Contextualizing the History of Yoga in Geoffrey Samuel’s The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: A Review Symposium

Autor: Stuart Ray Sarbacker, Christopher Key Chapple, Laurie L. Patton, Geoffrey Samuel, Johannes Bronkhorst, Vesna A. Wallace
Rok vydání: 2011
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Hindu Studies. 15:303-357
ISSN: 1574-9282
1022-4556
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-011-9107-6
Popis: Geoffrey Samuel’s new book, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century (2008, Cambridge University Press), aims to bring a richness of contextuality to the scholarly study of the traditions of Yoga and Tantra in South Asian religion. In pursuing this goal, Samuel brings his work on the Indian and Tibetan philosophical, religious and social worlds into conversation with a larger body of scholarship on these issues from recent decades. What emerges is a coherent and lucid narrative of the development of Yoga and Tantra within a richly contextualized social history of Indic religion, especially with respect to the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. As such, Samuel’s work might be thought of as a fruitful counterpoint to Mircea Eliade’s landmark study, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958), in which Eliade examines and theorizes about the “inner logic” of Yoga philosophy and praxis, with little attention to social context. Samuel’s work is, in contrast, centered upon the ways in which the practices of Yoga and Tantra can be understood as being products of particular historical moments, and that they were at least shaped, if not determined, in important ways by the changing political, economic and other social factors in Indic religious history. Samuel states his purpose quite clearly with respect to presenting a “balanced” account of the history of Yoga and Tantra
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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