– Alan Finger & Wendy Newton, Tantra of the Yoga Sutras 2018 p 1 link Patanjali, the Man The Sutras do not impart philosophy in a vacuum, nor are they intended for intellectual dabblers or the general public. Not much is known of Patanjali… There are many differing options about who he was and when exactly he lived… Whatever the truth of the matter, it seems evident to us that Patanjali was a practicing yogi writing for his contemporary community of yoga practitioners and students. – Nicolai Bachman, The Path of the Yoga Sutras 2011 p 1 linkĪ Yogi Writing for His Contemporaries, Not for General Public Patanjali was revered as an outstanding scholar and wise man who wrote significant commentaries on Sanskrit grammar and Ayurveda… The Patanjali yoga tradition is a later expression of older teachings based on the source texts of India known as the Vedas. Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutras, lived somewhere between 500 BCE and 200 CE, a time that possibly overlaps the life of Buddha and a period of intense philosophical activity in India. – Kofi Busia, Patanjali Biography link Patanjali’s Role Those predecessors thus acquired an exaggerated longevity… Given that the knowledge in Patañjali’s most widely recognized work, the Yoga Sutras, is presented through a series of terse aphorisms, a date for him of somewhere between the fourth and second centuries BCE becomes highly likely… Give or take a century, therefore, somewhere around 250 BCE seems the best bet. The dates proposed for Patañjali’s birth and life vary by a millennium… A part of the reason for this wide divergence in possible dates is the tradition, common at the time… In order to make their contributions more acceptable, and to give them some cachet and an air of authority, later thinkers were frequently content to concede authorship of their contributions to one or another of their more illustrious predecessors. Yogiraj Alan Finger writes that Patanjali seems to have been “a practicing yogi writing for his contemporary community of yoga practitioners and students” and not “for intellectual dabblers or the general public.”. Even his most basic biographical details are disputed.” Others claim that Patanjali was a revered yogi and scholar of many subjects. Kofi Busia says, “Almost everything about Patanjali is unknown.It was referred to in The Vedas, estimated to have been written between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago. Patanjali, who lived “somewhere around 250 BCE” codified (arranged in a systematic collection) the Yoga Sutras.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |