Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline

By Eric Shaw

Sacred Thread: A Complete Yoga Timeline makes yoga’s backstory simple for novices and newly-compelling for those who know the tradition. It brings to life a conversation that starts with Indian archaeological finds, becomes systematized by great texts and teachers, then spreads throughout the planet begining in the late 1800s. The book details the formative events that lie behind the countless styles, social media conversations, and celebrity teaching personalities that characterize the discipline today. Key themes in yoga philosophy and practice emerge as plots and subplots over the centuries, shaping a comprehensive picture of yoga's fascinating cultural evolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Shaw
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005388010

Eric Shaw

Eric John Shaw (b. 1961) is an American scholar and yoga instructor with a particular interest in yoga's history, postural range, and science of life energy. He received his BA from the University of California Santa Cruz in Studio Art in 1986, a 5th Year Certificate from UCSC in Studio Art in 1987, a MA from United Theological Seminary in Religious Studies in 1995, a MA from Western New Mexico University in Education in 2000, and a MA from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Asian Studies in 2011. He has written over 100 articles on the yoga tradition for leading web and hardcopy platforms, published two books (BKS Iyengar and the Making of Modern Yoga, and Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline), and lectured at museums, colleges, and conferences throughout Asia and North America.

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Sacred Thread

A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline

ERIC JOHN SHAW

Published by Master of Chickpeas Press, Dallas, Texas

© 2022 Eric John Shaw

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the author.

For information, contact Eric Shaw, Dallas, Texas, www.prasanayoga.com

Name: Shaw, Eric John, author.

Title: Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline.

Description: Dallas: Master of Chickpeas Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to all the scholars and students I’ve known, my spiritual-master-mother, Jacqueline Meadows; and my writerly, but mostly unpublished father, Stuart Robert Shaw.

A practitioner in the pose, Yogidandasana, from the 1825, Tashrih Al-aqvam.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

BEGINNINGS: THE PRE-COMMON ERA

THE COMMON ERA

0-999

1000 – 1799

1800 – 1899

1900 – 1910

1920 – 1929

1930 – 1939

1940 – 1949

1950 – 1959

1960 – 1969

1970 – 1979

1980 – 1989

1990 – 1999

2000 – 2009

2010 – 2022

BIBLIOGRAPHY

END NOTES

Acknowledgements

This timeline has come together over 15 years of intermittent work, and earlier versions have been sold in hardcopy or digital format. The project began as a way to codify the complex historical data I was taking in during a yoga-focused PhD program at the California Institute of Integral Studies that began in 2004. At CIIS, I received terrific guidance from my primary professor and Sanskrit teacher, Jim Ryan, and, inside and outside the institution, I had conversations, classes, and/or seminars with yoga scholars, Douglas Brooks, Christopher Key Chapple, Joanne Shivarpita Harrigan, Gerald James Larson, Jim Mallinson, Paul Muller-Ortega, Carlos Pomeda, Mark Singleton, Stuart Sarbacker, Graham Schweig, Stuart Sovatsky, Christopher Wallis, Ian Whicher, and David Gordon White, and these have greatly enhanced my understanding of yoga’s long course of evolution. I am thankful for everything these teachers have conveyed to me. Thanks, too, to the great illustrator of Hindu subjects, Ekabhumi Ellik, who suggested the title, Sacred Thread to me very early in my writing process.

Jason Birch took a careful look at an early draft of this manuscript many years ago, and provided valuable feedback.

I offer special thanks to two scholars who went above and beyond the call of duty, combing carefully through the document shortly before publication: Sean Feit, who gave me detailed thematic criticism, and Philip Goldberg, who went through the piece line-by-line, fixing errors and suggesting additions. Jerome Armstrong, Chris Chapple, Anya Foxen, Jim Mallinson, and Stu Sovatsky, also provided helpful, targeted commentary on my final draft. It goes without saying that any remaining errors in the timeline are my responsibility alone.

Introduction

The extent and limits of this offering

What you have in front of you is my attempt to create an encyclopedic timeline of the Hatha Yoga tradition, its antecedents and corollaries.

Hence, the word comprehensive in my title.

That term’s aspirational, of course.

This is an attempt to offer a profoundly-detailed account of yoga history—one formulated in an easy-to-read manner.

In collecting and writing up this material, some things have seemed more interesting, more critical to the tradition, more humorous, more strangely interconnected, more dramatic, or more archetypical than other facts to me, and for these, I’ve provided more verbiage than they might otherwise warrant. It’s my hope that this gives the narrative some character—entertaining the reader and drawing them in to learn more about yoga’s enriching effects on humanity’s history.

This timeline focuses on Hatha Yoga (or hathayoga, as the case may be)—the yoga that employs bodily processes to avail oneself of knowledge and transformation for both worldly and transcendent purposes—and which can be traced back to Indian origins. Its antecedents there, in several systems of practice called neither hatha nor yoga, are well known. Among those feeder streams, in both the modern and pre-modern eras, are a range of disciplines recognizably more metaphysical, devotional, athletic, martial, meditative, tapasic [1], self-actualizing, medicinal, or therapeutic. This book refers to a smattering of prominent developments in those disciplines, too.

