Haṭha Yoga Project



James Mallinson says:

"Each of the texts that is to be edited in the Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP) is a worthy object of study in its own right and is described in detail below. They include the earliest text to teach any of the practices of haṭha yoga (Amṛtasiddhi), the first text to teach a haṭha yoga called as such (Dattātreyayogaśāstra), the first text to teach physical practices for the raising of Kuṇḍalinī (Gorakṣaśataka), the first text to combine the practices of the tantric and ascetic yoga traditions (Vivekamārtaṇḍa), the first Nāth text to call its practices haṭha yoga (Yogabīja), the first text to attempt to combine haṭha and rāja yoga traditions (Yogatārāvalī) and the first text to describe individually each of the 84 āsanas (Yogacintāmaṇi). The most recent of the texts to be edited, the Kapālakuruṇṭaka- haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, scans of the single known manuscript of which have recently been obtained by Birch, is of particular interest for scholars and practitioners of globalised modern yoga: various features of it (on which see below) suggest that it might be the lost “Yoga Kurunta” from which T.Krishnamacharya took much of his teaching. Krishnamacharya’s students include B.K.S.Iyengar, T.K.V.Deshikachar and Pattabhi Jois, the most influential teachers of modern yoga. It is hoped that through text-critical analysis in combination with Singleton’s work on Krishnamacharya the HYP team will be able to establish whether or not the Kapālakuruṇṭakahaṭhābhyāsapaddhati is indeed the same as the Yoga Kurunta."

The ten sanskrit texts to be critically edited, translated and published as part of this project include:

1. Amṛtasiddhi.
2. Dattātreyayogaśāstra.
3. Gorakṣaśataka.
4. Vivekamārtaṇḍa.
5. Yogabīja.
6. Amaraughaprabodha.
7. Yogatārāvalī.
8. Yogacintāmaṇi.
9. Haṭhasaṃketacandrikā.
10. Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati.


A full description of the Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP) is available for download in the link below: