RELIGIOUS PRACTICE AND YOGA IN THE TIME OF THE VEDAS, UPANIṢADS AND EARLY BUDDHISM
The subject of Yoga and especially of its beginnings or early forms in India is a very difficult one. Ever since Garbe published his book on S&ňkhya and Yoga ( 1896 ) the interest of both scholars and public as far as it has been directed towards Yoga has been focussed predominantly on its classical forms such as Patañjali's system or on later developments such as Bhakti Yoga, Tantra Yoga and Hatha Yoga. One real exception in this respect was the German indologist J. W. Hauer who had made the beginnings of Yoga in India the theme for his doctor's thesis (1917 ) and who also dealt with this problem in his later books including his last one, Der Yoga , ein indischer Weg zum Selbst ( 1958 ). It is generally assumed that Yoga came into being in connection with or as a result of religious practice when this practice had lost its appeal for some worshippers, and some of its elements were then elaborated into an individual spiritual training ( Gonda, Hauer )* which again retained many points of contact with religion. The origin of some of the techniques of Yoga is. also seen as reaching back into a more distant past when shamanism ( or " archaic techniques of ecstasy " - Eliade ) 3 were prevalent. Neither of these propositions, takes into account the possibility that Yoga may, already in the earliest times, have been a special discipline in its own right. There is, however, no evidence in the Vedic hymns or in the Upanisads that Yoga actually was a by-product of religious practice which only later developed into a separate method. It is therefore perfectly justifiable to try to reverse the usual assumption and to propose that Yoga is likely to have been a very old discipline which did not owe its origin to the religious development, but even may itself have exercised some important influence on the development of ancient Indian religious views and practices. The very earliest indication - though not a proof, strictly speaking -of the existence of Yoga in India comes from the per-Vedic Harapp'an culture. A number of seals found during excavations show a figure seàtèd in a Yoga position which has been used till the present day by Indian Yogis for meditation. The best known picture of this figure bears signs of divinity identical with those attached to the much late* Hindu god áiva. Other seals are without those attributes and one of them shows a Yogi with rearing cobras. This last one is again a familiar scene within the scope of Hindu practices even nowadays. Yoga, if it existed in the Harappan period, must have already reached, then and there, a variety of forms and levels. The most important feature in these depictions, however, is the sitting position of the figures. It is not a position of a priest attending or performing a service, but a posture of one who meditates, contemplates or in any event is lost in some kind of mental absorption, in any case indicating some sort of Yoga activity of a character not primarily recognisable as normal reli r gious practice. This would hold true, even if the figure on some seals represented a deity, as indeed was also suggested, for it always is human activity and human ideas which are projected outside the human mind and made visible as attributes of depicted gods, thereby becoming ideals to be strived for and achieved by men. , Difficult as it is to try to draw conclusions from the limited archaeological evidence, it is no easier to do so on the basis of Vedic hymns, for the form in which they have been preserved for us is obviously a product of brahmanic redaction and hence religious and pařticularly ritualistic conceptions prevail. But it has been more generally accepted that the Vedic ritual contained elements which coincided, with the "later" Yoga practices and were then developed and elaborated ( Oldenberg, Hauer, Eliade, Gonda ).1 Some of these elements are supposed, as stated, to have originated in shamanist rites ( Eliade, Hauer, Gonda )l accompanied by ecstatic trances. The Kesiin hymn ( RV. 10, 136 ) is quoted as an example. However, it is again easily possible to see that at the root of the development of Yoga there is likely to have been a much more articulate mental activity and clearer mental experience than rituals and shamanist trances can provide, and to see rather that the latter two were only subsequent degenerations or external developments in the wake of deeper spiritual experiences of great men whose achievements were difficult to emulate. Later examples support this view : Buddhism was, to start with, a sober teaching arid a pure Yoga practice combined with a clear moral discipline. It was founded by a powerful porsonality with a clear vision and determined intentions whose reputation of having been an enlightened teacher has not yet vanished. Yet his later followers developed, within scope of Buddhism, various ceremonies» magic rites and spells and a sort of religious institutionalism. ( Although in a diffèrent context and on a different level, another parallel example could be furnished by the developmemt of Christianity ). It is therefore quite justified to accept what is suggested by the tradition in India which is that at the beginning of the Vedic development there were seers who had clear vision and were outstanding personalities in their time, but whose less congenial followers in subsequent times slipped on one hand into ritualistic, and on the other hand into perhaps wildly ecstatic practices. The Vedic seers are sometimes said to have been of two types: ( 1 ) the rsi type and ( 2 ) the muni type ( Y. G. Rahurkar ).2 This division is acceptable with the reservation that the elements of a developing religiousness accompanied by the worship of gods should not be ascribed to them as authors too easily. The rsi type seers can be made responsible for deeper mystical and philosophical ideas originally incorporated in myths and symbols and later expressed also conceptually ( as in the Creation hymn, R V 10, 129 ) and the munis were most likely ascetics living in renunciation and practising some form of Yoga. ( The origin of the religious elements in the Vedas clearly goes back into the distant and dark Indo-European era of the Vedic people ). Of course, the question of the beginnings of conceptual thinking and philosophising in the Vedas that much easier, because it is a question of ideas, whereas Yoga is a question of practice. Thus the Creation hymn presents important philosophical ideas in a relatively undistorted way, while the Kesiin hymn describing munis is obviously the work of an outsider or observer who was not quite congenial to them. Still the " long-haired ones " are described there so as to allow us to think of them as higher than mere ecstatic shamanists. They are identified with light which has always been a symbol of higher spirituality, purity and intelligence. Their designation as munayo suggests contemplation rather than worship of gods as their chief preoccupation. When they are described as following the path of the wind, this may be - in contradistinction to Eliade's view that it represents the shamanist experience of a " magic flight " )x - better interpreted as indicating the higher spiritual status of those who " leave no trace behind them " (compare the later Yogic title paramahamsa interpreted in the same way ). When the kesins say that " the mortals can see only our bodies this reminds one of the Buddhist description of arahats who were said to not be seen by either men or gods when they left the earth for good. Gods, of course, ranked high in the mind of a Vedic compiler and it is a high praise when the long-haired ones are described as friends of gods. But more than that is expressed by the description showing them as abiding in the region of inner vision ( antariksan ) and as freely communicating with all beings, suprahuman and subhuman ( as later accomplished Yogis and Buddhist arahats were said to do ).
