Yoga
YOGA. Etymologically, the Sanskrit word yoga derives from the root yuj, meaning "to bind together," "hold fast," or "yoke," which also governs the Latin iungere and iugum, the French joug, and so on. In Indian religion the term yoga serves, in general, to designate any ascetic technique and any method of meditation. The "classical" form of yoga is a darśana ("view, doctrine"; usually, although improperly, translated as "system of philosophy") expounded by Patañjali in his Yoga Sūtra, and it is from this "system" that this article must set out if the reader is to understand the position of yoga in the history of Indian thought. But side by side with classical Yoga there are countless forms of sectarian, popular (magical), and non-Brahmanic yogas such as Buddhist and Jain forms.
Patañjali is not the creator of the Yoga darśana. As he himself admits, he has merely edited and integrated the doctrinal and technical traditions of yoga (Yoga Sūtra 1.1). Indeed, yogic practices were known in the esoteric circles of Indian ascetics and mystics long before Patañjali. Among these practices Patañjali retained those that the experiences of centuries had sufficiently tested. As to the theoretical framework and the metaphysical foundation that Patañjali provides for such techniques, his personal contribution is of the smallest.
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