Asanas of the Yogacintamani: The Largest Premodern Compilation on Postural Practice

Writing in Varanasi in the sixteenth century, when the Mughal empire was at the height of its power, the monk Śivānandasarasvatī composed an extensive Sanskrit compendium on yoga entitled “The Wish-fulfilling Gem of Yoga” (Yogacintāmaṇi). Śivānanda was an initiate of a sannyāsin lineage descending from the great philosopher Śaṅkarācārya (fl. ca. 800). Śivānanda was among the first to combine Pātañjalayoga with Haṭha and Rājayoga. In the seventeenth century, an anonymous redactor used Śivānanda’s work to create a unique compilation of yoga postures (āsana), many of which are not found in other yoga texts. Arguably the largest surviving pre-modern compilation of its kind, it includes six postures that the redactor attributed to Mohan of Mewar, who was a disciple of Dādū and a practitioner of Haṭhayoga and breath prognostication (svarodaya). These postures were part of a collection that was appropriated and repurposed by Sufis, translated into Persian and illustrated for a royal treatise commissioned by Prince Salīm, the future Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (r. 1605–1627 ce). This book presents this unique compilation,transmitted to us in a manuscript written in theredactor’s own handwriting.