The Findings: Hinduism | Encyclopedia of Mystery

Hinduism13
- OmThe Mandukya never says turīya: its silent part is caturtha, plain 'fourth', as Robert Hume noted in 1921. Turīya became the technical term only in later treatises.
- The Bhagavad GītāGandhi first read the Gītā in 1888–89 in English, in Edwin Arnold's verse Song Celestial; he finished his own Gujarati version at Kausani on 24 June 1929.
- The Chakra SystemThe rainbow seven first met in print in Ken Dychtwald's Bodymind, June 1977; the 1577 text colours the heart lotus like the red bandhūka flower.
- The Yoga Sūtras of PatañjaliOn David Gordon White's account (2014) the text was virtually forgotten in India for centuries after its heyday, and iconic only in the last forty years. Its sūtras name no posture.
- Ajna and the Third EyeThe pineal 'third eye' is Theosophy, not Tantra: Blavatsky made the pineal gland a relic third eye in 1888; Leadbeater in 1927 still tied the brow centre to the pituitary.
- PatañjaliTradition made him the grammarian of the Mahābhāṣya, about 150 BCE. Philipp Maas dates the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, sūtras and commentary as one work, to the late fourth or early fifth century CE.
- The Kama SutraWendy Doniger (2016) argued that the 1883 'Burton' Kama Sutra was mostly Arbuthnot's work, and owed even more to the uncredited Bhagavanlal Indrajit and Shivaram Bhide.
- Tirumalai KrishnamacharyaYoga Makaranda (1934) lists among its sources the Śrītattvanidhi, a nineteenth-century Mysore palace compendium illustrating 122 postures.
- GaneshaThe tale of Ganesha writing down the Mahabharata is missing from every Southern manuscript; Sukthankar's critical edition of 1933 put it in an appendix as a very late interpolation.
- AbhinavaguptaThree of his works carry dates, in the Kashmiri Saptarṣi era: the Kramastotra (990–91 CE), the Bhairavastava (992–93) and the Bṛhatī Vimarśinī (1014–15). His birth and death years are estimates (K. C. Pandey, 1935).
- The Chakras Were Not Always SevenThe West's seven come from Pūrṇānanda's Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa of 1577, “Explanation of the Six Cakras”: its crown lotus is not counted among them.
- Holy BasilWilliam Crooke reported in 1896 that, at the last census, over eleven hundred people in the North-Western Provinces recorded themselves as worshippers of the tulsi.
- TurmericIn Vedic ritual turmeric worked by colour. In the Kauśika Sūtra's jaundice rite the patient eats turmeric porridge and is washed onto yellow birds. Bloomfield (1897) read it as yellow returned to yellow.
Hindu Tantra6
- KuṇḍalinīMallinson and Singleton (2017) find the earliest kuṇḍalinī a 'primordial coil' in the heart; the base of the spine is a later seat.
- Ṣaṭ-Cakra-NirūpaṇaThe six lotuses predate Pūrṇānanda: Mallinson and Singleton (2017) trace them to the tenth-century Kubjikāmatatantra; his 1577 chapter reached the West through Avalon in 1919.
- The PanchamakaraIn 1929 John Woodroffe reported a pandit's essay: many Bengali Tantrics used substitutes, and it was 'an erroneous but common notion' that a Tantrika drinks wine.
- Ida, Pingala and SushumnaThe 72,000 is older than hatha yoga: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad II.1.19 (c. 7th–6th century BCE) has 72,000 'hita' arteries spreading from the heart, where the sleeper rests.
- YantraAvalon's Principles of Tantra (1914–16) drew the line: a maṇḍala "is used in the case of any Devata", a yantra "is appropriate to a specific Devata only".
- Kuṇḍalinī AwakeningIts key text, the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, is a chapter of a ritual work Pūrṇānanda of Bengal finished in 1577; Avalon put it into English in 1919.
Modern Yoga3
- Yoga as Intellectual PropertyIn 2015 the Ninth Circuit held that Bikram Choudhury's sequence of 26 poses and two breathing exercises was an unprotectable system, not a compilation or a choreography.
- Surya NamaskarThe Rajah of Aundh's Surya Namaskars (1928) did not invent the practice: he learned an older style in boyhood. After 1908 he reshaped it, straightening the knees and adding three full breaths.
- Modern Postural YogaKrishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda of 1934 calls itself the essence of 27 texts of antiquity and says its vinyāsas were 'handed down from ancient times'. Norman Sjoman in 1996 judged the daṇḍa push-ups of Indian wrestlers their 'primary foundation', set out in the Mysore palace's own gymnastics manual, S. Bharadwaj's Vyāyāma Dīpikā of 1896.
Advaita Vedanta2
- Adi ShankaraMore than three hundred works are attributed to Shankara, and most are not authentic. Sengaku Mayeda (1979) judges the Upadeśasāhasrī the only non-commentarial work whose authenticity has been conclusively demonstrated.
- Ramana MaharshiWho Am I? began in 1902 as written answers: Ramana, then not talking, wrote replies to Sivaprakasam Pillai's questions; Pillai first published them, in Tamil, in 1923.
