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An Archaeology of Yoga
Author(s): Thomas McEvilley
Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 44-77
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
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 An archaeology of yoga
THOMAS McEVILLEY
Various models have been offered for the early
history of yoga: this paper will deal with two. The
primitivist model proposes that yogic practices derived
somehow from shamanism and agricultural magic. This
hypothesis has naturally enlisted the Indus Valley to its
cause, finding in certain seal impressions and sculptures
evidences of proto-yoga. The chief problems of this
approach have been the vagueness with which it has
been presented, and the definition of the changes
which this Ur-yoga underwent when it entered the
Aryan community, particularly its ideological
reinterpretation. Opposed to this model is what Filliozat
has called the "scientific" hypothesis, which rejects
pre-Aryan input and proposes that yoga was worked out
deliberately and as it were "scientifically" by members
of the Aryan community who were consciously
searching for mystical techniques.1 Those who adopt
this position are forced to reject the alleged evidences
of yoga, or proto-yoga, in the Indus Valley remains.2
This paper will reexamine these questions in some
detail, concentrating on the primitivist hypothesis, by
which the other also stands or falls, and introducing
both new arguments and new evidence into the
discussion. The model that will emerge is composite,
affirming both pre-Aryan input and "scientific"
investigation within the Aryan community, and
attempting to make the boundary between them clear. I
hope to give a more definitive and reliable answer than
was previously possible to the question, Was there
yoga, or proto-yoga, in the Indus Valley? My answer
will be affirmative, but with many qualifications, which
will, I hope, give new content to the semi-intuitive
affirmations of past authors. Believing that the great
weakness of the primitivist hypothesis has been its lack
of specificity, I will attempt to formulate its argument
more precisely. In areas where evidence is insufficient
for detailed connections, I shall try to show at least
what the possible types of relationships are.
1. Jean Filliozat, "Les origines d'une technique mystique
indienne," Revue Philosophique 136 (1946), pp. 208-220: ". . . une
origine scientifique bien plut?t chamanique" (220).
2. Various diffusion ist models that propose that yoga was
imported into India from elsewhere will be excluded from this paper;
the question of Mesopotamian influence in particular I bracket for full
treatment elsewhere.
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Though my emphasis will be on the primitivist
model, its discussion should also help to clarify
questions concerning the Aryan developments. For
instance: Why did the Indo-Aryans borrow yogic
techniques from the non-Aryan communities? Which
ones did they borrow? What reinterpretations did they
place on them, and from what motives? How has the
Aryan/non-Aryan dichotomy survived in the later history
of yoga?
The controlling ?mage of this investigation will be the
famous Indus Valley seal impression shown in figure 1.
On it hinges the question of yoga in the Indus Valley,
and in fact, as we will see when we let this expressive
?con speak, it has a good deal to say about the other
questions also.
It will be useful at first to specify our use of some
common terms in the history of Indian religions. The word
"yoga" will be applied to anything that has traditionally
been called that in India, without prejudice, from asvinl
rnudra to nirvikalpa sam?dhi.
The term "shamanism" is more problematic. There is
no guarantee that shamanic complexes are Ur-phenomena;
most of them are known to us only as they were recorded
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thus have a
longer history than the yogic texts with which they will be
compared. It is possible that both yoga and shamanism as
presently known developed from a common substrate.
When I attribute vestiges of redefined "shamanic" content
to a yogic practice, it must be understood to refer to this
(possibly preshamanic) substrate, and not to involve the
assumption that shamanic complexes as we know them
have remained unchanged for thousands of years.
The locutions "fertility magic," "fertility rite," and the
like will be used to refer to the whole complex of religious
practice in archaic agricultural societies, where more of
course was at issue than the fertility of the soil alone. They
will signify a circular (rather than linear-causal)
interweaving of aims, including renewal of world-lease,
connection of above and below, cohesion of social units,
and abundance of life in general, including the crops.
In Indian religions these three categories are
interpenetrated to an unusual degree. On the one hand,
India is known to have participated peripherally, by way of
Tibetan and other influences, in the Central and North
Asian shamanic zone. The classical religions of India show
many vestiges of this influence, and in some cases the
modern tribal religions have exhibited the shamanic
 McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 45

complex more or less complete.3 Tibet of course once begins with the Indus Valley and continues through the
belonged to the arc of nomadic, herding cultures that Yatis of the Rg Veda and the Vratyas of Atharva Veda
extends from Africa to Siberia, and its religion in the pre XV to historical yogic movements. He recognized, in
Bon period "belonged to the North and Central Asiatic
the Indus Valley, elements that foreshadow a variety of
type of shamanism."4 Even the Bon and Lamaist religions
later religious movements, including Jainism. His
preserved the shamanic complex complete, though
somewhat redefined.5 Tibetan shamanic practices have
relatively unfocused perspective was perhaps the best
entered India for untold centuries by way of Nepal, Sikkim,
one. In 1931, however, Sir John Marshall reduced this
and Assam, where still in modern times magicians have open-ended approach to a more closed proto-Saiva
fulfilled the specifically shamanic role of psychopomp.6 model. "There appears at Mohenjo-daro," he wrote, "a
Similarly, the Indus Valley culture, lying under the Khyber male god who is recognizable at once as a prototype of
Pass, has always peripherally touched the Central Asian the historical Siva."8
culture zone and been exposed to its influence.
But India, unlike Tibet, was dominated by agriculture
from a very early period, and there the shamanic practices
that entered from the North (and were, presumably,
stratified on top of an already present layer of Proto
Australoid shamanism, or primitive magic) tended to
commingle with agricultural magic and to be redefined
within its horizon. It would appear that it is from this rich
stratum of mingled shamanism and fertility magic that the
proto-yoga arose.

II
The connection between yoga and the Indus Valley
was first broached by the Indian scholar Ramaprasad
Chanda, who proposed that the sculpted figure that
Marshall would identify as a priest had its eyes "neither
wide open nor totally shut," as the Jaina ?dipur?na
(XXI.62) recommends for meditation, with its gaze fixed
on the tip of its nose, as recommended in the Bhagavad
Cita (6.13) and commonly elsewhere in yogic
literature.7 Chanda proposed a lineage for yoga that

3. See, e.g., Walter Ruben, "Schamanismus in alten Indien," Acta
Orientalia (Leiden) 17 (1939), pp. 164-205; Verrier Elwin, The
Religion of an Indian Tribe (London, 1955); Edward B. Harper,
"Shamanism in South India," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology
13 (1957), pp. 267-87; Rudolf Rahmann, "Shamanistic and Related
Phenomena in Northen and Middle India," Anthropos 54 (1959),
pp. 681-760.
4. F. Sierksma, Tibet's Terrifying Deities, Studies in Ethno
Aesthetics, Museum Series, vol. 1 (The Hague, 1966), p. 63.
5. Helmut Hoffman, Quellen zur Geschichte der tibetische Bon
Religion, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der
Literatur in Mainz, geistes-und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 4
(Wiesbaden, 1950), pp. 197-210; Ren? de Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the
Tibetan Protective Deities (The Hague, 1956), p. 129.
6. Matthias Hermanns, Schamanen?Pseudoschamanen, Erl?ser
und Heilbringer, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1970), l:54.
7. Ramaprasad Chanda, "Survival of the Prehistoric Civilization of
the Indus Valley," Memoirs of the Archeological Survey of India, no.
41 (Calcutta, 1929), p. 25; Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the
Indus Civilization, 3 vols. (London, 1931), 1:54, llhpl. XCVIII.
Figure 1. Impression of seal 420, Mohenjo-daro, 1.4" x 1.4"
(National Museum, New Delhi).
Marshall based this identification of the person
represented on the seal in figure 1 primarily on the
following points: (1) the figure on the seal is a god,
because it is horned, and in Mesopotamian
iconography the horned headdress indicates deity; (2)
the god on the seal is three-faced (though he may have
a fourth face behind), and in historical times Siva was
sometimes portrayed that way (e.g., the famous Trim?rti
of Elephanta); (3) the figure on the seals is in a "typical
attitude of yoga," and Siva was known in historical
times as the Mah?yogin, the god of yoga; (4) there are
four animals grouped around the figure on the seal, and
Siva was later worshiped as Pasupati, the Lord of
8. Ibid., I:52.

