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Mythbusting in Yoga: Are Sun Salutations an Ancient Practice?
Mythbusting in Yoga: Are Sun Salutations an Ancient Practice?
A strange situation exists in the yoga world, where the Indian Government and Yoga schools around the world state that Surya Namaskar or sun salutations are an ancient practice, whereas in the academic world, there is a near scholarly consensus that they are a modern invention. This contrast can be difficult for a student of yoga to navigate. How did we get these divergent opinions? And is there evidence there to decide what the truth is?
Attention has been drawn to this strange rift by scholar Christopher Tompkins, who for over ten years has been researching the history of Surya namaskar and vinyasa practices. Here is an example of two contrasting statements from his research:
“Surya Kriya (i.e. Namaskāra) is of great antiquity… it is a breathing sequence which accompanies the physical postures. It develops mental clarity and focus, and removes weakness in the body” — Swami Sadhguru, spokesperson for the U.N.’s ‘Haṭha Yoga’ Program.
“The emergence of postural yoga that we take for granted in modern yoga…such as the Sun Salutation or Surya Namaskar are neither millennia-old nor rooted in ancient texts but a relatively recent vintage.” –Mark Singleton, Yoga Body (a rewritten version of his academic thesis for popular audiences)
The acceptance of the latter statement is a big deal, as it has resulted in an academic scorn for the deluded claims of yoga teachers, who, the academics’ story goes, just want to make up ancient roots to validate themselves. It’s also validated thousands of western teachers who were making things up anyway, and who now feel justified to think that “oh well, all yoga is just making things up, so I can just keep doing that” – a sense of ownership that comes suspicious easily to the western mind when it comes to traditions from other cultures.
Western culture tends to privilege the academic mind as a pinnacle source of reliable information, and so the narrative from these scholars has been very influential. But is it accurate?
The confusion can be traced back to several key texts. In listing these, I rely on the scholarship of Christopher Tompkins and am indebted to his ground breaking work, described by Yoga teacher Shiva Rea as a “pioneering retrieval and translation of many lost texts” and by author and teacher Sally Kempton as “key to an understanding of the connections between the ancient and modern yoga tradition.” (1)
The story was first asserted by writer Norman Sjoman in his odd and aggressive book, Yoga of the Mysore Palace (1996) and was built upon and referenced in Mark Singleton’s popular book Yoga Body: Origins of Modern Postural Practice. These writers look back to the Hathapradīpikā, a 15th-century yoga text, and notice that there is little to no āsana. Therefore, they conclude, the yoga that later is taught by teachers such as T. Krishnamacharya, known as the grandfather of modern yoga, must have been made up.
Sjoman states, for example, that in Krishnamacharya’s teaching, there is a “total absence of connection between the traditional sources and modern traditions.” “There is no continuous tradition of practice that can be traced back to the texts on yoga,” he concludes.
The problem is that Sjoman did not read all the texts on yoga, or even the ones actually listed by Krishnamacharya in his bibliography. The Haṭhapradīpika is only one of the 27 texts referenced by Krishnamacharya as textual sources. Six of these, between them the bulk of the actual source material referenced, are in fact earlier than the Haṭhapradīpika, and are full of references to surya namaskar, vinyasa, flowing devotional movements, and diverse asana.
What Christopher Tompkins’ research has shown is that the Haṭhapradīpika represents a particular post-tantric (fifteenth century) trend towards less embodied practices, less women and householder practitioners, more focus on renunciant, meditative and male transcendent practices, and the erasure of the goddess culture context of the source texts for the Haṭhapradīpika. For example, much of the Haṭhapradīpika draws on the Varahi Tantra, “a medieval Goddess-based Tantra [sacred text] which present[s] Haṭhayoga as a devotional practice prescribed for householders, women and all social classes – features later removed or distorted in the Haṭhapradīpika, which sought to transform into a male renunciant practice focused on preserving the seminal power of male practitioners.” (Tompkins, Vira Vinyasa, https://www.yogaalchemy.com/courses/christopher-tompkins-varahi-tantra-vira-vinyasa)
What this means is that scholars have been looking at the compilation texts of a small misogynistic sect, which developed out of vast earlier traditions, and assuming that these are the authority on yoga. And because that sect stripped the embodied devotional movement out of the yoga, it has then been stated confidently that it was never there.
