Description
Book SynopsisYoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. This book challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2006 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, South Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xxi PART 1 INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION chapter 1 Historicizing Yoga: The Life and Times of Liberated Souls 3 CHAPTER 2 Yoga and the Supramental Being: Materialism, Metaphysics, and Social Reality 32 PART 2 YOGA'S MODERN HISTORY AND PRACTICE CHAPTER 3 Swami Kuvalayananda: Science, Yoga, and Global Modernity 73 CHAPTER 4 Birth of the Anti-Clinic: Naturopathic Yoga in a Post-Gandhian, Postcolonial State 109 CHAPTER 5 Dr. Karandikar, Dr. Pal, and the RSS: Purification, Subtle Gymnastics, and Man Making 142 PART 3 CONCLUSION 6 Auto-Urine Therapy--The Elixir of Life: Yoga, A yurveda, and Self-Perfection 181 CHAPTER 7 Mimetic Skepticism and Yoga: Moving beyond the Problem of Culture and Relativism 211 Notes 247 Glossary 273 References 283 Index 309
