Light on Hatha Yoga: a critical edition and translation of the Hathapradipika, the most important premodern text on physical yoga.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Hanneder
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 448419875

The primary outcome of this project will be a critical edition and annotated translation of the Hathapradipika or "Light onHatha [Yoga]". This Sanskrit text has been the most influential text on physical yoga, both in India since its composition inabout 1400 CE, and globally since yoga started to spread across the world in the late 19th century. The Light on Hatha hasbeen translated hundreds of times into several languages, but these translations are unreliable because they are of basedon nine or fewer of its more than 200 manuscripts, which present widely different versions of the text, ranging from three toten chapters. A team of scholars will trace the Light on Hatha's transmission and publish it in a critical edition which willforeground an authoritative version of the most influential version of the text and detail all its variations. By thus mappingthe transmission history of this text the project will document the premodern development of physical yoga from its originsin the early part of the second millennium CE as a method of mysticism practised by heterodox ascetics in India, to its earlymodern apotheosis as a somatic soteriology available to all prefiguring its current phenomenal worldwide popularity as ameans to wellness.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partner: Professor James Mallinson