Martial Medical Mystical The Triple Brai

Martial Medical Mystical:The Triple Braid of a Traditional Yoga Rob Zabel
The practice of yoga flourishes in almost every corner of the world today but not necessarily in the forms that might be expected.
The meditation practices and spiritual disciplines practised today do not appear to look back to ancient tradition. Rather, they
seem to be some sort of response to modern civilization.
-N.E. Sjoman, The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, p.39
In sum, the Indian tradition shows no evidence for the kind of posture-based practices that dominate transnational anglophone
yoga today. We should except from this assertion, of course, seated postures such as padmāsana and siddhāsana, which have
played an enormously important practical and symbolic role throughout the history of yoga.
-Mark Singleton, Yoga Body, p.32
This essay is written with a dual agenda, the first aspect of which is to demonstrate the influence that
martial traditions particular to India have had on the formation of what DeMichelis refers to as Modern
Postural Yoga (MPY) and its antecedents. But the second goal in writing this piece is to challenge a
number of assumptions made by select scholars of modern yoga, and frequently repeated by others, about
the level to which modern yoga's incorporation of standing poses, the concepts of physical strength, the
nervous system, and even energetic healing are derived from Western sources in response to British
colonial rule. These claims often make assumptions of misrepresentation and even dishonesty about
certain Indian teachers and authors due to a lack of textual citations and traceable lineages. Hence even
when a practice is claimed to predate British influence, it is all too often dismissed as mimesis. It is my
hope to show how reasonably we can uncover possible sources of influence that do not assume a foreign
imprint. In doing so we may allow a deeper reconsideration of the role of a warrior tradition on yoga that
dates back at least to the Mughal conflicts if not all the way back to the great epics of ancient India and
that tradition's influence on the formation of modern postural yoga practices.
When we speak of modern postural yoga it would be an egregious error to assume it is the direct
descendant of a singular school of yoga, or even that collection of schools under the historic umbrella of
haṭha. Postural yoga should instead be seen as the result of a careful cultivation of tapasic and meditative
yoga practices as a means towards bodily and mental ability that has been employed by both tantrics
seeking embodied power, healers seeking understanding, and within militant movements that wished to
cultivate super warriors and maintain their political power. In this sense, we can understand the forces that
shaped modern yoga as martial, medical, and meditative. And in the form of the guerrilla yogi we see one
of the places where these three interests would consistently collide outside of the academic postulations of
the peaceful brahmin ascetic, even before the arrival of British colonialism. It is not a new turn then to see
nationalist elements in the previous century attempting to use both the flowing sūryanamaskar and static
bodily postures to cultivate the physiques and minds of their countrymen.
At the same time, the term yogi has been widened and narrowed in meaning throughout Indian history to
such a degree that we can use yoga to simply mean the discipline of self-cultivation. This self-cultivation
in combination with tapas as austerity, are considered the classic means to enact one's dharma, be it
Brahmin or Kṣatriya. This is, at least by the definition of the Gītā, a form of yoga that should dominate
every aspect of the pious life. As scholar N.E. Sjoman points out "In the scheme of the śastras as a whole,
yoga enjoyed a unique position. It was regarded as a metaphysical school or distinct philosophical
position but it was also regarded as the means for pursuing virtually any metaphysical discipline." 1 Joseph
Alter points to the idea that
The word Yoga, therefore, now stands for the methods of a) realizing the potentialities of man; b) hastening the spiritual
evolution of man; c) becoming one with the Divine Being who is immanent in all creatures; d) uniting the individual soul
with God; e) realizing the highest ideal of man; f) becoming conscious of one’s unconscious powers and making use of
them; and, g) attaining perfect health, peace, happiness, will, immortality, omniscience, power, freedom and mastery over
everything in the world.2
In many of the following examples we will examine, the title yogi may not be used as such, even as these
practices come to form the yoga of the warrior, or the warfare of the yogi. More important is how we will
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see in these different indigenous systems of bodily cultivation a variety of vectors by which modern
postural yoga may have been influenced without the need to appropriate Western concepts in fitness and
medicine.
And so in the following pages I will demonstrate the influence these martial traditions had on the
formation of a yoga of movement, strength, and health that has become an international phenomenon. To
that end we will look at a few martial arts that are still extant in India, particularly in the South, including
wrestling, mallakhamb, and swordfighting, the techniques they use, and their attitudes towards cultivating
the body. To that end we will also look at the development of the sun salutation from a guru of Shivaji,
who led the Marathi army in 1670s, through its toned down revival by the Marathi Rājā of Aundh in the
early 1900s, and its diverse incorporations in the yogāsana of Krishnamacharya and Sivananda.
Haridwar, 2016
I had been staying in the holy city of Haridwar, in the mountainous state of Uttharkhand during the
festival of kanvar yatra, when thousands of mostly young men make the long barefoot trek from their
home temples to designated sites on the banks of the holiest river in India. The festival commemorates the
actions of the most infamous Śiva devotee of the epics, lord Rāvana, who poured ganges water onto Śiva's
head. My hosts during the day were the members of a camp of sadhus, Indian renunciants who live in
ashrams or itinerantly, roaming vast swaths of the subcontinent as living emblems of a turbulent and
sacred past. The camps mahant (a title somewhere between an abbot and a military commander), a
gentleman of perhaps fifty while simultaneously ageless, had a long coil of dreadlocks wrapped around
his head, a bright red cloth wrapped around his waist with a belt and a large curved dagger in a decorative
scabbard holding the fabric in place. His skin was perpetually smeared with the ashes of the camp's sacred
hearth, known as the dhuni, which was also the source of his name, Mahant Dhuna Giri Baba. In the
middle of the hearth stood a giant trident, known as a triśula, a symbol of the deity Śiva, the archetypal
yogi.
Within this camps was a diverse range of sadhus from different traditions, including the man who had
been personally showing me around town, a baba named Rūdranāth, whose spiritual name, much like the
gigantic bone earrings that loop through the cartilage of both of his ears, indicates his membership in the
Nath Sampraday. This lineage of warrior ascetics who put up armed resistance to the British colonizers
throughout northern India. They are particularly known for their militant prowess, as are certain members
of the Daśanami sannyasin order of which Dhuna Giri is a member.
When sitting around camp on the crowded shores of the Ganges, the babas would ask to see the pictures
on my camera of home and of my travels in India. When scrolling through the gallery on my phone we
came across a rare picture I had taken out of a BBC article that showed Gandhi with Rabindranath Tagore
seated in the woods. The picture of two national icons in contemplation in a pristine natural setting would,
I was certain, be immediately and unfalteringly adored by the curious crowd.
"Very bad man," Rūdranāth said.
"Who?" I asked, not sure if Rūdranāth was, as he often did, pulling my leg.
"Gandhi, very bad man." He was completely serious.
My experience of Rūdranāth was, to put it mildly, full of unexpected if not entirely surprising revelations.
He drove an SUV, which he used to chauffeur Dhuna Giri Baba around town, and had offered to drive me
in it up to Gangotri to see the source of the Ganges. He also seemed to have a decent amount of both
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money and jewelry for a man dressed in a loincloth and simple white lundi. He showed me pictures of his
phone that he claimed to be his guns, his horses, his dogs, and even his mercedes (some of which he still
sends me pictures of through facebook). Suffice it to say, there are a great many babas in India who do not
in any way meet our orientalist expectations of peaceful, chaste, voluntarily impoverished holy men, but
are in fact, remnants of holy armies which ruled large swaths of India, controlling trade routes, holy sites,
and the military affairs of much of northern India. India’s most popular baba today, Ram Dev, is both a
spokesman for āsana practice and ayurveda, but also likes to show off his wrestling moves on television.
As recently as the 1954 kumbh mela, the largest gathering of such groups, and in fact the largest gathering
of people of any type in the world that converges once every four years, violence erupted among these
armed holy men against unarmed and panicked pilgrims in an all too typical example of rampant violence
from the naga babas, an episode historian William Pinch describes as "an event predicated on violence
among men whose profession was violence".3 To Gandhi, these men were a liability in the efforts for a
non-violent independence from Britain, and the disdain with which the Haridwar akhāras hold Gandhi
reflect his public rejection of their way of life after his visit to the 1916 mela.4 But their image remained a
central emblem of Indian heritage and non-cooperation against the British, even as Gandhi's swarāj
movement pushed to limit the explosions of conflict that have marred most revolutions throughout
history.
Warrior Yoga of the Epics
In the sādhu two important traits of the ancient warrior hero archetype coexist, the yogi who gains
strength and invulnerability through tapasya, and the concentrated and purified mind that does not falter
under duress or grow distracted by women, wealth, or other worldly faults. This is exactly the yogi
depicted in the epic heroes of Rāma, Paraṣurāma, Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna, and Hanuman. It is no surprise to find
that Hanuman in particular is held up as an emblem of strength among many of the babas, who sometimes
swing a giant 'indian club' shaped like his iconic mace to show their physical prowess.
We see the training of young Rāma and his brother in the opening chapters of the ancient Rāmāyāna
under the tutelage of the ṛṣi Viṣvamītra, who had once been a great general before being defeated in battle
by a more powerful renunciant yogi, Vasiṣṭha. In their training they are led to defeat demons that harass
holymen in seclusion in the woods through the use of the bow and arrow as well as astral weapons and
mantric powers. This was the yoga of the kṣatriya or warrior caste, who defended their brahmin
counterparts in the performance of their rituals as part of their innate role as warriors. When the nagas
began enlisting warrior ascetics to defend their more peaceful counterparts during the reign of Akbar,5 we
see a very similar event to the role of young Rāma in defending the peaceful sages.
The antagonist of the Rāmāyāna, the Śiva devotee Rāvana, in addition to being associated with black
magic and horoscopy, had gained a power of invulnerability through tapasya, that is an act of extreme
austerity very similar to the long held poses found in postural yoga. In many ways Ravana, even better
than Rāma, shows us the ideals of these warrior yogis that we can see even today among those who stand
continuously for twelve years or hold one arm in the air indefinitely.6 The idea of this extreme tapas may
be construed as a purely mental or devotional act, and may have originally been seen to function by the
grace of a deity, but the act of holding an ascetic posture is repeatedly linked to the gaining of immense
power, and often enables the various demons that Viṣṇu defeats in his different avatars (Hiranyakaṣipu
and Bali both gained invulnerability through haṭha like austerity leading to divine boons). These boons
made yogis so powerful that the gods had to intervene just to restore order. The powers gained through
tapas were so strong they even threatened the gods. But perhaps the most idealized symbol of strength in
the epics in Hanuman who, in accord with the gods, carries a mountain in one hand, leaps across the
ocean, defeats demons of sea and land, and possesses the aṣṭasiddhi, the eight magical powers gained
through yoga.
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It is hard to deny that the right austere practice would imbue its practitioner with literal strength and
endurance that would seem superhuman. At the same time we see many tapasyas that would similarly
ruin the human body, but many of the most common austere practices would, if successful, result in a
yogi who had an incredibly high threshold for pain, could live on negligible amounts of food and sleep,
