Carl W. Ernst
Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 13:2 (2003), pp. 1-23.
© The Royal Asiatic Society; published by Cambridge University
Press
Not for quotation or reproduction without permission
Orientalist
Views of Yoga and Sufism
From
the beginning of Orientalist studies of the Muslim world, it was axiomatic
to define certain religious phenomena in terms of their origins. Because
of the tendency to view all Eastern doctrines as essentially alike, Orientalist
scholars of the Romantic period invariably defined Sufism as a mysticism
that was Indian in origin; from the first appearance of the term in European
languages, "Sufism" was characterized as essentially different from the
dry Semitic religion of Islam.[2]
Looking back at this early scholarship today, it is surprising that this
unanimous belief in the Indian origin of Sufism was almost entirely unconnected
to any historical evidence. From the days of Sir William Jones and Sir
John Malcolm to relatively recent times, this opinion has had a remarkable
longevity, despite the ludicrous appearance of some of these claims today.
As an example one may consider the outrageous claim of Max Horten, in a
1928 study that sought to explain Sufism as a pure expression of Vedanta:
"No doubt can any longer remain that the teaching of Hallaj (d. 922) and
his circle [in Baghdad] is identical with that of Samkara around 820."[3]
Another pertinent example is found in an observation of William James in
his 1902 Gifford Lectures, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience:
In
the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the possessors
of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest
times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid
monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that Sufism must have
been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences.[4]
James'
remark illustrates, innocently enough, how widely this opinion was shared
at the time by the academic world in Europe and America. It is easier to
see from the perspective of the later twentieth century that this opinion
was conditioned by nineteenth-century racial attitudes as well as assumptions
about the unchanging nature of religions.
Most
specialists in Islamic studies today would find the explanation of Sufi
mysticism cited by James to be quaint or objectionable, since the preponderance
of evidence permits us to understand the Sufi tradition perfectly well
without the slightest reference to the literary and religious traditions
of India. There is really no reason to maintain, as did Eduard Sachau in
1888, that "in the Arabian Sufism the Indian Vedânta reappears."[5]
The question then arises, if there is no intrinsic reference to India or
Hindu texts in Sufism, what led scholars to seek such an external explanation?
Theories
of cultural diffusion from a single source (like Pan-Babylonianism) had
a certain logical appeal, doubtless because of their simplicity. This kind
of reductionism inevitably attracted criticism. Louis Massignon's classic
study of the vocabulary of Sufism contained a major section devoted to
"The Role of Foreign Influences," which he rejected, on the whole.[6]
In a critical review of theories of Indian "influence" on Islamic mysticism,
Moreno rightly characterized approaches like Horten's as "Indophile or
Indomaniac zeal."[7]
In a similar vein, Dermenghem maintained that
The
surprising thing would be if we did not find in Moslem countries something
analogous to Hindu Yoga, since here are two traditions claiming the authenticity
of primordial tradition. Nor is it any more surprising that, severally,
these methods present a whole gamut ranging from pure intellectual contemplation
to orgies of rhythm and sound. Modern Europe is almost alone in having
renounced, out of bourgeois respectability and Gallican purism, the participation
of body in the pursuits of the spirit. In India as in Islam, music, poetry,
and the dance are spiritual exercises.[8]
He
went on to observe, "This does not mean that Hindu Yoga is at the source
of Moslem Sufism."[9]
Thus it has been possible for scholars such as Gardet and Eliade to entertain
a comparative study of mysticism that was not historically reductive, but
phenomenological (and occasionally theological) in approach.[10]
But
part of the genetic view of Asian religions was the habit of viewing non-Christian
cultures primarily in terms of their difference from European Christianity.
This was particularly prominent in the intellectual climate of nineteenth-century
colonialism. Theories of evolution and race were freely applied in the
comparative study of religion, originally understood as a disingenuous
comparison intended to reveal which religion was superior.[11]
The study of religion in Christian theological faculties initially exempted
Christianity from this kind of historical investigation, since Christianity
(in whatever form the theorist professed) was assumed to be still pure
and integral, despite such arguably revolutionary events as the Protestant
Reformation. If, however, other religions could be shown to be hybrids
composed of various "Oriental" influences, that was a testimony to their
dependent and inferior nature. In Zaehner's words, "Muslim mysticism is
entirely derivative."[12]
Regardless of the later progress of historical research into the relation
of Christianity to the cultural and religious world into which it was born,
the colonial legacy of condescension toward "Oriental religions" still
lingers.
This
is not to say that Sufis, particularly in India, were unaware of the ascetic
and meditative practices of yogis.[13]
But it is almost impossible to find any Indian textual sources on yoga
that were widely known in the Muslim world. Nevertheless, in observing
that the thesis of the Indian origins of Sufism was almost entirely unconnected
to any historical evidence, it is important to note the single piece of
evidence that forms the exception to this rule. It was Alfred von Kramer,
in a wide-ranging 1873 study of Islamic civilization, who first drew attention
to a short passage in a fourteenth-century Persian encyclopedia (the Nafa'is
al-funun of Amuli) that described yogic techniques of breath control
on the basis of an obviously Indian text. From this observation, which
he linked with breathing practices found in Central Asian Sufi groups,
von Kramer leapt to the familiar Orientalist conclusion: "We are, indeed,
constrained to ascribe to Indian influences the rise of that Muslim mysticism
which appears so much later and bears such a close external and internal
resemblance to the teachings of the Vedanta school."[14]
What von Kremer neglected to point out, in his enthusiasm, was that the
passage on breath control occurred in the section on natural and occult
sciences; the author of this encyclopedia had separately categorized Sufism
as one of the Islamic sciences along with literature, law, theology, and
history.[15]
The connection between Indian breath control and Sufi practice was not
recognized by Muslim authors, who classified the two items under different
categories (this question of categorization will be raised again below).