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46 RES 1 SPRING 81
Beasts; (5) the tripartite headdress of the figure is similar
to the later tris?la or trident of Siva: (6) deer or ibexes
appear beneath the "throne" and are also sometimes
found on Siva's throne in medieval Indian art; (7) the
god on the seal may be ?thyphallic, and Siva is in later
times the god of the erect phallus.
For two generations Marshall's analysis has been
widely, and somewhat uncritically, accepted. Eliade, for
example, places the origin of yoga in the Indus Valley on
the grounds that the person in figure 1 is "represented in
the specifically yogic posture," echoing Marshall's third
point.9 But it is not only the practice of ?sanas, or yogic
postures, that is commonly traced back to the Indus Valley.
Marshall assumed that the "Siva" figure is portrayed in the
act of meditating ("mental discipline and concentration"),
and this view also has passed widely into the literature.
Bhagat, for example, claims that the seal and the bust
"certainly indicate the practice of meditation [in] those
times,"10 and Campbell speaks blithely of "the meditating
divine yogi."11
As we will see, there is little justification for such
statements. While the evidence does indeed indicate
"yogic practices" of a certain kind in the Indus Valley
milieu, it does not indicate meditation. In fact, the Indus
material has been thrown into the wrong yogic camp.
There are, to begin with, many uncertainties in
Marshall's analysis of the "Siva" figure, which may be
reviewed briefly. (1) The tripartite headdress: Siva himself
is not presented horned in Indian iconography. He is
connected with the bull, but so are many other figures, for
example, the Buddha, who is often called the "bull of the
S?kyas." In fact, the tripartite headdress is paralleled by the
Buddhist tr?s?las at Sanchi much earlier than by any Saiva
examples. Even in Hinduism, the tr?s?la is not exclusively a
symbol of Siva; the Dev? is characteristically portrayed
using it against the Buffalo Demon.12 Indeed, Sastri, one of
the Harapp?n excavators, proposed an entirely different
identification of the headdress: "The fan-shaped crest rising
from the centre of the buffalo's horns on the god's head is
itself a symbolic representation of the fan-shaped foliage of
the conventionalized pipai tree emerging from a seed
vessel resting on an altar."13 The claim is supported by
numerous examples of pipal leaves rising between horns
9. Mircea Eliade, Yoga, Bollingen Series vol. 56 (New York,
1958), p. 355.
10. M. G. Bhagat, Ancient Indian Asceticism (Delhi, 1976), p. 99.
11. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology
(New York, 1962), p. 170. And cf. Eliade (Yoga, 356): "the holy
man . . . perhaps practising ekagrata."
12. See, e.g., Narendra Nath Bhattacarya, History of Sakta
Religion (Delhi, 1974), p. 82.
13. K. N. Sastri, New Light on the Indus Civilization, 2 vols.
(Delhi, 1965), 2:57, and see also 1:19.
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on Harapp?n burial urns.14 The pi pal tree, of course, is
sacred in virtually all Indian cults, including Buddhism,
Jainism, Saivism, and Vaisnavism. (2) The deer throne also
is associated as much with the Buddha as with Siva. (3)
Mackay has pointed out that "the peculiar half shut eyes"
of the bust that Marshall called the priest have "been
noticed in very early clay figures from Kish and Ur,"
Sumerian cities with which the Indus people were
definitely in contact.15 This fact either removes the
meditation associations from the half-shut eyes or forces us
to hypothesize meditation in Sumer. In addition, as to the
claim that the "priest" is cross-eyed, or gazing at his nose
tip, Sullivan, one of the few to question the proto-Saiva
hypothesis, has noted that "since the shell-inlay from both
eyes is missing" it is impossible to be sure where the gaze
was directed.16 (4) Sullivan pointed out correctly that it is
far from certain that the figure is either three- or four-faced:
"What are supposed to be three faces together look more
like the head of a Br?hmani bull ... or perhaps even the
head of a tiger."17 Furthermore, even if it were established
that the figure is three- or four-faced, this would not point
unambiguously at its being Siva. Many other figures are at
times presented three- or four-faced, including Brahma
and, on the Kail?san?th Temple of Ellura, Siva's enemy
R?vana.18 Furthermore, Jaina iconography also contains the
four-faced motif, which occurs in sculptures of tfrthankaras
and signifies "the same tTrthankara preaching in all four
directions.19 (5) Beasts arranged around a yogic figure are a
standard element in the iconography of the Jaina
tTrthankara;20 as signs of the four directions they occur in
the Buddhist pillars of the As?kan period. (6) Marshall
acknowledged that the person in figure 1 may not be
ithyphallic, as the upright member in question may be the
tassel of a waistband. Sullivan agreed, and pointed out that
Siva is not connected with the phallus, as far as present
evidence indicates, till the last century b.c., and that many
Indus objects that Marshall interpreted as lingas have been
interpreted differently by others.21 Sullivan, in his most
radical thought, argues that the evidence of other Indus
objects indicates that the person in figure 1 is more likely
14. Ibid., 2:13.
15. Ernest Mackay, Early Indus Civilizations (London, 1948),
p. 53. For examples, see Seton Lloyd, The Archeology of
Mesopotamia (London, 1979), figures 15, 16, and especially 45 top.
16. Herbert P. Sullivan, "A Re-examination of the Religion of the
Indus Civilization," History of Religions 4 (1964-65), pp. 115-25.
The shell inlay of the left eye is present (see Marshall, op. cit., 1:357
and pi. XCVIII), the right one missing.
17. Ibid., p. 120.
18. See, e.g., Heinrich Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia, Bollingen
Series vol. 39 (New York, 1955), pi. 211.
19. Jyotindra Jain and Eberhard Fischer, Jain Iconograpy, pt. 1 :
The TTrthankara (Leiden, 1978), p. 12.
20. Ibid.
21. Sullivan, op. cit., pp. 120-21.

to be female than male, and proposes an alternative model
for Indus religion in which the figure in question is not a
"proto-Siva" but another form of the great goddess who
appears on the seals in conjunction with tree and tiger
symbols.22 "Certainly," he concludes, "there is really little
basis for reading back the later Vedic and post-Vedic god
Siva into the Indus civilization."23 We will return to many
of these points.
Figure 2. Stamped amulet from Mohenjo-daro, 1.3" x 0.6"
(National Museum, New Delhi).
Ill
The key piece of evidence, in my opinion, is the
posture on the "Siva" seals, the significance of which
has not yet been fully appreciated. There are in fact six
of these icons, four from Mohenjo-daro and two from
Harapp?, although Marshall chose to construct his case
primarily on the basis of figure 1,24 Each of the six
differs from the others in some particular: the horns are
missing in figure 2, the platform in figure 4; the
heraldically flanking worshipers/serpents are present
only in figure 2, the attendant beasts only in figure 1.
The examples from Harapp? involve other motifs of the
"fertility" religion: in one case the "yogic" figure is
flanked by the tree-with-deity-and-tiger icon on its
ceremonial right, and on its left by a goat in an
enclosure; in the other, the posture is conjoined with
the motif of the contest with a bull. The only element
that is present identically in all six is the posture. It is
22. But Sastri in turn has argued that these figures are not female
but male! Op. cit., vol. 2, chap. III.
23. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 125.
24. The four from Mohenjo-daro are reproduced in figures 1 to 4.
See Marshall, op. cit., I:pl. XII, 17, and llbpls. CXVI, 29, and CXVIII,
11 ; Ernest Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohen'jo-daro, 2 vols.
(Delhi, 1938), ll:pl. LXXXVII, 222, 235. Those from Harapp? have not
been published in good reproductions. They may be seen in Madho
Sarup Vats, Excavations at Harapp?, 2 vols. (Benares, 1974),
1:129-30, and ll:pl. XCII, 303, 310.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 47
this?not the horns or serpents or beasts?that is the
essence of the icon, the one feature without which an
example would not fit into the group.
Several persistent misconceptions about this posture
have plagued not merely the literature on the Indus Valley
religion, but indeed, in their ramifications, the whole
history of yoga. Many scholars have chosen to neglect the
question of yogic ?sana (posture) altogether, and have
described the figure simply as "sitting cross-legged," which
it manifestly is not.25 Marshall and others who have
regarded the position as an ?sana, that is, as one of the
special positions of yoga, have neglected the question of
which ?sana it might be. A third group has specifically
demurred from this view. Sullivan, for example, wrote, "As
for the yoga aspect of the figure, the sitting posture which
Marshall interpreted as an ?sana seems to us a natural
enough one and need not be a yogic posture at all."26 The
question is an important one, for on it rests the
hypothesized connection of yoga with the Indus Valley.
Filliozat rejected the Indus Valley origin of yoga with
precisely the claim that these seals show a "posture tout ?
fait banale dans l'Inde en dehors des exercises du
Yoga . . . [une] position famili?re et commode."27 Staal
also rejects the ?sana view and with it the Indus Valley
origin of yoga: ". . . all over South and Southeast Asia
people sit cross-legged when talking, eating, shaving,
reading, teaching, and singing. Sitting cross-legged, in
other words, proves nothing."28 But of course the figure is
not "cross-legged." And the feeling that the posture is
"natural enough" would probably be rectified by getting
down on the floor and trying it.
All examples are clear on the following points: (1)
the heels are pressed together; (2) there is no space
between the joined heels and the trunk of the body,
which is resting its weight on the heels, though it may
be partially supported with a bolster from behind; (3)
the knees appear to be thrust outward at right angles to
the eyes' forward line of vision (though this may be the
25. V. Gordon Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East, 4th
ed. (New York, n.d.), p. 184: "sitting cross-legged;" Heinz Mode,
Dan Fr?he Indien (Stuttgart, 1959), p. 68: "mit untergeschlagenen
Beinen;" Sullivan, op. cit., p. 118, n. 17: "seated cross-legged;" Kees
W. Bolle, The Persistence of Religion: An Essay on Tantrism and Sri
Aurobindo's Philosophy, Studies in the History of Religion, VIII
(Leiden, 1965), p. 23: "seated with crossed legs," Haripada
Chakraborti, Asceticism in Ancient India (Calcutta, 1973), p. 4:
"seated cross-legged;" Fritz Staal, Exploring Mysticism (Berkeley,
1975), p. 76: "sitting cross-legged." (It should also be noted that the
seal is printed backwards in Staal's figure 10a.) Instances could be
multiplied.
26. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 120.
27. Filliozat, op. cit., p. 212.
28. Staal, op. cit., p. 76.
48 RES 1 SPRING 81

result of the artist's avoiding a difficult foreshortening
problem); (4) the knees are very low, almost touching
the platform (magnification of figure 1 suggests the
presence of a support beneath the one extant knee).
These details do not appear to be casual; all examples
show them meticulously, as with a certain ritual
correctness. Even the arms have exactly the same
position in all examples. Ordinary sitting postures are
not so perfectly identical.
Figure 3. Impression of seal 222, Mohenjo-daro, 1.05" x
1.05" (National Museum, New Delhi).
is evidently an impossible physical feat, but, considering
that he was a divine yogi, the priest-artist probably deemed
it necessary to represent him as though performing a
miracle."31 As we will see, the posture is not a miracle,
though it is not comfortable and natural, either. It is shown
in conjunction with the most highly charged symbols of
the Indus iconography, and in one case is actually being
worshiped. Clearly it has a special significance, either as a
ritual posture or, as Marshall said, an ?sana, or both.
Yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the
identification of the ?sana, and none whatever to its yogic
context. Chanda pointed the way by calling it bhadr?sana
("blessed posture"), but no one noticed, and he himself
said no more.32 The vague idea that the figure was in some
way "meditating" seemed sufficient. Bhagat calls it a
"typical Dhyana-yoga posture," that is, a typical
meditation posture.33 Now, it is true that V?caspati Misra
mentions a posture similar in some respects to this one,
along with a dozen others, in commenting on Pata?jali,
Yoga S?tras II.46.34 Nevertheless, this is not one of the
postures commonly recommended for meditation, none of
which appears on the Indus seals.35 Siva, Buddha,
Mah?vTra, and other figures in Indian iconography who are
commonly depicted meditating, are never portrayed in the
posture on the seals.