and would not be tempted away from his goals by wealth or women. Even without gaining the more
fantastical siddhis known to Hanuman and Rāvana, the sādhu would present an idealized warrior of
unshakable faith and loyalty with unusual strength and determination. According to Singleton
...yoga as physical culture would have entered the sociocultural vocabulary of India partly as a specific signifier of violent,
physical resistance to British rule. To “do yoga” or to be a yogi in this sense meant to train oneself as a guerilla, using
whichever martial and body-strengthening techniques were to hand, and it is thus that the yoga tradition itself, as Rosselli
puts it, “could be used to underwrite both violence and non-violence”.7
While it is refreshing to see the orientalist blinders thrown off in acknowledging the dual nature of the
yogi, what this fails to recognize is how long this meaning of yoga predates the arrival of the British.
The use of the title yogi may not have as much prevalence in the older Rāmāyāna, but in the Mahābhārata
we see many examples of the warrior's path being referred to explicitly as yoga, showing a kṣātriya
conception of what yoga is. Edwin Bryant, in his translation of the Yoga Sūtras, points to a familiar eight-
limbed yoga taught by sage Yājñavalkya to the Janaka king in the pre-Patañjalian epic. What is curious
about this yoga is how much it sounds like the virtues of a warrior:
The character of the yogī is like a rock, which is incapable of being moved even when pummeled by torrents of rain
pouring down from clouds.
The demeanor of the yogī is not moved by the noise of assorted conches and drums being played together, nor by
outbursts of song. [author's note: this refers to the sounds of the battlefield]
Just as a person of composed nature might ascend a staircase while holding a container full of oil, and yet, despite
being alarmed upon being attacked by assailants armed with swords, does not spill a drop out of fear of them, so , in the
same way, the mind of one who is absorbed in the supreme is fully concentrated.8
The demeanor of the ideal warrior may be, according to David Gordon White, the very origin of the
concept of the yogi, who is routinely depicted in the Mahābhārata as different brave charioteers and
archers of the two opposing armies. Throughout the itihasa literature and even select upaniṣads we see
the yogi depicted as the one with masterful control over their senses and in control of their passions. The
directing of the mind and senses is constantly compared to control over the horses that pull the warrior's
chariot, and the directing of an arrow to a target.9 It is
...an archaic warrior soteriology [that] was narrativized in epic accounts of dying heroes who, "hitched to their rigs," charged
up from the field of battle to pierce the orb of the sun and attain the world of the immortal gods.10
In fact, one of the most important qualities of the yogi was the direction of their consciousness on their
figurative deathbed, aiming for an undistracted ascent to immortality. This is not at all alien to those who
have seen the afterlife rewards promised to holy warriors throughout history, up to the virgins promised to
radical Islamic jihadists in death. It is much harder to convince an atheist to die for a cause then the man
who has faith in his entry to eternal paradise.
This is not to imply that there is no presence of the sagely yogi, but that always coexisted with this
concept of the yogi as the perfect warrior. In some cases, as with Śānkara's interpretation of the Gītā,
whether this is employed as an analogy or meant literally may be argued, but it is undeniable that yogis
would continue to read the Mahābhārata in particular as a justification to declare 'righteous' war without
fear of their own death. Perhaps our most notorious modern example is found in Gandhi's assassin,
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Nathuram Godse. At his trial, Godse justified his violence by comparing himself to the epic's hero archer
Arjuna.
Indeed my feelings were like those of Arjuna when he killed 'Dronacharya,' his Guru at whose feet he had learnt the art
of war. [...] he first threw an arrow at the feet of Dronacharya as a mark of respect for the guru: the second arrow he
aimed at the chest of the Guru and finished him. My feelings toward Gandhi were similar. I hold him . . . in the highest
respect and therefore on January 30, I bowed to him first, then at point blank range fired three successive shots and
killed him.11
To Godse a political assassination was totally within the purview of the yogi following in the path of
Kṛṣṇa's teachings in the Bhagavādgītā. The Rāmāyāna also contains seemingly unjust murders performed
by the protagonists without the karmic consequences of the non-yogi, including Rāma's murder of Vali in
support of Sugriva, much like Kṛṣṇa's deceitful tactics in defeating Bhiṣma. The yogi is, at least under the
auspices of karma yoga, able to act in battle without the consequences and uncertainties of the non-yogi.
It is hard to guess when the concept of ahiṃsā became prominent in Indian soteriology, but its role in the
Mahābhārata is virtually non-existent, and to many of those revolutionaries who followed the Gītā's
example, like Subhas Chandra Bose and a young Sri Aurobindo, the teachings of Kṛṣṇa were a message
of warrior nationalism and a call to arms.
Samārth Rāmdas and the Sun Salutation
While we can see a long history of the warrior within Hinduism's early history, one of the most significant
chapters in the religious development of the Hindu sacred warrior comes before the arrival of the British,
after the Mughal invasions beginning in the 12th century. The most famed general to take up arms against
the Mughal forces was Sivaji who commanded the Marathi army in resistance to Muslim conquest and
has since become an emblem of Indian nationalism, especially in reference to tensions with the Muslim
rulers.
Sivaji followed the instructions of the famed guru Samārth Rāmdas. Rāmdas is remembered not only as
an advisor to the great commander, but is famous for the instructions in physical exercise he gave to
Sivaji and popularized across the Marathan Empire.
Shivaji was encouraged to make vigorous endeavour by the religious magnet Shree Samarth Ramdas Swamee who was
considered to be the incarnation of strength and skill. They say, it was Ramadas who got 1,200 temples of Hanuman-God of
strength and valour, built throughout India,. They are the living monuments of the wonderful organizing power. The idol of
Hanuman was placed in every Gymnasium. Ramadas was considered as the incarnation of Hanuman by the Hindus.
Ramadas Hanuman temples and gymnasiums were associated together. Ramadas also popularized Namaskar activities in
Maharashtra. He travelled far and wide in the whole of India and wherever he stayed he inspired the people to build a temple
of Hanuman with a gymnasium attached to it. He himself used to practise 1,200 Namaskars every day and consequently
developed a remarkable physique. Thus Ramadas inspired the people to practise Namaskars every day after the daily
ablutions. Namaskars are meant for worshipping the God Sun and thus even today the exercise of Namaskars is viewed as a
religious practice. 12
It is not unreasonable to assume that this would make the sun salutation an integral part of military
training that could be practiced without any equipment, similar to Karate in Okinawa and Capoeira in
Brazil which could be practiced openly without appearing as military training and avoiding suppression
by hostile foreign rulers. This will become even more significant after the British ban the naked armed
ascetic, and even the practice of armed martial arts in various states. 13 Once sādhus were banned from
their military activities, the namaskar was one of the few military exercises they had left as it primarily
appeared to be a devotional practice.
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Although this source, the Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture (1950) is criticized by historian Elliot
Goldberg for its lack of citations, if we suspend our suspicions momentarily we can see a possible
example of a famous yogi (Rāmdas) teaching a devotional yogic tapasya as a means to bodily strength for
the devout warrior almost 100 years before Western influence on India, which Elizabeth DeMichelis
claims began at the 1757 Battle of Plassey.14 If anything, these integrations of military training and
devotional practice can be seen as a response to a hostile Mughal presence in Mahārāṣṭra that galvanized
an organized Hindu militant movement.
The Śritattvanidhi (terminus ad quem 1868) describes the sūryanamaskar in detail along with
descriptions of āsanas and iconometry. Goldberg quotes famous yogic innovator Kuvalayananda to show
that sūryanamaskar is at least a few hundred years old in a 1926 issue of Yoga-Mimamsa:
This system of exercise [surya namaskar] has been in vogue in Maharashtra at least for a few centuries and is very much
favoured by the upper classes of the society. In the eighteenth century it was not unusual to find youths making as many as
twelve hundred prostrations every morning. Among such youths were to be seen some of the Brahmana rulers of the land. 15
While Goldberg does criticize (again) the lack of citations from Kuvalayananda, it seems the plentitude
even of uncited references available is enough to convince him of its historic use by Rāmdas well before
Western gymnastics or mesmerism or any of the other commonly cited influences of MPY had entered the
subcontinental consciousness.
We can look back to the Rāmāyāna once again to see some antecedents to sun worship as a practice of
cultivating strength for warfare. Before Rāma's siege of Lanka, the sage Agastya (who is significantly
associated with Tamil medicine traditions and bestows cosmic weapons (astra) in the Mahābhārata) leads
Rāma in the worship of Āditya, known as Ādityahṛdayam. 16 This long hymn, similar to the names of
Sūrya chanted during sun salutation practice17, is said to restore strength to Rāma and empowers him to
defeat his rival in battle. While there are many authors who make a sensationalist connection between sun
salutations as a health practice and a short-lived Western pseudo-science movement of photonic therapy
(including Goldberg), it seems like a stretch to say the concept of the sun imbuing health and strength was
not already deeply imbedded in Indian history. The sun in India, as in China and ancient Greece, has
historically been associated with gold and immortality, and yogis have attempted to live off of sunbeams
since very ancient times. Rāma is only one of several accounts of the sun imbuing the yogi with strength.
Interestingly Joseph S. Alter and Mark Singleton, two of the most prominent historians of modern
postural yoga, claim that the sun salutation,
...is not mentioned as a physical exercise in any of the standard texts published or printed earlier than the nineteenth
century. 18
and that,
Sūryanamaskār, today fully naturalized in international yoga milieux as a presumed “traditional” technique of Indian yoga,
was first conceived by a bodybuilder and then popularized by other bodybuilders, like Iyer and his followers, as a technique
of bodybuilding (see Goldberg 2006, forthcoming)19
Singleton devotes a large portion of his Yoga Body to the influence Western bodybuilders had on a
'budding' Indian physical culture, despite the plentiful insistences of Kuvalayananda and others that these
practices were extant, if not widespread before international bodybuilding sensation Eugen Sandow and
others had made their imprint on the Indian mind. Problematically, Singleton cites Goldberg's then still
forthcoming book for this claim while Goldberg, as we have seen, actually sees the sun salutation's roots
as much older and "practiced continuously in India since Vedic times"20 even as he criticizes the
unacademic methodologies of his sources.
Insisting on its limited strength building ability, Goldberg states in his The Path of Modern Yoga, that
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The original purpose of surya namaskar exercise isn’t known. It was probably developed as preparation for strength
exhibitions, sports (especially wrestling), or military training, not as an exercise solely for developing and maintaining
fitness. At Ramdas’s urging, Shiwaji established numerous akharas (wrestling gymnasiums) throughout Maharashtra, where
in all likelihood he implemented surya namaskar as part of the wrestler’s extensive exercise regimen” 21
Goldberg points to a dissimilar sun salutation practice employed in at least one of India's remaining
temples to Sūrya, the sun god, assuming this to be the origin of Rāmdas' practice while ignoring the
plentiful examples of much more intensive prostration practices that exist not only within Hinduism, but
also within even far removed Eastern schools of Buddhism (e.g. zen and vajrayana), including the
incredibly austere act of making 108 prostrations before each step during parikrama, the meditative
circumambulation of holy sites. The prevalence, and undeniable strenuousness of the rhythmic namaskar
practice show that tapasic practices were not always static, even if the āsanas of the haṭha corpus make
no reference to flowing or interconnected poses.
Another strange tension exists between these two authors when Singleton describes sūryanamaskar as a
bodybuilder practice (see above) while Goldberg repeatedly makes the unfounded assumption that the sun
