Rest after War: yóga in the R̥gveda and Its Scholarly Understanding in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries

Abstract

From a longue durée perspective, the term yoga has been scholarly understood as a philosophical system or a religious phenomenon. Such an approach, however, does not take into account the uses of the word yóga in the early Vedic texts, mainly the R̥gveda, where this term is linked with the art of war. This article suggests that the term yóga should be understood in the social and political context of the mobility and warfare of the semi nomadic communities of ancient India. It also addresses the question of historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is suggested that the scholarly understanding of the word yóga in the early Vedic literature has been impacted by many attempts to search for an original, pure or essential yoga. For the purposes of this articles, the invention of the Ur-Yoga will be discussed to show how they contributed to forge ideologies in the course of the twentieth century.

Keywords

• Yoga
• R̥gveda
• Warfare
• History of Indology
• peace