When considering yoga’s most venerable roots, this timeline focuses near-exclusively on the Hindu/Vedic/Brahmanic-based line of cultural development. You’ll find only passing information on Jain or Buddhist forms of yoga here, and almost nothing about putative yoga traditions originating outside the subcontinent (e.g., Egyptian Yoga, yoga-like activity in transnational shaman culture, pose-evidence from Latin America, yogi-like figuration from old Europe, etc.).

When I started the work, I wanted to create a conversation between yoga history and U.S. history, but, in its final form, Sacred Thread also makes reference to important world events and particularly those in Indian history. The historical material for India is more dominant in the first part of the text, partly because I think those developments set the geopolitical stage for yoga’s unfolding (an reality of yoga’s backstory that I think yoga scholars pay far too little attention to—a thesis I may get to in another writing project).

In its present form, this timeline offers something unusual in yoga scholarship. By reading a line-by-line list of often-simultaneous events, all reflecting yoga’s march toward becoming more-informed, more widely-known, and more thoroughly-practiced around the globe, the reader witnesses something like a spirit moving through history—one that takes a wild diversity of forms. In its kaleidoscopic and decentralized view, I hope this provides some of that dizziness and delight one gets as a long story’s plots and sub-plots gradually reveal themselves. This particular drama comes together continuously, entry after entry, year after year, over many millennia.

By now, it goes without saying that the world’s yoga traditions embrace practices which bow to trendiness and materialism as much (or more!) as to the imperatives of sanctity. You’ll encounter descriptions of some of the world’s most widely-read sacred texts and biographies of saints here, even as you note the emergence of Goat Yoga, and a video with the unabashed title, YogaButt. Some years back, the social media phrase no filter was popularized. You’ll find some of that spirit here.

I’ve produced many works with proper scholastic form, but you’ll find no citations in this version of the text. (It’s possible I’ll integrate them in another edition.) Citations would give the data far greater legitimacy, but it would also have made this timeline significantly longer and perhaps unattractive to the non-academic reader. That said, if you would like to learn more about any item, time allowing, I’ll answer emails at prasanayoga [at] gmail.com.

My hope is that this becomes a useful reference work for both laypeople and scholars. May you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed its research and writing.

Notes on Structural and Thematic Choices

1. Entries are organized alphabetically within these categories, top to bottom: a) Significant historical events (sparingly), b) Births, c) General yoga events, d) Books or other media published, and e) Deaths.

If an event includes facts about both a person and a thing (e.g., someone founding an institution), my alphabetization is keyed to the institution. Unfortunately, this schema sometimes makes an event at a later date in a given year appear above an earlier one.

2. I use the term hathayoga when referring to the textual expression of the practice in its early and medieval periods or when something refers to that unique genus of systemization. I use the term Hatha Yoga when referring to the wider practice of physical yoga during the modern period.

3. Generally, the terms pose, posture, and asana are used interchangeably.

4. It’s highly irregular, but, in some notations, I’ve utilized diacritics; in others, I’ve left them aside.

5. Where specific gods or the godhead itself is indicated, God and Goddess are capitalized.

6. From time to time, I’ll italicize a word when I am emphasizing the gradations of some development throughout history. For example, the Yoga Sutras’ first published mention in English occurs in 1785, its first clear and public reference in English is attested to in 1809, and it’s first discussion in a published English work is found in 1810.

7. Sanskrit has three s sounds. I show a general preference for s over sh in transliterating Sanskrit to English, but sometimes sh is employed where that usage has been popularized.

8. Many Indian place names have been modernized since the colonial period and before. I have striven to use these newer names throughout (e.g., Mumbai over Bombay, Kolkata over Calcutta, etc.).

9. For some well-known personages, I use a variety of names. The influential (and compromised) popularizer of Ashtanga Yoga, Krishna Pattabhi Jois, will sometimes fly under Jois, or K. P. Jois, or K. P. J. among other appellations—especially if mentioned immediately prior in the text. B. K. S. Iyengar is often just Iyengar, and T. K. V. Desikachar, Desikachar. Well-known swamis, or simply ones who are referenced in a nearby line, will often be identified by their single-name sacrenomics, e.g., Vivekananda for Swami Vivekananda.

10. Some colleagues have recommended that I abandon my ubiquitous circa designations to more specifically indicate that texts or movements manifested within extended timelines (e.g., 800-500 BCE as opposed to circa 650 BCE). I recognize the greater accuracy this provides, but it makes for clumsy adjustments in the format I’ve chosen. The reader should understand that circa in older dates can cover centuries and, in modern dates, as little as one year.

