I am studying the Pātañjalayogaśāstra in order to use the method of yoga described in it as a practical guide.
The Sanskrit text is the basis of the study. I analyse its morphology and consult academic dictionaries, then produce a translation directly from Sanskrit and compare it with academic translations. Where the meaning of a term or practice remains ambiguous, earlier texts in which related yogic concepts already occur may provide additional context.
What exactly is the text?
What is commonly known today as the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali and the Vyāsa-bhāṣya — the sūtras of Patañjali and the commentary traditionally attributed to Vyāsa — has a more complex textual history.
According to the research of Philipp A. Maas, the earliest reconstructable form of the work is best understood as a single text, the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, consisting of two distinguishable layers: brief sūtras (sūtra) and the explanatory bhāṣya that directly accompanies them.
Maas reached this conclusion through the study of the manuscript tradition. In particular, no early independent manuscript tradition of the Yoga Sūtras separate from the bhāṣya has been identified; the sūtra layer has no independent colophon, and the earliest reconstructable title of the work is Pātañjalayogaśāstra Sāṅkhyapravacana. The attribution of the bhāṣya to an author named Vyāsa appears in a later manuscript tradition and does not allow us to reconstruct Vyāsa with confidence as the original independent author of the commentary.
For this reason, I treat the sūtras and bhāṣya as two distinguishable layers of one early textual complex, while always marking clearly where the sūtra ends and the accompanying bhāṣya begins.
Maas dates the composition of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra to approximately 400 CE, with a broader proposed range of 325–425 CE. This is a dating of the work, not a securely known date for the life of the historical Patañjali. The identity of the author and the formation of the text remain matters of scholarly investigation.
Philipp A. Maas — A Concise Historiography of Classical Yoga Philosophy
Philipp A. Maas — The Pātañjalayogaśāstra alias the Yogasūtra and the Yogabhāṣya / Sahapedia
Primary Sanskrit text
My working text is the machine-readable Sanskrit version of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra in GRETIL — Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages.
GRETIL — Patañjali, Yogasūtra with Bhāṣya (= Pātañjalayogaśāstra)
The electronic text was entered and proofread by Philipp A. Maas. It is based on the printed Sanskrit edition by Kāśinātha Śāstrī Āgāśe, published in Pune in 1904 as Ānandāśrama Sanskrit Series, no. 47.
This distinction matters: the GRETIL text is not a new critical edition of the complete work prepared by Maas. It is an electronic transcription of Āgāśe’s 1904 edition. Maas’s 2006 critical edition covers only the first chapter, the Samādhipāda.
The practical advantage of GRETIL for this study is that it is not an image of printed pages but a machine-readable Sanskrit corpus. It can be searched for lemmas and inflected forms, the sūtras can be separated from the bhāṣya, and the use of technical terms can be examined systematically across the whole work.
Digital copy of Āgāśe’s 1904 Sanskrit edition
Structure of the text
In the edition used here, the Pātañjalayogaśāstra is divided into four chapters, or pāda. Their names are recorded in the colophons that appear at the ends of the corresponding chapters in Āgāśe’s 1904 edition, on which the GRETIL working text is based.
The word pāda can literally mean “quarter,” “part,” or “section”; in the structure of this treatise I use the conventional English term “chapter.”
- Samādhipāda
“Chapter on samādhi”
51 sūtras - Sādhanapāda
“Chapter on practice / means of practice”
55 sūtras - Vibhūtipāda
“Chapter on powers / accomplishments”
55 sūtras - Kaivalyapāda
“Chapter on kaivalya — isolation / liberation”
34 sūtras
In this recension the text contains 195 sūtras: 51 + 55 + 55 + 34. Numbering differs in some other editions; throughout this study, references follow the numbering of the GRETIL / Āgāśe working text.
The chapter titles have been translated here directly from Sanskrit as working semantic equivalents rather than borrowed from an existing English translation. Technical terms such as samādhi and kaivalya are retained in their original form because no single English equivalent captures their full semantic range.