salutation is exclusively a stretching exercise with no strengthening effects. But Alter notes:
While they strengthen the body, they do not strain the muscles, bones, and organs of the body. Surya namaskars are not
vigorous, and senior wrestlers practice them in order to maintain their physique and stature. In any case, surya namaskars are
clearly associated with physical strength and muscular prowess. Shivaji’s guru, Samarath Ramdas, was said to perform
1,200 surya namaskars every day. Shivaji himself and Ramdas’s other disciples also performed surya namaskars. Mujumdar
attributes Maratha physical prowess and military success to this exercise (1950: 54).22
I would encourage Goldberg to practice a string of 108 sūryanamaskars just to feel how thoroughly taxed
the major muscles of the body become. Practitioners will attest that the salutation does more to build
muscle and heat in the body then it does to create limberness. But he does seem to emphasize this
exercise's ability to increase flexibility as an important preparation for actual combat training and sports
(of the martial variety). In fact, it is hard to imagine that combative practices, especially kicking,
swordfighting, and wrestling, could have been safely or effectively practiced without a preparatory
limbering practice. By extension, the standing lunging poses that vinyāsa yoga adds into the sun
salutation stretch the same muscles needed for kicking.
The Rājā of Aundh
Easily one of the most important proponents of the sun salutation in the preceding century was the Rājā of
Aundh. Like Sivaji, the Rājā was a populist ruler of a Marathi kingdom, making him conceivably a direct
recipient of the same tradition that Rāmdas popularized hundreds of years before. A tradition that was,
according to Kuvalayananda, popular among the Brahmanas since at least the 18th century. The Rājā is
also well known for the Aundh Experiement in which he offered his kingdom to Gandhi's swarāj
movement, prior to Indian independence, for an attempt at democratic self-rule showing the same
nationalist bent that influenced Sivaji before him.
The Rājā was also a practitioner of the Sandow method for ten years,23 popularized by the famous
Western bodybuilder of the same name, which is occasionally used as evidence of his susceptibility to
foreign influences by our authors. The Rājā eventually abandoned the Sandow method as ineffective,
finding instead that the practice of the sūryanamaskar was more effective in building the physique he
desired, at odds with Goldberg's conclusions above.24 The Rājā also studied wrestling under a Imam
Uddin where he learned and practiced the central practices of dand and bhek (more on these below) that
are central to the wrestler's training and aspects of the namaskar. In 1908 he began the sūryanamaskar
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practice as taught by his friend Sir Gangadharrao, the ruler of Miraj. He claims the native exercise was
vastly preferable for him for a plethora of reasons:
The ideal exercise should develop not only the limbs, muscles, and internal organs of the body, but should also promote
mental and spiritual development. To make such a physical exercise universally popular and acceptable there should be no
necessity for apparatus or appliances; it should be easy to do; is should take a short time to perform; it should be of such a
nature as to enable it to be carried out anywhere and by anybody; and should not necessitate a partner of companion. Surya
Namaskars fulfill all these requirements.25
Even weapons training, which could be enjoyed most readily by the elite, could not compete with the
common and discrete accessibility of the Rājā's favored sun salutations.
The Rājā made considerable efforts to popularize the practice, even introducing it into schools. Even if
they could be proven to derive directly from a yogic tradition as such, the fact that sun salutations were
taught as a distinct practice without the title yoga can easily be explained by the fact that most Indians
would be more interested in learning a secularized modern-seeming exercise system than a technique of
the often maligned and obscure yogi, and that the British would find it less objectionable if it was not
associated with the subversive yogis they had worked so hard to subjugate.
In the Rājā's 1928 book, The Ten Point Way to Health,26 he outlines his version of the sun salutation as a
complete system of personal health. The sun salutation, which he considered such common knowledge
that "our Indian readers would know at once what we mean",27 is demonstrated as a ten-step collection of
flowing motions, performed on a somewhat familiar "piece of cloth, twenty-two inches square, of
woollen, silk, cotton, or linen material, of whatever colour and texture pleases you, to place your hands on
while you go through the exercises."28 A familiar synchronization of breath he presents serves to turn a
'smoldering' practice into a 'clearly burning fire'29 alluding to the fire of tapas and the sun which, either in
real or in iconic form, was to be placed in front of the practitioner. This might hint at the underlying
concept of tapas as the tool towards bodily transformation, rather than any imported theories of
physiology, as we have seen with the heroes of the epics.
This is not to say the practice has been preserved unaltered. The Rājā admits unhesitatingly to having
slightly modified the received practice for his own purposes in at least three ways:
It was in 1908 that we first began to do Surya Namaskars in the old style. According to this the knees were not straightened
while bending over, nor was the foot brought forward on a line with the palms, and it was not necessary to stand erect at the
beginning of each Namaskar or to regulate the breathing in the way we have indicated.30
This is at odds with the idea that these innovators of the turn of the century would obscure their personal
emendations as traditional practices, and shows just how readily the ancient would be experimented with
or fused with parallel traditions, allowing a constant flourishing of variations connected to the same vast
array of Indian roots. It also suggests that those aspects of the practice he does not take credit for were
already part of the tradition as he received it, including the emphasis on generating heat, the constant flow
of motion, the use of a mat, his insistence on an orientation towards an icon of the sun, et cetera.
It should also be noted, even as this ten step system was popularized across India, the Rājā's addition of
the intermediate lunging step can be seen in the āsanas of Sivananda, while they are totally lacking from
the teachings of Krishnamacharya. Krishnamacharya's aṣṭāṅga vinyāsa style does, however, incorporate
similar breathing patterns, the straightened legs, and constant motion that the Rājā taught. This level of
variation may hint at the possibility that Krishnamacharya learned the sūryanamaskar from an entirely
different source, even if he may have borrowed some of the Rājā's inventions. If this is the case, it may
suggest that the sun salutation did not have to be imposed onto yoga as has been proposed, but that it was
a preliminary exercise used before vigorous training of both yogis and martial artists, both for building
strength and limbering the body.
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Defining Martial Arts and Yoga
In examining the existent forms of exercise that were present especially in the south of India where they
may have had the most influence on Krishnamacharya's Mysore style of āsana practice, we come across
an array of ancient celebrated traditions of martial arts. The two central practices we will examine are
traditional wrestling, which we have already seen had a potential impact on the Rājā of Aundh, and the
largely weapon oriented art of Kalarippayattu.
Joseph Alter problematizes the attempt to uncover an accurate history of postural practice, citing scholar
N.E. Sjoman:
it is possible to trace the history of ideas about Yoga philosophy through time, and possible to follow the development of
pranayama from puranic times up to the present, but there is virtually nothing that allows for the construction of a history of
asana practice.31
While an exact history of āsana is admittedly a challenging prospect if possible at all, we can see the
places where a yoga philosophy has embedded itself in these martial arts as an indication of their long
interrelation. In particular, the tantric physiology is intricately interwound with the martial disciplines
discussed below. Meanwhile, our attempts to discern a distinct stream of thought that carried a so-named
āsana tradition into modern times may not be a useful tool due to the fluidity of the definition of āsana as
a physical practice.
It is also a distinct quality of Indian thought, where no matter the social division to which an art or science
belonged, its mere development as a discipline invariably meant that it gained spiritual overtones, often
including a patron deity,32 and a complex mythology (both of which the Greek wrestler enjoyed as well).
It is difficult to separate any ritualized practice from the realm of yoga, even when the term yoga is not
implied as such. Alter is one of the few scholars I have encountered who makes this consideration
regarding the porous demarcations of yoga, prayer, and sport.
This presents a further problem as to what counts as Yoga, and whether or not all headstands can or should be counted as the
same thing in fact. In other words, the well-recognized problem that Yoga has multiple meanings is magnified considerably
when dealing with different elements of practice-where do you draw the line between deep breathing, prāṇāyāma, and
certain kinds of rhythmic prayer?33
In attempting to sidestep this systemic issue, we will examine martial practices that may have influenced
our modern construct of postural yoga, without attempting to determine what does or did count as yoga
per se. Instead I hope to establish native Indian precedents for those practices that have been myopically
attributed to Western gymnastics and Swedenborgian and Mesmeric metaphysics and and new-age
medicine by many academics. This attempt to determine what qualifies as yoga, like the academic attempt
to delineate the boundaries of tantra within Hinduism, are all but doomed to qualified failure because
India traditionally did not bother to make these distinctions nor allow itself to be limited by them. Nearly
every text of the loosely-defined yoga tradition shows some element of fusion and appropriation from
adjacent schools of thought. And so what we see in martial arts is in many ways an extension of the
warrior's yoga, even when the term yoga is not always present and the lineage of practice not always
shoe-hornable into singular schools such as dhanur veda, haṭha or tantra.
The issue becomes further confounded when we examine those martial arts practiced by yogis such as the
naga and nāth militants mentioned above, and the fluid definition of the akhāra as both a facility for
training martial artists and a regiment of sādhu warriors. Singleton, notes how
Dasgupta argues that the nāga saṃnyāsins of the Daśanāmi akhāṛas practiced “physical penance and difficult postures”
alongside combat techniques and training in the use of arms (Dasgupta 1992: 14)34. Matthew Clark (2006) has recently
shown that these akhāṛas owe a great deal to the Sufi martial organizations that had come to dominate northern and central
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India by the seventeenth century, and Vijay Pinch (2006) has similarly shown the extent to which “Hindu” militant cadres
were porous to Sufi institutions. While I have found no hard evidence of any overlap in premodern times between haṭha
yogic practice per se and elements of military training (Sufi or otherwise), it is clear that the semantic slippage we have seen
in the very term yogi (from a practitioner of yoga per se to an ascetic mercenary) broadens the term’s scope to include those
who practice physical culture to non-yogic ends. It is this space of slippage that will later provide an important rationale for
the incorporation of physical culture–oriented practice into modern yoga, by the likes of militant physical culturist, Manick
Rao.35
He goes on to claim that the notion of physical strength being instrumental to spiritual growth probably
"belongs to Vivekananda", ignoring the countless mentions of steadiness through āsana within the haṭha
corpus itself, and the warrior soteriology that has been integral to yoga at least since the epics. Each wave
of nationalism to hit India seems to have returned the public eye to cultivating strength, with Vivekananda
being a relatively recent example.
Though it is perhaps outside of the scope of this paper, I would argue what Singleton sees as a primarily
modern slippage is actually an ancient one as David Gordon White demonstrates in his Sinister Yogis
(quoted above). Also, his notion of 'non-yogic ends' seems to ignore bodily fortitude's long enshrinement
among the yogis that I have already outlined. Several of Singleton's own points are seemingly ignored in
later parts of his book where he credits most of the standing and flowing techniques used by
Krishnamacharya directly to european sources, with visual similarities as his main justification, and
makes little further investigation into the role of Sufi or military influence on specific practices.
Another consideration to be made is how self-conscious supporters of the non-violent movement of

