Frequently I have been approached by students who were disturbed by modern scholars’ claims that Ashtanga Yoga is a modern invention. This brief chapterasserts that Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is in fact an ancient practice and offers evidence supporting this conclusion. I consider this a vital point because to realize thatyour sadhana (practice) is handed down by a living ancient tradition and to energetically connect with this tradition will elevate the quality of your practice to acompletely different level; that is, it will transform you not just physically but spiritually.Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga has grown out of the fertile ground of the Vedas, which form a vast body of ancient knowledge. As noted in chapter 1, there are fourmain Vedic texts, the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda. There are also four Upavedas (ancillary Vedas) addressing the subjects of medicine(Ayurveda), economy (Arthaveda), military science (Dhanurveda), and art (Gandharvaveda). The Vedas have six limbs called Vedangas, namely Sanskrit grammar(Vyakarana), astrology (Jyotisha), etymology (Nirukta), phonetics (Shiksha), meter (Chandas), and ritual duty (Kalpa).
The Dwindling Number of Asanas
Some scholars who argue that Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is a modern invention claim that asanas have accumulated over time. They base this claim on the fact thatmedieval texts such as the Gheranda Samhita or the Hatha Yoga Pradipika mention relatively few postures, while our system today includes many.They argue thatAshtanga Yoga must therefore be a nineteenth-century invention, as it contains too many asanas to be truly ancient. This argument is flawed. From the number ofpostures given in particular scriptures, it is not
The Lack of Scriptural
EvidenceUnfortunately, most yogic schools did not leave any scriptural evidence behind. Even the Vedas weren’t committed to paper until the nineteenth century. Thetraditional view was that a body of knowledge could be read and sullied if it was written down. Most yogic schools kept their teachings secret and confined tomemory. Asanas were learned only through personal instruction from someone who had mastered them. Some Western scholars discount all aspects of Indianspirituality that were not recorded in books. This is often due to the fact that they see themselves merely as observers and do not want to get their feet dirty on theground. But Indian spiritual traditions are mainly oral traditions. If you wanted to learn something, you needed to get the trust and acceptance of somebody whoknew what you wanted to learn. Most knowledge that was confined to texts was considered so general that it was hardly usable. The mere absence of scripturalevidence, therefore, does not prove that Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is not ancient or that a large number of postures came into existence only recently.
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga as a Vedic Adjunct
The Ashtanga Vinyasa system, authored by the Vedic seer Vamana, is not a modern creation but follows the most ancient of Vedic designs. It is in fact a Vedicadjunct. The oldest of the systems of philosophy (darshanas) is probably the Mimamsa darshana. Mimamsa describes and analyzes Vedic rituals. The elaborateVedic rituals are not senseless jumbles, as some Westerners have stated, but symbolic representations of the entire cosmos.Although the practice of yoga does not include any traditional Vedic rituals, it is nevertheless closely connected to and influenced by them, as we can see fromthe following dialogue recorded in the Brhad Aranyaka Upanishad, the oldest of the philosophical portions of the Veda:4Yajnavalkya, the foremost of the Upanishadic rishis, finds himself invited to a dialogue with the emperor Janaka. First, however, he has to undergo a crossexaminationby nine learned court priests. The priests are hostile to this outsider from the forest, as they are worried that he might gain influence over the emperor,so they try to keep the upper hand in the dispute.Yajnavalkya’s first opponent, Ashvala, erroneously assumes that Yajnavalkya has no deep understanding of ritual and asks him how a performer of the Vedicritual attains mukti (emancipation, freedom). Yajnavalkya answers by noting what the four priests who officiate the ritual represent: fire and speech for the Hotrpriest, the eye and the sun for the Adhvaryu priest, the wind and breath for the Udgatr priest, and mind and the moon for the Brahmana priest. Fire, sun, wind, andmoon are represented by the Vedic deities Agni, Savitri, Vayu, and Soma, which partake of the ritual. Wind (vayu) is symbolic for the life force (prana), and thevarious forms of prana are called vayus. Yoga holds that the location of the sun in the body is the stomach and the location of the moon is the so-called somachakra, located at the soft palate in the head. But fire, moon, and sun represent together the three main energy channels: ida (moon), pingala (sun), and sushumna(fire). Fire, moon, and sun also represent the six chakras: fire, the muladhara and svadhishthana chakras; sun, the manipuraka and anahata chakras; and moon, thevishuddha and ajna chakras.In this way, Yajnavalkya interprets the offices of the four priests as having the functions of speech/sound, sight, breath, and mind. Through those four powers, theperformer of
