Thank you very much theo good evening everyone i'm jim allen chair of the sewer center of yoga studies and it gives me great pleasure this evening to be introducing professor karl baer who uh i'm sure doesn't need much introduction to anyone who's been following yoga studies for a while professor bae is currently a professorial research fellow the department of religious studies the

 University of vienna and uh yeah has been working on modern yoga for for many years um his current research interests also include 19th and 20th century alternative religion mesmerism and psychedelics i am and among his many publications he was editor and also contributed to the volume its yoga in transformation was the name of the volume which was the proceedings of a

 Conference in vienna's excellent really excellent um yoga studies conference in vienna in 2013 which is called yoga and transformation i think and then the edited volume came out in 2018 which is open access as well if i remember rightly so everyone probably most people are probably aware of that already but so and i'm also really excited about this evening's talk cg jung on yoga

 Which is not something i'm particularly uh ophelia but i did just examine or mark a very good m a dissertation on the subject so i'm more clued up than that i would be and it's a fascinating topic and i have lots of questions which may be answered in the process of the talk but otherwise i shall ask them at the end but then everyone else as as theo said please put your questions in on slide days so

 Over to you carl thank you very much we can't hear you carl i think you're muted i don't know yeah no i think you're you're there now no you've disappeared but your voice is there and uh okay that's now i you can you see me now yeah you can see and hear you thank you okay and uh i just opened uh [Music]

 Escape uh just a moment future given ah what's that it's beginning to look good perfect now we are here huh great something's wrong with the it was looking okay was it just not moving along

 Uh yeah so and now ah now it's functioning okay so that's it so thank you very much for the introduction and i'm very glad and uh grateful for uh being able to speak in your beautiful center appreciate the whole project very much and

 I would like to share some of my thoughts on carl jung with you this evening the swiss psychiatrist used the term yoga as a general category for all kind of eastern religious practices that are concerned with the spiritual development of the practitioner young conceived yoga as a primarily oriental phenomenon he was not to quote leon

 Concerned with distinguishing between the varieties of yoga practices and competing so soteriological perspectives established by the traditions of hinduism buddhism and taoism rather he was interested in exploring the universal psychological processes underlying these practices which are also relevant to the western mind although historically the western mind evolved differently

 I will leave aside his reflections on buddhist yoga uh and taoist meditation techniques and theoretical concepts in this talk and focus on his encounter with hindu traditions for young yoga was almost synonymous with meditation practice nevertheless he knew the psychosomatic dimensions of yoga in the form of pranayama

 Which he treated only in passing and especially through the chakras to which he paid more attention what we today call modern postural yoga is not covered in his writings i will first have a look at the most important stages of his involvement with india and yoga and the major sources of his yoga knowledge and then i will uh have a look at uh jung's orientalism as

 I just uh indicated yoga jung's view of yoga is shaped by his image of an east-west polarity which adopts orientalist cliches and re-interprets them by means of his psychological theory therefore jung's orientalism will be treated as an intellectual framework of his yoga studies the next section deals with

 Jung's notion of yoga and his concept of psycho therapeutical western yoga and then i close with some concluding remarks early encounters uh of jung with yoga the first encounter dates back to his early childhood when he was not yet six years old he was fascinated by pictures of the indian gods brahma vishnu and shiva in the children's picture book orbis pictus his involvement with indian religious

 And philosophical literature goes back to his student days when he started medicine in 1900 he became an assistant of the famous psychiatrist organ ployla at the book herdsley the psychiatric hospital of zurich and around this time he acquired the 50 volumes of max miller's famous series sacred books of the east the photo you see on

 The powerpoint is from jung's library and you see all the volumes of uh max miller's sacred books of these if you look at the right bottom corner you see a red volume this is woodroff's shakti in chakta and i come back to woodroff's to jung's reading of woodruff later so he had all these translations of upanishads brahma sutras bhagavad

 Gita etc samitas he also studied uh deutschen's history of indian philosophy and his works on his work on the upanishads richard garvey's book on samkhya philosophy and jung's extensive library also included for example james ferguson's tree and serpent worship in india and several books on the history of south

 Asian fine arts and architecture in uh his first book first major work transformations and symbols of the libido published in 1912 he demonstrated that he not did not only have these books on the shelves of his library but also read them he was trying to

 Introduce a comparative mythology into psychoanalytical uh thought and while writing transformations and symbols of libido he consulted the theory hindologist emil abec so he was in contact with an endologist he cited from the rigveda and upanishadic texts

 And especially referred to the concepts of atman and brahman in 1909 a sigmund freud and jung met and uh in 1907 yeah met in vienna and then collaborated closely for around five years both became friends and were very engaged in the psychoanalytic movement freud thought that jung is something like his crown prince

 And then he was quite disappointed things turned not so easy with in their relationship after 19 and 12 when the book was uh published he uh had a serious midlife crisis that lasted several years he broke up with freud and um had a lot of

 Disturbing dreams and visions that he could not interpret and he uh gave up teaching at the zurich university and during this period period he was intensively engaged in imaginative adventures and visionary experiences which formed the basis of his famous famous libra novus also known as red book the red book and especially its paintings

 Contain several references to indian texts and ideas for example the first you cannot see it okay based on his experiences uh with the with his dreams and visions he developed his own kind of meditation technique that he later called active

 Imagination and i emphasized this because his practice of active imagination is the practical basis of his approach to yoga and he always compares yoga with his experiences in with this kind of meditation technique in uh yeah during this time uh he

 Did some yoga exercises um he he tells us that he practiced yoga while writing the red book and the question is what the hell did he practice when he said i'm i was practicing yoga i quote jung from his autobiography i was frequently so wrought up that i had to eliminate the emotions through yoga exercises but since it was my purpose to learn

 What was going on within myself i would do them only until i had calmed myself and could take up again the work with the unconscious so this is an important statement he uses yoga to calm down his emotions in case they get too strong and the yoga exercises function as a kind of first aid in emotional emergencies for

 Him the real process that con his explorations of the unconscious are not part of the yoga exercises he only uses them and they get to when the the the process of imagination and vision gets too strong what kind of exercises could these have been uh jung did not have a yoga teacher to instruct him and practically oriented yoga literature was rare on the european

 Market in those days sonu shamdasani refers to a recommendation jung gave in the 1930s to his patient fowler mccormick where he describes an exercise that works very similar to his description of his yoga exercises he said um he writes to mc [Music] fowler mccormick's reports dr jung said that in times of

 Great stress there was a very useful exercises which was exercise which was to lie flat on the couch or bad lie very still and breathe quietly with the idea that the wind of disturbance was blowing over you so it's quite possible that jung practice such an exercise in order to calm down it resembles me of auto suggestive exercises from new thought yoga in the yogi rama character style

 So probably he there were translations of yogi ramacharaka and other new thought yoga so probably he got some inspiration from there in 1920 jung acquired search on woodruff's the serpent power many marginals marginal annotations in this copy in his copy of the serpent power proof that he read the book

 Very carefully and uh budov became the most important source for tantric forms of yoga for him in 1921 psychological types were published the first book after he started his self-experiments with active imagination it largely drew on insights from his fantasy journeys and their elaboration in the red book

 In psychological types he introduces the distinction between the ego and the self into his psychology the ego is standing for the center of consciousness and will while the self represents the center of the wholeness of the human psyche that encompasses the conscious and the unconscious and represents the image of god within the human being this distinction between ego and self

 Has several roots one of which is the upanishadic atman in psychological types he also introduced introversion and extraversion as basic human attitudes into psychological topology and the polarity between the two introversion and extraversion also informed his orientalist thought as we will see soon

 And he used introversion extraversion to define yoga psychological types provided the basis for jung's lifelong conviction that there is a deep affinity between his psychology and in particular his method of active imagination and yoga which does not however preclude important differences in 1930 jung stopped working on the libra novus and

 From then on uh his most intensive study of yoga starts here we have two illustrations from the red book that uh are important for his yoga uh for his understanding of yoga on the left you have systema mundi tortillos which is a

 A kind of cosmic diagram showing the order of the microcosms and the macrocosmos and the opposites the polarities that rule this microcosmic macrocosmic order and jung later said this was the first mandala i was painting and later also patience of him through

 This kind of schemes that remind of south asian mandalas on the right side you have a painting of jung the image language legend is brahmanaspati and this painting belongs to a series of paintings that

 Are connected with concentration and what he calls tapas and the role of tapas in his active imagination method brahma brahmanaspati the king of brahman the powerful word of invocation that summons the god uh is also connected to agni the god of

 Fire he knew that from mueller's uh uh series and uh he connected it with his experiences uh of imaginations uh emerging because of this fiery uh concentration he was drawing towards the unconscious the void the dark

 Okay uh so when we speak about jung in this 30s and his interpretation of yoga we should consider that uh he was not the only one who was dealing with yoga from a psychiatric and psychological point of view there was a kind of discovery going on in the uh

 Psychiatry literature uh from the end of the first world war throughout the 1920s the first one who compared yoga with psychoanalysis was a fa winter a pseudonym it was the psychiatrist frederick wortham

 Who published two articles in the occult journal the quest quest and british the best british occult journal edited by gr phr meet a famous occultist former member of the theosophical society

 But winter was only the first one but an important one because winter was very probably known to jung because jung had the quest journal in his library and quite astonishing parallels between the view of yoga that

 Winter or frederick wertham saw and jung's own few winter compared the yoga sutras with the psychology of freud and jung and his approach already anticipates basic ideas of jung according to wertheim winter the human nature and the struggle of human beings towards self-knowledge are the same in the east and in the west and he thinks that this would be proved by the similarity in the

 Symbolic representation of these striving forces within so the similarity of the symbolic representations of the quest the struggle of human beings towards self-knowledge this is an approach that is quite similar to jung's own at least in civilization and its discontents sigmund freud himself also

 Made some remarks on yoga quite late and not very elaborate but in between you have a lot of other psychoanalysts like uh for example uh franz alexander the biological meaning of psychological processes in 1923 or otto rank the trauma drama of birth uh and others who wrote on yoga and on eastern meditation techniques and most of this stuff is what i would call

 A colonial psychiatry they want to show that the mental disorders of civilized men is the normal state of mind of the savages and the non-europeans so they are in a kind of

 Daily life schizophrenia catatonia [Music] and this kind of comparison [Music] was very popular and they interpreted eastern meditation techniques yoga and so on through that lens so they saw it as a kind of archaic uh manifestation of psychic processes and

 Jung shared this view but he was more on the side of a positive orientalism because you know orientalism always has two sides the one side is we westerners are better and more uh have more knowledge and technology but on the other side the the non-western people have something which we have lost

 And jung was emphasizing this part of orientalist thought that india has something to give because it has some archaic approaches to the human mind that we have lost the heyday of jung's yoga reception in 1929 jung wrote a commentary to richard wilhelm's translation of the taoist text the secret of the golden

 Flower in this text he already touches also questions of hindu yoga in 1930 jung read heinrich artistic form and yoga in the sacred universe of india and this is a very important book for for jung's yoga reception

 Uh he later met heinrich simmer personally but this book influenced him a lot young was fascinated by it because this groundbreaking study uh a classic of yoga research uh investigates the mandala and the yantra in tantric tradition and he underlines simmer underlines that the sacred images are not only artistic expressions of religious worldviews but have a practical meaning as utensils of

 Religious and magical rituals and tools for visualization within meditation technique techniques so atima places the sacred images of india tantric mandalas yantras uh within meditation practice that was an important step and jung could follow him because his own paintings uh were connected to his uh meditation practice and he used

 Painting to express his meditation experience on the one hand and to deepen it and clarify it through this artistic process between 1930 and 1932 he jung lectured on kundalini yoga and collaborated with the indologist jacob wilhelm hauer it's a difficult chapter i don't want to go into details now because jakub wilhelm however was an art

 And nazi and uh that made the relationship between jung and um are not easier but um at least uh it took until 1938 that uh jung broke with howard and i think it's quite obvious that in the beginning he his attitude towards nazism was

 Ambivalent he saw good sides and bad sides and only uh after 19 in the in the late 1930s he uh [Music] criticized uh the hitler regime quite outspoken in 1933 the first eranos conference took place and its title was yoga and

 Meditation in the east and in the west that was just a symptom it's just as an expression of the interest that jung had because jung was mentor of the whole aeronautics conferences and the focus of the first eranos conferences was on the east-west relationship and the very first conference was on yoga and meditation here we see

 Jung and heinrich zimmer in 1936 and timah also was invited to the eranos conferences that happened in ascona in switzerland in 1960 in 1936 uh jung's article yoga and the west was published in a rabuda bharata the journal of the ramakrishna movement jung was

 Invited in 1938 uh to visit india and then went on a journey for three months to india he also met subramanya iyer the guru of the maharaja of mysore in together with paul branton in zurich in this year 37 and to talk about indian philosophy and yoga in uh

 1939 uh after his journey to india he lectured on psychology of yoga and eastern meditation at the etihad theory university in zurich and high school in university and 1939 he invited surrender natas gupta to zurich and

 Dasgupta uh lectured on the yoga sutras of patanjali at the psychological club in zurich das gupta the historian of indian philosophy who also wrote the book on yoga as philosophy and religion that was published in 1924 met jung during jung's journey to india and then jung invited him to speak in

 Zurich so this is the overview because uh during world war ii and after world war two he did not publish very much on yoga and eastern meditation anymore he focused more on uh western alchemy and uh christian topics and uh so um

 The real heyday of his yoga receptions are the 1930s now after this overview i want to get a bit more into the content of his uh interpretation and as i already said in the beginning he uh he follows a orientalist

 Line of thought and i want to have a look at this now here we have a scheme that shows how he interprets west and east the and you will see quite easily that uh this uh cliches from orientalist [Music] views that uh he just adopts and

 Interprets it in his psychological way the basic world through view in the west is materialism and in the east idealism so the outer world is the real world for the west the inner world is more or less seen as an illusion and not a true uh reality in the e the east identifies reality with the soul the inner life the outer world is seen as an illusion what for the westerner is real is a

 Dream for the easterner and vice versa what for the easterner is really a dreamy reality for the westerner the power of the west is material that that of the east is ideal very similar uh things you can hear from vivekananda and actually i think that vivekananda is uh so to say that one of the sources of his orientalist view the direction of the libido of the

 Attention of the consciousness is extraversion in the west introversion in the east dominant form of knowledge science and technology technological know-how in the east in the west and wisdom thinking in parables and images in the east typical religious practice extroverted prayer and worship in the

 West directed towards a god in the height in the in the heaven and in the east it's yoga as typical practice self-immersion meditation that is a kind of discovery of the god within everything and especially within the human soul and uh

 This is probably the most interesting thing for his yoga reception the relationship between the conscious uh and the unconscious are different [Music] in the west there is a dissociation and exclusion of unconscious contents under the rule of conscious will whereas in the east we find a connectedness and a compensatory relationship between the conscious and the unconsciousness and the conscious ego is on the other

 Hand in danger to be overwhelmed by the unconscious because there is more openness towards this hidden side of the human nature so his understanding of yoga here a quote from yoga and the west this article from 1936 yoga was originally a natural process of introversion with all manner of individual variations introversions of this sort lead to peculiar inner processes which change the personality

 In the course of several thousand years these introversions became organized methods and along widely different lines he gives an example how he imagines this kind of the the emergence of yoga techniques and methods uh in one of his writings he he tells us the story that an indian yogi is living in a cave for several months and

 Meditates and after meditation in the dark for several months he has an insight and he expresses this insight by painting a circle and a square and four directions on the walls of the cave and later the disciples of this yogi come and they

 See oh our master head has painted this circle with the uh with the different directions and so on probably this is something which guides us towards our inner depth so the disciples take the mandala and focus on it in their meditation and so it becomes a technique shared by

 Uh many people and in the course of hundreds of years systems are uh emerged that are taught but the source is this individual experience of of the first one who invented a mandala because a deep meditation process took place in his retreat

 So all from individual experience to organized methods this is the step that is important for jung is understanding of yoga as a method the jungian two limped yoga yeah i call it tulip yoga because he emphasizes two sides two dimensions of yoga i quote from psychology of eastern meditation

 Article of jung the word means literally yoking i.e the disciplining of the instinctual forces of the psyche which in sanskrit are called glaciers so the cl the work uh disciplining the cliches understanding the glaciers is the first important point and when when he is interpreting the yoga sutra he is speaking about the cliches and of course the eight-fold

 Path this sort and especially samyama the the last three uh limbs of yoga because that's this meditation practice so this is the first thing and then the second limp of jung's yoga behind or beneath the world of personal fantasies and instincts a still deeper layer of the unconscious becomes visible which in

 Contrast to the chaotic disorder of the glaciers is pervaded by the highest order and harmony so after the disciplining of the glaciers a deeper order comes to the fore and this is symbolized by the tantric mandalas for example psychology there is a parallelism

 Between his view of yoga and his view of psychology he says through to our european bias we have evolved a medical psychology dealing especially with the glaciers we call it the psychology of the unconscious and our western psychology has in fact got as far as yoga in that it is able to establish a deeper layer of unity the

 Mythological motives form in themselves a multiplicity but this culminates in a concentric or radial order which constitutes the true center or essence of the collective unconsciousness in account of the remarkable agreement between yoga and the results of psychological research i have chosen the sanskrit mandala for this central symbol so again we have these two steps dealing with the personal

 Unconsciousness the disorders of instincts and the desires and drives first step and then a deeper unity comes to the fore in the process of therapy as in the process of yoga practice okay so i've already quite spoken quite a long time but i would give you a a short hint about jung's understanding of the chakras that

 Might be of interest youngs understands understands the chakras as symbols for human levels of consciousness they are new worlds of consciousness one above the other so it's is interpreting the the chakras as symbolizing different ways of being in the world

 Lower ones and higher ones and there is a development from the lower to the higher level and this is fueled by the kundalini shakti which jung identifies with this concept of the anima and the divine urge that's his [Music] quote divine urge that drives people to become what they can be and thus realize their true selves this is these are the basics but indeed it's a complicated affair jung

 And the chakras especially if you look at the lectures he gave his hour on the psychology of the chakras you see that his interpretation of the individual chakras and the ascent through them is based mainly on four sources that are difficult to reconcile with each other he he is referring to the translations of the chakra nirupana by woodroff and howard he is bringing his concept of the

 Individuation process to the descriptions of the chakras then he has a theory of three levels uh three psychical localizations the lower abdomen the upper trunk and the head and this is basically a european tradition from ancient greece in platonic philosophy we have these three body centers lower abdomen upper

 Trunk head and jung refers to that and projects this to on on the chakras and he has reports of his patients about dreams and visions of snakes in their bodies that move upwards and that like so these four sources he blends and he either uh and he's trying to cope with the contradictions that uh emerge when he tries to understand uh the descriptions of the

 Chakras in this uh chakra nirupana and the other sources he has to understand body centers and uh use if you l if you read this lectures it's sometimes very entertaining he's a charming and charismatic speaker but he contradicts himself he tries this

 Approach and changes this whole thing uh starts all over again and so on so uh i don't think that he got he came to a consistent interpretation of the chakras but you see the process of trying to understand them from his psychological background active imagination as a kind of western yoga is my last point he distinguishes between

 Imagination passive imagination and active imagination imagination in general is the self-articulation of the unconscious in diverse perceptible manifestation so it's not just imagining something by conscious will if you close your eyes and you try to imagine a unicorn

 You might see something but that's not imagination in his uh understanding uh if uh jim ellison dreams of a unicorn and the unicorn tells him jim i have some new informations about kajari mudra you should consider this and that this is a manifestation of the unconscious and if it's a deep manifestation it's a manifestation of the

 Not the personal unconscious but the collective unconscious passive imagination is a dream for example as i just gave the example the mere perception of fantasies in dreams daydreams that arise spontaneously active imagination is the active unfolding of a imagination in a process of concentration

 Concentration focusing on it without disturbing the the image this is a very difficult technique but uh that's jung's meditation technique to let the images come and then focus on them so that they unfold by themselves and when they so it's not only that the unicorn comes the unicorn is doing something

 Uh probably it starts to speak to you and so this is a process and the uh also part of the imagination active imagination is that you answer to the images you get in this media practice you can ask them what do you want to tell me why are you telling me this why are you so angry about me and so on so this a kind of dialogue between the visions and the practitioner is part of the active

 Imagination the practice of active imagination here a quote from introduction to union psychology jung says by assuming a passive posture at night while at the same time pouring the same stream of libido into the unconscious that one has put into work in the day the dreams can be caught and the activities of the unconscious observed but it cannot be done by just lying down on a couch and relaxing it has to be

 Done by an unconditional surrender of the entire libido to the unconscious i have practiced doing this uh jung connects this with the concept of tapas this is a quote from the red book set the egg before you the god in his beginning and behold it and incubate it with the magical warmth of your gaze this is a description of the process of

 Active meditation and we uh connected this to poplar so the concept of tapras he said he says you have to quote him very early young says very early on we find in indian text the concept of tapas it is used as an expression to

 The fractifying effect of attention hence it is translated as creative heat this translation is from our he he refers to prachapati incubates himself this is the word used for the technical concentration exercises out of which yoga developed and this kind of magical warmth incuba where the meditation

 The the practitioner of meditation incubates himself sending his magical warmth warms of attention towards the unknown the unconscious and jung says this is a tapas as known in the yoga tradition the difference between your eastern yoga and western active imagination i want to stop with this point

 My talk yoga as it is practiced now and has been practiced for many hundred years is a system jung says the western technique is not a system but a simple process in the east it is a technical system as a rule the object of revaluation or meditation is prescribed here which is not in active where it arises quite naturally from a dream from intimations that manifest in

 Consciousness in a natural way so this is the difference and as young thinks that the western man is uh suffering under uh the uh separation of the unconscious and the consciousness

 He thinks that meditation methods that are prescribed to the conscious ego to perform them are not helpful in this situation he the he wants the westerners to discover their unconscious and for this a technical system of prescribed meditations is not useful they have to open up to the images that come from the

 Unconscious by themselves and work with them and so that is the reason why it doesn't uh recommend indian yoga practices for westerns in basically if this is so we can discuss uh it's of course part of his uh orientalist thought is to distinguish

 Between east and west in such a way and uh one can doubt if this holds true but he also this should not be this should be clear that he also with his kind of psychology wanted to uh to win the battle between east and west because uh

 Vivekananda came with this viewer materialists and i bring you spirituality the west is better in science and we are better in the inner science of the yoga is the inner science of the mind and jung says he's very skeptical about the claims of vivekananda but he says our scientific psychotherapy psychoanalysis is

 The real scientific approach to the intuitive insights of indian yoga and in a way it's a synthesis of science and uh meditation practice what he aims at and this would be a step ahead with uh compared with the

 Original traditional indian yoga so in the end i think in young psychology the west is the winner again taking inspirations from eastern yoga but transforming them with a scientific method that is more adequate for the modern western than the traditional forms of yoga so

 That i think was my summary and now we can start the discussion thank you great well thank you very much indeed professor bower that was fascinating great tour of a very complicated history and um yes i have lots of questions but i will try to restrict myself um firstly i mean it seems like sort of inferring from what you said i

 Think i know the answer to this but it seems as though jung completely lumped together lots of different indian systems he he doesn't seem to differentiate i mean you've talked about you know the the creative power of tapas which is really a sort of vedic notion and i think that was taken from the vaders and then the clashes and some other terminology

 From patanjali and then mandalas and chakras from tantra and you said he read woodruff and does he think that these are all part of one coherent system well this that's what he seems to what what that that was what i inferred from what you said anyway yes he doesn't differentiate so much for him it's all eastern yoga it might be buddhist or hindu it might

 Be patanjali or the tantras uh he's not so much interest he knows that there are different schools different systems but this is not uh what really interests him okay so he sort of essentializes them and yes one one system underneath and then and he pits that against some sort of a centralized west so i was wondering also about notions of a you know a perennial

 Philosophy does he think that there's a sort of underlying system that can that is that is true to the the entire world or east and west as kipling would say where they never the twain shall meet are they irreconcilably uh opposed to one another yes i think that um he has a kind of perennialist view of the process of individuation becoming yourself uh the

 Uh disciplining of the glaciers as first step and then discovering the gods and goddesses that are hidden in the collective unconsciousness and in the end uh this mysterious center [Music] of the mandala in a way is symbolized by

 Certain figures that show that there is a deeper center that is transcending the conscious and the unconscious and that's the true self and in a way it's a divine self because it's a image of god within man that is discovered this is a process that happens everywhere in the world and there are many cultural differences that emphasize this side or that side but

 The underlying processes are the same in jung's view okay and in in that case and if you said that ultimately sorry one second jim carl could we ask you to stop your screen share and then we can see you full screen would be brilliant thank you sorry jim i didn't want to interrupt right thank you well sorry i was too too involved my final just final question before

 We've got we've got one on the slider um would be are you still oh here we go yeah well done um great um final question would be then in which case if he ultimately argues that the his western system is better than this essentialized eastern yoga um what would you say that he actually gained from studying the eastern essentialized yoga which would he did he how did he benefit from looking at it do you think it actually did then

 Change his system in any way yes i think so um i think he he he took his own discoveries more serious seeing parallels uh in other cultures that's one point and the mandala is was a topic that was around he pain painted this kind of circles and and squares with squares and so on and center uh and his patients did but uh i think that to

 It was uh not arbitrarily that he called it mantra mandala it was he he felt the importance of this structures better via the indian forms and via heinrich zimmer's book on artistic form and yoga yeah that concerning the chakras sonos shamdasani says that jung learned something from the chakras

 In regard to the topography of the unconscious but i haven't checked this i i haven't found it actually i i don't know if this is right but he uh he he had a uh i think the basically his theory has problems with the body uh and the localization of psychic contents

 Is something that he knows but he is not able to articulate it and he was searching for ways to better understand this and the chakras looked like this is a elaborate system that he could connect with but it it's there are many difficulties and actually uh his interpretation of the chakras was not very successful in the sense of uh influential

 The if you look at what uh the western chakra systems after woodrow the impact of jung is is not not very strong i would say because it's too difficult and not elaborate enough not something you can consume easily you can study it because you i learned from that that the difficulty to interpret the chakras from an external point of view i mean you can reconstruct the meaning of the

 Chakras by looking in the tantric scriptures and interviewing yogis but what does all this mean for western psychologists or a philosopher this is a different question and it's not so easy to interpret the chakras beyond the reconstruction of the historical meaning so and this the difficulties you can

 Study in jung's approach okay great thank you now we have a few questions on the sliders i think first of all um if we can go to philip de slip who has an interesting comment or uh suggestion to make so if we can go to phillip please her buyer uh hold on one second i want to bring the most influential yogi of the 20th century

 I would agree with you um maybe one of the few so in chapter 23 of william walker atkinson's book hatha yoga he describes because he's new thought he says that when your mind is angry your body will be tense the two are connected so he recommends laying down flat and kind of doing like a deep relaxation of like letting your whole

 Body feel heavy um and he gets this technique from a hypnotic healer in chicago named herbert parkin and so there's a at least in my mind it's famous there's a photo of parkin would have his patients lay down on a table and his idea was in this relaxed state they were able to be suggestible and treated and

 There's a photo of a young atkinson in the crowd watching that so that might be perhaps a likely source of jung's relaxation yoga of laying down and doing that yeah lots of this kind of exercises were around during the 20s and 30s already in germany also yeah and ramacharaka atkinson is one of the possible sources yeah

 All right thank you great thank you thanks phillip um and next if we can go to lubamir on drachka please no i should be can you hear me there we go all right thanks i have two simple question first um you described young as a let's say positive orientalist who was looking for some lost heritage in in the easter

 Or india and i wonder whether he he uses or recalls the idea of aryan race when when doing this uh because of his contact of jacob hower and and and others so whether it's any place whether this this common idea this common heritage is invoked by young so this is my my first question and the second is about uh when when uh mentioning the sources

 I was surprised not to see mercha eliader's name so i wonder whether he was aware of the early i suppose that he was of the early eliades book on on yoga i mean published in 30s because you mentioned that later he did not did not write on yoga anymore so the later eliades books uh i suppose he did not use but what about the the early books from from from the 30s thank

 You yes first to the first question um well i don't i did not find any uh quotation of jung where he is linking with the aryan germanic uh myth how i was doing that yeah yeah

 Of course yeah young in in his in this early 30s distinguished between the germanic unconscious and the jewish unconscious that was a very unhap very strange uh phase and he later gave this up yeah but this distinguished distinguishing germanic and a jewish soul

 Or nature is not connected with yoga at all and the indo-germanic myth is people who who think in this line do not uh expose the differences between east and west so much we are we are not easterners and westerners concerning india we are indo-germanics

 Germanic people and have a common culture this is the the idea behind this indo-germanic ideology and this is not jung's line of thought he draws a distinction between the east and the west not based on race but on cultural historical differences i haven't found

 Anything else in young probably there concerning iliadi there is a la they haven't had an exchange of letters uh but i think only after world war ii quite late uh and when i remember rightly [Music] sent a new edition of his yoga book to jung

 And jung responded to that and jung felt misunderstood [Laughter] so there was not much communication then between the two so you think that in that in the 30s jung was not aware of this work oh that's that's surprising okay maybe he was but i haven't found a reference in jung's writings yet

 Probably there is one but i don't know great thank you very much thank you now we did have a well we've got a question from alexander but i'm afraid libermy has preempted it that was about elliardi so we've um had that one ass now we've got one more we've got an anonymous question so i'll read that what do you think jung's legacy has been for the trajectory of modern yoga difficult to say

 Of course he he pushed the popularity of yoga in psychotherapeutical circles and the impulse to take yoga serious from a psychological point of view as a kind of psychotherapy as a kind of uh method to gain

 Uh your inner center to discover your inner center that was something uh that had an impact i would say but he was already in the 30s he he was to say against the grain in his in his very impulsive and strict

 Uh opinion that for westerners it's not good to practice eastern yoga and of course he didn't have this his the historical knowledge that we have for him vivekananda was a representative of pure traditional indian yoga and this is totally yeah of course we know better now but

 Um he was against the the enthusiasts of yoga practice in his uh circles and that was of course also a kind of boundary work uh in favor of his own psychology because what he what he said was i'm doing better i can offer you what the yogis offer but more fit for the western mind

 So i my yoga is the better yoga so that was in the end uh what what his message was and uh okay that was of course limited to the unions others were not so uh amused by this uh message of course well i i have a related questions i quite often get asked about how in some modern yoga circles the chakras are associated with with particular emotions and yes states and

 As far as i know there are almost no precedence for that within the indian tradition there is there's this one text the singleton and i put a translation from that section on the the section on the chakras in that text because there is some mention of sort of emotional states but as i understand it jung may be responsible for that am i correct there or uh yes he was one of the

 First but not the only one okay and in the 60s 70s uh they they projected models of the human mind and stages of the human mind from humanistic psychology uh maslow for example with the peak experiences and the basic needs yeah and this kind of pyramid of human needs from very basic material needs to the highest

 Spiritual realization so this kind of models of the human being were projected on the chakras and it's jung tried a very similar thing and i wonder where but that was coming purely from him then presumably that was his creation no i don't think so i mean sorry the other people around about but they didn't have any indian source for that no

 No probably he was the first one who really uh engaged in a study of of woodroff uh from a psychoanalytical point of view so this he was probably a pioneer in this direction but not very influential because the the results of his research were not so clear not an easy formula so actually one we have one last quarter if you don't mind we're a minute over but

 If we can go to that just one fight my guess is it'll be a short answer but if we could go to radha devi please hi thank you so much sorry for my ignorance on this uh dr karl i don't know much about carl jung i'm definitely a great master or psychotherapist but now that i've been hearing and listening to you i have to i have several thoughts is he trying to

 During his time in and out of the western eastern mind frame was he trying to run away from indian yoga or did he feel he just wasn't up to it to spread or make it very authentic and in that same context did he or oxford dickshow or initiation or did uh any of the gurus he met want to initiate him thank you hmm

 So running away yes yeah there is [Music] there is a whole discourse in among the young scholars about us one question why didn't he meet ramana maharshi when he was in india because heinrich

 Zimmer was a kind of follower of ramana maharshi and uh very fond of his teachings and his person and he recommended it to young that he when he goes to india he should meet ramana maharshi he did not and he said afterwards he gave comments like i didn't know what to learn from this man it's always the same what they are

 Saying and so it's more kind of uh protecting himself for not uh no he didn't want to get in touch uh with rana namahashi and found some strange reason for that but the whole when he was in india he was really he had uh he had a lot of problems in coping with the indian culture and um was not really interested in uh deeper contact

 Uh also afraid of what whatever i don't know uh i feel some fear and insecurity and uh in him when he is speaking about his experiences in india so he was not interested in getting into it really and he was or not also he was also not interested in

 Finding a guru to teach him meditation or something like that okay well thank you yeah that's it for questions thank you so much professor bo that's absolutely fascinating yeah i could uh keep quizzing you more but um yes our times run out so uh it's through i thank you personally and then i'll hand back to theo for the for our final sign off

Okay good evening everyone can uh can you hear me please wave if you can hear me great um so welcome to the so our center for yoga studies online lecture series we're back um today um i let me introduce myself first of all i'm jim madinson so i'm the uh the chair of the ser center for yoga studies and uh

 Lecturer well i'm now the reader in indology and yoga studies at source um the center for yoga studies is a hub it's a sort of uh a place or a a space for scholars uh students and anyone interested in yoga and the academic study of yoga to come together we're putting on various events we've had just we're in the middle of a seminar series on yoga and

 Philosophy we're restarting after the summer break our lecture series so we've got this lecture this evening which i will tell you more about in a minute uh various the events that are generally detailed on our facebook page uh also on instagram we've got a couple of things lined up already for next month so the first one uh i'm going to be taking part in it's a

 Panel discussion for the hata yoga project which winds up at the end of this month uh formally although we've got an extension anyway that i and the rest of the team are going to be discussing the findings of the project in a sort of panel format and then taking questions from the audience and then that's on the 7th of october and on the 21st of october we've got a

 Great professor shaman hatley's going to be talking about his work on yoganese so that should definitely be a good event and i hope r1 will be a good event as well um now during this evening's talk as usual we're going to be taking questions through the slido page which uh in your invitation to this evening's event you would have got a link to that sometimes we've had this once

 Before there may be a problem with the link if you click on it it might go through to a previous lecture that we've done um things one on on pranayama by elena so if that doesn't work if you copy and paste the link into your browser it should work and finally if that doesn't work you can put in the code number which is in the email 54302 um this event like all our events is

 Being recorded for our youtube channel and you can view past events on there okay so now it gives me a great pleasure to introduce our speaker and his talk this evening the speaker is dr vijay sade dr sade received his phd from the department of ancient indian history culture and archaeology at the deccan college postgraduate and research institute in pune in maharashtra in india the thesis was

 Entitled archaeological investigations of the ngata samfradaya in maharashtra circa 12th to 15th century ce [Music] now dr sardes also had several articles published about the sampradaya and their sort of material remains in in maharashtra they've been published in various national and international journals he's contributed 10 entries on the

 Natsan brady for the marathi encyclopedia for the government of maharashtra and he's presently working as an independent researcher in the field of archaeology and history he's got life memberships of the indian history and cultural society new delhi and the indian archaeological society in new delhi so that's the formal introduction i just

 Sort of like to say how i became aware of dr saudi's work as two or three years ago and it was so about halfway through the hata yoga project in the course of which it had become extremely clear to me that the maharashtra region was really important for our understanding of uh of yoga's or hatha yoga's early history and of course the

 The history of the sampradaya the kind of formative years of the ngata sampradaya and that was apparent both through textual research uh and also through um field work in india with um daniella bevilla we've been to see some places in the in the deccan region that you know really exciting uh early images of north yogis and also yoga practice

 So it was really it was great to discover uh to find out about dr sadie's work um then whenever it was two or three years ago so i immediately started paying great interest i mentioned all his articles now i think pretty much all of them a lot of them are available on his academia edu page so you can get a wealth of interesting material there

 Uh or complete with with great uh photographs of the the many many temples that he's visited as we will shortly see so uh and then before handing over to dr sade i just i want to thank him very very much for agreeing to give this lecture also to point out that it's been extremely kind of him because i mean for us it's slightly late it's 7 p.m isn't it but for vijay who's currently in pune in maharashtra it's 11

 30 at night so uh uh well he's a young man i'm sure he'll be able to cope with this late night i'm not sure i could um so i think that's it i'm going to hand over to uh vijay now yeah so we'll have we'll leave 10 or 15 minutes at the end for for questions um which i will i will return for that but over to you vijay thank you very much yes hello everyone

 Uh thank you for introducing me james malinson so not uh wasting without our time i will start my ppt's presentation so actually as i said this is the part of my phd thesis and uh in this presentation you will mostly will find out or you will see you will watch uh various sites of the countries and maharashtra and early images of not

 Yogis so yeah uh we know that is a very throughout the indian subcontinent you have a various sites of north sunday you can find them in this map also from uh afghanistan to bangladesh and then nepal to south india various sites are located in india some are early sites and some are very late sites and we can see the uh

 Their density uh some sites are very uh in large number in maharashtra as well yeah this is the map of maharashtra and uh it has uh 36 districts uh during my exploration i have covered a lot of districts and i have collected a lot of data uh about not sampradaya yeah previous work

 Uh actually uh this work is actually uh work on the not something is very less actually a very brief uh work have done by scholars and uh not about uh uh architectural point of view or archaeological or imagery point of view as you can see mnd spenders except m and despande uh very less scholars have done or concentrated or

 Having a findings about not images yeah these are the districts where we got a lot of images of about nazim there now we we'll start from the very famous side of not panalikaji panalikaji is in coastal area of maharashtra we can see the location of panalikaji here and here there are 29 kills of uh from ranging from early prayer to medieval period and uh about them

 Out of them two chaos are very important uh upon not sampradayas yes this is the ground plane of cave number 29 and we can see here uh on the both side of the door jump uh we have a lot of images of uh not yogis and uh this is the uh there are a lot of scales also there sorry

 Yeah images of siddhas we can see here we can see the care number 29 and we can see the various depictions of siddhas they have been depicted all over the walls of the cell now we will look at some of the important sites of the pune districts here we can see the map of pune districts and you can see the various sites of north sampra there along with uh the noun jundi root you can see that

 The the black line is indicating the root and there are many sites parunded some of them having images of not yogis yeah this is the temple of brahmanatha we will see the site parunde uh this is the site paronde here we can see the this is there is a temple of brahmanatha brahman but it is actually very late temple uh

 We can say hundred and two hundred years old but in that temple in garbage sanctum or at the hall of the temple having four ancient pillars and that pillars having beautiful carvings of yogasanas we can see the plan of uh that sketches of fillers and here we can see the lot of images of not yogi not yogis in various portions of uh yoga you can

 Say this type of postures are carved on that pillars some postures are identified however some are not identified and uh most of the asanas have been identified based on manuscript there are some texts they are giving they that showing the names of some uh asanas and that as that in this way we can

 Identify those asanas see the close images of some asanas uh here we can see uh some are not identified properly so there is a lot of scope to for future study also yes now another important site of pune is pimpri dumala and pimpi dumala is small village situated 54 kilometer away from pune city and there's uh there is medieval temple

 Uh of some swara and along with two water tanks the temple is embellished with various images of deities such as bharava chamunda and vishnu ganesha and other deities are found along with the images of nars centers mainly on the jungle portion of the temple you can see the here ganga portion of the temple and lot of

 Lots of images of not yogis depicted on this portion of the temple yes we can see uh the plan of the temple and there is water tank just in front of just this this side of the temple and we can see the numbers of uh one four six like that all around there are the images of not yogis this temple has garbage then sabha mandapa and then nandi mandapa

 See other images of yogis left in the corner we can see uh yogi probably in tadasana you can see that the beautiful image of yogi and probably he is in tadasana one snake with his cobra naga naga image is depicted in front of this yogi and then this middle image images uh probably of not yogis and it not identified properly and here we can see in this way the portion of janga depicts

 Lots of many various images of not yogis all around the temple so this is another temple of bhuleshwara and it is situated 60 kilometer away from pune district pune city and here inside the temple we have images of yogis on the capitals of the pillars there are some capitals pillars and on that pillars we have some early images of not yogis and their iconography

 Is very similar to other yogi's of dakan region not yogis so some of them are shown in yogic portions we will see the those images this temple assigned to the 12th to 13th century by the scholars see we can see the images of nata yogis on the capital of pillar and some of the yogis you can see this yogi is having goat face

 See properly uh on the left side is shown the good face yogi and they have shown with then the bags and then the staffs and then the various unless wristlets and then various positions we can uh yes i was talking about uh these images only yes these are some asanas and hand postures some are the hand pushers these hand pushers on the right side

 This is eye side and it is a simmer mudra see two hands uh how he is showing and so this is this is pashmi mudra shirasana and aranya chatkasana according to jim malinson that this is uh uh similar to pashinimudra but we find uh we found various names of samsung asanas two three names there are two three names also uh in text

 Now uh this is a map of ahmednagar district we can see the various sites of uh belongs to uh north sides uh in ambanigar districts uh some are this hari but out of them some sites has have beautiful images of not yogis yeah the uh brahmani village this is a balalai devi temple in brahmani village and uh this is in ahmednagar district

 Six very aged temples are located uh in this village out of them balalai devi temple and machendrana temple shrine small shrine then mahadeva temple are important and these temples uh assigned to 14 15th centuries sea uh uh the very interesting thing about this site is that in this

 Uh uh muslims muslims and hindus consider the place sacred we can say the inside the garbage there is also turbat we can see both things means image also and that muslim shines uh also there so this is the plan of uh uh balalai devi tom temple complex we can see here small shrine of machindrana temple and uh is assigned to 15th century behind that

 Uh temple is there but now there is there is no temple and totally ruined and here this side mahadev temple is there and then uh some other temples are near about this temple complex we can see some images of not yogi's card on temple on pillars here we can see in this image in the slides there are pillars and small carvings of not yogis have

 Been carved all around the pillars uh we have some images of yoginis also not yoginis we can say not yoginis or nothing is so he here we can see the images of nath eugenies this is another yogini having stuff in hand and then sacred thread also you can see this is small shrine of machendranatha it's very close to balalai devi temple and here we

 Can see the image of matsundranatha this is one of the earliest known shrine dedicated to machendranatha and on stylistic grounds the temple can be assigned to the 15th century here we can see the life-size image of machindranata here we can see the small depiction of fish below the bachelor nathan actually this is this image is originally ancient but now in modern time

 Image is painted by villagers but actually this basically this team uh timber this image is uh assigned to 14th century along with temple now this is a map of bead bead also is very important this tricks here also we have uh several sites like elongate ambassador chennai and bead we can see that you can see the location of beer district it is almost in central part of maharashtra

