Misadventures in the Historiography of Indian Yogis

Séminaire organisé dans le cadre du programme  « Médecines et religions en Asie du Sud » (IEA-Paris, CEIAS-EHESS).

Following the lead of such dilettantes as Madame Blavatsky and Swami Vivekananda, modernist reconstructions of the history of yoga tend to assume that the religio-philosophical principles of yoga promulgated in the Bhagavad Gita (200-400 CE) and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (350-450 CE) constitute a "classical yoga" that has remained unaltered since the time of the Vedas and the Indus Valley civilization down to the present day. In this lecture, I deconstruct the assumptions undergirding this modernist historiography, and, through the use of both textual and iconographic sources, reconstruct the early history of yogic practice.

Chercheur invité : David Gordon WHITE
David Gordon WHITE, Professeur, Indianisme, Indologie, University of California, Santa Barbara, Californie (Etats Unis)
Thème de recherche : "Religion et médecine en  Inde, Histoire du  yoga et des yogi"
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