In the GRETIL corpus, sūtras are marked, for example, as YS_2.43, where YS stands for Yoga Sūtra, the first number indicates the chapter, and the second indicates the sūtra. In these notes I use the more conventional form YS 2.43.
Written sources on yogic practice before the Pātañjalayogaśāstra
The Pātañjalayogaśāstra is not the first written description of yogic practice. Practices and concepts that later became part of Patañjali’s system are found in earlier texts.
The academic overview in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy identifies, among the important Upaniṣadic witnesses preceding the systematized Classical Yoga of Patañjali:
- Kaṭha Upaniṣad VI.11–18
- Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad II.8–15
- Maitrī Upaniṣad VI.18
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali
Kaṭha Upaniṣad — machine-readable Sanskrit text in GRETIL
Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad — machine-readable Sanskrit text in GRETIL
In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, yoga is already associated with the steady restraint of the senses and the cessation of their ordinary activity together with the mind. In Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad II.8–15 the description becomes more explicitly practical: bodily posture, regulation of the breath, restraint of the senses, and concentration of consciousness form a recognisable complex of yogic practice.
An especially clear comparison is provided by Maitrī Upaniṣad VI.18, where a formally defined six-limbed yoga — ṣaḍ-aṅga-yoga — already appears:
प्राणायामः प्रत्याहारो ध्यानं धारणा तर्कः समाधिः षडङ्ग इत्युच्यते योगः
prāṇāyāmaḥ pratyāhāro dhyānaṃ dhāraṇā tarkaḥ samādhiḥ ṣaḍaṅga ity ucyate yogaḥ
prāṇāyāma → pratyāhāra → dhyāna → dhāraṇā → tarka → samādhi
Machine-readable Sanskrit text of the Maitrī Upaniṣad
Later, in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, YS 2.29 lists the eight-limbed system, aṣṭāṅga-yoga:
यमनियमासनप्राणायामप्रत्याहारधारणाध्यानसमाधयोऽष्टावङ्गानि ॥२.२९॥
yama-niyamāsana-prāṇāyāma-pratyāhāra-dhāraṇā-dhyāna-samādhayo 'ṣṭāv aṅgāni
yama → niyama → āsana → prāṇāyāma → pratyāhāra → dhāraṇā → dhyāna → samādhi
GRETIL — Pātañjalayogaśāstra, YS 2.29
The comparison is particularly revealing. Five of Patañjali’s eight limbs already occur in the six-limbed system of the Maitrī:
prāṇāyāma — pratyāhāra — dhāraṇā — dhyāna — samādhi.
The Maitrī lacks three limbs that appear in Patañjali:
yama — niyama — āsana.
Instead, the six-limbed scheme of the Maitrī contains tarka — reasoning, inquiry, or reflective discrimination — which is not one of the eight aṅgas listed in YS 2.29.
The order is not identical either. In the Maitrī:
dhyāna → dhāraṇā,
whereas Patañjali gives the reverse sequence:
dhāraṇā → dhyāna → samādhi.
This similarity does not demonstrate that Patañjali directly borrowed his eight-limbed system from the Maitrī Upaniṣad. It does, however, show that a substantial part of the technical vocabulary and the structure of multi-stage yogic practice existed before the Pātañjalayogaśāstra.
In his academic overview of Classical Yoga, Edwin Bryant characterises Patañjali not as the inventor of yoga but as a systematiser of already existing and diverse yogic traditions. Among his examples, he also compares the six-limbed yoga of the Maitrī Upaniṣad with Patañjali’s eight-limbed system.
Edwin F. Bryant — Hindu Classical Yoga
Earlier texts will therefore be used in this study as an additional historical-semantic level of verification. If the meaning of a technical term in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra remains ambiguous, I can examine how that term and the corresponding practice were used in earlier yogic contexts.
This does not replace grammar, dictionaries, or the context of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra itself: an earlier usage does not automatically prove the same meaning in Patañjali. It can, however, reveal the history of a concept and prevent the assumption that the technical system of the text arose in isolation.