Gandhi, such as the Rājās of Aundh and Mysore, would likely have attempted to artificially scavenge a
'brahmin' yoga of strength from an inherently militarized or Sufi-inspired fusion that was centuries in the
making,. There is also a possible discrete effort to make this subversive mass strength training system of
civilians appear more innocuous to British colonial powers that may have started with Sivaji, willfully
obscuring what were once clearer lines of influence with their innovations.
Wrestling
We begin our look at the martial artist with wrestling. This indigenous exercise is run out of humble
gymnasia across the country, often staffed with celibate ascetics. Unsurpisingly, the sexual restraint that is
required of the sādhu is also expected of the wrestler, with the same humoral explanation linking sexual
continence and fortitude. The Indian wrestler has long been known to employ a variety of popular
strength building techniques, perhaps the most famous of which are the dand and the bhetak, both of
which are incorporated into Krishnamacharya's sūryanamaskar a and b. The dand in its traditional form is
more obvious in Sivananda and the Rājā of Aundh's techniques, where the chest is lowered in a dive and
then lifted upward in what is sometimes called a 'jack-kniving pushup'. A cursory survey of youtube
videos of Indian wrestlers practicing dands shows the frequent use of bricks under the hands, reminiscent
of the yoga blocks generally credited to Krishnamacharya's student B.K.S. Iyengar. It is not unreasonable
to expect this innovation to be quite old, as the martial artist employs many props in his training regimen
including bricks, clubs and ropes. The utility of the blocks in this exercise is easily notable as they allow
the practitioner to avoid hitting the ground during practice, especially if the arms are short.
The fast paced and repetitive sequence of movements of the dand are known in modern yoga as
downward dog (adho mukha śvanāsana), eight-limbed pose (aṣṭāṅgāsana), and upward dog (urdhva
mukha śvanāsana), though these names seem to have been applied later and do not come from the haṭha
manuals, though it is reasonable to expect that if these exercises are as common as they seem, there would
be no need to waster verses on their explanation in these relatively concise works. The Mysore tradition
came to use a straight backed version of the dand instead that became known as four-limbed pose
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(caturāṅga), and came to a full standing position in between rounds. A technique all but identical to the
dand exists in the so-called Five Tibetan Rites, a collection of five exercises oriented around seven cakra
like bodily vortexes (including two in the knees), purportedly used by Tibetan monks to maintain a strong
body for meditation practices.36 While Krishnamacharya supposedly learned the essence of his vinyāsa
techniques from a master in Tibet, a Rammohan Brahmachari, the actual antiquity of the Five Tibetans is
highly disputable and cannot be treated as a very likely source for MPY. However, Tibet's more
established Yantra Yoga, also known as Trul Khor, does seem to favor a similarly rapid paced practice,
synchronized with breath, and oriented around points in the subtle anatomy (a topic that warrants its own
paper). Further evidence that yoga was not always the static postures associated with classical haṭha yoga.
The bhetak will immediately be recognizable as the squatting utkatāsana of Krishnamacharya's vinyāsa
yoga where the knees are bent, the back arched, and the arms extended overhead. This is undeniably one
of the greatest full body exercises available without equipment, strengthening all the muscles of the
posterior chain, from the calfs to the top of the neck. Along with the dand, the bhetak was and still is
performed in a contained area, with a repetitive rhythm and the use of another central aspect of MPY, the
dṛṣṭi. Dṛṣṭi is the locking of the eyes onto a set point, internal or external. While this is not found in the
āsana sections of the classic haṭha manuals, it is a very traditional aspect of meditation to be found in a
martial practice. By the time Pattabhi Jois had standardized his version of the Mysore style, it contained
nine such dṛṣṭis. Alter mentions how "one’s eyes should be fixed on a point about four meters forward on
the ground, so that one’s head will be stationary and balanced" during practice, adding that "Dands are
similar to certain aspects of surya namaskar."37
Another practice employed by the wrestler is the beautiful practice of mallakhamb. The popular and
ritualized sport invented as a training method for wrestlers is described as stambhaśrama in an archaic
text on wrestling called the Mallapurāṇa, which was present in the Mysore library. Interestingly, the text
also contains a list of 18 āsanas including the iconic śīrṣāsana, proving a pre British connection between
the wrestler and the performance of āsana. It also contains instructions on massage, dand exercises, and
traditional strength building exercises. 38 In mallakhamb, which dates to around the same era as the early
haṭha yoga texts, the wrestler trains for a variety of holds and maneuvers by manipulating their body
rapidly around a large pole or pillar with graceful rapid-fire contortions. Popular and all but obligatory
moves resemble Bikram's toe stand pose (padāṅgustāsana) performed on top of the pole, and Iyengar's
natarājāsana performed while hanging upside down from one leg. Other versions of this practice were
developed around the use of a hanging rope and a bamboo cane. It resembles, perhaps more than any
other exercise we have examined so far, the fluid and deft movements of vinyāsa in a number of ways,
only on a vertical medium. The precision movement of the legs is not unlike the trademark vinyāsa
maneuver known as the 'jump-through', where the legs are swung between the arms, moving from a
standing to a seated position.
Mallakhamb also reminds us of a customary practice in almost all martial arts, the exhibition of skill
through prescripted sets or series, which are also memorized as a teaching tool. Just as Karate and Kung
Fu and even boxing utilize memorized sequences to train students, Indian martial arts contain the same
practice. The ubiquitous image of the Chinese martial arts is that of a courtyard filled with students,
moving in graceful synchronized sequences that combine military prowess with dance like grace and
subtle metaphysical underpinnings. By learning to quickly segue from one difficult maneuver into another
the Indian wrestler could make a countermove into an instinct, or set traps with carefully sequenced
feigns and follow-throughs. To practice a single action repetitively would not be as effective as learning to
quickly connect moves together in an uninterrupted flow. These sequences would also serve as excellent
exhibition tools, making it little wonder that mallakhamb in particular has become a popular spectator
sport. And there is little doubt that up to the present day, teachers of any physical activity win over
students with these skillful displays. This is even more obvious in Keralan Kalarripayattu where the
fighter's skills are also employed in Kathakali dance companies39 and in the film industry.
Yogāsana has also been in an era of exhibitionism since long before Krishnamacharya that extends from
the disenfranchised yogi displaying his contortions for alms to the The Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup āsana
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championships held by Bikram Choudery in Los Angeles every year. It is undoubtable that innovators like
Krishnamacharya also wished to exhibit their students' skills for their patrons and the world as we see in
the 1938 newsreel footage of him and Iyengar flowing effortlessly between postures, and the young
Mysore students engaged in a forerunner to acroyoga. Although I've personally heard James Mallinson
point to vișvamītrāsana performed by a nāth yogi as evidence they were copying poses from the West, but
we can watch a young Iyengar preform it in black and white on the palace grounds in Mysore. Mysore
palace records describe Krishnamacharya's yogic missionary work of touring the country giving
exhibitions. 40 While it may be convenient to assume he borrowed this flowing style from Western
gymnasts, all the same principles were clearly present within the wrestling tradition, and a reasonable
purpose for this performative style were plentiful. If we assume that yogi armies had patrons, what might
their exhibitions of skills looked like? Is it unreasonable to think the more static contortions of haṭha
might have been strung together into impressive exhibitions even in the same era that mallakhamb was
beginning to be practiced in akhāras across the country?
Kalari
And the last martial art we will examine is Kalarippayattu, the celebrated military science of Kerala.
While we find many of the same qualities that liken wrestling to Krishnamacharya's vinyāsa method, we
also find an incredibly complete system of attendant medicine, massage, applied subtle anatomy, and
devotional practice that is also central to MPY. The practitioners of both Kalarippayattu and Shaolin like
to make the claim, unverifiable as it is, that the legendary monk Bodhidharma brought the art into China
where it became the Buddhist Kung Fu system. While this story pleases both schools' egos despite scant
evidence that Bodhidharma was a historical person, the similarities in these two highly ritualized martial
arts are plentiful enough to fuel the belief, and likewise demonstrate how readily martial arts and Indian
soteriology blend together, even when transplanted across the himalayas.
Like MPY, there are long periods in which this art fell into decline. One practitioner describes how
The one-hundred-and-forty-three-year-old ban on the possession of weapons and weapons training between 1804 and
1947 succeeded in almost totally destroying the popular appeal and the systematic practice of payattu all over Kerala.41
Efforts to keep it alive would have meant practicing it in secret, or selectively utilizing its non martial
aspects to avoid suspicion. Kalarippayattu, literally 'place' for 'exercise', dates back to at least the 12th
century.42 Its physical training techniques alone overlap with modern postural yoga in a number of
immediately apparent ways. Phillip B. Zarrilli, one of the few academic authors to write on the martial
tradition of Kerala43, quotes teacher Gurukkal Govindankutty Nayar when he writes: "You are trying to
make the leg as flexible as a (rubber) band, Anyone can kick their leg up, but superior balance is the key."
He goes on to quote Duarte Barbosa from the sixteenth century, "tricks of nimbleness and dexterity . . . (in
which) they teach them to dance and turn about and to twist on the ground, to take royal leaps and other
leaps . . . and they become so loose jointed and supple that they make them turn their bodies contrary to
nature."44
During the training in basic kicks, the student is instructed to gaze at a set point (dṛṣṭi) ahead to channel
their focus, which Zarrilli describes as part of the development of ekagrata and subtle body awareness.45
Any student of yoga philosophy will immediately recognize the exact term ekagrata as a central concept
of the mental training in Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, just as any student of aṣṭāṅga vinyāsa will be familiar
with the employment of dṛṣṭi as part of the central practice of the 'three anchors' (triṣṭhāna). Collectively
these practices cultivate the student's subtle or "inner eye". Subtle awareness and the subtle body (sukṣma