 Yeah this is the uh very important temple uh this is the general view of kankaleshwar temple and we can find uh various uh images uh card on janga portion of the temple this is the jungle portion of temple and you can see the images of nata yogis here you can see the image of uh matching us also and based on

 Architectural features uh of kali kankalishwar temple they looker and devo assigned this temple to the 12th century sea see here we can see important images including various nuts they are having staffs staff and then uh some uh other attires lion clothes coping in karna kundalas and uh you can see their ornaments also some yogis are shown with ornaments various types of ornament we can see

 Uh beautiful ornaments and some are having stringies vessels on uh in their hands this is the this is the the images depicted there now this is alum in the same district here we can see the images of nat yogis uh including machine ranath chauvrenginath and this is from ambassador from siem district this is the bulgar district uh here also various sites are located

 We will see uh further in next slides various little information about them this is the putila bharara from syndicate raja and in this borough we can see the various types of images of machine learning and other not yogis this is the 13th century staff well in syndicate raja according to several records from sindakir raja the ancient name of

 This place was siddhapura siddhapur it's also indicating that this uh place is uh important for siddhas also as well yeah you can see the images uh this these are the unidentified images of not yogis and you can see the various types of images and there will decrease yeah some not yogini is also there some depictions of native units and you can see uh some are from uh mukteshwar temple and some are from

 Uh that stiff will this is the another site from bulhana district here also we can see lots of lots of images of yogis and their iconography is similar to iconography of mahudi gate it is in gujarat so we can consider that we can say that these images are of naruto yogis because their iconography is very similar to the baudi

 Uh maori gate of badudra in gujarat see the various postures of nothing is yes this is vishnu temple in bulana district this is famous lonar crater and along with there are various several temples of uh 12th 13th centuries and here we can see the image of machindranatha and the depiction of his fish

 This is uh in uh permanent districts just in first part i am just giving some introductory of my fine endings and discoveries after that i will uh given i will show you the characteristics of images and their significance in that sample here we can see the yeah and this is uh very interesting that

 You give me a much image of machine is carved in sanctum along with the main shrine main deity that is very important and this temple is belongs to 13th century then this is nagna temple here we can see the some postures some yogis are covered here in various asanas and this temple is assigned to 12th century here also we can see the early image of

 Yogi yes another yogis also we can see here so overall we can see a concentration of the sites related to north sampradaya we can see most of the site concentrated in and around central maharashtra see if you observe that here central maharashtra isn't having most images most of the images of not yogis so here i have highlighted

 Some area this is the we can say the core area of nothing is now uh iconography of not yogis so several images related to there have been card on the various temples rocket caves gates and water tanks and then outside of uh maharashtra also some of the images have been carved so uh how we can recognize or identify uh the images

 So there are some uh clues or we can say evidences there are some traditional legends very popular legends some are given in uh and other manuscripts of contemporary time period then some wall paintings are there in debate also we can see some wall paintings having their names then some symbols and masks like such animals like birds fish creatures

 And their costumes from this we can identify them properly now uh this is the uh iconography we will see the iconography of adinath and girija adena and girija uh we know that adinat is a main deity main deity in north samtraday actually and several several legends about arenas are popular across the india uh these legions are useful to identify the

 Sculpture of them here that legend is depicted in this culture and this culture this panel rather we can say is assigned to 13th century and this is a 14th century in panalikazi so earlier it was thinking that adhinata would be the yogi or main person or the nation prada means some scholars i thought some scholars they were uh assuming that

 Means uh will be some yogi but from this scale uh from this depiction we can firmly say that uh this adidas is not other than shivans shiva himself this is actually nathan is not a separate yogi it is a depiction of siva it is considered as shiva and it is also can be understand from this uh images that

 Uh this type of legends was popular in society at least from 13th to 14th century from that time these legends are popular in society uh we can get these things from these uh images yes uh much uh these are some uh images of uh not yogi's image this is a earliest image of not sampled and this temple is assigned to 12th century and here also here we can

 Came across come across several not yogis in asanas that is very interesting we will see uh gets significant position after adheenata and girija in not sampradayan so you know he is considered the first historical person in north sampradaya he is considered his uh means uh he is also related to many uh cursed like holy organic girls in trick

 Also and then siddha marga also so as we have seen according to the tradition he had encompassed the knowledge contained uh in it like a fish during the conversation of adhinat and giza for this reason he is always shown with fish uh traditional legends also show his association with fish see some of the some other thing

 Other images of natalya yogis these images are from usmanova districts and we can see the images having a yoga pattern and fish symbol below the machinery and this is the famous temple of mankeshwar yeah the other depiction of the yogis here we can see the symbol of uh fish here also here also but these two images are in the same temple so

 It's create problem actually uh there uh see we can their characteristics fishers features also are different so we can say that there should be uh separate yogi uh having a fish as a mound but it's actually a assumption we can't sure but there is a miranda in not somehow there so probably this image is of miranda also some image means on a second image and

 Another yogi is shown with uh gauraksha we have we can see the shrinky in his hand and stuff but we can't we can say we can't say that this image is of korakshnatha because there is no symbol of cow and uh any uh mark is there see another images from uh maharashtra this is a inscribed image yes overall we can see the

 Temple list where not images are found so overall we can see the images of machine learning are mainly depicted on shiva shakta and vaishnava temples and some are in chaos and pushkarni also these images are noticed all over maharashtra which indicate his recognition inversely in the area images have considerable variation in size shape

 Postures and mudras early images appear to be relatively small in size in the later period they appeared comparatively larger so fish is a common character um excuse me here we can see the temple uh 23 images early images are found in maharashtra and these are the temple list list of temples so in this graph we can see uh

 The how where machinata have been covered on temple architecture so some images are covered in garbage some are in fillers some are on pillars even some are uh some images are carved on adisthana and some are on janga and some aromas this uh here in uh this architectural members we can get the images of the machine so

 Uh what we can [Music] understood about these images what we can understand from these images so we can images are helpful to dating machine ranatha because some temples are dated already and but unfortunately uh that time when these temples are dated uh scholars are not uh uh given inside information about

 Machendranatha then kol yugini cult and machinata there are many many images of machinata found along with yogini temple yogini temples means instance of shakta shrines so it's also very helpful to indicate their relation between the coal yogini and nat sampradaya and konkanath and konkan we can say konkan is a coastal land of western india and it extends throughout the

 Western coast of maharashtra goa and karnataka so they are popular uh center sites like kadri qadri is in karnataka region but it is false in coastal area of western india and that part is included in kokan so machindranatha is mentioned as a siddha known as machanda in abhinav gupta's whose concert is called kunkunamba it is very interesting the god is from

 The konkan region and it shows the connection of machindranatha with the kunkan region as we know that khadri one of the important uh center of north sampradaya is associated with the legends of machindra nathan land of women women several sites are related to machin ranatha and the not yogis in the coastal region like panale kaji uh then we can some sites are in gujarat uh in dubai and then some are in d

 Region then some are in ahmednagar and uh city so geographically khadri falls in konkan region as the southern most center so we can say probably that konkan is uh identified with machendrana so now uh a total of six images of chauvrenginata has been reported eight four of them are in maharashtra and two uh images

 Are in gujarat and madhya pradesh respectively so chorangi nada is also known as bhagat in legends and in various states uh references of servanginata is found in the several lists of 84 siddhas also he is always shown with two additional hands and legs in the iconography uh there is a famous legend about chauvrenginatha and uh we know about that legend uh many of them we are aware about that

 Legend uh the earliest known image of charanginata most probably of 12th century is noticed from naresha in madhya pradesh see the iconography of gorakshinatha now uh gaurav actually these are the very rare images and some images from the we have some images from banalikaji

 Then pridumala and these images are from uh that are sindh raja here we can see uh that their iconography he is always shown with danda cows this row of cows here we can see here also we can see the cows then longboat pin we can say and here we can see cows here also three cows are depicted these images are from uh sindhika raja and uh this image several early images

 Of guraksha are noticed from gujarat odisha so about 14 depictions of goraksha are noticed from outside maharashtra the iconography of several images is similar to the images found in maharashtra his images from mageshwa these images are from this image is from megiswar and that temple is dated there is one inscription and from that inscription we can say

 That this is the earliest image of known image of godakshinatha and it is dateable to 1170 but uh one thing is there uh uh images of machine randa we found from early earlier period means 11th century but uh text and architect archaeological sources indicating uh his images his presence in 12th century so uh this is the this shows some gap in

 Between machine ranatha and guraksha more research required for this this this image is identified recently and actually the reference of this image is in lilac 13th century there are uh images uh very uh few images are in maharashtra for some of them in maharashtra and some of them so there are the uh the very famous legend

 Uh related to kanepnata is being mentioned in detail uh i will tell you here so uh a legend that according to the story kanefnatha once went to the forest of bhudi along with his 14 000 1400 disciples and then the voices of the pellet drums started echoing around kanikata demanded a coconut from yogini body

 Upon which she replied that if you are powerful yogi then you should plug the coconut yourself kana plucked the coconut miraculously with his eyes and handed it over to one of the one of his disciples disciple however bahudi stretched her eyesight and returned the same coconut to its original place moreover a sequence ensured ensured in which karna continued to

 Break the coconut and body kept on returning it to its place eventually bahudi defended defeated kanipnata in several events including sexual practice probably in vajroli mudra in which khanna died this is the legion uh in lilac given in lilac and this image is the earliest image of kanipnata assigned to 12th century and

 Interestingly this image is carved on jaina temple then some other images also we found in maharashtra his another image also is in panalikaji and some images are in gujarat see is the often said to have been kapalika and kanopa as his disciple jalandhar natha is referred in lilac

 As a mentor of govinda chandra and the guru of karna there is probably a panel of kanita natha with his guru jalandhar natha on kangaleshwar temple it is possible actually because uh yogi uh in shown in this image actually this is uh this yogi he actually the same row this image is uh means uh shown with body organi so from that we can say this image is also of

 Now other siddhas also are there uh their iconography uh some icons uh images we can found on various temples and kills i'm not going to go into detail in a clean because a lot of things are also out there so concludingly we can say they are the images of uh various natas uh these are the numbers of images and name of the districts where images are found

 So we can see how many images are found in maharashtra this uh in this table now in uh with the help of graph also we can see uh the images of much more than 24 images are found uh so uh district whites also we can see buldhana bid and pune are having more images of cheap not yogis compared to other districts of maharashtra

 Now northwest are also known for their peculiar appearances there are several differences and similarities amongst their appearances it is also reflected in their images depicted on various temples and caves now we have these type of indications uh this type of appearances of not yogis and in with the help of these appearances we can identify the naata images

 Now generally uh they are shown with yogapata they are shown with the shrinky then staffs also are there then peculiar kundalas are there ear rings and these types of current kundalas mostly be found on their uh ear see now hairdressers also make las also are there then sumarini

 These types of appearances we found on the images of nat sampradaya now some early sculptures evidences of yoga amongst natives now uh there are some uh yogic postures and that those are related to the not yogis how we can see i will see the 13th century lilac mentions of the appearances and some yoga sanas also some yogic postures also some mudras also so

 Several images of yogi's posters in the context of nasa are observed on the temples of maharashtra the mankeshwar temple uh at jorge the nagnar temple at andha and mahadev temple at mankeshwar we have images of natalie's then some mudras are there some cleanings technology techniques are there some kumbhaka's depiction of kumbhakas and some uh depiction of kundalini also we

 Can see on some of the temples see some early images of not yogi uh not yogi's in various postures this is again the pashini mudra we can say and the other names of this posture are brahmasana panindrasana and nagpanasana this is vajrasana then this yogi is with kubri that's why this is kubriyasan and then kukuta sana and some of asanas are mentioned in text

 Also see some uh uh yoginis also nothing is also are shown in some posters uh she is shown in padmasana and in dhan mudra that uh this image is from uh nashik districts some we can say and this some asanas are unidentified this asana is probably vajrasana and this is path

 Now uh somewhere we have seen that is mentioned on 14th century text shiva sammita as well and then uh machine rasana is mentioned in hadi and is also depicted on the brahmanatha temple so therefore it indicates that machindra asana was prevalent at least from the 13th century so these images are important from this point of view also

 Uh likewise the antiquity of kukutasana and pachimu tasana goes back to the 12th and 13th centuries respectively padmasana and sindh siddhasthana are the common asanas depicted more than many other asanas on several sites so this is now this is the mudra mudra actually this is indirectly indicted indicate uh the vajrali mudra why i am saying this

 Because it is not uh directly representing the method of fujirohi mudra nevertheless it depicts the legend when a yogini named bhudi probably in vajroli mudra was defeating kanika according to legend in lilac went to the jungle of yogini bahadi and gave her challenges to her in sexual intercourse probably practice of vajroli mudra

 Both of them were involved in sexual practice and started to resolve rajas of each other unfortunately bahudi a worshiper of kamakya acted treacherously and defeated khan if nathan this legend indicates the practice of virtually mudra in 13th century so this is the earliest uh image uh of vajrali mudra we can say indirectly it indicates the vajroli mudra and practice of

 Prevalent in 13th century now uh um one type of other mudra and one practice amroli so several depictions shows yogis insulting their fallacies in their mouths it is probably indicating amrolimudra in which a sadaka drinks his her urine there are several references to amroli in lilla charitra now some yogis are depicted probably

 Doing pranayama also so let's see the this image is of pranayama indicating pranayama and this is actually late image from amanda district and we can see kumbhakas also had pradeepka teaches eight variants varieties of kumbakas breed attention two images showing sitkari here we can see sitka is the chandela depicts depictions of shitakari

 The earliest mention of shithari is in goresh so in this a sadhaka makes a whistling sound while inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the nostrils two images of this yogis doing shithari have been shown on the fallon fallon slab of chandew temple in maharashtra now depiction representing uh kundalini yoga so this is the temple of uh somehow

 Temple 14th century temple but there is a unique image depicted on the swameshwar temple this image is probably representing kundalini yoga a yogi is shown with half bloomed lotus on the head here in the in this image he seated see this image of yogi see the close view here we can see an image of showing thousand petal lotus on the head

 Of yogi uh and in another image we can say uh here the how kundalini yogi kundalini uh practices shown in this image in north sampradaya it is said that shiva and shakti reside in the body in the lowest of the nerve center lies like shakti it in its dormant state the yogi allows it and makes it follow the middle null the sushumna and unite with siva who resides in the highest center the

 Sahasrara the thousand peter petal lotus in the head that same depiction same thing is shown in this image we can see here the uh lotus also on head the sculptor has probably tried to manifest this aspect in this image the yogi is seated in padmasana and probably this awakened his kundalini so

 I can conclude in brief that the archaeological assemblage about the north sampradaya is dispersed all over the districts of present maharashtra the indicates this indicates that the north sampradaya was well established in the 12th century sea it is difficult to say whether or not ever every temple which has an image of not yogis is associated with the not sampradaya

 Most of these types of temples belong to the shiva and shakta pantheons there is a high possibility that this temple have been worshipped by not yogis along with other shaiva shakta girls it is also observed that written records and oral traditions which are prevalent in the study area have preserved long tradition of the north it is reflected in the archaeological

 Sources as well the early individual shrines of north sampradaya are very few these are seen from the 13th century onwards at panalikaji vr we can see the individual worship of machindra natha in the iconography several images of not yogis are observed in the study area the earliest depiction of not yogis are noticed on the 12th century temples such as

 Mankeshwar temples jorge mahadev temples and kangaleshwar temples uh images of machindra nathan gorakshanatha and kanifa natha are predominantly noticed in the maharashtra 24 images of machindranatha whereas eight images of gorakshanatha and five five or six images of kanibnata uh are in maharashtra antiquity of images of kanifa nata goes

 Back to 12th century these evidence indicate their recognition and popularity in maharashtra as well it is also notice that districts like buldhana bid ahmednagar and pune have more images of the cheap nata yogis compared to other districts in maharashtra it is perceived from the images of female ascetics depicted on the temple that the role of

 The female ascetics was prominent in the north sampradaya every even they were allowed to do naga practices such as yoga because we have some images of not yoginis on temples hat yoga is one of the important practices in nothing prada several images of yogic postures have been carried on the several temples in maharashtra the reference of several asanas and other practices of yoga depicted on temple and chaos are also

 Noticed in contemporary literary sources also it seems that yogic practices were prevalent from the early stage of not in maharashtra the evidence related to the naathas also indicates that the sampradaya played an important role in the religious social and cultural history of maharashtra so thank you i will stop here and uh thank

 You for uh uh to listen me i would like to thank to jin manson and martha and sauce thank you thank you very much thank you so much vijay um can you hear me okay my thing's back on is it can you hear me bj yes yes thank you i can't see my picture for some reason that was that was wonderful i could have i i mean

 Yeah i could have listened to you for hours more and and i enjoyed the images so much but it's sort of tinged with some sadness as i would i'd want i'd want to get on a plane straight out and go and visit and have a look at look at them myself but we're gonna have to wait for a chance to do that again but um yeah that was a real tour de force i have got a lot of questions but i think

 I will just rest try to restrict myself to to one we've also got because we've got quite a lot of questions on the slido page as well so the one question i'm going to ask um i mean you showed i can't remember how many sites in total in maharashtra do you know off the top of your head how many sites there are there are many sites actually but if you feel

 If you restrict in 12th century or 11th to 15th century uh most probably um more than 50 sites we can we will uh okay but you then i mean and as i said in the introduction it's it's come clear from textual sources as well that uh that maharashtra was a very important location for the early night sampradaya but you did mention some sites

 Outside of maharashtra such as dubois which which i have visited also this fascinating reference to the megheshwara temple in [Music] my question is do you think there are i mean have you restricted in your thesis your phd did you restrict yourself to the maharashtra region because for any particular reason

 Uh i mean just because you're from there and obviously that's the way you focused your project do you think there may be many more places outside of maharashtra yes yes of course there is a high possibility actually because of some of the yogi's images i have shown from outside of maharashtra like odisha orisha then mp and then gujarat so there is possibility actually

 But till that uh very few scholars have done work on these images so from maharastra uh now uh we have early images early in early images of not yogi's but there is probably a possible possibility of uh images we can found uh outside of maharashtra as well okay yeah thank you i mean i as i said until i mean your work you mentioned there's been one or two previous scholars who've

 Worked on on these sort of images in maharashtra but outside of maharashtra i don't think anyone's really tried to look for these things so as ever in india there's a huge amount of data that you know and field work and work still to be done yeah that's so exciting well thank you um okay so i'm gonna now we'll we'll go through the slido list of questions

 The one at the top currently is from seth powell who will be joining us i think from california and so hopefully martha can switch us over to him so he can ask his question directly hi everyone can you hear me okay yeah yes hi jim martha vijay thank you so much for yeah just fantastic uh presentation and such rich images just um

 Quick question to focus uh our attention on the brahmanatha temple in particular those images are so fascinating i wonder if you could just tell us a little bit more about that site in particular why do you identify those as not the okies and then why second you know why do you think that they're yogic postures versus something else you know some of the identification

 Of asanas you know are from much much later texts or even more modern postural yoga traditions so i'm curious a little bit about the identification of those asanas and then in particular what is what's the evidence for for not at that site thank you okay nice question actually yes uh because we can see uh in earlier that uh in my phd thesis i have explained uh

 In uh minutely why this is uh uh this site is belongs to nata sampradaya because we found that in that this kumbha mila also 2016 uh many yogis are come there came there come there and they worship there and there uh there is also there is one dargah of gorakshanatha and traditionally we can see that in that reason uh brahmanatha there is also

 One monastery of not sombra there just attached that temple there is another uh monastery of belongs and uh traditionally also that uh uh place is uh known for not yogis and lots of sites are there and legends also are there prevalent in that area so in the because of these evidences these legends we can say that site is belongs to not sombra there and we can see if you

 See the iconography of that yogis that postures so iconography also similar to other uh icons of uh deccan region and other area of maharashtra so these are the few uh things hari chandra grad also is very famous side of nassau that is very close from that uh uh that area then now not juni uh passing from that

 That area and traditionally also that uh that temple is uh and that reason is uh much of famous for natha sampradaya natha sites that's all there are also many reasons so in this way we can say that i have attached this image uh this side to nasam prada indeed in this way and another question was that about yoga sanas uh that yogasana is also early because of the way there are analogical study we

 Will do similarly of the images postures and then architectural artistic study then we will we can recognize that those images are uh yogis yoga images related to yogas and belongs to nathan first means we can say tradition then legends then a vicinity of other north sides not monastery is there then one of dergah naming goraksha dargah in that village

 So in this way we can attach that side to not some prada okay and uh what about other question also i think he asked or different like i said about yoga this much only hello seth fest you have to hear this video uh yeah yeah i think like you jim probably many more questions but i'm i'm happy to leave it at that for now and let others jump on but uh thank you

 Vijay i'd love to talk further you know about all this so thank you okay um so the next question we've got an anonymous one it's top of the list at the moment um yeah i had a very easy quick question how old are the pillars on which the yogis are depicted at the brahmanatha temple 13th century scholars also dated 13th century

 13th 14th century we can say but uh 13th century uh now confirmed because i have taken information about other scholars approach other scholars archaeologists and i also that you can say that that pillar belongs to 13th century okay and just out of interest how are those dates uh arrived at is it through stylistic and uh architectural grounds are there any

 Inscriptions uh some temples have inscriptions some uh stylistic architectural stylistic ground so we can say that uh and that yes there are some texts also some asanas uh the media dimensions is in the later text means garand san mita and other text but now this is possibility now some text which are

 Given in later text now we have to search we have to find out that these are the historicity and antiquity of some of the asanas goes back to 13 12th century and we have to search for the another text for that of course now i quite agree just because something just because something is not in a text doesn't mean it wasn't being done so yeah that's a good point okay we get

 It we've got lots more questions right uh top of the pile now is vikram so he's got a question if martha could take us to vikram and he can ask it directly uh hi vijay thanks again for the amazing presentation i just echo what's it had said before um the simple question may be about uh the not yogis wearing a small horn around their neck

 And i've seen them in 17th century pictures but i don't maybe i didn't see that level of detail in any of the the statues from 13th century 12th century that you showed when did it start being part of the tradition as well as what is its significance yes about wearing that uh shrinky and other things you asking about the string is only

 So now whatever we are seeing in uh that uh in uh today's not sampradaya is actually if you observe the images of early images of natives we will uh we will we see different views uh different aspect different view of not yogis means at that time we can see the size of hansard horns are different now it is very small size but that time we can see the big hands

 And their postures their appearance also we can see different they are not now we can see the noun numbers that uh they are shown with some beaded uh beaded and some different questions but uh that time means 12th 13th century according to me this tradition probably start after 15 16th century it is whatever whatever in what we can see in modern time

 Uh i think so because in earlier images we can't found now the popular images are popular imagery of native is in that time there is very totally different and some of the attributes are still they have long tradition that yoga pattern and make la and then some karna kundalas also so that is continue but other things are uh vanished or we can say disappear

 After some time after 15th century or 14th century and now modern look is yeah any other yeah okay thanks yeah i was really i was fascinating to see i hadn't noticed before the the yogi's holding the quite big singing in the hand like that but not wearing around the neck so i think yeah you're on to something there but then later on they start wearing around the neck and then i

 Guess they have to get smaller because that would be quite uncomfortable to wear those big horns around the neck and you see the same in the muggle images as well in the early ones they have quite big thingy and then they get smaller so we've got i don't think we'll get through all the questions we might do but let's see next one is from lucy mae constantini so

 If we can go to her please hi can you hear me yes yes so uh just to echo what everyone else said that was wonderful and um also made me kind of rather homesick so thank you very much for that um so my question was around uh the image of the adinata and girija and i there was a third figure and i didn't know who that was maybe i missed it but

 It reminded me a little bit of the layout you see in the somaskandas in in other parts of south india and i was wondering if you think there's a relationship uh with text you are asking about text i'm asking about so in temples particularly in tamil nadu you see the layout of the somaskanda like in that way okay but in uh shiva is shown in yogic

 Means you are like yogi you know and that if you see the legend it that legend is given in lilac also in 13th century one takes to a text is there famous marathi text is there and that legend is famous from 12th 13th century and there is we can see the depiction of uh machindra natha with fish are you getting me that because of

 Machinery radha is along with shiva that yogi and that legion and he is shown with namaskar mudra when we do namaskar that he is uh that showing that he is doing namaskar that pranam to his guru that parvati girisha and adinatha so in that way and that other images also along uh card on uh that same here are identified as nata images so that's why

 We can say that particular images also belongs to adinata and girija and were that there is no difference i don't know about that actually the too much uh that much but uh uh this is the image of adinata uh because of iconography and earlier one scholar uh m deshpande also prove that this is image of adenata and girisha in

 Very well in his monograph his small monograph is on that kanali khaji very interesting in that he has mentioned that this is a iconography image of adinata and girija and machina the third figure is machiendo but maybe something to do with the layout i suppose they could conceivably be parallels but yeah it's definitely not skunder um okay thanks vijay so we have uh we have a question from

 Gemma d'alessandro but unfortunately she's just had to leave but she will listen to the answer to the question uh on youtube so her question was the postures arsenal's here represented um excluding what we today know as matsyendrasana do the postures come before or after the iconography and that just a sort of a related point i remember

 Discussing with uh daniella and others in the hatha yoga project we were wondering whether the matsyendrasana is connected with the fact that he's sitting on a fish so he has to be depicted sideways in order to be seen straight on perhaps it's connected but yeah so the question is do you think that the uh you know what came first the the postures or the iconography i

 Suppose it's the most closely answered with that you can say because there are a lot of posters and traditions if you see the tradition of asanas so this is easy actually and there are varieties of asanas and this is possible that iconography should be later and asanas will be first because there are many trends or any

 Practices happen before means so uh in society or in uh introduce or he you given more trace it may be or because of fish also eastern but what i have shown here that is different actually it is not sure that there is no fish depiction that is uh shown without fish and uh that is doing by some other yogi so it will be that actually the fish will be that the depiction of machine

 Radar will be next means later and then uh first year will be first according to me but more research will be required as i suppose it's an almost impossible question to answer isn't it um okay so we've got one uh a question from jackie hargreaves if we could go to her please hi good evening thank you vijay that was wonderful i had a really a question about it was really

 Interesting to hear about the sculptural depiction of the vidroli scene and this um uh i was just wondering what do you find on penalty this side is there is there a relationship between the penalty the side of the depiction there of the kanipata and is it yeah of the vidroli legend do you if they're usually a consistency to um the sculptural panels that you see

 Either side of that legend uh i mean that's your uh whatever pardon me is that uh what you asking exactly i mean sir okay can you repeat question uh yeah so in the in the sculptural panels that you find that particular lecture a legend depicted is there any consistency to um stories that are told either side of that but yeah uh yes actually

 In my thesis i have given detailed description about the that site also particular side where and when this uh will be happen means should be happen uh so i have found that if you observe that image you will find one coconut tree coconut tree so in in india most of the coconut trees are we found we have in south india or in coastal region

 So most probably that legion happened in south india and that there is one legend also machendra and it's about uh in bengal so that time kanye mother said that you are guru where he where he where is he he is in kadri mandate in uh with women women so kadri is in south india so in this way we can say that he he was aware about that area also

 And that area also known as the area for what we can say the state of yogini or the uh related to yogini so most probably this legend happened in uh near about maharashtra because now still that we have images from maharashtra only maharashtra and gujarat so it is also very means now we can't can't say that where is actually happen this story or

 Some relation is there or not but most probably near about maharashtra or in south india somewhere in south india stories legends are there in maharashtra there are a lot of these legends are famous about that about this means there are in their text also in later text also in the earlier text also okay thanks i mean i think jackie was

 Wondering also i mean the the legends that go with these with with the not yogis in their depictions on the temples whether there's any kind of a regular pattern and in fact i think our next question sort of feeds into that so if we could go back to seth powell who's got a question related to to that that that point hi vijay yeah i wanted to ask you about

 This navanata schema you know because i i'm doing work on visual materials in karnataka more and we start to see i think early 16th century this navanatha depicted visually where you have nine knots and they're all seated on these animal yeah of course you showed some wonderful images of both matsyenja

 And goraksha which of course we can identify with fish and cow but the some of these other karnataka sites the 16th century and later you start to see these not yogi's seated on a scorpion on a snake antelope uh there's some variants so we of course have you know the telugu navanatta charitra but that doesn't describe these

 Animals associated with them except for fish and cow and so forth so i'm wondering if in maharashtra do you do you see this in any of these sites do you start to see more of these animals uh relating to these not the yogis or anything you can you can you can share about this yes yes yes i can share many things about that about this actually i have seen that near

 Near bangalore we have depictions but interestingly i have observed some earlier images means from 12th century 13th to 12th century in gujarat there is one body that i have mentioned in my thesis also resultation in gujarat there are nine yogis are depicted serially and and that staple is there in gujarat mudera is placed the name of place is there

 And where there we can find other yogis also so in maharashtra there are many uh means several images are having animals figurines uh animals depictions uh but still it is very difficult to identify them which yogi is there and when i when we observe list of noun so we can see the variation in that some means uh machendranatha will be

 Common uh that sometimes gaurashita will be common also sometimes in common but other four finals are they are not commonly found they are locally i think there is local variation local names or local siddhas are included in listers uh whatever available lists are there of navanathas so local famous yogis may be uh that give a

 Shown in list so that's why this uh animals scorpion and that they have maybe their local animals but their uh iconography of karnataka vijay quite different actually these are the earliest images and we are that karnataka's images are very later so tradition in last thousand years many changes occurred happened in that sample there

 So slowly some uh i think so i say actually we have to prove that this actually but i think so many things are com came in into uh not summer then changes also some so that's why i can say that these that those images are some of those images are not about that however that uh charitable saying something

 But not saying that the mounts so maybe those images are local nuts uh apart from machendranath and some gorakshma of the few images yeah any other music almost there's a couple other questions but i'm i'm afraid i'm going to jump in with my own question which leads on from what seth asked um in the uh this is the last question then you can go to bed sorry we've kept you up very late

 But um at dubois it's very clear that there's a series of 12 not yogi's and it's the number is 12. whereas later on traditionally is always said to be 9. and i'm just wondering perhaps yeah sort of carrying on from seth's question have you seen any groupings in maharashtra of 12 or 9 or you know any large clear kind of organized groupings of yogis

 But in gujarat yes there is in gujarat and karnataka two three examples these ones in gujarat and karnataka are early as well gujarat one is earlier yeah okay i went daniela and if you find uh seriously observe then we will get that in those images but very less images of natas okay vijay well thank you that was really fun and as you can tell there's a lot of

 Interest and it's really exciting to you know this fresh work is coming out and you and you've really reminded us how much more material there is out there you know there's so much more work that can be done and yeah hopefully things will open up and people can go out for more field work and come and meet you maybe go and check out some of these these sites are with you

 Would be wonderful so what we do now is everyone is going to turn on unmute themselves and we're going to we're going to say thank you give you a round of applause a round of applause and then you can um go and uh go to bed i'm sure you must be exhausted but thank you so much that was really thanks a lot thank you thank you thank you

Good morning everyone uh oh good evening to Dr Takahashi it gives me great pleasure to introduce the introducing Kenji taka Ashu whose work I've been following keenly over the last few years really exciting material he's been unearthing from the sort of early yoga Traditions Dr taka actually is an assistant professor affiliated with The Graduate School of humanities and sociology at the University of Tokyo I

 Did his PhD at Kyoto University and the thesis that the title of the thesis was Manus or mind in the didactic discourses in the Mahabharata and uh Dr takahash has published several articles on related topics uh to do with the Mahabharata and so forth but also on material and practices from the Shivan armor Corpus um I I think were you working with uh the Shiva Dharma project in in based in Napoli and Naples yes yeah the ERC

 Project and his current research interests is uh really early song yoga philosophy and didactic discourses in the Mahabharata and the history of shaibism and today the title of the talk today is physiological teachings of yoga as found in the mahavirator so particularly intriguing for me and I'm really looking forward to this so thanks thanks so much for joining us uh over to you Dr Pepperidge thank you so much for kind the

 Introduction let me start my talk okay I will share the screen so can you see the slides okay yes so yes thank you so let me start um thank you for introduction my name is Kenji Takashi from Tokyo and today's talk is about physiological teaching us yoga as found in the Mahabharata so today I'm going to talk about why I study Mahabharata and then talk about control body Channel and also what's in

 The head what the answer to Indian people think in the head and then embryology and evolution Theory so uh so people starting this talk I want to have a very small questions for those people attending and then listening to this kind of talk part for the first time today's talk contains lots of several lots of sexual descriptions and to make it worse its content is very much

 Androcentric which means that it's male oriented and it's only from the male perspective and then it has a lot of positive descriptions for women so but the purpose of this lecture is to you know not to make you believe in it but for a better understanding of various types of other yoga and their implications for later development so don't feel offended and then you may feel offended but this is just a you know fact and then how they

 Think and I believe that's this kind of Investigation makes us easy it makes it easier to understand what they think in reality so let me start okay so first I'm going to talk about why them how about that so but how about the means the great epic of the ballot is or the Great Wall of the biologist and it is believed to compose sometime in between second century visits to Fourth Century 80 okay it's 600 years so it

 Seems that there are several stages of you know compositions and the main product is the conflict between the balance and Caravans who are keys to each other so by killing the Kings or by the king the United States the main players feel a lot of Agony of the or those of you know like sorrow during the battle and so the main thing is that this original and you just appears lots of agony and there's a series of philosophical or

 Didactic discourses to to make them understand what the life is what scene is that what the light will think is so this is the starting point of this expansion with the text and so once this kind of expansion has started it's very kind of Limitless so you see that it has become a work of imposing side and this Mahabharata is this yellowish book just you know is occupying two shelves of this book and you can see that how big it is so

 And then some portions of the dialect discourse is related to the main part but not part of them so it's a kind of a loose collection of discourses so and then quite hard to read especially those who are interested in the story of the Muhammad and not to mention the work of editing at work but in the past or maybe 19 from 19th century to 20th century there are a lot of people who says like epic sankya or epic philosophy but I feel that it's a

 Loose collection of discourses and then the editorial principle of the composers seemed to write in just correcting discourses According to some thematic threats so it means that it's not totally aviated it's not totally unrelated to the work but they do not seem to attempt to campaign unifying Theory Etc so there are several attempts to restore a kind of unifying epic sound care epic philosophy underlying all the discourses

 But it seems it's not very you know Pro promising way of research so what I think is what makes this Mahabharata is interesting is that especially due to the lack of this strong editorial principles now how about that has worked is a kind of Time Capsule for various discourses so the Mahabharata preserves those unique and intriguing discourses that may not have been transmitted otherwise and

 So because there is not so much unique editorial this unit uh principles so the editors do not seems to be so much interested in altering or changing the text according to their likes so they are different from the classical doctrines of South Asia and it is true that they are not entirely free from later Christians or modifications but across a theological Province the Thomas Mission the text gives another Vivid view with philosophical teachings of the

 Time so as you mentioned I used to I am also working for the Shiva demo project which is located in Naples and then as you may know Maples has a Pompeii and Vesuvius so I feel like I'm like an archaeologist who found Pompeii for the first time as you may know it's Vesuvius like 2000 years ago has you know Southern volcano explosions and the disasters covered all the cities and around it that is Pompeii and it was too unfortunate for those people who were

 Living there but it's too fortunate for those archaeologists to excavated after 2000 years ago it has it's very clear from any modifications and sometimes you know this artist in archaeologists makes very bad the making so modifications to the artifacts but it's totally curriculum this kind of thing and not only you can see that this is you know like this is I think this was a kind of Temple or Shrine but also these types of this Hood stand in which

 These normal people use the campaign and even the breads that they used to eat and it's carbonized blood so I feel like if you read the mahabalada you feel that this kind of sense so many various things and it's sometimes not related to each other but it's you know it's not true it's true that it's not intact I mean there are some modifications in the course of transmission but it seems that these vast things that you find and it's enormously interesting and then I've

 Been working for them how about more than 10 years but I've never ever get bored with the content so that's how how it makes the Mahabharata very interesting so let's have a look at how it is right so the first part of the thing is that about the control body channels so this is one of the article is based on the logic of the articles that uh I wrote and I found that I met only Jim only once in a conference in Krakow in person

 I met I think I remit several times online but and then this is the time that I talked about these things so and then uh it's about the virus near the atomic part that is how about 12.203 to 20210 and this is among the less studied ones because this text is very difficult to understand and there seems to be lots of confusions on the part of the editor so on the part you know if you just see it

 It does not make so much sense but it has a lot of interesting ideas incorporated into the text and also influence Chrome or interaction with Indian medical Traditions these are ayurveda and it is also mentioned artery Atria or who is sought to be the teacher of the ayurveda in the bars near the Atma so it's a kind of very interesting you know Crossroad or ayurvedic traditions and so on it's also as the title suggests large snail suggests it

 Has partly a vaginalistic but it's not entirely and as my PhD thesis was about Manas so it has an interesting idea about Monas and body channels and just give so let's look at this kind of thing so this teaching has uh interesting you know both system body channels that's the manovah this mind combating channel in the center of the heart and then you see that I'm not very good at painting or this PC painting yeah

 This and I intentionally make it like very big because there's not so much uh details about it so we don't know whether how long this duct was or how big was this but somewhere in the heart so it is said and then there is there are 10 channels from the manobah channels and thousands of its final channels from 10 channels got spread all over the world all over the body so it works for the circulation of nutritions and conveying Sensations and passions

 Overwhelm smells and it results in the ejaculation of semen so how it's interesting is that okay in the case of this manners so the center Central channel is called Channel and then this manovah Hawaii why they said manuscript so Manus is connected to various sense and sense faculties and the governance perception of Sensations moving through the channels so because this it seems that this uh the other channel is also

 Conveys the manners and also works for the manners to convey the sensations and so on and the bonus is subject to sexual Temptations and then in the case of ejaculation simmers you know in in a modern science we know that there's a place to make the semen but in the past or in the ayurved in the ayurveda Traditions semen is considered to be dispersing all different parts of the body and in the time of the

 Ejaculations corrects it and illustrates it and this is a kind of personal communication from uh scholar in the ayurveda and he says that okay maybe because Siemens semen becomes you know complete man when it is become embryo Advantage spoon so he thinks that okay this you know the reason why semen is considered to be spread all over the world all over the human body is because you know like semen has to take some parts from

 Different parts of the body to be a complete human so he said that that is the reason why that may be the reason why semen is considered to be dispersed all the parts of the body but he does not say anything to prove it but I think it's a very good idea to explore it so and then so the test it's about Chastity and the doctor in amanas and Body Challenge I intend to encourage yogans to practice Chastity so by maturing one's

 Understanding and by getting good questions that is one of his mental power to you know to mental power to sustain this uh knowledge and also to keep the Chastity and then to lead the Moksha and then how this liberation is possible is that the relations through the monologue Channel at once that moment so it's interesting that okay when this uh you know this Liberation is possible is

 Not very clear in audio text so like it seems that these texts seems to take that this definition the final Liberation comes at the time of death and then the idea that deliberation while living is possible seems to be very late anyway so at the time of the test one contains Perfection by conveying the manners to all the parts of the body through the monobah channel and by pursuing out pushing out the products

 So in a perfect State Monastery said the connected knowledge and publish the whole body and dominance and divine and clear from largest so that just has several meanings that it's staying and passion and one of the goodness of the sanchia doctrines so in any case so so and then what does this means is one of the questions that I want to explore a little bit uh and then why so we say that balances luminous luminous

 And divine and why this mass is called predominals and divine this is Luminosity this toxic explains for one who controls his sense faculties and holds the minus under the control Divinity shine force and directly go to him as the Lord who one whose Manus is properly connected to them that Blackman shines Force when all of them attack him so help departed from the practitioner one becomes sweet for being black man so it seems that this Luminosity of us

 Is associated with the sense facilities as divinities so in the ancient Indian text that sensualities are often said to be devoters or diminities in the public States and this appears to be the reason why the malice is called Divine and also this experience of right is very interesting and then I don't you know I cannot figure out exactly why they think that these are shining but for example the

 Word devata it comes from the deep this heaven and then also the heaven and then it also has the meaning of The Shining so it seems that the world itself has the meaning of its Shining Force but also maybe it it is a kind it comes from the experience of the yogins maybe they have stirred some lights in it so but this is one of the things that I want to explore more about this experience of right and experience of prior so and they also like in the in the modern

 Minds like we distinguish between light and fire but in this light and fire and light and fire because light and the fire as heat is some is considerably something different but if you look at the Mahabharata it seems that they don't distinguish between light and fire so and then in the modern in the mode in a modern light modern world we can distinguish you know we can see something something light something you know some light without

 Any heat but maybe in the past it's impossible for them to distinguish between light and fire you see that the sun is very warm and heating so it seems that I this is just my feeling but it seems that this heat might have experience that's something that always comes with the the light so maybe this kind of this how they feel about this light and fire is also one of the things that I want to explore yeah for For My Future Works anyway so a little

 Bit of deep versions and then so how how they come to come up with this idea of this iteration so there's always some very corres and shut up I talked about Sam and in the vedically shows the sun is considered to be the god of the death and then Sun swallows the water from the living things as well as light breezes and then the sunlight days of the sunlight is called Rashmi and dashmi is also means the lanes which you you know in the

 Child to control the uh to control the you know like horses so you can see that this image that the sun is you know governing all the living beings with his Reigns as arashmi so I like this you know idea of Rashmi as the name and then according to them the sounds follows daily swallows the water from the right from the given being and at the time of this like they swallow the light breezes that is Prana from the living people and that's

 How they they die and that according to this time like if you do a daily performance of organization to poor to pour the butter into the fire daily and then there's exemption like you can go to the word of the immortal codes but if you don't do that you have to pronounce molecule read this which means that you can stay in heaven for a while and you have to return to the world so that is what is they said there

 So and then this seems to be not so much related with what we have seen Bob but this is this image is further developed into a kind of uh into a kind of Moksha thing so in the channel Japan chat which I think like 200 or 300 years later that we have seen like it's and there's an interesting part of the channel Japan shot and then I said close part because what is said

 In the prose is something different from the verse past what we are going to see and it is often the case that chandigar panchat or other parishad quotes of us and makes explanation of something and then this verse may come from something different sources but then had something similar ideas and then make explosions but it is often the case that's dispersed the content of this cross is not entirely connect it's not entirely matching to the contents of the

 Pro spot so so anyway let's look at the pros part first according to the system and the sum it's set to a door to the header and for the for the first time in this literature this Rashmi is said to be connected to the uh bodily channels of the human being and then at the time of this with the sound on as a charioteer with with the sound home as a chariot here the spirit is going to set to going up above