Highly mythological imagery penetrates the hymn when the kesin is said to have drunk poison from a cup in Rudra's company. The attempts to interpret this image literally as drug-taking ( H. D. Geiswold, R. N. Dandekar )x are unsupported by the general description of Kesins as bright and gentle sages. Another interpretation of the act of drinking poison as taking the world's suffering on oneself ( A. Ch. Bose )2 is more in line with the rest of the hymn. To conclude, the naked ( vãtaraéana ) muni type seers were not early dissenters from the orthodox Vedic religion ( as H. D. Sharma would have it )3 nor wild pursuers of shamanist ecstasy, let alone drug-addicts, but rather early Yogis whose practices and techniques were not quite understood by their contemporaries, but aroused interest and started exercising some influence on the Vedic ritual. In this sense the origin of Yoga cannot be sought in ritual practice with its requirement of ,c yoking the mind " to the ritual performed with the assistance of a particular god ( as Hauer interprets R V 1, 18, 6ff and 5, 81, 1 ).4 On the contrary, the specific and efficacious Yoga techniques were being introduced into the religious rituals in the hope that the latter would thereby be made effective. The Yoga techniques of concentration were felt to be very powerful and practically a superhuman achievement which, in accordance with the religious way of thought, could not be of human origin. The source of its power was felt to rest with some deity (like Brahmanaspati or Savitr ) who was then asked to help the sacrificer to achieve the required concentration. This is the main difference between a Yogi's and a worshipper's approach to the supposed transcendental region. A Yogi, " following the path of the wind", is on his own and penetrates into the interim region of spirituality while still dwelling among mortals, and he is at least equal to the gods. The usual line of thought of a priestly mind, however, is inclined to rely on help from the gods brought about by routine offerings, prayers and the like, even if what is needed is the sacrificer's own mental effort, enabling him to carry out his sacrifices properly. At the bottom of this is man's inclination to project outside his mind forces and faculties* hopes and aspirations, fears and limitations which are parts of his own character. Another important Vedic concept, that of tapas ( " mystical heat " or " inner creative flame " ) can be interpreted in a similar way. First there must have been reached the psychological experience, accompanied by a certain degree of aWareness of what was going on, of a state of m^ind which came about as a result of some conscious or even calculated effort made in order to achieve some results, and this experience must have been accompained by a sense of " inflaming ". Only then could it have been elaborated into a religious concept and projected into the cosmic dimension as the original force which gave birth to " That One " or through which That One self-generated itself ( depending on how we translate the verse tapasas tanmahinã-ajãyata - ekam - RV 10, 129, 3 ). And only then could it have been ascribed to the gods as we see in practically every myth of creation where a creator of the universe is described as making first a sort of mental preparation before the act of creation, consisting in producing in himself the inner creative flame ( the usual words being tapo atapyata ). It has been confirmed nowadays that a sense of inner heat and subsequent inflow of energy accompanies all practised traditional Yoga exercises as well as modern relaxational techniques like the " autogenic-training " ( J. H. Schultze ).* To become aware of it requires a considerable degree of self-observation which must have been reached by some Vedic seers already and cannot but be seen as a part of what is known as Yoga training. This inner experience was undoubtedly a possession of the few only and the meaning of tapas was not generally understood, not even among non-orthodox ascetics, so that in the course of time it acquired the meaning of '^austerity Another Yoga tradition obviously existed within and around the vrãtya communities which, according to some researches, had their own social organisation outside the Brãhmaiiic society (Hauer,Ohoudhary ).2 The hymns of the Atharva Veda and especially of its Vrãty a Kãnda contain many clear references to Yoga practices which, however, are practically always intertwined with religious ritualistic practice and mythological thinking. These elements were probably introduced later when vrâty as became brahmanised and the material contained in the Vrãty a Kãnda was brought in line with the orthodox religious attitudes. Brahmanised priests of the vrãtyas- the Atharva Veda brãh manas - then adopted, in the course of time, an even more rigid formal and ritùalistic attitude than is found in the three older samhitãs. which may be understandable in view of the comparatively late redaction of the Atharva Veda in a time when the Vedic religion generally deteriorated. Therefore if we find in the Atharva Veda hints at specific Yoga techniques in connection with rituals ( for example breathing exercises, AV 16, 14, 15; 15,15,17), it cannot be taken for granted that these were early elements of what later developed into classical Yoga, a notion which persisted from the times of Deussen till Haue^. It can only mean that these specific practices among the Yogis of the time were so influential that they were in some form or another introduced into religious practice and thus got into the priestly version of the Atharva Veda hymns, the Yogis themselves having had no written records» There is no doubt that there were, among vrãtyas , individuals and groups of individuals leading the life of wandering ascetics and practising various forms of Yoga. It again has to be stressed that they were no dissenters from any kind of orthodox religion, because they never belonged to it. In fact, they were an older phenomenon than the real Vedic orthodoxy as we know it from the Samhitãs and especially from the Brãhmanas. When Brähmanism established itself as orthodoxy, it could do so only because it raised the claim of being all-embracing, universal. This claim could not be raised if wandering ascetics and Yogis continued to be looked down upon as outcasts by the established priest caste. And because they would never be assimilated into a Brãhmanic community as the larger vrãtya community including their priests was, while their influence on and authority with people could not be eradicated, the only way to make Brähmanism universal was to include them into the system by accepting their way of life as a sort of culmination of life's achievements. This is most likely the origin of the scheme of four ãsramas or stages of life, particularly of the fourth one, which is that of a sanyãsí.
However, this scheme was never consistently adopted by Brahmanas themselves who preferred to remain in the second stage of a householder as long as possible or up till dëath and so it remained mostly theoretical. Besides, the claim for universality in Brãhmanism was never fully accepted and outside it schools of thought and movements of ascetic and Yoga practices kept flourishing throughout the times of the Brahmanas and Upanisads and well beyond the time of the Buddha. But on the other hand the acceptance on the part of orthodoxy of the Yoga approach as a legitimate religious practice gave rise ta religiously committed schools of Yoga in which religious and mythological projections into the mental practice of Yoga played a great part. The Yogi, originally a completely human figure, received his cosmic counterpart in the " Primeval Yogi " ( Uryogin of Hauer ) that was identified with Rudra and Šiva, presumably not without the influence of the obscure tradition going back to the time of the Harappan civilisation. ( A story which repeated itself in a way later in Buddhism - from Gautama Buddha to the cosmic Adi Buddha ). From such religious schools of Yoga a developmental line leading directly to the Švetakvatara and the later Yoga Upanisads can be assumed, while the ř original Yoga traditions outside the Brãhmauic orthodoxy continued and led eventually to the rise of Jainism and Buddhism and later on to the formulation of the classical Yoga system. The oldest Upanisads , such as Brhadäranyaka , Chãndogya , Taittiraya Aitareya or Kausïtaki, do not appear to have been directly related to the tradition of Yoga schools, whether of the independent line or the brahmanised religious line, and fall within the scope of the evolution of philosophical thought. Yet at least four points make them most interesting and important with regard to Yoga and the development of religious practice and show signs of influence on the part of Yoga : ( 1 ) There is indirect but clear evidence of an essential Yoga technique which the Upanisads call dhyãna. ( 2 ) The older Upanisads formulated what was to become a new motivation for earnest religious practice and for philosophical quest and what appears to have been always the basic motivation for all Yoga efforts, namely the teaching on what happens to the individual after death and what is his final destiny. ( 3 ) There is a shifting in the conception of ^what is knowledge from merely knowing the scriptures to being aware of the art of knowing itself and finally to knowing directly the last imperishable reality. (4) It is realised that the psychological states of the individual mind are the doors to experiences with wide implications thought to include the psychological identification with the absolute.
