Abstract

Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Karl Baier, Philipp A. Maas, and Karin Preisendanz. Vienna: Vienna University Press, 2018. 630 pages; 55 figures. The Yoga in Transformation volume pulls together extended research papers from an eponymous conference held at the University of Vienna in 2013. Featuring sixteen peer-reviewed chapters from world-leading scholars, the volume is a valuable resource for academic yoga studies—probably more at graduate than undergraduate level, given its original research content. The collection is divided into two sections. The first, titled “Yoga in South Asia and Tibet,” features mostly studies on texts, while the second, titled “Globalised Yoga,” focuses on developments in the twentieth century and is more interdisciplinary, including textual research, anthropology, sociology, affect theory, and art history.

Highlights

  • 2020 Volume 3 robust refutation of Pines and Gelbum’s theory that Al-Bīrūnī based his rendering on an unknown commentary

  • Maas and Verdon investigate the Kitāb Pātanğal, a work by Perso-Muslim polymath Al-Bīrūnī. This eleventh-century Arabic text is a “free and creative” (329) translation or a “simplifed revision” (301) of the Pātañjalayogśāstra, rendered during the Golden Age of the Islamic world (289). It is characterised by formal innovations, including a dialogic frame between “Pātanğal” and “the ascetic who roamed in the deserts and jungles” (287)—the latter a familiar figure in medieval Islamic religious literature

  • The chapter includes a detailed discussion of the cosmography of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and a sharp theoretical analysis of the translational strategies used by Al-Bīrūnī in order to “bridge cultural gaps” (325)

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Summary

Introduction

2020 Volume 3 robust refutation of Pines and Gelbum’s theory that Al-Bīrūnī based his rendering on an unknown commentary (rather than on the commentarial part of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra itself). The Yoga in Transformation volume pulls together extended research papers from an eponymous conference held at the University of Vienna in 2013. The first, titled “Yoga in South Asia and Tibet,” features mostly studies on texts, while the second, titled “Globalised Yoga,” focuses on developments in the twentieth century and is more interdisciplinary, including textual research, anthropology, sociology, affect theory, and art history.

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