The European Orientalist assumed a genetic relationship between the two
on the basis of modern prejudices extrinsic to the text. But the important
thing was that von Kremer noticed a distinctively yogic text being circulated
in learned Islamicate circles. This can now be identified as a version
of The Kamarupa Seed Syllables, which is described below.
Again,
as von Kremer shows, the automatic assumption of the purely Indian origin
of Sufism was axiomatic in Orientalist scholarship. In a similar case,
Hartmann in 1915 noticed a report in a late Arabic text stating that one
of the early founders of the Naqshbandi order in Central Asia, `Abd al-Khaliq
Ghijduwani (d. 1220), was inspired by the immortal prophet Khidr to introduce
the practice of breath control into Sufism. Hartmann could not resist speculating
that this report concealed an Indian origin for this practice. The claim
of inspiration masked the more prosaic point that Ghijduwani's native city
of Bukhara was "the point of communication with Buddhist and Brahmanic
Asia," and that at this formative period in the development of the Sufi
orders, they necessarily passed on the influences of their Indian environment
to the rest of the Islamic world.[16]
One must simply pass over with astonishment the European parochialism that
places Bukhara in the same neighborhood as India (it is roughly 1000 miles
from Lahore and 2000 miles from Bengal). Here too, the argument for influence
was ultimately meant to demonstrate which system is original and authentic,
and which is derivative. Such a tendentious motivation is also apparent
in a late nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox text, which treats both yogis
and Sufis as having borrowed (and bungled) the meditative techniques of
the church fathers as outlined in the Philokalia: "It was from them
[the Greek Orthodox saints] that the monks of India and Bokhara took over
the `heart method' of interior prayer, only they quite spoiled and garbled
it in doing so."[17]
From
the point of view of the study of religion, it is disappointing enough
to see lack of historical rigor that too often accompanied Orientalist
speculations about the Indian origins of Sufism. Even more problematic
was the pervasive positivism and condescending Eurocentrism that increasingly
replaced Romantic enthusiasm as the colonialist mentality intensified in
the later nineteenth century. Von Kremer concluded his review of Islamic
civilization with a heavy indictment of the errors of the Oriental:
The
more the Muslim is constrained to learn to adapt himself to the needs of
the age and indeed learn them from the Europeans, whose powerful superiority
he no longer fails to recognize, the more will he be induced to take the
right and proper course, that of a practical life from which he has been
estranged by superstitious, mystic visions and theological speculations.[18]
Here
I would like to take a different point of view, one that takes seriously
the views of those who are engaged with the religious questions under discussion.
If there was a text on yogic practice that was transmitted and studied
in Muslim countries, how was it in fact understood? The remarks that follow
are based on the study of the highly complex history of a text known by
the Sanskrit title Amrtakunda or The Pool of Nectar, which
survives in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu translations in multiple
recensions (evidence has recently come to light of a Hebrew version produced
in Yemen). This textual history indicates that the readers of this text
engaged it in a process of Islamization, involving scriptural Islamic themes,
philosophical vocabulary, and the terminology and concepts of Sufism. What
remained was a very narrow window onto the world of Indian religions, and
one which to many readers was hardly distinguishable from the standard
occult and mystical practices found in Islamicate society. In short, the
history of the single textual source for yogic practice in the Muslim world
tells us a great deal more about its Muslim readers than it does about
yoga.
The
Textual Transmission of The Pool of Nectar
The
Amrtakunda
or The Pool of Nectar was the name of a Sanskrit or Hindi work,
the original text of which is now lost. The Pool of Nectar was also
known by the title Kamrubijaksa or The Kamarupa Seed Syllables,
which circulated in an independent Persian translation that seems to represent
the earliest stage of transmission of this text by Muslim authors (see
below).[19]The
Pool of Nectar was ostensibly translated into Persian, and then Arabic,
according to the introduction, in 1210 in Bengal, under the title Hawd
ma' al-hayat, or The Pool of the Water of Life. The initial
translation was accomplished by a Muslim scholar, Rukn al-Din al-Samarqandi,
aided by a yogi who converted to Islam after losing a disputation. At an
unspecified later date, the text was redacted in Arabic by an unknown author,
with the aid of another yogi who converted to Islam.[20]
For
reasons too complex to discuss here, I suggest that this account is fictitious.
The earliest phase of the text (perhaps going back to the early thirteenth
century) is probably represented by The Kamarupa Seed Syllables.
This eclectic Persian text contained breath control practices relating
to magic and divination, rites of the yogini temple cult associated with
Kaula tantrism, and teachings of hatha yoga according to the tradition
of the Nath yogis (popularly called jogis). All of this was placed
in a context of the supremacy of the goddess Kamakhya, with frequent reference
to her main temple in Assam (Kamarupa). This text was adapted by an anonymous
Arabic translator, who was trained in the Illuminationist (Ishraqi) school
of philosophy in Iran, probably in the fifteenth century. This anonymous
Arabic translator completely rewrote the Persian text, incorporating into
his introduction two symbolic narratives, one deriving ultimately from
the "Hymn of the Pearl" from the Gnostic
Acts of Thomas, the other
being a partial translation from a Persian treatise, On the Reality
of Love, originally written by the Illuminationist philosopher Shihab
al-Din al-Suhrawardi al-Maqtul.[21]
From the dissemination of the manuscript copies of the Arabic text, it
is clear that Hawd al-hayat was fairly well known in the Islamic
world; at least forty-five copies are found in libraries in European and
Arab countries, the majority being in Istanbul. None of the manuscripts
is older than the late sixteenth century. The content of the text was so
unusual that, almost by default, it has been frequently assigned to the
authorship of the Andalusian Sufi master Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-`Arabi; this
attribution is clearly erroneous, but it served to give the text a certain
canonical authority, particularly in Ottoman lands.[22]
The vocabulary of the text is mostly formed on the Arabic technical terminology
of Hellenistic philosophy, with some Islamic overtones derived from the
Qur'an and Sufism. The translator worked strenuously to render the yogic
practices in a way that was understandable to a philosophically oriented
reader of Arabic. The oldest recension of the Arabic version no longer
exists, and the two existing later recensions show an increasing amount
of Islamization of the text.