( 1 ) Dhyãna is not a religious concept, has nothing to do with a mythological line of thought and could not be arrived at through philosophical speculation. It is a definite Yoga technique which can be known only where individual practice has been cultivated for a considerable time by advanced Yogis and groups of pupils and where attempts have been made to formulate the resulting experience for instructional purposes. The dhyãna section of the Chãndogya Upanisad (7, 6, 1) appears to be a distant echo of such a formulation inserted into a wider context of Upanisadic tracts without full understanding of its significance. It is said there that dhyãna or contemplative absorption transcends the surface mind ( citta ) and that, in fact, everything - the earth, the atmosphere, the heaven, the waters, the mountains, gods and men - exists in deep absorption, as it were, meaning in an instant and constant peace and balance. In other words, the unified, mature mind of a superior man sees everything in its proper place and only small people live in conflict and create upheaval around themselves. This description, although short, gives the essence of a meditative way of living which corresponds to the later Buddhist detached attitude of an accomplished arahat. ( See e. g Maj. Nik . 1, 1 ). It also corresponds to a still later Zen conception of merely viewing reality as it presents itself without trying to grasp it and we find it advocated even nowadays by those who claim to have reached or experienced the essence of life, particularly by J. Krishnamurti. All these sources say, basically, that the real or true life ( the meditative life ) just flows, letting everything be as it is. They imply that it is the way of spontaneous existing which is natural to entities that have no differentiated or individualised consciousness including happy simple people. " Small people " who quarrel are the bulk of humanity consisting of self-conscious individuals, while " superior men " are supposed to be those who, through personal effort, are able to achieve the dhyãna attitude with full consciousness. The section is set into a context which suggests that the redaction of the Upanisad was done by people unaware of thè meaning of the section and the concept of dhyãna , for they refer to scriptural knowledge as higher than dhyãna . This indicates that the concept of dhyãna was an element introduced into the Upanisad from elsewhere and that it took some time before it was fully accepted and understood by the Upanisadic thinkers in later Upanisads . An obvious interpretation then is that it came from an independent Yoga tradition outside the orthodoxy and philosophical circles
( 2 ) The new motivation for religious practice which was formulated in the earliest Upanisads- and was shared by ascetics and Yogis of practically all schools - was, in the first instance, the teaching of transmigration. For Yoga it must have been a current underlying ideology for a long time and there are indications in the Vedic hymns that ancient rsis knew or even held the teaching. Brähmanas show that the priests had a certain idea about the repeated deaths which had to be suffered by those who had not reached final salvation, but it was only in the early Upanisads that the teaching was for the first time clearly formulated ( particularly in Brh. Up. 3, 2, 12-13; 4,4, 2-5; 4, 6; 4, 4, 19; 6, 2, 15-16 ) and it became quickly universally accepted ( cf. Katha Up. 1, 1, 7 : sasyam iva martyah pacyate sasyam iva jöjyate punah ). Soon, however, it became a source of frustration to religious thinkers. The prospect of an endless round of rebirth was deplorable to them as it may have been to ascetics and Yogis for a long time already. For the chief motivation for the Yoga practice - although not for all the religious practice of the time - was the desire to escape from endless sequence of lives, to secure non-return ( Brh. Up. 6, 2, 15 ). What was hidden behind the notion of no return, however, was not at all clear to all early Upanisadic thinkers and various statements were made concerning it. Soon, of course, the philosophical identification of the individual Atman with the Brahman provided the answer (Brh. Up. 1 , 4, 10 ) and became widely accepted and taught, but the practising truth-seekers or Yogis were not thinkers and evidence can be found even in the Upanisads that they did not attach importance to concepts, ideas and religious beliefs and wanted to know truth directly. This was a point when it was clearly seen or it was at least beginning to dawn that to know about things did not mean to know. There was therefore the realisation of the basic ignorance of man about his own situation. In their pursuit of knowledge the truth-seekers were prepared to leave everything behind. Religious practice in the orthodox sense did not have any meaning for them, they wanted a reliable solution of the riddle of life. An illustration or a typified figure of an unenlightened truthseeker is Naciketas ( which can be interpreted as " the ignorant one " ) of the Katha Upaisad. The mythical framework and an older story (Tait. Br. 3,11,8) provide an opportunity for putting Yoga higher than the orthodox religious practice and showing concern for the ultimate destiny of man which escapes the attention of the current religious outlook, In the original story in Taittrïya Brãhmana Naciketas,
who has been granted three wishes by Yãma, asks as his third wish for the means of overcoming repeated death (punarmrtyio ) and is given instruction in using a certain ceremonial fire sacrifice called thereafter by his name. In the Katha Upanisad , however, Naciketas right from the beginning is obviously sceptical about ritual and even about the value of external renunciation ( the ascetic attitude did not appeal to him as, later, the Buddha did not find it successful, either ). He is well acquainted with the doctrine of rebirth and is not hesitant to give up everything, including his life, but he wants to know what happens to man as an individual when he departs from the world for good, meaning when he has won final release - a knowledge which is hidden even from gods, as Yama says. The instruction he finally gets is typical of the independent Yoga approach ( culminating later in Buddhism ) : he does not get a direct answer to his question, but is advised to turn to himself in practising Yoga, thus abandoning worldly joy and sorrow {Katha 1,2,12). Later even some practical steps are specified and they represent the essence of all Yoga techniques : " When the five processes of cognizance together with the mind come to a standstill and the intelligence does not flatter, that is called the supreme course. That is considered to be Yoga : firm mastery of the senses; then one is undistracted. Yoga is growth as well as passing away. " ( 2, 3, 10-11 ). The story, in which these sober statements appear, contains even in its Upanisadic version, much mythological material which is combined with philosophical ideas, the usual pattern with the Upanisads. But the statements on Yoga are so clear and different from the rest that they cannot be regarded as an outcome of evolution achieved in time between the Brãhmanic and Upanisadic versions of the story within the scope of Brãhmanic religious thinking. We must assume that they point tö the existence of Yoga practice cultivated outside the orthodox religion and also apart from the line of speculative philosophical thought. In order to gain the final knowledge people had to resort to the special practice of Yoga. ( 3 ) The shifting in the conception of what is real knowledge, indicated already in the Naciketas story, was brought about partly also by the philosophical development and was strengthened and deepened by the influence of Yoga. At first there was no clear conception of knowledge as means of salvation - faith was the most important basis for religious practice ; knowledge was conceived as merely knowing the Vedas and other scriptures ( vedãngas ). No access to reality through direct knowledge was suspected by the priests to exist, while the facts and things of the world could be known because