The Mahābhārata also contains substantial early material on yoga. It will be consulted in this study only where it is necessary for understanding a particular practice or technical term.
Working with Sanskrit
Each passage follows the same sequence of analysis.
First, the Devanāgarī text is given.
Next comes its IAST transliteration, which represents Sanskrit accurately in the Latin alphabet.
The passage is then segmented and grammatically analysed: forms joined by sandhi are separated, compounds are parsed, and the lexical forms, morphology, and syntactic functions of the words are identified.
For independent verification of this analysis I use the Sanskrit Heritage Reader, part of the Sanskrit Heritage Platform. It provides Sanskrit segmentation and morphological analysis.
Once the grammatical structure has been established, the semantic range of key words is checked.
Dictionaries
Two Sanskrit-English dictionaries serve as the main lexicographical sources.
Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899) — one of the standard broad-reference dictionaries of Sanskrit, covering meanings, compounds, etymology, and references to usage.
Monier-Williams — A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), digital edition
Vaman Shivram Apte, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, revised edition (1957) — an expanded edition of Apte used as an independent additional source for checking meanings and usage.
Apte — The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, revised edition (1957), digital edition
Both digital editions are part of the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries, a project of the Institute of Indology and Tamil Studies at the University of Cologne.
Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries
The dictionaries are not used mechanically by selecting the first English equivalent. For key concepts — such as tapas, citta, vṛtti, nirodha, kleśa, saṃskāra, and others — the available semantic range is retained first, and the meaning in a particular passage is then determined from its grammar and context.
Ordinary and unambiguous words do not require a complete comparative lexicographical analysis. Additional dictionaries are introduced where a meaning is important or disputed.
Translation
After morphological, syntactic, and lexical analysis, I produce a translation directly from Sanskrit, independently in Russian and English.
The Russian version is not translated from English, and the English version is not taken from an existing edition. Both are constructed directly from the same Sanskrit text.
For each substantial passage, a maximally literal translation is preferred first. If a more natural literary translation requires interpretation, that interpretative step should remain visible in the analysis.
Technical Sanskrit terms may remain untranslated where a single Russian or English equivalent would artificially narrow their meaning.
How the translation is checked
Only after the independent analysis is complete is the translation compared with existing academic translations.
Two principal reference translations are used:
James Haughton Woods, The Yoga-System of Patañjali (Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 17, 1914). This is an academic translation of the Yoga Sūtra, the Bhāṣya, and Vācaspati Miśra’s commentary.
James Haughton Woods — The Yoga-System of Patañjali
And a more recent work:
Gerald James Larson, Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Sāṃkhya (2018).
Larson presents the Sanskrit text and English translations of the Yoga Sūtra, Vyāsa Bhāṣya, and Tattvavaiśāradī, allowing the different textual layers to be compared separately.
Gerald James Larson — Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Sāṃkhya, bibliographic record
Preface and Introduction — author’s version
These translations are used not as the sources of my translation but as independent checks. If comparison reveals a substantive disagreement, additional sources are consulted in order to clarify the reading of the text.
Two modes of reading
The study proceeds in two complementary ways.
The first is sequential reading. The sūtras are examined in the order of the work together with the bhāṣya that directly accompanies them.
The second is conceptual study. When a particular concept appears in different parts of the work, its occurrences are collected across the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and examined together. For example, in studying tapas, its forms and contexts are identified throughout the text and then analysed jointly in order to determine the meaning of the concept.
In both cases, the sequence remains the same:
Pātañjalayogaśāstra → segmentation and morphology (Sanskrit Heritage) → dictionaries → syntactic analysis → earlier yogic contexts where necessary → literal RU/EN translation → comparison with academic translations → investigation of disagreements.
The aim of this method is to reduce the risk of divergent readings and distortions caused by inaccuracies or interpretative decisions in existing translations, and to approach the meaning of the Sanskrit text as closely as possible within the scope of this study.