Amaraugha Prabodha

The ''Amaraugha'' and the ''Amaraugha Prabodha'' (Sanskrit: अमरौघ, अमरौघप्रबोध) are recensions of a 12th century Sanskrit text on haṭha yoga, attributed to Gorakṣanātha. The ''Amaraugha Prabodha'' is the later recension, with the addition of verses from other texts and assorted other materials. The text's physical practices imply a Buddhist origin for haṭha yoga.

Author, location, sectarian origins

The ''Amaraugha'' is a 12th century Śaivite Sanskrit text on haṭha yoga, attributed to Gorakshanath. It was most likely written by someone in a ''siddha'' lineage who held the belief that the teaching of the four yogas stemmed from Gorakshanath. It was composed in South India, probably at Kadri, Mangalore in Karnataka, since the text invokes the sage Siddhabuddha of Kadri, a disciple of the Buddhist and Hindu saint and yogi Matsyendranātha. The text's Shaivite point of view is demonstrated by mentions of the god Śiva, also named Śambhu, and the Śivaliṅga.

Jason Birch comments that the ''Amaraugha'' seems to have modified a Buddhist method to create a technique "for moving ''kuṇḍalinī'' and attaining a Śaiva form of Rājayoga." If it was indeed written at Kadri, just at the time when Buddhist groups were switching to Śaivism, he writes, then the text captures the moment that both haṭha and rāja yoga take shape as Śaiva and Vajrayāna siddha traditions collide. In the process, the physical technique has survived basically unchanged, whereas the theory underlying it within esoteric Buddhism was dropped. This left early haṭha and rāja yoga rather simple in doctrine, unlike Buddhism.

Relationships to other texts

The ''Amaraugha'' is closely related to the 11th century ''Amritasiddhi'', a Vajrayana tantric Buddhist work, describing the same physical yoga practices, but adding Shaivite philosophy, subsuming haṭha yoga under rāja yoga, and reducing the use of Vajrayana terms. The ''Amaraugha'' is the earliest text that combines haṭha yoga with rāja yoga. Birch considers it likely that rather than being based on the doctrinally more complex ''Amritasiddhi'', and for some reason cutting down on the theory it provides, both works may derive from some earlier source.

The ''Amaraugha'' was used by Svātmārāma when he wrote the 15th century '' Haṭha Yoga Pradipika''. Svātmārāma borrowed twenty-two and a half verses from the ''Amaraugha'', constituting almost everything it has to say about haṭha yoga. He supplemented these old practices with many additional practices including yoga postures or asanas, the six purifications or shatkarmas, and ten body seals or bandhas.

File:Relationship of Amaraugha to other early hatha yoga texts.svg, Relationship of ''Amaraugha'' to other early haṭha yoga texts

Contents

Coverage in the two recensions

The text of the ''Amaraugha'' defines haṭha yoga as the type of yoga—as distinct from laya yoga, mantra yoga, and rāja yoga—which manipulates the breath and the ''bindu''. Birch notes that much of the content is shared between the two recensions, ''Amaraugha'' and ''Amaraughaprabodha'', but that the latter adds an assortment of materials including verses from other texts.

Models

Verse 3 defines Rājayoga in terms reminiscent of the definition of yoga in Patanjali's ''Yoga Sutras''.

The method of reaching the state of meditative absorption, samādhi, is essentially by retaining the generative fluid, semen- or bindu. Among early Shaivite haṭha yoga texts, celibacy and the semen-preserving practice of ''Vajroli mudra'' are described only in the ''Shiva Samhita''; its practice is omitted from the ''Amaraugha'', the '' Yogabīja'', and the ''Yogatārāvalī''. The ''Amaraugha'' says that ''Vajroli'' is attained, presumably with samādhi, when the mind has become pure and the sushumna nadi, the central channel of the subtle body, has been unblocked to allow breath to flow freely. The ''Vivekamārtaṇḍa'' and the ''Gorakṣaśataka'', both of which describe haṭha yoga techniques in detail, do not mention ''Vajroli mudra''.

Birch comments that the ''Amaraugha''s haṭha yoga indicates a change from the older view that its method consisted of forcing generative fluids upwards, to getting kuṇḍalinī to move. James Mallinson and Mark Singleton note that the two models are not just different but incompatible, something that does not prevent the ''Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā'' from including accounts of both of them.
13th or 14th century texts influenced by the ''Amaraugha'', including the ''Yogabīja'', the ''Yogatārāvalī'', and the ''Gorakṣaśataka'', take the kuṇḍalinī model further.

References

Sources

*
*
*

{{Yoga

12th-century books
Sanskrit books
Hatha yoga texts