they were accessible through the consciousness ( Chãnd. Up , 7. 7, 1 ). However, the idea of the direct knowing of the "imperishable" ( aksara ) was eventually found to be possible by some more profound minds (e. g. by Yajñavalkya - Brh. Up. 3, 8, 10-11 ) and finally it was conceived that man's knowledge ( vidyã ) was • twofold : the lower one was concerned with the Vedas and other external branches of knowing and the higher one was believed to have direct access to the " imperishable " ( Mund . Up. 1, 1, 4-6 ). It can be objected that it is hardly possible to rule out that it was the development of philosophical thought which alone and in its own way had been responsible for the Upanisadic concept of higher knowledge and that it need not have been the influence of Yoga practice which made itself felt here and introduced a new concept accepted by philosophical thought. The urge to know was always present in Yedic scriptures. Thus the Creation hymn (RV 10, 129) shows the desire to know the last mysteries of thè worlďs origin, and as there was not found anybody who had witnessed the creation and the origin of the world, a new channel of knowledge had to be found. It is3 however, doubtful whether this could have been possible within the strict boundaries of the thought process. The thought is never inclined to resign its claim of superiority in providing knowledge and gives way only when the pressure on the part of irrational components of human personality is very strong and irresistible. And the concept of a direct knowledge providing access to the " imperishable " is certainly not rational. Yoga itself owes its very existence to the claim of being able to open just such a new direct avenue to knowing the highest truth and it provides for techniques which are said to achieve it. It is, therefore, most likely that the Upanisadic philosophical thought, opposed as it was to traditional religious practice which was felt to be unfruitful, made use of or was Itself overwhelmed by the impact Yoga made on its followers as well as on outsiders. In this way philosophical thought first accepted the basically non- rational Yogic notion of dhyäna and then adopted even the Yogic concept of higher or direct knowlege as well, followed by embracing the practical Yoga techniques in later Upanisads . All this provided also a new impetus for further philosophical and religious speculations. ( 4 ) The realisation that man experiences various psychological states of mind and that these point to a possible solution of the riddle of his origin and essence seems to have developed entirely within the scope of Upanisadic speculations based on observation. The first and most conspicuous element in this respect was the observed fact of the disappearance of consciousness on falling asleep and its reappearance on waking up ( Brh. Up. 2, 1, 16 ). Next the difference between' sleep with and without dreams Was noticed ( Brh . Up. 4, 3, 9-18 and elsewhere ) and the speculations became concerned with the points of dissimilarity between the world one experiences in the waking state and the world one seemingly creates for oneself out of nothing when dreaming ; the latter was being compared with Brahma's creation of the universe (also seemingly out of nothing). The greatest interest, however, was focussed on the state of deep sleep without dreams which so easily provokes comparison with death. It was noticed, though, that one wakes up from a deep sleep not only with all one's previous knowledge and memory, but one experiences also a sense of freshness and an afterfeeling of a just passed experience of bliss. The explanation of what happens during the deep sleep was first - in fact quite fittingly - this : that mans all psychological functions withdraw into the vital force ( prãna ) of the organism ( Chãnd. Up. 4, 3, 3 ). A metaphysical explanation emerged when deep sleep was proclaimed to be a temporary merging of the individual soul ( ãtman ) with the immortal universal essence {brahman - Chãnd. Up. 8,11,1; cf. Brh. Up. 4, 3, 20-31 ). It was even claimed that in dreamless sleep one has deep knowledge ( Mãnd Up. 5 ). However, it was still felt that the dreamless sleep was not the highest possible experience and that the realisation of the essential unity in one ãtman was the content of a fourth state of consciousness ( caturtha - Mãnd Up. 7 ). But nowhere in the Upanisads of old do we really find an indication as to how this state may be arrived at. It was only when Yoga became fully accepted and introduced into later Upanisads that the way to this achievement was described ( Maitrï Up. 6, 18-19; 7, 11 ). The indirect evidence of the existence of Yoga techniques outside the religious orthodox practice, and independently of the philosophical efforts of the time, as furnished by the Upanisads , is supported by direct evidence of the existence of free non-religious and non-philosophical schools of Yoga contained in the Buddhist Pâli Canon. In his search for enlightenment the Buddha, or then rather an unknown mendicant, Gotama, spent some time under different Yoga teachers, having joined their schools or circles of pupils. The Pali Canon mentions only two of them by name ( Álãra Kãlãma and Uddaka Rãmaputta - Maj . Nik. 3, 26 or 4, 36 and elsewhere ), but it is almost certain that Gotama was successively associated with more than two and in any event it is certain that there existed a large number of schools and teachers in India of the Buddha's time
The report on the teachings of the two teachers of the Buddha is very brief, but it seems that they gave their students first a theoretical introduction into their respective systems and when the pupils were able to follow them they were taught a practical Yoga technique to achieve psychological states of absorption described as the sphere of nothingness and the sphere of neither-cognizance nor-non-cognizance ( nevasannãnãnnãyatana ), respectively. This achievement they both considered to be the^last and definite reality, a state of transcendence temporarily accessible to them during their lives, but permanently achieved after death. Thus we find schools of Yoga in existence in the 6th century B. C. which obviously had no connections whatsoever with the orthodox religion of the time, nor did they possess ideological teachings based on any kind of a God idea and, besides, they were not influenced by the Upanisadic brahma-ãtman theory either. (Asvaghosa's account of this biographical episode from the Buddha's life imputes that both Buddha's teachers had postulated a self -the "fieldknower " and the " self-grasper " ( ãtmagrãha ) respectively, which woul d bring their teachings nearer to those current in the Upanisads . As his account is several centuries later than the Pâli Canon - he is believed to have lived around 100 A. D. - it is likely to reflect not the situation during the Buddha's time, but the later controversy on the point of the ãtman doctrine. ) The very fact of the existence of such non-committed Yoga schools, prior to the establishment of Buddhism, is a proof of a line of development of Yoga entirely outside the recognised religious and philosophical sphere of Brãhmanism. Yoga in ancient India was not an outcome of religious evolution nor a result of a protest against religious stagnation and ritual practice and it did not originate in philosophical circles. On the contrary, Yoga stimulated fresh philosophical development when the latter, after the stagnation of the Brahmana period, took up some subtle philosophical trends of the early Vedic times and elaborated them into religious speculations opposed to dry ritual practice and aiming at transcending it. Yoga was then in due course accepted by philosophical schools of thought and made by them into a prerequisite for philosophical progress towards knowledge as reflected in the Upanisads. Yoga gave a new impetus also to religious practice and Yoga techniques were among the elements that transformed orthodox Brãhmanism into the broadly conceived Hinduism which accepted tolerantly many previously refused elements of philosophical thought and unorthodox religious practice and could then compete successfully with Buddhism
