Talk:Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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[edit] Added-deleted?

I added the link to the site where the Patanjali sutra's named the The Thread of the Science of Uniting One's Consciousness was offered, because that is the only place where the book is read out aloud. There is no other way of offering this knowledge in this form but by this personal website. And, by the way, which of the already mentioned sites are not personal?

--rpba 16:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Yoga Sutras were before Buddhism

Buddhist tradition asserts the opposite to the claim in this article: the Buddha studied under the two leading Yogi teachers of his day, and deliberately modelled his noble 8-fold path as a caricature of the Patanjali 8-fold path. i.e. Patanjali came first. The claim that the Yoga Sutras are modelled on Buddhism is at best contentious. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LMackinnon (talk • contribs) 01:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC).


TRANSLATION ISSUES

I really don't like the current discussion of "citta vritti nirodha":

"Yogas citta vritti nirodha" ("Yoga is control of thoughts and feelings").

citta is literally consciousness or thoughts and feelings, fine. but vritti is a swirling or a whirling. and nirodha is extinction or elimination. definitely not control. this is a really substandard interpretation. if you want a reference, I would cite any of the excellent textbooks by Feuerstein. They all support this view. This needs to be changed.Lesotho 20:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] need for more links to texts

The current links by being so selective are implicitly biased and not nuetral. In this case, given the wide divergence of translations Wikipedia can only honestly present the competition. And since those nuances of difference may not even be suspected by researchers, the list should be comprehensive. Further, this page as stands is an outright advertisement for "Ashtanga Yoga". It needs to be totally revamped both in the light of current spiritual thought (or organisational strategy) and the light of modern academic research. Patanjali is not an userpable trademark for a single group. While the swamij.com interlinear is an admirable work it is not definitive. The inclusion of the BonGiovanni translation is problematic, one that seems almost to have been made to play up the qualities of the other more thourough work. Though I'm not much in favor of the his treatment of the third book, let me quote BonGiovanni (and Patanjali) from the second:

2.23 The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.

2.24 The cause of the association is ignorance.

We shouldn't force associations on this pure work.

Here are most of the other sources: Yoga Sutras in English[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [8]][9]