śarīra) are indispensable to the Kalari fighter, with their borders more fluidly defined than one might
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expect. This subtle awareness also connects to its core practices of massage and vital point attacks which
utilize meridian points of both subtle and more tangible systems.
Once the student has gained sufficient strength, flexibility, and balance, they start to memorize the
complex sequences of moves, or sets, that are part of all martial arts. Some of these series have obvious
martial applications while others serve solely for strength and flexibility purposes. The individual poses,
like many yogic āsanas, are named for animals and intended to shamanistically embody "both the external
and internal essence of the animal for which they are named."46 These include elephant (gaja), horse
(aśva), lion (simha), wild boar (varāha), serpent (sarpa), cat (marjara), rooster (kukku), peacock
(mayura), and fish (matsya), all of which are embodied in āsanas taught in MPY, if not directly by
Iyengar and Jois. The forms of the poses are not generally the same between yoga and Kalarippayattu as
they are not even the same between different Kalaris. That being said, horse pose looks generally the
same in yoga and Kalarippayattu, as it does in Kung Fu. Peacock actually looks like Iyengar's
vīrabhādrāsana III, but not like mayurāsana which makes sense since peacock and rooster pose have well
established seated haṭha versions in the classic texts. This pose also happens to look like an extended
static rear kick, just as Iyengar's ardha candrāsana looks like an extended side kick, and Jois's
padāṅgusṭhāsana c look like an extended forward kick. Similarly snake pose resembles a variation of
vīrabhādrāsana II, and haṭha already contained an established bhujāṅgāsana. These animal forms also
give further credence to the theoretical connection with Shaolin, which also incorporates a collection of
animal styles. While many of these sets are performed as 'line drills', walking across the room, others are
performed in a static space marked with a special yantra like image called a kalam with five circles, zig-
zags or triangles.47
In the southern style, training will start with 'salutation steps' (vandana cuvatu) where the left leg remains
stationary and the right leg is lunged into position similar to a forward leaning vīrabhādrāsana I facing
the four cardinal directions one at a time and then towards the teacher. While clearly distinct from the sun
salutation, this shows a similar concept of beginning the practice with a devotional salute to nature and
guru. The sun salutation itself can be viewed in this manner in vinyāsa yoga as a preliminary practice that
does not have to be part of yoga proper to be integrated readily into its practice as a logical spiritual
preliminary associated with strength.
Kalarippayattu also involves the use of mantra and meditation. Just as every class of 'traditional' āsana
practice with Jois, Iyengar, or Krishnamacharya would begin with a mantric invocation and end with
seated or supine meditation, the Kalari guru would similarly imbue this physical practice with the same
subtle spiritual work. Often the masters "learn these techniques from Kalarippayattu teachers, yoga
masters or wandering holymen" which hints further at the porous lines between the traditions.
Some masters organize and conceptualize their experience around the conventional progression of classical yoga from
ekagrata to more subtle, refined and stationary levels of meditation, i.e. to dharana and eventually dhyana where the 'object'
of meditation (the deity, etc) is transcended and a more complete state of non-duality is experienced. [...] achieving these
higher/deeper states of internalization is both an end in itself–ideally leading to transcendence, enlightenment or union with
Allah–and a means to an end, i.e. attaining the 'mental courage and power' through which the martial artist 'conquers'
himself, i.e. his fears, anxieties, and doubts, and also gains access to specific and more subtle forms of sakti in martial
applications.48
One such meditation exercise is to face the enshrined deity of the Kalari in a static cat pose while
repeating the verbal commands from their memorized sequences with a steady breathing pattern.49 These
exercises are said to connect the student to their inner experience and ultimately help them cultivate
control over their subtle body to reinforce their gross body in combat, even channeling the deity on which
they meditate. Although Elizabeth DeMichelis went through great lengths to show how meditation in
more physical āsanas was an 'invention' of Iyengar's freewheeling interpretations and Western/Śrī Vaiṣṇav
influences, we can see clearly how the martial artists would make both static and moving practices into
meditations with the body as its object or medium.
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Mantras could be used for puja, gaining power and mastering techniques, gaining skill in weaponry,
gaining 'higher' powers, and for healing.50 The mantras can be tied to specific poses and even specific
body parts which may be moved or activated during recitation. Like the Rājā of Aundh's sun salutation,
each movement in a series might have an attendant syllable or mantra that, along with breath and
intention, empowers the physical activity. Like our warriors from the epics, mantra and meditation are
yogic means for these fighters to gain powers. This harkens back to the mantras that could summon divine
weapons (astras), imbue powers or summon deities in the classical stories of the yogic warrior mentioned
above. Even if Kalarippayattu did not directly influence most yogis, it is clear that the yogis shaped
Kalarippayattu in so many ways that it would not be a strectch to call it a martial yoga. But it is hard to
imagine that militant renunciants, who were drawn from all castes and locales, would not have brought
many of the refined combative developments of the Kalari into their akhāras. Sjoman reminds us that
"There are a number of private libraries under the aegis of ascetic movements where yoga was practised.
No earnest investigation of these sources has been made." 51
Medical Yoga
And finally, we look at the strong connection between martial arts and medicine. While Singleton joins
many other scholars, including Krishnamacharya's own student A.G. Mohan, in describing the cakras as
an exclusively mental element of meditation, the martial artist had a much more applied sense of the
subtle anatomy that included the ability to both harm and heal through the knowledge of energetic points
on the physical body known as marma, typically explained similarly to the cakras as intersection of the
channels of the subtle body (nāḍi). In fact, due to the homologizing logic of these ancient philosophies
and 'sciences', it is unreasonable to think that a central concept like the cakras would not be incorporated
into an idealized medical system, when the same sacred concepts were used as the basis of ancient
cosmology, and even the seven dhatus of Ayurveda seem to hold to the same homologizing that creates
seven cakras, seven heavens, and seven continents in the purāṇas. To a martial artist or yogi who
understands their nāḍis to be carrying their bodily power to move, blink, breath, digest, and eliminate the
idea of a medical system that did not consider the subtle body would be useless. Ayurvedic scholar
Dagmar Wujastyk points out that "To study the disciplines of yoga, ayurveda and rasaśāstra in isolation
from each other, as almost all previous research has done, is to miss what is in fact a deeply entangled
history of divergent and intersecting concerns, goals and technologies."52
It is an issue of some concern that the seminal books of Singleton and DeMichelis make efforts to
compare modern yoga with new-age movements and Western influences, while neither makes any
mention of ayurveda. DeMichelis argues
As Modern Yoga became progressively more attuned to the secular, pragmatic and rationalistic temper of the West, it was
accommodated in a twofold manner: at the margins of 'health and fitness' concerns on the one hand, and within the
conceptual and
institutional sphere of alternative medicine on the other.53
She is just one of many to claim authors like Iyengar developed the lists of medical applications for
postural yoga. The credit for yoga's medical philosophy is given over to New Thought, Swedenborgian,
Mesmeric, and Emersonian conceptions of health, which she refers to as 'harmonic' modalities.54 It might
be a valid subject of research to examine how Western and Eastern esoteric medical systems that led to
harmonialism may actually stem from shared Pythagorean and Neopythagorean sources. But ayurveda is
integrally connected to yoga, stemming from the same philosophical system of sāṁkhya, and for her to
make these claims without attempting to distinguish these systems from the ayurvedic understanding of
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health she does a disservice to her own research. Joseph Alter quotes one practitioner's notion of wrestling
as a form of yoga when he writes
Here it is to be remembered that there is actually one Yoga, and not many yogas which are exclusively different from one
another. The one purpose of all the yogas is to bring the body, the prana [vital breath], the unconscious and the sub-
conscious strata of the mind, the mind and the forces of individuation, under one’s control; and to be conscious of one’s
identity with the supreme reality which is within us as our very Self.55
I find it unreasonable to dismiss these attitudes as strictly modern in light of what we can see of the
traditional yogic medicine employed in martial arts. Even Kalarippayattu generally credits Agastya, the
supposed founder of Tamil Siddha medicine, with developing martial arts, awarding astras, and teaching
the Sūryahṛdayam to Rāma.
In Kalarippayattu, as in Indian wrestling, the guru is trained in medicine and massage oriented around the
subtle body in a way that is conceptually similar to the nervous system. Singleton credits the association
of cakras with medicine and medical haṭha yoga in general to
the likes of N. C. Paul, Major D. Basu, and, some decades later, Swami Kuvalayananda (1883–1966) and Shri Yogendra
(1897–1989) [...] But essentially their application to modern forms of yoga is limited to a general recognition of the three
principal nāḍis, the cakras, and the role that these may play in kuṇḍalinī type experiences.
Major Basu is especially credited with stating the connection between the nerve plexi and the cakras. But
Zarrilli argues that the earliest textual evidence of the concept of the vital points is in the Ṛgveda when
Indra attacks Vrtra's marma points with his astral weapon, the vajra.
From this and numerous other scattered references to the vital spots in Vedic and epic sources, it is certain that India's early
martial practitioners attacked and defended the vital spots; however, we possess no martial texts from antiquity comparable
to the Sanskrit medical texts in which a systematic knowledge of the vital spots is recorded.56
Far from being strictly conceptual, we can see that the subtle body has long been a source of applied
physical knowledge, nowhere more blatantly then in the dually healing and harming marma of Indian
martial arts. Why would the connection to the militant yogi be downplayed? Singleton furnishes adequate
evidence when he quotes S.C. Vasu, who first began translating select foundational haṭha texts for
English audiences in the 1880s. Vasu notes with disgust “those hideous specimens of humanity who