Although the earlier hints in the Vedas from which it is possible to infer the early existence of Yoga are brahmanised, it seems obvious that the strongest independent Yoga tradition was one without the idea of God as ïévara and without the concept of a universal principle as the underlying essence of the universe which would be the goal of the Yoga path. That is why individual teachers such as those mentioned in the Pali Canon and various schools of Yoga could develop different forms of psychological experience, and great unorthodox integral Yoga movements like Jainism and Buddhism could arise and even an anïsvara form of the classical Yoga system could survive. Buddhism itself was a culmination of this free unorthodox line of development of Yoga schools and would be inexplicable without them. Buddhism cannot be explained as having developed solely from the Vedic and Upanisadic line or as a totally new phenomenon created by one man. It has its prehistory and this is in the mostly unrecorded independent Yoga tradition. Where Buddhist ideas are foreshadowed ( like in the Kesin hymn of the Rg Veda or in the Naciketas story in Katha ), the influence of that independent tradition itself can be detected. Buddhism, having perfected the Yoga techniques, inherited from the independent tradition, into a psychological system of training hardly ever surmounted afterwards and given them a comprehensive and basically non-religious doctrinal backing, exercised a powerful influence on all non-orthodox truth-seekers and schools of Yoga and thus probably contributed largely to their disappearance. The only other remaining unorthodox school of Yoga has survived within Jainism. Its Yoga techniques are not too removed from those in Buddhism. At the other pole Yoga was incorporated into the newly developing, broad system of Hinduism where - apart from minor exceptions such as the one within Patañjali's Yoga system - it took religious forms which often made Yoga into a secondary tool made use of for reviving or assisting in deepening the religious practice and beliefs of various Hindu sects. At the same time Yoga was added to every system of Hindu philosophy supposedly as a means of proving its validity.
And so even Yoga seems to have caught the attention also of some free and scientifically trained minds inclined to experiment with it. With what results remains to be seen,
Highly mythological imagery penetrates the hymn when the kesin is said to have drunk poison from a cup in Rudra's company. The attempts to interpret this image literally as drug-taking ( H. D. Geiswold, R. N. Dandekar )x are unsupported by the general description of Kesins as bright and gentle sages. Another interpretation of the act of drinking poison as taking the world's suffering on oneself ( A. Ch. Bose )2 is more in line with the rest of the hymn. To conclude, the naked ( vãtaraéana ) muni type seers were not early dissenters from the orthodox Vedic religion ( as H. D. Sharma would have it )3 nor wild pursuers of shamanist ecstasy, let alone drug-addicts, but rather early Yogis whose practices and techniques were not quite understood by their contemporaries, but aroused interest and started exercising some influence on the Vedic ritual. In this sense the origin of Yoga cannot be sought in ritual practice with its requirement of ,c yoking the mind " to the ritual performed with the assistance of a particular god ( as Hauer interprets R V 1, 18, 6ff and 5, 81, 1 ).4 On the contrary, the specific and efficacious Yoga techniques were being introduced into the religious rituals in the hope that the latter would thereby be made effective. The Yoga techniques of concentration were felt to be very powerful and practically a superhuman achievement which, in accordance with the religious way of thought, could not be of human origin. The source of its power was felt to rest with some deity (like Brahmanaspati or Savitr ) who was then asked to help the sacrificer to achieve the required concentration. This is the main difference between a Yogi's and a worshipper's approach to the supposed transcendental region. A Yogi, " following the path of the wind", is on his own and penetrates into the interim region of spirituality while still dwelling among mortals, and he is at least equal to the gods. The usual line of thought of a priestly mind, however, is inclined to rely on help from the gods brought about by routine offerings, prayers and the like, even if what is needed is the sacrificer's own mental effort, enabling him to carry out his sacrifices properly. At the bottom of this is man's inclination to project outside his mind forces and faculties* hopes and aspirations, fears and limitations which are parts of his own character. Another important Vedic concept, that of tapas ( " mystical heat " or " inner creative flame " ) can be interpreted in a similar way. First there must have been reached the psychological experience, accompanied by a certain degree of aWareness of what was going on, of a state of m^ind which came about as a result of some conscious or even calculated effort made in order to achieve some results, and this experience must have been accompained by a sense of " inflaming ". Only then could it have been elaborated into a religious concept and projected into the cosmic dimension as the original force which gave birth to " That One " or through which That One self-generated itself ( depending on how we translate the verse tapasas tanmahinã-ajãyata - ekam - RV 10, 129, 3 ). And only then could it have been ascribed to the gods as we see in practically every myth of creation where a creator of the universe is described as making first a sort of mental preparation before the act of creation, consisting in producing in himself the inner creative flame ( the usual words being tapo atapyata ). It has been confirmed nowadays that a sense of inner heat and subsequent inflow of energy accompanies all practised traditional Yoga exercises as well as modern relaxational techniques like the " autogenic-training " ( J. H. Schultze ).