Drawing on the example of kuśtī-pahalvānī (traditional wrestling in India) to engage with arguments presented in each of the chapters that have come before, this “Afterword” engages with the problem of how meaning is assigned to physical practices and to the body engaged in various forms of self-development and self-discipline
This paper examines yoga āsana and vyāyāma instruction from Bengal in the twentieth century
Yoga and Vyāyāma in New Bengali Sources Read More »
This article was inspired by a reading of Nāgeśa Bhaṭta’s commentary, Pātañjalayogasūtravṛtti (PYV), on Pātañjalayogaśāstra I
This article reassesses the history of postural yoga in precolonial India by drawing attention to recently discovered visual material evidence of non-seated postures carved onto the pillars of Vijayanagara temples at Hampi in Karnataka
In this chapter, we formulate a corpus of premodern praxis manuals on yoga that were composed in the 18th and 19th century in rudimentary Sanskrit and vernacular languages, which were likely documenting collections of yoga postures (āsana) current among practitioners of the time
This chapter aims to broaden our understanding of the visual record of yogis carved upon the temple pillars and walls of several Vijayanagara-era temple sites in the Deccan—including major temple complexes at Hampi, Śrīśailam, Śṛṅgerī, Lepākṣī, and Śravaṇabeḷagola
Yogi Sculptures: Complex Āsanas Across the Deccan Read More »
The largely understudied Sāmrājyalakṣmīpīṭhikā is known to a small number of Sanskritists as a compendium on kingship, which they believe to be from South India
In the Nāṭyaśāstra, two main types of physical practices are described in some detail: the so-called “bodily acting” (āṅgikābhinaya) and dance (nṛtta)
The tradition of Turco-Persian wrestling, including its programme of physical education based at dedicated gyms known as zurkhāneh (literally “houses of strength”), contains elements that would appear to merge Turkish, Iranian, Central-Asian, and Indian influences within a mystical (Sufi) Islamic framework potentially affected to a certain degree by Buddhism
Mallkhāmb (malla-khāmba, “wrestler-pole”) is today popularly referred to as “Pole Yoga” and it is recognised as the so-called “Authentic Indian Sport
Poles apart? From Wrestling and Mallkhāmb to Pole Yoga Read More »