It is important to make clear that this is not the

everyday squatting-on-the-heels position that is comfortable
to many Indians. In that position the heels are flat on the
ground, not raised, precisely joined, and pressed forcefully
into the crotch by the body's weight.29 Other relatively
simple positions found commonly in Indian sculpture,
which must be carefully distinguished from the posture on
the seals, are: (1) the posture of kneeling adoration, found
at Sanchi, Bh?rhut, Amar?vati, and elsewhere, in which the
heels are against the buttocks, the trunk is leaning forward
with the knees forward on the ground supporting much of
the weight, and the hands are raised to about eye level,
and (2) the posture exemplified by Visnu on Sesa at
Badami, in which one knee is flat on the ground, the other
raised slightly, and the two heels, although close together,
are not joined.30 All these are, to Indians raised without Figure 4. Impression of seal 235, Mohenjo-daro, 1.2" x ?
chairs, relatively easy positions that could rightly be called (National Museum, New Delhi).
"natural enough," "famili?re et commode," and so forth.
But the posture on the seals is another matter altogether.
Sastri, unlike Western scholars, is aware of its difficulty: 31. Sastri, op. cit., 1:10.
"He is shown seated on a dais hardly touching it with his
32. Ramaprasad Chanda, "Sind Five Thousand Years Ago,"
upturned toes, while the rest of the body is balanced in the Modern Review (Calcutta) (August 1932), p. 158.
air above the seat. Add to this the contorted form of the 33. Bhagat, op. cit., p. 97.
feet and the toes. The former are vertically pressed down 34. References will be to the edition of James Haughton Woods,
under the haunches with heels pointing upwards and the The Yoga-System of Pata?jali with the Yoga-Bhasya of Veda-Vyasa
latter bent at right angles to the feet. This seating [sic] pose and the Tattva-Vaicradi of Vachaspati Miera, Harvard Oriental Series,
vol. 17 (Delhi, 1977, repr. of 1914 ed.).
29. For an example, see Zimmer, Art of Indian Asia, pi. 60. 35. The traditional list is given, for example, by Swami Sivananda,
30. See ibid., pi. 11a, 36a,c, 94, 95, 127. Kundalini Yoga (Sivanandanagar, 1971), p. 106.

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So uncritically accepted is the "meditation"
interpretation that one author described the figure as
"seated on a low stool in a half-lotus position" (the latter
being a well-known meditation posture), which of course it
is not, anymore than it is cross-legged.36 More common,
but along the same lines, is the simple designation of
"yoga posture" (Rowland), and Eliade's insistent "the
specifically yogic posture."37 Again this is much too vague.
There is an ?sana simply called "yoga posture," but it does
not appear on the Indus seals.38 The question of the nature
and purpose of the ?sana that we are considering, and of
the world of implications that it brings with it, is more
complex, and more important, than these scholars have
recognized.
Figure 5. M?labandh?sana (from B.K.S. lyengar, Light on
Yoga, Schocken Books, 1979).
Figure 5 shows B. K. S. lyengar demonstrating what
he calls m?labandh?sana.39 If his buttocks were
supported in such a way that he could rest his crotch
upon his joined heels, this would be precisely the ?sana
on the seals. Figure 6 shows Dhirendra Brahmachari
demonstrating what he calls Goraks?sana, which shows
the heels turned back under the crotch.40 That the
posture on the seals is a variant of these is, I believe,
36. Troy Wilson Organ, Hinduism (Woodbury, New York, 1974),
p. 46.
37. Benjamin Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India
(Baltimore, 1967), p. 38; Eliade, Yoga, p. 355.
38. See, e.g., Gheranda Samhit? II.44?45 for "yoga posture";
references are to the edition of Sris Chanda Vasu, The Gheranda
Samhita (London, 1976, repr. of 1895 ed.).
39. For this and several variants, see B. K. S. lyengar, Light on
Yoga (New York, 1966), figures 459-62 and 101-3.
40. Dhirendra Brahmachari, Yogasana Vijnana (Bombay, 1970),
pi. 29.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 49
beyond doubt. Figures 1 and 2 imply lyengar's position
with support from behind; figure 3 implies
Brahmachari's, with some problems in foreshortening
the feet.
This ?sana appears in several variations with different
titles, representing different traditions in the yogic
literature. The Hatha Yoga Pradfpik? (1.53-54), a classic
text of hatha yoga, uses the name bhadr?sana (as
Chanda was aware), and adds the comment that
"siddha yogis call this Goraks?sana" ("posture
employed by Goraksa").41 Swami Brahmachan gives the
following instructions for Goraks?sana: "Sit on the
ground and bring the soles of the feet into contact.
While holding the feet together with the hands, move
forward and squat on the feet so that the knees touch
the ground on either side. Then the hands should be
placed on the knees. The spine and the neck are kept
erect."42 The description is precisely of the posture on
the seals, even to the detail of the lowered knees, and
should remove all doubt that this is in fact a specific
traditional yogic ?sana. Swami Vishnudevananda,
another exponent of the kundalim hatha yoga tradition,
uses the term shakti-chalini ("energy-awakener") in
addition to bhadr?sana and Goraks?sana.43 The
significance of these various names will emerge as we
proceed.
A related ?sana that must be considered is that
which the hatha yoga text Gheranda Samhit? (11.27)
calls utkat?sana: "Let the toes touch the ground, and
the heels be raised in the air; place the anus on the
heels: this is known as the Utkat?sana." Figure 7 shows
Swami Brahmachari in utkat?sana. This posture is
related to m?labandh?sana but is more like the
everyday squatting-on-the-heels posture, in that the
knees are not spread fully to the sides but take a natural
position about a foot apart. Still it must be stressed that
this is not the everyday squatting position, in which the
heels are flat on the ground; in utkat?sana the heels are
to be raised from the ground and pressed against the
anus, an extremely significant point, as we will see.
41. The Hathapradipika of Svatmarama, trans. Swami Digambarji
and Pt. Raghunathashastri Kikaje (Poona, 1970), p. 27. Citations will
be either from this translation or one of the following two: The Hatha
Yoga Pradipika, trans. Pancham Sinh (Delhi, 1980, repr. of 1914 ed.);
The Hathayogapradipika of Svatmarama, ed. Radha Burnier (Adyar,
1972). The numeration varies slightly, but there are no major
differences.
42. Brahmachari, op. cit., p. 61 and pi. 29.
43. Swami Vishnudevananda, The Complete Illustrated Book of
Yoga (New York, 1960), pis. 116-19. For still other terms see lyengar,
op. cit., pis. 101-3; Woods, op. cit., p. 191.
 50 RES 1 SPRING 81

Figure 6. Goraks?sana (from Swami Brahmachari, Yogasana Vijnana, Asia Publishing House, 1970).

(This posture is significant to us, as the Indus artists may
have avoided a difficult foreshortening problem by
drawing m?labandh?sana when they intended
utkat?sana. However, such a possibility is not crucial
for our interpretation, as utkat?sana and
m?labandh?sana have much the same yogic context
and purpose.)
We may conclude that the posture on the seals
definitely is a yogic ?sana, or a forerunner of one, and
that it can be clearly and specifically identified in the
historical yogic tradition, albeit under several names.
We will find, furthermore, that the specific yogic
context of this ?sana is very revealing for the history of
Indian religions.