* To become aware of it requires a considerable degree of self-observation which must have been reached by some Vedic seers already and cannot but be seen as a part of what is known as Yoga training. This inner experience was undoubtedly a possession of the few only and the meaning of tapas was not generally understood, not even among non-orthodox ascetics, so that in the course of time it acquired the meaning of '^austerity Another Yoga tradition obviously existed within and around the vrãtya communities which, according to some researches, had their own social organisation outside the Brãhmaiiic society (Hauer,Ohoudhary ).2 The hymns of the Atharva Veda and especially of its Vrãty a Kãnda contain many clear references to Yoga practices which, however, are practically always intertwined with religious ritualistic practice and mythological thinking. These elements were probably introduced later when vrâty as became brahmanised and the material contained in the Vrãty a Kãnda was brought in line with the orthodox religious attitudes. Brahmanised priests of the vrãtyas- the Atharva Veda brãh manas - then adopted, in the course of time, an even more rigid formal and ritùalistic attitude than is found in the three older samhitãs. which may be understandable in view of the comparatively late redaction of the Atharva Veda in a time when the Vedic religion generally deteriorated. Therefore if we find in the Atharva Veda hints at specific Yoga techniques in connection with rituals ( for example breathing exercises, AV 16, 14, 15; 15,15,17), it cannot be taken for granted that these were early elements of what later developed into classical Yoga, a notion which persisted from the times of Deussen till Haue^. It can only mean that these specific practices among the Yogis of the time were so influential that they were in some form or another introduced into religious practice and thus got into the priestly version of the Atharva Veda hymns, the Yogis themselves having had no written records» There is no doubt that there were, among vrãtyas , individuals and groups of individuals leading the life of wandering ascetics and practising various forms of Yoga. It again has to be stressed that they were no dissenters from any kind of orthodox religion, because they never belonged to it. In fact, they were an older phenomenon than the real Vedic orthodoxy as we know it from the Samhitãs and especially from the Brãhmanas. When Brähmanism established itself as orthodoxy, it could do so only because it raised the claim of being all-embracing, universal. This claim could not be raised if wandering ascetics and Yogis continued to be looked down upon as outcasts by the established priest caste. And because they would never be assimilated into a Brãhmanic community as the larger vrãtya community including their priests was, while their influence on and authority with people could not be eradicated, the only way to make Brähmanism universal was to include them into the system by accepting their way of life as a sort of culmination of life's achievements. This is most likely the origin of the scheme of four ãsramas or stages of life, particularly of the fourth one, which is that of a sanyãsí.
However, this scheme was never consistently adopted by Brahmanas themselves who preferred to remain in the second stage of a householder as long as possible or up till dëath and so it remained mostly theoretical. Besides, the claim for universality in Brãhmanism was never fully accepted and outside it schools of thought and movements of ascetic and Yoga practices kept flourishing throughout the times of the Brahmanas and Upanisads and well beyond the time of the Buddha. But on the other hand the acceptance on the part of orthodoxy of the Yoga approach as a legitimate religious practice gave rise ta religiously committed schools of Yoga in which religious and mythological projections into the mental practice of Yoga played a great part. The Yogi, originally a completely human figure, received his cosmic counterpart in the " Primeval Yogi " ( Uryogin of Hauer ) that was identified with Rudra and Šiva, presumably not without the influence of the obscure tradition going back to the time of the Harappan civilisation. ( A story which repeated itself in a way later in Buddhism - from Gautama Buddha to the cosmic Adi Buddha ). From such religious schools of Yoga a developmental line leading directly to the Švetakvatara and the later Yoga Upanisads can be assumed, while the ř original Yoga traditions outside the Brãhmauic orthodoxy continued and led eventually to the rise of Jainism and Buddhism and later on to the formulation of the classical Yoga system. The oldest Upanisads , such as Brhadäranyaka , Chãndogya , Taittiraya Aitareya or Kausïtaki, do not appear to have been directly related to the tradition of Yoga schools, whether of the independent line or the brahmanised religious line, and fall within the scope of the evolution of philosophical thought. Yet at least four points make them most interesting and important with regard to Yoga and the development of religious practice and show signs of influence on the part of Yoga : ( 1 ) There is indirect but clear evidence of an essential Yoga technique which the Upanisads call dhyãna. ( 2 ) The older Upanisads formulated what was to become a new motivation for earnest religious practice and for philosophical quest and what appears to have been always the basic motivation for all Yoga efforts, namely the teaching on what happens to the individual after death and what is his final destiny. ( 3 ) There is a shifting in the conception of ^what is knowledge from merely knowing the scriptures to being aware of the art of knowing itself and finally to knowing directly the last imperishable reality. (4) It is realised that the psychological states of the individual mind are the doors to experiences with wide implications thought to include the psychological identification with the absolute.
( 1 ) Dhyãna is not a religious concept, has nothing to do with a mythological line of thought and could not be arrived at through philosophical speculation. It is a definite Yoga technique which can be known only where individual practice has been cultivated for a considerable time by advanced Yogis and groups of pupils and where attempts have been made to formulate the resulting experience for instructional purposes. The dhyãna section of the Chãndogya Upanisad (7, 6, 1) appears to be a distant echo of such a formulation inserted into a wider context of Upanisadic tracts without full understanding of its significance. It is said there that dhyãna or contemplative absorption transcends the surface mind ( citta ) and that, in fact, everything - the earth, the atmosphere, the heaven, the waters, the mountains, gods and men - exists in deep absorption, as it were, meaning in an instant and constant peace and balance. In other words, the unified, mature mind of a superior man sees everything in its proper place and only small people live in conflict and create upheaval around themselves. This description, although short, gives the essence of a meditative way of living which corresponds to the later Buddhist detached attitude of an accomplished arahat. ( See e. g Maj. Nik . 1, 1 ). It also corresponds to a still later Zen conception of merely viewing reality as it presents itself without trying to grasp it and we find it advocated even nowadays by those who claim to have reached or experienced the essence of life, particularly by J. Krishnamurti. All these sources say, basically, that the real or true life ( the meditative life ) just flows, letting everything be as it is. They imply that it is the way of spontaneous existing which is natural to entities that have no differentiated or individualised consciousness including happy simple people. " Small people " who quarrel are the bulk of humanity consisting of self-conscious individuals, while " superior men " are supposed to be those who, through personal effort, are able to achieve the dhyãna attitude with full consciousness. The section is set into a context which suggests that the redaction of the Upanisad was done by people unaware of thè meaning of the section and the concept of dhyãna , for they refer to scriptural knowledge as higher than dhyãna . This indicates that the concept of dhyãna was an element introduced into the Upanisad from elsewhere and that it took some time before it was fully accepted and understood by the Upanisadic thinkers in later Upanisads . An obvious interpretation then is that it came from an independent Yoga tradition outside the orthodoxy and philosophical circles