The
Pool of the Water of Life
stands out from other Arabic and Persian translations from the Sanskrit,
by emphasizing Indian spiritual practices rather than doctrines. Although
al-Biruni (d. 1010) had translated Patañjali's Yogasutra
into Arabic, he had focused on philosophical questions and omitted the
topic of mantra altogether, and his Indological works were not widely read.[23]
Most of the Sanskrit texts translated into Persian during the Mughal period
were likewise chosen either for political or philosophical interest and
had little relevance to religious practice.[24]
The Arabic text of The Pool of the Water of Life was known to various
Muslim mystics of India, some of whom had watched with interest the breathing
exercises and chants of the yogis, and noticed similarities with their
own meditative practices.[25]
A Chishti master, Shaykh `Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (d. 1537), who was familiar
with the yoga of the Naths and wrote Hindi verses on the subject, taught
The
Pool to a disciple.[26]
Shaykh Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari (d. 1563), an Indian Sufi master of the
Shattari order, translated The Pool from the oldest Arabic version
into Persian under the title Bahr al-hayat (The Ocean of Life).[27]
Sufis from the Qadiri, Mevlevi, and Sanusi orders in Sind, Turkey, and
North Africa continued to refer to The Pool well into the nineteenth
century. The Arabic text was twice translated into Ottoman Turkish, and
Muhammad Ghawth's Persian translation was itself rendered into Dakhani
Urdu (see Chart
2). The Arabic version is still in use today; a Damascene Sufi shaykh
who is an expert on the works of Ibn al-`Arabi regards it as a very important
treatise.
A
document such as The Pool of Nectar, the only known Arabic translation
of a work on hatha yoga, would seem to offer an ideal case study for determining
how yoga was construed in relation to Islamic mysticism, and what relation
it had with Sufi practice. It is a concrete example of how a Muslim writer
interpreted a characteristically Indian set of religious practices. A quick
glance at the text is enough to indicate that it was definitely prepared
for a Muslim readership; the text opens with an invocation of God and the
Prophet Muhammad, and it is sprinkled with terms and phrases from the Islamic
religious vocabulary. The translator has carefully attempted to describe
practices that include Sanskrit chants or mantras, breathing techniques,
postures for meditation, a version of kundalini meditation with depictions
of the seven cakras or psychic centers, invocation of feminine deities,
and other specific practices. My analysis of the relationship between Islamicate
and Indic features of this text indicates, however, that generalities about
Hinduism and Islam are relatively useless for shedding light on the significance
of the text, nor does the text provide any insight into overarching questions
of inter-religious exchange. Many different strands of meaning have been
interwoven by the translator, who eclectically drew together practices
of yoga and divination from different sources that cannot be identified
with any particular surviving text on hatha yoga, providing in any case
a very limited picture of hatha yoga practice.
Nevertheless,
the different translations of The Pool of Nectar are unanimous in
affirming that this is the most famous and respected scripture of India,
despite the fact that no trace of it can be found today in any Indological
literature. The anonymous Arabic translator concealed his identity behind
a highly suspicious account of the circumstances surrounding the translation
of the text, in which a leading role is played by yogis who convert to
Islam and announce that their teachings are fundamentally identical with
the Qur'an. The translation is prefaced with a narrative framework that
adapted materials from Christian Gnosticism and Islamicate Neoplatonism,
producing a complex interpretation of the religious significance and goal
of yogic practice that avoids mentioning any of the principal categories
of Indian metaphysics. In addition, the translator inserted into the text
materials that clearly derive from standard Islamic sources. The different
redactions of the Arabic text, and the subsequent translations into Persian,
Turkish, and Urdu (see Chart
1)contain further interpretive differences, which mostly transform
Greco-Arabic philosophical concepts in the direction of Sufism. All these
symbolic strategies tended to remove any sense of otherness from the yogic
teachings for Muslim readers.
The Pool of Nectar does not attempt
to describe Hinduism as an autonomous religious system beyond the boundaries
of Islam. In late interpretations of it, such as the description of Sufi
orders by Muhammad al-Sanusi (d. 1859), yogis ended up being described
as a subset of a Sufi order. In this respect, the Muslim understanding
of yoga resembled the case of the enigmatic group called Barahima
in Islamic heresiographies, whom some commentators have identified as Indian
Brahmins. But a recent analysis has concluded that "there is not a single
dogmatic item in the agenda of Barahima beliefs that evokes the beliefs
of Hinduism. . . . the Barahima were a sect completely explicable in terms
of the Islamic environment and its Judaeo-Christian heritage, and not Indians
at all."[28]
When translators and interpreters overuse the technique of familiarization,
no trace of otherness remains, and readers see only what their training
and education have prepared them to see. This over-familiarization seems
to have happened with the Arabic version of The Pool of Nectar.
On
a less sophisticated level, the Persian text of The Kamarupa Seed Syllables
also demonstrates an unselfconscious domestication of yogic practices in
an Islamicate society. Among the breath prognostications, for instance,
one learns that one should only approach "the qadi [Islamic judge]
or the amir [Arabic term for ruler]" for judgement or litigation
when the breath from the right nostril is favorable. Casual references
mention Muslim magicians, and practices that may be performed either in
a Muslim or a Hindu graveyard (47b), or else in an empty temple or mosque
(49b), and occasionally one is told to recite a Qur'anic passage such as
the Throne Verse, or to perform a certain action after evening prayer.