 And those with knowledge got stimul tidy and those without knowledge does not go to the immortality and have to return to the world so that's the first thing and so one of the new things about this is that the sound is said to be connected this Dash means over the days of the sun is connected it's said to be connected to the channels of the body channels of the human being and then by going this way by going by taking

 This Lord by the sound it said that the spirit is goes to the Sun and then the sun is set to be the door to the heaven so those with knowledge can go but those knowledge without knowledge have to cannot go to the heaven and have to return to the world so and then the other difference is that those who know the knowledge and then In this passage what this knowledge means is not specified but uh it you know like in the setup of the program it was just

 It was just a you know daily performance of the agony hotel and then the content the key to the door of the heaven is something different and then if you look at the cross part password is more interesting and it says that one of the channels from the heart it's connected to the head and with the sound ohm as a charity it goes to the chord and those with the knowledge goes to the immortality and those without the

 Knowledge they don't go to the heaven so it seems that this is the first time in the chanduge panchat that this central body it's not Central because it's not it's not very Central because it's just one channel so it we are not sure but we can say this is Central thing but one channel one single channel is specified as connected between the Sun and the person so in the prospect in the Prosper the audio part is several

 Channels are connected the sound so it's there's some slight difference between the two so when compared to the it's very foreigners so the continuity we can see that the central channel in the heart and the utilized supporting Channel at the time of death so this continuity is also psychological as well as a physiological sophistications so physiological means Manas as the mediator and passion and its control and

 Physiological the circulation of nutritions and prosperation and ejaculations so maybe you want to say that this is one of the poor another Doctrine which uh in the other in data of the other text or binge doctor in this accumulation of semen so but it is never said that you have to accumulate the semen so it's not exactly the on the foreign it is a kind of focusing on the semen so

 That is one of the interesting part so then the next thing that I want to discuss is what's in the head so as we have seen like it the head is not focused on the varsity at the atom which I have seen but this head appears in the chandelier Punisher and then so when I make crosses I make often make these questions where do you think is

 Your mind or Center of Consciousness in whatever you like it's located in your heart in your body so most of the people like I don't know I've never made this question abroad but most of the people in Japan think that they are in the heart so like for and then when I ask them why because for example when you fall in love with somebody like you hear you feel that your heart is beating and then not so many people like

 Say that they think that they are in the brain but they still feel that this their self is still in the heart that is one of the interesting thing that I found but yeah like in the Japanese literature that your heart is trembling you say but maybe you don't say that your brain is trembling or something so I think that our literature also signified that we feel something Consciousness in them in the heart

 Foreign [Music] would say they are in the brain and then maybe after one year of the bachelor after learning some Buddhist philosophy and so on when heuristic things they some say sometimes they say there's no such thing as a self or mind or sense of Consciousness in the body but yeah like in my in my impression that when I make this question to Japanese people I feel that most of the

 People think that they are in the heart so I also feel that when I when asked questions I often say that they are my myself in the heart but okay that is also the case with the ancient Indian people in the generally speaking the heart is considered to be at the place of the self or and then and the mind so there are lots of important studies about this heart so for example heart in the apparent Shots

 By Patrick Goldberg or Selma Sven zelman's work on the heart in the Mahabharata and they also this is a quorum students from University of Tokyo like it's also in the Deep Vedic part it said that the political inspiration comes in the heart so it seems that it's hard it's something very important and as we have seen this we see that heart is the center of the body channels and which is also partly true so

 That is what they said but so what's in the head so this is my question do they think that that is meaningless so generally speaking the ancient Indian did not seem to place a high value on the head and as well as the brain and there are several important exceptions that is and so on and then this part is partially inspired by James Mac Hughes keynote speech that I decently had attended it's leaky battery

 Head model the brain in Ari India that was extremely interesting things and recently there is a study by Sasha robotsky about in the Iranian origins of this uh word so to sum up the Mark used keynote speech this head the word head appears mastiska mastika and then also appears in the league weather but it's very scarcely mentioned and it's considered to be there is a kind of white substance or melty substance battery substance in the head and it's

 Interesting that in the Telex after this each amount of the body you know components is specified and then it says that it has just half boundary the half of the Angel is this Angelic part and this is the same as the sukura so it's very interesting that how they think about the brains so but it seems that it's not so much mentions so much in the in the gray so this is something that he has not published any articles yet but I hope that he will publish a book of

 Article based on his talk so so let's look forward to what he is going to publish but my uh for my part this uh Mark Hughes did not discuss is this Agony channel in The Vedic so it's the partnership author and then as you see in the past and in the in on the right it's a falcon shaped out and the sacrifice right on the faricum iconic or becomes the particles and then what is special about this so

 This Bar is something very significant it's very huge so you can have a look on the internet that there are several agricultural revivals so you can watch in on the YouTube but what is special about this Agony Channel literal is that they put the heads of human being yes this is one of the layer example of the human sacrifices in The Vedic and horse and cow and God goat and snake and generally speaking the head part is avoided in Vedic ritual but it's

 Something very special about this part and it's not so much studied about this part of the issue and why they use the brain and then there are different several recent Studies by Isabel atsco uh but unfortunately they are in Japanese so but the the con but you can download it online and then you can see that you can see because she quotes a lot of a lot from different literature so you can see the text so I think they are

 Extremely interesting so this is based on her studies so and they're according to the text the head itself is not fit for the literature because basically they don't use the the head for the normal rituals so first stage it is devoided with 20 parts so they they put they purchase things with competitive by 21 beans and then I really don't know what these 21 beans stand for

 And it's interestingly they say that they are devoid of seven planets and then they compensate the lack of receiving products by putting the ant hill by antique with seven holes so each other correct observes this correspond these seven holes and seven pranas corresponds to seven orifices separate opening prices that is two years two eyes and two noses and one Mouse of the head and then they in the onset literature

 This Prana is one of the very controversial word when it is uh appear in the appear in the especially in the plural and then this says that everybody's elliptic plural standing for something plural beginning with flowers so and then so we actually like this number fluctuates so we really don't know what these seven planets standing for but sometimes it's five cents over five

 Cents facilities with minus and parts so this kind of summon is always possible so it's very difficult to determine what it really stands for and then also interestingly for according to shut up he said that project the first performance literature only with the head thinking the Charis so if you know the Sanskrit SRI is somehow similar to the word head that is shiras so there's a kind of etymological connection they they are

 Trying to make etymological connection but it was incomplete then he makes the ottoman by water and Earth so this water Earth stands for bricks so like so this means that I think that this means that they put the head and then by putting the bricks on on the top of it they mix the whole body so so yeah so that's this is not very clear yet but this kind of thinking is very important and then I feel that this is

 Wrong with the layer mentions of the head literals uh head related rituals in the very old period it's like five five I think it's the first Millennium of the of BC people Sentry so even though it is predominantly the the very culture is predominantly about the heart but it's also interesting so that's really about the tracks then about charaka science star there is I found this interesting passage I really need a transition that in which pranas

 And all the science faculties of living beings having brothers are located that is the foremost part of the body parts it is called head so this chart is also Echo thinks that piranhas is in the head and it says that uttamanga so the above burst appears in the description of the head diseases so maybe this is just pointing on the importance of the head and then it says uttamanga so it's the foremost

 Part the most important part of the old body parts but chakrapani the commentator interprets the tamanga as the uppermost so there are some thoughts about this and then finally about the Mahabharata this is something different from the uh it said that fire is located in the head and protecting the body and The Prana deciding Empire and in the head activates the body so in this way that

 Even though it is buried there but I found that there are several passages in which this head is very important and head is considered to be that the status or the place for the piranhas and the agony and In this passage Agony is identified with the fire it's identified with the self so even though the heart is predominantly important part but it's interesting that some passages thinks there's things that the head is important and then in the later Hotel

 Text that for example like it said that the stimulizes connected to the head and so on so and the head becomes the important part so I think this could be around the forerunners of the head worship and head importance so the last uh section is about Evolution and embryology and evolution Theory so we are going back to the varsity at the atomic chapter 206 and how embryo grows in the womb of a mother and another chain of suffering initiated

 By letters that is called passion so before starting to before starting this idea of the embryology I would like to explain about this general idea of pregnancy in Ancient India so the union of male Siemens like menstrual blood not very sexually good statement and then there is I it seems that they did not find something corresponding to Shakura open for the female and then there's a famous story in the

 Italian so he says that father enters the wife having become a jam gem that is bigger he enters the mother in her becoming renewed he is born in the 10th month her wife had her name of her wife Jaya since in her she's born again so because he is so In this passage the father is said to be reborn as a son but this idea is very abundant in The Classical period

 Because there is undesired Concepts that the father has more than oneself at the same time so for this program the sorry body has a very interesting discussions and also by Japanese scholar so and instead they come up with the idea of transmigrations so after enjoying the life in heaven it says that he becomes Akasha this immediate space and volume wind and Duma smoke and Abra crowd and Lane crowd probability it rains and it becomes oshadi and the on

 The hood so it means that from the heaven it he becomes the rain cloud and the rains into the onto the Earth and then it becomes a semen of human being and then it is eaten by by a human being and they become so semen and then becomes a human being so that is what it said and then this is just my own idea that's in In classical India in classical Indian Souls there's the order of the five elements is that the archives acne and Jada and pretty

 That uh space wind and light or fire and water and could be that is the Earth so it seems that this uh order of this transmigration seems to be deflected in this order of the five elements and then there are several uh interpretations about the order of this uh order of this elements but the disorder is seems to be fixed by this title puncher 2.1 and it's about the five elements and then this title exponential 2.1 is clearly

 Dependent on this channel your partnership part so I feel that okay this process of transmigration seems to have something to do with this older of the five elements so anyway this is not so much related to the topic today and then there's a iPhone also interesting passage also a female also has a semen and then this is interesting passage this is like 7th or 8th century and at the sexual intercourse with a man the

 Semen over Uma also grows indeed but it had nothing to do with embryo therefore it is not considered here so that is not mentioned in the case of chalk science and this does study this is a very interesting and detailed study of the female blood and children but I sometimes it's very too too much interpretation that I found that this his interpretation is not very useful and but

 This also has a parallel passage in for example in the security design though so just like a number of key emails when it is placed on the fire the art departments through a blood of agronom discharge of female clause so out of intersectional intercourse with men so considering these things I think that the sukra in the this female also has a circular has maybe menstrual blood or vaginal discharge is mentioned not not this kind of type of shukra or

 Urban but they this kind of idea that female also has a shukra is also one of the things that is different from our idea of the human being in modern times anyway so let's return to the borders so according to Varsity Atma a new life comes into existence from the SEMA and female blood a charge is formed from the male semen which is produced from a man's desire and since faculty such as hearing coming to being from the Hunker due to the desire due to the desire for

 The objects such as um the text concludes the performance of a sense properties are killed in rajas and adults that wants to control desire so let's look into detail what they'd say so what it's it's also meaning of the rajas so one of the three ignorance qualities in sanchio doctrines and it also means start or impurity and in this context desire especially sexual desire in the various

 So and then Jim Arya mentions uh that this in the personal communication there is also mean menstrual blood but this does not mean meaning it does not seem to be intended in the varsity of the other one but in the American city he recently published this Union on Bindu and rajas in the head is also a very interesting ideas and also this connection with this rajas is something to be explored in the future research I suppose

 So then one especially a male practitioner should avoid women so women complain the textile transmigration santile that by Nature um therefore the white man should neglect them I'm not very convinced with him so I'm just being taught that I think I cannot avoid women but okay and then it says these actions

 Whose forms are formidable perplexed non-creative non-creation people the Everlasting form of the sense faculty is hidden in the just therefore living beings are born from the desire at the sea whose nature is thirst so what is this sense faculties the form of the sense faculties is hidden in largest and this father clarifies what it really means so from the desire for the sound the

 Faculty of hearing shotra all right it's for the one whose Optimum is made sorry uh I did not make the translation for the latter part anyway so I think it's not important so it's for the embryos this is about the embryos every row has the desire for the sound and then by this desire The Faculty of self hearing analyzes for the one who is out whose utterance making is made so I think this kind of idea that why the sense Market is made because of this

 Desire it's something very interesting idea that I built so in the concluding Nepal it says India problem the rise of sense of activities is made by Desiring a mind and then this fine Treatise comes into being and the problem of the text says interior paragraph that is the dissolution sense but it is by the neroda control and then it says that this leads to the Moksha so it seems that so the problem that I have

 Is that okay the one who had the sexual intercourse with woman is someone different from the embryo maybe my father's desire is not related to my desire for the digest so it seems that by making it very ambiguity of this current sign it seems that there's a inheritance of rajas going farther to the Sun and then also if you know the sanky and Doctrine in data period this Accord according to their doctrines

 Ahankar gives birth to the sense faculties so and I was wondering this might be the reason why ahankala faculties Etc are produced from Hong Kong and then before closing this talk I want to compare with this Doctrine with other different sources so first is the challenge the first Millennium 80 and the other is the garbage satra that is the Buddhist texture this takes about this and maybe

 Should have been already made so it's quite oddy and that is called three second BC to post 80 but I think that is most likely belong to the rape your day of the text anyway so and they describe it's very interesting one because it talks a lot about this vagina how vagina is made and how disgusting this magnet is and I was wondering how about the snow is so much details about the body

 Dancing anyway so if you look at the jackassanta chapter three like these six factors of conceptions the father mother husbands and suitability and nutrient and suitable so the Garba is sent to be the union of the semen and female and individual cell so what is the Eiffel mother is the king and brother is knowledge of itself

 And then deductible suitability its health and divisions derived from NASA development and the growth I think this software in this case is positioned or something that is inclination conduct and Etc and I found it interesting that there's nothing from the dead so anyway I was wondering what this comes from that anyway uh then it says that there is a monthly descriptions of the embryo but what is interesting about this embryology is

 That in the sadness there's a kind of explosive growth so making of sense faculties and various parts of the body and sensation Etc and from this sadness it said that why critia two-heartedness and then this means that the embryos heart is connected to that mother so the embryo conveys his or her desires through the heart of the mother so some texts say that you should not go against the mother's

 View because this is the desire of the embryo or something itself so that is interesting thing and then on the fixed mounts this is blood and crash is made and then according to garbage Sutra it's very interesting because it has a even though the chocolate challenge is about the monthly development and it has a weekly detailed descriptions of the gestations on the embryo and then because this is Buddhist text so it tries to convey how it is suffering so

 The warm and vagina is very filthy and disgusting and through the suffering so there are lots of different interesting studies about this suffering of the deaths uh suffering of being born so the scripture has a recent studies and then Hara who has died three Century uh unfortunately has also interesting studies about that anyway so if you compare this that's what version of the Atma in comparison as a way to encourage this question and

 That can be also shared with the garbage Etc but not in the track Santa and the female body is filthy and disgusting seems to be avoided that is and they also what very you know distinguishing idea is this digest oriented so it seems that varshia diatoma is very much focused on digital sexual desire and that's just the power that is the desire and the power to produce and produce different type of things

 So to sum up all my lectures about this talk uh especially the various preserves various intriguing doctrines that is I talked about body channels and brain and head and embryology and the text is to The Chronic and difficult that integralizes the examination of textual evidence so I'm now uh modifying the text of the varsity and yatma based on one manuscript that is very old 14th century months good and there should be more work on the virus

 In the idea I don't know and then I think that it reproduces a lot of interesting materials so thank you for listening and that's all for my talks so I think it was not 45 minutes but thank you for listening it was almost exactly 45 minutes okay okay thank you very much that was great really rich really nice good sort of General overview as well thank you for contextualizing all your work which I

 Think would be very useful for everyone there's so much in there um so we got time for a plenty of questions does um as usual there's the slido so if you look in the chat you can see the number for to put put into the slido to post any questions uh I have a few as ever um I think one so the general question that occurred to me is in the so in the varshness when physiology is taught

 Is it do you think it's uh you know it's meant to be understood as applied to everyone it's a general kind of medical Theory or do you think it's being taught as a sort of tool specifically for celibate ascetic practice as well I think that the latter case is the data is the case so if even though they think that just saw this guy have to do this and this and it gives an impression that

 It is meant only for those who practice very severe practice of posterity and just reading okay so yeah um that leads on to another question I had so is it are the practices I mean what practices are taught you think that the sort of physical practices associated with it the only things that are mentioned are methods of Tapas or asceticism yeah sorry are they what sorry are they identified does the text say what

 Practices should be done in this context or is it just general asceticism General celibacy General Tapas yeah there's no clear description but you should do this and this but it seems that it is said that it will this this kind of things will happen or this is the process of this Liberation is going to be and then that's why the text just say that's why you should you should focus on the custody you should not have sexual intercourse with women

 So and then thinking that this how considering this how this chakra and these things it's it's it's left to the kind of this uh it's on the part of the one who leads how what kind of practices were there but it seems that there's uh at least I think that they had a kind of imaginations or that kind of the imagination that this mind is going this way and that way and they do this you do

 The Integrations that this kind of things happen and then the text just say if you just do the Chastity and if you just Ukraine and meditate but the meditation itself is not very much mentioned so that it's uh it's like sankya like distinguishing between within what is dirty and what is not dirty so that is the thing that is General meditations but the yeah maybe I cannot get you a very good answer but it's not the the

 Practice is not very uh it's not clearly mentioned and just just did here on vacation so but it gives an impression that they perhaps some austerity yeah okay thanks um so we just have to sort of infer from the context of ascetic yeah that that are described elsewhere this is what they were taking of um

 And then in the late yoga texts of course Mana sort of Mind however it's formulated chitta and Bindu are said to be very closely connected if you control her and then the breath to uh if you control one of those you control the others it didn't sound like there was a direct parallel to that in the in uh but I was just wondering you know what well maybe I misunderstood what would you can you comment on that as well uh

 Yeah there's no uh there's no it seems the product that the planners as far as I did the barasama The Prana is not something important for this also of the vars near the Altima but and then this focus of the mind is more on the part of this it's more of the moral perspective of the mind and then it's not as yet uh it's not as developed as the data text of the

 Other yogas are in so for example when you said that the man over heart channel is distributed around the body yeah it collects it for it to be ejaculated but is at what what's the process behind that so you did mention about the the mind being stimulated and and becoming yeah yes in this part of this I mentioned I supposed to remember there's no mention

 Of the planets on this part and then in the last in the last phase it says that they push pull out all the planets from the body that is the only mission that I remember so it seems that this he has like there are different things that is conveyed like dasas urines and so on for nutrients and so on and Brad is also conveyed but uh in this quarter and then in this way like this manner seems to be conveying or the Manassas is also conveyed it to these

 Channels but the Piranhas are not mentioned here and in but in the case of embryology this wind is called prajapatia wind is uh makes a very important role in pushing the uh pushing the embryo from the bomb and so on but this is not also mentioned in the bars near yet okay great um and I yeah one other question I was very intrigued uh when you mentioned that at 3 or atreya is mentioned yeah

 Yeah because I'm currently trying to finish off the critical edition of the three yoga shastra and of course he is said to be the son of Atri and this text is also very closely you know uh teachers or or forcefully teaches this Bindu preservation Paradigm and it's a vision of a work so uh so in what could you just clarify in what context up through your art prayer is is mentioned within the I mean also I'm going to look it up now and add some notes to my

 Edition but I wonder what what his what the role of our prayer is within the text um it's actually refers to Krishna prayer and then this yeah this version in the first part of the verse near the Atma there's a uh kind of list of the different types of the knowledge and then it refers to uh

 So as far as remember there are two parts that refers to Krishna Atria and then is referred to in two nine and then in this part there's a different videos is mentioned and then it says that Krishna today is uh quote so I think uh he told um yeah so I think that for example it says that uh in this part

 But it was just uh taught Daniel Graham so this is a list of the different stories and then I remember that there is also another mention of Apple and then in the in this context uh actually is said to be the authentic teacher of the doctrine that is uh that is explained in this chapter so this yeah discretionary at 2 12 this uh in the beginning of the version it's just a list of the different knowledges

 And then in this 12.207.23 this is a kind of authentic teacher of the Krishna atriya but the the question is that I could not clarify whether this you know you know the problem of this whether this artery and artery is different or not and I'm not very sure about this R3 is actually it's maybe something someone different and then because it says Krishna today it's somehow this is my

 Opinion but this is if they say Krishna yet but by adding Krishna somehow gives a feeling that this is something atreya is different but I feel that 12.27 27 this difference the R3 might be uh Krishna uh this artery in the charaxanta and then this part is almost contemporary and then this sharaka sancha also has don't seems to have a long history so it is very difficult to say that this comes from the car the charcoal and also the content of this

 Product is different from so yeah this is what I can say about that but yeah there are two different types of educational yeah and then discussion artery seems to be different from the artery that we know okay great well I think I'll be looking into that further I mean it's very interesting if there's I mean it's going to be impossible to trace probably but this suggests the direct you know a Heritage of this this yeah

 Perhaps anyway I'll look further into it right we've got um a couple of questions on the slide over from west to be if we could go to Ruth please hi thank you so much for your presentation that was absolutely fascinating loads of questions I put two on this I'll just say both of them if if you want yeah I was wondering if you had come across the term ungerasa um in your work and what what you

 Thought that to me like is it a Corolla of is it synonymous with Regis or is it something different um and I'm sorry if I wasn't paying enough attention but I wondered whether you were equating or what relationship you saw between Rogers Gunner and regis's sexual fluid menstrual fluid thank you I yes for the cross questions this angular is coming from related to Angus

 Or what do you mean this angular is so I think I have not came across business so I have nothing to add about this but maybe it would be nice if you could teach me what this refers to in different texts and for this for the second questions of the largest and then let's just says questions so I I think I skipped several important things but in the mahabalata in the ancient times this largest and subtle Thomas seems to refer

 To the kind of dispositions or the state of the mind of the different people that of the persons so and then it has in the sound care it is developed into the kind of principle of the world so like but in the Mahabharata there are lots of uh several parts that seems to intend this that just or Thomas was acceptable as a state of the mind so and then so I think that this was Data developed into this doctoring so and then Johnston's Ali signed here it was

 Published 97. uh Johnstone Escape very short book has a lot of discussions about this topic of The Greener and denotation between Guna and uh and then also when I was reading uh yeah this is something related unrelated the question not so much related question but when I was reading the America city of the James book that I found it interesting that only satawa is said to to to abide by Saturday and the Abundant

 Abandoning datas and Thomas and then in Sun in normal science Doctrine you have to you know give away with all the subtle brothers and Thomas and then that is also the case in the early text of the Mahabharata so you have to in that version also you also have to preserve the satama and the abundance so that is also discussed by Johnstone and then also this this kind of connection is also important I think

 So yeah this is the part that I found interesting so do you have anything about can you share what you think about the angular or something um I don't know I think it's I think it's the correlate of red dress but it's not clear um Edition Jim is working on at the desk okay um it yeah I'd like to know okay yeah I'll take a note to this board and then

 Yeah I'd feedback yeah maybe later I may have liked another article based on your questions thank you very much um would you also be able to share the reference to Johnston that you mentioned so yeah I believe uh we have a plan which are going to talk about the end for Kenji to share some of the slides from the session today and we'll be sending those out afterwards um so yeah as well

 Thank you great thanks I'll just make a comment on that yeah argue Russell seems to be this very uh it's a uh obscure term it's only used in the data yoga shastra but I'm pretty certainly seems to be just another name for rajas but when it's introduced it's kind of um obscure and in fact in the new resention I found some manuscripts that haven't extended different version of the passage and

 Okay says well what is this angurasa stuff you were talking about and then it seems explains that it's it's related to religious but the same text I mean there um they kind of justification for celibacy is very much um material physical physiological you know it's a problem it's a problem about losing Bindu losing semen okay he gets old and dies and there's no kind of

 Suggestion that's anything to do with uh I mean I suppose there's some implication that you need to be in charge in control of your faculties and services but it's not really said to be in any way moral or ethical or anything like that and I just wonder if that's the same sense you get from these um from the version elsewhere is this a purely kind of material physical teaching uh I I kind of feeling that this is more

 About the model and then this is a kind of this part of this physiology is a kind of explanation why you have to do this kind of thing and then it's more it's more about the moral and there's also I think there's also part of the moral about what kind of disposition you have to make for the world so so this idea of this expose okay I think that this is where it started about this how the education so on but uh yeah maybe I did too much about the Mahabharata so it

 Gives the impression that it's the moral teaching is the main thing yeah I know that makes sense to me and I sometimes think that with the heart of yoga text the it's there's less emphasis on that side of things because they do make an allowance or some yogis to have to engage in sexual practice but obviously then they have to hang on to the Bindu so so the morality doesn't seem to come into it it's purely about um preserving your your vital essences

 Okay we've got a uh we have a anonymous question which means I have to read it out and I think it's suitable I think could you point to further study regarding the female fluid in quote marks that is mentioned for example could the female fluid be referring to female ejaculation uh yes so this is one of the points that I can't I am I have not studied too much yet so I but it seems that this sun uh in the section of this intercourse it

 Seems that there is a uh ejaculation of something that is called in the uh in the Social Science Diet it's called comes from the uh from the word Ritu vitamins the season so in the periodical thing so the difference between what we know and what they know is that this whether this algebra has you know the menstrual menstrual blood is not very clear does not have the seed but so when it says that it did it this charge is audible we are not sure whether this is

 To the this is these discharges is in the uh in the wrong or uterus or to the outside of the outside of the vagina so there are two possibilities and the article is sometimes said that it has a net and it's it's sometimes okay it's vivarna it's colorless so when it is safe vivarna maybe this might be this wagon I don't know how to correct this when there's a sexual like this uh means not

 Commenced one but this discharge of the vagina uh vaginal discharge but so that's kind of ambiguities about that and it seems that it's from the from the leading of the Socialist scientist it's difficult to decide what it really meant and then I also yeah I haven't surrounded yet and examined the book of this Das uh this body what was that because that's look

 Uh this book about this the origin of the of the life of a human being conception and female according to ancient Indian medical and sexological literature so but I'm not very much convinced with him so I yeah maybe I've also studied a little bit more about this point and it might be very interesting for future studies sorry yeah thanks

 Yeah yeah there's a there's a quite a good review of that book isn't there where someone could sell the I think which is not okay all together appreciative Ruth nodding yeah yeah um so yeah anyway my reading of dust was that it was inconclusive as to whether rogers's sexual fluid is like ejaculatory fluid or menstrual blood I've just actually got um and Wendy donegan's um Karma Kamasutra translation

 Because I wondered whether there was anything in that on conception they do have a footnote on all the various different fluids on page 191 okay the various comments I need to go into more detail on that myself yeah thank you yeah thanks well thank you very much I mean you gave us a Content boarding at the beginning I've I've got a reading of the Delta 3 yoga this afternoon which is much more explicit so yeah more of a concept where you dealt with

 That very well we've got a hand up that's not normally how we do this I don't know if that's deliberate because we have got a couple more minutes Andrew Norris um do you have a this is this is going away from our usual protocols but uh hang on a minute I'll just leave a message there we go uh yes sorry I should read the protocols

 Really it's actually my first Zoom session so this is all quite new to me which is strange from the pandemic but uh really I was interested um in uh you mentioned Agni ultra um perhaps in the context of your lecture is really the only daily practice it came up I was wondering if there were any other daily practices um

 With the acne Ultra whether there was any mention about the the effects it had on perhaps the participant and or the environment whether there are any recipes and things mentioned in the text with regards its practice uh so you so sorry I cannot get the point uh so so I pract I mentioned Agony hold traditional right so all right so yeah and you mentioned it if if performed daily then it then it would sort of get you straight to heaven

 If you like um but but it was the only mention you made of a daily practice um but then you didn't mention it further so I was just wondering it seems to have a lot of significance but yet um I was wondering if there was more about it within the text uh it's I I think I skipped several important explanations is Agony hotra is a kind of very very traditional ritual of to put some

 Clarified butter or milk into the fire yeah and then it is so that's uh I think that's apart from that I'm not very much into that and then yes I understand what acne Ultra is it's just that you mentioned it as a daily ritual that would yeah you know you have to do it you have to do it every day so yeah were there any other daily rituals mentioned in the text I'm not sure I I have it but

 Yeah this is yeah the text says that's just but uh yeah maybe it's possible that there are several other texts that has daily mentions of daily text so if I can bat in excuse me for interrupting but presumably I mean that's a very distinct tradition from that of the virtue where they were yeah Justin's and they're not performing uh they may not performing

 They this kind of they really chose yeah it's it's like it's I think it compared to daily version it's like five one thousand years ago or something so I think for this product it's not connected I guess yeah but most of the kind of the physiological conceptions yeah it's related yeah I suppose that was my interest in that that the um the earlier Traditions seem to have used um the ritual of fire if you like in the

 These ritualistics that are almost magic yeah things whereas related uh practice seems to be more sort of physical I guess or um you're self-orientated um and you know um you know controlling your desires Etc so uh because the latest edition that seems to have died out a lot things like the agniotra become sort of symbolic rather than practical if you like yeah I'm not sure whether there helps

 Um yeah some philosophical implications entered it but uh yeah there's an interesting survey about by both ways about this internalizations of Dragon hotel and then this pouring some milk into the fire it's de-interpreted as digesting fire so by putting your own food it's considerably that substitute for Diagon hotel and then if you it starts when you go on a travel you cannot do the fires and so on so and then so it started it's you know

 Considerations about this oh thinking of this fire as the internal fire and then thinking that this digestive fire is considered with the prior octagonist Ultra so maybe it has started somewhere around that but maybe I can hold the literal itself is not very much developed into that thing I guess interesting thank you very much thank you

 Okay great Angie thank you so much yeah we've taken a new bit over time that's really a fascinating such Rich material please keep you know diving into this the stuff that no one else is brave enough to try to make sense of because there's so many different things going on and so many different things too but yeah yeah I really particularly enjoyed all the contextual material you're looking at trying to make sense and if I'm sure Ruth was taking a lot of notes

 As well because I think as you know her it's a lot of overlap before that you're providing nice earlier historical context to what she's working on so that's that's that's great um so just remain yeah thank you very much and I will pass back over to Theo now for the final ritual about your ceremonial procedure

Uh good evening everyone i'm jim marlinson uh chair of the center for yoga studies thank you very much theo for setting all this up and it gives me great pleasure this evening or this morning for dominic for professor dominic sierra to introduce him as our speaker this evening um i don't think we've ever actually met but we've been in touch quite a lot over over the years you um dominic very kindly gave an

 Excellent presentation at one of our hata yoga project workshops which was organized by uh mark singleton and daniela beverlaqua about um physical practices that may have influenced the history of yoga and so that's where our connection first appeared and our interests um and then but unfortunately dominic couldn't make it for that in the end and you gave you gave you a talk on zoom but that was i think i was pre

 Pandemic so you were sort of ahead of ahead of the curve there and then we tried to set this one up in person as well but that that didn't work out so maybe third time lucky we'll have to get you back another time make it happen but anyway um uh professor steve who is associate professor of chinese religions and chinese buddhism at the university of california in santa barbara and his research focuses on medieval taoism and

 Buddhism especially as regards therapeutic and or contemplative bodily practices and so there's that you know which is obviously uh of interest great interest in itself but he's also interested in the trance cultural circulation of ideas relative to those practices which is of course how you know we first uh started discussing because in recent work of mine which i'm

 Obviously not the first to discover it people have looked into this much over over the years over the decades there's been a lot of talk about interplay between chinese body practices and indian body practices there's a lot more work to be done but i think we're beginning to make a bit of a bit of ground here and so uh yeah and and professor steve has looked into their reception history as

 Well throughout asia and beyond uh and now i shall just hand over to uh professor steve who's going to be talking to us about the taoist body and of course we have questions at the end on uh put questions on slider if you've got any please okay over to you dominic thanks very much all right well thank you very much uh jim for this uh introduction and i want to thank uh the soa center of yoga studies

 Along with professor jim allison and theo wildcroft and erica morton mcgill as well for organizing this for inviting me for putting it together and giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts um i want to preface this by saying that i don't i don't have any formal training in yoga studies um and i'm a bit of a neophyte when it comes to south asian

 Traditions so this presentation will mainly focus on china i will make occasional oblique references to the little that i know about south asian traditions as well and hopefully that will be sufficient to get some some conversation going but um i realize also that uh you know i have to to speak to my audience and so this talk will not be

 A kind of traditional research presentation is going to be an overview of some of the work that has already been done on the taoist body by others and myself included and i'll just try to share my thoughts and present those notions about the taoist bodies as clearly as possible so um thank you all for for being here and and for listening get started here

 Okay so uh just a little kind of very brief definition if you will of what taoism is it's a collection of uh very heterogeneous traditions that are lumped together sometimes artificially by scholars and not only modern scholars but scholars throughout the history of taoism in china as well um and it combines perspectives from and practices

 From um medicine therapy or health philosophy politics and statecraft chemistry as well psychology cosmology astronomy divination and also what we um we in academia i guess would call religion and it organizes all these very

 Disparate things into a coherent world view it emerges around 300 bce in china at the intersection of political philosophy quietest self-cultivation as well as very importantly longevity and immortality cults and these this latter component i guess of the genesis of taoism focuses on preserving the material body and this will be a kind of theme that

 That runs through uh some of the materials that i'll be presenting today so there there isn't initially at least no effort or impetus to uh transcend the body um or or access some kind of higher spiritual form of you know incarnation or what have you um taoism becomes institutionalized so

 It becomes i guess conscious of its unity despite this heterogeneity as a tradition in 142 ce with the rise of the celestial masters and we have a very formative period between 142 ce and around the end of the 900s where all of the critical texts and major views and practices are developed and by the 12th century

 Already a lot of it has been ossified um or established there there's still innovations obviously between the 12th century and today but not at the rate that we have between the the 100s and the 900s so that really forms that period is is it constitutes the bedrock of uh taoist uh thought and practice

 Um now despite its heterogeneity throughout its you know over 2000 year old history uh taoism has relied on a set of metaphors consistently um in talking about the body and there are quite a few here today we're going to focus on the major ones um and there are three of them

 The first one is the body as a cosmos has a microcosm um and and kind of small scale representation or duplication of the cosmos the other one is the body as an inhabited landscape uh here to have this notion of a microcosm that emerges and lastly this view combines elements from the the proceeding to the body as a generative matrix

 These are more or less chronological so the first one body as a cosmos i guess would be dominant in the period in the early period of the development of taoism between 300 before the common era and 200 of the common era the second one inhabited landscape is dominant in during the early medieval period between 200 and 600

 And the third uh the body as a generative matrix arises in the medieval period around actually 700 800 drawing on early materials and then it continues on um has the dominant way of talking about the body um up until today basically in taoism so this is the one that kind of won out if you want to look at it that way

 Each mode of uh or model of the body here is associated with its own set of practices as well and we're going to be looking at those so obviously what i'll be presenting here is not you know it's not all my material the taoist body has been studied amply studied in the past um i guess mas pero would have been earlier than than rick shipper here

 But the i guess fundamental or earliest book that is specifically on the topic of the daoist body is by rick shipper came out in the 90s and then catherine despere has worked on it as well on this theme of the taoist body as you can see here this book was recently i guess

 Three four years ago translated into english in case you're you're curious so these are sources that you know you can follow up on they're they're fairly accessible and they're not um too daunting either in terms of being overly technical or what have you uh fabricio pregadil has also recently

 Been been publishing he doesn't have a book but he's been publishing articles um that have been very um uh i guess formative at least in my view of the taoist body or my understanding of it um and these you can look up online they're easy to find through academia.edu um if you want to access them and you can't find them you can send me an email and i'll

 Give you the full bibliographic reference so the alchemical body and taoism and which is the taoist immoral body these are the two main articles by fabrico predio on the topic i've also written a bit about it in this this volume that i co-edited embryological discourse and sexual or reproductive imagery in east asian religions i have a chapter in there that addresses

 Some of these issues related to the taoist body and a chapter as well in my book that came out a couple of years ago so what i hope is that you know with a kind of reconsideration of this material or a fresh look at it and by keeping in mind its potential connections with um yogic practices we can open up new fields of of inquiry so that would be kind of the point of

 Today's talk just a quick overview we're going to focus each section is going to focus on one of these models of the body and then we'll have some concluding thoughts so it's fairly straightforward and we can jump right into it uh the earliest one as i mentioned is this view of the body as a cosmos so it is um in early materials represented as a site that is animated

 By cosmological principles elements powers energies and processes this is kind of important as well so everything is in constant transformation and flux they're not static this view is rooted in what we could call pre or at least para taoist medical understandings of um the body as a microcosm so it's

 Not specific to taoism taoism is i guess it borrows this this model and elaborates on it in in this early formative period and some of these you know it's constitutive elements uh for this uh this um metaphor of the body are uh chi which is considered a kind of vital breath that permeates um the universe and this is obviously what animates us

 As as people as well as humans and here uh you see i'm doing a little pointy finger thing at um the notion of prana which is more or less from my understanding at least a parallel uh idea um yin and yang of course also are reproduced in the body and these are important um cosmic elements uh this is this basic

 Binary or male and female principles the eight trigrams which are uh sequential markers or symbols that that mark processes or or the passage of um time i guess um in one way or another uh they're associated with changes and mutations and things like that the five agents sometimes mislabeled as the five elements but these are active agents so we call them agents uh metal fire water

 Soil and wood these are all represented in the body and again i want to stress this notion of the body as or at least these energies as being dynamic and influx and transformative and there's always a an effort to find a balance between all of them now while these are abstract renderings right so people don't actually have

 Trigrams in their body they rely on what is understood to be a very physical and concrete framework in taoism uh and chinese medicine for that matter um the basic internal organs so known as the five viscera and the digestive organs are known as the six receptacles these store and process um vital cosmic energies turning them

 Into um vitality or or chi or refining them into increasingly higher energies and this is part of a larger correlative cosmology that regrettably i don't have that much time to get into but um all of these are interconnected so you have the the five viscera that are connected to um the lesser digestive organs or um the six receptacles that are connected

 To the five agents that are connected to sensory organs that are connected to seasons to tastes to times to directions and here you see another illustration of this and all of these have to be always balanced and depending on the time of year or the activity or the place that you are or what you're eating you also have to keep in mind those correspondences and associations so as to not generate

 An imbalance for example to give you a very straightforward kind of illustration at this point if it's really hot as it sometimes is in the summer heat and summer are associated with young energy and therefore you shouldn't be eating rooster meat which is uh highly young as well because then you're gonna overpower the yin

 Energies in your body and that will cause damage to a certain organs that are associated with yin or young and so on and so forth so this is just like a very simplified view of of how the system works um we also have meridians and channels that circulate these energies after they're stored uh processed and

 This notion of the three cinnabar fields as three centers energetic centers of the subtle body that are also despite being non-physiological so you can't identify them when you dissect the body but they are believed to be very present and real and quote-unquote material these are centers where these energies and vital breath are refined so they're pretty akin to chakras and

 From one or sin also early chakra systems had had fewer chakras three or four um which which more or less aligns with this and there's a lot of focus in the chinese tradition in the taoist tradition on the lower cinnabar field which is where the the essence uh vidya is is uh generated um and then you have to bring it up and refine it in the middle cinebar field

 Uh which is associated usually with the the heart the lower cinebar field is um in the kind of um lower abdomen so sometimes it's described as being three inches below the navel between the kidneys um yeah essentially and then you refine that energy in the middle cinnabar field where it becomes vital breath and then you refine it a second time um

 In the brain area in the upper cinbar field where it becomes uh spirit so you have this progression this refinement and this focus initial focus on the lower cinnabar field i as i understand is kind of analogous to certain emphases that we have in in chakra systems perhaps so

 Under this model this first model of body as cosmos uh practices are usually geared towards correcting imbalances in order to optimize health and longevity so the focus is on preserving the body and its health again not transcending it uh counteracting its corruption and and the imbalances that occur and uh these practices are typically part of um

 A system i guess that can be called um nourishing life now this system is made up of a variety of different practices it depends on the source usually there's about four to six of them that are identified ingestion of medicines or elixirs is one of them the second is dietetics a second common one in chinese these characters mean avoiding grains and that refers to basically i mean

 Grains are a placeholder for any food that is processed uh that is not found or consumed in its natural state so grains you know obviously you have to like remove the husk and dry them out and then you cook them and so on and so forth it involves a lot of uh processing so this becomes representative of all foods that are processed so ideally he would be eating according to daoists

 Macrobiotically or raw foods um as they as they are in in nature uh the third one that that consistently shows up in these lists of nourishing life practices are uh postural forms of self-cultivation uh you have an illustration here of some of them in this version they're seeded later on they become or can become more dynamic i

 Guess and the chinese term for this is daoin which means guiding and stretching or guiding and pulling that could refer either to you know stretching the body the limbs um and guiding it through various postures or it could refer perhaps more more probably to guiding and expanding or stretching this vital breath this chi while you do these movements

 So uh in the descriptions of the postures in chinese sources um right obviously this is this is um analogous to this notion of asanas so in the descriptions in chinese sources these postures are very often combined with breathing exercises so you have a close connection between breath control and postural self-cultivation and i understand that it's also quite

 Similar in in yogic sources with this pairing of asanas and pranayama right these breath uh control um practices in chinese the characters mean uh to circulate qi or circulate vital breath or to ingest vital breath um so that kind of illustrates things a bit uh and lastly sexual practices are also

 Associated with this these nourishing life practices uh that are typically representative of this first way of viewing the body the body as a cosmos and i guess we can spend a bit of time on sexual practices right yeah we're about 13 minutes in or so um the basic principle of these early sexual practices is to take vitality to

 Take young energy which which represents vitality from your partner without at the same time losing your own so only one person reaches climax and it shouldn't be you should be the other person it can work either way mayor male or female um or male male female female that there's no um importance um attributed to that but

 There's two people usually and one of them um is trying to i guess it's been described as a vampire eyes uh the other the other is vital energy and what you do with your own is usually uh instead of emitting it during uh climax and again this goes for men or women you return it up the spinal column and refine it um in the cinebar field the middle one and

 Eventually return it to the brain in order to fortify it and this uh affords longevity it affords like clarity of spirit and um a bunch of other advantages and this is again from my limit understanding uh similar to bhadrali mudra practices and let me show you the text before i get into what essence means so this is for uh

 Men a practice that is you have practices for women as well but this is a practice for for men and it says as for the way of returning essence um to supplement the brain when one is engaged in intercourse one's essence is greatly stirred and desires um to come out so the essence wants to come out you know emissions one should quickly by means of the two main fingers of the left hand the left

 Hand pressed down behind the yin satchel as it is called and in front of the great cave so during this great undertaking while pressing down one should draw in a long breath so again this notion of breath control here and then resume breathing normally without cc can currently click the teeth several dozen times so this is either to to scare away um negative influences or to summon uh the

 Gods of the body um you just clack your or click your teeth and then when one releases the essence the essence will actually not come out rather from the jade stock it will return upward entering the brain so this is the basic technique uh essence here refers to uh semen for for men and um um ejaculate for uh women uh in some cases it's described as menses