Thank you for raising this important issue of variations in translations. I completely agree that the article could use improvement in more clearly citing the variations. However I do not think that the best approach is to proliferate links to web sites, as that raises problems of WP:SPAM and WP:RS. Rather than just provide more English translations, many of which will be non-notable and inaccurate, it might be more effective to focus on which of the available Sanskrit-to-English translations would be of general value as reference texts, so that editors here who wish to do so can focus on source quality as the main issue. Many editions of the YS give word-by-word textual analysis, showing the original Sanskrit in Devanagari, along with English grammatical analysis. Examples of this type include:
In my own experience I have never found a single line of the Yoga Sutras where those three sources agree on the . In addition to those sorts of commentaries which include linguistic detail, a vast number of commentaries exist which purport to tell us what the text says. As a method of approach, our goal here is not to engage in WP:OR by determining the "correct" translation. Our job is to cite what WP:RS say on the subject, and when differences of opinion exist among sources to document them. Also, according to Wikipedia:List guideline just creating a list of things is not necessarily a good solution. One way of moving forward on the issue which you raise would be to pick one specific thing at a time in the article and see if it can be improved. Is there a particular point that would be good to focus on? Buddhipriya 23:29, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
O.K., I agree the Wikipedia is and must be a bastion of scholarship. You must be also be aware that a [vast?] majority of readers of this page, and indeed of the Sutras, will choose bongiovanni's translation( he's a christian cultist based in Uruguay ) because thanks to Infotext.com- scholarship's competitor- it has saturated the market. The other available on-line translations are from neo-essene, hermetic, theosophic, and bhakti oriented groups, only three come from more traditional yogi groups. And there are, of course other translations and commentaries at levels between. These may be "non-notable and inaccurate" but are current. In that case the reality is that that's the phenomena that needs to be documented; in comparison to not only traditional schools of thought, but to each other. As I've found no authority to take on this daunting task, I think I could be be comfortable with a section of this page dealing in a simple way with as many as possible of the available translations, and noting the movements they are connected with; perhaps also noting sections of wide stylistic or conceptual divergence.
Also, the term Ashtanga is generic as well as specific, and far from being the only yogic movements based on the Sutras. That must be sorted outKlasovsky 17:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
When there are several points to clean up in an article, one approach is to pick one thing at a time and focus on getting agreement on that point. Once it is settled, the next can be done in turn. I would like to start with the issue of translations, since it is central to everything else. I have never really worked much on this article before, but having just looked at the external link section closely I feel that it needs to be cleaned out almost entirely in order to eliminate sites which fail to meet the tests of WP:EL and WP:SPAM. Sites that are personal web sites, blogs, sales gimmicks, etc., should not be included.
The issue of notability is also important. There are many, many translations of the Yoga Sutras because it is a short work and of popular interest. One way of establishing notability is to check if the translator is mentioned in the Bibliographies of standard reference works or other related books that are published by academic publishing houses or in reviews of significant scope. I have never systematically tried to determine which English-only translations are most notable, but it is an interesting question. Does anyone know of an academic citation which discusses this issue? Can we find a review of which English translations are currently considered notable?
I just did a small spam cleanup and the EL section now directs the user to an archive site where multiple translations are available. Anyone who was serious about study of this material would probably be doing it from a book. Currently the article is very poorly referenced. I think what should be done is to begin adding some citations, which over time will build a better References section. Regarding points of fact which are contested, such as the "eight limbs" question, can we focus on specific sentences that are dubious? For example you could place a fact tag on one or two of the most dubious sentences, and then we could try to improve them. According to Wikipedia:Verifiability "Articles should only contain material that has been published by reliable sources. Editors adding or restoring material that has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, or quotations, must provide a reliable published source, or the material may be removed." So if you feel particularly strongly about unsourced material you can cut it. Unfortunately mass deletions usually just trigger edit wars, accomplishing nothing. So personally when trying to improve an article I chip away one sentence at a time if it is an article where a supportive team of editors has not yet formed. Collaborative work on individual issues build teamwork. Buddhipriya 18:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


The choice of Hrir is unfortunate, though it might be of some use to an academic attempting to collate minor translations, the site it self is awkward and defaults to (in english) the neo-essene Vespers Havdallah translation, many browsers would not get past that. Possibly it should remain as a source, but I would imagine editors who have worked here would be unanomyous in reccommending that the swamij.com translinear be the principle web link. it follows classical lines, and although it is commented rather freely, this too is traditional, a fact of form that might be alluded to in the WIki text. It would certainly not serve scholarship if readers were shunted to what is among the weakest and most idiosyncratic translations over a fair and representative contemporary one- similar in intent to the Satchidananda you mentioned. There are no other on-line versions worthy of being considered representative. Which is a point I need to make. Saying that serious people read books is like saying they go to concerts: when you live in a world where every third person is head-phoned, you see that undoubted truth as being only marginally relevant. Certainly a list of book translations should be here. I myself favored once
  • Swami Prabhavananda, "How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Pantanjali" 1969 ISBN 978-0451620125

But I believe quoting sales figures may be as relevant as, and easier than quoting an academic as to relevance here. What are the Historical usages of this text? In Universities, in Ashrams, on the street? AS TO A SINGLE line. Well the number of sutras is contested isn't it? So

Alongside the Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Sutras are a milestone in the history of Yoga. The book is a set of 195 aphorisms (sutras)