We even hear of a Muslim from Broach who successfully summoned a yogini
goddess and participated in the rites of her devotees (37a). The text is
provided with an overall Islamic frame, through a standard invocation of
God and praise of the Prophet at the beginning:
Praise and adoration to that God who brought so many thousands of arts and wonders from the secrecy of non-existence into the courtyard of existence, and who adorned the sublime court with luminous bodies, who made the abodes of spiritual beings, and who commanded the manifestation of the sublunar world with varieties of plants and minerals, and who made the residence and resort of animals, and who chose from all the animals humanity, creating it in the best of forms, giving the cry: "We have created humanity in the finest of stations" (Qur. 95:4), "so bless God, the finest of creators" (Qur. 23:14). Many blessings and countless salutations on the pure and holy essence of the leader of the world [i.e., the Prophet Muhammad], the best of the children of Adam, the blessings of God and peace be upon him, and upon them all.
Likewise
at the end, a quotation of a hadith saying of the Prophet and some mystical
allusions furnish a religious coloring for magical practices (55a). These
practices remain fundamentally ambiguous, however. "If one to whom this
door is opened makes the claim, he will be a prophet; if he is good, he
will be a saint; and if he is evil, he will be a magician" (55a). As a
generalization, I would like to observe that for the average Persian reader,
the contents of The Kamarupa Seed Syllables probably fell into the
category of the occult sciences, and its Indic origin would have only enhanced
its esoteric allure. The text employs standard Arabic terms for astral
magic (tanjim), the summoning of spirits (ihdar) (30b, 37b),
and the subjugation (taskhir) of demons, fairies, and magicians.
Thus there would be a familiar quality about the text, even when these
techniques are employed for summoning the spirits known in India as yoginis.
The chants or mantras of the yogis are repeatedly referred to as spells
(afsun), a Persian term of magical significance. We also read of
recognizably magical techniques such as one using a nail made from bone
(51a), which is employed nefariously with a voodoo-type doll (51b). Another
recipe uses a comb made from the right paw of a mad dog killed with iron,
in rituals performed at a cremation ground (48b-49a).
Islamic
Elements in the Text
The
Pool of Nectar
contains numerous Arabic formulas and references that locate the text in
reference to standard Islamic religious themes (see Chart
5). There are six clear quotations from the Qur'an in the earlier extant
Arabic recension, to which the later recension adds two more. One hadith
saying of the Prophet Muhammad is quoted, and another is implicitly referred
to. Terms from the vocabulary of religious practice, particularly those
relating to the names of God and prayer, are prominent. The text is, in
addition, studded with pious phrases and blessings, which occur in over
half of the chapters. Cosmological terms relating to standard Qur'anic
sources appear with remarkable frequency. And there are at least a dozen
places where specific Sufi terms and themes are invoked. All these are
instances of deliberate Islamization, in which the translator decided to
use familiar terms and conventions to normalize the foreignness of the
Indian text. Three chapters (I, III, and X) contain no Indic material whatever.
When combined with the quotations from Islamicate philosophical texts in
the preface (see below), the net result is that over one third of the Arabic
version of The Pool of Nectar consists of the translator's additions
to the text.
The
process of Islamization was a cumulative one. The earlier extant version
of the Arabic text (manuscript family a) represents a stage
in this process, which is clearly accelerated by the later version (family
b).
Not only does family b add more Islamic scriptural passages
and themes, it also strips away, truncates, and distorts many Indian references.
Indian names for the planets have been garbled or omitted in both Arabic
recensions, though they are clearly preserved in the Persian translations,
perhaps because Indo-Persian scribes were familiar with the Hindi terms
(see Chart 3).
The later recension (family b) omits altogether the identification
of Brahma and Vishnu with Abraham and Moses (Int.3), the yogic term alakh
and its translation as Allah (IV.4), the three yogis identified with esoteric
Islamic figures (V.4), the description of urethral suction (VI.5), and
most of the description of the seventh yogini (IX.9). The manuscripts of
family b also add further extraneous textual materials, including
an Arabic verse, inserted at the beginning of the preface, and a treatise
on the heart according to Sufi psychology, added as an appendix after chapter
X. The Islamization of the text even proceeded on the visual level. The
Arabic translation includes fourteen diagrams for visualization during
meditation, of which nine relate to the cakras. Comparison of manuscripts
indicates a subtle but unmistakeable process of grammatization, in which
diagrams increasingly turn into Arabic letters or the cabalistic figures
common to Arabic works on occultism.
The
insertion of Islamic materials into the translation of The Pool of Nectar
was accompanied by another technique, in which Indic names and themes were
given Islamic equivalents (see Chart
4). The Sanskrit term alakh, "the unconditioned," is translated
as Allah, doubtless because of the tempting similarity of sound, and their
nearly identical appearance in Arabic script.[29]
Brahma and Vishnu are translated as Abraham and Moses, and three legendary
yogis are equated with Islamic prophets. This last identification is made
in the context of a discussion of attaining complete control over the breath:
When you have reached this station, and this condition becomes characteristic of you, closely examine three things with thought and discrimination: 1) the embryo, how it breathes while it is in the placenta, though its mother's womb does not respire; 2) the fish, how it breathes in the water, and the water does not enter it; 3) and the tree, how it attracts water in its veins and causes it to reach its heights. The embryo is Shaykh Gorakh, who is Khidr (peace be upon him), the fish is Shaykh Minanath [Matsyendranath], who is Jonah, and the tree is Shaykh Chaurangi, who is Ilyas, and they are the ones who have reached the water of life (V.4).
Several
technical terms are given in their Sanskrit forms along with Arabic translations:
homa
or "sacrifice" is translated as du`a or "prayer," japa or
"counted prayers" becomes `azima or "invocation," and the key term
yogi
(in its north Indian form jogi) is murtad or "person of discipline."
Brahman,
the term for the priestly caste, is translated as `alim or "scholar."
But as noted above, several of these equivalences have evaporated from
the later recension of the Arabic text. The very attempt to translate an
Indian name or term with an Islamic one has been abandoned in these instances.
In later recensions, or in quotations of the text, we find that the passage
identifying the Sanskrit word alakh with Allah has a radically different
appearance. A mid-nineteenth-century Arabic treatise on Sufi orders by
the North African author Muhammad al-Sanusi (d. 1859) includes a section
on the yogis (al-jujiyya) as a subset of the Ghawthiyya branch of
the Shattariyya Sufi order; for this he clearly draws both on the writings
of Muhammad Ghawth and on the Arabic text of
The Pool of Nectar.[30]
When he reaches the passage in question, he states, "If one wishes to witness
the hidden world, it is incumbent on him to cross his eyes over his nose,
and imagine in his heart the word Allah, Allah, without moving his tongue.
If he reaches the level of perfection in this practice, then magic and
poison will have no influence on him, disease will not affect him, the
hidden worlds will be unveiled, his prayer will be answered, and he will
be famous among men for deeds of piety." At this point it is no longer
possible to see any Indian "influence" in a portrait of a practice that
is indistinguishable from standard Sufi technique.
Philosophical
Formations
It
is evident that the Arabic version of The Pool of Nectar was composed
by an Iranian philosopher familiar with the Illuminationist school, because
of the characteristic Illuminationist vocabulary in the treatise. The most
persuasive evidence in this regard is the extensive revised Arabic version
(Int.9-12) of an extract from Suhrawardi's Persian treatise On the Reality
of Love, which is integrated with the fragmentary "Hymn of the Pearl"
frame story.[31]
We also find a distinctive term from Avicennan-Illuminationist psychology,
"the cognizing and distinguishing rational soul for the managing of states"
(Int.14), or more briefly, "the managing rational soul" (IV.1). The prominent
location of this passage in the preface is clearly meant to exercise a
dominant role in determining the significance of the yogic teachings of
the main text. This has the distinct effect of proleptically assimilating
the psychophysiology of yoga to the basic categories of Aristotelian and
Avicennan psychology, even though this assimilation is not actually carried
out in the text. Specifically, the text in the preface enumerates the standard
Greco-Arabic list of the five internal senses, the five external senses,
the seven vegetal faculties, and the two animal motor-sensory faculties,
which would be familiar to any reader of later Aristotelian texts in Arabic.
At the same time, the narrative suggests an overall framework for interpreting
yogic practices as a means of discovering the true self through discipline
of the body and mind. But there is no indication of any familiarity of
philosophical anthropologies that might be found in other Sanskrit materials
connected to the yogic tradition.
In
addition to these explicit references to the Illuminationist school of
philosophy, the Arabic version as a whole calls on a more diffuse kind
of Arabic philosophical vocabulary, which was shared and recognized by
many schools. The philosophical terms in the treatise are primarily of
a cosmological significance, and they include such items as the four qualities
(hot, cold, wet, dry) (VI.2-3, X.2), moderation (al-amr al-awsat)
(IV.1, VIII.1), contraries (diddan) (III.4, V.2, X.2), the rational
soul (al-nafs al-natiqa) (I.3, V.2, VI.2, X.4), the universal intellect
(`aql al-kull) (I.2, I.3), and the creator (al-bari)
(I.2, I.3).
Intellectuals
trained in the Arabic scientific curriculum would have recognized in The
Pool of Nectar some explicit references to commonplace themes from
the tenth-century encyclopedia known as The Epistles of the Brethren
of Purity. The theme of the correspondence of the human body as microcosm
and the larger cosmos as macrocosm had been well developed in Greek thought
from an early period.[32]
The Brethren of Purity gave an early expression to this doctrine in their
encyclopedia, with strong leanings toward Pythagorean teachings. From the
prominent first chapter of The Pool of Nectar (I.2), we can glean
the following list of microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondences:
1.
nostrils, eyes, ears, and mouth:
seven planets
2.
senses: stars
3.
head: sky
4.
body (juththa): earth
5.
bone: mountains
6.
nerves: oceans
7.
veins: rivers
8.
hair: trees (ashjar)
9.
skin, blood, flesh, ligaments, muscle,
10.
waking: day
11.
sleep: night
12.
happiness: spring
13.
sadness: winter
14.
hunger: summer
15.
satiety: fall
16.
weeping: water
17.
laughing: lightning
18.
heart: throne
19.
brain: canopy
20.
soul: universal intellect
21.
intellect: creator
To
this list some manuscripts from family b add the following
items:
22.
arteries: springs
23.
chief limbs: mountains
24.
brain : mine
25.
limbs : animals
This
list may be compared with a similar series of microcosmic-macrocosmic equivalences
found in The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (repeated or similar
terms are marked in bold, with reference to the numbers in the list just
given):
body(jasad):
earth (variant of no. 4)
bones:
mountains
(variant no. 5)
brain:
mines
(variant of no. 24)
belly:
ocean (partial; no. 6)
intestines:
rivers (partial; no. 7)
veins:
streams (partial; no. 7)
flesh:
dust
hair:
plants
(nabat) (variant of no. 8)
head
to foot: civilization
back:
desert
front:
east
back:
west
right:
south
left:
north
breathing:
herbs
speech:
thunder
cries:
thunderbolts
laughing:
lightning
(variant of no. 17)
weeping:
rain
(variant of no. 16)
misery
and sorrow: dark of night
sleep:
death
waking:
life
childhoods:
pring (partial; no. 12)
youth:
summer (partial; no. 14)
maturity:
fall (partial; no. 15)
old
age: winter (partial;
no. 13)[33]
The
list of the Brethren of Purity continues with an additional twelve equivalences
between the human condition and planetary movements, of particular relevance
to astrology. The series of twenty-five microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondences
in The Pool of Nectar is introduced primarily in the context of
the yogic teaching regarding the sun and moon (I.1), and their association
with the two opposed breaths of the right and left nostrils. As shown by
the items marked in bold above, six of these correspondences are variations
on correspondences given by the Brethren of Purity, and another seven give
correspondences that include one of the terms in the list of the Brethren
of Purity. Items 18 to 21 contain terms deriving from standard Islamicate
cosmology. Manuscripts from the later recension of family b
add four more items, one from the list of the Brethren of Purity, indicating
a further stage in the domestication of the text. The Persian translation
of Muhammad Ghawth (which differs widely from the Arabic text at this point)
contains another four equivalences from the list of the Brethren of Purity
that do not occur in any of the Arabic manuscripts of The Pool of Nectar,
but which probably reflect the earlier Arabic recension from which his
Persian translation derives.