 For for women but this is the kind of literal take on it sometimes it's described a bit more metaphorically and essence is this vital energy in in very coarse form unrefined form before it becomes the chi before it becomes vital breath this is another passage that i don't have the time to uh to go through but you can go back to the recording and pause it if you want to read it

 But in the interest of time we'll skip ahead again in these practices all of them not only sexual practices but all of these nourishing life practices that are connected to this vision of the body as a cosmos the focus is on preserving the body and its health now the second metaphor uh body is landscape comes um

 To the forefront i guess of practices uh a bit later during the early medieval period and here you have this it's not only a landscape um a natural landscape it's an integrated landscape that features uh inhabitants as well and sometimes it also features um you know palaces or pavilions and things that are usually

 Associated not necessarily with with religious traditions but more with statecraft so in the dao's perfect order the natural order of things uh you have a perfect integration with human society human societies and nature and this is represented in this vision of the body as as a landscape so it's not just a mountain with animals and no

 Humans you have buildings and infrastructure and bridges and things like that um so in daoist utopias both the natural and the human worlds are perfectly integrated and so the body becomes a kind of utopia in this mode of representation it is an image of of the dao's perfect order now that image that i just showed didn't look too much like a body just looked

 Like a mountain um and it was hard to make out but i have another clear image where this will become a bit a bit less confusing um so imagery related to mountains obviously sometimes water and to statecraft are most prominent under this model so again we have these two the top um

 Text i guess or excerpt or passage uh focuses more on the natural elements so you have heaven you have the seasons it's kind of covered by my my face there but um sun and moon are the eyes hair is stars and con constellations and you have a mountain and a flowery canopy as well and in this other description like i said it's more um infrastructural or it has to do more

 With uh you know urbanization or urban planning so the chest and the belly are like the ruler's palace the four limbs are like the suburbs and borders or frontiers um bones and joints are like the hundred officials uh the spirit is like the ruler blood is like the ministers and breath vital breath is like the people therefore if one is able to govern oneself one can govern a country

 Being fond of the people is the way to make one's country secure preserving one's breath is the way to keep one's person whole when the people scatter the country is lost and when breath is exhausted the person dies so these are two um different ways of seeing the body as a landscape but sometimes these two ways are of seeing or describing the body as the landscape are combined in one

 Moreover the landscape and cosmos models are not mutually exclusive so the landscape model kind of builds on the model of the body as a cosmos and there's a lot of overlap as well so in this it becomes a bit clearer this is again a representation of the body as a landscape and you have all the major points that are identified and here in green it's not super visible but in green you have these

 Trigrams that appear so these are cosmic principles and you have uh in kind of pinkish red the three cinnabar fields as well which were tied to this cosmic notion of chi of vital breath or vital energy so these get transferred over into this metaphor of the the body as a landscape so practices for this model

 Are um more focused on meditations and visualizations of the inner gods so for the earlier model you had to focus primarily on nourishing life here the focus shifts to inner gods and these are the gods who are believed to populate the inner landscape many of them appear as officials or as as high-ranking ministers or

 Members of this this imperial bureaucracy that's how they are represented and this is not a closed system so it's not a cosmic egg we'll we'll come to that idea later on but um so you have interactions between this inner landscape and things outside of it um in some cases you have to feed these gods with through meditations

 Energies from the sun or the moon or from the stars and you collect them and then direct them towards wherever the gods are in your body at that time in order to feed them with it so that they're they're kept um satiated and happy this is another representation of what um the gods might look like the gods of the heart in this case and i

 Mean it's hard to make out the quality of the image isn't great but they're dressed in official garb so they're like officials and ministers um let me just pull this out here so we can see the text a bit better this is a typical meditation on the inner gods what it would look like so with one one's hair untied lying straight and supine so on your

 Back outdoors with one's eyes closed so you could be sleeping basically this could be almost a sleeping meditation constantly meditate on the yellow essence of the moon and the scarlet vital breath of the sun from the two eyes descending and entering the mouth swallow it do this 27 times then stop and this is basically what you're you're collecting um

 These essences and you're going to circulate them in your body to feed deities and here we have a specific deity that we're talking about constantly meditate on a little lad inside your body wearing christmas crimson vestments residing in the center of your heart when doing so also visualize a crimson flowery canopy in your heart below is another person wearing a layered red

 Headdress a simple scarlet robe with an arrow in his mouth drawing his bow so these are they're very um detailed descriptions of these gods because you're supposed to be visualizing them right and the more information you have the kind of easier it is to manifest them in your mind's eye this second god is angrily wrathful and can protect against violent harm or can

 Summon gods and demons perhaps parallels to uh yoga nidra some people have made that point i know olivia cohen has at any rate the result is longevity again focusing on the body youth health protection from injury or untimely death um and communication this is a kind of added bonus with the divine and unseen um a lot of these were used for the purpose of divination as well where

 You would summon the gods have a chat with them and ask them you know how you'll do uh on your exam tomorrow or um or what have you so still the the material body is the primary site of the benefits of these practices here um and again i want to stress this point that the models are not you know i'm simplifying here um but they're not

 Mutually exclusive and they often have a lot of overlap and they build on each other so this is just to give you a quick example am i doing on time um the gods of the five viscera can be represented in a number of ways you actually see the viscera as they would appear materially or physiologically right with the kidneys and the liver looks a bit different but

 That was the understanding of what it looked like at the time and then you have animal forms of their gods you have anthropomorphic forms of their gods here they look like aristocrats for the most part or royalty you have those trigrams that are represented as well and you have uh clouds of qi of vital energy which are a bit more abstract but they

 Have different colors depending on on the viscous depending on the organ so this is a interesting image and these models are um avowedly metaphorical so the texts state that this is not actually what the gods look like it's just that this is how they manifest to us or this is how you know by visualizing them in this way this is how we can summon them

 Um so it's very straightforward and direct that these are images these are second order representations of these energies or of these gods of these unseen subtle forces or processes um that are at work in in the material body so the function of these images these

 Texts say is to actually relate the unseen or the immaterial to the concrete and to the material so that adepts have something to work with right otherwise it's it's kind of very abstract and very hard to wrap your mind around things and do things with those energies uh so this is i use the color version of this uh chart for the the main image for the talk this is a famous

 Uh chart of the um the inner landscape i'll go through it rather quickly because i don't want to go over time too much but this is the kind of archetypal representation of the the body as a living inhabited landscape that integrates both human and natural elements and it's highly symbolic so you have at the bottom there a boy and a girl

 On water wheels and what they're doing there is um inverting the stream the normal stream where you lose your vital essence um with it going downward right so they're inverting it and recirculating it upwards up the spine as we'll see in a second instead of losing it and dissipating it and it passes through this kind of a barrier tower

 Building which is the first of three barriers um located at the coccyx and then that inverted uh energy flow or essence flow goes to heat uh the cauldron of the the lower cinnabar field and you have i mean you can see the fire right under the yin yang symbols and there's a kind of plate under it so that's the lower cinnabar field

 Yin yang symbols represent the five agents and the connection between them represents the the fifth one um we also have an ox there um and a farmer and they are plowing to prepare the terrain um in order to plant the seed of the golden elixir so this is actually an alchemical representation of the body um

 Which is closer i guess in spirit to the the model of the body as a generative matrix but we'll get to that in a minute uh we have here in the middle part a spiral um that seems to be surrounded by by flames or water or something and this is the middle middle cinnabar field uh located in the heart um then we have a kind of child figure uh holding the big dipper or manipulating it

 And this is uh altair um the star uh it's the cowherd you know that that legend of the cowherd and the weaving maiden that join in the sky once a year and for the rest of the year they can't see each other um we have the weaving maiden right below there and they they join their energies that both of them feed into this spine

 And move up the spine we have the the second of the barriers which isn't that visible but there's a little bridge looking thing right across from the heart which is the second um of these barriers and then you have the 12-story uh pagoda which is the the trachea and this is kind of like the the beginning of the head area you have the third gate

 Which is not really visible here in the next slide it will be the jade pillow at the level of the occiput right so the base of the skull basically um this figure with the outstretched arms is bodhidharma a buddhist figure but especially uh from the medieval period onward there's a lot of integration of of buddhist imagery language practices as well

 In taoism and especially in internal alchemy which doesn't necessarily have to be classified as something taoist it's really at the intersection of taoism and buddhism as well as confucianism to a certain extent above him is lauza the founder of taoism and then you have the two orbs uh they represent the sun and moon

 Uh these are the eyes and the upper cinnabar field is basically that whole area that's made up of a building of raging waters and these peaks emerging peaks the upper cinnabar field is it has nine distinct areas that are known as chambers and um that's what they're represented as here so finally we move to the last one body as generative matrix the third model

 Is later and it combines again a lot of elements from the the previous two um it stresses first of all the body as a cosmic egg right so it's self-sufficient it's sealed off there's nothing um outside of it and at the same time this cosmic egg is also a generative matrix because it produces everything that is inside of it so

 These are characteristics that liken it to the dao uh which encompasses everything and generates all within it uh but the dao itself is outside at the same time that it is inside of the universe and generates a universe it is also outside of it it is pre-cosmic uh so if you think about in terms of i don't know the big bang for example the big bang

 Um creates or generates the universe and then the space in which the big bang occurs in which that singularity departs from is the dao right so that's pre-cosmic or metacosmic i guess uh and we have um you know a few passages to illustrate this from the scripture uh on the way in virtue

 That liken um the universe to being and the doubt non-being um the tao in the second one this is a famous passage cosmogony basically the genesis of the cosmos according to taoists um the tao generates unity so it's this singular point where everything is contained much like that singularity at the big bang or one split second before the big bang unity generates uh duality which is yin and yang

 And then duality generates a ternarity or the three heaven earth and humanity so things kind of expand and develop and internality generates the ten thousand creatures so all of creation and we'll see that the main point of these practices associated with the body as a generative matrix is inverting this process that's described in this passage here it's

 Going backward from all of creation to three to two and then to one a point of unity and then transcending that very point of unity to um recommune i guess or rejoin the dow so i'll try to get that as quickly as possible since i'm running out of time um so this this model generative matrix model is expressed in

 Through two discursive modes the first one is um or you know or sub-models i guess the first one is the body as a reproductive site in which an embryo is produced or an infant and this occurs already in the early medieval periods in meditations on the inner gods or bodily gods

 We have descriptions of this infant or embryo uh that you can generate through meditation by joining different energies together so here we see for example that you have this red child in your lower cinnabar field and if you constantly meditate on a deity called the supreme unity who is tied to this notion of cosmogonic unity this deity constantly nourishing the

 Perfect the perfected cinnabar child then it will grow and not only that but the cinnabar child is actually this is in the last line your own self and your own original uh name or identity do not forget this uh this will become important in uh in a second so this model of body is generative matrix

 Is also connected to embryonic breathing methods in which you are instructed to breathe like an embryo so um through your skin um through [Music] what would be the equivalent to an umbilical cord so not through the lungs um and this practice generates actually a perfected version of yourself an embryo

 I don't have too much time to get into that but um this two i think is has a few intersections with pranayama you also have an early practice again a precursor to these models of body as generative matrix in which you create a perfected version of yourself and your imperfect carnal self is abandoned as a corpse so this is known as corpse liberation or corpse deliverance techniques it's also known as feigned

 Death and it's very useful like if you get captured and you're in prison then you just abandon your your carnal body people think you're dead and you've actually escaped in this ethereal body um somewhere else so you have precursors is the point i was trying to make the second way in which this this model is expressed is uh the body as an alchemical crucible

 In which an elixir is produced so you have a kind of parallel here between reproductive site and infant or embryo and um alchemical crucible and elixir right the production of the elixir and here in this image you see very clearly the lower cinbar field is uh an alchemical tripod and then you have a vessel also in which it's refined at the level of the heart before uh circulating that essence back

 To the to the brain um so this is of course this imagery is derivative of laboratory alchemy uh precursor to internal alchemy much older but there too with laboratory alchemy a lot of these processes were so complicated the um ingredients were very hard to come by they were very expensive when they were available that

 In all likelihood a lot of these were practiced um virtually so to speak so through meditations right so they were visualized these alchemical processes um were purely visualized uh this is another chart of a famous chart of the body primarily as an alchemical um crucible in the center which is where all the action happens but you also have the three cinnabar

 Fields you have lunar phases solar phases you have trigrams you have the embryo in the center in the heart as well and this is a somewhat clearer version and this is um the topic of catherine despera's book if you're interested in in learning more about that i referenced it earlier on so you can go back and check out the title so um

 Right these discursives model these discursive models uh the the two the ones about you know the body as crucible and the body as reproductive site come together in internal alchemy uh also known as naidan and this is um it emerges around the 800s and it's still part of

 Daoist practice nowadays but um i guess the formative period is yeah 800 to the 1200s and then you have a few in important commentators uh since then that also contribute but the idea behind it fundamentally is to produce something outside the body that was not there to begin with and this is why i talk about the body as a generative matrix and what you're producing is either this embryo or a golden elixir

 By inverting this cosmogonic process that i had on the other slide um and going back to unity and then the dow and by doing this you're actually you're the way that you go back is by generating this new version of yourself a new body so in this model the present material body is to be discarded once this new body is created

 Its preservation through longevity or immortality is not sought why because it is post cosmic right it comes after the cosmos was created and therefore it is essentially corrupt so you want to get back to the quote-unquote purity pre cosmic dao so the new body is a perfected body or true self that's how it's described golden elixir is another name for one's

 Fundamental nature i have to skip through that unfortunately because i don't want to i still want to spend a few minutes on the conclusion and what happens is after nourishing it for a nine year period so nine years once you create this this perfected version of your your body it's in your body you're nourishing it with essences and meditation practices it's growing and it reaches the maturity

 And then it has to come out so the body uh this perfected body is delivered usually from the top of the head it emerges some some people describe it has an actual birth through the top of the head like the imagery of the cicada shedding its skin is often used and it cracks open the skull and it's very painful but

 In most cases this is understood as as being an energetic process that doesn't have uh you know concrete physical um consequences but the identity of the adept basically is transferred to this new body that emerges from the old one um and at this point

 So in the ultimate stage after you've created this body and delivered it um with it with this new body you rejoin the pre-cosmic original doubt and this is um variously described as emptiness you know drawing on buddhist discourse here vacuity non-existence or non-being in some texts even this these dichotomies between existence and non-existence or being a non-being are

 Transcendent themselves right so you go even beyond that uh and this true selves provide true self provides the adept with access to the spaceless and timeless pre-cosmic doubt not only that the body this true body this true self is the spaceless and timeless precause me now okay conclusion

 So where does this leave the material body uh what what is the material body in certain taoist practices um especially those that that adopt you know since the medieval period this generative mode of representation representation um the body is is merely a tool it's a a prop or a vector for self-cultivation it is um sometimes even

 You know we get the impression that it's it's nothing more than a ritual object that is used in a ritual practice or a soteriological instrument in the pursuit of a real and perfected body which is none other than the true self or the dao and i have this image here that'll you know what it represents will become clear in a second

 Um we have this i haven't found dallas text that expressed this as clearly but certain buddhist texts do express this ambiguity between the body and ritual objects and they actually instruct the the practitioners to become ritual objects so there's an example of one text in which the object uh the uh adapt becomes um a divination board so these boards in which you have to manipulate

 It's like um um it's hard to describe but a square plate and then there's a mobile round part and you make it point in certain directions towards certain cosmological uh values and the adap does this in the uh sacred space so that the adept becomes its him or herself uh the the divination

 Board there's another very interesting example where um adepts light um an incense seal which is represented here um this is the bija of um um of the goddess of or the bodhisattva of compassion and they have to imagine themselves becoming the seal being consumed and then turning into the smoke

 That also has the same shape as the seal it's the the seed syllable uh the bijaki and they identify with the smoke so their body becomes the smoke and then the smoke becomes the bodhisattva and by doing that then they identify with avalokiteswara they become avalopiteshwara but still there's this intermediate step of them becoming the

 Incense seal and then the smoke which is very interesting in terms of you know we're talking about a body as um as a quite literally a ritual object um so ultimately the body although concrete is not real it is itself an image uh just like the metaphors that taoists use to talk about it it is a simulacrum a pale copy

 Or shadow sometimes this this term is used to describe it of what the true self is um so an imperfect expression of the essential ideal of a perfected body right so this i while i was writing this it struck me as a somehow platonic yeah um that's not very important in this context so what does this ideal this ideal true body look like um what

 Is the perfected true body right beyond these descriptions of it being the dao um well we have some indications i just have like two three more slides so please bear with me and then we'll be done um some daoist scriptures talk about a conventional appearance to gods versus um you know they're a an esoteric appearance so the way that they would manifest to low level adepts versus the

 Way that they manifest to higher level more advanced atops and this is an example for um from the three sovereigns uh you know their conventional appearance and then you have here their esoteric appearance so it's a marked difference um but these even these esoteric appearances

 Are not the true selves it's not their true bodies so at another level gods are described in terms of their true shape or their true form um which is a technical term that comes up a lot in dallas tex and here uh when we have representations of this they look more like shadows again

 Right so you have here the shadow image of a dot of a god and then on the right the shadow image of or the true shape image of um five sacred peaks that you have in china and when they talk about the true shape of a peak they also talk at the same time of the true shape of the god of that peak of that mountain so they can be anthropomorphic shadows abstract shapes

 Or even kind of like these labyrinthine um shadowy patterns that become very abstract but this is supposed to be a truer representation of what deities actually look like um in in the divine realm in the divine world uh so these are yeah forms of of one specific um mountain the central march mount and

 It's got according to some scriptures there's even a purer form beyond this true shape and it is um closer to writing which is a interesting concept so this is known as true names that happen to be truer than or more or less equivalent to true shape but they are logographic and this is no surprise since the chinese

 Writing system is for the chinese historically it was a marker of cultural distinction between you know themselves and others mode of communication with the divine so they communicated with the divine through writing by sending up petitions and talismans and things like that um it's also believed that um your name or even the way that you write certain characters uh calligraphy for example is an

 Expression of your vital breath of your chi of your spirit um so this importance that is associated between you know uh or that is attributed to writing and its connection to identities is um not altogether surprising um you have here the three sovereigns you know i showed you the esoteric forms and conventional forms this is their written

 Form this is what they appear as in in this kind of truer embodiment so we can imagine an ultimate reality in daoist terms that is entirely made up of logographs of divine writing right including its uh divine inhabitants um and it would look something like this just like this kind of code with beings or anything any any constituent of that reality taking

 The form of this um divine writing so we can assume then that uh you know if this is the true shape of babies perhaps that the true shapes of realized adapts is also somewhat similarly logographic this is not described in any text however and the way that texts describe they don't really describe this ultimate uh true or

 Perfect body um other than through a kind of via negativa uh discourse so typically this body is everywhere and nowhere it is before now and always um it is the great image without shape that transcends even the materia prima even um this this earliest um components of the universe

 So it's ineffable and unfathomable and i'm just gonna end with two quick quotations from leo ming who was a later master of internal alchemy but a very influential one the coagulation of the elixir or the embryo or the true self occurs within empty non-being uh and neither has anything to do with men or women nor is concerned with this skin bag made of breath and matter

 So it returns to the pre cosmic creation and transformation which is devoid of forms and images it does not stick to being and does not sink into non-being it has no form but can generate forms it has no image but can generate images thank you very much for bearing with me through this kind of longish talk thank you dominic that was great that's so rich and so many i mean there was plenty of

 Peculiar things that were alien to me but there are so many interesting parallels and interesting connections that i could pursue um we've got a few questions but of course i'm going to use my chairs prerogative and i've i've got about a dozen but i'm not i i don't worry everyone i won't ask them all and don't forget about slido if people do want to ask questions should put the questions on slido i thought i'd ask

 Just start off with a sort of big question about i was very interested just your your your definition of taoism at the beginning of how it just covers so many different aspects of of life i suppose and society and so forth and that seems to map on quite nicely to the concept of tundra in fact in indian religion you know which can cover so much but that made me wonder about taoism's

 Place in society how pervasive was you know how many people and it also there are a couple of subtle clues from which i inferred that it is somewhat perhaps elitist or to do with uh practiced by by the elites you know when you were talking about control of the breath in the body enabling you to control the land and so forth you know like a sort of political manual so i was wondering if you could say

 Something about taoism's place in chinese society who was doing it and how how pervasive it was sure uh yeah that's a great question um so when it starts off two of the fundamental texts are are uh someone somewhat concerned with um or i guess the first one the scripture of the way in virtue is very concerned with um

 Statecraft with politics and um it emerges in this period where you have roaming advisors and everyone is kind of throwing their lot in and trying to gain these prestigious positions with with um warlords or eventually the emperor and daoism is part of this um the second text the juan's the book of master juan kind of turns its back on this and says no you know we can focus more it's more of a quietest text

 We can focus more on cultivating ourselves and then everything else will fall into order um but from the from the beginning taoism is definitely involved or concerned about its reception by the elite and when it becomes an institutional religion um it is definitely political uh it's always trying to um include itself in political debates and

 Discourse and it does so quite successfully and for most of its history or at least during the medieval period you have a back and forth between emperors um supporting taoism as the main official religion and that comes with you know tax breaks it comes with uh donated land it comes with um a huge amount of benefits so either taoism or buddhism and you have at the

 High level you have court debates you have a lot of animosity between taoists and buddhists so that's the elite level so it's a very self-conscious tradition it wants to build itself or build itself as something in contrast distinction to buddhism for much of its history at the level of uh you know common or or a popular practice uh those differences kind of dissipate and what happens is

 That you have um i guess the lower you go and and the the less literate uh population is um you have people practicing around certain uh masters or gurus and those masters will take from a variety of sources they are typically literate and they'll take practices from taoism from buddhism and it doesn't matter and therefore the majority of

 Practitioners i think in terms of you know absolute numbers at least were not concerned with the difference between buddhism or taoism at all or even if it was like a local popular tradition that wasn't derivative of an institutional religion they would practice that too and lump it all together so to answer your question um taoism is very present at the level of ruling

 Elites um the textual tradition is mainly geared towards securing sponsorship or intriguing or interesting literate elites but the majority of practitioners ended up being um in many cases illiterate uh or or kind of more at the popular level and there the the distinctions or the specific um aspects of practice or

 Perhaps less important okay great thanks um yeah that's fascinating i've got some follow-up questions but i feel i should turn to the ones on the slido first and if we've got time we normally go on for so seven or eight more minutes that's okay with you um we have got so as a couple of anonymous ones came in um so maybe i'll read those out they

 Came in a while ago first one please can you elaborate on the common mislea you mentioned this the common mislabel of agents as elements uh you sort of implied that they they do a bit more than sort of inert elements they have some potency themselves i suppose um yeah so this is just i mean the way that it's been translated historically is is the five elements and um i guess that's because of analogs in um

 In europe um and other places but i want to bring up that slide um these are never ever static and they're always in movement um and actually i'm going to share the screen just for a second uh so i can bring up the slide here um they're defined by their interactions between each other and you have two

 Major ways that they interact uh one is uh generation right so one generates the other um so wood generates uh fire for example when you burn it or um things like that and the other one is conquest so you have a kind of productive or yeah generative relationship and then you have a antagonistic i don't know why it's called support here this is actually a

 Mistake it should be it's not my slide but um it should be conquest so metal will conquer wood because you use an axe to chop it and they're they're always in flux and always in movement so that's why they're called agents uh moreover the chinese character uh xing when when we say wuxing the five agents xing means uh to go or to move or to act

 So it's a more accurate translation it's not you know there isn't like a very deep um logic behind the translation but that's what it is okay great thanks um yeah it seems quite distinct in some ways from indian traditions but then some i mean more parallels perhaps with the doshas in the body of ayurveda constantly you know

 Doing and going out of balance um maybe well now if we could go to dagmar if that's possible please dagmar you asked well yesterday i presume we were talking about before we got going is that going to work out is she still here hopefully i have asked her maybe i see her but we can't we can't hear you yeah

 Okay probably no microphone okay if it doesn't i can read it out anyway we can't hear you hi hello dagmar we can see you guys says can you explain the idea of cinnabar fields in the context of the body as landscape does cinnabar the substance feature in the landscape body oh right that's a that's a very good question uh no it doesn't is the is the short answer um they're called cinnabar fields

 Because again i stress that the um the lower cinnabar field is in in most cases the most important one and uh that was the original cinnabar field um and there's a description that i also thought of of putting up here but basically it refers to the color of that field that

 It's supposed to have so it's a deep red that is analogous to cinebar and that's why they call it a cinnabar field and then that way of referring to that cinebar field which is red um got got transferred over to the other two even though the other two aren't red or cinnabar colored okay great thanks um and an anonymous one does the yin yang concept come from

 Buddhism and then in brackets we have luo scrolls which i'm afraid doesn't mean anything to me i don't know about the scrolls but it definitely doesn't come from buddhism uh a yin yang concept is so buddhism comes from india and yin yang is a indigenous chinese conception of the universe and it's pretty old it predates daoism um i'm trying to think it

 Oh yeah it goes back at least to 5-600 bce if not earlier okay great thank you i hadn't realized about the the high level antagonism between buddhism and taoism that's very interesting made me think also sort of shaivism and buddhism you know that perhaps the courtly or theoretical level and then what you were saying about the the ground level people probably not caring too much no and and what's interesting is that you have a lot of uh

 Currents of um taoism when you have this formative period they're taking a lot of cues from buddhism buddhism is in a period of ascendancy and so they just take over cosmology practices um and put a very thin taoist veneer on it so if you look at at the taoist canon there's a lot of texts that are basically buddhist texts just with with taoist

 Terms inserted into them so there's a lot of interaction too thanks um okay one more anonymous will you please share the text or texts in which you find the liberating corpse feigning corpse pose and that sounded very interesting lots of yeah parallels as well um sure those most of the descriptions of that practice come from

 Hagiographies of immortals so you don't have like a text that focuses specifically on it but if you read fabrizio's article this one let me put it up which which is the taoist immortal body this one right here you have um

 A good description of it and he also points to some of the main sources um of it otherwise there's um a very useful resource uh called the encyclopedia of taoism published by routledge that is um available in digital or hard copy formats and there you have entries for

 Overall no problem all of these major um major concepts or practices so um yeah i highly uh recommend it encyclopedia of daoism with a t the taoism that was okay i see t for t um okay thanks we've got uh hector has a question if we could go to him please yeah thank you can you hear me thank you dominic doctor

 My question is about if you know that if there are some distinctions between yin and yang practices in any of the three bodies that maybe have survived throughout the times to nowadays and practice today either in china or any other place in the world so wait are you asking if the practices are

 Still practice nowadays or if the distinction between oh yeah yeah definitely the two the two things if there are distinctions between the three bodies and if some of those practices have survived throughout the times uh yes so a lot of the uh internal alchemical practices um are still

 I guess prevalent people still still practice them and there's this thing also that i didn't get into but um a practice called nudan which is female alchemy that emerges in the um 1800s 1700s or 1800s that is a female analog to the more kind of um male-centered practices of of uh internal alchemy and both of these are still

 Practiced i mean if you go to to taoist temples in china or elsewhere um you know they're not going to practice it in front of you they're not going to be super forthcoming either but they'll say oh yes this is uh something that we do practice but it's still kind of like a closed world when when when it comes to these specific types of practices that happen to be more

 Um more esoteric and also more internal because so they're harder to manifest right um but yes a lot of these are still practiced and you do have differences also between you know yeah male and female practices they're adapted great thanks um

 Well with slightly over time i've got about a dozen questions i could ask which i'm not going to we have got one more if you don't mind we've got time to go to one more person if you don't mind going over a couple of minutes to caroline gunning um caroline are you there can we yeah hi hello caroline hey um

 So i can't share my video hi um my question was hi hi thank you dominic it's really really interesting um i'm a practitioner of qigong so i'm listening to your talk i was thinking whether the cinnabar field in any way related to the adantians that we found in qigong like the the lower dante individual dante in the higher dancing and he spoke about the

 Sort of lower cinema the cinebar field being of um great importance and that's the same with the dantians in qigong that the lower uh dante is called the the golden house the powerhouse of the energy so is there a link there between the two or relationship uh yeah uh so cinnabar field is a translation of dantian so it's the same thing

 A lot of qigong practices so qigong as a independent tradition emerges um you know many of the systems emerge uh post prc so after after 1949 but uh they are grounded in uh earlier traditions that find their roots in taoist uh meditations so yeah there's there's a definite straight connection yeah great thank you

 Great well thank you very much indeed dominique we're definitely going to have to continue this conversation over the years i told you we've got sort of kind of got got planned plans plans of foot but who knows will come and then but hopefully we can dive into it deeper and we've got to get you over in person third time lucky it's going to happen

Thank you theo uh good evening everyone i'm jim allen chair of the center for yoga studies and it gives me great pleasure this evening to be introducing our speaker dr olga sobaiva uh so her official role models academic collaborator at the university of zurich um i've i've known olga for a while and i've been aware of her work for a long time

 It's absolutely fascinating her main interests are tantric you know tantric studies she's also a great expert on digital humanities and we were talking earlier she's doing amazing work at the moment and trying to sort out optical ocr optical character recognition of manuscripts but she assures me that luckily that that means we philologists won't be made completely redundant in

 The end because she thinks that the contents of the manuscripts are still so difficult that the computers won't be able to understand them so that's good news uh we're still in in hopefully still have jobs in the future um olga doctor serbia has been working on yoganese for nearly 20 years i think her phd from the university of lausanne was on the subject she's been working in that

 Area ever since um in particular she's going to be talking to us tonight about the yoga of the yogany's advanced level i think this is a slight uh joke and a little bit of a joke in the title in that the yoga that these yoga needs practice is extremely advanced i think extremely esoteric she's going to be talking to us about the teachings about yoginis in the tantra sadhava

 And then also in a very a fascinating huge text called the jayadurata yamala which i first became aware of gosh 25 years ago when i was working on my phd because alexis anderson has uh has worked on it quite a bit and he would read sections with it uh of it with me sections about yoganese there and uh dr serbia has got the very undertaking the very brave task of editing uh

 And translating this enormous extremely difficult esoteric text um yes well i think that's about all i can say i'm very excited very much i've had a quick preview of the slides they look wonderful and i'm very excited to uh to listen to dr serwayeva's lecture so over to you please argo thank you very much for this wonderful presentation and thank you for inviting

 Me well on all projects that james described i think i would need to get reincarnated couple of more times in order to get them finished but let's get to the yoginis so do you see my screen well okay so then of my today's presentation is to present the yoga of the yoginis and to get to the advanced level let's go so a precise aim would be

 Um just a second maybe i try to move this zoom yeah and let's go we shall try to define the yoga of the yoginis find out the stages of their yoga and see how these stages were described in tantra can non-tantric literature and we shall try together to reflect on the ontological reality of the described practices our main questions however will be what is

 The point of view of the male practitioner versus the point of view of the female one and how it can help us to define the yoga of the yoginis in in what it really was i have decided to choose this picture as some representation for this precise conference it is supposed to be um a story of king vikramaditya meeting the goddess kali

 And it is a copy of um an original story in kalabhavan varanasi a painting of 18th century by a known author so this is a reproduction by a modern paper painter called kailash raj the painting is like as if separated into two parts so if from the center you go to the left you see a yogini like kali blessing the king if you go to the right you see exactly

 The same figure of kali eating something from the big pot and the clothes of the king lying in the down right corner so this represents well that one has to be very careful with yoginis and the danger was real it was taken by the sadika very seriously having said that let's try first of all to define the yoginis i shall again resize my screen

 A little bit sorry for this so who are the yoginis in the text i'm working on there are multiple types of them so first of all this can be human women participating in the tantric practice it can also be various non-human beings with spirits mostly appearing in dreams visions or altered states of consciousness and this happens rather in front of the male

 Practitioner jokiness can be also symbolic figures populating chakras or mandalas there are multiple cosmic yogurts and yogurts of the elements we shall see them today there's symbolizing residuals so states of the universe and states of consciousness if you like and yogini is also the means to encode the mantras so even if you have a real good dislike

 Beings described it it might be simple code so among this rather vast category we have yoginis that do some yogic practice and this can be human and non-human maybe the best way to represent the whole structure would be to imagine the mandala and you which you like in the center which will be a goddess this goddess will be surrounded by closed deities looking very similar to

 The main goddess this would be generally called the devi or devata then on the next level rather than petals we would have um an assignment of the yoginis and some of these yoginis might be human while they're still in the mandala it is really extremely complicated to separate human and non-human yoginis then coming out of the circle of the

 Mandala we would see some lower kind of yogini such as for example deckiness or shakiness along with buhutas pretas pishachas and other non-human monster-like type of beings these are inside the city of the mandala but outside the circle if you like so the yogi the human yoginis would be praised like on the rim of the circle um so yoga and yoginis these two terms were not always together um i prepared here a small summary of my

 Article from i think 2010 so if we take classical patanjala yoga we will see that there are in their only male yogis nothing feminine is mentioned at all please correct me if i'm wrong but this was my conclusion in the pashupata yoga there are again yogis these are actually male brahmins and the yoginis and everything feminine is rather some an object against which

 The yoga is constructed something feminine appears first in said anti-kashiva yoga this is shakti or for the main god shiva in this respect however as soon as we get to bhairavashastra or bhairava revelation which is shaiva shakta tending rather towards shaktism we would see that the male practitioners are called sadaka and on the female side there is an explosion of various

 Kinds of eugenies and they are called duties yoginis dakinis and some other like 40 different terms some of them which we're going to see today uh let me in this rather long introduction bring you some historical geographical and linguistic context what i'm going to talk about today is perpet based on the sanskrit texts and these texts were written rather in northern india but they were preserved

 In much later nepalese manuscripts the traditions reflecting the practices of the eugenies existed i think so between the 7th and probably the 13th century of common era and the core phase of this was probably between 8th and 10th centuries how much my texts are representative so if in blue um square you can imagine that these are indic

 Texts in various languages anything that existed in medieval india a part of it in green would be sanskrit texts which we know about hundred thousand different titles as for tantra attacks there were probably around five thousand different titles counting from what is pretty of the nepal now among the standard texts around 20 that

 Survive and available talk about yoga of the yoginis and of this 20 i will take two so this is really a drop in the ocean that's what i'm going to tell cannot be taking as the final point in this research by no structures imagination so now following the classification of alexis anderson who was the first one to work on this kind of text seriously um

 We shall briefly describe where the text stands so within video pitch domain video petra means a throne of videos or invocation of the female deities we would have a number of sub separations of which i will mention only to here would be yamalas with brahmayam being edited now and early trika as another sub separation

 And within the context of early tracker would have the muller text or the root text called mata this is the text probably one of the earliest where the practices of the yoginis is described however only very short version of it came down to us luckily we have another text called the tantras at baba tantra probably written around 8th century that takes a major part that

 Disappeared from the long version of siddhargeshwarimata so this is this will be our first text and i propose to take tantrasad bhava chapter 16 which is called yogini laksan adhikara the master the authority at hikara on recognition recognition signs of the yoginis if we translate it in simplified way tantra said baba came to us in two

 Different manuscripts but both preserved in nepal chapter 16 consists it's rather long one consists of 372 slokas there are multiple people working on these texts before me so i would like to mention that the existing transcripts done by mark ditkowski that was about her site around 2005. there was an edition by alexis sanderson done in 2004 still unpublished

 To which i had access and i would like to thank alexis anderson for sharing it with me and i made translation and commentary of this chapter in my phd of 2006. so the chapter would consist consist of two parts first would be dealing with kinds and signs of yoginis so basically what they are what are their classifications how to recognize them and

 What yogic practice they are doing second part of the chapter is written for the male sadhakas and is dedicated to the question how one could control the yoginis so let's see it more in detail tantras above 16 starts with the classification of the organism and the first level of yogis we will go from up down would be the cosmic yoginis it gives the

 Name of the six most powerful cosmic yoginis and this six jogen is not three as one would expect for trigger text but six jogging is assigned to six petal lotus and the trident their precise assignment is not really clear so this supreme yoginis they really um resort to supreme state something happens uh and some sort of the state changes the state go slightly

 Down from the high state of yoga and that produces a bindu um unfortunately maybe james i mean i i will not be able to define what bindu is precisely in this context maybe james could could add some later on but this bindu becomes agitated and it starts moving so it moves in fire like circles called allata chakra and this movement of the bindu which is

 Circular or also vibrating starts to produce the whole world including physical creation and once physical creation happens maya at this level becomes solid during this circular movement of the bindu infinite number of yoginis is produced according to this text what you can see here in the down left corner is actually some tatwas which you

 Might recognize as samkhya that was however they slightly different and the status was from sound down to earth they have a growing number of qualities from one to five growing number of gunas for example sound would have only one quality touch two and earth would have five all these yoginis they don't have human form they're qualified as anu rupa meaning that they're like like atoms or

 Something like this and it is said that all of them all these millions and milliards of yoginis is one single supreme yogini parading all so this is considered to be the highest level now we're going down and in chapter 16 of the tantras at baba we will we would find 150 shlokas on basically various classifications of yoginis so i just list them briefly here so that

 We are not lost in the further material yoginis can be classified by the places where they appear these are geographical places or sacred places of various kinds they can be classified by the cooler or clowns of the matricus to which they belong they can be also classified by the male chef of the clan they are differentiated according how they are born to their

 Yogic practices and finally to an economics to the age of recognition meaning when a yogini recognizes herself as being such or when she is recognized by others as being such so according to the places to their peer we are going again from sort of the higher hierarchy of this yoginis down all the time in this presentation but it will be a little bit confusing because the name yoginis or shakiness

 Would appear at various levels of this hierarchical classification this is probably due to the fact that multiple layers of previous traditions go to somehow collided in this tantras valley 16. so the yoginis who are born you know who have human form so they they are really they have human form they are born from human parents

 And they belong to one of the seven clans are classified according to the places in which they appear into four kinds those born in pittas pitha jazz and those have this is the strongest one and they have divine nature then we have those born in the fields of shetra and these are interestingly called devata of really goddesses is our mixed nature

 And the tantras above will further provide an interesting explanation to such precise classification and then we would have almost normally women resorting to some sacred places called yonija and dropping catcher is also mentioned in this classification however no explanation is given and all of these yoginis assigned to these various sacred places also belong to this one of the seventh

 Lands of the matrix from brahmani to yageshwari or brahmi to augustus are various names so first we are moving again down and the text is trying to fit the yoginis into the block of seven so i will just read my translation aloud lesson i will explain the furthest of separations there are shakiness rudra shakiness chavis chavarricas shivas

 Devatas and yoginis such as the seven sub-separations of beautiful yoginis should be known as accomplished from before or what she does so meaning that actually yoginis they are born already perfect it's like as if they were practicing something in the previous lives actually text suppose is that your yoga practitioner has not one life but

 A multitude of them and this practice continues from one into another up to seven different lives in a row so it is not uh yoga is not seen here yet as one life achievement it's really a long process that can go through multiple lives so those who are accomplished from before and born already perfect are the highest kinds of yoginis so these are really yoginis

 Uh and they recognized also very early as we're going to see devatas or goddesses interestingly lower should be known by sadly those who obtain yoga or laptop yogas um so these are actually getting some sort of initiation and start practicing from this life then we have another sub separation of this yogurt is according to the geographical places

 So there are higher yoginis called yoginis and these are assigned to precise geographical regions the list of these places are as long and i try to map it to a modern map of india it it's not really precise so it's difficult exactly to look at the places but if we go from indus river to nepal then to assam and then down to country and we come back to madhya pradesh by rajasthan

 We come back to indus river madhya pradesh and rajasthan so this would be the core of the yogini world according to this tantra in the places that are not mentioned as a lower yoginis and this would be called shakiness so then they would have a very important classification according to the seven matrikas or mothers from chamunda to calmare here and this matrix has a note of the same

 Kind they are classified according to their nature which can be divine rather like a yaksha or rather like rakshas this name's probably abbreviated as yaksha and rakshas some older variants of them this also appears in chapter 14 of the tantrashiva now let's try um again to come down again to the yoginis that are non-cosmic

 And they're classified yet on another different level so those which are which have form which are non-cosmic they can be cooler jazz and here kula means not related to the clans of mothers but means born in the human families and they can be devatas and this classification is contradictory to what i just said

 So the kula jazz are human women born uh in families of forecasts and the devatas that are really goddesses they live in a special world and these are to be seen by various yogic procedures by the sadhakas and worshiped so cooler just basically have two sub separations and it's not clear how these two fit together

 But there are two groups mentioned so this can be a human women that are recognized after the age of 27 or shakiness so this is like sort of lower yoginis and what do these women do they attack victim in vulnerable states and there is a list of vulnerable states of somebody sick afraid wet has oil on the body and things like this

 And feed on the body liquids and why do they do it because they want to obtain the cd of changing form rupa siaparivata let me say a few words about gender polarity in tantras at baba so if we talk about human practitioners only we would clearly have male sadhaka and female duty as his partner for really physical outside ritual however this male sadaka searches to meet the yoginis of various

 Kinds and actually his progress in yoga of tantra assad power is measured according to this um hierarchical ladder of yoginis which you see on the right which stretches from goddesses down to categories to yoginis and to shakiness of whom shakiness are the most dangerous this has to be kept away or avoided yoginis have to be chosen

 Carefully because one should meet the yogini of his particular client etc but female duty as female partner does not appear in this ladder anyhow so it's like as if a different category between human female and non-human female let's see what else we can find in this text the text has the chapter has two paradoxical schlokas i call them pandora men so among these

 Clans some rare men narrate of the same kind they obtain that same state by infinite heroic mode or another one by awakening the circle of mothers by rituals or tapas the rare man narah ketchit obtained this supreme cd how could we interpret this so there are multiple possibilities here we could read it that women have this yoga of the yoginis naturally

 But able men of this kind are rare or we could imagine that this practice is designed for women specifically or there is no contradiction to things that men can reach the position of equality with higher kinds of yoginis or even with matricus and whatever i would personally wish to see in these two slokas the truth

 Is rather tending towards the third interpretation here for example we have the classifications of yoginis according to the five male leaders and what are these leaders so hari vamana and simho narasimha these are forms of vishnu then we have mahakala like standing on the border

 And then we have bhairava and yoginis here are classified from down up from hari to bhairava so interestingly that like imagine the whole universe was created by yoginis shiva is barely mentioned in this chapter and then we have this five kings of yogunus if you like so again the chapter is contradictory and putting various layers one top of another and trying to

 Make sense out of it however let us try to see what do these various kinds of yoginis do so shakiness they kill and extract dravias or magical substances or liquids we can translate it in order to change form those underwhelmings are rudra shakiness they can already change form and they can enter the mind of the other being

