Browse the Yoga section of a bookstore or books online, and there are hundreds of thousands of contemporary books on yoga and more are being written everyday. As Joseph Ater observed in his book, Yoga in Modern India, "many writers write as if they are the only person writing on the subject with any authority, and what they are saying is new. Yet if there is one single thing that characterizes the literature on yoga, it is repetition and redundancy in the guise of novelty and independent invention." Joseph Ater, 2004. (Yoga in Modern India, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.) Referring to this body of writing as "pulp nonfiction", Ater says, "Yogic pulp nonfiction can be defined as texts that put forth the idea that you can teach yourself yoga by reading a book, even if one of the lessons is that you should stop reading and go and find a guru."
Before there were yoga classes available and before I found a teacher, books were the only guides I had for yoga practice. At first, very few books were available. I found The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga by Swami Vishnudevananda at a yard sale around 1972. Around the same time, a friend gave me Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahamsa Yogananda . After returning from a trip to India in 1986, I found The Sivananda Companion by Lucy Liddel and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translated by Georg Feuerstein at a bookstore in Washington, D.C. When I first moved to Louisville in 1990, the local bookstore, Hawley-Cooke (now gone), had only four or five yoga books, and they were all by Osho (Baghwan Shree Rajneesh), which did not interest me. At Spirit Mountain Bookstore (also now out of business), I found Swami Sivananda's magnum opus on yoga practice, Sadhana. In a magazine, I found an order form for Geeta Iyengar's Yoga - a Gem for Women and her father's book, Light on Yoga.
Through Siddha Yoga I became acquainted with the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism and had access to important texts like The Shiva Sutras, The Vijnana Bhairava, and the Spanda Karikas, translated by Jaideva Singh. In studying these texts, I began to understand the importance of commentary in the Sanskrit tradition.
These days, thousands of books on yoga are being published and self-published everyday. Anybody can write a book, or go on the internet and write a blog (like this one). However, are those writings reliable and helpful to our understanding of the topic under discussion? Scientific, medical and other scholarly articles are published in peer-reviewed journals where the content of the writings and their methods of research and analysis are examined and reviewed. This is also the case in Sanskrit scholarship. Otherwise, how can one know if the author is writing with authority? It's helpful to understand the tradition of commentary on yoga texts because it helps us to think objectively and critically about yoga philosophy, practice and theory.
At Yoga East we have spent many hours reading and discussing The Yoga Sutras. For these discussions I recommend that students bring a translation that has both a bhasya and a vritti. There are many versions of the Sutras out there. Some are authoritative, some are not, and some are misleading or incorrect. How do we know? This is why it's useful to know something about the tradition of commentary.
The information below is drawn from "Sanskrit Philosophical Commentary", by Jonardon Ganeri, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pollock/sks/papers/Ganeri(commentary).pdf. Go read this article.
Sutra- a short formula-like assertion, such as the statements in the Yoga Sutras and Shiva Sutras. Because sutras are extremely short, pithy words or phrases, a commentary is necessary to flesh out the meaning of the sutra. Commentary is helpful if written by someone who a knowledgeable authority on the text and its tradition.
Karika - similar to a sutra, karikas are short sutra-like statements that comprise a simple skeleton-like text.
Bhasya - is a commentary on a sutra whose function is to unpack the meaning of the sutra and weave it together with other sutras in the text. A bhasya gives a statement of the topic, raises a doubt or question, gives opposing views, gives a statement of the decided view with reasoning, and gives the purpose served by the discussion.
Varttika - is a subcommentary on a bhasya defending the commentary's particular construction or interpretation of the sutra over alternative constructions, making revisions and adjustments as necessary to clarify the meaning.
Nibandha is a commentarial work which cntinues the process of revision and adjustment until a state of equilibrium is reached. James Mallinson says, "a traditional Sanskrit nibandha ...gathers together a wide variety of texts on a single topic." (James Mallinson and Mark Singleton, Roots of Yoga, 2107, Penguin Books).
Vrtti, vivrtti or vivarana - commentary that gives the meanings of individual words, analyzes grammatical compounds, construes meanings of words and sentence construction.
Gudharta - uncovers deeper or hidden meanings.
Subodnini - companion or aid to understanding.
Pariksa or vicara - investigation or examination.
Pradipa, prakasha, dipa - clarification (shedding light upon the topic).
Bibliography
Ater, Joseph. Yoga in Modern India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2004.
Ganeri, Jonardon. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pollock/sks/papers/Ganeri(commentary).pdf. accessed 1/20/2017.
Mallinson, James and Mark Singleton. Roots of Yoga. UK: Penguin, 2017.
Suggestion for Further Study
Clark, Bernie. "How to Critically Analyze Yoga Articles", Elephant Journal, Nov. 22, 2013.
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