11. Yoga scholarship is advancing quickly, and I try to stay up on all late-breaking developments, but I’ve no doubt missed things. My dates are the best guesses fielded by the scholars I follow as of this writing. It goes without saying that minor or major adjustments in that dating will make some of my notations inaccurate in the near or distant future.

12. I’ve tried to include details on every significant contributor to yoga history, and I know that many of these individuals have made big mistakes in their teaching careers. Many readers—perhaps you are among them—think certain people’s contributions should be erased for that reason, but that’s not my position. I don’t condone these errors, but I don’t believe our faults poison the good things we’ve done.

13. I’ve repeated a few of the more outsize claims of hot yoga guru, Bikram Choudhury, despite the fact that many of his over-the-top boasts are easily disproven. The facts included here find their confirmation in the books of Benjamin Lorr, Jerome Armstrong, or other research.

I hope that you enjoy reading this timeline as much as I enjoyed making it.

Eric Shaw

Dallas, Texas

June 29th, 2022

BEGINNINGS: THE PRE-COMMON ERA

3300

—Earliest circa date for the rise of the Bronze Age Harappan (a.k.a., Indus-Sarasvati, Indus Valley, or Mohenjo-Daro) Culture of India. Sited in a large area in the northwest corner of the subcontinent, it lasted until 1300 BCE, with its highest development between 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Alongside Mesopotamia and Egypt, it was one of the world’s first major civilizations and the most widespread of these three. It flourished in the Indus River basin that travels along Pakistan’s length. The culture had baked-brick houses, plumbing systems, large community baths, and citadels and provides evidence of sophisticated carnelian products, seal carving, and copper, bronze, lead, and tin metallurgy. Artifacts suggest a complex religious mythos sharing iconography with Hinduism and yoga. The largest cities possessed 30,000 to 60,000 inhabitants. During its efflorescence, the culture boasted a population of one to five million.

2900

—Circa date for the creation of the steatite, postage-stamp-sized Pashupati Seals found in the remains of the Indus-Sarasvati Culture (ISC). The most detailed of these provides numerous suggestions of yogic norms (including an upright, broad-chested sitting posture, hand gestures (mudras), upward-pointing chevrons (suggesting upward-thrusting prana), many faces (associated with godlike-omniscience), ithyphallia (penile erection—a kundalini kriya), foot-heels at the anus (looking like Bhadrasana Pose—a kundalini-focused position), animals in attendance (suggestive of one who commands the primal or biological powers), and a three-horned headdress (suggestive of the trisula marker of the yogic Saivite cult)) which seems to define the image as the earliest representation of a yogic practitioner. What each detail and the picture itself might actually mean is hotly debated, but—it seems to this author—that it’s a clear case of scholars failing to see the forest for the trees. The pashupat images come together with small terracotta sculptures of figures in simple yoga poses from that same place and time to make a strong argument for yoga’s early origins in the ISC.

3000

—Circa date for Babylonian contact with India.

1500

—Circa date for the expiration of the Harappan Culture.

1200

—Circa date for the beginning of the Iron Age.

—Big, several-hundred-year circa date for the composition of the Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva Vedas and their various recensions. Each one is a textual collection (samhita), with parts such as Aranyakas (forest texts), Brahmanas (commentaries on ceremonies), and Upanishads (philosophical texts). In them, we find accounts of rsis (poet-sages), munis (silent ones), brahmacharins (celibates), yatis (restrained ones) kesins (long-hairs) and vratyas (vow-takers). These groups display conduct and abilities similar to those of yogis. The books also describe a variety of purificatory practices by participants in Vedic rituals such as fasting, breath exercises, isolation, exposure to fires, celibacy, mantra-recitation, almsgiving, vows of silence, and other psycho-somatic actions that foreshadow yoga’s methodology. Such techniques will become more yogically-defined and more enlightenment-focused in later Indian traditions.

—Circa date for the metal plate found in Lorestan Province, Iran, that shows a Ganesh-like figure, possibly making it the first clue of that god’s presence.

1000

—Circa date for Phoenician contact with India.

900

—Several hundred-year circa date for the composition of the Brahmanas, the rather exhaustive commentaries on the Vedas with a particular focus on ritual.

600

—Circa date for the composition of the Brihadaranyaka (great forest) Upanishad of the Shatapatha Brahmana, a part of the Shukla Yajur Veda. The text is attributed to the ancient sage, Yajnavalkya, and he appears as a character in the book. The Brihadaranyaka presents metaphysical conversations between sages and their counterparts which deal with concepts of the self (atman), the conscious universe (brahman), and liberation (moksha). Nascent conceptions of karma are introduced, as well as discussions of proto-yogi sramanas.

—Circa date for the composition of the Chāndogya (Poetic or Verse) Upanishad. Scholar Patrick Olivelle calls the Chāndogya the "Upaniṣad of the singers of the Sāma Veda." Oriented in the Sama Veda’s Chandogya Brahmana, it’s long and wide-ranging and affirms song and speech as the key means to liberation. It stresses the importance of the om chant, deals with the