 And what they want is a nectar so there are five kinds of nectar panchama italia and so basically amrita would be the key word here yoginis that are governed by naresimha are the same like the previous one but they do not kill and they extract nectars from the whole holy chidra most paradoxical most interesting for me are the yogin is called shamarikas related

 To makakawa so this extract five nectars carry men away and able of producing multiple forms it is interesting to note that although the text that would link any kind of yoginis to mahakala in india it seems to me that they have disappeared i am not aware of anyone of such text i would be very happy to find one but around 15th century

 There were buddhist tantras translated into chinese and this mentioned mahakala and yoginis and what this yogini is doing chinese takes actually sort of kill people but they kill only those who must die any and this also will be repeated in the tantras such as tantra said baba that are still sort of survived to that registers however when there is

 And the yogi is called so from the name of shiva of course we can translate this as auspicious yoginis so this rather have a pure patanjala like cd out out of nowhere actually they must mantras and dianas they have to they have eight yogic cds so animal and other

 They know three times past present and future and they can they see or they can go voluntary in supreme state of yoga so again it is said in the text that yoginis so again the term is used as generic and as a sub term and it's very difficult to separate yogi is a higher than the above five classes and yoginis are perfect in yoga by the previous life knowledge that's

 How i interpret again to kena with hina they are endowed with unbroken pledge so they have never broke the samaya and are born from the bodies having complete knowledge this is very interesting thing because so this would mean that they are born also from some sort of perfect parents and when abhinav gupta tells about

 Himself in one of the texts he wrote he actually says that he is born from the yogini yogini basically he assigns the title of yogini to his own mother so being born from a yogini automatically gives a higher status to a yogini so the low one get pledge prata samaya and here text is again contradictory so this they get this pledge and they're sort of

 Obliged to do mantras and varatas but they do not do japa homa puja and other such practice so how could you do mantras without japan is it a japa something something else is supposed to be here but it's the text is very difficult to interpret we only have this so now just that we don't get lost we shall see what the auspicious kinds of yogi needs to do

 And we are going to talk about those who are under byron that are shiva's so of shiva there are seven classes and then these seven classes are not mentioned we have a separation of two we have shakiness who are called excellent and why they're called excellent because they drink blood of people of all four varnas of of all forecasts if you like and there are others called kravia does

 And though they eat flesh we have here an example of two of these shockings described how they look like and what they do fat of yellowish complexion round faced having lost into the past i'll explain later she is doing it she drinks a lot of blood another is shining black with red eyes loving quarrels she cries and extracts the blood hitting victims and their

 Vulnerable points marmosom marmon so now we should we shall try to find out the difference from the rest so the rest would be called ashiva the non-auspicious ones and here in the sub classifications of these ashi was known no species are opposed in certain sense to the shakiness so of ashiva there are seven sub categories they have wonderful names chushika the one who sucks chumbika one

 Who kisses patra alechica one who licks the ball different difficult to translate so she again from the word tusak and nakra may be a crocodile something like crocodile sakura if you prefer and then there are two yogin to two kinds of yogurts that are related to the way they breathe so one briefs one inhales and

 Extracts the drivers from above these are called utwanishvasika and one does the same from below problem on exhalation we don't know this is ad honestly so let us get now to some precise kind by fixing eyes on the tip of your nose so this would be nasagra practicing yoga she always sucks nectar she is known to be nakratushi another one has the face upwards and

 With a single inhalation she drinks this one is upped for an ishvasika being naked she always goes at night to the house of another server typo but her mouth covered with cloth because she is upside down she always drinks a lot of blood she is add honey swashika the one who inhales from below it's interesting to note that um we could switch from the context of tantric text which is supposed to be

 Secret kept from practitioner and we could find a very close description in a text written for the non-initiated i would like to bring you an example from the catastrophic sagara book 6 chapter 6 verse 156 on which describes what could be recognized the chushika from tantra said baba i shall use translation done by tony

 King so the story goes like this a barber of the king has a beautiful wife the king goes to this wife and the barber is sick out she's sick with it so he stops eating and one king asks what's going on with you he answers king my wife is a witch dakini and when i am asleep she extracts my entrails and sucks so she sucks them and then replaces them

 As before this is how i have become lean so how can continual refreshment and eating nourish me when i said this to the king he became anxious and reflected can't surely be a witch dakini why was i so captivated by her i wonder whether she will suck my entrance also and basically leaves the girl quiet so but why would uh all these various kinds of yoginis human as well as

 Non-human do such stuff if i summarize the verses from 201 to 212 of tantras about 16 we would have a list of the reasons so they would get by this invisibility shape-shifting so they would be able to assume a form of any animal that it will they would get some knowledge cd non-specified and as the top most cities would be able to attract a victim

 But there is a higher reason for this so basically the shloka which you have here and half describes the reason of of the yogi of the practice of the yoginis so what they want really to achieve is to get to the place of yogeshwara and this is called in sanskrit yogeshwari samstown really the the place where you geshwari is stationed it is not clear what is mean here by

 Yogeshwari if it is really the strongest matrika so you geshe or chamunda or if it is a goddess or some sort of independent goddess so which we know close to nothing so how do they get to this state by yoga yoga here is not specified but i believe this is what has been described so far by tapas tapas is actually some sort of mahabharata-like tapas by vision of their own mantra

 So vision of their own mantra means actually in this language mantra cd so when the deity of the mantra appears in front of the practitioner and some sort of dialogue happens and the fourth way by which yogis obtain higher state of yoga is by killing the janma victim so then this janma victims janma pashu these are actually human beings reborn with

 Particular signs only to be sacrificed by the yogis throughout seven or maybe eight even lives and again we will find here a small note on men men who know all mothers actually the term used is that they really know closely the mothers also obtain that through fruit so it is like as if what has been described before yoga

 Tapas mantra and all this janma sacrifice janma being sacrifices are specifically for women and for men there is a different way so now we shall get to the last classification point as the age of recognition so the strongest yoginis as i have briefly mentioned are pita gels this are recognized as such at the age of eight

 Cetera just know that they are such by twelve or probably recognized by others were apologized at sixteens and yogi yoni jazz was like normal women born from yoni by the age of 27. well if classification is more or less clear the last age of 27 is slightly emblematic and what would it mean in fact in india it seems like that the age of 27 if a woman does not get married by this age

 It is strongly believed that something happens to her that she would never get married she is different so then she might be a yogi this is the only explanation of the age that i could find so far let us summarize what we have learned so far so there are multiple levels of yogini practice which i will show here three so the

 Lower yoginis are called in the text shudra they do vampiric practices they extract blood or other liquids from victims in order to obtain the basic power of changing form on the intermediate level of this yoga of the yoginis so the turning point would be sacrificing a human victim in order to get the ability to fly and we shall get to this later and so these levels of the yogis are

 Really coherent uh within themselves and sort of self-sufficient however on the top of it in tantrashap we also find siddha or accomplished yoginis and these are perfected from birth with yogic cds so it is like as if we would have here two different traditions one i would call it cooler i might be wrong but i believe that this text were originally politics probably the

 All this kind of tantras and this uh kula tradition got sort of superimposed by the yogic tradition at around the time when the trash ball was redacted and thus we have this um conjunction point of two different yogas yoga the yoginis down and the classical yoga which is coming from patanjali tradition and i believe it is when this conjunction happened here

 It is at this point that all these various wild beings shakiness darkness chushikas etc they started to be called yoginis so let us summarize tantras bhava 16 again so you can easily do the yoga to reach the state of yogeshwari yoga is similar to potential yoga but for the highest classes of them but they do not practice it they are somehow born with it

 Yoginis practicing yoga belong to lower classes and this yoga is a vampiric yoga by which they obtain the ability of shape-shifting and attract victims for sacrifice and now if we take one chapter before tantras above 15 it's actually chopped on yoga and the yoga is fully internalized basically it is the whole kundalini awakening procedure

 Uh and uh actually the whole body is interpreted in tantric terms so the central channel is a lonely tree etc etc so various kind of um reinterpretation of what external tantric entourage is happening here already however in the chapter after it in infantry's above 16 the organisation described according to much much all the traditions

 It seems to me however this text stops after more or less the eugenies obtain the power of shape shifting and we don't know much what happens after and in order to learn more advanced level of the yoginis we would have to address a different text so what happened after tantra said baba tantra said as alexis anderson has just described it in his various publication a large part

 Of it at least to go to incorporate it into mata tantra which i have formal proof that parts of this kubrick mata tantra were incorporated into jaidra tayama the text i'm working on since at least 2006 um especially as this is visible in the form of codes for the videos so tantrasad was written around age kubjica tantra in this sense would be around

 Age to ninth generation was redacted around 9th to 10th century likely towards 10th century jaidra consists of four books called chatkas each has six supposed to have six thousand shlokas however they are shorter especially shatkar too in the shadow three we have it can be like if separated into three independent parts

 So the first part chapter from 1 to 23 would be a very classical part of jedra tayamola so we would have a chapter where um there is a code of the video of the goddess there is a description of this goddess hermandala nyasa how to initiate a disciple and what siddhi sadhana brings however this is changes drastically in the chapters from 24 to 34 11 chapters and these chapters even have independent

 Numeration so this is clearly a piece of another text that got appended to original material of this this part which i'm talking about is called yogini samchara prakaranam or explanation of the assembly of the yoginis this text is followed by a set of chroma chapters and then shotka stops so we're going to talk about now about the material of this yogini sanchar

 Prakarna this text exists in eight manuscripts so far which i have all i collected them there are 11 chapters in it is as i said independent block was in the third chakra first of all it was mentioned by bhakti and the text was edited pre-edited if you like by alexis anderson in 2004 on the basis of five different manuscripts the text is

 Interesting because it is like as if continues and expands on the tantrashiva 16. so what are the main features of the yoga in samsara prakarna this is a clear reference to a shadanga yoga so the yoga note of eight not ashtanga no but of six limbs it's a shallow variety of yoga if you would like to learn more about it

 I would advise to read the book by some devastation then this text list in lists in chapter 157 yogini related tantras so it was it has some internal references but it really says that there were 57 tantras describing the practices of yoginis among these 57 texts i could trace at least eight in nepalese manuscripts

 However they are not edited except the two mentioned siddhis rarimata edited by judith torjok and brahmayam allah being edited by shaman hatley and shabakesh so these are available in addition to what i am presenting today if you remember tantrasaba creation of the world it was purely feminine here however in yogani samsara prakaranam

 Well like is getting either two and all the tradition which was still more shy but less structure or we are dealing with some sort of rewriting back to shaivism of more radical elements both are possible so shiva main god has three forms here which is akhora not terrible mahagura very terrible and ghorakura extremely terrible one and from this male form spring here

 The three goddesses aguara because for mahagura the same kinds of lower yoginis as we saw in tantrashivs or shakiness chum because sushi cause etc and from the extremely terrible form we would have the 18 families of the matrikas with their duties messengers female messengers and kinkara servants so 18 families of matrikas is the signs that the text is extremely

 Ancient the same 18 family is also mentioned in tantra and in some very old puranas and it seems to me that originally there were probably more kinds of matrices than seven and just when the tradition reached the general public somehow all this multiple matrices they got crystallized into seven and the list got rather reduced then expanded

 So now let us just remember that here creation is rather from masculine to feminine so already there is a hierarchy from masculine to feminine creation he has explained is an operation of the alphabet in which the states of universe tatwas are linked to the letters by combining those letters into mantras and by joining these letters to particular channel in the body

 The practitioner can influence the world here are also details of internal chakras and in this case they're often replaced by syllables so although the text is still dealing with wild deities there is a tendency to internalize beautify the thing by replacing the yoginis with symbolic elements so as for the embodied yoginis

 If and untranslated as higher classes of being able to reach the states that were rare for men here in the yugini samsara prakaranam the goddess asks for easier way for women specifically because they have unstable mind and so they fall on the time from the visualization they are unable to do mantras and those

 Are such usual practices and interestingly she asks bhairava precisely to explain her subtle or sukshima practice so what bhairava suggests for yoginis basis of all yoga he says is blood extraction from a victim and the mechanism of it is a visionary state in which the practitioner links the channel to the petals of the visualized lotus and assigns

 The letters to them and this affects the state of the victim interestingly uh a whole range of patanjala like cities are integrated into cities of yoginis in the yogini samshara prakranga what this is not really surprising because jaydratha actually mentions some sort of yoga sutra near nayama or a commentary on yoga sutra and it is not clear to me so far which text exactly is meant

 This is in chat one so what what special capacities do yogunis have here they have full control of nature they can break mountains or stop the oceans they have eight yogic cities anime etc but these are sort of mentioned in passing they can heal and kill do usual black magic but all this um vashankaris tampana etc

 Etc are like as if revised in relation to vampiric vampiric practices so for example paralysis of the victim's tampa would mean not a physical paralysis like a sort of sickness or such such state but it would mean to stop the flow of prana in the channels of the victim mudra here does not specifically mean a hand gesture but it can be a sign of

 Recognition for the yoginis but most importantly it is a seal mudra so really something impressed on the victim or rather on the um soul of the victims that deprives the victim of will flying disappearing and reappearing invisibility climbing huge trees changing shape all this serves to find and approach the victims yogis also have the knowledge of time

 And by this means specifically the time of death of the victim and they have ability to enter the body of the of another this is called paradigm provisional we can ask again for whom this is this text there are two schlokas that actually say that this is a practice specifically for women a liquor flesh and blood all that by a woman

 Or even a man purusho piva using the video accomplishing elections will be extracted suddenly listen to goddess of great intelligence i will tell you that knowledge it is particularly for women not in them and for men who are connected to so what exactly is being extracted here the basic substances are called dragyas these drivers can be from eight kinds of animals

 And dravia is extracted from animals interestingly bring the cities of transforming a yogurt into a different kind of supernatural being for example by i don't know eating a dog she could transform herself into erections so i would give such example but there are some precise letters of this but dravia should be preferably from humans dravia we would imagine that it is

 Something liquid but here not specifically so it can include various body substances and also skin for example and bone so not specifically liquid top of the top of these drawings is extraction of the soul or life of the victim it's called jiva karshana interestingly we do not have any description of yogini actually doing these extractions

 In centro said baba or jayadratha so these are all prescriptions sort of whereas general interpretation like nothing nothing really happens at the level that um this yogini who found such a great tradition extracted on such a date from such a such a person such drive as nothing of this kind what we have is actually prescriptive stuff and it is mostly addressing male

 Practitioner so we are told multiple times that the drug is extracted and by the male practitioners and offered to yoginis and various goddesses make all the supernatural beings very happy so again it is not clear for whom is actually the text um yogini samchara prakaranam has a classification of cds which is totally endemic to this text i could never find

 Anything which would expand it anyhow in the other text so if you know about something that looks close to this please let me know so the cities of yoginis have two sub separations this can be yogiki and kaliki and the later one are not related to goddess kali but they are related to time so among yogiki city we would have precisely

 The colorful things that noted below blood extraction should be mastered within one year five nectars of panchamrita extraction within six months to one year after blood extraction extruder acid is low acid this actually technical term meaning that they are related to eight kind of animals and modifying yogini's form into animals or into other supernatural

 Beings so these are six months to one year and then extraction of the soul or life of a victim should be mastered within 12 years so as you see it is quite quite some time to master this yoga of yogin is according to this text however kali ki cd is something special so this uh describing this kaliki city the text

 Says that there are some months in indian month in indian year linked with particular nakshatras and moon phases when this series can be achieved easier as far as i interpret this text in this yoga of the yoginis we would have various terms from classical yoga that you might know reinterpreted in order to feedback to this one

 Vampiric practice so nadi would mean a channel but not not just either pingala and sushumna but a multitude of channels these are related to the openings of the body some of them and through them the yoginis can enter the body of the victim chakra here would be not uh swatistana muladhara in the this sort of chakras chakra here rather means some sort of

 Visualized lotus on the petals of which the channels of victim are arranged in a particular way so it is internal and external path are totally merged together so chidra is a whole literal meaning is this and this would mean an opening in the body of the victim which can be any for example organs of

 Senses are considered to be the doors through which yoginis can enter and also in some texts navel can be a place of entry shadow it is not a physical shadow of the person but by this is meant subtle body rather so um in jaidra tayamawa all beings regardless of do they practice yoga not have a number of bodies

 The next one after stu la sharira the physical one is sushma sharira and the synonymous is chaya and by actually affecting this subtle body uh yogini or sadaka can have influence on the physical body of the victim finally we have term parakai pravesha in with various synonyms means the entry into the body of another there are some passages which absolutely fascinating

 That i would like to to read aloud with you it's my translation and it's definitely not perfect so i hope to find more material such as this to be able to understand better what is going on so uh here we have a practice which would use chair or subtle body of the victim the intelligent one should recite 100 times the name of the victim sadhya then he

 Will suddenly see the subtle body chaya of the victim pashu station there he should at night cut the chair by means of a sharp weapon while reciting the video then the victim will fall wherever stationed so basically affecting the subtle bodies for the victim kills so the stool sharira as well here we have a practice which combines knowing time

 And the channels the past is known in the navel the present in the heart the lord of yoga of the yoga at the end of the aisle eyes end of the eyes i don't know where it is but probably behind the eyes will see everything everywhere by this order the 24 nadis are separated by three and become thousands or beautiful there are 24

 There are 72 thousands of them the principle three nadis are endowed with the that do all by them yoginis resorting to the path of yoga yoginio yogamagaga perform the deeds so you see here the reuse of well-known yogi concepts in relation to the urban new related practices as time control paraka prevention when the master of mantras while

 Stationed in his own body makes in so he's stationed in his own body and he makes within his own bodies there is some sort of space which is connected to the past and he makes the sound of that and this sound is called swara so i prefer to call it syllable here he makes it resort to future it's again it was in his own body then having blocked all nudges in himself

 He should enter the body of another para puran vrajet having joined the future in the body of the other with a syllable swar of the past in himself he will make it one and then he can accomplish all desired so let us jump to actually symbolic passage for upper stage of yogini is actually interaction

 Between the yogini or sadaka and the victim so who are the victims jadrata says in this particular part that no female can be a victim and if somebody sacrifice is a girl it will destroy the city victim pashu cannot be one who just dies by himself or by herself which is impossible victims should have particular body features so there are various signs of

 Recognition of the victim which are both physical and also the signs that it can be only seen in a yogic state yogiana victims who should be younger and have good health the time of death of victim should be normal so basically yoginis or sadikas cannot kill anyone who is not to die by himself within next six months so the

 Time of death can be known by the practices given in this part six months before even one year before in some cases the victim should be charmed only by one's own mantras then there is a note that the victims should not be killed by arms in this part but they should die by yogic death with chronic and this would crunchy so basically um something that would make

 Him them go up would crumb should be prolonged by yoginio sadaka and it is not because the text is sort of shy of describing various hard practices is not shy it describes how to kill animals people in great details and throw throughout its four shortcuts but here precisely we have good grant

 And most important all these practices are done not because sadaka or yogini they want it but it is done on the order of shiva and not otherwise so as a mark of the second stage of the yogini practice we would have human sacrifice that would afford the power of light and this would mark realism the second stage so we are now on the top of the green

 Part here again let us get to some well-known text which is outside of the domain of the text of the initiated so now we are going to address the chronicle of the kings of kashmir the rajatarangini well-known passage which we can now interpret differently there is a king passed 63 years and 13 days as ruler of the earth then a certain sorceress yogeshwari and

 Her name is bhatta and actually bhatt has mentioned intel trusted bhava 16 and i think she is even assigned to lose kashmir at least to himachal religion so mahatma by name having assumed the appearance of a lovely woman approached the king one evening losing his sense over her various captivating words he joyfully accepted an invitation to view the wondrous of

 Your sacrificial feast then when in the morning the sovereign came to that place followed by his hundred sons and grandsons she made of him a sacrificial offering to the circle of goddesses to this day there is seen on the rook the double impression of peonies showing where on attaining by that supernatural power she has risen to the sky

 So we can reinterpret with the material we have now that the yogini is called bhatta saw that the king has particular body signs or she saw him when she was indiana state so she decided to charm him as he would fit as a victim for her sacrifice she sacrificed him and on the spot she obtains the supernatural power another such example uh occurs in the text that we addressed

 Already today sagara book three chapter six versus from one hundred forty one hundred twelve here the context is that a girl she sees suddenly her companion fly up in the sky and she wants to have the same capacities and her companions who are all females they explained to her that this as a magic power is a witch's spell

 And they are due to eating human flesh and our teaching this is a brahman woman and a word in sanskrit is actually brahmani known by the name of colorado brahmani he is interesting because we would uh the fact that she belongs to a brahmin caste makes little sense here but probably um she would belong to abraham brahmi clan rather as a result in

 Threats under the ball 16. so the author like they've had access to some material that was only for initiating however what becomes in 11th century when um was reducted is it is like as if the tradition is already dead and all these tantric elements are used as a sort of spicy decoration of a narrative so what happens here when my companion

 Said this to me i being desirous of acquiring the power of a woman that can fly in the air so hatchery but afraid of eating human flesh was for a time in a state of hesitation then eager to possess a power i said to those friends of mine caused me also to be instructed in this science and immediately they went and brought in accordance with my request

 Colorado who was a repulsive appearance and here we have actually an initiation procedure which is very close to what is described as variance in generation when i fell at her feet after biting and worshiping in nature she made me take off my clothes and perform standing in a circle mandalay a horrible ceremony in honor of shiva in his terrific form

 They worshipping bhairava together after that she had sprinkled me with water gave me various spells known to her mantra nijan interestingly the word nija in tantric context means one of the higher yogic bodies so here this is this would means just she gave you one of your own mantras and human flesh to it that has been offered in sacrifice to god

 So after i had it in men's flesh mahamsa so this is technical term throughout under assad bhava and jadha tayamala and have received the various spells i immediately flew up naked i was into the heaven with my friends here you see one of the rare images representing such things it is not coming from an indian sort of hindu painting but this is a painting from agbar court where katasari sagara was translated

 On the top you see various flying beings which many are represented as male and down in the left bottom left corner you see the women eating the pieces of human flesh so let us come back to the question of male versus a female so yoginis are represented in this texture as both examples and means for the male sadhakas to reach their cds the only thing that yoginis um actually

 Care about in the church the part of the generation that we're discussing is to obtain the substances coming from the subtle genome partial from a human being who is reborn seven times with a set of particular conditions it is like as if yogis would mind their own business and they would not care in their normal state about sadhakas at all whatsoever but sadaka would need yoginis in order

 To progress and his progress is measured by the kinds of yoginis he can encounter so having said all this let us come to the question of ontological reality so first of all i will say why i think that all this should be considered as internal practice so what we're talking about is yogic visionary states that are available only after full opening of the central

 Channel and kundalini waking so it's really not for everyday normal human beings normal beings would not be able to see the urines then the cruel terms that we discover throughout the tantras can be reinterpreted into something extremely positive thanks to the terminology provided for the initiation called diksha and he actually there is essential

 Similarity between guru entering the body of disciple extracting the soul bringing to his own body setting the disciple very high up on the ladder of the tatwas and when disciple reaches a high state actually guru gives back the soul to the disciple the difference was a yogini is a minor so yoginis enters the body goes to the heart extracts the soul

 Brings it to her own body and she just does not give it back so each aspect of the practice has also a double meaning internal and external and it can be extremely confusing for example we had this already with tantra said baba in kubjica that the lowly tree is actually a central channel so practice near a lonely tree practice near your central channel somewhere

 Texts are written by men and for male practitioner so could all these representations of yoginis be just a male projection i would love to hear your opinion on this find then the tradition can be considered probably safely dead by the 11th century and becomes rather an anecdote or spicy decoration in already in katasari sagara however coloratory in catastrophe sagara has a

 Pure feminine lineage of disciples then in the tantra itself the transmission of power does not go through the texts written by men but through spontaneous visions that can be available to anyone all while by partaking magical substances as my final note i would like to present the following so here we have a 19th century account which is second

 Hand account by um major generals lemon who met met a friend somewhere near raipur and his friend tells him a story that happened that the man went to a market and a woman there was selling sugarcane so a man wanted to buy one but she asked double price so the man got angry and he grasped one part of the sugarcane and she grasped another then what happens another official

 Arrives and he sees the whole thing and he says to the man surprise to release this sugar cane and the man get gets angry and refuses and tries to argue and official without any further conversation cuts this sugar cane into two and blood pours from both parts of it and you can see the rest so the fact was that the woman was a sorceress of the

 Very worst kind and was actually drawing the blood from the man through the king to feed the abominable devil from whom she derives from the testable powers so let me finish at this note thank you very much for your attention thank you very much indeed olga that was uh masterful i mean the fact that you were working from just these two very difficult texts you've really presented us with a

 A wonderful wonderful overview of the whole yoga tradition i feel i understand it a whole lot better than i did before because it's always so complicated so it was a wonderfully clear presentation thank you so much um very much i have various questions are there also quite a lot on the slider i mean we're all i hope you're okay to go on for five or ten minutes of questions are you because we normally

 Finish around about now but you okay keep going for a bit for some questions um olga could i ask you to stop your screen chair as well please sure sure thank you so we can see you yes um i've already i've got lots of questions but i'll i'll start with just one actually one quite specific one um which is why i wasn't quite clear why you think that there's a a gap a

 Break between the traditions you're talking about and the qatar sarat sagara in that which was written in the 11th century because the the jayadratha yamalev we think is ninth or tenth century yeah so it's quite a not that much time between them so just running on what grounds you you think now yeah well you see if we take george yama as the videos are still taking very seriously so you cannot

 Pronounce some syllables so you cannot give a video to somebody and actually what somadeva does he mentions the names of the videos in the text for non-initiative but it seems like he had access to this because he uh he mentions actually kalasamharshan nvidia in his writing interesting oh yes you know i remember that now yeah because i mean i translated bits for it in fact

 It's an unpublished translation the third volume i would have done had that passage with the entrails being sucked out and i noticed that tawny didn't translate gudena there was a rather nasty aspect of that exactly mild translation and interestingly and i mean this was found by alexis andrews there is like a parallel story reusing the same elements uh written by jimmy andres in the text

 Also huge one called bright catamary and there is a parallel passage also on this like ducking extracting entrails okay interesting um and so it's sort of related sort of you know if we're trying to answer relate the text to what's going on on the ground uh as it were and this actually links up there's one one of the questions sort of links into

 This but i'm wondering what the relationship is between the traditions you think in the tantrash bhabha and then the ratha yarmula to the yogini temples that we find on the ground and i think maybe i've just asked someone's question i'm afraid well maybe we could go to ian alexander because he's phrased he's put a different spin on it one of the one of the questions out there it would be possible to go to him please

 Um yes i was wondering um if there was any connection with the various 64 yogini temples that are dotted around india quite a lot of them are circular and hypothermial they're open to the sky so perhaps they let flying yuginis come in and commune with the practitioners but it's very unclear what they were doing i noticed you mentioned a horrible circular

 Ritual so i wonder if there's any connection it is very possible i mean at least who analyzed the yogini temple she mentions this circle of temples as perceived by locals as some horrible places but we have no proofs about it um if i may continue a little bit on this um i think uh yogini temples they were

 Actually built when this tradition from the tradition of the initiated and secret one so something practiced internally for oneself for incremental ground at home but totally secret became the tradition of the king so i think it happens around um probably 9th to 10th century at the final stage of the reduction of shatsa has rasamita this is where within

 The kubricka cycle after mullah attacks there is a hazard which reuses the whole mullah but adds a lot of more material and so if i believe this is was the earliest text where the yoginis are described as having physical forms to be actually worshipped as such so it would be like a manual to make statues okay so you think so that by the time

 That the the temples appear that they've become a more sort of uh cleaned up cult perhaps and more in the domain of of the royal patronage okay great thank you now next on the list we've got lubamir andrajka has a question you can go to him please yes sir good evening many things for you fascinating uh lecture that was really uh amazing but i i would like to ask you

 Hundreds of questions but for now just one technical one you mentioned that in the tantrasad bhava the yoginis extract panchamrta these five nectars from the male practitioner and as you know we have various sets of five nectars in various tantric works and i wonder whether tantra sat baba specifies what these five nectars

 Are so is it is it specified in this text or it's just a general term so i would have to check the exact recipe but if you like i could get back to you later on i think the best study on this is the note 69 yes that's that's the famous sloth okay thank you yeah okay thanks um so we have a few more questions they're all anonymous so i

 Need to read them out but i'm just going to jump in actually i'm afraid i'm going to use my chairs privilege once again and another sort of general point that you made is that you thought that all the techs are compo well there's only the two that you're really talking about but you think that they're composed in north india and i'm and but you mentioned the sort of relationship

 For example with the the kubji kamata feeding into the yarmulle and we'd be pretty confident that the kojica mata was composing so i'm just wondering what what on what grounds you you place them in the middle so it is just because i have only uh either kashmiri mentions in such text says tantra loka oni police manuscripts i cannot touch so far anything from south

 India but i think there is a scholar i think mikhail karachinski or something like this working on uh grammar traditions touching probably yogini traditions and kerala okay so there's a possibility maybe they yes there might be already i think in some of some articles of alexis anderson's it was a suggestion that

 Probably it is coming from karnataka at some point because also uh there are some china texts mentioning extreme tantric practices such as striker and this text are dated to 11th to 12th century something like this definitely totally unexplored region okay so we go to the one so the first of the anonymous questions we've got here is uh are you able to explain why it should

 Be seven lifetimes in order for a yoga knee to become siddha to become perfect oh yogini can probably advance quicker especially if she uses the kaliki points in calendar but somehow seven lives is a very important number in the whole set of traditions probably still coming from the vedas

 Because this explanation i could find that um the karmic traces they have influence on this present life through seven previous lives so this was sort of the most coherent explanation and actually some of the signs of recognition of the being of the sapta general passion so the being who is reborn seven times to be sacrificed is the fact that he has seven shadows

 Which means seven subtle bodies he has traces of all those bodies hanging around okay thanks yeah that the the notion of seven yeah your seven birds is very common isn't it even today yes people talking about in hindi uh okay there's a very general question might be rather difficult do these texts represent a way to come to terms with the horrors of the world i mean do you i guess the question is

 Asking for some sort of psychological function of these whole world i believe that there is a very much prominent use of subversion of the horror so you go to cremation ground you do the stuff which you don't generally do then you get into some sort of particular state the earth starts trembling as there is like

 Rumbling noise around one clear sounds like somebody speaking and actually this marks that the practitioner would enter into some particular psychological state right and then the eugenies appear and then something great happens to him so out of fear appears the beauty if you like so there is this subversion all the time but the horror is sort of

 Necessary to have the bigger jump right so it's not not a question of overcoming it's rather embracing it and yeah um another one well i think you kind of this question came in about halfway through and then you sort of answered it but i'll read it anyway when the yoginis kill their victims do you have any knowledge of lord yama being

 I better say annoyed with them for interfering with his work of timing people's death as you said later on you pointed out how yogany should only er the time of death is known yeah exactly well i think in puranas in some earlier pranas for example i think it was brahma purana there is a notice on dakinis is actually the original

 Servants of the lord of death and they described as having animal heads and they're holding dundas and say torture the sinners in hell so this probably is very early descriptions of what will become yogurt okay so they're working with yama to something yeah sort of yes he's not going to get on order of shiva so they cannot do it just by themselves okay

 [Music] this is a rather technical question can you provide a source or reference for the corresponding months in the indian lunar calendar that enhance certain cities is that mentioned in the text yes it mentions there are precise dates yes because it's always dark of the moon isn't it the dark of the moon is generally the best time but then there are particular months as well are

 There but you're not going to tell us the person can contact me we can discuss all right you're reminding me of the discussion we had before as well you were saying that perhaps after your lecture people will be less uh keen to call themselves yoginis certainly if i meet anyone who's seen who's witnessed your lecture and then introduces himself as a yoga in the i'll be quite scared

 Um okay we've got ali alex alexander fadayev i may have pronounced that wrongly he's got a question so if we could go to him please can we go to him um yeah okay uh hi olga thank you for a great presentation i just wanted uh some um quick question to qualify so we're talking about android yeah you describe

 These three levels of practices practices with your guinea your guineas doing yoga on top yeah and also you mentioned that this is uh so that they practice sort of uh yoga is similar to patanjali yoga and they kind of are born with it on this so does it mean that they have they are born with cities or does it imply some sort of ashtanga

 Practice they are doing oh no precisely this higher yoginis um not doing any practice so they're born perfect and they're born perfect because they use it's technical terms a taste charo charo is transformative substance here can be of various kinds while being inside of the womb of their mom actually

 So this is actually consuming the magical stuff while being unborn or while your mom is pregnant with you so this is a state where they obtain cities in this text i know i wonder that that made me wonder about you know the the meaning of yoga in this context yoga and yoga because sometimes yoga means more like what we would say is magic or something rather than

 Yes yes so perhaps this early understanding of yogani is simply that possessing yoga in the sense of you know supernatural power exactly it would mean rather like a procedure to do something right more general terms and linking to the absolute here okay we've only got a well we'll give you two more minutes and i think we've got a couple of

 Couple of questions uh anonymous one does the text give any concrete benefits for transforming into the mentioned demigods yakshas or does it assume this to be known it's very difficult one and quite fascinating also so there is a chapter in jaidra tayamawa which actually like as if written from the point of view overreactions and the practitioner is supposed to want to become

 Rakshasa it's fascinating well throughout the generational practitioner wants to become ketteri or yogini so ketu is and things like this but there is one chapter where one should really desire to obtain a lower state of supernatural interest yeah that's so okay and we've got let's see we've got one more um actually we've got two more but uh so

 Maybe a quick one this one is this practice believed to exist anywhere anymore very difficult to say i think large parts of these practices were incorporated in tantric buddhism and yeah there are still some references that pills including the substances made of shru are still being distributed so maybe in tibet uh yeah maybe so

 The sort of the latest reference i have to such practices is 1962. okay so it's quite true uh because they keep coming in i keep thinking we're with you hopefully you're very good at answering questions quickly so uh maybe we can try we've got certainly two more can a practitioner of a particular type of sadhana see yoginis who are related to a

 Different mandala that's very technical question uh well um there is no such case described from memory somehow they are not classified in this relation according to the mandalas so mandalas would be a particular structure related to a particular deity so each mandala would be linked to a particular particular video right so technically from my point of view it would be quite

 Impossible to see the deity of another mandala if you are not doing the video of that right but it is very important for practitioner to see the yogini of his own clan so the male practitioners they also have some sort of clan or particular relation to one of the clans of these seven matrices and this is defined at the initiation okay great uh is this the concept of yogany we have

 Until the night tradition had female yoganese that made practice not not a very clear question but i think the question is maybe whether these yo this concept of yogany is similar to the the human practitioners in the north some pradaya if i've got that right well i think maybe can reply at my place better um i i'm not sure i don't i'm afraid

 That question hasn't it's not very clear so maybe whoever was asking it could email you directly or something to us so now we have got the final question uh are there detailed descriptions of lower yoginis in these texts uh yes there are so how to recognize them and they're really precise so a woman should have hair like this and teeth like this

 And wrinkles in form of treatment for example and things like this and she would wear rather black clothes or red clothes and you would find your either listening to war stories or going to cremation ground so there are multiple ways it would be but you can recognize them yes yeah and then you quickly cross to the other side of the road okay well thank you very much that's

 Amazing and you're you're the depth of your knowledge you know the as i said the presentation was fantastic incredibly uh clear and comprehensive and then you know your depth of knowledge about the subject is is amazing and as you revealed in the questions thank you so much thank you very much you're very kind to me i'm just trying to present a really complicated messy things with i know

 Whenever i read any of those bits of those texts i i straight away i'm like this is just too too much but you know now i will return with more confidence i think when i look at those classes let's translate some tantric stuff together be good fun okay great well thanks so much um i'll say goodbye i think i'll hand

 Back to theo for the sort of final final goodbye

Okay so hello everybody and thank you very much for coming along to this which is the third in our series of online lectures for the South Center VOB studies hi my name is Martha I'm the project coordinator for the center and tonight we're going to be hearing from dr. Finney and garetty of Brown University and on on the subject of um before the very sound a little bit more open and I just want to because I think

 We probably have some people who are new to the center just explain a little bit more about us and what we do and so so us is one of the few places to have an MA in traditions of yoga and meditation we also have the hot yoga project there so there's lots of going on in the area of scholarship around yoga and so our job as the center is to kind of help disseminate that research but also sharing the research of others as well so we've been running live events and

 Also a summer school for some time obviously have had to change all of that in the light of what's happened recently so today very pleased to be welcoming dr. Garrity and he is a historian of Indian religions focusing to keep on sound and mantra and especially on for which he has a book coming out soon which is very much looking forward to he his research combines work on pre-modern texts but also ethnographic research fieldwork in contemporary India so today

 He gained his PhD in South Asian Studies from Harvard University was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University Institute of sacred music and is currently visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Brown where he teaches courses on mantra yoga ritual and the senses and so I will now hand over to think and let him tell you a bit more about what he's going to be saying ok thanks so much Martha and it's great to see all of you signing on greetings

 From Somerville Massachusetts outside of Boston or thank goodness it's a sunny day today and just I really want to express my appreciation to this so a center of yoga studies the amazing work they do the people instructors and students and scholars that are affiliated with that and to Martha Henson and Ruth West to be in particular for the logistics and this invitation and for Jim Melanson the director and his leadership I don't know

 About you I hope everyone's healthy I am and I've never valued my scholarly practice as much as I do right now in these kind of times of madness and suffering and ennui so I'm really grateful to be thoroughly absorbed in something project like this like my current book project on ohm and looking forward to talking to you a little bit about writing home so without further ado let me share my powerpoint and I'll begin my remarks on writing the sacred

 Syllable the history of home in script and image now as all of you know the sacred syllable ohm is a sound right that is to say it's a Sanskrit mantra that millions of people chant and meditate on every day but ohm is also a visual or graphic sign most prominently written like this and the history of ohm as a sound stretches back some 3,000 years to the earliest Indian texts and ritual traditions but it's written forms are much more recent and as I work on my

 Book project on the history of ohm I found that everyone always asks me the same question they want to know where does this written sign or glyph as I'm going to refer to today come from and I'd even be tempted to say that the glyph has become better known worldwide in some respects than the sound it represents right through tattoos t-shirts and other kinds of visual culture and so the written symbol has become an icon in its own right

 Representing Hinduism Indian religions yoga meditation Eastern spirituality so this evening I'd like to begin my remarks with a deceptively simple question and that is why is ohm in modern day vinegary script written like this right as you can see on the screen with a loop or a little kind of stroke on the right hand side this is distinctive no other word in Sanskrit follows precisely this graphic pattern of representing a similar sound

 And some scholars and practitioners have explained this famous ohm glyph by noting that the sound ohm can be separated into constituent phonemes right Constituent sounds and many of you may be familiar with this sonic analysis of ohm because it follows sanskrit rules of Sunday or euphonic combination that the sound o if you had a break in two parts is made up of an O and an O and then finishes with a mine the case of ohm on your lips or a nasal right oh

 Right you can kind of slow it down and say it out loud yourself you're all muted so feel free to try write it those together combine to form this sound so the thinking goes that the glyph for ohm may have followed a similar pattern right and that you would see for example this Dave and auguri signed for a on the left then a David I agree sign for who then a ma or a kind of tender Bindu right the the dot and moon that represents a nasalized mmm sound all

 Somehow combined into this composite glyph that we know so well right thus forming a distinctive symbol now I'm quite skeptical of this explanation for reasons that should become clear as I take you through the historical record but to begin let me just cover some facts of writing home in Devanagari and other modern indian scripts on a very basic level explaining the graphic form of ohm should be simple right

 We would expect ohm to follow the norms of sanskrit orthography right the conventions of writing the language and so this slide illustrates the orthography of ohm in modern Devanagari script and according to these conventions we would expect the sound ohm to be written with an initial low character so for any students of Sanskrit or readers of Sanskrit that may be familiar to you on the left that posts that oh character that represents

 An initial Oh sound then combined with a short mm or ma right so in the second example that's represented by an oak character combined with the MA and then Fe Rama line that line that takes off the short that's part of all automatically part of all signs and the Sanskrit syllabary and changes it to ma so you just get home right that's how you would write it if you were just using the basic principles of orthography in your Sanskrit 101 class

 Right the oh you write them up we also have other possibilities right because sometimes that must sound in when you use home in certain mantras and context is not a full ma but brother kind of shortened nasal labial like the Una's Farah representing here with the dots you'd get an O sound plus a dot right ohm or a slightly more nasal sound or a different way of representing the exact same sound is with the Chandra Bindu right and so that's the O character with

 The tender Bindu and so these is what this is this is how we would expect to see it written widely right and yet as I've mentioned already this most prominent daven agra glyph for ohm combines that familiar initial sound with the chunder Bindu but in this distinctive and unusual way now Dave & algorri is not the only Indian script used to write Sanskrit and so the Devanagari ohm is just one among many glyphs for the syllable in India's

 Modern regional scripts and here you have a slide with nine contemporary examples in the top row starting on the Left we have an ohm and sharra to script from Kashmir we have a Jane ohm which we might associate with the kind of poem of Jainism Gujarat and Rajasthan we have home in Malayalam script from Kerala then the middle row we have ohm and a Bangla script from Bengal that familiar Dave and auguri ohm associated with northern India the Kannada are Telugu

 Ohm from Karnataka and Telangana and now in the lower row we have a Tibetan Buddhist ohm and a Sikh a comb car symbol and then finally the Tamil ohm right on the lower right and if you know anything about these other languages you'll recognize that all of these glyphs you know in spite of their differences follow the same orthographic principles that I just outlined a character for an initial o sound joined with a character for a nasalized or

 Shortened M sent right oh and right and so leaving aside some quirks and peculiarities and some stylizations and kind of graphic design elements we can see here that we write ohm and modern Indian scripts following the same basic principles we used to write any other sound or word in Sanskrit and yet the status of ohm as a sacred syllable definitely sets it apart right chances are you wouldn't show up to a lecture for writing you know any

 Other random necessarily write something about home and special the ohm glyph is stylized in ways that normal words are not and even people who do not read Sanskrit may still recognized so in this respect ohm is not like other writing in Sanskrit right and this is the aspect of it that makes it a visual symbol or an icon and the syllables iconic status becomes obvious if we look at some 20th century Hindu posters of gods and ohm which my

 Colleague Richard Davis has shared with me let me show these to you here we see Shiva and ohm and I just love this poster I could just look at it for four hours so many great details but among those is the way the kind of God Shiva and his kind of ascetic guys it's sitting cross-legged and a lotus and that's framed by an ohm sign made up of snakes right and I just draw your attention to this chunder Bindu which is formed by this

