The academic scholarship on yoga in the rarified environs of Western universities has been trying to reconstruct the history of the spiritual practice, and the recent “conclusions” they have reached—to put it mildly—will surprise many. These scholars claim that the ideas of karma, rebirth, meditation, and yoga first appear among the Sramana traditions of Buddhists and Jains and were later “appropriated” by Vedic rishis (monks) and incorporated into their “Brahmanical religion”.

During the fifth and sixth centuries BCE, the Sramana ascetics present in the Magadha area developed the practices of what is called yoga, independent of any Brahmanical influence, because the Greater Magadha region during the time of Buddha and Mahavira was beyond the pale of “Brahmanical religion”.

Buddhist scholar, professor Geoffrey Samuel agrees, and says: “(Yogic) practices developed in the same ascetic circles as the early Sramana movement (Buddhist, Jains and Ajivikas) probably in and around the 5th and 6th centuries BCE.”

However, yoga, like practices of meditation and physical austerity, appear frequently in Rig Veda and Atharva Veda. To this, our scholars assure us that yoga, like practices mentioned in the Vedas, “may be forerunners of later yogic techniques…..but it is entirely speculative to claim…that the Vedic corpus provides any evidence of systematic yoga practice.” When the advanced yogic practices in the Mahabharata refer to these Vedic practices, the scholars caution that “it would be wrong to read this backwards as proof of a similar understanding within the vedas themselves.”

Moreover, due to a lack of unanimity on the dates of Hindu texts, the early Upanishads on Yoga are dated post-Buddha by these scholars, to preclude any possibility of the origins of yoga in the “Brahmanical” traditions.

Now there is this knotty question that the word yoga does not occur in any of the earlier literature of the Sramanas of both Buddhist and Jain sources. They occur most frequently in what our scholars would call “Brahmanical texts”. If the Brahmins did not practise yoga, then in what context did they use the word “yoga”?

Indology scholar, professor Johannes Bronkhorst, drawing on his research and that of other academics, says Brahmins used the word yoga to refer to the “psychospiritual” practices of the Buddhists and the Jains. The Brahmins used the word “tapas” to describe their ascetic practices. This “tapas” cannot be the same as the “yoga” of Sramana as the goal of tapas is to gain worldly boons without religious merit while the goal of yoga is to achieve liberation. Therefore, yoga, as we understand it, was not something that the Brahmins themselves practised but used it as a reference to others.

After this hair-splitting argument, Bronkhorst delivers the knockout punch:

“…the Brahmanical contribution to Yoga is minimal. Indeed, its most important contribution would seem to be the word yoga itself, which Brahmanical texts assigned to what were originally non-Brahmanical practices.”

Now that any “Brahmanical” influence on yoga is ruled out except the naming rights, the next logical step is to question the very credibility and authenticity of the entire yoga traditions of Hinduism. Amongst the world’s leading academic authority on yoga, James Mallinson and Mark Singleton, in their book, Roots of Yoga (published 2017), deliver the coup de grace:

“As a text seeking to affirm Brahmanical religion, the Bhagavad Gita seeks to appropriate yoga from the renunciate milieu in which it originated…(while) Patanjali Yoga Shastra represents a Brahmanical attempt to appropriate yoga from the Sramana traditions (such as those of earlier Buddhism) …”

Now, dear readers, please stop for a moment and take a deep Ujjayi breath to let this sink in. In the last few minutes, you have learnt that that there was no “Brahmanical” presence in the Magadha region during the time of the Buddha and Mahavira, that the origins of the entire meditative and yogic forms of Hinduism, including the Bhagavad Gita, was appropriated from rival traditions, and the only foundational contribution of Hinduism to yoga is the word “yoga” itself!

While you may agree or disagree with such research, do you not cringe to read that these Western academic experts in the world’s top universities can use as loaded a term as “appropriate” to describe the yogic traditions of Hinduism? (I mean, how dare Krishna not put a footnote in the Bhagavad Gita, mentioning the source of his teaching!). Do you not cringe at the Western academia’s usage of the term “Brahmanical religion” to describe the entire early traditions and culture of Hinduism? Do you not cringe at the Western scholars’ description of Sramana and Brahmanical traditions in such starkly separate terms, as if these traditions were water-tight compartments?

While it is easy to ignore the yoga research that happens in Western academia as something irrelevant to our beliefs, what is now ‘research’ on yoga history by eminent Western scholars will eventually become academic orthodoxy and will then become fossilised ‘facts’ in our textbooks. Just as Max Muller’s date of 1,500 BCE for Rig Veda became fossilised ‘fact’, just as British scholars’ theory of Aryan invasion became fossilised ‘fact’, just as the missionary account of ‘caste system’ became fossilised ‘fact’, similarly ‘Hinduism’s appropriation of yoga from Buddhist traditions’ will become fossilised ‘fact’ in our school textbooks. And by that time, it will be too late!