And yet because Krishnamacharya actually referenced earlier texts in his own bibliography, the fact that asana has been dismissed is not just a problem of a “lost past” or not enough research, but wilfully overlooks the sources of this Indian indigenous scholar, with two white male scholars preferring to impose their own narrative. And many following along, without looking more deeply into the matter. We cannot ignore the strange eagerness to believe yoga has been made up. Perhaps it is because so many teachers have made up things and called them yoga, including the yoga teacher of both Sjoman and Singleton, BKS Iyengar (by his own proud admission).
Sjoman’s denial of Krishnamacharya’s sources is curious. He describes Krishnamacharya’s reference list as “a padded academic bibliography with works referred to that have nothing to do with the tradition he is teaching in. He has included material on yogic practices from the academic sources in his text without knowing an actual tradition of teaching connected with the practice” (Sjoman 66).
Scholar Christopher Tompkins however, notes in an interview that he has “uncovered evidence that these six Tantras [referenced in K’s Makaranda bibliography] contained the specialized and now largely lost ‘Vinyasa-Krama’ that Krishnamacharya attempted to revive.” Tompkins notes that:
“Western scholarship in particular has simply skipped over [‘the fundamental and critical place of Yoga in the thousand year long tradition of Tantra’], and has chosen to look at the reference manuals which are devoid of the Vinyasa within which these practices were originally applied.”
Tompkins notes that while the shorter texts on Krishnamacharya’s reference list such as the Haṭhapradīpika may have been more accessible, scholars have ignored the crucial matter of the Tantras referenced by Krishnamacharya and belonging to “the Vaishnava Tantric lineage known as the ‘Pancha Ratra… [which] contain a semblance of the vinyasa yoga that he taught.”
Note that Krishnamacharya used the word vinyasa more like it is used in these ancient texts, i.e. to refer to “the choreographing of Mantra, Asana, Pranayama and Mudra,” “ritualized Yoga [that] derives from ancient Shastras,” not merely to a sequence of poses as used today. This is the sense in which Krishnamacharya’s long term student Srivatsa Ramaswami uses the term, and the way in which teacher Mark Whitwell recalls Krishnamacharya and his son T.K.V. Desikachar employing the term.
So, the academics have overlooked the ancient roots of yoga in the medieval Tantric period. This stance from Sjoman and Singleton has been very influential. For example, Alistair Shearer writes, in The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West, “ The influence of Western gymnastics in the mysore palace tradition is, on its own, enough evidence to undermine the claim that all postural practice has a hallowed indigenous origin” (page 335). Or take how scholar Jason Birch states that “As far as we are aware, there is no evidence for a medieval Sūrya Namaskāra that resembles the modern one.”
Is this true? The problem is, there is no single “modern one.” The gymnastics taught by Pattabhi Jois, BKS Iyengar, and their many spinoff styles, probably do bear little resemblance to the ancient practices. There’s no doubt that the surya namaskar practice many Indians begin their day with now is purely a physical exercise regime. So what were ancient people doing in their relationship with the sun, and are there traces of this today?
Christopher Tompkins looks to the classical surya namaskar sequence, as it is commonly practiced today (picture below).
This image comes from the Bihar school, and is almost identical to the series featured on a 2016 Indian stamp series. It is nearly identical to what was taught by Krishnamacharya to his students, as still taught by his students Srivatsa Ramaswami and AG Mohan. It also was taught in this way by Krishnamacharya’s son Desikachar, according to what is now taught by his students Mark Whitwell, Leslie Kaminoff, R Sriram, and others. In both cases, the postures were combined with solar seed mantras: HRĀM, HRĪM HRŪM, HRAIM, HRAUM, and HRAḤ.
I first came across these mantras sequenced with the movements while studying with Mark Whitwell. For the first time, after many tyears of yoga, I felt like I was actually in relationship with the sun, the real sun. I realised that before, my attention had been on myself, on an abstract idea of ‘sun’ that lived inside my brain. Now it was actually a devotional gesture, in relationship with the sun. Not monitoring my body for correct alignment and improvement, but laying my body down on the ground in graceful movements of gratitude for the gift that is our sun, the giver of life. How sad that this relationship, these mantras has falled out of practice! How sad that surya namaskar had become something for physical self-improvement only.