 Cute little green serpent here we also have Krishna or Madhava with his partner Radha together and a kind of sharing an amorous moment in the night sky in a gnome where the chunder Bindo kind of doubles as an actual moon in this visual landscape and then we have Rama and Sita seated in so images like this from the 20th century remind us that the visual history of ohm is not just a matter of writing it's also a matter of iconography and so the point I'm trying

 To make is that the visual history unfolds between and in the interplay between these two domains writing and art of course other domains like religion and ritual are also crucial right and yoga and I'll come back to those aspects later to study written homes though we need a pig Rafi and paleography the study of inscriptions manuscripts and the development of scripts over time study iconographic ohms we depend on our

 History now surprisingly these disciplines have produced very little work on visual history and so my talk today and my current research aims to fill this gap I'm gonna survey some previous scholarship on the topic from the last hundred or so years and then offer my own visual history of the sacred syllable and by way of background it's going to be helpful to know some facts about the ritual use of ohm as a mantra as a Sanskrit syllable or formula

 Used in chanting and meditation ohm is first attested in the Vedas where it is considered the essence of sacred speech Vedic texts were composed orally by Brahmin priests in the early first millennium before the Common Era well before the advent of writing in South Asia and so the point I'd like to emphasize here is that own begins its career as a strictly sonic phenomena chanted in Vedic sacrifices nevertheless conventions of chanting Vedic ohm will

 Come to influence the syllables later graphic development so let's think about some of these chanting conventions in the first place ohm often introduces other mantras as in this Vedic utterance ohm would move us pod on earth atmosphere heaven and some of you may recognize this as a prelude to the Gayatri mantra that's where many people encounter in mantra practice in the modern day and so this general practice of using the syllable to begin

 Not just this mantra but various mantras innovative tradition informs the somewhat later but still ancient custom of using home to introduce and conclude Vedic recitation as a whole right if I'm going to sit down and chant a Vedic text I need to begin it with ohm so according to the law of Manu a classical texts on Dharma from the early centuries of the Common Era quote at the beginning and at the end of Vedic recitation the student should

 Always recite the syllable ohm if it is not recited at the beginning the Veda slips away if it is not recited at the end the Veda wastes away and that's from Patrick olive ELLs translation right so this kind of codifies this already long-standing practice of using ohm - auspiciously signal the beginning of recitation right in the same era ohm also is attested as the opening of a familiar devotional formulas ohm namaha plus the name of a deity right so this

 Is the namaha or nummis that you hear in namaste right Oh Maj or phrase to you and so examples of this would be on the most on namasivaya right Oh Maj - Shiva or ohm the mo not Ayodhya um homage to not Ayane or efficient it so with this in mind for the next couple of minutes let's see how previous scholars have traced ohms early history as a written sign the oldest clear examples of writing in India are the inscribed

 Edicts of the Maori and emperor Ashoka dating from around the 3rd century before the Common Era and most of these are Procrit inscriptions in the oldest Indian scripts called Brahmi in 1877 the Orientalist Alexander Cunningham noted the unusual juxtaposition of two characters a swastika and the Brahmi sign for ma on the rock edict at Geauga da in erisa and you can see that here on this slide you'll you'll know somewhat larger than

 The rest of the text this kind of curved swastika like form and then this other form separated from it which is a circle with a little Halfmoon on it that represents or was thought to represent a must sound and looks a lot like the MA in bra me so Cunningham suggested that the combination of swastika plus ma together framing the inscribed text might represent own and I've blown these up on the side of the slide here as you can see better what I'm talking about

 Pursuing the same idea a few decades later HK Deb observed that the swastika is composed of nothing but two Brahmi O's crossing each other so here are some images from Deb's article and let me pause here to explain the sign that's labeled with in number one is the Brahmi sign for O for an initial oh right so if we were to find the representation of a word beginning with O in the brahmic corpus it would begin with this sign this vertical line with two little kind

 Of capitals and going opposite directions right so basically Cunningham and then Deb's idea ingenious and a bit creative was that if you combined that sign with number two which is an inversion of it and kind of superimpose them on top of each other you would get two Brahmi O's together for this long o sound right such as these kind of swastika like forms represented in 3/4 and then slightly curved in the particularly

 Edict we're talking about in five and six and then so the thinking goes you would combine that with the Bromley sign for MA and you'd have home right this extra long home to explain the necessity of using two O's right because usually don't see home written that way Deb referred to the specialized Vedic technique of lengthening home and recitation and this is the recently called the Pranava where you at the of a mantra at home and like that Oh mmm

 So there's this kind of resonant performative emphasis but this argument really fails to to convince me for one thing the edict we're looking at is only is the only instance of this symbol and the entire ashokan corpus so the question remains wide doesn't it appear at other sites and next it's doubtful to me that ohm the essence of the oral vedic corpus right this is a corpus that was meant to be chanted it doubtful that ohm would be used to begin this written

 Text about the affairs of state and then it seems even less likely that Ashoka would have used ohm in a lengthened form that's primarily used in Vedic sacrificed rights at the time it's a highly technical esoteric form of oh and then finally there are no parallels for writing home in the way that you would have to write it to read the jogo to eat it in that respect with an O here and a way far over there right that just doesn't show up and in fact later

 Scholars of the Shogun corpus have argued that given the placement and larger size of those characters the swastika and them are pretty likely to have been graffiti that were added to this inscription much later right so this kind of interpretation of those signs as ohm has been pretty well discredited so what do we learn from this well if if Brahma inscriptions which are the earliest known Indian writing do not attest the sacred

 Syllable then what are the oldest inscribed ohms answering this definitively is gonna require a lot of digging right and I welcome you to send me along anything you find I'd be grateful we basically have to look through tens of thousands of classical inscriptions right to find that kind of the oldest one but in the meantime lucky for us there's a bit of a shortcut we can use paleography right the study of scripts and how they develop over time

 In order to kind of predict or hypothesize what the earliest ohms might look like in Brahmi derived scripts and I'd remind you here that all indian scripts currently in use are based on Brahmi so the slide I'm sharing right now shows the development paleographic Lee of the character for an initial Oh sound on the left we see that familiar Abra mio from Ashoka's time a vertical line with corners on the top and bottom and then as we move across in

 Time it changes so by the second or third century of the Common Era the kind of next two or three signs the corners of that Brahmi o start to soften and form something like a backwards s and then by the 6th to 7th century the Oh sound starts to look a lot like our modern numeral 3 right and incidentally starts to resemble something like the way we write ohm and modern scripts and so using paleography to kind of hypothesize this and predict this we can

 Guess that the oldest ohms when we find them should look something like these later O'Shea's right along with the diacritic mark of some kind to indicate the nasal or the short month and miracles of linguistic science we get some confirmation of this in a Sanskrit text of Buddhist Tantra from the 7th century cache of manuscripts found in gilgit and to date this is the oldest own glyph that I have been able to find in Indian material culture in manuscript

 Or inscription and this interestingly appears in a mantra right introducing the famous Buddhist mantra om mani padme hum and looking at the slide you can see it at the top this folio the manuscript towards the right where it introduces the manuscript and then I've blown it up again below that to the right and then included a much larger effect simile in my own hand of this all right so around 600 of the Common Era that's the oldest material

 Culture example of own that I've been able to find it has that characteristic 3 shape that we were predicting that is an initial Oh in this period plus a diacritic dot to represent nasalization and then some kind of line below right we can't really tell exactly what's going on but that's the basic way we describe the describes the form and again I would be happy if someone found an earlier example right this this is research that's ongoing so

 In your reading in your own exploring if you do find examples please share them with me if we move on to the 9th and 10th centuries in Nepal Dominic Goodall has alerted me to this home from a manuscript of the oldest surviving Shiva Tantra Denise Fossett Optus Amita and as you can see here the this is two different instances from Goodall's apparatus on this text and actually three representations of repetitions of ohm in under a here right and it you can

 See here that it has that familiar o character but instead of a dot right like at under Bindu it has a mini ma this is a ma in the orthography of this Sanskrit text and then a line of Irama line under it to make that much into mm so we have ohm so a different form than we saw in the Buddhist Tantra but nevertheless representing a kind of consistent application of orthographic principles and by the end of the first millennium in the Common Era ohm is

 Showing up in more and more inscriptions so in this 12th century inscription from Bihar we have a similar shape but with the moon and dot on top that gender bindu representing the nasal and if you're interested in seeing these in context on the slides you can always look at the beginning of the inscription which is where these ohms are positioned right although I'd blown them up for convenience on the side and so here as in many of the examples we're going to

 Look at home introduced as a mantra which Banerjee has transcribed as ohm ohm namo not ini a homage to it Narayan ah now this repetition of ohms that Banerjee reads here I'm gonna return to that issue later right so we'll bracket that as a South Indian parallel consider this somewhat earlier 9th century inscription from Tamil Nadu in the grunta script so this rubbing is a bit hard to make out but again you can

 See in the upper left at the beginning of the inscription this home sign and Holtz transcribed this as a mantra in praise of Shiva ohm namah Shivaya and although the shape is markedly different from the North Indian examples we looked at right the idea is still the same an initial character here in Tamil Grantha script that's combined with a special sound denoting the must sound and here this you can really see the close relation of this form of grunta to

 Brahmi right because it looks a lot like the brow Mima we're looking at before so these examples show that the oldest written ohms introduced mantras in manuscripts and inscriptions as we would expect and that the various shapes of ohm depend on regional orthographic conventions to put it more simply scribes in this period wrote the earliest ohms no differently from how they wrote other words so keep that in mind as we perceived through some more

 Examples but and there's always a kind of but in scholarship right there's some disagreement about how to read these inscriptions so from the Gupta period forward it's customary to begin inscriptions and I'm going back to my sharing here with a curved symbol of some kind so this 5th century quite early this this Buddhist inscription and Sanskrit pros offers a an example and I blown it up here you would almost miss

 It if you're just looking at the the rubbing itself it's just this teeny little curve at the very beginning of the description which has a little y at the top reading this curved stroke as ohm jf fleet maintained in 1888 that the syllable is quote represented by a symbol not by letters that is fleet suggests that unlike other words which are written with script and using fixed conventions ohm is a visual symbol unto itself and he read this amna mahmoud on

 A book of a toe so I'm introducing a mantra in praise of the Buddha we can see find lots of variants of a curved symbol like this including a spirals opening to various sides or squiggles or lines with the hook on top here a few collected by bulls in a 1947 article and many other European Orientalists followed fleet it was quite influential in transcribing all of these spirals as ohm now I want to be clear I disagree with this reading I don't think that the

 Spirals and curls no matter what their shape represents ohm at all let's take a closer look it turns out that the Orientalists starting with fleet had based their interpretations on an earlier authority al biruni who's a Muslim scholar from Central Asia who wrote about India and science and culture and religion in his travelogues from the 10th century and he had this to say about ohm let me quote Albinoni writes the hindus begin their

 Books with ohm the word of creation as we muslims begin them with in the name of god the figure of the word ohm is like this and in the Albertina manuscripts there's a drawing of some kind of spiral such as a rosette represented here this figure does not consist of letters it is simply an image invented to represent this word which people use believing that it will bring them a blessing and meaning thereby a

 Confession of the unity of God so this writing very clearly shows that al-biruni to thought that ohm had its own special symbol its own special sign and that this sign or symbol was a spiral so to test this let's examine some of the inscriptions that were known in Algodones time and in the centuries that follow beginning an inscription with a spiral or curl or hook of some kind was a widespread convention in north indian inscriptions of the early

 Medieval period so in this ninth ninth century CE II Sanskrit inscription from Maharashtra a spiral begins the first line and HULC transcribes that spiral as ohm and with good reason right the symbol precedes a mantra nama vision of a homage to Vishnu and so given what we know about mantras and ohm it would appear to make a lot of sense to start an inscription with a formula just like that ohm nama vision of a or take the 7th century stone inscription from Uttar

 Pradesh which starts with a curl slightly different shape but also in this case followed by namaha the word for homage right and Buehler surmises because it appears is the first term spiral before namaha that this cur that you must represent own an examples like this can be multiplied many hundreds of times over and it leads to the readings that I shared earlier with you in those earlier slides what people read two ohm's in a row right and I'll show you

 Some more examples like that so following the Orientalist consensus many indologists today endorsed this spiral as ohm interpretation but I have my doubts and that's because as I flipped through plates and inscriptions and look at them carefully I keep finding spirals curls and crooks juxtaposed with actual legible ohms in early not a script as in this example right so consider this 10th century inscription also from with the Pradesh which opens with a spiral you

 See it here right at the beautifully reproduced here and but then is followed by a legible own right written as we would expect in this script and keel horn transcribes this influenced by the kind of orientalist consensus of the time as home spiral home script nama sivaya so these double repetition of ohm before this mantra but let's pause to think about that that reading assumes that ohm is repeated twice in the same inscription in the hand of the same

 Scribe as far as we know first with the spiral and then was script to me it just doesn't seem likely that two different signs right next to each other would both signify home nor is there much precedent in mantra culture to have a formula that begins with two ohms in a row right ohm ohm usually the mantra only has 100 namah shivaya and we can you know adding to our skepticism we'd note that markedly different curly shapes have been read as ohm so this

 11th century inscription on the stone once again from what the pradesh features a right turning crook right before the opening of the mantra so a very different jade and yet kyo horn reads this one the same way om namah Shivaya right and then this 11th century Banaras copperplate same thing it opens with a different shape and s shape in this in this instance but it prompts a similar reading of ohm and so Bueller reads this

 Ohm ohm namah Shivaya and finally although it's a bit damaged you can still make out in the upper left here this elaborate design that consisting of curls and a circle followed by a legible own right here at the start of this 12th century stone inscription from Matata and so Buehler transcribes this as a formula venerating Ganapathy so he transcribes it as ohm ohm ganapataye namaha right and i tried to reproduce

 This as best I could it's this kind of hodgepodge of curls and dots on the side followed by a legible ohm right this kind of three shaped with a dot on it and I could give you dozens more examples like these almost every inscription I found that opens with ohm plus a mantra has some curly shape at the beginning but sometimes the curls and spirals also open inscriptions without home and without Hindu mantras and this detail is significant because

 It shows that curls and spirals are not necessarily part of mantra culture as ohm most demonstrable is and we also find curly shapes opening Buddhist and Jain inscriptions sometimes with mantras in Procrit and sometimes without but the what the fact remains that since al Barone's time many scholars have continued to interpret all of these signs alike as ohm notwithstanding the diversity of shapes and contexts but already in 1924 a Bengali

 Scholar named nan the about the Chablis had contested this prevailing view starting in the first centuries of the Common Era Hindu Buddhist and Jain inscriptions alike often use another word the word CID them meaning success in Sanskrit and Procrit as an opening benediction for manuscripts and inscriptions and but the shali argued that the spiral oyd symbol that we're seeing everywhere stands not for ohm but for this word Sydenham so let me show

 You some examples of Siddim and the argument he was making in this slide we have a very early second century inscription from Matata which has an instance of Siddim inscribed in this case using characters right and it's this Jain inscription so this is the word Sid them as it's written in this jain inscription in the second century Common Era and the basic idea which has been fleshed out by paleography since but the shali is

 Predicated on the fact that scribes often used Mangala symbols write abstract science to convey auspiciousness at the beginning of their work and what scholars have hypothesized is that over time the script used to represent Sydenham morphed into an actual symbol that was conventionally used by scribes and took the shapes of various curls and stylized spirals such as the ones collected here by but acharya and a 2000

 Article so how did this happen right how if this is true how do we go from a word that's written or inscribed Sid them right with with letters and characters to scribal symbol that's used widely the answer may lie in manuscripts culture and in this scribal custom of beginning writings with inscribed prayers for success to mark these auspicious beginnings the scribes fornum nted and stylized their work according to to a pig rufus wrote and

 Sander scribes across south asia embellished the end of the word sit them until over time it had gradually morphed into such a Mangala symbol and as it's an example of this let's look at a buddhist sanskrit fragment from the turin basin in the 6th century we'll reproduced by rote and this shows a rendering of the word Sydenham see that to begin the text and here you have a Roman transcription and I've also blown it up here at the bottom but the reason

 This particular specimen is so intriguing is because according to Roth and I find this quite convincing it has even though it's the words to them using script it has signs of scribal stylisation that point to its eventual development into a spiral like symbol and this takes place around the dot representing a short muff the dot and the line and you can see here that that line has been curved around the dot so it says sid them write that last sound

 Mmm you the line which to communicate that sound you'd only need a brief line under the dot or even just the dot itself but nevertheless the scribe kind of extends the line and hooks it around the dot so according to wrote and sunder the final result of this scribal development would have been a completely stylized curl or spiral representing the words to them with the word itself fading from use and about the shyly in his work

 Showed that the spiral symbol only appears in texts where the word situm has been omitted right they never appear together in the same text that is he argued that the symbol clearly substitutes for the verbal formula and he also pointed out as we've already seen that in later inscriptions the spiral symbol typically precedes a legible own thus suggesting that the symbol and ohm could not be one in the same and this slide

 Shows us Sydenham next to illegible and you can notice that the ohm is also somewhat stylized and closely resembles the curly shape of the Sydenham so you can see here in the upper left this example of the Sydenham followed by an ohm which has a particularly long tail and then I wanted to kind of conclude this little excursus and consid them by talking about a very a fascinating side note but the shali being from bengal gives ethnographic evidence from scribal

 Culture in his time in modern bengal and he reports that bengali scribes use this symbol this curl and they call it the unjú symbol and they use it as a way to represent and then invoke a blessing as they begin to write so in this this slide here which is a unicode representation of the unjú of what he's referring to and this is a stroke that is made a little curl or spiral that's made by the scribe as they begin to write write whatever text but and they

 Call it the ng but it's pronounced out loud as they're writing it's almost a kind of a ritualized beginning to writing it's pronounced outloud Sydenham or close synonym severe us to let there be success let this undertaking have success and i should also say that i was not able to locate any bengali manuscripts that have instances of this to kind of confirm what about Shelly's talking about but I've seen it discussed online and various kind of typeface and

 Font forums and so that's where I got this but if anyone listening has an example of a Bengali manyu manuscript with the ng I would be really happy to see that so since bought the charlize times some of the most eminent a pig Rufus of the 20th century have accepted this argument that includes DCCC car and Richard Solomon both of whom have affirmed that the spiral ed symbol represents Sydenham oh and yet and this is a reason why I'm

 Kind of really driving this point home very few scholars working in and ology or yoga studies or Sanskrit studies have paid much attention to this little corner of scholarship and I continue to get into debates with colleagues and indologists who want to read the spiral as ohm right in spite of this impressive work showing another alternative interpretation so let me just say this very plainly right for the record I really think that we should abandon the

 Outmoded interpretation of spirals and curls as own there's very little evidence to sustain such an interpretation and as you've just seen I think there's a mountain of evidence against it all right so in the time I have left I'm about two-thirds through my remarks here let me just kind of try to orient us more broadly in ohms visual history how do these arcane materials and debates really relate to homes visual history as a written sign and

 Icon I promise they do and let me explain why first they underline the importance of orthography right the conventions for using script to encode words in the earliest phases of syllables visual history next the evidence shows that ohms glyph only appears within written text to introduce mantras and yet these mantras are rarely embedded in a clear ritual context they're just kind of written as to begin the undertaking and then that's it it's

 Political discourse so even though we know from other texts that the sacred syllable was widely chanted contemplated and worshiped in vedic yogic and tantric traditions all through this time up through the end of the first millennium of the Common Era nevertheless no material evidence that I've seen survives to show how Indian religious practitioners in that time period employed visual media with ohm as the central symbol right so what I'm saying

 Is that in the material culture of religious life during this first millennium of the Common Era when Tantra and early ever get going but we just don't have any freestanding iconic ohms that that I've seen right and so I want to underline this point because nowadays were accustomed to seeing home in mandalas in altars and temples and paintings posters tattoos t-shirts and that may lead us to assume that the sacred syllable on its own

 Right not just as a part of a mantra part of its Christian but on its own has always been the focus of visual representation in other words that it's always been an icon throughout Indian religious history but so far I've just found very little evidence to support this for this really pivotal millennium of that I'm talking about and so iconographic uses of the sacred syllable as in this temple implement at a South Indian temple to Murugan are

 Much more recent than we might expect and a shout-out to Buddha Ian Larios for this beautiful image so to me this this framing prompts a key question when and in what circumstances does the own glyph become a visual symbol on its own terms and icon not just part of a Mont or a part a little part of an inscription but the main event right from what I can tell of the art historical record it seems that number one this transition happened several centuries after the

 Syllables appearance in manuscripts and inscriptions and - that it took place in the context of ton trick ritual culture so I would argue that the written signed for ohm that we've seen in so many inscriptions and manuscripts becomes an icon through rituals especially in rituals that use script a broad movement of Tantra cessation influences Indian ritual and religion starting in the early medieval period and this trend transcends religious boundaries

 Encompassing Hindu Buddhist and Jain traditions alike Tantra emphasizes ritual mantra visualization embodiment and the use of script and new ways and a central aim of tantric traditions is for the practitioner to chant and then internalize mantras which are conceived as deities in Sonic form the most powerful tantric mantras are mono syllables called seed syllables or B Jack shadows and tantric practice

 Honours throughout medieval Asia embraced home as a tantric bija you might consider this example in Tibetan lanza script from a cave mural and I want to just thank Rob Lin Roth from making his collection available via art store it's a great database for images and this is just a beautiful seed syllable representation of ohm one of the oldest that I've seen and it has a kind of flaming gender Bindu on top or we could compare a somewhat later home

 Seed syllable from 17th century Japan in Sydenham calligraphy and this is from Van Gogh looks buck on the Sydenham script so tantric traditions adopted new media and ritual techniques write and script is one of these new media the use of script to write and visually represent mantras and to use them in ritual was a crucial innovation and I'm not speaking here again of simply writing mantras down and manuscripts like you just say the mantra write it

 Down to record it no I mean the use of script as a central feature of ritual practice and in some cases as many of you must be aware this involves eventually making material objects and diagrams with script forms of ohm write amulets mandalas Yantra is like this one and so forth and then it also involves the kind of virtual and imaginative use of script to internalize a deities power the practitioner has to visualize mantras in graphic form and install them

 On the subtle energy centers of the yogic body in other words the practitioner uses the script forms of mantras not all by physically writing and drawing them but by meditating on them so in the time we have left let's look at a few examples to see how all of this could have emerged to the emergence of ohm iconography and I'll focus on three brief case studies from Hindu Buddhist and Jain Tantra in Hindu Tantra Kashmiri

 Shiva speculations about ohm emphasized the drop or point Bindu that's the subtle sound of the nasalized mm at the end of Ohm's uh pterence and the Bindu is regarded as the syllables potent sonic essence and yet the importance of Bindu is based not only on the syllables sound right but on its written form the Bindu takes its name from the diacritic point that we've been focusing on that graphically represents this nasalized home in

 Manuscripts and inscriptions and according to andre purdue the visual representation of this sound as a point Bindu ensured that it became the pointed focus if you will of speculation in other words the dot itself attracts the eye and makes it useful for meditation and visualization so let me give an example of this from a Shiva text thus what turned the switch and the Tantra codify is a contemplative practice with ohm that involves sound script and the

 Subtle energies of the yogic body this is the sonic ascent or achada of ohm from the base of the spine to the crown of the head the aim is to harness ohms power by chanting it picturing it and then embodying it completely chanting ohm in a quiet voice the practitioner visualizes the graphic form of the syllable and the text presents this as the metaphysical inscription of the mantra on the subtle body in other words it's not writing using a stylus right or

 Writing using a paintbrush it's writing using the mind right using script to kind of metaphysically imagine and inscribe this mantra on the subtle body in addition to the audible sound as he chants it the practitioner Tunes in to the inaudible subtle sound levels of ohm this begins with the nasal resonance of Bindu right as as the sound finishes followed by eight progressively more subtle levels of vibration that end in silence and so reading an account of

 This based on Purdue's work it occurs to me that this intricate technique shows how the ritualized integration of sounds script and meditation might have shaped homes visual history here we don't have actual objects and material culture to attest Ohm's ritual use as an icon but we have texts like this which Enda that codify techniques involving script and the imagination and so as we grapple with ohms visual history I would suggest that we include examples of

 Visualization like this one ritual informs iconography if we shift gears and turn to Central Asian Buddhist Tantra we find actual material specimens of this phenomenon of ohms ritual iconography gurgly he thus reproduces a 10th century Dharan eprint from them long and this is a woodblock that depicts avila koteshwara within a circle of sanskrit texts in the system script right so you can see the Bodhisattva depicted here and in this circle of text

 Now a Dada me is a type of Vajrayana Buddhist formula these are mantras that can be recited out loud but also inscribed and worn as ambulance and in this specimen for different seed syllables are depicted at the four corners of the central design one two three four and you see one of them you may be able to make out is an ohm and in the upper left and he does reads the curl that begins the text look at this spiral that should look familiar because

 I've been ranting about spirals for the last half an hour he just reads that curl as Sydenham right correctly in my view and distinguishing it from the obviously legible ohms that are repeated throughout so here's another home that's inserted in the text of itself then on the left side we have Chinese text that explains the effects of wearing this particular formula as an amulet and it reads those who wear and keep it will

 Have their sins destroyed good fortune will arise for them and they are to become a Buddha in this way the inscription of ohm contributes to a material wearable instrument of tantric practice and as my final example Ellen Goff's research on Jane Tantra provides another perspective on the interplay of ritual and iconography the distinctive shape of the genome comes from the combination of an O sound plus a nasalized ma image ina

 Nagar e script right as kind of Chandra Bindu type shape the basic form is not that far off from the numeral three shape that we've seen in so many other examples according to goth a 12th century Jain text tells how to construct a ritual diagram with ohm that's called the Siddha chakra the wheel of the liberated soul and a much later manuscript contains an actual image of this to the chakra as codified

 By that earlier text so an actual image of the wheel and we basically have a ring of Jane ohm so you can see them here in the centre surrounding the Procrit mantra for the liberated soul awed hum and then in this rather abstract design of a lotus each of the petals they're eight of them surrounding contains a written ohm the base of which is extended as a spiral three times around the central glyph right so we see spirals again following us as we go

 Through this visual history and according to this jain tax med in the city the chakra eradicate scar ma and leads to liberation Goff also writes about how other Jain materials refer to a multicolored icon of Jane ohm with each of the five Supreme Lords placed on five different colors of the home icon white yellow red blue and black and here as an early modern image which a Carina vessels Madison shared with me of a similar um although green seems to be

 Substituted for white and by the 12th century you can look at Hema Tundras yoga Shastra which codifies meditation on the Supreme Lords and describes using a multicolored ohm just like this one and the aim of this practice according to that yoga sastra is to destroy karma and achieve liberation so summing up Goff says that among James at least quote the sounding of ohm is far less important than focusing one's mind on a physical representation of it now by the

 Early modern period other traditions also developed their own distinctive iconographies a noteworthy trend is painting of Hindu gods in home right we saw some posters of that in the 20th century when I began but let's look at a few earlier examples here's a Hindu home from Jammu 18th century from the Berkeley Art Museum and a bobbed album top pointed this out to me and this has various deities arrayed in different positions throughout the icon here's a

 Bihari version of a similar thing with different kind of divine tableaus inserted into this Hindu home icon or consider this gorgeous gilt home from the Yale University Art Gallery which is just a beautiful specimen like full of a lot of amazing designs and even kind of set interestingly in an Islamic it arch right so it has this kind of architectural feature that my latest is associated with Mughal painting this

 Happens to resemble specimens from illuminated manuscripts of the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata like this one from the University of Edinburgh or this one with which hamsa Stanton shared with me which is a an ohm with God's embedded in sharra descript on a long mantra manuscript of stotras and epic from the collection of mcgill university okay so let me wrap this up now by jumping back to the present day and to this this question that I began with the most

 Iconic representation of ohm the one we're all probably most familiar with the one we see across India and all over the world is this symbol in modern-day vinegar tea and I began my talk today by suggesting that this glyph deviates a bit from how we would expect home to be written in modern day vinegary specifically it has this stubborn little tail or hook or spiral or loop on its right side as I mentioned the rules for modern Naga orthography represent oh and

 A nasal differently and indeed you can see in 19th century print culture that this isn't just a kind of abstract idea it's a way that it was represented in some publications at the time this one by an Orientalist author this is the frontispiece from Moore's Hindu Pantheon which depicts a ganesha morty with an ohm in this kind of standard orthographic representation with a no sound and then i'm Spada dot and I'd like to thank Holly Schaeffer for

 Sharing this with me or this came from a Soyuz affiliate daniel simpson this front discoverer of an edition of Vivekananda's raja yoga which similarly has an iconic represented in this kind of standard orthographic way in the 1920s so again in face of these kind of examples and everything I've explained where does this kind of familiar own simple come from the one of the distinctive hook or tail on the right

 One scholar Gadre has tried to explain this shape right that we know so well as a graphic transformation of upanishadic speculations on own such as the famous bow and arrow simile from the Mundaka Upanishad and so Gadre argues that with passages like that in mind scribes or artists along the way transform this kind of bow and arrow shape into the own glyph that we see all around us or in the case of this one from the potato upon Ishod

 There's a simile about a fire drill so you know a stick and a block of wood that are used to kindle fire and Vedic sacrifice and ohm is related to that simile and so gadre kind of ingeniously imagines this graphic development from an actual fire drill to a more kind of abstract fire drill that's eventually turned on its side and comes to look like home here right alongside these kind of explanations we can include the so-called Phonographic explanation that

 I mentioned earlier and according to a set but um Pele who writes about this you would derive this de vinegary glyph from the from these constituent phonemes that are the subject of all kind of speculation and they punish odds and other texts plus blue plus ma transformed it under Bindu gives you this composite home right and so I love to think with these ideas I love these ideas they're great food for thought but they I really don't buy them right

 Because creative explanations like this violate the pattern that we've kind of you know painstakingly established and going through these inscriptions we're a written or inscribed home is formed according to basic orthographic principles not according to the fancies or hermeneutics speculations of an artist or ritualists necessarily but according to kind of the normal paleographic development of script and so I sincerely doubt that the Devanagari

 Ohm symbol was based on upanishadic speculations or the artificial combination of other characters instead I'm looking for an explanation that's based on paleography and so let me offer my best guess of what that might be in medieval Naga scripts a three shape as such as we've seen with a tail or a hook as in this example on the left represents the diphthong out in Sanskrit but as pundit ogia explained way back in 1918 there is evidence that in some

 Forms of regional Naga T this sign right the three with the hook on it represented an O instead and so oda conjectures that at the end of the 11th century AD in Naga T writings for o the old form of owl was used right so al goes to O and a new character was developed in its stead for Al this one on the right okay so this is a very kind of arcane detail of paleography and a pig Rafi that this pundit points out and another scholar

 Named Kapadia observes that this phenomenon might explain where this kind of distinctive glyph for ohm comes from and I want to again acknowledge Ellen goth who brought these writings and scholarship to to my attention so in a nutshell something changed in scribal culture so that in certain forms of Nagi and O is represented in this way right and more research needs to be done in order to confirm this but if the transposition of the old naga d al 4o

 Was a broader trend across medieval India then we could surmise that inscribed homes with this distinctive shape led to the eventual emergence of iconic ohms with such a form as in this beautiful poster by Ravi Varma of a young Krishna and so if we can find more examples in the historical record then we'll be a lot closer to explaining the peculiarities of the modern Devanagari ohm symbol that is so widespread in yoga

 Culture today so thanks so much for your attention that was a long argument dense packed with information I hope you have some time to stick around for discussion I'm happy to take as many questions as you have fantastic thank you so much and we do have some questions I mean we've got we've got a few there and feel free to add add add more anyone's to go to the slide oh and so first one is from Nikolas if there's a Nikolas on our

 Participant list so Ruth who's existing is going to unmeet you if you'll want to ask your question directly and ask everyone to keep their questions brief we've only got another five minutes or so that we could possibly stick around a little bit more so Rita you could unmute Nikolas hello hi dr. Garrity that was a very interesting talk and I would like to ask you if you have any if you have knowledge of the some early instances of the usage of a visual symbol um as a

 Reference to settle down to meditation to subtle sound and meditation yeah yeah so the the earliest examples that I know about come in various tantric texts right and I've enumerated just a few examples of that in my case studies but there my sense is that they're fairly widespread the switch on the Tantra is a great example of an earlier one but I think especially in the scholarship of under padieu you can find exam of this because in his article the oral

 And the written he really aggressively pursues this idea that the use of script as a new medium in Tantra was kind of incorporated into ritual so I won't offer any specific citations other the ones that I gave in my talk but I would point you to that vast corpus of medieval Tantra and encourage you to do some digging I'm sure you'll find a lot more examples like this all right thank you and we have a question from gumiho yes hello

 Thank you myself for turning on my microphone take thank you that oh we've lost you I think I want to try again I do have it here written Martha maybe you can read sorry about that and so she's asking are there any written accounts of home in Persian and Arabic texts yeah yeah that's a that is a that's an aspect of this that I wasn't able to include in this lecture just for I've already taken up too much of your time but it's a really important

 Question Supriya Gandhi at Yale University has done a lot of work Dara Shikoh right the kind of mughal prince who have esoteric interests in Sufism Hinduism and mantra culture and meditation and has given at least one talk on the importance of home in Darko's writing and Millia right so I can refer you to that talk and so Priya's work and also just signal that this is something that I plan to come back to in the book so there will be

 References to that forthcoming but the short answer is it was disseminated widely the kind of pre-modern South Asian world and that includes in Islamic and Sufi context thanks for that question and I said sorry I should add to that one of supriya's great examples of this is that that that ohm written like with a three with some diacritic dots on it and one modern printing of Jericho's work is turned on its side and the editor notes

 That it represents the sign for Allah so I'm not an expert in Arabic or Persian but there's there's there's definitely some record of kind of esoteric visual transference between ohm and Islamic culture thank you and request me to ask you a question thanks Martha and thanks fin that was a really fascinating talk I wondered if there was any evidence from there the grammarians than from the via current tradition of orthographic accounts of or didn't they just speak

 About more philosophic aspects yeah yeah thanks Ruth that's a really great question because I mean as you know the grammarians you know most famous most famously within the writings that Barta Hadi is it are interested in the transcendence that shove sound right and ohm is sometimes invoked in formulating this doctrine I don't know I haven't dug deeply into the grammarians works to see if there's some confirmation in the text of the orthography I'm pretty sure that

 There are in various commentaries on the Mundaka Upanishad so not quite the world in the sense for marian's but something at least related some accounts of explaining homes constituent phonemes and sound in relation to the way that it's written right but those are details that I'm down and I can't give you a specific information on but I share your interest in this because I think in some ways in the absence of really early examples of material culture like actual

 Inscriptions or paintings or frescoes survived or manuscripts what our best sources are going to be texts that describe the writing of oh right and that and I'm still you know combing through this vast corpus of Sanskrit texts to find more of those great so we have a few other questions anonymous day so I'm not sure who they are and so someone's asking is this broadly to say I think as in is your thesis that evidence for the origins of

 Iconic Margherita nom and likely to be found in tantric scribal culture yes well well-put I should I wish I had put it so pithily we could we could have saved a half an hour of my lecture yeah I I would I would yes so I think the tantric scribal culture is a place that we should really search in greater detail right but I want to be clear that all those scribes were obviously involved in this kind of transmission and creation it's that I see ritual as

 The primary venue for where ohm emerges as an icon right so a scribe is kind of has this kind of artisanal or mechanical function of recording sounds and moans and transferring them into the medium of writing right whatever paper bark whatever it may be but it's in ritual where you elevate a certain sound alone I've taken out of a mantra like poem or like the other beaches that are associated with the chakras and various systems of a subtle body so it's

 Actually in tantric ritual speculation influenced by scribal culture I think that you get this kind of development of this idea of transcendent home that can be represented in script and you know in some of the examples that padieu gives its script that's kind of flaming or illuminated right and actually in a fascinating way that example from that tibetan kata mural give some corroboration of that so I think we'll have one final question here and which I

 May or may not be you know about is what is the earliest representation of arm in Chinese character hmm this is a great question too so I I don't know anything about the Chinese literary culture or writing culture so I will have to kind of defer that to experts and colleagues who know better but an interesting detail of this is that in in tracking down the kind of earliest Buddhist texts to talk about um I I had a conversation with Ron Davidson who who had who's in

 His works suggests that he's found um in Darwin a form in texts that are in Chinese right so that would suggest a kind of pre Tantra core kind of earlier than the Indian tantric evidence we have Chinese manuscripts that are codifying darnay's that include ohm in Chinese characters so if if Ron's hunch is correct then you would probably find that the somewhat ironically that the earliest written representations of ohm are not in an index script at all but in

 Chinese characters so that kind of could end up being a fascinating curiosity of this cultural history okay great well thank you very much and we'll leave it there but I'm just about to allow people to uh meet yourself so if you want to unmute and show your appreciation round of applause or thank you so much it was it was a real pleasure from from my family there thank you thank you and thank you also to Rita's been assisting tonight

 And you know please look out again for this on my youtube channel which should be appearing in a few days as well all of our talks and thank you very much thank you thank you Thank You Martha Thank You Ruth thank you so thank you too so us and real I just want to commend everyone who stuck with me through that hour-long argument I hope you took some nuggets from that that will be useful to you definitely right well I will end the

 Meeting now but thank you thank you all for coming

Thank you very much Theo and thank you very much indeed to Professor Andrea akri for agreeing to talk for us um Professor Aki akrie his first degree was from the University of Rome last Sapienza and he took an M.A and PhD from Leiden Universe the University of Leiden and all his work of course had a focus on South and Southeast Asian studies and particularly the philological approach using Sanskrit and relatively unusually

 In our field old Javanese which has enabled him to produce all kinds of fascinating studies in the discipline and of course religious studies as well since then he's held research and teaching positions in India at Orlando University Singapore Australia and the Netherlands but since 2016 he's been in Paris where he's made sort of the conference which is a tenured professorship in tantric studies can't be many of them around I suppose

 Professor of tantric studies uh in the now I always I find these all very confusing and I won't try to understand it exactly the the divisions of Parisian Academia but in the religious studies section of the eccle practice and he's also um also a member of the efeo the air called Frances extreme Oreo in particular as part of this amazing huge Dharma project which is one of the which is funded by an ERC Synergy Grant

 Uh his research is quite wide-ranging in particular sort of fascinating looks at the the maritime connections of South and South East to Asia uh that it looks at the history and circulation of Shiva and Buddhist tradition tantric traditions in those regions yoga studies Indian philosophy and of course the religious history specifically of Jabba and Bali is published extremely widely I just sort of mention a few highlights of the Department of partanja which I think

 Was a really working PhD thesis which is a shiver scripture from ancient Java there's also recent books on this this kind of Maritime world of interaction between South and Southeast Asia including cultural transfers in early Monsoon age I think that's an edited volume and esoteric Buddhism in medieval Maritime Asia all absolutely fascinating stuff just showing how important it is for understanding the religious traditions

 Of any of these areas to to look at the wider picture and today Professor Akron is going to talk to us about yoga in Javanese and Balinese Shiva and Hindu Traditions so once again thank you very much Andrea and over to you thank you Jim for this most kind introduction I'm going to share my screen I hope you are able to see it very good indeed thank you for inviting me so

 Today I will be talking about yoga in Japanese and Berlin is Shiva and Hindu traditions still a rather esoteric Topic in the sense that not much research has been produced uh to this day but I hope it is becoming increasingly and more and more people is getting involved eventually they will get involved so I will take you you know beyond the borders of of the Indians continent kind of imaginary borders if you ask me across the Indian Ocean

 To this island these two islands Java and Valley so located at the LSA Southeastern corner of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis this trans local transnational trans-regional for me cultural formation of the ancient world where where Sanskrit language was used and where Indian religions Buddhism Hinduism chaivism Etc you know uh developed kind of in parallel with with those uh in their in their Homeland South Asia

 So these are the islands uh very big island of java and just next to it Bali much smaller and so as I said these two islands were part of we can say a Continuum a culture Continuum even though they had their own languages very different you know from Sanskrit still they absorb you know they they Incorporated many many elements of Indie cultures and as you may know nowadays they belong to the nation state of Indonesia and

 Java is uh mostly Islam you know has adopted Islam since the 15th 16th century whereas Bali is still Hindu to these days so basically uh we in historical period from perhaps the 5th or 6th Century ad maybe even much much before there was a transfer of in the elements to these ions and yoga was no exception so we also have yoga traditions in Java and Bali now I will just go through some quickly

 Some art historical evidence and then I will move to discuss the textual sources so one of one interesting uh you know art historical evidence of the existence of yoga is actually found on a Buddhist Monument the borobudur perhaps the single largest Buddhist monument in the world now the late art historian Jan Fontaine described a panel you can find actually hundreds of carved you know releases on

 The monument and one of them was described as maitrea uh you know standing on one leg in a typical yoga fashion okay so according to him actually this passage describes the so-called ekapada bakasana so the the yoga posture where the yoga stands on one leg okay just resembles the Baka is the Heron in Sanskrit so just like the bird basically it's an imitation of the of the posture of a bird named after that

 And so actually this this passage occurs in in a scripture uh the Ganda viewer translated by prajna a monk who traveled from India from Orissa actually to China bringing scriptures within and probably influenced even the the release of the borobudur because this text is very important on the monument and there are not so many other representations of these texts in the in the world so this could be a kind of early you know type of Asana and it's interesting

 That it is indeed mentioned in a Buddhist context rather than a Shiva or Hindu context but in India of course we already find it uh since the in the Mahabharata and at the early early scriptures then we move to a shiver Monument a Chinese Shiva in prambanan in central slightly later the mid of the 9th century and we see that basically Shiva is represented

 Many many times so there are various forms of Shiva manifestations and as you can see Shiva here is prominently represented as a yogi in a kind of yogic posture probably but masana and or is you know manifestations are really represented as if meditating they hold someday they hold rudraksha you know some have closed eyes so it is striking that uh all these representations of Shiva seem to be kind of you know to represent him as a yogi

 So yoga must have been already well known to the local people by the 9th century not only Shiva but also uh human figures are represented uh possibly Rishi I mean they are you know sages or ascetics and as you can see many of them have this yoga patta so it is kind of banned you know that in India is associated with yogins in this case not only we have also some Royal figures for example in borobudur who are depicted with the

 Yoga Pata but it is still striking I think especially because these reliefs are rather early by in by Indian standards or you have uh you know not many of this yoga but represented I think already in the 9th century now we moved to the textual sources and uh you know we can have a look at the at the largest dictionary of all Javanese by zut Mulder published in 82 and we can look for the word yoga and we find many instances of

 This world not only as yoga but also as compounds so compound and compounded form for example yoga vyasa the practice of yoga yogadhara the concentration of the Mind translated by the Mulder yoga the mind or Spirit In Yoga literally knowledge of yoga yoga Karma Etc so this world was very popular you can see that you know it really occurs many times in many different texts as early as the ramayana is ramayana which is the single probably let's say the earliest old