This
passage is then followed (I.3) by further reflection on the microcosm and
the macrocosm, joining the language of Islamicate philosophy to citations
from the Qur'an and hadith. Speculations on the microcosm and the macrocosm
have certainly played an important role in Indian thought, and they are
frequently found in yogic writings, but the material in this Arabic version
(I.2-3) appears to be wholly unrelated to Indian sources. In Indian texts
one would normally expect specific references to correspondences between
sections of the body and multiple worlds, specific geographical sites in
India, etc.[34]
It is hard to avoid concluding that the translator of The Pool of Nectar,
perhaps inspired by something comparable in the yogic teaching, at this
point eliminated the Indic narrative and substituted materials from exclusively
Arabic sources to make the yogic teachings more comprehensible. This is
not the only place in the treatise where the Brethren of Purity are invoked.
A description in The Pool of Nectar (VI.2) regarding the prediction
of the sex of the embryo in the womb, according to which direction it is
facing, appears to draw directly on a passage in the writings of the Brethren
of Purity.[35]
Yogic
Elements in the Text
The
Arabic version of The Pool of Nectar contains a variety of practices.
Some are not distinctively Indian or restricted to yoga, but are widely
found in other traditions. This is the case with the recommendation of
fasting (IV.3), vegetarian diet (V.3), and sexual abstinence (VI.3, VII.11).
But other practices are clearly associated with hatha yoga (see Chart
7). Very prominent is the description of breath control, with reference
to the sun and moon breaths as associated with the left and right nostrils
(I, II). The concepts of breath underlying these passages are not clearly
related to standard Indian cosmologies, however.
Later
Indian texts such as the Yoga Upanisads often employ the time unit
of the matra to count the duration of breaths.[36]
In contrast, The Pool of Nectar measures breaths by fingers, in
two passages using a spatial measurement rather than a temporal one. The
first passage gives a list of five breaths associated with the elements,
and it describes the directional orientation of four: "The breaths are
five: fiery, watery, airy, earthy, and heavenly. The fiery rises up, the
airy spreads out, the watery descends the extent of four fingers, the earthy
descends the extent of eight fingers" (II.2). Although the number five
is characteristic of Indian medical and yogic approaches to the breaths,
and while some of the breaths are associated with upward and downward movement,
it is otherwise hard to recognize any resemblance to the Indian traditions
on the breaths in this brief list.[37]
The association with the elements is not found in standard Indian texts,
and may be an Aristotelian touch added by the translator. The second passage
details the effects of exhalation and inhalation, and recommends the increase
of the latter in order to prolong life: "You will find it [breath] rising
in exhalation the amount of about twelve fingers with power, and in inhalation
it descends the amount of four fingers. It decreases at every breath by
the power of eight fingers. So see how much it decreases every day. That
is the decrease of one's life. It is appropriate that you reverse that
by kindness, sympathy, and gradual approach. That is, you should inhale
the breath with power and exhale it with gentleness and mildness, to the
point where you inhale twelve fingers, and exhale four" (V.3). In the Persian
translation of Muhammad Ghawth, this passage reads: "Twelve fingers of
breath enter, then eight fingers return, four fingers of cold wind (sarsar),
and four of cold (sard). . . . When walking on foot, breath of twelve
fingers enters, and two warm and two cold ones return. When exerting effort,
running, or having sex, twenty-four fingers go out, and four return to
place." Oddly, the spatial measurements are missing from the account of
breath in the oldest Persian translation, the portions of the Kamrubijaksa
preserved in the fourteenth-century encyclopedia of Amuli. In any case,
the basic idea is apparently control of the quantity of breath in order
to maximize inhalation for long life. There are occasional references to
the finger as a spatial measure of length related to breath control in
the Yoga Upanisads, but these do not correspond with the life preservation
technique mentioned here.[38]
Physiological
techniques mentioned in the text include the purification of body by postures
recognizable as yogic asanas (IV.4-8). The Arabic text acknowledges the
traditional number of 84 postures, but describes only five (although the
Persian translation of Muhammad Ghawth, relying on an earlier version of
the Arabic, describes twenty-one postures). These are difficult to match
with the descriptions of asanas in standard hatha yoga texts, but from
the descriptions we may recognize the Virasana, Kukkutasana, and Uttana
Kurmasana among these five. The Arabic text emphasizes the physical and
psychic health benefits of these postures. It is notable that the yogic
word alakh is repeated in each position; this reinforces the association
with the Nath or Kanphata yogis, for whom this is a characteristic utterance.
Among these physiological techniques appears to be a version of the khecari
mudra, described as staring at the tip of the nose and drinking the
"nectar" of saliva (II.5, II.7). Unlike standard hatha yoga accounts of
this practice, this description emphasizes the crossing of the eyes (vividly
illustrated in some manuscripts) as the chief element, which permits the
retention of semen during sexual intercourse; the swallowing of nectar
is also modestly credited with curing sores and headache.[39]
Another yogic technique that occurs here is a variation of the vajroli
mudra, which makes possible return of the semen by urethral suction
(VI.5). Curiously, the discussion of retention of semen is embedded in
a lengthy section on procreation and embryology according to Galenic medical
principles, leading to the equivalent of the philosophical proverb, "Every
animal is sad after sex" (VI.4).