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But first a last class of misapprehensions in the scholarly
literature must be mentioned. Heinz Mode and others have
argued that the posture on the seals is not unique and
culture-specific, but is one of a type that has recognizable
members in other cultures too (a Bildtypus).44 He cites, of
course, the mysterious composite figure, sometimes taken
as the Celtic God Cernunnos, on the Gundestrup Cauldron.
That figure is horned, surrounded by beasts, and has his
legs in a position vaguely like that on the Indus seals.
Although the overall composition is similar, one should
note that the posture is not equivalent, because the figure's
heels are not joined, and this is an unvarying feature of the
posture on the seals. Mode cites in addition an alleged
Sumerian parallel, which also lacks the key element of the
seal figures. Others have felt that postures in Egyptian
statuary, especially the "scribes," or postures in Central
American art, offer parallels. Yet nothing in Celtic,
Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mexican, or indeed any of the
world's traditions precisely parallels the posture on the
seals. Its essential feature?the joining of the heels in
contact with the crotch?is (as far as I can tell) actually
unique in all the world?unique to India, that is, where it
appears six times in the Indus seals and repeatedly in the
yogic tradition. There is, in short, no way to account for
this posture outside the yogic account, and an accurate
yogic account has never yet been given.
IV
This ?sana group (which for convenience I will call
m?labandh?sana) may be presumed to have existed
continuously in India from the Indus Valley period to
the present day. Though not in the publicized
foreground of yoga, it has surfaced in a series of related
instances. Chronologically, the first appearances after
the Indus Valley seals occur in two of the oldest Jain
works, the ?k?r?hga S?tra and the Kalpa S?tra. Both
contain traditional lives of the last tTrthankara,
Mah?v?ra, which center around the iconic moment of
his enlightenment. The Kalpa S?tra says (my italics):
During the thirteenth year, in the second month of the
summer ... on the northern bank of the river Rigupalik?,
in the field of a householder Samagra, in a northeastern
direction from an old temple, not far from a Sal tree, in a
squatting position with joined heels, exposing himself to
the heat of the sun, after fasting two and a half days
without drinking water, being engaged in deep meditation,
he reached the highest knowledge and intuition, called
kevala, which is infinite, supreme, unobstructed,
unimpeded, complete and full. (KS 120)45
44. Mode, op. cit., pp. 66-69.
45. Hermann Jacobi, trans. Gaina Sutras, pt. 1, SBE 22 (Oxford,
1 884).
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 51
The key phrase for us, of course, is "in a squatting
position with joined heels," namely, in one of the forms
of m?labandh?sana. The phrase is repeated in the
corresponding passage of the ?k?r?nga S?tra, which
also provides us with a description of the platform on
which the Venerable One was carried about:
[This palankin] was adorned with pictures of wolves, bulls,
horses, men, dolphins, birds, monkeys, elephants,
antelopes, sarabhas, yaks, tigers, lions, creeping plants, and
a train of couples of Vidyaharas. (AS 21)
If we choose, as Marshall did, to think of figure 1 in
terms of later Indian religion, we might better regard it
as the prototype of this Jain scene than as a prototype
of Siva Pasupati. The Jain parallel offers not only what
seems to be the same ?sana?and one in which Siva is
never portrayed?but also the platform with
surrounding animal images.
The implication of a great antiquity to Jainism is
supported by other evidence. Mah?v?ra, of course, is not
represented in the Jain canon as the founder of a tradition,
like the Buddha, but as the reformer of one that had
existed for a very long time before him. Hiuen Tsang felt
that Jainism was an offshoot of Buddhism, but Jacobi has
shown that it was more the other way round.46 He points
to Jainism's "primitive animism," and Schubring stresses its
conceptions "coming near to primitive sorcery."47 The Jain
ahims? doctrine, with its disregard of the actor's intention
in the assessing of karmic debt, is closer to a system of
taboo than of ethics.48 In these and other ways Jainism
seems more primitive than Buddhism. Clearly the seals
suggest some degree of continuity between the Indus
Valley religion and the Jainism of Mah?v?ra?though
possibly greater elements of discontinuity will emerge as
we proceed.
This proto-Jain hypothesis gains credibility from other
possible examples of the theme in the Indus Valley
iconography. P?r'sva, the tTrthankara before Mah?v?ra, is
said to have been protected on both sides by upright
serpents at the moment when he passed into kevala.49
The seal in figure 2 may represent the prototype of this
scene. Siva of course may be depicted with serpents on
his person, Visnu reclining on a serpent, Buddha
46. Ibid., intro.; and see Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of
Indian Philosophy, 5 vols. (Delhi, 1975, repr. of 1922 ed.), 1:7, 169;
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 vols. (London, 1929),
1:287.
47. Jacobi, op. cit., p. xxxiii; Walter Schubring, The Doctrine of
the Jainas (Delhi, 1962), p. 15.
48. See S?trakrtanga II.4 (SBE xlv, pp. 398ff.), and cf. Majhima
Nikaya 56, etc.
49. See, e.g., Zimmer, Art of Indian Asia, 1:59.
52 RES 1 SPRING 81
sheltered by one, but only P?rsva is traditionally
described as flanked by upright serpents. Furthermore,
there are several Indus Valley seal impressions that may
represent the Jain posture called k?y?tsarga, "dismissing
the body posture/' in which Rishabha, the first of the
twenty-four tlrthankaras, is said to have passed into
kevala.50 The k?y?tsarga is an upright posture with arms
hanging somewhat stiffly and held slightly away from
the sides of the body; sometimes in sculpture the arms
are shown unusually long, hands reaching about to the
knees.51
These identifications may be strengthened by the fact
that Rishabha, P?rsva, and Mah?v?ra are the only
tirthankaras whom scholars widely regard as
historical?those, that is, whose stories would contain
some memories of actual facts; the postures may be
among them. Mah?v?ra's Jainism seems to have
developed out of (and away from) a stream of religious
practice that flowed from the Indus Valley, and that our
next example will permit us to define more closely.
V The ?jfvikas were an ascetic group headed in the
Utkat?sana is mentioned in a formula used
repeatedly in the Pali canon to describe, and denounce,
the "false aust?rit?s" of certain ascetics of whom the
Buddha disapproved.52 Three "false austerities" are
mentioned: the "bat-penance," or hanging upside
down, the penance of standing upright for long periods
of time, and ukkutikappadhana, or "exerting oneself in
the squatting posture." The penance of standing up is
k?y?tsarga, found in Jainism; the bat-penance also
appears in Jainism53 (and will be discussed later). The
third of these "false penances" seems to relate to the
posture on the seals.
The Pali Text Society dictionary defines ukkutika as
"a special manner of squatting. The soles of the feet are
firmly on the ground, the man sinks down, the heels
slightly raising as he does so, until the thighs rest on the
calves, and the hams are about six inches or more from
50. See Chanda, "Sind Five Thousand Years Ago," pp. 159-69.
The best seals, in this respect, are Marshall, op. cit., pi. XII, 14, 19.
51. This point was mentioned in connection with the Indus
sealings, albeit in inaccurate terms, by Adris Banerjee, "Origins of
Jaina Practices." )OI (Baroda) I (1952), p. 314. The type is shown by
Jain and Fischer, op. cit., pi. XXVIII.
52. D.I. 167; M. 1.78; A. 1.296, II.206; /. I.493, III.235, IV.299:
Dh. 141.
53. For the bat-penance (vagguli-vata) see Richard Morris, "Notes
and Queries," Journal of the P?lit Text Society, 1884, p. 95. For its
occurrence in Jainism, see Schubring, op. cit., p. 318.
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the ground."54 The crucial raising of the heels again
indicates that this is not the everyday squatting-on-the
heels position, in which the heels are flat on the
ground, but that it is the yogic posture of utkat?sana, of
which the Gheranda Samhit? (11.27) says: "Let the heels
be raised in the air; place the anus on the heels." The
raising of the heels so that they join under the anus is
essential, and the importance of this seemingly
insignificant detail will become clear as we proceed.
The practice of ukkutikappadhan a, then, or "exerting
oneself in the squatting posture," is the same activity
portrayed on the Indus seals, except that the figure on
the seals was portrayed with its knees fully to the sides.
One of the J?taka references to utkat?sana (/.1.493)
identifies its practitioners as Aj?vikas. The Majhima Nik?ya
(1.515) agrees by implication, saying that utkat?sana is
practiced by one who is naked and shaven, and who
"plucks out the hairs of his head and beard." Both Jains
and ?j?vikas went naked and shaved or plucked their head
and beards, but these practices were adopted by the Jains
from the ?j?vikas, and it is probably the latter to whom all
the Pali passages refer.
Buddha's time by one Makkhali Gos?la. They were very
closely connected with Jainism, and due to the loss of all
?j?vika scriptures, we are dependent on the highly
sectarian Jain account of the relationship (mostly in the
BhagavatTS?tra). According to the Jain view, Gos?la was
an "unruly disciple" of Mah?v?ra, who, after following him
for six years, broke away over a point of doctrine.55 Both
Barua and Jacobi, however, regard this as a pious fiction of
the Jains: the evidence suggests that it was Gos?la who
was the master and Mah?v?ra the disciple who broke
away.56
The Jain tradition itself seems to preserve some memory
of Mah?v?ra's conversion to Gos?la's sect, and his later
defection. P?rsva, the tTrthankara prior to Mah?v?ra, in
whose religion Mah?v?ra was born, allowed his followers
two articles of clothing. Gos?la went completely naked,
however, and Mah?v?ra, after meeting him, adopted the
rule of nakedness also. The implication is that Mah?v?ra
joined Gos?la's group, adopting its customs. There are in
addition many points that suggest the greater antiquity of
?j?vikism over Mah?v?ra's Jainism, including "goblin
54. T.W. Rhys-Davids and William Stede, Pali-English Dictionary
(Delhi, 1955).
55. Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism (Oxford, 1915),
p. 60.
56. Benimadhab Barua, A History of Pre-Buddhistic Indian
Phillosophy (Delhi, 1921), p. 300, and "The ?j?vikas," Journal of the
Dept. of Letters (Univ. of Calcutta), II (1920), pp. 18-20; Jacobi, op.
cit., llrXXIX.
 McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 53

Figure 7. Utkat?sana (from Swami Brahmachari, Yogasana Vijnana, Asia Publishing House, 1970).

worship," "secret magical rites of a repulsive tantric type"
(as Basham calls them), blood rites, and a shamanic-style
initiation involving a symbolic rebirth from adult males and
the grasping of a "heated lump."57 In the initiation, "the
boy was placed in a pit on which planks were set and the
?j?vikas, seated on the planks, pulled out his hair with a
57. A. L. Basham, History and Doctrines of the ?j?vikas (London,
1951), pp. 104-6, 112-13, 164.
piece of the rib of a half-leaf."58 As Barua said, ?j?vikism
58. Chakraborti, op. cit., p. 454. For the primitive context of
initiations involving the grasping of hot coals, etc., see Eliade,
Shamanism, Bol linge n Series vol. 76 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 315, 476,
etc.; Rites and Symbols of Initiation (New York, 1958), pp. 85-6, 100.
For primitive initiations involving fire and rebirth symbolism see also
Geza Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream (New York, 1969),
pp. 111-18, etc.