( 2 ) The new motivation for religious practice which was formulated in the earliest Upanisads- and was shared by ascetics and Yogis of practically all schools - was, in the first instance, the teaching of transmigration. For Yoga it must have been a current underlying ideology for a long time and there are indications in the Vedic hymns that ancient rsis knew or even held the teaching. Brähmanas show that the priests had a certain idea about the repeated deaths which had to be suffered by those who had not reached final salvation, but it was only in the early Upanisads that the teaching was for the first time clearly formulated ( particularly in Brh. Up. 3, 2, 12-13; 4,4, 2-5; 4, 6; 4, 4, 19; 6, 2, 15-16 ) and it became quickly universally accepted ( cf. Katha Up. 1, 1, 7 : sasyam iva martyah pacyate sasyam iva jöjyate punah ). Soon, however, it became a source of frustration to religious thinkers. The prospect of an endless round of rebirth was deplorable to them as it may have been to ascetics and Yogis for a long time already. For the chief motivation for the Yoga practice - although not for all the religious practice of the time - was the desire to escape from endless sequence of lives, to secure non-return ( Brh. Up. 6, 2, 15 ). What was hidden behind the notion of no return, however, was not at all clear to all early Upanisadic thinkers and various statements were made concerning it. Soon, of course, the philosophical identification of the individual Atman with the Brahman provided the answer (Brh. Up. 1 , 4, 10 ) and became widely accepted and taught, but the practising truth-seekers or Yogis were not thinkers and evidence can be found even in the Upanisads that they did not attach importance to concepts, ideas and religious beliefs and wanted to know truth directly. This was a point when it was clearly seen or it was at least beginning to dawn that to know about things did not mean to know. There was therefore the realisation of the basic ignorance of man about his own situation. In their pursuit of knowledge the truth-seekers were prepared to leave everything behind. Religious practice in the orthodox sense did not have any meaning for them, they wanted a reliable solution of the riddle of life. An illustration or a typified figure of an unenlightened truthseeker is Naciketas ( which can be interpreted as " the ignorant one " ) of the Katha Upaisad. The mythical framework and an older story (Tait. Br. 3,11,8) provide an opportunity for putting Yoga higher than the orthodox religious practice and showing concern for the ultimate destiny of man which escapes the attention of the current religious outlook, In the original story in Taittrïya Brãhmana Naciketas,
who has been granted three wishes by Yãma, asks as his third wish for the means of overcoming repeated death (punarmrtyio ) and is given instruction in using a certain ceremonial fire sacrifice called thereafter by his name. In the Katha Upanisad , however, Naciketas right from the beginning is obviously sceptical about ritual and even about the value of external renunciation ( the ascetic attitude did not appeal to him as, later, the Buddha did not find it successful, either ). He is well acquainted with the doctrine of rebirth and is not hesitant to give up everything, including his life, but he wants to know what happens to man as an individual when he departs from the world for good, meaning when he has won final release - a knowledge which is hidden even from gods, as Yama says. The instruction he finally gets is typical of the independent Yoga approach ( culminating later in Buddhism ) : he does not get a direct answer to his question, but is advised to turn to himself in practising Yoga, thus abandoning worldly joy and sorrow {Katha 1,2,12). Later even some practical steps are specified and they represent the essence of all Yoga techniques : " When the five processes of cognizance together with the mind come to a standstill and the intelligence does not flatter, that is called the supreme course. That is considered to be Yoga : firm mastery of the senses; then one is undistracted. Yoga is growth as well as passing away. " ( 2, 3, 10-11 ). The story, in which these sober statements appear, contains even in its Upanisadic version, much mythological material which is combined with philosophical ideas, the usual pattern with the Upanisads. But the statements on Yoga are so clear and different from the rest that they cannot be regarded as an outcome of evolution achieved in time between the Brãhmanic and Upanisadic versions of the story within the scope of Brãhmanic religious thinking. We must assume that they point tö the existence of Yoga practice cultivated outside the orthodox religion and also apart from the line of speculative philosophical thought. In order to gain the final knowledge people had to resort to the special practice of Yoga. ( 3 ) The shifting in the conception of what is real knowledge, indicated already in the Naciketas story, was brought about partly also by the philosophical development and was strengthened and deepened by the influence of Yoga. At first there was no clear conception of knowledge as means of salvation - faith was the most important basis for religious practice ; knowledge was conceived as merely knowing the Vedas and other scriptures ( vedãngas ). No access to reality through direct knowledge was suspected by the priests to exist, while the facts and things of the world could be known because
they were accessible through the consciousness ( Chãnd. Up , 7. 7, 1 ). However, the idea of the direct knowing of the "imperishable" ( aksara ) was eventually found to be possible by some more profound minds (e. g. by Yajñavalkya - Brh. Up. 3, 8, 10-11 ) and finally it was conceived that man's knowledge ( vidyã ) was • twofold : the lower one was concerned with the Vedas and other external branches of knowing and the higher one was believed to have direct access to the " imperishable " ( Mund . Up. 1, 1, 4-6 ). It can be objected that it is hardly possible to rule out that it was the development of philosophical thought which alone and in its own way had been responsible for the Upanisadic concept of higher knowledge and that it need not have been the influence of Yoga practice which made itself felt here and introduced a new concept accepted by philosophical thought. The urge to know was always present in Yedic scriptures. Thus the Creation hymn (RV 10, 129) shows the desire to know the last mysteries of thè worlďs origin, and as there was not found anybody who had witnessed the creation and the origin of the world, a new channel of knowledge had to be found. It is3 however, doubtful whether this could have been possible within the strict boundaries of the thought process. The thought is never inclined to resign its claim of superiority in providing knowledge and gives way only when the pressure on the part of irrational components of human personality is very strong and irresistible. And the concept of a direct knowledge providing access to the " imperishable " is certainly not rational. Yoga itself owes its very existence to the claim of being able to open just such a new direct avenue to knowing the highest truth and it provides for techniques which are said to achieve it. It is, therefore, most likely that the Upanisadic philosophical thought, opposed as it was to traditional religious practice which was felt to be unfruitful, made use of or was Itself overwhelmed by the impact Yoga made on its followers as well as on outsiders. In this way philosophical thought first accepted the basically non- rational Yogic notion of dhyäna and then adopted even the Yogic concept of higher or direct knowlege as well, followed by embracing the practical Yoga techniques in later Upanisads . All this provided also a new impetus for further philosophical and religious speculations. ( 4 ) The realisation that man experiences various psychological states of mind and that these point to a possible solution of the riddle of his origin and essence seems to have developed entirely within the scope of Upanisadic speculations based on observation. The first and most conspicuous element in this respect was the observed fact of the disappearance of consciousness