parade through our streets bedaubed with dirt and ash—frightening the children, and extorting money
from timid and good-natured folk.”57 It seems that from the very beginning, these would-be torch-bearers
of the old tradition have made concerted efforts to separate yoga from the most unsavory elements of the
yogi.
Remembering that many ascetic groups were also functional militias who would have cut living flesh on
countless occasions, it is easy to imagine how these same yogis would have gained superior knowledge of
the body. In addition to the vivisections of the battlefield, these soldiers would no doubt have to deal with
the aftermath of conflict which means a familiarity with the kind of nervous system disorders that come
from cranial and spinal injuries including seizures and paralysis, all within the theoretical framework of
Indian ayurveda and siddha medicine, including the paradigm of seven that dominates traditional
geography, astrology, et cetera. A parallel example is the ancient Egyptian Edwin Smith Papyrus, a
military medical text composed circa 1600 B.C.E. which contains the oldest known descriptions of
treatments for nervous system disorders and the effects of cranial and spinal trauma intermingled with the
more magical and ritual views of the body we love to associate with the ancient mind. It is very likely
ascetic militants would have been far better versed in the workings of the nervous system than even the
scholastic Brahmin doctor, even if this knowledge would have been placed within a magical/mystical
context. This is harder to prove, however, since whatever knowledge the tantrics possessed would have
been preserved in the same coded mystical twilight language that defines nearly all tantric teachings, but
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in the martial tradition these observations are more explicit. It seems perfectly reasonable to think an early
understanding of the nervous system from combat was an influence on the yogis' subtle body. If this is the
case, the therapeutic (cikitsa) yoga taught by Krishnamacharya and Kuvalayananda need not be seen as an
innovation or fusion of Western and Eastern concepts, but rather a natural extension of the warrior and
field surgeon's knowledge.
Mysore and Krishnamacharya
Yet another tenuous explanation of British influence is to be found in the Mysore tradition as shaped by
Krishnamacharya and his patrons, the Wodeyar dynasty. Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar who lived from
1794 to 1868 is credited with authoring the oldest extant text to include yogic 'series' where āsanas are
strung together in specific combinations, the Śrītattvanidhi. It should be noted, however, that he may
simply be credited by the actual author as the commissioning patron, since the work seems to be a too-
large-for-one-author accomplishment that covers iconography, exercise, yoga, and a number of other
topics and includes illustrations in the early Mysore School style. This text, only recently uncovered by
N.E. Sjoman, is a rare glimpse into an otherwise obscured tradition of yoga practice, and hints at other yet
undiscovered clues in the various royal and ascetic libraries of the subcontinent. Those texts that might
have directly influenced the Śrītattvanidhi's composition are unfortunately, like so much of India's
scriptural heritage, lost to the ravages of time.
In fact, there are no Palace records earlier than 1897 of patronage or practice of yoga because of the fire of February 28,
1897 when large portions of the old Palace, including all the Palace archives, were destroyed. Therefore, even though the
"ŚRĪTATTVANIDHI" manuscript comes from an earlier period, the accompanying records that would have documented an
accompanying tradition, patronage or even the circumstances connected with the manuscript do not exist. 58
The Mahārāj was, according to Sjoman, educated in English gymnastics among other disciplines, the
equipment of which remained in the Mysore palace at least until Krishnamacharya's tenure as the palace
yoga instructor. The ropes that hung from the wall are used as proof of English influence, but it should be
noted that the traditional kalari also uses ropes for climbing and stretching exercises, just as the rope form
of mallakhamb incorporates the rope as a means to strengthen the wrestler's grip. Singleton cites this
equipment's mere presence as evidence of English influence on Krishnamacharya in the concluding
chapter of his book. Sjoman points out that the ropes may have been part of siege training for Indian
soldiers (for climbing walls).59 But he does argue that the influence of English gymnastics is visible even
in the text of the Śrītattvanidhi, although just how is unclear.
The Śrītattvanidhi's author, like Iyengar, divides up the listed āsanas on the basis of supine, prone,
standing, inverted, et cetera, an innovation generally credited to the modernizers of the mid 1900s. It cites
the Haṭhayogapradīpika as one of its sources.60 Sjoman points to a variety of scribal errors and
mismatched pictures, which suggests that someone with limited knowledge of an extant system was
behind the book's assembly.61 If this is the case we have evidence to suggest this yogic system predates
the Mahārāj by some time.
there is a certain amount of historical material from the Palace that indicates older sources. These materials do not
necessarily indicate a continuous tradition preceding Krishnamacariar on which he would have descended but they must be
examined together with the modern books that seem to derive from other traditions.62
So while we cannot point to the origins of this early example of sequenced yoga, we can definitely
consider the possibility that it was established well before Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, and clearly
before Mysore's patronage of Krishnamacharya.
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16
As this legacy of yoga began to solidify into the styles of Krishnamacharya and his students in the 1920s
and beyond, we can see a system with strong martial influences which is presented as a strictly health and
meditation based practice. This can be understood as part of a sterilization of militant yoga that we saw
earlier with the Rājā of Aundh. A system to strengthen and embolden a generation of young Indians that
had to simultaneously stay under the radar of British oppression (The Mahārāj had previously been
restored to the throne by the British, whom the royal family was obliged to obey). Several of the āsanas
have clear analogues not in the haṭha corpus, but in the manuals and traditions of Indian martial arts.
Iyengar's divisions of āsana types and his use of blocks and ropes 63 can be seen in the training methods of
the wrestlers and Kalari student. There is an abundance of poses named for the fearsom forms of Śiva,
such as natarāj and vīrabhadra which literally means glorious warrior, and legendary fighters and sages
like Anjaneya (Hanuman) and Viṣvamītra.
We see in Mysore a military style training of large groups of students flowing simultaneously through
predetermined sets of āsanas which were originally called sṭhītis or 'stops' in Krishnamacharya's first
book, Yoga Makaranda, emphasizing the explosive movements between stops known as vinyāsas as the
instructor conducted by counting out the movements. Ir is reminiscent of a both the training of soldiers
and martial artists more than it is of gymnastics. The only distinction is the absence of weaponry and clear
cut military applications. It is difficult to surmise if the Mahārāj's of Mysore were interested in
strengthening his people, or simply interested in salvaging and even 'brahminizing' an important part of
their heritage.
Conclusions
So while it is obvious that individuals like Kuvalayananda, Krishnamacharya, the rulers of Mahārāṣṭra
and Mysore, and even Samārth Rāmdas were innovators, willing to appropriate, reconstruct and even
occasionally mask their eclectic methods and inspirations, it should be equally clear that this is a process
that does not stem from India's encounter with the West alone, but is a continuation of the endless
permutations of Indic mind-body practice that extends unabashed between medicine, martial arts, and
spiritual practice. We can view this as the triple thread of yoga: the rajasic martial, tamasic medical, and
sattvic mystical. The voices of peace have had their imprint on this once bloody path, from the Buddha up
to Gandhiji, but that imprint only obscures and does not supplant the past. Since the beginning, the yogi
has been a part of the warrior's identity and vise-versa, which is preserved to this day in the traditional
martial and medical systems of South India. Our attempts to pry this triad apart is an attempt at artificially
isolating elements of an ancient amalgam that can never be understood as its mere constituent parts. With
the bans on martial arts, wandering yogis, and weapons under the British we see a period of increased
incentive to make these traditions tame and palatable to the common man, severing their connection in the
public eye with the itinerant śaiva sādhu that drew the ire of Warren Hastings and the British
administrators of India, the disdain of Gandhiji, and the fear of the laity. And what we have received is a
multifaceted tradition that is as amorphous as mercury, and as irrepressible as Mother India herself.
Works Cited
• Alter, Joseph S. The Wrestler's Body. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA. 1992
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• Alter, Joseph S. Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy. Princeton University Press.
Princeton, NJ. 2004
• Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: a New Edition, Translation and Commentary with Insights from
the Traditional Commentators. North Point Press. New York, NY. 2009
• DeMichelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern Yoga. : Patañjali and Western Esotericism. Continuum. New York.
2008 Freedom. State University of New York Press. Albany, NY. 2008
• Goldberg, Elliott. The Path of Modern Yoga. ibook version. Inner Traditions. Rochester, VT. 2016
• Kelder, Peter. Carolinda Witt (editor). The Eye of Revelation. PDF. 2008. http://www.vielewelten.at/pdf_en/the
%20eye%20of%20revelation.pdf
• Mujumdar, D.C. (editor) Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture. Good Companions. Baroda, India. 1950
• Nair, Chirakkal T.Sreedharan. Kalarippayattu: The Complete Guide to Kerala's Ancient Martial Art. (kindle
edition). Westland Ltd. Chennai, India. 2007
• Pinch, William R. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK. 2006
• Rājā of Aundh: Shrimant Balasahib Pandit Patinidhi, B.A. Louise Morgan (editor). The Ten Point Way to Health:
Surya Namaskars. J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd. London, UK. 1938
• Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University Press. Oxford, UK.
2010
• Sjoman, N.E. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. (second edition). Abhinav Publications. New Delhi,
India. 1996
• White, David Gordon. Sinister Yogis. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 2009
• Wujastyk, Dagmar. Medicine Immortality Moksha Entangled. (ERC Grant proposal). Academica.edu. url: http://
www.academia.edu/11543403/Medicine_Immortality_Moksha_Entangled_Histories_of_Yoga_Ayurveda_
and_Alchemy_in_South_Asia. 2015
• Zarrilli, Phillip B. When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in
Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Marital Art. Oxford India Paperbacks. Oxford, UK. 1998
Endnotes
1 Sjoman, N.E. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, p.42