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54 RES 1 SPRING 81
"represents ... an earlier stage of thought-evolution and
religious discipline . . . than the period covered by the
early history of Jainism and Buddhism as expounded by
Mah?v?ra and Buddha."59
The Buddha and Mah?v?ra both seem to represent
reforms of an earlier ascetic tradition that emphasized
magic, sexuality, and physical austerity, rather than karma,
celibacy, and meditation. Gos?la, on the other hand, was a
conservative who espoused the ancient way. Mah?v?ra, if
Jacobi and Barua are right, had encountered the ancient
ways while in Gos?la's group. But the Buddha also had
once participated in this older tradition, prior to his insights
beneath the Bodhi tree. The DTgha Nik?ya (111.37-56)
describes ascetics who plucked out their hair and beards
and were "Standers up or squatters on heels," that is, they
practiced k?y?tsarga and m?labandh?sana or utkat?sana.
The Majhima Nik?ya (1.78-79) adds that the Buddha
himself once practiced this s?dhana, that is, he was himself
either an ?j?vika or something closely related to it.
?j?vikism, in short, was part of the more ancient yogic
stream from which the Buddha and Mah?v?ra were
breaking away with their reforms, and which may go clear
back to the Indus Valley.
VI
Certain aspects of yoga?specifically the sexo-yogic
practices of the kundalinT tradition?reached their
greatest florescence in the religion of the N?th Siddhas,
a melange of yogic and magical practices that "enjoyed
and is still enjoying immense popularity/'60 It is here
that we encounter in a fourth cultic context the posture
on the Indus seals. Many Sanskrit yogic texts are either
attributed directly to the N?th gurus, especially
Goraksa-n?th, or associated with them (including the
Hatha Yoga Pradfpik? and the Gheranda Samhit?).
Dasgupta traces the sect back "to a period prior to
Pata?jali," and feels that it had great influence on
tantric Buddhism in Nepal and Tibet as well as on the
Saiva tantrism of India.61
This sect seems, furthermore, to be connected with both
Jainism and ?j?vikism, the other cultic contexts where
m?labandh?sana has been found. A N?th legend records
that the two sons of the first N?th-guru, Matsyendran?th,
were the founders of the two surviving branches of Jainism,
the Svet?mbara and Digambara.62 Barua argues that
"in . . . N?thism . . . one may trace the recrudescence
59. "The ?jivikas," p. 21.
60. Shashibusan Dasqupta, Obscure Religious Cults, 3rd ed.
(Calcutta, 1969), p. 191.
61. Ibid., pp. 191-200.
62. Ibid., p. 385.
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and continuity of the doctrines of the ?j?vikas."63 Although
the point cannot be established with certainty, there is
much in its favor. Basham and others have demonstrated
that in the medieval period, until about 1400, the ?j?vikas
gradually merged with various sects including both
Digambara Jains and the more radical Saiva sects, of which
the N?th Siddhas are often counted one.64 Both ?j?vikism
and N?thism (and no other Indian sect known) believed
that the soul must reincarnate through a series of
8,400,000 births, and that early release, or moksa, was
unattainable. Rejecting the motive of moksa, both
foregrounded magical attainment of superpowers.
Furthermore, it seems that Makkhali Gos?la has been
worked into the list of eighty-four N?th gurus, at least in
the Tibetan version, which has (66) Makhala and (67)
Mankhala. Such parallels indicate either ?j?vika input into
the N?th cult or that the N?ths represent another surfacing
into documentary history of the same primitive religious
stream to which the ?j?vikas belonged.
The chief figure in the N?th mythology is Goraksa
("Cowherd"), whom Barua considers a doublet for
Gos?la ("Cowpen"). In any case, the mythologem
behind the names is the same: Goraksa is said to have
been born of a cow, Gos?la in a cowpen.65 Many
legends concerning this guru place him in the
mythological category of the fertility god or hero; he is
credited with producing magical pregnancies, with
laying waste, by his withdrawal, the fertility of the land,
as Tammuz did by his death, and (again like Tammuz)
with being a cattle or herd god. In a myth echoing the
Dying God type, the earth opens and he descends into
it.66 Where he walked (like Dionysus in Euripides'
Bacchae) "everything became green, and the lakes
were filled with water."67 A stick that he stuck into the
ground grew into a tree. He had control of serpents.
But commingled with this stratum of "fertility"
motifs, Goraksa and the N?th tradition exhibit a wide
range of Central Asian shamanic traits, including
initiation by tigers, shape-changing, journeys out of the
body, the ability to descend to the underworld on
lifesaving missions and reascend, and the gift of
restoring the dead from their bones.68 In terms of cult,
63. Ibid., p. 200.
64. Basham, op. cit., chaps. IX and X.
65. Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, p. 389; Basham, op. cit.,
p. 36.
66. George Weston Briggs, Gorakhn?th and the K?npha? YogTs
(Calcutta, 1938), p. 39.
67. Ibid., p. 187.
68. Ibid., pp. 187-90, 195; Eliade, yoga, p. 312, Shamanism,
pp. 160-65.

Goraksa clearly represents a religious substrate that
preceded historical sectarian boundaries: he was
worshiped by Jains in Bombay, identified by Saivas as
Siva, considered in countless village cults a deity in his
own right, the Lord of Cattle. His followers claim that
Brahma, Visnu, and Siva were his first disciples.69 His
cult absorbed K?p?lika and P?supata sects which in
turn had connections with ?j?vikism. In short, if not a
doublet for Gos?la, he represents the same primitive
stream to which that "unruly" teacher belonged. It is
hardly insignificant that he was connected with the
"bat-penance" of the ?j?vikas and above all with
m?labandh?sana, which in the N?th tradition was
called Goraks?sana, "after the great yogi Gorakhn?th,
who used to sit in this ?sana."70
In this sect, as among the ?j?vikas, yoga occurred in
a distinctly archaic setting, quite unlike the context of
Br?hmanical yoga. These yogins were often low caste.
They were not so much seekers after moksa as
sorcerers. They made (and still make) their living by
selling magical charms (as did the ?jFvikas), working
spells, handling snakes, and tattooing. They performed
black magic for money. So far were they from the
ahirns? orientation of the polished Br?hmanical yogins
that they participated in all manner of blood rites
including human sacrifice.71
Historically, the N?th tradition belongs in the sphere of
the early Buddhist tantrics and the Saiva sects of K?palikas,
P?'supatas, and Aghor?s, the last three of which practiced
not only human sacrifice but also cannibalism. The
K?palikas, in fact, are recorded in inscriptions of the tenth
century as headhunters.72 This entire group of Indian
religions exhibits conspicuously the interp?n?tration of
shamanic and fertility magic that was referred to above.
The K?p?lika cult of skulls, like Goraksa's restoration of the
dead from their bones, echoes practices that have been
recorded over the whole shamanic range, from India to
Siberia and beyond.
"In all Asia," says Sierksma, ". . . bone = essence."73
Skulls were prominent in Lamaist ceremonies that appear
to be vestiges of the earlier pure shamanic phase of
69. See Briggs, op. cit., pp. 63, 71-72, 79, 138-39, 151, 179,
228^29.
70. Brahmachari, op. cit., p. 61, and see HYP 1.54; Briggs, op.
cit., p. 197.
71. Briggs, op. cit., pp. 57-59, 125-29, 140-41.
72. Ibid., pp. 224-26; Eliade, yoga, pp. 205, 296, 300; David
Lorenzen, The K?palikas and Kal?mukhas, Two Lost Saivite Sects,
Australian National University Centre of Oriental Studies Oriental
Monograph Series vol. 12 (Delhi, 1972), pp. 24, 80, 85-86.
73. Sirksma, op. cit., p. 72.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 55
Tibetan culture.74 In North Asia, Yukaghir shamans divined
from the skulls of dead shamans.75 The worship of skulls
relates to the skeleton meditation of Tibetan Buddhism,
which in turn has close parallels in Eskimo shamanism.76
The skeleton costume of the Siberian shaman is worn in
Tibetan Buddhist legend by Padmasambhava.77 This
continuum of skull-bone-skeleton motifs from Eskimo
through Siberian and Tibetan to Indian cultures seems
related to the shamanic initiation by dismemberment and
resuscitation, which also at times, like K?p?lika practice,
involved cannibalism. The ?j?vika initiation and other
phenomena that we will review seem to be vestiges of this
tradition, or of the same substrate of "primitive magic" of
which this tradition also is a vestige.78
Our last example of m?labandh?sana is from a
related milieu, at a later period. It is a funerary stele
(fig. 8) from Madhya Pradesh, dated to c. 1800 A.D.,
which clearly expresses the milieu of village tantrism.79
A man and woman are protrayed seated in variants of
m?labandh?sana on a platform or bed. Her vulva is
clearly delineated. His phallus seems not to be, though
certainty is impossible given the condition of the stone
and reproduction. Beside each of them is a vessel.
Above her is a lunar crescent, above and beside him a
solar disk. Between the sun and moon is a horned
head, probably a deity, who, like the person in figure 1,
has a third element rising between the horns. His left
hand is raised over the couple. This is of course an icon
of left-hand tantrism, and probably portrays the
preparation for a sexual ritual involving use of alcohol.
It will become clear as we proceed why
m?labandh?sana should be practiced in such a setting.
74. W. W. Rockhill, "On the Use of Skulls in Lamaist
Ceremonies," Proceedings of the American Oriental Society 40
(1888), xxiv-xxxi; Berthold Laufer, Use of Human Skulls and Bones in
Tibet, Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago), Anthropological
Publications 10 (Chicago, 1923).
75. Waldemar I. Jochelson, The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized
Tungus, 2 vols., American Museum of Natural History, Memoirs
13.2-3 (New York, 1924-26), 1:165.
76. Knud Rasmussen, The Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik
Eskimos, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, vol. 7 (Copenhagen,
1929), p. 114.
77. Robert Bleichsteiner, L'Eglise ?aune (Paris, 1937), p. 67.
78. See U. N. O. (Holmberg) Harva, Die religi?sen Vorstellungen
der altaischen V?lker (Helsinki, 1938), p. 494; Hans Findeisen,
Schamanentum, dargestellt am Beispiel der Besessentheitspriester
noreur asi atischer V?lker (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 51 ff.; M. A. Czaplicka,
Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (Oxford, 1914),
pp. 171ff.; Schamanengeschichten aus Sibirien, trans, from Russian by
Adolph Friedrich and Georg Buddruss (M?nchen, 1955), pp. 31-43.
79. See Ajit Mookerjee, Indian Primitive Art (Calcutta, 1959),
pi. XXVI.
56 RES 1 SPRING 81
Figure 8. Tantric Funerary Stele, Barsur, Madhya Pradesh, c. A.D.
1800
VII
It is time to return to my earlier statement that the
Indus Valley material has been thrown into the wrong
yogic camp. The most serious weakness in Marshall's
hypothesis is its implicit assumption that yoga is a
single coherent tradition. That position can only be
maintained by those who argue that yoga developed
entirely within the Aryan community?a view that the
precise identification of the ?sana on the seals renders
untenable, in my opinion. Very likely, if yoga existed in
some form in pre-Aryan India, it underwent extensive
changes when it entered the Aryan community, and
there resulted, in effect, at least two brands of yoga,
one completely Aryanized and one non-Aryanized or
less-Aryanized.
Perhaps the central difference between the two is
that although Aryan yoga is primarily a celibate
tradition, non-Aryan yoga is deeply involved with
sexuality. The institution of monastic and yogic
celibacy, and its enormous spread during the period of
buddha and Mah?v?ra, may have been concomitant to
the displacement of non-Aryan matrilineality by Aryan
patrilineality. In a patrilineal system, a child without a
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father to provide him with an inheritance can be a
burden to society. Since a monk or ascetic is usually
not a man who will support and endow children, he is
likely to be discouraged from begetting them. In a
matrilineal system in which a child grows up in the
care of its mother's family, this safeguard is
unnecessary. Such a system seems to have prevailed in
pre-Aryan India, judging from the prominence of
"mother-right" among modern Indian primitive groups.
Among the Garos of eastern India in the nineteenth
century, for example, inheritance was only through the
mother, and all children belonged to and were cared
for by the mother's clan.80 The Kh?s? of Assam (which is
the tantric country par excellence) have a pure
matrilineal system, in which inheritance passes strictly
from mother to daughter.
The Indo-Aryans gradually enforced a patrilineal system
on those aboriginal groups that they conquered and
absorbed into the s?dra, or "non-Aryan," caste. The
extreme Hindu emphasis on marital chastity is probably
connected to anxiety about paternity-and-inheritance, and
monastic celibacy would seem to be a secondary
ramification of the same anxiety. Indeed, this overlay of
patrilineality on matrilineality may be the source of the
whole range of qualities that makes Koestler say that "the
Indian attitude to sex is perhaps more ambivalent and
paradoxical than any other nation's,"81 and of which we
will see some examples as we proceed.
But this attempt by the Aryan ruling class to enforce
patrilineality throughout its realm, and to enforce celibacy
on the very populous ascetic groups of India, was not
highly successful outside the Aryan community itself. In the
"alternative tradition" of India, comprising those non
Aryan village cultures where Ehrenfels found such
abundant traces of mother-right and the s?dra sub-castes,
which still are known by feminine names (Qomb?, Candal?,
Rajak?, etc.), the sexual yoga remained in force, yogin and
yogin? working not apart but together: the K?p?lika yogin
had his Bhairavi, the Tantrika his Sakti, the N?tha his
Mahamudr?, the Vaisnava his Manjar?, the Sahaji? his
Uttaras?dhika.82 The Aryan commentator S?yana rightly
denounced non-Aryan worshipers as unchaste, and for
centuries (indeed, millennia) the celibate establishment has
struggled to reform the sexo-yogic tradition, or, failing that,
to conceal its practices through pious or official fictions.
80. A. Playfair, The Caros (London, 1909), pp. 80ff.
81. Arthur Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot (New York, 1966),
p. 136.
82. Narendra Nath Bhattacarya, History of Indian Erotic Literature
(Delhi, 1975), pp. 3-5, 13, etc.; O. R. Ehrenfels, Mother-right in India
(London, 1941).

