The Hatha (Yoga) Pradipika: A New Edition of the Most Influential Sanskrit Text on Yoga

The Haṭhapradīpikā, or Hatha Yoga Pradipika as it is often incorrectly named, was written by Svātmārāma in the Andhra region in about 1400 CE. It quickly became hugely influential across India because of its clear synthesis of all the yoga methods that had developed over the preceding centuries. Its innovative division of yoga practice into āsana (posture), kumbhaka (breath control), mudrā (physical methods for manipulating the vital energies), and nāda (concentration on the internal sounds) was taken up by almost all subsequent authors on yoga. In the early 20th century yoga started on the path to becoming the world’s most popular wellness technique and the text attracted attention beyond India, resulting in the publication of more than a hundred translations of it. Many of the modern era’s most important yoga gurus, such as B.K.S.Iyengar and Swami Shivananda, drew extensively on it in their teachings.

Until recently editions of the text had drawn on only a handful of localised manuscripts, at best. From 2021–2024 Prof. Mallinson, together with Prof. Jürgen Hanneder of Marburg University, led a joint UK-German project which consulted over 200 manuscripts of the text from all over India and beyond. Using computational methods in tandem with traditional text-critical study, his team has been able to identify a version of the text much closer to that written by Svātmārāma than the versions that have previously been published. This has allowed for a new appraisal of the author’s method and the realisation that not only did he draw on earlier texts on yoga, but that he interviewed itinerant yogis from across India in order to provide a comprehensive description of the physical methods of yoga current at his time. Prof. Mallinson will explain how his team established the text and then show what the new edition tells us about yoga during its most vibrant period of development prior to its explosion across the world in the modern era.