 Germany's texts existing and it will just survive to to our day except for inscriptions indeed so the ramayana kakawi probably 9th century or early 10th Century in the text the word yoga occurs with many different meanings as magical creative power as a psychophysical meditative technique associated with Supernatural powers as a synonym more or less of aestheticism

 Even as a scenery of release or in the context of release Moksha as uh you know in the context of samadhis or this particular uh anger you know or stage of yoga next to the word jata so the repetition of mantras Etc and harana also dharana is one of the yogangas and chitta is very important especially patanjala yoga is actually the higher mind the higher you know psychic

 Aspect of human beings so uh even you know the designation of religious persons Mystics Aesthetics uh called yogins Armani we find many instances of that and uh okay that the actually the highest level of practitioners is called a yogishwara so a leader or a Lord among yogins Yogi ishwara which means that yoga must have had a high position uh in Java so it was very well regarded and yogis were at a very high status

 Now I would like to to look at some interesting passages in the sargas the cantos 24 and 25 of the old Germany's ramayana which mention you know some practices that bizarre practices actually it's the allegorical passage where animals are described as if they were yogins as if they were different categories of religious people of ascetics and in this case we have um you know the Flying Fox which is a

 Kind of big bat that you can find in Java and the rest of the archipelago and these flying foxes are described as hanging down from a high tree okay so you have to imagine uh upside down basically that's what they do and it is possible that these are again the Hume the animal counterparts of human Aesthetics carrying out those practices and again we have another uh passage you have actually uh couplets of of stances

 In Saga 24 and 25 we describe the same you know uh animals and Aesthetics again these flying fox wraps them Rob themselves in in Pure or are enrock impurity I wonder whether it's a reference to Ashes to the pashu but you know ashes were considered pure and white Etc and in another passage again uh the it is explicitly say that the Flying Fox follow the observance so evrata a technical term indicating a

 Religious you know practice of hanging down and interestingly we can find this very same this same practice in a much later relief uh I think this is the this must be a 14th century temple in East Java and you clearly see an aesthetic with a characteristic turbine or hairdo uh basically hanging upside down you know and practicing is this form of rata and it seems to have survived I would say up

 To our days uh because we find uh written references to to it this practice is called tapa nalon nalon is the verb form of uh from the word column so in this case the the top are the kind of posterity is practiced as the column and the column is the Flying Fox okay we will find these references in 19 and even early 20th century Javan is literature but even modern folklore so in certain part of java people would immediately understand what the paneling

 Is now uh if you look at the the Indian sources we find actually a similar practice perhaps that very same practice already mentioned at a very early uh stage of of the history of Indian literature for example in the Pali Canon so before our era it is mentioned as the vagulibrata which indeed is is you know uh persist in the same practice of suspending oneself upside down from a

 Tree and uh Jim malinson indeed describes this as possibly uh you know a hata yoga practice in in so far that it is not dissimilar from the viparita karani mudra so it is kind of upside down uh posture so probably again link to this uh to this technique of preservation of the semen due to gravity that basically if you have upside down you cannot lose your semen and rather it goes you know

 Inward now uh we find also other observances there linked to yoga in some sense for instance the acidara vrata or the nice Edge penance which is also found in a number of early Shiva texts for example the Brahma Yamaha and now I would like to talk about these very two important streams of yoga that existed you know across the Indie world and also in Java and Bali the first is

 The shadanga yoga so the yoga of the sixth ancillaries which we find in Shiva about the event texts we also call this tantric yoga and on the other hand the Ashtanga Yoga which is the very popular you know patanjala yoga The Yoga of patanjali and it's some some sometimes referred to as classical yoga so the difference between these two large very important streams of yoga lies in the number of the angas in

 Shadanga R6 and also the the types for instance as you can see in Ashtanga Yoga we have a similar you know the same actually angas except that we do not have Tarka reasoning that is found in shadanga yoga and instead we have Asana so they're kind of physical postures preliminary practices Commandments or moral observances which we also find in shadanga yoga but not counted as angas just as Preparatory practices now the classical yoga is based on this

 Literature the earliest of which is yogasutra with the commentary the bhasha and then a series of commentaries by shankara and Virginia Beach on the other hand the shadanga yoga is found in a very large body of Sanskrit scriptures and not only in Sanskrit for example also Tibetan Buddhists and vaishnava persuasion but it is also found in the puranas in the yoga Punisher Etc so it's basically a

 Typical form of medieval yoga that you find in medieval literature now this type of yoga also exists in Java and in fact we find it in in a type of genre literature referred to as tutu or tatwa which basically is often you know formed by way of Sanskrit verses and prose passages you know Japanese most of the time exegetical so you have sort of commentary or translation of the

 Sanskrit but often many attacks are only composed in all Japanese by the way all Japanese is an Australian language which has a very different grammar from Sanskrit but it contains up to 50 percent of Sanskrit words so it has been really influenced by Sanskrit especially you know as as far as the Lexicon is concerned so this tax reconfigure you know shaiva most of material along localized lines and they are preserved mostly in public

 Manuscripts from the island of Bali just some titles of this of these texts so if I would give you a definition of yoga in these texts it would be that they contain some kind of cosmicization of the body a relationship between the micro and the macro Cosmos the visualization of syllables they dismantras in the body and outside in the cosmos Etc so it is Yoga is almost always found in this text yoga was very important

 Thank you and this tax actually Doctrine is speaking they are most close closer to the genre of literature called seidantica literature so siddanta tantras which have survived in manuscripts from many from Nepal Southern India and which in the medieval period actually they were the the earliest texts of this Shiva sidant mainstream form of soft Tantra we could say from the 6th 7th Century onwards up to 12

 12th century it was really the probably the commonest form of shaivism not only in India but also outside for example in Southeast Asia Mainland and in Southeast Asia and uh it's interesting to see that reference to the shadanga yoga are found in all these this type of old Japanese texts and this is a table where you can see basically a comparison uh I have kind of you know drawn um occurrences from different texts also

 From previous Scholars that already researched uh this this uh you know yoga in Indian text and as you can see the the fourth column there are so many titles of texts these are all mostly Shiva texts and some of them are from java like every hospital Etc now if we move to the right we see that there is a text entitled tatwajiana is the sixth column and it is interesting in so far that it's a no

 Japanese text and we find some sort of hybrid list so no six Angus but seven uh with Asana in the beginning just like you know in patanjala yoga but also Tarka which is not far in patanjala yoga so it strikes me as a kind of you know uh syncretic or middling we have a list of seven angas in in Indian texts also as you can see and usually they also contain Asana for example Etc now if you move to the right we see that

 A yoga sutrin in a classical text contains the Yama niyama Asana and then the other five Angus and the Dharma patanjala so these uh the Dharma patanjala is actually no journalist attacks and it's interesting because it doesn't contain the shadanga yoga which is commonly found in you know in Shiva text both from India and Indonesia but rather ashtang and I will elaborate on that soon I just wanted to give you an idea about how it works in

 Practice uh just a quotation some passages quoted from the Jana sidanta one of these Sanskrit all Javanese tutor texts and you see you have a verse this is actually a very widespread verse found in many sidanta tantras and also other scriptures uh from the English subcontinent in Sanskrit and you see that then there is a commentary in all Japanese and then every anger so every one of these

 Ancillaries are described and commented upon and so it's interesting often to see how the you know the old Germany's commentary uh reinterprets this Angus in a way that is sometimes different than what you find in the you know in the Sanskrit verse and I think there are similar passages in in some siddhantatra so it is interesting to to see really to uh it just definitely suggests that shyvis the most a very you know important the the

 Mainstream religion in Java now I would like to elaborate on the Dharma patanjala um that is a very interesting text in many respects first of all is found on one of the oldest manuscripts from Indonesia uh it is mid 15th century late 15th century and this is actually very early for Indonesian manuscript most of Balinese manuscripts go back to the 19th century some to the 1817 and jovanese manuscripts have basically been

 Destroyed 99 and one percent has survived and they are usually go back to this 15 early 16th century only one copy exists and it's a very uh interesting Treatise from the point of view of Shiva philosophy it has a very fast trick so a very scholarly style and it is basically clearly the I think the the attacks written by a single author or Mastermind as you can see here so the text just I give you a list of the topics discussed

 In this text and as you can see in the lower part of the list there is also a a chapter we can say on yoga it is actually called yoga pada in the text which is interesting because also Indian cidanta Tantra have this portions like janapada of Doctrine and yoga pada charyapada Etc and so it it really contains basically a description of Ashtanga Yoga which is rather unique in in the tutu Shiva literature from java and Bali

 So what the text does is to reconfigure patanjala yoga along to a stick lines so as you may know classical yoga is not tasty the yoga suit really don't give much importance to the figure of ishvara but this being a thoroughly Shiva text so the author wanted to appropriate Ashtanga yoga for some reason and reflection it so as to kind of you know become shyvised for instance samadhi absorption uh is is important in the soteriology of

 The text but the goal is not high value isolation but rather shivasa atmiya which means Unity or identity which she with Shiva which is the one of the possible goal of uh you know shiver schools now um this is interesting so why the author uh you know include chose Ashtanga instead of shadanga yoga well this is maybe I don't know I have actually think that the status of patanjali was on the rise in India after

 The 89th Century we start to find many contaminations so many Shiva scriptures actually adopt Ashtanga Yoga after that period also interesting to mention that for this text The Liberation cannot be achieved through initiation diksha as in the case of the Orthodox but rather through yoga this is very clear there is a purva paksha and uttarapaksha and the the purva paksha actually is uh advocating for diksha and then the

 Siddhanta is that indeed uh diksha is not helpful but rather yoga and this is actually a you can find that in almost all the total texts so we are dealing here with a kind of different form of shaivasidanta which is heavily influenced by yoga soteriology and actually this appropriation is already found in India as I was telling you for example in the puranas and in many tantras especially the rather late ones we really find a kind of increasing

 Influence of patanjala yoga so what did Dharma patanjala does is basically to take only four shlokas four verses in Sanskrit which are clearly based on patanjali yoga Sutra and the Basha as well and that and then add long prose passages which also reflect the yoga sutrabasha but also other commentaries possible this strikes me as a similar to the kitapatangel which is also supposed to be from a versified Sanskrit version and

 Also mix mixes you know different commentaries so these are the the viruses as you can see uh that have a kind of you know corresponding portion in the yoga Sutra in terms of Sutra of course but these are versified sutras of course they are quite corrupt and the result of my inundation restoration is on the left column and these are the all the topics treated

 In the yoga pad so as you can see really the text the yoga Sutra bash or the patanjala yoga shastra if you prefer is followed uh you know from the beginning uh to the end especially the the three chapters the first three chapters and then the the interestingly the final chapter the fourth chapter is not found in the text and uh you know I mean it this probably means that it was not very interesting for the author or more speculatively and daringly you know that

 Perhaps the fourth part as it has been suggested by some Scholars was kind of spurious was added at a later date and this is based on an early version of the Sutra which they didn't have uh the the sport Pad but there is no way to demonstrate it so uh again uh the the text really stresses the importance of samadhi just like the patanjala yoga shastra and again actually links it to the to the to the Lord Shiva okay so to this

 Paramarta supreme reality or Sumo Bono in a shy of a sense so high value is really interpreted you know as a state of Union basically so as a manifestation of the powers of Shiva which means identity uh with this supreme deity foreign so there are interesting passages I think I don't want to now go into them you know that that they are quite striking because they also reflect you know uh sometimes polemics or uh you know passages that are found in Shiva

 Literature from India uh for instance again this kind of you know some Shiva authors mentioned patanjali as a lower form of Revelation uh and they kind of give the the describe the higher status of shadanga yoga and shaiba yoga but here there is really an attempt to merge the two systems somehow yes another passage where somebody is redefined according to atheistic agenda

 Right and so basically the salvific knowledge samyajnana is equated to samadhi and uh you know it's essential for attaining the Supreme pleasure supervisation which is again final liberation and again uh prajna which is also a word found in in yoga classical yoga literature is actually said to be of one level some upada with the Sumo Bono so it means basically the same as Shiva all

 Right so the the conscious The Liberator Consciousness or mind chitta is uh becomes actually to be the same as Shiva not isolated now I will move to to to Bali actually five centuries four five centuries later and talk about a small Treatise a booklet actually uh called ajisankya published in 1947 by Balinese intellectual one of the first books of let's say describing Balinese Hinduism

 And this booklet is interesting because again like the Dharma patanjala it actually you know it is totally shiver you know thoroughly uh taste it but it also adopts Ashtanga Yoga instead of shadanga yoga and this is quite striking especially because you know on the left column you can see all the sources used by the author the knowledge is sources and they are all Shiva texts you know Japanese or Sanskrit and all Japanese that he has used to kind of you know

 Explain uh Shiva Doctrine to the masses this is actually written in a common Balinese but there is one exception it is the yoga Sutra in the Old Dutch spelling you know which turns out to be the kitab yoga Sutra patanjali which is a book um you know uh actually a translation uh into English of Manila budwebeni which is just a kind of misspelling for Manila published in 19 in 1890.

 Then translated into Dutch and then into Javanese okay in an asrama so in a kind of you know religious community in surakarta Central Java all right then again translated into Malay and uh printed and so this booklet reached the author and he liked it he just felt you know it was an authority why I suspect because as you can see on the left side this is the the uh the front matter and the cover of this book in Japanese script and there is the

 Theosophical society stamp there and and so the philosophical Society was actually very influential in those years many intellectual but also you know politicians who are theosophists and somehow I think it contributed to kind of you know uh educate let's say the give an access to the Japanese and the babylonies to Indian philosophy yoga and so this this uh patanjali of course was you know already

 Classical right and so I think the author felt like he needed to upgrade the shadanga yoga I wanted to use the Eightfold yellow and this also continues later there are other books for example this by uh Rishi Ananda kusuma which do exactly the same thing they are based on thorough you know Shiva or Japanese sources but at the same time they also use Ashtanga yoga and in case in this case there is a book Kundalini Yoga by Swami shivananda

 Another of those Indian you know kind of we can say reformers or intellectuals of the 18th Sr 19th century so I think you can you have can you can try to compare these things I think they all suggest that patanjali statues was on the rise and and so strikingly enough you know Indonesian authors both in the 15th century or before and in 1920s Century they decided to adopt you know patanjali as is an authority in terms of yoga

 Now I would like to tell you about yoga in Bali as I said ball is still predominantly Hindu and you know yoga is a common term people have different understandings of it of course I would say that if you talk to practitioners you know educated people their their understanding of yoga as I said before would be mostly in terms of you know visualizations of syllables okay and in this case they're called the dashaksha so the 10 sacred syllables

 Including the five Pancha Brahma mantras or these five names uh the first syllables of the name of Shiva Etc and there is a lot of speculation about the OM also both as a as you know as a akshara so as a script a script and also as a sound um and uh so various mantras and it's basically an emanatory system and this system is really practiced this is very much part of the Balinese way to carry

 Out psychophysical practices to get power you know and to get Liberation even in fact there there is a body of text where this placement of syllables you know in the body is described and there are all sorts of correspondences with micro and macrocosmical realities this is a very tantric you know form of yoga I would say and a very very common uh practice is

 The that of the arabiner the two split in all Japanese why because uh so this practice involves visualization of the you know the body of the yogin uh and uh Fire coming from below you know and the water so rain coming from the top of the head and meeting in between in the heart and producing smoke okay this smoke would be it's a metaphor for for the art man you know for the life principle the spirit and this this practice is can can lead

 To different results it can lead to Rejuvenation Liberation even or death and on the right you see these are illustration by Gusty merdiana Barney's painter and so uh on the right you see also a very popular type of uh you know understanding of yoga in Bali that is the visualization of the syllable om and the various various components uh upside down so coming from the heart and then upside down in the head

 And meeting innocent so I think these are possibly reconfigurations of practices and ideas already found in Indian sources for instance the visualization of the Amrita the nectar as a water vest vessel located inside the skull in the brain and then flowing down and again transformed um into the reverse arm located in the cranial vault in the upper part Etc in

 Various subtle Center reflect possibly you know Yoga practices uh maybe kechari good mudra so it's about really the the production in this cavity behind the the tongue right in the between the nose and the tongue let's say of this America this nectar of immortality there is nothing there's nothing about the the role of the tongue actually uh no actually there is sorry um Dharma patanja there is a very

 Obscure reference to that but it is mostly about visualization you know usually whereas in India is more about turning the tongue backwards to release this nectar and these practices are also connected to boot and should be so to the purification of the elements for example the yogurt has to imagine the body burned and turning into ashes and then you know being washed away so this is another tantric practice of

 The purification of the elements and if you go to battle you will see a kind of you know huge little popular literature for example in this case the Kanda ampal is five mystical siblings that every person is believed to have at least if you have done a certain ritual you know at Birth is an austronesian you know a practice you find it in other parts of Indonesia archipelago but it has been kind of a hybrid you know it has become a hybrid

 In Bali there are some Schreiber elements in it and it is very very popular one of the most you know characteristic really understanding of yoga in Bali is that it involves these four siblings and they're in our body and you can actually you know uh so to speak exploit them to do certain operations to acquire certain powers to purify and even get achieved liberation then uh if we talk about yoga we cannot

 You know uh not mention the the shaiva priests so to speak practitioner called pedanda Shiva they are brahmins basically uh that are they perform every day the Surya sevana this ritual you know Shiva ritual where the performer actually becomes Shiva like in the South Indian version of the of of this of a similar ritual and produces only water that is religion really revolves around holy water for purification and only Shiva of course

 Can produce it so the priests can do this on a daily basis and it has been argued that this these priests are actually yogins you know uh tantric yogis um there is all sorts a lot of vocabulary borrowed from uh yoga text for instance even the practices of pranayama Etc Incorporated in the ritual which is also found in India of course but this is a

 Totally private ritual so it doesn't involve so this priest actually matters the Mantra performed with his eyes closed uh even if there is people around you know they they are not important it's not for this play it's just for himself in order to become Shiva he assumes also yogic posture you know so it really looks like he's meditating actually he's visualizing you know performing visualization and something that's always struck me is

 Really the the fact that you know unlike in India the worship in the temples is not iconic so there are no images of the Gods expect on certain except on certain ritual occasions and so the common people who goes go to Temple they they do worships and Bahia you know worship the gods there is no bhakti or devotion there is actually yoga they are actually performing yoga uh first stage of Asana then pranayama then dhyana you know visualization

 Etc so they're it's something that it's strikingly another striking form of uh ritual yoga we can say rather than you know outer uh devotion or worship of the image of a deity then another very important type of yoga that was common in both ancient Java before the 15th century and Bali later is the so-called UT Grant your subject kranti which is a Sanskrit you know expression meaning the expulsion of violent expulsion of the breath or the

 Life principle from the body actually from the Fontanel the cranial uh the tip of the of the skull okay and this is a a practice already known from Shiva texts even some Buddhist texts actually in India and uh so this practice is is basically important at the time of death it is a very esoteric practice often descriptions are quite obscure I have to say but it really the stress is that the practitioner has to practice it during

 The life to accompany death so when the time comes and it is very important also to know the the kind of you know sign that that is is coming you can actually you know pronounce the right mantras and uh let the soul go out the life principle go out from the from the skull and reach the Shiva you know so the the point is not to be distracted by anything but be just straight like the course of an arrow

 To reach a higher level in any event in a higher level of reincarnation or even liberation so it is often mentioned with this kunch here this secret key uh that you use to open you know and or close actually the apertures uh the holes the bodily orifices and expel the breath to break the cranium or It's associated also with pranayama and it is not only found in this very technical you know religious text but

 Also in cacao and which are you know poems read also by by you know by other members of society not only brahmins or initiates so the the it's a common literary Trope even in you know Bellator so it must have been widespread in ancient Java yeah so we often have this unification of the syllables which represent opposites or water and fire Uma and Shiva pradhana and purusha the two syllables that arose imagine in

 The body to obtain Amrita and so at the time of that they should be kept separated and reversed as the diagram actually the drawing I showed before so that the fire actually moves downwards and water upwards so in that sense you can achieve uh you can die basically in instead of you know rejuvenating and Etc and you can reach from the shivad Vada or Shiva a higher station so it's all about being aware and using

 The right mantras at the time of death and I think that this this practice was so widespread and well known among society that it has even survived in you know modern Balinese ritual uh so Anthropologist Michelle Stephen has written about this about the Balinese spearness so the funerary ritual as some form of ritualized yogic art of dying so originalized good kranti so it's kind of reenactment

 Of the absorption of the cosmic principles you know that may make the shtiva cosmos and in fact the police actually Whispers certain mantras in the eye of the of the deceased which is about to be to be burned and there are all the the characteristic Mantra that we find in the utkranti uh they are found and so it's it seems that Bali has elaborated a post-mortem ritualistic version of this yogic

 Practice for the benefit of the lay people because again this was the very esoteric practice which is nowadays you know I I don't think anybody would be able to do it or maybe very few you know initiate but it's kind of way to also you know uh push a little bit the soul of the disease of the common people in order to help him find a way back to the origin you know back to Shiva or to a higher level of incarnation yet another form of yoga which is found

 In Bali is what we can call sexual yoga so we have uh quite uh you know a few manuals or you know Japanese and Sanskrit sometimes tutor which basically you know describe a form of visualization meditation which has to be done during the the sexual act with the partner you know for example at the angular pravesh indiranishastra so sex is is a religious practice where sexual climate Climax and pleasure and Liberation are you know

 Meditation are Central okay so you always have in in the Bell letter even equals of these practices for example the hero a prince you know gets married so there is the kind of royal wedding in the end becomes a king and Mary's uh his partner and it is called yoga of the bed chamber basically so they they you know the first night of the marriage they have a sexual encounter and they become transfigured so to speak into the primordial couple of Shiva and Uma or

 Kama and ratis for the god of love and his partner or Shiva are the narish so they can come United in one single deity transfigure transfigured human being which is a half male and half female and this idea really seemed to have persisted to have survived among practitioners of modern Japanese mysticism which is basically a there are many schools you know many traditions of Japanese mysticism most of them are Islamic or islamicized but they clearly

 You know preserve many elements of pre-islamic Hindu Lord and they really focus on you know the stress this the path you know to to Perfection is as not as a salivator ascetic but rather as a married householder and so practice certain forms also you know sexual yoga and even there are some transgressive practices found even nowadays you know in on some mountainous areas of java but I don't know if you really have to do

 With yoga but still they they suggest that this understanding of you know the mixture between sex and meditation was very much part of the of the you know uh civilization of java especially and body and well I mean as I speak uh you know nowadays in Bali of course there is a very flourishing you know we can say industry of yoga um but you see this is a translation of the yoga sutras of patanjali so there is

 A kind of continuous you know um influx I would say of again Indian ideas the Balinese of course are looking at India as the source of Hinduism sometimes they forget that their own Hinduism is actually in some case I say provocatively more you know origin I would say than Indian Hinduism because it has preserved very archaic traits you know very archaic doctrines that beliefs Etc that are not found anymore in India because

 They have changed and uh if you go to Ubud I think some of you know that it has become one of the centers you know of transnational contemporary yoga uh but this this you know this this yoga is indeed as you can see probably as you have realized quite different from the understandings of yoga by the Balinese although this kind of modern Coastal yoga is becoming more and more important many Balinese now if you are an early

 Riser around 6 a.m in the public you know places in the Square Sparks they actually do yoga but this is kind of you know modern westernized yoga reintroduced from India rather recently well this was uh all I wanted to share with you and yeah since this is probably esoteric for most of you I'm happy to you know take questions clarify anything that was not clear thank you thank you very much indeed Andrea it's

 Very uh rich and stimulating I have so many questions um but I I um gosh where to start I've written down so I mean the first one I was just wondering with the um with the harm of batangela why the text has that name when the from the synopsis that you gave the yoga section seemed you know just a one part of a much bigger text I wasn't sure about the proportion you know what What proportion of the text it occupies

 So it surprised me that uh the the the text itself should be called part Angela I mean is the main purpose of it to present this this form of yoga and the rest of it is sort of ancillary well it's an interesting question and the answer might be a bit surprising but you know uh probably the yoga pad from a third of the text so it is I would say not the most important you know part the rest is the remain in part is Thoroughly Shiva but I think here there is a

 Conflation that I think the author of the text knew I mean he had the patanjala yoga before his eyes or some other attacks so he had to kind of understanding that patanjali you know was the the author of this text was important for this type of tradition but on the other hand I've seen the patanjala is referring to is also uh the pattern another patangela which is very important in the Shiva tradition of java and Bali and it's probably uh I

 Think Alexis Sanderson was the first to suggest that patangela might be actually a kind of misspelling or corruption or localization of pitanjalam which would be a name of agastya in India you have petab D for example you know the one who drank the ocean and I tend to agree with this interpretation uh because this this patanja is actually the fifth um uh character the fifth you know the

 Member of uh apented which is made by the four gurus of the pashupata Traditions so the name of the four maitri karuna you know Etc which are found in very early Indian in scripture all connected with different streams of pashupatism so this very early atemarga type of shaivism and the fifth is usually La culicia okay but in Java there is no La policea whatsoever is never mentioned in any text but instead we had patanjala and it is

 Interesting LA College it has been suggested that laculation was probably added at a later stage in India Itself by Sam pashupatas so up to the fifth century La Collision was actually not very prominent in iconography for example so it seems that in Java rather you know the the main figure is but is agastya and interestingly um it is the actually the the they are brothers not like in India they are conceived of as brothers and patanjala

 Is the youngest but also the one into which the god Shiva incarnates just like the the episode of Kaya varohana you know in Indian sources so there is this really this Incarnation the basically the Brahmin dies an incarnation of Shiva dies then a funeral is performed is but the corpse is burned Etc and then uh it kind of resuscitates in the form of patanjala and and so I really think that the author here kind of you know he wanted

 To uh and this is all describing the text in the Dharma patanja it's the only text that actually described this episode of the incarnational patanjula so I think we have a conflation there the author definitely knew the patanjali and it played a little bit he wanted to give the Dharma the book or the doctrine of patanjali patangela but actually this patangela was more more familiar to him that is the shaiva Javanese version you know of uh this incarnation of Shiva

 Known as LA College so it's a bit complicated but I hope that gives the idea yeah and a complicated but convincing that yeah that's to to make sense of it because otherwise why why would why would it be such thanks yeah um okay I'm gonna ask a chair's privilege for another question at least maybe maybe more as I say I've got loads um I always want to see you at the at the

 Beginning you identified we saw a picture from the temple in barbador was it of maitreya standing on one leg um yeah and it was identified in in the textual uh what was it in it was um going to review her as perhaps say a yoga posture was identified as a yoga posture and also the top of nylon if I'm pronouncing that correctly this exactly hanging upside down position now I have in recent years I've sort of somewhat changed my position on the

 Origins of yoga and I think a lot of the I think all the distinctive hata Yoga practices are probably new Innovations around the 11th century something like that and that these older techniques and these certainly would be identified and it even says there if it's your translation I'm not sure but it identifies this practice as arduous practices which suggest tap bust and our you know pre-pre 11th century physical practices tend to be some form of of

 Tapas um so I'm wondering if my question is is there any evidence in Java or Bali of any of the more distinctively had to Yoga practices you know balancing postures that can't be held for a long time um these mudra I mean you also showed the catering mode that yeah there did seem to be some crossover there you just suggest that I think was it in the Dharma patanjala there's some mention of

 The tongue being used to access Amrita but I mean that so that that would perhaps be an earlier earlier character technique and sorry I this is a very long question I think hopefully the the gist of it is simple and but connected with it you kindly a few years ago when I was working on an article uh about the the transmission of outer yoga from Buddhism to shinivism in South India and you pointed out this image of matziendra uh from I think it was in in Java on a

 Statue of chamundi that was right um so I'm wondering that might start to encapsulate my question is there any evidence of the slightly later Postmates traditions of goraksha the 84 siddhas uh and any of these balancing postures these more complex yogic arsenas and these yogic mudras yeah well the answer is simple unfortunately not uh I didn't find really

 Much evidence yeah so I think I think it's we are at that period you know late late late stage uh I didn't find so what does that say sorry to interrupt but what does that say about um the time frame of the transmission exactly exactly I mean again I think that these elements must be much earlier and we find many archaic elements so I tend to think that the transmission was

 Early and those elements that were stuck you know they persisted you know across throughout the medieval period and uh even to now is it to another to the present some of them but I didn't see much in terms of really real real Atta yoga like post you know 12th century whatever things uh so I'm not suggesting that I'm suggesting that maybe those similarities are far were found even in other Indian texts in other traditions uh before or

 Maybe something you know it just came arrived in Java and and it was reconfigured changed you know and in now in value we find these practices you know which seem to be kind of related you know but not exactly as the Atta yoga and also the postures you know I I really don't find much evidence in terms of postural yoga uh this is really uh something that yeah it's interesting uh I would say so it seems to have been a different you are developed in a

 Different you know way than in India okay that's also rather supports my theory that these practices were an innovation in India at the beginning of the second Millennium as well for that um there was and so we've got a couple of questions in the slide but I've got one more observation you mentioned the bed chamber yoga and that I seemed to have strong parallels with the um it's Tamil sex I wonder if you've looked at that that's just a suggestion

 Um okay I might be worth having a look in there and finally My Last Quest this is a question is is the top burgundy long still practiced or was it did yes yes uh I have a student of mine from java confirmed that you know some Japanese Mystics you know this kajao and stream actually practice it you know I've never seen myself and I don't know how many people are able to do this or are aware

 But it is found in texting modern Japanese you know it is mentioned and described so it seems to be still alive you know in some parts of java great great thank you I will be following up I will asking you more about that and that again suggests um as you indicated that there are certain more archaic elements of Hindu practice that have persist in in Java that have died out in India as well so that's interesting okay we've got a

 Couple of questions in the slido one from uh Ruth westerby if we go to Ruth please hi thanks ever so much for your presentation um you mentioned in the Dharma patondula the inclusion of embryology and generation and I wondered why you thought that was included in the text and if it had any particular relationship with yoga thanks I see

 I don't think so I mean I don't see a relationship with yoga in that part it is very shiver and the many Shiva texts have because they describe the lower that was you know and the human being the conception uh Etc so that is Thoroughly Shiva it doesn't need to have a relationship with yoga thank you and we have a question from Vic so if we could go to Vic please if

 Um Hello thank you so much for such an interesting um uh presentation is just really um eye-opening um what I can see from um your presentation when you showed some sculptural um images it kind of suggests an aesthetic path of of yoga um and then when you're discussing text there seems to be kind of this sexual yoga which is kind of like a

 Parallel householder path which doesn't necessarily kind of connotate with asceticism as such so I was just wondering does it kind of lean towards a suggestion that yoga reached a kind of a broader spectrum of people rather than just an ascetic path that it kind of could be for yoga for Aesthetics and yoga for like the grahasta the priest for example yes yeah indeed is a fascinating question

 I I'm not sure if I can answer that and give you like you know um the percentage of but it makes sense to me yes I mean uh the tags actually are full of the of tropes of yogins as anesthetics for sure but there is more to this I think these texts were you know after all these texts like the Dharma patanjan Etc were were read and copied and written by brah means householders also you know especially in Bali actually these

 Priests are householders you know they have wives children their wife sometimes can become a priest you know herself and and so uh there is definitely that aspect you know um both in the ancient period I think and in the modern period uh so I can only say both are clearly there but there are these again this sexual yoga you know that are clearly really more they target the householders so it's

 Really clear clear there you know this is does not involve staticism but rather something that you know it's allowed uh you know uh for uh to for householders and uh and so both parts are pressed are found in the sources thank you uh and we've got a question from Erica uh in this slide as we can go to Erica please hi there thank you I'm curious if in The Yoga of dying there are any pastoral or gestural bodily shape indications given

 Or if that's inferred and assumed while breath sort of takes precedence yes I think most of it is assumed uh I mean I think that the basic idea is that you are in padmasana you know so you assume the posture required by pranayama then you do pranayama you know and then you you take that practice to the next level you know and and manipulate those mantras and syllables

 And then you can achieve this kind of yogic dying but it's really these descriptions are very esoteric uh it's really they just stress the fact that the Mind should be very focused you cannot see if you think about you know I don't know uh what you have eaten or I mean you're going to Incarnate as maybe a chicken if you have eaten chicken or you see this kind of things so you really have to keep your mind absolutely uh empty and focus there are metaphors

 For example the metaphor of the Archer you know uh and the arrow which has to be aimed correctly and then uh straight you know released just like the soul the breath is released from the body so this kind of you know descriptions not very much in terms of postures foreign hang on there's an anonymous one so um I shall read that one and that the death practice so this uh what was it called uh reminds me of the follow-up practice

 In Virtual armor do you know if there's been any comparative research yes it's that's very interesting uh I think that I'm not that sure but somebody must have looked at there's a recent article but not enough has been done so it's really would be very interesting I say obviously obviously I don't know but for me uh it's quite it's very possible that this practice was Borrowed by the Buddhists from the shaivas

 And uh you know it kind of developed uh even in Tibet you know in uh Buddhist contexts and I I think there are similar practices even in Japan so in other you know uh religions let's say Buddhist traditions of Asia uh they're probably not the same but still there is this idea of you know uh the good deaths and uh certain practices you know to be done so I think it will be most interesting

 To do a project on this uh put kranti yogic death practices across the unique world yeah yeah thanks um well we've got no more we have got a few more minutes I hope you don't think we've got you for another five minutes I hope that's okay um because I've got well I've got one more question it sort of leads on from that you were talking about the

 Parallels between the different traditions and I was intrigued by what you were saying about the systems of where uh fire so we have fire at the base of the central Channel yeah and then you said water or rain at the top and then they meet in the heart to produce I think once she said smoke and then once you said Amrita now of course this is similar to the the very prevalent yogurt doctrine of fire at the base and Amrita at the top and

 Then normally everything has to be raised to the top rather to the heart although actually perhaps that's echoing some older shiver material but it's also substantially different I think from the normal uh yogic model and that just made me think uh maybe wonder where whether you think that there's a sort of a Southeast Asian substrate whether there's much input into these practices in the same way that people will often say with Tibetan Buddhist practice that

 It's overlaid onto some older tradition that are sometimes identified as burn and so forth can you can you detect any sort of indigenous practices uh within the the text you're looking at yes the medium dollar question I mean uh it's very difficult to establish this I mean in order to establish this one would have to look at you know let's say austronesian uh beliefs you know practices in other areas of the archipelago but we really

 Don't have these kind of things uh a problem I mean those the fascinating aspect of studying these Traditions is that much of this this material you know is is like a a house built with the same bricks that you you find in India but you know they use the same bricks but the result is different the form the shape of the house is different but you can still recognize the elements like a puzzle that kind of you know

 So uh I would say I often tend to where every wherever evidence is lacking which is probably 90 of the time I interpret this as even parallel developments you know uh that look different but you can still see you know the essence that maybe as you said it came from early tax travel tax yeah there is this agreement I mean this kind of ideas in the yogic body or maybe not especially the importance of the fire and the water I mean these

 Are very let's say uh you know part of the daily life in Java and Valley volcanoes you know coming of course from the from below and Rain from above and then meeting in between you see on the earth so why not in the case of the kandam path there I can really see I mean I can I really have a strong evidence that this Gundam path so these five siblings are found uh you know from let's say Sumatra to kimor you know all austronesian societies but then they

 Have been also described in terms of this pancharishi which are the siblings the the children of Shiva you know and the fifth like the fifth of the kandan part is the most important and is the expression of the ego of the eye which is actually Shiva himself so you see you can clearly see that there is a kind of merging of two similar sets of pentas and set of ideas but in this case to be more difficult to really say that there is an indigenous substrate

 Your course thank you but what you say brings very true and thinking about this idea that you mentioned that they're being smoke as well smoke being created which I don't think you get in any yogic text not that I'm aware of but if there's volcanoes and Fire and Rain that's deep exactly the only explanation I can find is I mean one of the possible explanations precisely this kind of natural you know the metaphor for a natural process yeah

 Great well we've got no more questions in the slider and we're up up to our timeline so that that would just I mean I'm going to say thank you very much but then hand over back to you but thanks that's absolutely fascinating such Rich material and yeah really um so productive to look at look at this uh different a different well for me obviously it's a different window onto the Indian traditions but obviously it's a rich and

 Important tradition in itself and

Good evening everyone can can you hear me okay can i come here great um so i'm jim allen the chair of the center for yoga studies and uh i'm really excited this evening to be introducing our speaker who's uh doctor professor i'm not the professor i think now is that right jamal professor jamal james yeah uh congratulations

 Jamal studies the literary history of southern india with particular interests in sanskrit and telugu and his current research looks at intersections between poetics ritual and astrology in the medieval and early deccan and he's currently served i think it's a new shift as assistant professor of south asian studies the department of asian languages and

 Cultures at the university of wisconsin-madison which is somewhere i've always wanted to get to it's a sort of hotbed of south asian studies it must be a great place to to be congratulations um jamal was uh at uc davis before that and before that you're in chicago well that's right for your phd which is supervised by i think we can say our very own uh professor whitney cox who was my

 Predecessor as the sanskrit lecturer at psoas um now i i so i came across jamal's work i guess it must be three or four years ago now i very luckily got sort of early draft or just as you were submitting i think maybe i i squeezed it out of whitney i can't remember but um we're going back so before that when i was um

 Sort of setting up or proposing the hatha yoga project and i got called for an interview in brussels i remember for uh you know it was the kind of last stage to get the grant and the one tricky question that was thrown my way i remember basically they were all softballs i think you would say over there but uh the one curveball was um why are you not focusing on south india

 In this project and i somehow batted it away rather ineffectually i can't quite remember what i said something like oh none of the texts were written in south india it's not doesn't matter it's not important but i kind of knew there was a problem there and as i as i progressed my work on the on the hata yoga project became more and more apparent that in fact south or the deccan in particular it was

 Really important for the early history of uh hutta yoga and there were some tantalizing references in some secondary literature to uh this poet governor who had written up uh a telugu text early telugu called the navanatta charity so you know the stories of the nine nights but there was nothing more than that and then somehow i can't remember how i heard about it but somehow i

 Discovered that jamal was working on it in chicago and i got a copy of the thesis early on and it was one of those really exciting things as i read that and it really pulled everything together um you know i could i could luckily we've got jamal to tell us more about it because he obviously knows it much better than i do but there were various things one in particular stood out so one of the texts that

 You know the earliest text we're working on the amrita city is actually mentioned in the text and virupa it's author it's one of the very few indian mentions of uh virupa as a you know in in the context of hatha yoga and the knot so and that just kind of blew my mind to be honest and you know set off all kinds of uh fascinating things which ideas i'm yet

 To write them all down and i've had a lot of engagement with jamal over the intervening period so and we tried to get him to search a few times and one of the few benefits of lockdown and all this care because it didn't work out he had too much teaching and the timings weren't right but one of the benefits of this lockdown is that we can get people from all over the world to to

 Speak to us so um with that i could i could go on forever but yeah thanks so much for agreeing to speak to us and i'm very excited to hear your talk on yogi's empowered and imperiled in the telugu account of the nine nights over to you jamal everyone uh thank you for uh coming out today another yeah as theo said there's a lot going on in the world um

 And uh so i appreciate uh you're coming to uh to listen and um you know hopefully i mean we can have ample time in the q a um i'm still learning about the text in many ways and um so i'm i'm very excited to be able to engage with this community on the subject so let me get the screen share going to pull up

 My sort of handful of slides um in the meantime just i want to kind of reiterate so thanks to theo thanks to uh jim for bringing me and inviting me um so is the screen share showing up all right um great okay let's uh let's see how this goes um so i'm just going to launch into it uh composed in the in telugu during the early 15th

 Century uh gauranos navanata charitra narrates the travails of masendranat and his band of yogi disciples often cited as a key document of the not some pradaya's history in the medieval deccan the poem and its poet gauranga are also said to represent andhra's virus community this um shaiva kind of heterodox group this connection the literary historians maintain

 Is evident from his use of the dwi put a verse for him favored by the virus poets as well as his patron um the monastic potentiate mukti santa bishop is a parent leadership role within srishalam's virus community so i won't speak too much on the aquatic forum immediately though i'm happy to talk about it i think there are interesting things to say there but i won't say much immediately now

 I'm happy with discussing questions um but today i really want to think about kind of the larger kind of structure and sort of thematic and narrative uh appearance of the nova nacho toy through and that's how we can kind of think through some of these uh affiliations and connections between the naz and the veto shaivas um and you know to what extent it's even desirable to sort of label the work in a particular

 Way um to preview my position um i want to suggest that the navanathi chug them was not quite a not text if by that we mean a text of the not something i think we find suggestive parallels too even mason formations of the sampadaya as we know it but beyond that gauranus poem represents the knots in a way as a little bit of a legendary project

 Thus i think we would miss a lot of what the text does if we sort of only look forward to the sampradaya similarly as we might put aside the focus on the samtradaya i think that focusing too narrowly on a kind of viewership or reading of the text also looks for sort of too much too much coherence and limits what we might get out of the novel so taking a broader look i would instead

 Concentrate on the poem's persistent interest in aesthetic power um and i think that this in particular helps us to make better sense of the poem the poet and how they can how these connect to the religious and political culture of sri shiloh so stands as one of the earliest collections of narratives on the siddhas that would be deemed the founding

 Fathers of the not symphody according to david white the text contains the earliest list of nine knots that matches those recognized by the contemporary sampradaya that said in any immediate sense it's difficult to label galino's composition or work of the natsam vadaya at least as it's been described in recent years so there's no formal institutional structures that are represented in the text um and

 Hasid does rarely if at all offer expository discourses detailing any kind of like not a doctrine and with the exception of golodaksha's encounter with allama prabhu the siddhas do not debate or compete with yogis and adepts of rival traditions so in that sense it's in a way hard to maybe define them as a against other kind of

 Yoga tradition perhaps um and this is predictable to agree um for one aside from masandra charangi and goraksha gauden does not do not overwhelmingly match figures listed in certain other texts of the of the period um and literary attacks are what i know best in that regard on that statement um so further gaurano mentions nothing of the knots being subdivided into 12

 Punts which has been taken as a key marker of not identity um and further as uh jim allison here as has suggested uh we don't have a sort of really firm ident articulation of a kind of not identity earlier than the 17th century and you know i think what we find in gowdan is where it corroborates um that um so i mean aside from kind of how the knots um appear um

 Or rather aside from the appearance of figures that the sampradaya ultimately claims the basic warrant for labeling the text a kind of not text has been the title of the work and indeed it's subject matter but i would suggest that even here there's a little bit of ambiguity and flexibility as not all of the figures noted in the text actually carry the appellation not a sum

