A History of Yoga: From Slaughter to Sex to Spandex (REL-0172)

Spring 2024 · REL 0172 · Tufts University · 3 credits · Undergraduate

The history and practice of yoga in global perspective, tracing the roots of the modern Yoga studio backwards through a variety of adventures and misadventures in the modern and premodern eras to its most ancient roots in the world of Vedic India. Examination of the international bodybuilding movement and Indian Nationalist movement (late 19th and early 20th centuries), ascetic practices associated with the mass yogic militias of the 17th and 18th centuries, various alchemical and sexual yogas of the 8th-16th centuries, contemplative and philosophical yogas of the 1st century, and the sacrificial and political significance of meditation in the context of animal sacrifice in the late Vedic period (ca. 500 BCE and afterwards). Discussion of the role of memory and forgetting – as yogic traditions reinvent themselves multiple times over the course of two millenia. Discussion of the purpose and early social/political context for blood sacrifice and vegetarianism, public ritual sex, rituals of coronation and installation and how each of these contribute to the modern practice of yoga. Particular attention paid to the rise and fall of blood sacrifice, of yogic alchemy, the rise and persistence of late yogic philosophy of Kashmiri Shaivism, and the pivotal role of yogic practices in the spread of Islam in pre-colonial India and of yogis in the defeat of the Marathas and the Mughals in the 17th century

Course codes: REL-0172, REL 0172, REL0172, REL-172, REL 172, REL172

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