Is the Bhagavad Gita considered a milestone of Yoga? Better to mention the Upanishads. 194-196 is the count. In the 3rd book are a couple sometimes omitted: the 3.19 & 3.22. 3.19 {impossible to know the structure of others} was brutal for yogis who sold yoga as magic, and I reckon someone of them dropped it and added the fluff of 3.22{also disappears hearing,etc} to compensate for what was perhaps the original 195 total. But we can't know today. When did the texts diverge? Klasovsky 22:13, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You have raised a variety of points, but I would prefer to pick one issue and get it settled. I would like to stick with the issue of translations first. Regarding web links, I might support adding a second repository site with multiple variants if one can be found that complies with WP:EL and which does not push a particular religious group, as does the swamiji.com web site, which seems to me to clearly fail the tests of WP:EL. Is there any other archival site that you can identify to add to the one which is currently listed?
Regarding the issue of good books, I do not support the strategy of just having a list of translations because it will be a magnet for POV issues and notability debates. If particular works are good, we would expect that they would show up being used for hard inline citations, and thus would appear in the list of References, which is a list of works cited in Notes. If that method is used, the works cited in Reference are in effect the recommended book list. Over time, that approach eliminates the need for something like the "Suggested reading" lists which are sometimes seen and which I do not favor.
To help get citations into the article, I suggest that you pursue your other content points by fact-tagging the specific sentences in the current article that you think need to be improved so we can zero in on specific language. I have placed fact tags on two statements which you have challenged. If you are not familiar with the fact tag, it is a call for citation and looks like {{fact}}. According to WP:V you may challenge any point, and call for citations in this manner, which is considered a polite approach as it gives editors the opportunity to respond prior to the cut. If the material is blatantly wrong, and unsourced, personally I just cut it and sometimes move the disputed material to the talk page. The burden of proof is on the person who wants to put a statement in.
Regarding the issue of variant texts, most Hindu scriptures exhibit this issue of variants. I have never systematically looked at variants for the YS but now that you have raised the point I am curious about it. Perhaps we can find a citation that discusses the issue. A related issue in the recensions is the age strata of the material.
I have not personally seen the Prabhavananda edition, but my opinion is that he is notable, and in general the quality of the Sanskrit translations produced under the direction of his order is good. I have placed an order for it so I can examine it, thank you for making me aware of it. Buddhipriya 23:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I am still searching for a comprehensive site, and am not positive that one will be found.
But Hrir is inferior, funnels users to a poor example, and its archives are dubious and poorly organized. we can't refuse to list, and instead refer users to a site with a poor and biased list. This may well constitute an occasion to make an exception to Wiki list guidelines. I have found this site with no manifest program, a nice disclaimer, the Sanskrit text, no commentaries and a rather rough transliteration; perhaps you will agree to put it on links.[10] To me this is an emergency, I wouldn't want to have a single potential sannyasin or sadhu turn to volleyball or poker on finding falsely that the sutras are just another obfuscatory quasi-religious tract.
I believe an Indian researcher will be needed for matters of comparative text variations, etc. Though perhaps someone could scour the work of Georg Fuerstein for these. Just now I did a web search for him and found a copy of his translation on line. This is great, because he is perhaps the accepted Sanskrit scholar in English. The translation is dry in the extreme, and hence unrepresentative, but aside from minor quibbles it will be acceptable to subsequent editors; and will be citatable as well, even if citatable isn't really a word.[11] I'd recommend these two links, wholeheartedly as representative and unbiased. The former also includes the spoken sanskrit and the aforementioned disclaimer. It is from a Grandson of Krishnamacharya, to whom it is dedicated; Krishnamacharya can certainly be reliably established as perhaps the most influential in bringing Yoga to the west. This translation is an improvement on one that comes more directly from this provenance or lineage: [12]
As to Prabhavananda's edition be forewarned that it is as much an English cultural artifact in the Burton tradition as anything, but as such it may underline the cross-cultural problems here. Klasovsky 14:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, Feurstein is an excellent source. I have several of his texts at home if I can help with any sourcing along the way. Osho also writes well and is respected in his discussions of the Patanjali Sutras. Lesotho 19:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Regarding getting into a comparison of translations at the level of individual sutras, we need to be careful not to get into WP:OR. I think it would be best to stick to a fairly high level, and cite what WP:RS say the work means rather than try to do a "correct" translation. Regarding such comparisons, in India both the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita are often given as copying assignments to schoolchildren, so finding people who know them in the Sanskrit is not difficult. But the problem is that we must not rely on their views. We need to identify what sources are the strongest and most respected, and see what they say. Regarding Georg Fuerstein, I personally view his work with some caution. Buddhipriya 04:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
ditto on Fuerstein, but there you go. Respected by whom?Klasovsky 11:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yoga Sutras and the Web