Before we get too excited, we should note that Srivatsa Ramaswami, AG Mohan, and Mark Whitwell have all noted that Krishnamacharya would vary the exact postures within the 12-part flow. Showing again that the asanas themselves, that modern obsession, were not the focus, but rather the overall devotional movement and movement of the spine.
Krishnamacharya reportedly referred to the sequence as a “danda samarpanam”, an offering of dands, a word that literally means stick, but which has a long history of being used to mean postures in a sequence. For example. D.C. Mujumdar in his Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture (1950) calls postures in a Namaskāra sequence ‘dands’. “After noting the influence of Sūrya Namaskāra on the evolution of Indian gymnastics, Mujumdar affirms that “Namaskāras were meant for worshipping the Sun…and is even today viewed as a religious practice.” He further relates that Sūrya Namaskāra had been particularly popular in Maharashtra, and experienced a resurgence there in the 17th century under Samartha Ramadas and his disciple, Shivaji, finally noting that the practice waned in the 19th century due to neglect.” (Tompkins http://indiafacts.org/surya-namaskara-ancient-practice-modern-invention-controversy-textual-evidence/)
However this reference has been dismissed by the scholars, who did not follow this lead. If they had, they would have discovered a book called Ten-Point Way to Health (1928) by Balasahib Pratinidhi Pant, which also featured the surya namaskar sequence with the accompanying mantras. This union of postures and mantras is a vital clue to older traditions, as “there is no instance outside of this tradition in which Sūrya Namaskāra is taught as a postural practice led by mantras.” (Tompkins http://indiafacts.org/surya-namaskara-ancient-practice-modern-invention-controversy-textual-evidence/)
Therefore we can look back into the texts and discover the abundant evidence of surya namaskar sequences in Tantric literature in the last 1000 years. What qualifies it to be called surya namaskar? The following features:
A posture-based practice
Postures referred to as dands, danda or bending poses, or the whole thing as a dandavat
Presence of solar seed mantras leading the sequence
Starts and finishes standing
Core pose of “Ashtanga Namaskāra” where eight body parts touch the earth
Considered as a yoga
Tompkins, having reviewed tens of thousands of Sanskrit texts, concludes that: “a Namaskāra practice featuring these core tenets is prescribed in innumerable source texts representing some 10 lineages found in three major branches of the medieval Tantric tradition… These lineages include the Śaiva-based ‘Path of Mantras’ (Mantramārga), the Goddess-based Kaula Tantras, and those of the Pāñcarātra, the Vaishnava-based movement of Tantrism to which Krishnamacharya’s lineage belongs.” (http://indiafacts.org/surya-namaskara-ancient-practice-modern-invention-controversy-textual-evidence/)
In one of these texts dating back to some time between 1350 and 1450 CE, surya namaskar is most beautifully described as the body postures being the physical expression of the mantra sounds.
There is no doubt that these early references are speaking about surya namaskar (or dandavat, as they most commonly refer to it as) as a devotional prostration ritual. This means that the scholars are partially right: there is certainly something very sadly missing from the modern, purely physical sequences, something no amount of adding on beautiful music or readings from ancient texts can replace: the precision of practice as a devotional ritual, handed from teacher to student. I feel sad that they themselves were taught a yoga lacking this heart essence, leading them to suspect the whole thing of being made up.
And yet they are wrong that surya namaskar is a modern invention, as we have seen. Mostly it may be a shadow of its former self, but it does exist in remarkably unchanged form in certain schools, namely the Bihar school, and a few of the long-term students of Krishnamacharya – notably not Pattabhi Jois, nor Iyengar (the latter of whom admits that "he (Krishnamacharya) only taught me for about ten or fifteen days” total (see interview). It is sad to see how quick western scholars have been to dismiss India’s own clearly stated knowledge of its own tradition, with a dismissive superiority that suggests that although the British Raj may have finished, colonial attitudes may still be floating around.
About the author: Rosalind Atkinson is a yoga teacher and writer, and a student in the Krishnamacharya lineage via her teacher Mark Whitwell. An ex-academic with a Master’s in English literature, she is interested in finding the proper place for research and analysis as secondary tools in service to the main business of love and feeling with the whole body.
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