2 Alter, Joseph S. The Wrestler's Body, p.80
3 Pinch, William R. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, p.234
4 ibid, p.245
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6It should be noted that these static 'poses', much like the sun salutation, are not mentioned in the haṭha corpus, but
are still confusingly glossed by many academics as 'haṭha'.
7 Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body, p.104
8 Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, p.306
9 An excellent example is the story of Arjuna seeing 'only the eye of the sparrow' when he pulls his bow, a one-
pointedness that will be explored below. Note that in far off Japan, the same connection between Zen's 'yoga' and the
art of archery is still prominent and celebrated, just as Zen was hardily embraced by the feudal era Samurai.
10 White, David Gordon. Sinister Yogis, (Kindle Locations 1257-1260).
12 Mujumdar, D.C. (editor) Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture, p.18 (emphasis added)
13 Nair, Chirakkal T.Sreedharan Kalarippayattu: The Complete Guide to Kerala's Ancient Martial Art (Kindle
Locations 308-316). "Pazhassi Raja in his armed revolt against the British (1796-1805) was supported and assisted
by his Nair warriors and the Kurichya tribals of Wyanad. The British found it a serious threat to their rule in
Malabar. In fact they were already well aware of the Nairs’ valour, expertise in wielding weapons and fighting
fitness. To curb and contain that revolt and any probable ones in the future, Lord William Bentinck, President and
General-in-Council, Fort St. George, Madras issued a government order in 1804 proclaiming a permanent ban on
the possession of weapons and weapons training in Malabar. Anyone who violated Bentinck’s order was condemned
as a traitor and was either deported for life or given the death penalty. The officials raided house after house and
confiscated all arms and ensured that this ban was not violated. Almost a similar situation was repeated in
Travancore as well to curb and contain Veluthampi Dalawa’s revolt (1809) against the British."
14 DeMichelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern Yoga, p.38
15 Goldberg, Elliott. The Path of Modern Yoga, ibook (no page numbers) Ch 14 "Reviving Surya Namaskar"
16 Book VI, Canto CVI
17 The Rājā of Aundh also taught a mantric recitation to combine with his sūryanamaskar system.
18 Alter, Joseph, S. Yoga in Modern India, p.23
19 Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body, p.124. Emphasis added.
21 ibid, Ch 14 "Reviving Surya Namaskar". More on the use of sūryanamaskar in martial arts training below.
23 Rājā of Aundh. The Ten Point Way to Health, p.73
25 Rājā of Aundh. The Ten Point Way to Health, p.29. Emphasis added.
26The 1938 English translation of this text unfortunately contains a number of additions by its Western editor,
making the Rājā's own words currently less accessible until a new translation of the original 1928 version is made
available.
28This appears to be an early version of the now ubiquitous yoga mat. Rājā of Aundh, The Ten Point Way to Health,
p.36
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19

