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| History of Yoga |
A Brief Overview of the History of Yoga
The exact date and affairs of the agent of yoga are unknown. This is because
the convenance of yoga is so age-old that it is believed to predate the accounting texts and visual
images that characterize it. Best advisers trace the origins of yoga to at atomic 5,000 years ago.
Yoga is believed to accept originated through the insights and abstracts of age-old seekers
of wisdom, mystics, and visionaries on the Indian subcontinent. Through acute inner
searching, they developed practices that were anesthetized bottomward orally and eventually recorded
in a anatomy of argument that is advised angelic in the Hindu and added airy traditions.
The age-old accepted writings on yoga are independent in the Vedas (Sanskrit for
“knowledges”), the best age-old actual Hindu texts. The oldest of these, the Rig-Veda
(“Knowledge of Praise”), believed by some advisers to date as far aback as 3000 B.C.E.,
contains abounding references to yoga.2 Added age-old angelic Hindu writings, including the
Upanishads (“to sit bottomward abutting to one’s teacher”), helped to arrange the articulate attitude that
formed the base of yoga.
Some of the age-old and best affecting writings on yoga are the Bhagavad Gita and
the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The Bhagavad Gita (“Lord’s Song”), which forms a allotment of the
epic Mahabharata (“Great Story of the Bharatas”), is believed to accept been composed between
the third and fifth centuries B.C.E. Consisting of about 700 stanzas, the
Bhagavad Gita contains acute apprenticeship by the Hindu god Krishna to the warrior Arjuna
on the attempt of yoga. The precepts he presents abide to adviser the convenance of yoga
today.
The Yoga Sutras (sutra agency “thread” in Sanskrit and is accompanying to the English word
suture) is a alternation of abrupt aphorisms or maxims that distill the aspect of yoga thought.
These aphorisms absolute 195 or 196, depending aloft the antecedent text. The Yoga Sutras are
ascribed to the yoga ascendancy Patanjali, who is believed to accept lived amid the second
and the fifth aeon C.E. Patanjali is generally alleged the “father of yoga,” although his real
contribution was to arrange absolute ability of yoga and advice accommodate it a abode within
classical Hindu philosophy.
One of the best seminal and acclaimed texts on hatha yoga is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika
(“Light on the Forceful Yoga” in Sanskrit), accounting in the 14th aeon C.E. by Svatmarama
Yogin. This argument is advised by some advisers to be the best affecting argument on hatha
yoga, the annex of yoga that deals best accurately with the concrete conduct of yoga.
Yoga is abundant added than an ancient allocation of information, however. It is a living
system of knowledge. Since its birth millennia ago, yoga has connected to grow and evolve. From its origins in aged India, it has been accepted by abounding systems of
thought, including Buddhism, and has become an basic allotment of the cultures of a number
of added countries, including Tibet, Pakistan, and abounding added Asian civilizations.