I suggest that there be a topic added to this page: Yoga Sutras and the Web, in which the availability, and contemporary syntaxes (for want of a better word) of current Yoga Sutras' usages are ennumerated; i.e. its availability copywrite free for sites dealing with any aspect of spirituality, usage as a dogmatic tool by yoga groups, as evidence of an ecumenical nature by other groups, on personal pages of other translators, etc. And also to look at the discrepancies, or rather, at the range of differences as may appear in these. This proliferation of translations is a real phenomena, one that begs documentation; and it would serve the largely web centric readers of this 'pedia as a tool for critical differentiation . Perhaps this could be a seperate page, but it'd have to be linked here.Klasovsky 12:11, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The addition of a link farm to the article would be unwise in my opinion. I would agree that some discussion of major translations may be appropriate, but only if it can be sourced by referring to reviews of those translations in academic sources. Buddhipriya 03:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
not a link farm, but just a discussion of the multiplicity of translations available; this is a disambiguation issue, in the classic (pre-wikipedia) sense. Perhaps the appropriate form would be discussion of academically accepted translations, with notes, and a note on the far more wide-spread non-academic usages of the work. These appear because of the various failures of academic works to mesh with the experience and needs of practicing yogis; perhaps this is irrelevant to our discussion: If we were writing on truffles, we should not fail to mention false truffles, the prevalence on the market of last years flavorless truffles, and those perfidious Chinese truffles; the accepted meaning of truffles pertains to the gourmet french variety; there are however generic meanings appropriated by marketers. I find a similar thing has happened here. refer here to Sutra 1.9.
I think your suggestion of "discussion of academically accepted translations" sounds very interesting, and I would encourage you to see if you can flesh out that idea. However limiting it to things on the web seems to me a bad idea and likely to lead to problems with WP:SPAM. I would venture to guess that the most interesting translations are not on the web. Also, in the tradition of the sutra literature, one would generally not just do a translation, but instead would do a commentary. The commentorial literature grew us a distinct literary form in India addressing the somewhat cryptic nature of the aphorisms themselves. So for a native commentator, just translating the words would be considered trivial and unnecessary. It was important to interpret what the words meant. The sourcing for any list of "important" commentaries would need to establish notability for individual "translations". Someone must have done a paper on the current available popular ones, can we find it? I am referring here to the current crop of available works in English. I also think that your comment that academic materials often do not resonate with practitioners (and vice versa) is both true and worth discussing in some way. Another point which we have previously mentioned, is that those who wish to read the work in the original have different needs than those who wish to read it in translation. And so not to be obscure for those who do not have a copy of the text, sutra 1.9 is one of the definitional sutras, defining the technical term vikalpa (translated variously as verbal delusion, hallucination, a fancy) as an image conjured up by words without any substance behind it. Buddhipriya 03:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
"just translating the words would be considered trivial and unnecessary. . ." it seems this attitude has infected English and- do you know if this is true?- the Indian renditions and commentaries they rest upon; Fr instance: 1.41 [word for word, vrittis constrained, refined like a jewel, clapse, clasping, the clasped transformed by the setting, perfected reciprocally.(approx.)]On its most obvious level this was a true metaphor (drawn from lapidary art) setup as such by the universal/particular argument of the preceding sutra,1.40. But as "clasp-clasper-clasped" was a clever summation of the previous exposition on vrittis, and as grahitri has a slew of other meanings,(as do all the other words here) didactics dictated dialectics (over fidelity, for yogi-pendants) and the whole original metaphor has gotten lost entirely- no where to be found in English. Although most renderings get something of the sense, I believe Patanjali chose his words to resonate on many levels- and wanted to achieve that reciprocal perfection (samapattih) between words and ideas. The evolution of translations and commentaries must have drawn some sages along the way to study it but wouldn't this have happened more assuredly on the sub-continent? Must we depend on English research? I'll try to find sources, indeed I'm trying already but it may go slow [remember all those 'grasping' school kids who wont get past this 'pedia!]Klasovsky 12:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Please excuse any lack of clarity in my remark. I was alluding to the general literary tradition of making commentaries on the sutra literature, which is a stock issue in Sanskrit literature. The sutra form is a distinct type of literary composition, based on short aphoristic statements which generally use various technical terms. The sutra forms were desgined to be very concise, and were the texts that were intended for memorization in some of the formal methods of scriptural study (svādhyāya). Since each line is highly-condensed, another literary form arose, in which commentaries on the sutras were written to explain them. As a stock literary form, commentaries (Sanskrit: bhāṣya ) had their own rules of style. These commentaries were also written in Sanskrit, as it was assumed that the reader would be familiar with that language. In modern times, those who do not know Sanskrit must read the work in translation, and most of the Western books on the subject thus present only an English version of the sutra text, along with discussion of what that sutra means, all in English (or whatever language). Distinguishing between the sutra itself, and commentary about the sutra, helps to focus attention on the original source text, as well on the variations in views among the commentators. And if I have understood your point correctly, yes, the goal of study is to understand the sutra itself, through direct study of it, meditation upon its individual words, etc. It may be helpful to know what Swami X thinks the sutra means, but ultimately it is best if you can form your own opinion of what it means. And then you can write your own bhāṣya. Buddhipriya 19:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


