Meera Nanda <http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/how-> asks "How Hindu is Yoga?", whereas the question to ask, if you ask me, is "How Indian is Yoga?". The answer is "Very". Indeed, Mysore's royal family had a long-standing interest in hatha yoga: Wodeyar IV's ancestor, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (1799-1868), is credited with composing an exquisitely illustrated manual, titledSritattvanidhi, which was first discovered by Norman Sjoman, a Swedish yoga student, in the mid-1980s in the library of the Mysore Palace. What is remarkable about this book is its innovative combination of hatha yoga asanas with rope exercises used by Indian wrestlers and the danda push-ups developed at the vyayamasalas,the indigenous Indian gymnasium.
As I was explaining to a friend, it is sort of like Teppanyaki. Teppanyaki is obviously Japanese, and everybody would acknowledge that, but contrary to what many people may think, Teppanyaki is not *that* old. Its age must be measured in decades, not centuries. This should not be surprising. Much of the literature in innovation suggests that innovation happens in cities, areas that are densely populated and therefore areas of much economic and creative activity. And a lot of innovation is hybrid and recombinant <http://www.people.hbs.edu/lfleming/techsearch.pdf> . New research has brought to light intriguing historical documents and oral histories that raise serious doubts about the "ancient" lineage of Ashatanga Vinyasa of Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar yoga. Both Jois (1915-2009) and Iyengar (b. 1918) learned yoga from T. Krishnamacharya during the years (1933 until late 1940s) when he directed a yogasala in one wing of the Jaganmohan palace of the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodiyar IV (1884-1940). The maharaja, who ruled the state and the city of Mysore from 1902 until his death, was well-known as a great promoter of Indian culture and religion, but was also a great cultural innovator who welcomed positive innovations from the West and incorporated them into his social programs. Promoting physical education was one of his passions and under his rein Mysore became the hub of physical culture revival in the country. He hired Krishnamacharya primarily to teach yoga to the young princes of the royal family, but also funded Krishnamacharya and his yoga protégés to travel all over India giving yoga demonstrations, thereby encouraging an enormous popular revival of yoga. I saw the discussion on Yoga on the Indo-Eurasian Research List, and have gone through Meera Nanda's article. This changes nothing. The article and the discussion add some details to what we already knew. It is impressive how changing a couple of terms in the discussion makes one want to shift the subject to whether Yoga is a hybrid or not as opposed to where it arose and under what circumstances. Nice try but it ain't gonna get past me. It is pretty obvious that Yoga started in India. If anything, it substantiates the idea that innovation is recombinant and hybrid. We could have a discussion on what Indian institutions created Yoga but that is a question for a different time. Yoga is an Indian innovation. As simple as that. Anand P.S. More here : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indo-euro-americo-asian_list/message/193