"Tantrism practised literally," says Bharati, "is anathema
and criminal in India."83
This opposition has resulted in many discrepancies
between fact and official record. The twelve "orders"
founded by Goraksa, for example, are clans with full-scale
family life, though for official purposes they claim to be
celibate.84 Farther back in the tradition, the stress of this
opposition may have contributed to the schism between
Mah?v?ra and Gos?la. Gos?la was a low-caste non-Aryan
who seems not to have observed celibacy. Mah?vira, on
the other hand, was almost certainly a twice-born Aryan,
and had converted from the religious goal of sexual power
to that of ethical celibacy. His reform of the religion of
P?rsva was precisely to enforce the law of celibacy where
earlier it had not been in effect. He was overall the most
anti-sexual of the great religious teachers of his time.
Under his rules, a Jain monk was forbidden to speak to a
woman, to sit where a woman was sitting, or even from
"behind a screen or wall [to] listen to the screeching or
screaming or singing or laughing or giggling or crying of
women."85
This general distinction between Aryanized and non
Aryan ized forms of yoga seems to be referred to in the
Bh?gavata Pur?na (XI.27.7), where religious practice is said
to be of three kinds: Vedic, tantric, and composite. In this
terminology the word "tantra" is used loosely to refer to a
wide range of phenomena that has been called "the tantric
circle," including various Saiva and S?kta cults, traditional
hatha (including kundalinT) yoga, the N?ths, the proto
tantrism of the ?j?vikas, and much village magical practice
that does not fit any formal sectarian category. Some
authors wpuld include the S?rfikhya (or proto-S?mkhya)
and Lok?yata schools in the "tantric circle." Veda, on the
other hand, includes the most orthodox form of Hinduism,
which is not yogic at all but ritualistic, the heavily
Aryanized r?ja yoga tradition (which claims to be based on
the Vedas), and indeed all yogic traditions that have come
under the influence of idealist philosophy, including the
right-hand tantras and the kundalinT tradition as censored
or revised by the Hindu renaissance.
The series of differences that separate the r?ja yoga
of Pata?jali's Yoga S?tras from the hatha yoga of the
Goraksa Sataka, Gheranda Samhit?, and Hatha Yoga
PradJpik? is most revealing. For the Aryanized r?ja
yogin the goal is moksa, or release from reincarnation;
for the non-Aryan hatha yogin it is siddhi, or the
obtaining of magical powers including bodily
83. Agehananda Bharati, The Light at the Center: Context and
Pretext of Modern Mysticism (Santa Barbara, 1976), p. 42.
84. Briggs, op. cit., pp. 10, 55-59.
85. Uttara S?tra XVI; cited by Chakraborti, op. cit., p. 373.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 57
invulnerability (k?ya-siddhi) or immortality (deva-deha),
and a range of sexual powers: one will become a
k?ma-deva, or sex-god, all yoginis will love him and all
beautiful women will be irresistibly attracted to him.86
The Aryanized yoga emphasizes karmic responsibility
and preaches ethical rules (the yamas and niyamas) as
prerequisites for yogic progress. The non-Aryan yoga
stresses magical overleaping of the consequences of
one's actions and makes no moral preachment
whatever.87 R?ja yoga claims to be derived from the
Vedas and thus to belong to the Hindu establishment;
halha yoga is anti-Vedic.88 The one teaches a male
oriented Weltanschauung (purusa-pradh?na), the other
a female one (prakrti-pradh?na). The one is for twice
born (higher caste) Hindus; the other (as Sv?tm?r?ma
notes in the Hatha Yoga Prad?pik? [IV.64] for those
lacking Vedic education, that is, for lower-caste non
Aryans.
The texts of both traditions have undergone syncretic
editing to give them an appearance of universality, but the
balance of arguments and the emphases remain entirely
different. Pata?jali, the r?ja yogin, devotes only about six
s?tras (of two hundred and fifteen) to the physical side of
yoga, and about two hundred to a close inspection of
certain mental processes; Sv?tm?r?ma, on the other hand,
the traditional "author" of the Hatha Yoga PradTpik?,
devotes only about five sutras to explicitly mental topics
and about three hundred to physical. The Gheranda
Samhit? and Goraksa Sataka exhibit similar ratios.
Sv?tm?r?ma's central topic is the awakening of kundalinT,
which he repeatedly insists is the whole of yoga;89
Pata?jali, on the other hand, does not even mention it. For
Pata?jali the whole of yoga is the cessation of fluctuations
in the mind (citta-vrtti-nirodha);90 Sv?tm?r?ma and the
other hatha yogins mention that only as a byproduct of
certain physical processes that have other primary
purposes. For Sv?tm?r?ma, meditation is not very
important; the physical process of forcing pr?na ("breath,"
"vital spirit") into susumn? n?dT (the central channel in the
spine) for the awakening of kundalinT is the only important
yogic practice: "all other practices," he says, "are simply
futile for the yogi."91 Yet Pata?jali does not even mention
this subject. The hatha yogins seem deadly serious about
siddhis, or superpowers, even such unlikely ones as bodily
86. Hatha Yoga Pradipik? 11.54-55, 111.49, etc.
87. E.g., Gheranda Samhit? 111.43-44.
88. E.g., Hatha Yoga PradTpik? IV.35, 40; Gheranda Samhit?
111.65, etc.
89. Hatha Yoga PradTpik? 111.1, 100, etc.
90. yoga Sutras I.2.
91. Hatha Yoga PradTpik? 111.116, IV.20, etc.
58 RES 1 SPRING 81
invulnerability; the concern of Pata?jali and his
commentators is to rationalize these on philosophical
grounds.92
To sum up: the Hindu renaissance has sponsored the
pious fiction (originated millennia ago by r?ja yogins)
that these two yogas are successive stages of a single
process?specifically that hatha yoga is a preparation
for r?ja yoga. R?ja yoga meanwhile, having started out
with a strong element of Ved?ntized S?mkya in its
superstructure, has come increasingly under Ved?ntic
influence so that the entire yogic process is seen as a
preparation for the pure mentalism of the Ved?nta: the
sensory world is illusory, pleasure is a cause of
bondage to illusion, and the mind is the means to
escape. Hatha yoga, on the other hand, is physicalist,
centers on body practice, is philosophically undefined
or materialistic, and does not reject sensory experience
and pleasure, the intensification of which it often sees
as its goal.93 Beneath the superficial syncretic editing of
their texts, the two traditions exhibit inherently different
and irreconcilable axiologies, methodologies, and
intentionalities.94
VIM
A dichotomy parallel to that between Veda and
tantra exists within the category of tantra itself, between
the right-hand and the left-hand practitioners. The
tantras in general teach the ritual practice or s?dhana of
the panca-mak?ra or Five Ms, that is, the use of five
ingredients that begin, in Sanskrit, with the letter M,
namely, wine, meat, fish, parched beans or grain, and
sexual intercourse. These five seem to be prescribed not
because they are taboo to ordinary Hindus (grain is
92. See, for example, V?caspati Misra's treatment of the siddhi of
"knowledge of the cries of all living beings, tame and wild animals,
creeping things, birds and the rest" (on yoga S?tras 111.17).
93. E.g., Hatha Yoga PradTpik? IV.30.
94. A much longer philological analysis of these texts has been
excised from this paper from considerations of space. Usually the
overlay of a Hindu horizon on the underlying non-Aryan
intentionality is very obvious, as basic inconsistencies remain in the
texts, such as Sv?tm?r?ma's advocacy of celibacy (1.17) alongside
certain techniques of sexual intercourse (lll.84ff.), and his occasional
expressions of fealty to r?ja yoga alongside his acknowledgment that
he is in the tradition of the N?th gurus and the K?palikas (1.4, 8). In
the late hatha yoga text, Siva Samhit?, the editoral overlay of r?ja
yoga is actually dominant; there are allusions to Pata?jali, and the
yogin is encouraged to fulfill his caste duty (V.157-58, 185). This
should hardly be regarded as a genuine hatha yoga text.
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not), but because they were the ingredients of pre
Aryan tribal rites.95 The first four ingredients were
believed to be aphrodisiacs, to prepare the participant
for the last and crucial ingredient.96 Very likely this
practice is in part a survival of Neolithic or Bronze Age
fertility rites involving sexual intercourse.97 But as
tantric or proto-tantric sects fell under celibate and
idealist influence, the custom arose of using substitutes
for the physical ingredients. Those sects that used the
Five Ms physically came to be called left-hand
(v?m?c?ra or kaula); those that used substitutes, right
hand (daksin?c?ra, samaya). The most Aryanized
tantrics only visualized the substitutes mentally.
The left-hand tantra, or kaula, is practiced by low
caste sects and overlaps with kundalinT, S?kta, and
Saiva practice. It has historical connections with the
P?supatas, K?palikas, Aghor?s, Lok?yatas, and N?ths.98
These were the sects most shunned by respectable
Aryan society. The K?palikas, for example, are
described in the Brhaspati S?tra (11.6) as purveyors of
k?ma-s?dhana, or sexual yoga. They practiced the left
hand way, and taught, in most dramatic contrast to
Aryanized Hinduism, that "final salvation
(mukti) . . . [is] perpetual orgasm, not merely
extinction of the cycle of rebirth."99 The Sahaji? text,
Samputik?, agrees that "the supreme process of
yoga . . . originates from our sex-passions."100 This
attitude and practice had received religious definition at
least as early as the age of the Buddhist Nik?yas, as the
Majhima nik?ya refers to people who believe in the
attainment of nirvana through sense-pleasure, and the
Katth?vattu (XXI11.1-2) speaks of maithuna as Dharma.
The Cullavagga (V.10.2) refers to the skull bowl that
was the K?p?likas's trademark.
R?m?nuja describes a group of K?palikas who became
partially Aryanized, abandoned the kaula practice and the
skull bowl for which the sect is named, and became
95. See, e.g., Bolle, op. cit., pp. 36, 74-76.
96. Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (Garden City, New
York, 1970), p. 252.
97. Cf. Chattopadhyaya: "Tantrism had its ultimate source in the
belief underlying the early agricultural magic, namely, that the
productivity of nature is induced or enhanced by the imitation or the
contagion of the human reproductive process or aspects thereof."
(Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Lok?yata, A Study in Ancient Indian
Materialism [Delhi, 1959], p. 230.)
98. V. S. Pathak, History of Saiva Cults in Northern India
(Benares, 1960), pp. 26-28, 49, 68.
99. Lorenzen, op. cit., pp. 18, 47-48, 54-55, 80, 88-89, 90-91.
100. Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, p. 52.