30 ibid, p.78
31 Alter, Joseph S. Yoga in Modern India, p.23
32 According to Alter, Hanuman is the patron deity of all wrestling akharas (Alter, Joseph The Wrestler's Body, p.12),
which is in accord with the Encyclopedia of Physical Culture's statement about Rāmdas' role in establishing these
institutions. The Keralan Kalari is traditionally devoted to Bhadra, a form of Kālī, which may play some part in
inspiring the vīrabhadra poses in MPY.
33 Alter, Joseph S. Yoga in Modern India, p.23
34 I have not, unfortunately, been able to obtain a copy of Dasgupta's Fakir and Sanyassin Uprising.
35 Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body, p.41
36 Peter Kelder, Carolinda Witt (editor) The Eye of Revelation, page unknown
37 Alter,
Joseph S. The Wrestler's Body, p.87. The Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture also mentions "The
Surya Namaskar Exercise also makes a body beautiful and with Dands and Baithaks added to it makes it
graceful." (p.xxiii)
38Sjoman, N.E. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, p.56 "The manuscript of that text is dated 1640 but the
text, according to the manuscript editors, is of a much older date, from the twelfth or thirteenth century."
39 Zarrilli, Phillip B. When the Body Becomes All Eyes, p.12
41Nair, Chirakkal T.Sreedharan. Kalarippayattu: The Complete Guide to Kerala's Ancient Martial Art (Kindle
Locations 320-321).
43 Interestingly, Zarrilli's book is included in Singleton's bibliography, though it seems no material from it was used.
44 Zarrilli, Phillip B. When the Body Becomes All Eyes, pp.95, 96. Do these 'leaps' include 'jump-throughs'?
45 ibid, p.97
46Zarrilli points out that, much like āsana names, these pose names will vary considerably from teacher to teacher.
Zarrilli, Phillip B. When the Body Becomes All Eyes, p.97
47 ibid, p.106
49 ibid, p.142
50 ibid, p.143
52 Wujastyk, Dagmar Medicine Immortality Moksha Entangled, p.2
53 DeMichelis, Elizabeth History of Modern Yoga, p.15
54 ibid, p.115
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57 Singleton, Mark Yoga Body, p.45
59 ibid, p.59
60 ibid, p.57
61 ibid, p.58
62 ibid, p.49
63The yoga strap, (yogapāṭala) however, is clearly an antique element of yoga, seen in Mughal era paintings of
yogis and in depictions of Viṣṇu's violent Narasimha avatār.
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Martial Medical Mystical The Triple Brai

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Martial Medical Mystical:The Triple Braid of a Traditional Yoga Rob Zabel

-N.E. Sjoman, The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, p.39

-Mark Singleton, Yoga Body, p.32

"Very bad man," Rūdranāth said.

"Gandhi, very bad man." He was completely serious.

Warrior Yoga of the Epics

Samārth Rāmdas and the Sun Salutation

The Rājā of Aundh

Defining Martial Arts and Yoga

Another consideration to be made is how self-conscious supporters of the non-violent movement of

Mysore and Krishnamacharya

1 Sjoman, N.E. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, p.42

29 Rājā of Aundh. The Ten Point Way to Health, p.39

56 Zarrilli, Phillip B. When the Body Becomes All Eyes, p.161

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