H-M synthesis: Yoga under the Mughals

by Guest Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:47 pm

When the Mughals, who comprised India’s greatest Islamic empire, came to power, yoga’s two main traditions, ancient and Tantric, began to evolve into the ascetic orders of the Daśanāmī Samnyāsīs, the Nāths, and eventually the Rāmānandīs.

The Mughals, like their Islamic predecessors (who will also briefly be discussed in this paper), were fascinated by yoga and its proclaimed possibilities, from its ultimate goal of obtaining enlightenment to even more powerful abilities, such as gaining dominion of the highest gods.

Emperors Akbar (r. 1556-1605), Jahangir (r. 1605-1627), and Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658) not only called for Persian translations of Sanskrit works on yoga, but also verbal and visual documentation of their personal encounters with ascetics. Most importantly, they called for systematic studies of yoga exercises, so they, like Hindu holy men, can access its powers.

For scholars, these works, particularly the paintings, continue to serve as learning devices, but in a different way. They shed light on the evolution of yoga, as well as bear witness to the subcontinent’s ever changing societal, political, and religious landscape and how yogis struck a balance between preserving their faith and adjusting to the political, societal, and religious changes around them.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02666030.2015.1094207?journalCode=rsas20

by Guest Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:51 pm

One of the earliest depictions of yoga asanas occurs in a Persian text commissioned by a Mughal emperor: Bahr al-Hayat (Ocean of Life) is a text on yogic practices compiled by Sufi master Shaykh Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliyari around 1551. The first illustrated copy was produced in Allahabad around 1602, at the request of the Mughal prince Nur-ud-din Mohammad Salim, soon to be known as the emperor Jahangir.

The text contains 21 illustrations depicting various asanas and is an expanded translation of an Arabic work on yoga titled Hawd Ma' Al-hayat (The Pool of the Water of Life), which is itself based on an older Sanskrit text, the Amritakunda, says Carl Ernst, co-director of Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, at the University of North Carolina.

"These were not mere coffee table books for idle curiosity, but part of a serious engagement by the Mughal elite with important Indian intellectual and spiritual traditions," Ernst says. "This illustrates that yoga is not the property of any one religious community."...

Calling yoga Hindu is like calling gravity Christian, as one online meme put it. Both are sciences; both were discovered; in both cases, the faith of the discoverers is irrelevant. "Referring to yoga as religious is like calling Dante's philosophy religious," adds Shubhada Joshi, scholar and professor of philosophy at the University of Mumbai.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/health-and-fitness/orthodox-jews-to-muslims-yoga-is-different-things-to-different-people/story-8VRoLwW94kgWWkHNjXkrSJ.html

by Guest Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:53 pm

Around 1600, a dramatic shift took place in Mughal art. The Mughal emperors of India were the most powerful monarchs of their day—at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they ruled over a hundred million subjects, five times the number administered by their only rivals, the Ottomans. Much of the painting that took place in the ateliers of the first Mughal emperors was effectively dynastic propaganda, and gloried in the Mughals’ pomp and prestige. Illustrated copies were produced of the diaries of Babur, the conqueror who first brought the Muslim dynasty of the Mughal emperors to India in 1526, as well as exquisite paintings illustrating every significant episode in the biography of his grandson, Akbar.

Then, quite suddenly, at this moment of imperial climax, a young Hindu khanazad (or “palace-born”) prodigy named Govardhan began painting images of a sort that had never been seen before in Mughal art. They were not pictures of battles or court receptions. Instead they were closely observed portraits of holy men performing yogic asanas or exercises that aimed to focus the mind and achieve spiritual liberation and transcendence. The results of Govardhan’s experiments in painting—along with a superbly curated selection of several hundred other images from the history of yoga—were recently on view in “Yoga: The Art of Transformation,” a remarkable exhibition at the Freer and Sackler galleries in Washington, D.C., which will travel next to San Francisco and Cleveland.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/03/06/under-spell-yoga/

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H-M synthesis: Yoga under the Mughals

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