supporters of Veda and varna (caste).101 The K?p?lika was
now instructed to meditate on himself in bhagasana, that
is, in the vagina, probably as a substitute for physical
sex.102 For as Bharati put it, "Tantric method is radically
opposed to the official climate."103 Respectable Hindu
yogins are disgusted by the low-caste yoga that seems
likely to be the substrate from which their own yoga
developed under the influence of idealist philosophy, they
recoil from its physicalism and hide it beneath a
superstructure of allegorical readings, so that the Siva I'mga,
for example, becomes a symbol of spiritual
transcendence.104 Swami Ajaya, a pratitioner of an
Aryanized and "higher" form of tantra, says, "This kaula
group is considered to be the most inferior."105 The kaula
tantra, like the yoga of Goraksa and the k?mas?dhana of
the K?palikas, may be said with some certainty to have
arisen from the pre-Aryan population of India, to have
remained primarily the religion of the non-Aryanized and,
when in contact with high-caste Hinduism, to have been
subjected to celibatizing censorship.106
101. Srl-bh?sya II.2.35-38; D. R. Shastri, "Lok?yatas and
K?palikas," IHQ 7 (1931), p. 131; Pranabananda Jash, History of
Saivism (Calcutta, 1974), p. 63.
102. Even this is too raw for a Tibetan right-hand text that says,
"Since in Yoga Tantras even meditating on a union of the organs [i.e.,
even visualizing oneself "in bhag?sana"] is inappropriate, joy that is
based on another type of touch?holding hands or embracing?is
used in the path." (Tantra in Tibet: The Great Exposition of Secret
Mantra, by Tsong-ka-pa, ed. Jeffrey Hopkins [London, 1977], p. 162.)
103. Bharati, Tantric Tradition, p. 290. Bharati seems to feel that
this official opposition occurred only in the last five centuries (after
Muslim influence), but there are signs of it as early as the Atharva
Veda.
104. jash. op. cit., p. 16.
105. The whole passage says:
The word kaula comes from the Sanskrit ku (earth). This refers to
the practitioner's worship of kundalini at the muladhara chakra at
the base of the spine, which is related to the earth tattva (element).
In this group, kundalini, though it may be awakened and release
considerable energy, is not raised above this lowest center of
consciousness. The kaula group uses external rituals. Sometimes
sexual rites are used to awaken kundalini. Their practice is not
spiritual but focuses on worldly concerns and the satisfaction of
sensory pleasures. Black magic may be practiced to gratify one's
selfish desires. . . . This kaula group is considered to be the most
inferior. (Swami Ajaya, "Kundalini and the Tantric Tradition," in
John White, ed., Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment [Garden
City, New York, 1979], p. 101.) (When curved brackets appear in
a quotation, the inserted words are never mine, but the author's or
translator's.)
106. The Mah?nirv?na Tantra, one of the chief kaula texts, clearly
exhibits this revisionist editing. On a basal stratum of pure kaula
tantra (e.g., IV.20, 42, 48, etc.) is overlaid a right-handed stratum of
celibatized allegorization, recommending visualized substitutes for the
physical ingredients (e.g.,VIII.1 70-74). (See The Tantra of the Great
Liberation, trans. Arthur Avalon [Sir John Woodroffe] [New York,
1972, repub. of 1913 ed.].)
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 59
Indeed, celibacy is not the only point of contention
between the left- and right-hand ways, the Br?hmanical
swamis disapprove of the fact that kaula tantra (like hatha
yoga) has resisted Ved?ntic monism and illusionism and
continued to emphasize the individual physical existence
as the locus of dharma. Swami Ajaya says:
There is little similarity between tantra as practiced
in the samaya school and the popular
conceptualizations of tantra and kundalin? that abound.
This higher form of tantra, in fact, does not at all
contradict the principles of Ved?nta.107
This attitude has become standard in the modern
celibatized and syncretized yoga; even the siddha tradition
has been taken over by Ved?ntic idealism. Swami
Praj?ananda, for example, says "In fact, Siddha Yoga
complements Ved?nta: perfect realization is attained when
the two are united."108 K?p?lika tradition shows awareness
of this tantric-Ved?ntic hostility in its legend of a combat
between a K?p?lika magician and the Advaitin Samkara.109
R?m?nuja rightly referred to the sexo-yogic tradition as
"opposed to the Vedas."110
IX
Having drawn the boundaries of the two yogic
camps, it is time to consider to which of them
m?labandh?sana belongs. Its historical occurrences,
both iconographie and documentary, suggest strongly
that it pertains to the non-Aryan stream of sexo-yoga. Its
occurrence in the Indus valley is of course a warrant of
that. The ?j?vika connection is another, as is the
intimate link of the ?sana with the N?th siddha
tradition, and its occurrence in the left-hand tantric
environment that produced the stele of figure 8. Its
occurrence in the context of Mahav?ran Jainism might
seem to put it in the celibate camp, but can be taken as
a survival of Mah?v?ra's earlier ?j?vika-related practice;
at the time of his enlightenment he had not yet laid
down the rule of celibacy. Sv?tm?r?ma, whose
authority among hatha yogins is as great as Patafijali's
among r?ja yogins, says that m?labandh?sana should
be called Goraks?sana, placing it in the strongest
possible way in the tradition of low-caste kundalin?
yoga. The one occurrence that would seem to point the
other way is its mention by V?caspati Mi'sra, the
107. In White, op. cit., p. 104; and cf. Sri Chinmoy, ibid.,
pp. 451-52.
108. In Swami Muktananda, Play of Consciousness (San
Francisco, 1978), p. xxi,
109. Lorenzen, op. cit., pp. 35-38.
110. SrT-bh?sya, II.2.35.
60 RES 1 SPRING 81