Visualization
is another prominent feature of The Pool of Nectar, particularly
in the lengthy chapter VII on the magical imagination (wahm), treated
as a generic term for mental and magical powers. Normal Islamic discourse
gives wahm the pejorative meaning of "illusion" or "prejudice,"
and wahm also has various technical meanings in Aristotelian philosophy
as the "estimative faculty" (Lat. aestimatio, Gk. sunesis, phronesis)
and "compositive imagination" (Gk. phantasia logistike). But wahm
in the sense of "magical imagination" seems to presuppose a correspondence
with some unstated Indic term, possibly dharana or kalpana.
It is defined in The Kamarupa Seed Syllables as "the knowledge of
breaths" (16a), and in the translator's introduction magical imagination
is also linked with the term "discipline" (riyadat), which is the
standard Arabic-Persian translation for yoga (below, p. ). I am open to
suggestions about other interpretations of this term. At any rate, this
practice takes the form of the visualization in sequence of seven locations
corresponding to the standard yogic cakras, from the seat to the crown
of the head. Each cakra is described in terms of a color and a diagram,
but instead of being linked to Hindu gods and letters of the devanagari
alphabet, the cakras are connected with the planets. While some of the
bija-mantras
contain phonemes recognizable to Indologists, others are beyond retrieval,
doubtless due to the difficulties of preserving the chants in Arabic script
(see Chart 3).
The demythologization of the cakras, and their planetary placement, has
the effect of likening the cakra meditation and the implicit upward movement
of the kundalini to the ascension of the the soul through the planetary
spheres, a major theme in Islamic, Iranian, and Jewish traditions.
The
seven Sanskrit mantras or chants associated with the seven cakras
are all boldly declared to be translations of the Arabic invocations of
the names of God. Thus the Sanskrit syllable hum is translated as
"O Lord" (ya rabb), and aum is translated as "O Ancient One"
(ya qadim). In introducing these seven great mantras, the Arabic
translator remarks that "they are like the greatest names [of God] among
us." Muhammad Ghawth goes one better, however, in his Persian translation,
providing two Arabic phrases for each Sanskrit term; he translates hum
as ya rabb ya hafiz, "O Lord, O Protector," and aum as ya
qahir ya qadir, "O Wrathful, O All-powerful."[40]
In a discussion of breathing techniques that does not appear in the Arabic
version, Muhammad Ghawth also finds equivalents for the yogic terms hans
and so ham, which are pronounced during the two phases of exhalation
and inhalation; the first is "an expression for the spiritual lord (rabb
ruhi)," while the second stands for "the lord of lords (rabb al-arbab)."[41]
There are many other examples of this kind. Semantically, such "translations"
make no sense whatever; they are, rather, functional equivalents between
the yogic words of power and the names of God as used by the Sufis; this
is especially evident in the case of the seven great mantras, for which
the Arabic equivalents are presented in a vocative form used in the Sufi
dhikr
repetitions of the names of God.
Chapter
IX of The Pool of Nectar amplifies on the cakra meditations in Chapter
VII with elaborate instructions for summoning seven female deities or "spiritual
beings" (Ar. ruhaniyyat) who are evidently the chief yoginis (there
are a total of 64 of these entities). These seven are usually called Mother
Goddesses in yogic circles.[42]
In this text, however, they are assimilated to the seven planets, as in
Chapter VII. Here as well, it seems that the planetary organization is
a deliberate attempt by the translator to familiarize the subject, in this
case by likening the summoning of Indian goddesses to well-known Middle
Eastern occult practices involving planetary spirits. The phrase "subjugation
of spirits" (taskhir al-arwah) in the title of Chapter IX is the
normal Arabic name for this kind of occultism. The yoginis are summoned
with incense and mandalas. Instructions here call on the practitioner to
act like a son and a brother with the goddesses, in order to obtain the
numerous favors they can bestow. Lengthy Sanskrit mantras addressed to
these beings must be repeated thousands of times (see Chart
6).
The
worship of the female deities known as yoginis seems to have been at its
height in India from the 9th to the 12th centuries, but it continued in
various places until at least the 18th century. Vidya Dehejia has described
at length the open-air yogini temples found at remote sites where these
deities were honored.[43]
While the description of the yoginis in The Pool of Nectar is brief,
The
Kamarupa Seed Syllables describes them at length as the key to knowledge
of all things. At the beginning of the section on breath, we are told,
So say those sixty-four women, "By the command of God (who is great and majestic), who one day gave us this science, we shall not speak of this science. By the God by whose command the 18,000 worlds exist, this is an oath, that this is the science of magical imagination, for whatever is in the earth and heaven is in the grasp of the children of Adam. We tell everything, for everything that goes on in all the world is all known and made clear by the science of magical imagination" (16a).
Furthermore,
they say,
By the command of God most high, and the masterful teaching they have taught us, between the moon and the sun one can know whatever goes on in all the world. We teach a science of who comes, and from where, and what he asks. Also know that this science lengthens life and makes one near immortal (17a).
The
knowledge the yoginis confer makes poison harmless, cures the sick, removes
desire, and enables one to control all persons and things in the world.
These "spiritual beings" are invulnerable to injury by sword or fire, their
hair and nails cannot be cut, they hear from a distance and travel anywhere
in an instant (23b). Each of the sixty-four yoginis has a particular spot
in India, and they go to delightful places to enjoy themselves at feasts,
dressed in gold and jewels, wearing crowns and wreaths, revered by the
devs;
they will never die, grow old, or get sick before the day of judgment,
but all appear to be twenty years of age (30b-31a). These beings are in
fact the principal objects of worship among the Hindus, who carve idols
of them. "Just as we have prophets, saints, and miracle workers, so the
Hindus have faith in them" (31a). Many of their names are given, though
the Persian script leaves many ambiguities: Tutla, Karkala, Tara, Chalab,
Kamak, Kalika, Diba, Darbu (31b), Antarakati (44b, 46b), Chitraki (56a),
Ganga Mati (45a), Sri Manohar (45a), Katiri (30a), Parvati (49b), Suramati
(44b), Susandari (44b), Talu (30a). Of course, as Vidya Dehejia has pointed
out, no two lists of names of yoginis are the same. Sometimes adepts may
have sexual relations with the yoginis (39a), but at other times they regard
them as sister and mother (46b). "She is the yogini and you are the yogi"
(48a). Benefits of association with them include money (44b) and food (48b).