on falling asleep and its reappearance on waking up ( Brh. Up. 2, 1, 16 ). Next the difference between' sleep with and without dreams Was noticed ( Brh . Up. 4, 3, 9-18 and elsewhere ) and the speculations became concerned with the points of dissimilarity between the world one experiences in the waking state and the world one seemingly creates for oneself out of nothing when dreaming ; the latter was being compared with Brahma's creation of the universe (also seemingly out of nothing). The greatest interest, however, was focussed on the state of deep sleep without dreams which so easily provokes comparison with death. It was noticed, though, that one wakes up from a deep sleep not only with all one's previous knowledge and memory, but one experiences also a sense of freshness and an afterfeeling of a just passed experience of bliss. The explanation of what happens during the deep sleep was first - in fact quite fittingly - this : that mans all psychological functions withdraw into the vital force ( prãna ) of the organism ( Chãnd. Up. 4, 3, 3 ). A metaphysical explanation emerged when deep sleep was proclaimed to be a temporary merging of the individual soul ( ãtman ) with the immortal universal essence {brahman - Chãnd. Up. 8,11,1; cf. Brh. Up. 4, 3, 20-31 ). It was even claimed that in dreamless sleep one has deep knowledge ( Mãnd Up. 5 ). However, it was still felt that the dreamless sleep was not the highest possible experience and that the realisation of the essential unity in one ãtman was the content of a fourth state of consciousness ( caturtha - Mãnd Up. 7 ). But nowhere in the Upanisads of old do we really find an indication as to how this state may be arrived at. It was only when Yoga became fully accepted and introduced into later Upanisads that the way to this achievement was described ( Maitrï Up. 6, 18-19; 7, 11 ). The indirect evidence of the existence of Yoga techniques outside the religious orthodox practice, and independently of the philosophical efforts of the time, as furnished by the Upanisads , is supported by direct evidence of the existence of free non-religious and non-philosophical schools of Yoga contained in the Buddhist Pâli Canon. In his search for enlightenment the Buddha, or then rather an unknown mendicant, Gotama, spent some time under different Yoga teachers, having joined their schools or circles of pupils. The Pali Canon mentions only two of them by name ( Álãra Kãlãma and Uddaka Rãmaputta - Maj . Nik. 3, 26 or 4, 36 and elsewhere ), but it is almost certain that Gotama was successively associated with more than two and in any event it is certain that there existed a large number of schools and teachers in India of the Buddha's time
The report on the teachings of the two teachers of the Buddha is very brief, but it seems that they gave their students first a theoretical introduction into their respective systems and when the pupils were able to follow them they were taught a practical Yoga technique to achieve psychological states of absorption described as the sphere of nothingness and the sphere of neither-cognizance nor-non-cognizance ( nevasannãnãnnãyatana ), respectively. This achievement they both considered to be the^last and definite reality, a state of transcendence temporarily accessible to them during their lives, but permanently achieved after death. Thus we find schools of Yoga in existence in the 6th century B. C. which obviously had no connections whatsoever with the orthodox religion of the time, nor did they possess ideological teachings based on any kind of a God idea and, besides, they were not influenced by the Upanisadic brahma-ãtman theory either. (Asvaghosa's account of this biographical episode from the Buddha's life imputes that both Buddha's teachers had postulated a self -the "fieldknower " and the " self-grasper " ( ãtmagrãha ) respectively, which woul d bring their teachings nearer to those current in the Upanisads . As his account is several centuries later than the Pâli Canon - he is believed to have lived around 100 A. D. - it is likely to reflect not the situation during the Buddha's time, but the later controversy on the point of the ãtman doctrine. ) The very fact of the existence of such non-committed Yoga schools, prior to the establishment of Buddhism, is a proof of a line of development of Yoga entirely outside the recognised religious and philosophical sphere of Brãhmanism. Yoga in ancient India was not an outcome of religious evolution nor a result of a protest against religious stagnation and ritual practice and it did not originate in philosophical circles. On the contrary, Yoga stimulated fresh philosophical development when the latter, after the stagnation of the Brahmana period, took up some subtle philosophical trends of the early Vedic times and elaborated them into religious speculations opposed to dry ritual practice and aiming at transcending it. Yoga was then in due course accepted by philosophical schools of thought and made by them into a prerequisite for philosophical progress towards knowledge as reflected in the Upanisads. Yoga gave a new impetus also to religious practice and Yoga techniques were among the elements that transformed orthodox Brãhmanism into the broadly conceived Hinduism which accepted tolerantly many previously refused elements of philosophical thought and unorthodox religious practice and could then compete successfully with Buddhism
Although the earlier hints in the Vedas from which it is possible to infer the early existence of Yoga are brahmanised, it seems obvious that the strongest independent Yoga tradition was one without the idea of God as ïévara and without the concept of a universal principle as the underlying essence of the universe which would be the goal of the Yoga path. That is why individual teachers such as those mentioned in the Pali Canon and various schools of Yoga could develop different forms of psychological experience, and great unorthodox integral Yoga movements like Jainism and Buddhism could arise and even an anïsvara form of the classical Yoga system could survive. Buddhism itself was a culmination of this free unorthodox line of development of Yoga schools and would be inexplicable without them. Buddhism cannot be explained as having developed solely from the Vedic and Upanisadic line or as a totally new phenomenon created by one man. It has its prehistory and this is in the mostly unrecorded independent Yoga tradition. Where Buddhist ideas are foreshadowed ( like in the Kesin hymn of the Rg Veda or in the Naciketas story in Katha ), the influence of that independent tradition itself can be detected. Buddhism, having perfected the Yoga techniques, inherited from the independent tradition, into a psychological system of training hardly ever surmounted afterwards and given them a comprehensive and basically non-religious doctrinal backing, exercised a powerful influence on all non-orthodox truth-seekers and schools of Yoga and thus probably contributed largely to their disappearance. The only other remaining unorthodox school of Yoga has survived within Jainism. Its Yoga techniques are not too removed from those in Buddhism. At the other pole Yoga was incorporated into the newly developing, broad system of Hinduism where - apart from minor exceptions such as the one within Patañjali's Yoga system - it took religious forms which often made Yoga into a secondary tool made use of for reviving or assisting in deepening the religious practice and beliefs of various Hindu sects. At the same time Yoga was added to every system of Hindu philosophy supposedly as a means of proving its validity.
And so even Yoga seems to have caught the attention also of some free and scientifically trained minds inclined to experiment with it. With what results remains to be seen,
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