 Such as so you can see here a kind of list of the knots mentioned uh in the navanathi charitable um some of these in fact do not carry the label not at all so in particular nagarjuna and buddha uh and gauranga seems to use some of these labels of nothing siddha and yogi entertain interchangeably so

 Nevertheless i would say i mean we can see a lot that is interesting when we're sort of when we are in fact thinking ahead to the not simple diet and particularly um we find gauranga offering a very strong and detailed sartorial description of not all of them not all the knots and siddhas mentioned but sandra in particular um and we and we can see here him

 That masendra in fact uh displays some sort of telltale signs such as the shining triple smear of ash which marks him as a shaiva and which is seen to be commonplace among knots today we also find him additionally um holding rudraksha mala and an anadamu the text says say but not exactly using the terminology of the singh nadjanu however aside from these um

 Sort of markers um particular markers we don't in fact get some of the other kind of telltale signs um in particular the ear splitting piercings that are taken to be kind of characteristic of the not yogi beyond i would say these outward signs the gaurano depicts his siddhas as mass in fact as masters of yoga and possessors of marvelous powers and in this um he follows much of

 The sort of understanding of goraksha and other knots and sort of pre-modern texts on yoga yogic and tantric traditions and from the beginning of the work in fact museum that is represented as a practitioner of yoga and he and the other signals are seen practicing in particular um sort of contemplative and sort of breathing based yoga practices so first and foremost

 Samurai promotes and practices contemplative yoga oriented towards sort of extreme acts of concentration culminating in zamadi and in the course of the narrative the devoted cowherd who eventually becomes the chief not the goraksha discovers meenanatha machindra engaging precisely in this kind of practice and later it is in a contemplative technique that machine gunner guides the prince

 Um saranga dara who often will become shaorangi here matsiendra explicitly describes the technique as a royal or kingly yoga so the telugu here is ra truly yoga which just as well could have been raja yoga such labeling identifies it with conceptions of raja yoga known from sanskrit texts in which the forebears of the nazim padaya were

 Synthesized with hata yoga and in fact it is this contemplative yoga that appears to be a central path to bodily power in the navanatha now so this technique is particularly on display in the story of chaurangi when he is as the story goes regenerating his limbs so matsyendra in this case puts this mutilated prince into the siddha posture

 Um and then he then leads him into a state of deep yoga concentration wherein he recalls shiva's yoga's teachings on yoga um he visualizes his limbs their divinities their numbers their sensations and then it is through this practice that the prince sarangada is able to regenerate his limbs sort of interesting point here is in fact that um he matsender also throws a stone

 Up into the air and asks that to be the point of concentration for the prince and he actually has them concentrate on it and keep it afloat but we can see in fact that visualized here in this slide that was the sort of background image for the social media advertisement let me go forward again now it's through this practice ultimately that

 Sarangada is able to grow a perfected body a siddha deja um and is through this event that garners him his name chao dangi rangi four limbs one now uh while this sort of meditative raja yoga appears to undergird much of the sort of bodily practices depicted in the nomination there is an explicitly sort of kundalini focused um sort of hatha yoga uh practice that

 That is also depicted that allows the siddhis to manipulate theirs and others bodies in spectacular ways now the word haka or any form never appears in the work but by deploying some of the language around the kundalini a gaurano nevertheless displays and deploys the vocabulary associated with these practices um now i think the other interesting

 Thing here about this episode where this language is used which is when what saying that enters the body of a dead king is that rather than this this power this uh being just a siddhi that a yoga might use yogi might use at will um it is sort of represented as a uh a technique um sort of sort of actively employed and deployed um in the passage so

 We have here um a gauranos description of masendra entering the body of the king and so here he says after straight away entering a mountain cave he sat and listed the posture and putting his mind firmly on shiva that foremost of siddhas brought on his breath brought his breath under control drew it upward made himself firm as the kundalini stretch properly broke the three knots gently brought the kundalini upward

 Wondrously shined as one rich in ancient yoga and through all the paths of the ten doors uh path of the tenth of the ten doors and assuming an immensely subtle form he took on a luminous form and went forth as his and his disciples amazed looked on and on and meena natas atma then reached the king's body

 So he is using this uh practice controlling his breath manipulating the kundalini um as a way of uh affecting the siddhi of pravesha sort of entering or possessing another's body um and and in this way i mean gauranga you know is really kind of bearing witness to the sort of our larger sort of sense of messenger as having this seminal role in the early

 History of hatha yoga um and you know as jim mentioned in the introduction you know he does this in other ways in particular um by you know reaper by producing this uh attribution of um of this text which he calls the amritanya siddhi um to veer virupaksha natta so with these things this depicts the depiction of the yoga yogi's appearance depiction of

 Certain yogic practices themselves and even in this kind of textual understanding or representation of this sort of textual culture um with the amritanya siddhi um he's he's really presenting a sort of general scent a sort of picture of the siddhas that accords with um sort of our larger sense of how the sort of nascent tradition looked at the period

 In particular i mean he's also kind of showing the sort of synthesis between different sorts of yogic systems now um beyond simply yogic practices is sort of contemplative and corporeal exercises um the navination also sort of produces or reproduces the image of the knots as sid does you know in the sense of you know

 Practicing a range of sort of alchemical techniques um and sort of being interested in herbs and sort of magical substances so i would say in contrast to the yogic sequences gautama actually offers little description of sort of actual alchemical methods sort of the most we get is that he will show a siddha assuming a yogic posture a siddhasana

 Visualizing shiva along with the divinities and the month of mantras and of mercury and you know that that sort of the depth that we get in terms of describing alchemy um but even here right i mean we have some sort of common common places right galena is emphasizing uh alchemy is oriented or here and he he has them actually in the early early chapters of the work

 Um uh where even whether or not actually um undertaking any kind of alchemical um sort of experiments let's say um we do have them like seeking out and discovering say depositories of mercury in the mountainous wilderness um but it's only towards the end of the story in particular in the story of um nagarjuna said the student that we actually kind of see a siddha

 Actively engaging in some kind of alchemical act um but again here his precise methods are um obscure um beyond the interest in sort of mercurial mercury based alchemy um they are all the synthes here also and the text generally shows the sort of deep interest in um sort of magical substances particularly magical herbs or accidents

 Again these are vaguely described we simply have them sort of discovering them in the wilderness again or throwing them say into a fire when they're under when they're doing some sort of mercurial alchemy but aside from that um aside from the interest in herbs we also have them interested in um other substances in particular there's a very interesting story of them

 Being interested in kind of magical fauna in this case a bird that depending on which part of it you eat will grant you long life um kind of royal sovereignty or siddha hood itself so um that's sort of a brief of kind of rundown of the sort of yogic and um alchemical um sort of practices um that are sort of depicted in the navanatta charitable but i would say that you know

 These are you know these are only sort of small portions of the text in a way um so um and while they sort of affirm and sort of offer very interesting descriptions of zanatas and i think in particular i mean we i mean i think the other thing that we get is we do get this kind of um these descriptions of nata and siddha lineages um so here this chart displays just the

 The nots who are sort of actively sort of portrayed in the text who we have sort of who the narratives are about in this case is much more than the nine knots technically um but we also have a sort of a longer list in a later chapter of many more disciples but these are just sort of listed and named i'm happy i'm happy to sort of

 Discuss that in the questions um so i think given the kind of the limited scope in a sense of the sort of of some of the material i i think it's interesting to ask in a way kind of what is the nomination about more broadly um because i i kind of and how should we which how should we read it what should we get out of it um now sort of other other ways of reading it um have focused on

 Gaurana and the sort of poetics and in particular um sort of thought through his connections or sort of positive the connection between between him and the veda shaivas who are the prominent sort of group and movement disparate as it may have been at srila and largely this is because of the verse form of the poem and it's written in the form

 Called teleguipada which is sort of so highly associated and favored by telugu virus poets um but i would just say in briefly beyond this you know beyond the fact the sort of fact of the forum gaurana doesn't otherwise kind of show the marks of a virus of a poet he doesn't claim the kind of affiliations uh that they do and in fact in his other

 Work so his other major works that i've sort of worked that i've worked on and i'm you know continuing to work on is this text on poetics and astrology called the lakshana deepika um wherein he he really i mean he sort of shows himself in a way to be a very kind of um um you know interesting brahman uh oriented uh sort of figure and and much of his

 Work in sanskrit at least is interested in sort of shoring up certain kinds of grammatical prerogatives um and i think largely i mean we can see his his sort of description um of the of of himself at the beginning of the work sort of shows not the kind of um the shiva uh style of introduction um wherein you sort of claim shiva and parvati as your

 You know as your parents and other shiva bhaktas as your kin um but he is a sort of a more sort of traditional um let's say um kind of way of orienting himself in the social world by in particular orienting himself around his his his father and in this case his uncle um who was attached to um the ray charlotte king in the who uh of the the dynasty that was sort

 Of prominent in either particularly in the sort of uh from the middle of the 13th century into the sort of late uh late uh or sorry the middle of the 14th century to the late 15th early 16th century um i would say the the other way in which the text often gets associated with the veto shaivas is because there's an episode in the

 Fifth cont in the fifth chapter uh you can see on the sort of bottom right of the slot and slot corner of this slide um where garaksha um engages with um the virus sort of saints and siddha and in this episode they sort of debate and sort of challenge each other's bodily siddhis and uh ultimately alama probably the virus wins and takes gordaksha for as his disciple

 Now in this case um i think you know that's a that's a very in a way a strong point that would affiliate the text with the veto shaiva sort of world textual culture and i i think i don't i don't mean to dismiss it um but i also want to note that that this story is sort of exceptional one there are no other mentions of sort of viruses in the text uh they are shy of the doctrines and on the other hand

 It in fact um it's in a kind of underwhelming narrative position let's say um it's not in fact the end of the text which you know maybe we might expect if we were to say that okay well garen was given this account of the knots and he then you know at the end wants to simply subsume them within the vietnamese the i think there are some of that there but

 You know in fact the story the the the text as we have it goes on for uh four more not insignificant stories um and so i want to say that um you know i think this makes us ask kind of what is then what's going on with this text maybe what else might we kind of get out of it aside from just tracking these affiliations maybe what's the narrative

 Argument and i would say thematically i mean if we want to sort of think about the kind of narrative argument um and sort of the larger i don't know point or instruction if you will if you want to look for those kinds of things from a literary work i'd say that it's really concerned with really kind of obsessed with siddha power yogic power alchemical

 Power in the political sphere um in particular with uh sort of connections between siddha these siddhas and knots um and kings now these kinds of liaisons between kings and these and siddhas are actually very commonplace and indian romances right and indian story literature they're also very commonly fraught um we often find

 You know siddhas sort of enacting some kind of occult ritual to achieve sort of their sort of sids of powers or supernatural godlike sovereignty um and in these were in these sorts of narratives kings for their part often appear in one or two of two roles um they may be there to guard the siddha from the kinds of like fiendish beings that are you know sort of summoned and roused

 In the course of these sort of esoteric activities um and you know as sort of you know recompense as a gift for doing this work you know they often get something like a magic sword that will kind of amplify their their the fortunes of their royal house um or else in some of the more sort of disturbing scenarios kings actually sort of arrive on the scene to sort of foil often to decapitate

 Um evil said those who require you know human or made and often made in sacrifices for their rights um and in both of these cases the sort of kingly figure sort of appear that the kind of the role of a kind of protector securing the scene and the larger moral order um and the sid doesn't in contrast are these kind of you know they stand in some kind of

 Shadow um and you know this this is where you know david white um fairly recently has sort of argued that you know in the sort of pan-endic imagination the siddha yogi is fundamentally a sinister yogi an adept who employs occult procedures to gain power and possession of others especially royalty and you know even when the siddhas that

 Maybe not feel evil let's say or depraved he's he's still kind of a dubious and maybe self-absorbed character um but this is not really how it goes in gabriela's november not to charity you know it definitely sort of details the exploits of yogis and siddhas and in fact it also agrees to this point that siddha that the relationships between

 Siddhas and kings are generally problematic the difference here is that it identifies a different source for this problem siddhas in this text they do seek power right through in the means that i've described above and earlier um but in a way it's actually not clear why they do it um because even insofar as they are attaining their powers the best that i can see in the

 Text is that they do so you know for his own sake in a way but um they only use their powers um in service of others they don't seem to use it for their own gain and when they do this is criticized that they're doing this kings on the other hand um are categorically displayed depicted in the text as you know kind of walking this sort of selfish path

 Always in pursuit of power and pursuit of pleasure um and this often has um you know really terrible consequences um at the very least it simply kind of threatens the sort of larger sort of sociological goals of sort of yogurt practice of the siddha teachings that matendra and his disciples are offering and in this case they're simply kind of

 Disruptive or disappointing but often and sort of um more dramatically they are also they're often displayed as having in fact kind of like you know dangerous and deadly consequences um and so what we walk away with i i would say from the nova nacho charities remove is that we walk away with an image not of a sinister yogi but of a sinister

 Sovereign um so hold it there for a moment so what is the problem with kings so fundamentally um you know there's the text is sort of depicting an incompatibility between um sort of the royal class and sort of yogic practices and the sort of the things that siddhas do um and i think it this runs through the whole text

 Um which we see i mean so it starts with the birth of masendra but very quickly uh in the in the first chapter um go ahead and displease into the second chapter goes to the story of prince saddam gana who is who is ultimately to become the siddha the nazi and i think that the issue this problem with kings and their sort of relationship to

 The sid the path is articulated um first here um in a really dramatic way and the story of this which is known in other versions and you know the prince here goes by other names in other parts of india um is that saranga dara is born to this king raja mahindra and his chief queen nangi as a result of their sort of ritual devotion to shiva and he grows up

 He's you know beautiful you know beautiful specimen of young manhood and he's you know he's pledged to to wed an ally princess but one day while his father the king is out hunting uh the prince and his friends are sort of playing play racing their pet pigeons and the princess bird of course wins but upon winning uh loses its way and and um upon seeing

 A beautiful parrot and it's by this site that it's lured into the quarters of chitrangi one of the king's other wives now the prince sees this and decides to go fetch the bird his best friend in this case the chief minister's son advises him against it advises them against going to see chittangi while while his father's away largely out of this kind of

 Misogynistic argument that um about the corrupt the inherent corruption of women but the prince goes ahead anyway and um this the queen chatangi aroused by the prince's beauty propositions him um when he comes for the bird the prince rebuffs her um chitrangi is angered and humiliated and vows revenge um and resolve to accuse um to accuse um about sexual assault essentially um now

 The king comes back from the hunt um after this has all gone down and goes to see chippongi um and he finds her sort of despondent and you know this is when she levels her accusation and the king ultimately enraged decides that the king has that his son has to be punished somehow like this is you know he's

 Gone too far and he sends the prince to the forest with two soldiers who cut off his limbs um now after this is done after the prince has been mutilated uh you know unjustly by the texas term by the text terms um that his agonizing moans are heard by masendra um who then rescue sadangadana and brings him back to his quave dwelling and he sort of nourishes the

 Prince to health with the aids i should i should note here of um go to of the cowherd who becomes gauraksha who's been bringing massimo milk and so using so instructing the prince in this raja yoga i mentioned earlier he helps him to grow back his limbs and then ultimately once the prince has been regenerated gives him and initiates him under the

 Title of chowdangi at this point now the story goes on uh to give sort of more of this and we'll break it down in a moment uh machendra um after initiating chaorungi um plan decides that he needs to go on a mountain a trip to the mountains to seek out magical herbs um and he leaves chaorangi at the at the cave um

 And orders him to wait for and initiate uh this cow herd who had um sort of become ninonata's deva tea and was supplying him with milk um so but after machine gun leaves the prince uh sort of becomes curious about the world and he becomes curious about the fact that he has these like new powers right these sid deets and he leaves the caves you know he disobeys masendra

 And after he's left the cowherd comes and waits patiently but eventually chaorungi who's left and sort of gone on his own sort of walkabout of a kind finds machindra and matsyendra running into chaurangi you know out in the mountains essentially um becomes very angry and then he goes goes on to sort of disparage the dislo disloyalty as well as the sort of general disloyalty

 Displayed by kashatriyas and he curses charungi at the end of this part of the narrative to actually be without his own lineage of disciples um so there's a lot there um but i sort of want to sort of think about like what we should make of the story and you know for one uh gaudina sort of invokes the problem of sort of royal desire from the very beginning

 Um in his reference his allusions to the hunts and sort of vice and sort of sexual desire um but the problem really emerges once sadangada has um sort of regenerated and fails to keep his word um so he he so after so uh charungi leaves his his post and goes about experimenting he in particular he experiments with his vaccine his ability to make whatever he says the truth sort of

 The state of things um and um you know but after mathiendra sort of runs into chao rangi out of the mountains um he's understandably angry that he's been disobeyed but his sort of um his sort of reprimand of chao rangi is sort of based in his sort of innate character um as a kashatriya um and so much gainer in particular

 Makes this uh analogy saying plantain seed in the ground will it bring joy and wondrously grow into a tree of mango sweet and lovely make a camphor scented watering trench fill a golden vessel with good water and pour it in will an on the onion lose its old old odor and grow gifting the scent of a flowering tree so i mean in a way we can we can read this as a team that are kind of

 A scolding charangi but also saying you know what what else could i expect um you know this it's only sort of this princess this this cassava's sort of innate nature uh coming to fruition um that has sort of resulted in um you know him disobeying me and um sort of just wanting to kind of sport in his own power

 And i think um in a way i mean this this brings up i think ultimately and sort of signals ultimately a question of motivation and intent of the text so we have to remember that sarangada didn't actually intentionally give up his royal identity right he was cast out of the royal world world by his father and he happened to be a beneficiary beneficiary of

 Saint grace's compassion um in his compassion sort of makes um sadangada into the siddha chowdangi and gives him these great powers but it's not as if the prince actually wanted to you know he didn't renounce anything and if anything he only wanted to be saved from his mutilated condition and you know once though once he was a siddha he was you know simply kind of self-satisfied with his powers

 Um and i sort of mentioned this as a question of intent uh precisely because um i mean we can see in sort of other the other narratives that follow in particular when we get to the chapter three and we're looking at the story of an initiation of budupaksha that this you know much of these initiation stories that follow are very much

 Uh sort of concerned with the intent and the sort of true actual commitment of the people who become siddhas who want to become a team that is disciples their intent and their commitment to becoming siddhas and in fact renouncing uh sort of their royal power and their ambition um so and i think it's worth noting that you know many of the sort of people who become

 These sort of nine knots who become disciples of me of matsuyam do in fact come from these princely lineages um so for instance judo paksha um has actually comes to their willingly and does in fact seek him out in a way um but it's matinder grills him um and sort of has to sort of test his commitment um and you know virupaksha must have to

 Respond with his own sort of life story to explain why in fact he's no longer committed to um his sort of royal power in any way but even then i mean i should note that masendra doesn't believe them he's he's ultimately suspicious and refuses he's only he only agrees actually not after they he uh guru paksha and as well as uh nagarjuna and the fourth to give their stories but he has to have a

 Sort of divine witness to their to their sort of commitment so either a voice from the sky or in or in some cases shiva himself will appear to say like look what uh um give them a break you know they they're they're being honest here um so you so it's okay to bring them into the tradition now um sort of in marking this this sort of conflict and this concern

 With kind of um the sort of acquisition and the sort of use of yoga powers um the nomination is again engaging with a sort of an older theme that comes out in sort of the more technical manuals um that sort of distinguish between um practicing these arts these techniques for the purpose of actually sort of

 Achieving and enjoying the siddies so this is you know what we could call the perspective versus um sort of engaging in yoga practices undertaking these sort of techniques for the purpose of the the greater sydney the girl the greatest city siddhi of the mahasithi of liberation or moksha and this is what we could call the mumuksu

 Practice or orientation and so we i mean we have yogurt manual sort of traditions of taking different sides in this and what the extent to which it's uh permissible and sort of to actually sort of seek yogic powers for their own sake and to use them and enjoy them um and we have sort of more sort of tantrically contra-cleaning

 Um texts maybe taking the the role the sort of orientation that maybe it's okay to actually indulge in the cities to some extent um another nachotomo very clearly i think does not take a kind of perspective right it doesn't it's very interested in yogis and the sithos not sort of really using their powers for the sake of power in the kind of worldly sense right

 Luxuriance and sort of political achievement but i think you know it's really interested in fact in dramatizing this tension and it dramatizes precisely through um these sort of stories of these kings and princes and um who are sort of sort of basically coming to yoga yoga consider practices with a very different orientation

 And maybe in fact congenitally afflicted with uh the qualities of arrogance and selfishness and pride um which makes which just would make them a poor fit for the kind of siddha tradition the sort of ascetic renunciant tradition is the head of and i would say that this larger tension is we should see it here precisely because

 Right um like in a way it's also not just a problem with kings um right i mean i think there's there's a way in which um on the one hand goraksha it stands in direct contrast to sadangada or charangy he becomes in the course of the text messenger is chief disciple and in fact his sort of more let's say meager position as a cowherd

 Is is valor precisely valorized by when he finally initiates gauraksha um right and it sort of he these these his sort of cow herd orientation is sort of recognized in a way as a kind of like transferable skill if you want to use the kind of present market language right he says and since you deliberating with wisdom ward the cattle of the senses without letting them wander i give you the fine name of the cowherd

 Or godaksha so in a way massimo is saying that you know a yogi is is just a cow herd in a way just a cow herd of different kinds of cattle and in this way he's also sort of drawing a distinct contrast between him and the kashatriya chaurangi from you know very early in the text but i think we also have to note that even goraksha misses the mark

 And we see this in this encounter with allama prabhu uh the veena shaiva sort of siddha saint um you know i think you know i've marked this as a way in which the the this not the tradition is being you know subsumed within the veda shaiva tradition but i would also say that it more broadly maybe more in line with the rest of the text is actually just sort of articulating and dramatizing

 Again this mumuksu distinction because the the precise contrast between the kinds of siddhis that are being sort of narrated here instead of that their debate that gauraksha and alama prabhu are debating is about their bodies and godraksha for his part through his cities has a vajradeha an adamantine body

 Which you know is invincible but you know because it's highly solid alama on the other hand has a shunyadeja the sort of empty ethereal body which the text praises as a pure aesthetic achievement that is you know even more even less bound to sort of material concerns um and when goraksha realizes this the text says that alama prabhu has in fact

 Shed him of his arrogance and his envy and caught and has caused the final laser layer of gauraksa's own delusion to fall away so in this case garaksha even here even though he's on one hand been distinguished from shatria he's still being brought into this um into their sphere insofar as he too is marked by these same defects now um i'm going to

 Sort of run through some of this a little more quickly so we have time for questions but i want to say that in a way like the story is not just about whether or not kings make good yogis that might make good siddhas um the text is also fun also very much about um whether siddha yogis should interact with kings with political

 Powers perhaps at all because kings are not just bad disciples but they can be very bad or even treacherish treacherous allies um and this again stems from their sort of congenital sort of selfishness arrogance and their sort of fundamental orientation towards the pursuit of power um and pleasure um and these stories are and this these themes are foregrounded

 In the sort of later stories um of the text which are about gorakshas and nagarjuna siddha students and so here for instance in the story of vyali we have a siddha who's engaging in alchemical techniques and has a kind of recipe for immortality that the king tries to steal from him and ultimately tries to boil the siddha alive in a vat of boiling oil after he steals the recipe um

 In fact he does boil the siddha alive so he steals it but we have this as this kind of cautionary tale we have this other tale of uh the story of um gorak guru who is gordaksha's student who gets to live at the end of the story but the king is no better because garaka in this case has the akashina sydney the power of possession and attraction and acquisition which the king wants the siddha to use for him

 But after the siddha refuses the king thinks that the siddha is actually going to use his akashin a siddhi his power to attract and acquire things to take the things that the king himself has and so um and here the king is kind of seeing this garaka sid garakul the siddha as precisely this kind of sinister yogi competitor in the realm of royal power um the

 Siddha is not um but nonetheless the king after being refused by the siddha tries to have him killed by assassins but i think the sort of starkest story that we get in terms of um the sort of incompatibility between siddhas and kings is actually in the final story the story of gaurantaka gorantika siddha who who enters the story after it which is

 In fact about a king named kandara who um after a series of events um where he brings misfortune upon his kingdom um tries to then he finds a kind of misfortune in the form of disease he finds a sort of magical reservoir of water which he tries to kind of exploit and sort of channel to his city and so but in the course of sort of ordering and engineering this public works project

 Uh to sort of siphon the waters of the of this sort of magical tank um the the workers in fact sort of pierce a hole into the underworld and anger a divinity down there who deman and they end up draining the waters and bringing kind of further misfortune upon the city but there is you know a way out that the deity offers which is human sacrifice um and in response to this the king

 Ultimately proves willing to sacrifice his own people to maintain and replenish the site and replenish the water and appease the gods but um you know the subject his subjects you know expectedly do not take well to this and you know i think in here i mean we find you know again a familiar theme which is the king's kind of ambivalent and maybe even impure position

 As a sort of agent of maintaining the social order through violence but here in fact i i would say like this story actually finds him um finds that whole function being you know fully perverted where you know the king krishna kandara you know whether he wants to or not is brought to a point where he you know by his own desires and interests has to set his own sovereign force against his own people

 Um the only way out that we're that we get is ultimately um from this who sort of arrives at the town at a sort of use at a sort of at the last moment and sort of agrees to sort of stand in um for the sort of subjects of the kingdom that might have otherwise been sacrificed um but you know before doing so he has to criticize the king and he says oh

 King and killing so many people as they wail just so the waters of the waters of the tank might stand here again what reward comes to you through such a cool act when you think of a world protector's dharma is this it um so here you know in a way i mean the sydney is marking the king's you know acts here as sort of fundamentally at abs

 At odds with his sort of imperative to safeguard his realm um but ultimately i mean the way that um the siddha is able to sort of save the day is by in fact um sort of in a way plugging the hole um that the text is actually very broken here um so what happens um in the sort of the spinal sort of ritual um is unclear but it seems that the the sort of

 Interred or something in a temple um that is built over the the sort of rift to the underworld um but and all this is to sort of demonstrate that you know the text is really interested in sort of casting royal power as inherently self-oriented um and for all usual models of indian kingship in a way this this isn't problematic

 Because in fact the king's enjoyment of personal pleasure and prosperity is often understood to just ramify throughout his own realm um but then of not to charge him was sort of drawing out these kind of alternative these sort of contradictions of this model and ultimately saying that it doesn't it doesn't work but in its place he does offer it does offer a sort of alternative vision

 I would say of a kind of ascetics ascetic sovereignty um and this is often comes out when the text speaks of yoga samarajam so me so matera is often said to sort of preside over his disciples and in fact much of the world in this state of yogic sovereignty um so sort of the sovereignty that seeks power and sort of holds power but

 Shows no interest in directly enjoying it it's not self-oriented and at best it's uh purely generous and benevolent and even will sort of offer prosperity at the sort of siddha yogi's sort of own expense i would say the only place the only story that offers a kind of workable model of siddha yogi relations is in the story of nagarjuna's disciple atreya who and this is the

 Story of this this this siddha through alchemical practices uh trying to turn the mountain the great mountain of srishilam to gold um and in the course of this he makes a pact with the king who becomes his disciple and protector but also i mean the ultimate goal of turning srishalam into goals is to in fact you know kind of eliminate inequality when sort of wealth

 Inequality in particular but even this even if it offers a workable model of relationships between a siddha and a king is in a way depicted as being unsustainable because vishnu as he often does arrives on the scene to sort of maintain the usual hierarchical ordering of society so so just to sort of wrap up here so

 That we can have some time for questions the ultimately um i would suggest kind of celebrates this an idea of kind of rule of power that's founded on renunciation and asceticism um even so right um as i just mentioned this this mo the models that it does present that are positive are ultimately rendered inconceivable um and they're undone by one or the other

 Parties arrogant so in the case of this final story i mentioned about treya you know even though he's depicted as being ultimately generous and benevolent he is also mentioned as sort of basically wanting to be an alchemical celebrity um and so this this kind of thing this again this sort of concern with sort of pride um that vishnu when he comes to

 Undermine atreya um sort of goes after and sort of takes as you know one of the reasons for uh contravening it um even so i would say that this larger kind of narrative argument resonates with the religious and political world of sri shilam in the 14th and 15th centuries um so i would say so specifically i think in sort of thinking through

 The sort of political potential and associations of ascetics um i think the text points us to think about a little bit more about the place of gautama's patron uh the ascetic patentee mukti shanta um who was the sort of presided over um the matra at srish island and seemed to have a sort of in fact a larger uh sort of role as a superintendent over the sort of complex of sri shailum

 Itself based on the epigraphical evidence um and i would say i mean i think this is marked in fact by precisely by the sort of rising political fortunes of of the big chavrty leaders in the 14th and 15th century um so kind of starting with mukti shanta they sort of gain and seemingly gain sort of increasing levels of of power in the and over sri asylum and

 In the in the region and later inscriptions of sort of disciples or seemingly potentially sons and of muktishanta hold you know significant political economic and even military power in the greater shush island region and i think we in a way we find a direct parallel to the text in the story of antreya because we see a kind of sort of

 Naming practice um that is replicated among the be in the big chavrty sphere um so nagarjuna student atreya um the only way that he kind of has a good relationship with the king is that the king becomes his disciple and takes on his name so the king gets rid of his older name and becomes tiago nagarjuna following atreya's own name as sort of

 This nagarjuna and we see this sort of echoed actually in the epigraphical and literary evidence in the case of a patented from the deccan named mumma disanta who was named after and clearly a disciple of mukti shanta bikshavatiraya um so and i i think more broadly the big chavish urayas and aside from sort of encouraging uh sort of in this case

 Um i think they have a lot they seemingly based on the sort of project of these the um the great architectural release that some of the images that i showed at the beginning of the talk are drawn from on those sort of walls around the malikajana temple at srishaim they were commissioning these works at precisely the same period that they would have been commissioning the nova nacho toy

 So they clearly have this sort of larger interest in uh sort of kind of celebrating a kind of siddha and yoga culture at sri shalom and i think the navanatsu tradition participates in this larger project but i think part of the project i mean that i would emphasize is that in fact it's sort of um capacious realization right it's not precisely not limited to a kind of not something but i

 Think they're they're trying to sort of sort of portray shree xylem precisely as this kind of place four sid does for these esoteric practices for yogic practices um as well as um i think also it's kind of shoring up its status as shri shalom as the sri shainum right because we in fact there are sort of in some cases these competing claims and um two sometimes where sri shailem

 Is uh in the decade um but i think they're sort of trying to sort of centralize the traditions around sri shilom and the practices um at um at their site and gardeners was meant to participate in that so i'll stop there um and um yeah let's thank you so much jamal that was great uh maybe we can

 Stop sharing the screen i don't know yeah doesn't really matter uh oh yeah that's better thank you um yeah that was fantastic i could have listened to you keep going for hours um and it makes me want to read your thesis again i i've got loads of questions but there are quite a few on the slider as well and we haven't got that much time so i won't be i will i'll just i'll have to pick one

 Of my questions um so mukti shanta who was the guarana's patron do we know anything about his cast background you know if there's all this stuff against kshatriyas and so forth is there some tension in that i mean do we know anything about that was he like yeah brahmin was it or not i mean it's it's unclear actually i mean from what from my

 Reading um i mean most most of what we get and the couple of inscriptions and descriptions that we have so these are common the navanatcha charisma is where actually we get i would say the lengthiest description from to my knowledge um there's another um text in the poem in telugu by the poet srinata who is a contemporary of gauranga so in his shivaratri mahatma mahatmu

 He names his patron as this moomari shanta who is portrayed as the disciple of mukti santa and so i think because in fact the connection is kind of a couple of steps away we don't we don't get very much about mukti shanta in the shivaratri mahatma i think i mean i think there's some confusion here even about because of the sort of naming practices and people taking on

 Names of of their sort of gurus and fathers and things like that um some of it is a little still to me a little ambiguous um but i would say in the nomination and in the shivaratri mahatma the little that we get and then in some inscriptions from the middle of the early middle of the 15th century um mukti shanta i mean we don't get much about his background i mean he's he's

 Sort of for the praised as he is which is as this kind of ascetic king you're literally a yes um and he's so he's sort of portrayed he's so he's praised um in the inscription then by gaudina using the tropes that are used to describe royal figures um but we don't get but that sort of a praise of him as he presides

 You know in the present um so yeah i mean i i haven't i haven't been able to uh sort of detect or sort of pull out the bits about the background yeah i mean i'd be interested to hear what others might think or know um because i'm still in some ways working through the evidence was he do we know i mean because he as you say he kind of had military and he was you know building reservoirs he

 Was like a king was he victorious the king of victoria was there was he under any bigger any you know actual king that we know of was so was there you know was part of the the idea of the of the nawa natacharith to kind of tell this other king that they were that you know they were behaving badly and then in fact that uh mukti shanta was the you know the best ruler around

 We know i mean i mean i think you know i so so they're we're writing so gauranga is writing right sort of in this sort of period where like where vijayanagara is kind of achieving ascendancy um i think you know in the early years it's maybe not quite so settled and they're you know there's the other families in the region that they're competing with the ray charles and the red d's in particular okay okay um that might have been some

 Of that that might have been more so i think that that's some of it um but i think yeah i mean i think later i mean so his son or grandson lingaya um is explicitly named as having like having a military and we have records in some later collections so this what is it the charla sort of vomchavali text which is sort of assembled and

 Probably in the 16th or 17th century um of sort of praises of these rachael kings who find their way into that you know more into tumble country um but we then we find reference to actually the big shabbat ira's military fighting with these like vijayanagara generals so um i think yeah he's definitely i mean they're definitely trying to be like we are

 Just independent i would say i mean that's definitely coming through okay great all right thanks so we haven't got that long i will cost you any technical only got five minutes and we've got plenty of questions lots of questions the one at the top of the slide though is lucy may constantini so if it's possible to go to her that would be great lucy should be unmuted okay can you hear me yeah hi hey hi

 Thank you very much for that it was really fascinating um it's a really quite straightforward question you touched on it towards the end but i was just hoping you could give um a little bit more context as to like the the geography of this poem like where exactly is it thought to have emerged and in what kind of a context right um so yeah i mean it's

 Gauran is very clearly writing at sri shalom uh sort of so in the great temple complex in the deccan uh where the central deities swami garuna himself seems to be a potentially a devotee of um of this molecular genos consort brahmarambika but i would say it's kind of geographically i mean it's sort of i mean sri shalom is kind of the center for as i was sort of yeah as i was

 Touching on this this sort of vietnam community that sort of spans you know karnataka um especially you know it goes to point south and into other parts of the deccan um and he's clearly i mean i think kind of a part of you know sort of assembly assimilating many of these uh traditions and he's um using his um he's using their sort of in telugu their favorite verse form for long compositions which

 Is doipada um but i say in fact he's so gaudina is probably coming from a little farther north in the deccan and sort of more like telangana because of his family connections to this dynasty and the ray charlotte dynasty which is sort of short-lived power in the area that kind of emerged in ghana in the 13th and the 14th century

 But i mean sort of contextually i mean i would say that yeah i mean i would really could have centered gaurano at srishilam even if i wouldn't sort of say sort of center his participation in the sort of video world um if only because i think he has sort of other other commitments and a sort of i think he's i mean he's seemingly kind of like a

 Classically trained poet who's sort of acting sort of opportunistically in the region um because there are a lot of maybe like minor dynasties um that aren't as powerful now given sort of the rise of the nagara the rise of kind of more kind of persian culture in the deccan um as well and so he's i think found found his way

 To this great temple shriek island which you know where you know there are these powers there that are in fact trying to kind of build something of a court a more sort of traditional kind of sense critic let's say court um in the area i don't know if that gets to some of your concerns but great thank you right okay thanks so um next

 Question and and he's got a a comment and a question as well uh a mole bunker we can go through here hello can you hear me yeah i can hear you hello jamal actually uh i'm also working on some uh old malachi sources okay yeah i feel definitely yes and they are very parallel to your work actually so

 We have the story of this chowrangi in our marathi from 30th century and uh it is very interesting for you that the story of goraksha there is one parallel of the story so in in the marathi uh there is a argument between this uh and this corruption defeats this mirupa and this vidupa is converted

 So maybe these two stories they may have some prototype and another question is uh do you have any references of goda choli and siddha kaneri in your this text let me let me say that um we do have a long list of uh disciples that are that are named we have yeah we do have godad chuda named for instance and then who what is the other name

 Let me check the slider he was disciple of nagarjuna um canary no no mention of canary that i can actually he is mentioned as uh arya tibetan traditions okay so this god in malati tex we have referenced that actually was related with interesting okay yeah i mean yeah so yeah there's a brief so the mention of a lot of them come in

 This in the last chapter um at the beginning there's a sort of list of sort of where the immediate disciples go like which regions of india they go to and then there's a list of their disciples accompanying that okay okay then thank you okay thanks um jamal we we're already a minute over it would it do you mind if we go on for sort of minutes or something yeah

 We've got plenty um okay so the next one is hurry please we can go to hurry next then the rest are anonymous harry you kind of mute yourself now harry you should be unmuted hello hurry oh here we go hi hello hi harry we can hear something but i don't know can you try again uh can everyone hear me yeah that's better

 Can everyone here yes yeah yeah that's a lot better okay hi um so it's just how much oh now you've dropped out but harry if you've got a problem with the connection i mean i can because i can see your question maybe i should read it out it's gonna be save some time so the question i don't think we i think your connection's too weak harry so hopefully you can hear because i'm going to read your

 Question out and then we can um if you can't you can always listen back in the recording the question is how much interaction was there between hindu and scare quotes and buddhist naz and siddhas in andhra pradesh at this time did they see themselves as clearly distinct um yeah that's an interesting question i wonder there's even any evidence of buddhist

 Siddhas as such if you would yeah i mean i i don't know that i can speak too much to that i mean i yeah i don't know what kind of evidence there is to kind of to really to answer that question um well you know i mean i think i mean as i sort of mentioned uh or i mean as i can try to bring together with some of the work that

 You know i'm becoming aware i'm aware of from what you know jim and dr yoga project are doing right i mean there's they're truly i mean there's some there's some kind of connection or i don't know how we want to sort of think about that kind of sort of broader sid the culture that may be you know kind of involve practitioners

 Who might take one affiliation or the other but i mean based on the evidence i have from you know the sort of literate telugu literary sources that i'm most familiar with um i mean this tradition is basically portrayed as a kind of hindu or i mean ultimately a shy of a tradition um i mean let's see that is recognized as a as shiva as an embodiment of shiva

 Himself um and you know that carries through the sort of other references and sort of context that i can take um and i mean i mean i would say you know kind of thinking to them back to the big chavers again that right i mean they're they are whatever they are they are shiva um and they are i think you know interested

 In sort of sort of claiming a certain you know we might say kind of shy of a sort of affiliation and sort of umbrella over this these kind of siddha traditions um and the sort of these sort of siddha figures i mean who they're clearly i mean they're sort of referenced very briefly in the prologue as to you know sort of sitting in the court

 Maybe of the these great sydney yogis who are there um and i think you know based on gauranga's use of um which i mean just to say is like a literary form but has some kind of full kind of vernacular song tradition association um which i'm still trying to sort of describe i mean he's clearly kind of doing some kind of compilation work

 Um so i mean i think we have these stories that are circulating i mean i think emol's um questions and comments kind of speak to that right i mean we have these stories that are sort of circulating probably you know probably orally you know prep maybe in some kind of you know who knows exactly what forms multiple forms um but they're being you know kind of in

 This case you know crystallized in this kind of shiloh work but i i that's the best i can do yeah i mean from my reading of your word i don't it's not it's never mentioned that for example is buddhist is it a mention of buddhism within the i mean i've i've written a little bit about uh the minister in uh in mangalore mangalapura who's

 Siddha buddha isn't here buddha so maybe there's some uh implication there yeah yeah okay we've got a few more questions we won't be able to get through them all i don't think but there's a couple um they're all anonymous so i've got to read them out there's a couple that are quite similar so the first one is this story about power and challenging those who have

 Power and then the other question is i often find that natas are considered a counter cut a counter culture to brahmanism is this evident in the navanatha cherith some seem to be uppercast by identity and i suppose that also ties in with vera shaivism which i guess is kind of nascent at that time but also is seen as a challenge to cast hierarchy as well isn't it yeah

 Yeah i mean so i would say i mean as i mentioned i mean just to kind of start at one level i mean gaudina is i mean he's a brahman and like very proudly so and as i mentioned in his sort of sanskrit work on poetics i mean his basically his argument there i mean if we can kind of think about him as having kind of consistent world view his argument is that you know at least in a

 We can say in a kind of religious or metaphysical sense only brahmanas should be poets or should be poets that may be like kings accept poetry from like if we think about kind of a poem like some kind of object or gift um but within the text um i would say actually yeah most of them are uppercast by i mean most of these siddhas except for goraksha are coming from either kashatriya or

 Or identified as kuchatri or brahman many are satria i mean we have so siddha buddha is a brahmana probably um um we have um kanika siddha um who's meant to be just kind of mentioned briefly is a brahmana sage living in a himalayan ashram before he becomes initiated he's sort of he's sort of like a kind of older sort of

 Dupa swin type um who kind of turns the corner into the sort of yoga um and then yeah most others are so i mean i would say it is an in a sense um in one sense it's not cultural i mean it's sort of establishing certain kind of pedigrees from most of its members um but i think in a way i mean it's it is all it is sort of establishing a kind

 Of separate sphere potentially um but i would say i mean as with the question that sort of kind that's coming out on a lot of the scholarship around the leadership from people like elaine fisher and um especially um [Music] i wouldn't say it it doesn't reject brahmanism fully or even yeah i mean it just

 It's more of like a re a reorientation but i mean just in terms of who's actually depicted as being included in this world i mean they're they're sort of often than the sort of you know upper undercast kind of upper line uh folk okay well thanks i mean we're actually i think that's it really for questions because yeah we just hit 5-2 but well i've got one one or two

 Questions just quick ones uh any plans for publication and and related also what about a translation of the whole text any thoughts on it yeah i'm working i'm working on it this is kind of the short answer um i'm sort of yeah i mean i have this project and then i'm sort of working on a more a translation project and with sort

 Of commentary um yeah as well as yeah but i'm sort of also kind of maybe sort of working on that a little more slowly than sort of the other project on poetics and astrology and ritual and you've just got a new teaching job so presumably as um but yeah it's i'm sort of working on it and sort of yeah try i think i need i also need to kind of

 Think through some of the other things people you know talk talking to uh you and others and uh yeah hopefully yeah connecting with people who are also working on the marathi material in the commonwealth and um because i i have some more i think thinking in terms of at least on the sort of commentary sort of analysis side i feel a workshop coming on