger populace, the exact time-frame of
its formalization and adoption is hard to figure out even for scholars of
history and archaeologists. There were written texts too, but since much of
writing back then was done on palm leaves that couldn’t stand the test of time.
But though its origins
in pre-history aren’t well documented, it’s certain that yoga is more than
5,000 years old. That would take it to the period of the Indus Valley
Civilization in north western India and what is now Pakistan, between 3300 and
1900 BCE. But it is believed that yoga was further developed and perfected upon
during the Vedic period that extended from 1500 to 500 BCE in northern India.
First Use of the Term “Yoga”
The Rig Veda, one of
the oldest religious texts in the world, contains the first use of the word
“yoga”. The Rig Veda is part of the Vedas text collection which contains
mantras, rituals and songs for use by the Hindu Brahman priests. The Brahman
caste was considered the highest in the caste-based society of the day. The Brahmans
further developed the yogic practices. Credit also goes to the seers of the
era, called “rishis”. The rishis and the Brahmins could document their
practices in another religious work, the Upanishads. The Upanishads framed the
karma yoga and jnana yoga disciplines. But the development of yoga has also
been attributed to the non-Brahmanic Sramana traditions.
Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras
From 200 BCE to 500
BCE, a philosophical system for yoga started emerging. This was the age when
Buddhism and Jainism emerged as well. In the 2nd century AD,
Patanjali brought out his Yoga-Sutras text. Patanjali is credited with
documenting the classical stream of yoga, called Raja Yoga. Patanjali’s focus
was on organizing the steps of yoga with an aim of attaining enlightenment or “Samadhi”.
These Yoga-Sutras still have a major influence on modern yoga, which is why
Patanjali is called the father of yoga.
The Yoga Widely Followed in the West – Hatha
Yoga
The modern practice of
yoga commonly practiced in the United States and the Western word largely
follows the principles of Hatha Yoga which itself is an evolution of Tantra
Yoga developed by yoga masters who lived centuries following Patanjali. They
did not follow the concepts of the Vedic texts I mentioned earlier. Rather, they
considered the physical body as a means to enlightenment and developed the
principles of Tantra Yoga, which eventually led to Hatha Yoga.
By the Middle Ages,
there were many satellite divisions of yoga that emerged. The Western world got
wind of yoga only millennia later, in the 19th century after Swami
Vivekananda’s exposition of Hinduism and Indian traditions in 1893 at the
Parliament of Religions at Chicago.
