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...