As
a comprehensive description of Indian religious practices, a narrative
limited to Kamakhya and the yoginis might seem a bit eccentric. Brahmins
are mentioned, but only as occasional sources of information about The
Kamarupa Seed Syllables and its interpretation. This is clearly a narrow
sample, but what is it based on? In terms of the categories that are available
today, we could probably say that this text reflects practices of the yogini
temple cult that are associated with Kaula tantrism.[44]
There is also some connection with the Nath or Kanphata yogis, as indeed
Matsyendranath is usually considered the introducer of the yogini cult
among the Kaulas, and the name of Gorakhnath is invoked once (51a) in the
text.[45]
Beyond that general indication, we find multiple strands of Hindu tradition
popping up in an incidental fashion. This text assumes a system of nine
cakras rather than the seven cakras current in most Nath yoga writings
(19b, 20a, 25a). Meditative exercises are given that concentrate on raising
the Sakti from the navel up the spinal column (17b, 18a, 28a). A standard
list of supernormal powers (siddhis) is provided (54a).[46]
Occasional mantras appear to contain the phrase "Krsna avatar" (48b, 53a).
We are told of the temple of Mahakala in Ujjain where many siddhas or magicians
are said to live (24b, 37a). The story of Siva (Mahadev) and the churning
of the ocean is told at length (31b-32b). While long accounts are given
of the temple of the goddess Kamakhya, nothing is said about the animal
sacrifices associated with that site today. The basic teachings of The
Kamarupa Seed Syllables, however, are the use of breath for divination
and the summoning of yoginis to obtain various goals; hatha yoga meditation
is certainly linked to these practices.
The
representation of yogic practices in The Pool of Nectar and The
Kamarupa Seed Syllables was highly selective, to say the least. In
one sense, this is not surprising, if these texts are the result of the
adventitious contact of one or two enterprising Muslim scholars with a
mixture of esoteric Indian teachings. It includes unusual practices not
attested elsewhere, such as a combined visualization of all seven cakras
into a composite diagram (VII.14, VIII.5). Among the benefits of the practices
mentioned in The Pool of Nectar are familiar yogic powers (siddhis),
such as taking on an animal form or another human body, whether living
or dead (parakaya-pravesa) (VII.12-15). At the same time, there
are non-yogic powers, such as the prediction of the time of death by visual
meditation, a practice common in early tantric works on sorcery (kriya
tantra) that predate hatha yoga (VIII.1-5). There are also sexual practices
that use breathing techniques derived from early Indian magical and divinatory
texts (II.4). There are two different accounts of the breaths that are
pretty much incompatible (five breaths in II.2; three breaths in V.3).
The Arabic version of The Pool of Nectar has an otherwise unattested
selection of five asana postures, while the Persian translation of Muhammad
Ghawth provides twenty-one, the names of which do not overlap with any
known work on hatha yoga.[47]
It is difficult to identify the bija-mantras in Chapter VII, though
here as with the longer mantras of Chapter IX, the problem may lie in part
in the inherent difficulty of representing Sanskrit (especially short vowels)
in Arabic script. In any case, despite the translators' claims regarding
the scriptural authority of their texts, the representation of yogic practices
that they provided was arbitrary and selective, and it was heavily colored
both in context and in interpretation by a strongly established set of
Islamic conventions.
Translation
as Hermeneutics
What
is the function of a translation such as The Pool of Nectar? The
account of the origin of the text domesticates it in an Islamic context
through the conversion of yogis to Islam. The two frame stories invoke
particular interpretive approaches linked to the gnostic myth of the soul
and the Illuminationist allegory of the senses and psychic faculties. The
actual mechanism of translation is applied unevenly throughout the text.
Sometimes purely Islamic terms and symbols are unselfconsciously placed
in the text as adequate descriptions of Indian originals. This has the
result that many of the original Indian terms and symbols can only be recovered
by the use of resources of modern Indology outside of this text. The Islamizing
tendency is most evident in the later stages of manuscript production;
there, the most common recension of the Arabic dispenses with most of the
Indian elements of the text. Sanskrit originals are also dropped when techniques
are being introduced that would be new to Arabic readers, particularly
in the sections on chanting, visualization, and postures. In an intermediate
stage of translation, Indic names and terms are retained alongside their
Islamic "translations." Yet there is a certain residue that remains untranslatable,
particularly in the Sanskrit mantras that are transmitted in Arabic script.
In short, The Pool of Nectar exhibits conflicting tendencies in
its modes of translation, which are never fully resolved.
In
approaching his task, the Arabic translator seems only to have felt the
limitations imposed by the audience's unfamiliarity with technical terminology;
he was not limited by social and religious constraints. A glance at the
Indian names and terms that are transmitted in the text along with their
Arabic translations (Chart
5) shows that major theological translations relating to God and the
prophets are entertained without hesitation. It must be repeated, however,
that some of the Indic terms can only be recovered with difficulty through
recourse to modern Indological sources. Given the almost exclusively extra-Indian
distribution of manuscripts (only one of forty-five is found in India),
it is hard to believe that any readers of the Arabic text would have been
in a position to recognize that the text contained Sanskrit terms.
In other cases, the translator evidently felt that it was pointless to retain the Indian originals for a cluster of other important terms. "Mantra" is almost certainly the term underlying the Arabic term dhikr or “recollection,” referring to the seven powerful "words" or "names" in ch