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The Mauryan Polity c11.s2.t11: Yatis and yoga

The Mauryan Polity c11.s2.t11

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Yatis and yoga

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It must be remembered that the order of *Sannyāsa* either of the orthodox or the heterodox type, did not begin with the Buddha or even Mahāvīra. It was a very ancient institution. The *dhyāna yoga* attributed to the Buddha finds a mention in the *Upaniṣad* and the epics. In fact it is much earlier than we would ordinarily believe. We have archæological evidence to show that this institution of yoga can be traced as far back as to the prehistoric culture of the Indus Valley.¹ At Mohen-jodāro a group of stone statuettes are found though in a mutilated condition. But the bust which is in a good state of preservation is characterised by the stiff erect posture of the head, the neck, and the chest, and the half-shut eyes looking fixedly at the tip of the nose, in conformity with the description in the *Bhagavad Gītā*.² It is undoubtedly the posture of the *yogin*.³ Rāmaprasād Chanda recognises in these statuettes the images of the *yatis*, first friends and then foes of Indra, as seen from some hymns of the *Ṛg Veda*; and those *yatis* were probably the forerunners of the *vrātyas*.⁴ Von Schroeder interprets the expression *yati* as a *shamana* or a diviner, sorcerer.⁵ What do these things bear testimony to? They indicate clearly that *yoga* and asceticism were not peculiar to the Mauryan epoch or even to the few centuries before it. But it goes far back into the prehistoric times and it is not possible to determine when exactly such speculation in regard to religion and philosophy commenced.

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¹ *Ibid.*, p. 170.

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¹ According to Sir John Marshall *yoga* had its origin among the pre-Aryan population. *Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilisation* (1931) p. 54.

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² VI, ch. 11-13.

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³ *Memoirs of Ar. Sur. India*, No. 41, p. 25.

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⁴ *Ibid.*, pp. 32-33.

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⁵ *Vienna Oriental Journal*, Vol. XXIII, pp. 11-15 (1909).

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The practice of *dhyāna-yoga* in the third millennium B.C., bears the test that religion and its institutions were far older than that period. Again the sects of heterodox mendicants are as old as the *Ṛg Veda* when the *yatis* turned inimical to Indra and were reduced in the course of ages to the position of the *vrātyas*, the outcaste mendicants of the Vedic literature. If the term *yati* could mean *shamana*, as Von Schroeder would have it,¹ verily is our knowledge of ancient Indian history rapidly changing, partly on account of increasing archæological evidence and partly on account of the scientific interpretation of the technical terms in her ancient literature.

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¹ *op. cit.*, pp. 11-15.

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