Kashmir Shaivism2
- The TantralokaIts 37 chapters were printed in 1918–38, in twelve Kashmir Series volumes; Mark Dyczkowski's complete English translation appeared only in 2023.
- Vijñāna Bhairava TantraJaideva Singh (1979) traces Sanskrit commentaries on it down to Shivopadhyaya in the 18th century, long before Paul Reps took it west in 1957.
Aghor1
- The AghoriIn 1961 Awadhut Bhagwan Ram founded Kusht Seva Ashram, a leprosy clinic at Parao across the river from Varanasi. Barrett's fieldwork, published in 2008, found the lineage's service society running schools and free clinics in almost 150 ashrams.
Ajivika1
- The Ajivikas and Makkhali GosalaThe order outlived its 'vanished' reputation: in 1951 Basham showed that South Indian inscriptions levy an Ajivika tax as late as 1346, entries Hultzsch and Hoernle had taken to mean Jains.
Baul1
- The Bauls of BengalTagore traced his regard for the Bauls to a song he heard from a Baul beggar after leaving his father's church. In his 1930 Oxford Hibbert Lectures, printed in 1931, they became the chapter 'The Man of my Heart'.
Hatha Yoga1
- Khechari and Vajroli MudraTranslators cut vajrolī. Srisa Chandra Vasu's 1914 Śiva Saṃhitā omitted it as 'an obscene practice'; Hans-Ulrich Rieker's 1957 Haṭhapradīpikā dropped its twenty verses.
Hindu (Yoga)1
- PrāṇāyāmaThe Yoga Sūtra (c. 400 CE) names no technique. Named breath-retentions come a millennium later: the fifteenth-century Haṭhapradīpikā 2.44 lists eight kumbhakas, from sūryabhedana to plāvinī.
Hindu / Nāth1
- Haṭha Yoga and the HaṭhapradīpikāIts seals mahāmudrā, mahābandha and mahāvedha are first taught in the Amṛtasiddhi, traced by Mallinson and Szántó to tantric Buddhists of the late eleventh century.
Indian Astrology1
- JyotishaDavid Pingree's 1978 edition dated the Yavanajataka, 'Greek horoscopy', to 149/150 and 269/270 CE. Bill Mak (2013), reading a newly found manuscript, argued both dates must be discarded.
Indian Materialism1
- Charvaka and the LokayataNo Cārvāka book survives; its doctrine is known from opponents such as Mādhava (14th century). Jayarāśi's Tattvopaplavasiṃha, found at Patan in 1926 and printed in 1940, is the one possible exception, and whether Jayarāśi was a Cārvāka is disputed.
Indus Valley1
- The Pashupati SealMarshall's 1931 proto-Shiva was challenged in 1964 by Herbert Sullivan, who read the figure as perhaps a goddess; Doris Srinivasan's critique followed in 1975-76.
Integral Yoga1
- Sri AurobindoBefore the yoga came a trial: arrested in May 1908 in the Alipore bomb case, he was acquitted on 6 May 1909 and reached French Pondicherry on 4 April 1910.
Kashmir Shaivism and Modern Esotericism1
- Shaktipat and Siddha YogaLis Harris reported in 1994 that SYDA's two-day initiation 'intensives' usually cost $400. Muktananda had given a TV interviewer shaktipat in a 1980 commercial break.
Modern Hinduism1
- VivekanandaCalling Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra 'rāja yoga' was a borrowed label: David Gordon White (2011) traces the equation to Madame Blavatsky. Vivekananda's Raja Yoga of July 1896 then made it standard in the West.
Nath Sampradaya1
- Matsyendranath and GorakhnathThe earliest text to teach haṭha yoga's methods, the c.11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, is Buddhist; Gorakṣa is first named only in 13th-century texts.
Shaivism1
- Bhang, Cannabis and ShivaIn 1894 the Commission ruled that suppressing bhang would be 'totally unjustifiable'. Its use, they found, was very ancient, had religious sanction among a large body of Hindus, and was almost always harmless in moderation.
Shaktism1
- The Shakti PithasD. C. Sircar showed in 1948 that the count grew: four seats in the Hevajra Tantra, seven in the Kalika Purana, fifty-one only from the seventeenth century.
Sri Vidya1
- The Sri YantraEven the count is disputed: translating the Saundaryalaharī in 1916, Arthur Avalon noted that some hold a full Śrīcakra has 44 angles, others 43; his text gave 43.
Upanishadic1
- Yajnavalkya on KarmaTranslators split 4.4.5: Hume (1921) makes the chain from desire to deed Yajnavalkya's reply to what people say; Nikhilananda (1956) leaves it in the others' mouths.
Vaishnava Tantra1
- PancharatraThe West long judged it by the printed Narada Pancharatra, a late text South Indian Vaishnavas reject; in 1916 Otto Schrader called this 'a strange misfortune'.
Vedanta and Yoga1
- Prana and the Five VayusTheir meanings shifted: in Chāndogya 1.3.3 vyāna is the pause between out- and in-breath, as in speech; later it was the breath that circulates the blood (Olivelle, 1998).
Vedic1
- SomaPopular writing follows R. Gordon Wasson's 1968 fly agaric, but Matthew Clark (2019) reports ephedra as the leading scholarly consensus.