The ''Yoga Korunta'' or ''Yoga Kuruntha'' is a purported 5,000 year old text on
yoga, said to have been written in
Sanskrit by an otherwise unknown author,
Vamana Rishi, allegedly discovered by
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in the
National Archives of India
The National Archives of India (NAI) is a repository of the non-current records of the Government of India and holds them in trust for the use of administrators and scholars. Originally established as the Imperial Record Department in 1891, in Cal ...
in the early 20th century, and supposedly lost when Krishnamacharya's only copy was eaten by ants.
Krishnamacharya also told various other stories of how he came across the ''Yoga Korunta''; Fernando Pagés Ruiz noted in the ''
Yoga Journal'' that he had heard "at least five conflicting accounts" of the supposed text.
Krishnamacharya later related an oral "translation" of the text to his students, such as
K. Pattabhi Jois and
B. K. S. Iyengar
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014) was an Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as " Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga guru ...
. Jois claimed to have used that as the basis of his
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga system. The original text reportedly was not preserved, and its historicity and existence has been questioned; Krishnamacharya also spoke of a ''Yoga Rahasya'' which similarly has never been seen by anyone else.
According to
Mark Singleton's ''Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice'', this legacy of Krishnamacharya is one of the bases for "power struggles" among competing schools of
modern yoga; he notes that it is surprising that Jois or other pupils did not make copies of the valuable document, and that Krishnamacharya did not bother even to cite it in his 1934 book ''
Yoga Makaranda''.
It is said to have been made up of stanzas using rhymed, metered sutras, in the manner common to texts transmitted orally in the
guru-shishya tradition. The text is said to have described several lists of many different
asana
An asana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,Verse 46, chapter II, "Patanjali Yoga sutras" by Swami Prabhavananda, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math p. 111 and later extended in hatha yoga ...
groupings, as well as highly original teachings on
vinyasa,
drishti,
bandhas ''Bandha'' (बन्ध, a Sanskrit term for "binding, bond, arrest, capturing, putting together" etc.) may refer to:
* Bandha (yoga)
* Bandha (Jainism)
See also
* Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga#Bandhas
* Bandhu
* Trul khor
* Karma in Jainism
Karm ...
,
mudra
A mudra (; sa, मुद्रा, , "seal", "mark", or "gesture"; ,) is a symbolic or ritual gesture or pose in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers.
As wel ...
s and general teachings.
The name ''Yoga Korunta'' may be the
Tamilized pronunciation of the Sanskrit words ''Yoga grantha'', meaning "book about yoga". Alternatively, there may be some connection with the name of Kapālakuruṇṭaka, the author of the 18th century ''
Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati
The ''Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati'' ("Manual on the practice of Haṭha yoga") is a manual of Haṭha yoga written in Sanskrit in the 18th century, attributed to Kapāla Kuraṇṭaka; it is the only known work before modern yoga to describe elaborate ...
''.
[Russell, Jame]
"Yoga Korunta - Unearthing an Ashtanga Legend"
Devon, 11/11/15. Retrieved on 20 September 2017.
Notes
References
{{reflist, 30em
Purported ancient yoga texts