Buddhipriya, I don't think anyone can argue with your contention that it would be optimal to read and process the sutras in Sanskrit, rather than relying on the interpretations others. The Kalama Sutra should tell us that much at least. However, it is my impression that this English version of Wikipedia is intended to provide access to and a summarized version of the knowledge available on various topics to native English speakers. I feel it impoverishes Wikipedia to eliminate all topics that have no origin in English or cannot be properly understood without combing through source texts.

Personally, I do not see the harm in pointing externally to Patanjali resources (in the form of textbooks, online bhasya, etc.). I disagree strongly with the position that there is no value (or indeed harm) in an interested learner or aspirant to consume all available knowledge on the subject. If the prerequisite for absorbing any of the lessons of the Yoga Sutras or Hinduism more broadly is years of formal training in Sanskrit, then I think that discourages all who are interested in furthering their own knowledge.Lesotho 17:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I regret if I have not made myself clear. I have no objection to citing what WP:RS have to say regarding the content of the Yoga Sutras. As a member of Wikiproject Spam, I will continue to object to the addition of spam that falls under the definitions given at WP:SPAM. Links used as references must also meet the tests for external links given at WP:EL. That is, just because someone has put something on a web site does not make that web site into a WP:RS. There is a great deal of nonsense on the web. I encourage all editors to challenge the quality of sources used for this article and demand that any statement related to a translation or interpretation be examined closely with regard to reliability. Any of course any editor may freely add anything they want to any article on Wikipedia. Personally due to current time restraints, I probably will be unable to work much on this article for a while, and thus will look forward to seeing what other editors can do in the next few months to improve it. Buddhipriya 19:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
it seems that in these present Yoga Sutras we have a nice parellel to some web/info phenomena- the narrowing of sources and interpertive possibilities in favor of the current and popular choice. . . Here was a nice bit of grammar covering a huge hunk of psychological/mystical ground. So, many people commented it. i come to see it as having been, yes, a mnemonic learning tool, but no, not for students in the ashram, but for health and religion professionals in need of philosophical underpining and, also in need of a summary understanding of learning processes. It seems to me that the psycho-social layer of meanings these commentators justly appended to the author's aphoristic words, have for later generations come to usurp the originals- these meanings even now top the entries in the sanskrit dictionary. So? for the obscuration of a few homely metaphors we wont mourn much; of course, much of the text is about meditation anyway; in this case the losses of meaning may be subtler and more insidious.
"There is a great deal of nonsense on the web. . ." but fear not, the Wikipedia Gadget is among the most popular Add-Ons for your iGoogle MyPageKlasovsky 10:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The sutra's by Osho, relevant historical link to be added?