commentator on Pata?jali.111 Was this ?sana prominent
in the r?ja schools, or did it drrift intrusively into
V?caspati's commentary from the hatha tradition? The
question can only be clearly and finally decided?and
with it a number of other questions?by a study of the
yogic function of the ?sana, which is complex and
extensive.
At the simplest level, m?labandh?sana is, as the
name implies, one of the traditional ?sanas for the
performance of m?labandha, the "root-seal" of hatha
yoga. Sv?tm?r?ma says, "Pressing the perineum with
the heel and raising the Ap?na, the anus is to be
contracted. This is known as
m?labandha. . . . Pressing the anus with the heel, one
should repeatedly contract the perineum with
force . . ." (111.60, 62).
The contraction of the muscles of the anus and
perineum is called asvinl mudr? (e.g., Gher. Sam.
111.82), and in m?labandha it is to be performed in
conjunction with the pressure of one or both heels at
the anus and/or perineum. Sv?tm?r?ma specifies that in
m?labandh?sana the heels should be forcefully pressed
against the perineum, right heel on the right side, left
heel on the left side, so as to press or squeeze it
between them (1.53-54). Gheranda similarly specifies
that the heels should be raised against the anus. The
other ?sanas that are recommended for m?labandha
share this feature. In simh?sana, as in m?labandh?sana,
the heels press on the sides of the perineum, but right
heel on the left side and left heel on the right (HYP
1.52). In siddh?sana, as Gheranda says, "having placed
one heel at the anal aperture . . . keep the other heel
on the root of the generative organ" (11.7).
The combination of contraction of the perineum/anus
muscles and pressure of the heels against them creates
a flow of nerve sensation upward from the base of the
spine, which is conceptualized as the upward flow of
ap?na, or lower body energy, toward union with the
pr?na, or upper body energy. The name Shakti-chalini
applied to m?labandh?sana points to its function of
activating nerve sensation. With the increase of nerve
sensation the "inner heat" so important in archaic
magical practices is said to increase also. Sv?tm?r?ma
says:
When the Ap?na rises up and reaches the sphere of the
fire (the navel region), the flames of the fire blaze forth,
fanned by the V?yu (Ap?na). (111.65).
Then, as the fire (heat) and the Ap?na reach the Pr?na,
111. See Woods, op. cit., p. 191.
which is warm by nature, the fire (warmth) of the body is
extremely intensified. (111.66)
This activity, which seems related to the Ajfvika
initiation rite of grasping a "heated lump," also echoes
shamanic techniques. Shirokogoroff noted that the
Tungus shamans became "much hotter during the
performance (before their swift moving dance)," and
that "this feeling of heat is seemingly a general
phenomenon." As Eliade says, "Magically increasing
the heat of the body and 'mastering' fire to the point of
not feeling the heat of burning coals, are two marvels
universally attested among medicine men, shamans,
and fakirs. . . . The continuity between the oldest
known magical technique and tantric yoga is, in this
particular, undeniable."112
Our limited conclusion so far is that the figures on
the Indus seals are less likely to be meditating or
seeking union with god than they are to be seeking
magical power through the generation of inner heat.
They are less the forerunners of Pata?jali than of
Goraksa and Sv?tm?r?ma.
X
But the stimulation and accumulation of inner heat
through m?labandha is not the whole function of
m?labandh?sana. A modern handbook of yoga says,
"Those postures in which the perineum (khanda) is
against the feet have connections with the arousal and
control of the sexual energies."113 In the sexo-yogic
tradition, m?labandha may be practiced in conjunction
with maithuna, or yogically guided sexual intercourse,
as a stimulant to sexual energy.
The connection of the activity of pressing the heels on
the perineum with sexual stimulation is a fact recognized
by modern sexologists. Dr. Alex Comfort, when discussing
what he calls "postillionage" ("putting a finger in or on
your partner's anus just before orgasm") says, "Most prefer
firm finger pressure just in front of the anus," that is, on
the perineum, or m?l?dh?ra cakra, where, according to
Sv?tm?r?ma, the kundalin? serpent slumbers. "In men," Dr.
Comfort goes on very significantly for us, "this can
112. S. M. Shirokogoroff, Psychomental Complex of the Tungus
(London, 1935), p. 364; Eliade, Yoga, p. 106. The body temperature
of the Capuchin stigmatic Padre Pio broke thermometers at 125?
Fahrenheit. See Geoffrey Nicoletti, "Stigmata and Kundalini," in
White, op. cit., p. 378. Even Pata?jali mentions the inner heat (YS
111.41), though he lays no emphasis on it.
113. James Hewitt, The Complete Book of Yoga (New York,
1978), p. 292.

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 McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 61

produce erection used alone." And finally: "Firm pressure renaming of semen as bodhicitta or "enlightenment
with a heel behind the scrotum or between anus and vulva mind-stuff.") Similarly Mah?v?ra's fourth
works as well in some postures."114 commandment, that of celibacy, in fact prohibits "the
delivery of sperm," retaining a memory trace of the
At this point we will return our attention briefly to
period when it was not puritanical avoidance of sexual
the tantric couple in figure 8. Living in the semi
pleasure but the power-generating retention of semen in
primitive village area of Madhya Pradesh, they are
the act that was the point.119 This goal probably went
probably practitioners of the kaula tantra. The raised
very far back in Indian history. It is not mentioned in
hand above them explicitly identifies them as left-hand
the Rg Veda, but appears in the Atharva Veda, which is
practitioners; it may also indicate that we see them
widely regarded as an expression of an "early non
engaging in the ceremony of the Five Ms. She is either
Aryan stratum of belief."120 The implication is that the
just reaching for or just putting down a vessel which in
practice entered the Aryan community from the non
unreformed kaula tantra could only contain wine;
Ayran.121 The great importance of m?labandha rests in
another is beside him. He is performing a mudr? (a
part on the fact that the contraction of the anal and
ritual hand position) near his heart, possibly holding an
perineal muscles literally chokes off the urethra and
incense stick. These are recognizable elements of the
prevents the ejaculation of semen. In fact, the exercise
practice as described by Bharati,115 which involves,
is recommended by modern sexologists for the same
along with the Five Ms, ?sana, mantra-japa, and mudr?
purpose.
of hand gesture. Bharati says the tantrikas at this stage
Here it is advisable to turn our attention back to
of the ceremony sit in either lotus posture (padm?sana)
figure 1 briefly. Marshall, as we have seen, suggested
or heroic posture (vTr?sana). But the stele of figure 8
that the figure is ithyphallic, though he acknowledged
seems to show a couple performing the shakti-chalini,
that the phallus might be "in reality the end of the
or "sexual-energy-stimulating" m?labandh?sana
waistband."122 Sullivan increased doubt about the
instead, in preparation for the ritual of sexual union.116
figure's ithyphallicism, pointing to the ornamental
In the man's case, the preparatory practice of
waistbands on some Indus figurines, and arraying
m?labandh?sana will be important at a later stage of
evidence that the figure may even be female.123 What
the ritual also. For m?labandh?sana-w\th-m?labandha
has not yet been mentioned in the literature is the
does not merely increase sexual energy, it specifically
obvious fact that two testicles seem to be clearly and
increases the ability of seminal retention. And as
separately represented beneath the phallus. None of the
Bharati says, "The central rule behind the left-handed
waistbands shows a comparable design. The possibility
rites, both Hindu and Buddhist, is the retention of
that the figure may be ithyphallic cannot be
semen during the sexual act. . . . The man who
disregarded.
retains it during maithuna is divya, 'divine' . . . and a
Staal believes that the idea that the figure is
vira, 'hero'."117 This is not celibacy; it is not avoidance
ithyphallic removes it from the sphere of yoga.124 But
of sexual intercourse, but of seminal emission, that is
this is to disregard the left-hand or sexo-yogic tradition
the goal. A Buddhist tantra advocates a certain
altogether. The idea that religion must be practiced
deliberate use of sexual intercourse when it says,
without an erection has no validity in terms of the
"Inserting the lihga (penis) in the bhaga (vulva), let him
not discharge bodhicitta."us (The mentalist overlay on
119. Schubring, op. cit., p. 30. And cf. Dasgupta: "All these
the primitive sexo-yoga is seen in the allegorical
processes are associated in the N?th cult with the process of retaining
the Mah?-rasa. ... In a grosser sense Mah?-rasa means the seed, and
114. Dr. Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (New York, 1972), p. 209. the s?dhana consists in saving the same from any kind of discharge."
Italics added. (Obscure Religious Cults, p. 244.)
115. Bharati, Tantric Tradition, pp. 250-65. 120. Margaret Stutley, Indian Magic and Folklore (Boulder, 1980),
116. It is possible that the artist meant to portray the man in the p. 6.
related siddh?sana, in which one heel presses the perineum while the 121. Cf. Bharati: "Loss of semen is a pervasive and ancient fear in
other presses above the genital. The woman's feet, however, are Indian lore, and it is probably the core of the most powerful anxiety
precisely in the position of the protoyogin's in figure 1. Either she is syndrome in Indian culture." (Tantric Tradition, p. 294.)
supported from behind by a pillow, or the artist has shown in profile 122. Marshall, op. cit., 1:52.
feet that are in the difficult position of our figure 6. 123. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 119.
117. Bharati, Tantric Tradition, p. 179. 124. Staal, op. cit., p. 77: "This is hardly appopriate for a person
118. Ibid. engaged in yoga."

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62 RES 1 SPRING 81
ancient fertility religions, the practices and
representations of shamans (e.g., the "Sorcerer" of Trois
Fr?res), and the realm of proto-tantric yoga. In recorded
cases of kundalinT awakening there are instances of
spontaneous and persistent erection occurring during
practice of the bandhas. Swami Muktananda's career is
a prime example of this, and he calls the experience "a
part of the process of Siddha Maha Yoga," indicating
that it is not only known but expected.125 Gopi Krishna
also records "a feverish movement in the sexual
region," an "agitated condition of the hitherto
quiescent area," which persisted throughout the period
of rousing the kundalini.^26 In Taoist sexual yoga, which
may be derived from Indian, the accumulation of inner
heat through retention is said to be much increased
during erection. It is worth remembering the sexologist's
statement that pressure on the perineum can by itself
produce erection. If the testicles of the person in figure
1 are in fact portrayed, then his heels are placed
precisely as directed in the hatha yoga manuals,
between the scrotum and the anus, and the weight of
his body (even if partly supported by a bolster from
behind) will forcefully press the heels against the
perineum. There is some reason to believe that, about
midway in time between Swami Muktananda and the
figure on the seals, groups of Indian ascetics practiced
"keeping the penis in tumescent condition without
feeling and showing any excitement."127 The Indus seals
may show us an earlier stage of this tradition.
XI
M?labandh?sana, then, is employed in a threefold
process of stimulation, accumulation, and retention. But
there is a fourth stage to the process also. Three
substances, citta (mind-stuff), pr?na ("breath," nerve
energy) and bindu (semen) are to be arrested by the
retention process and then "regressed," or channeled
upward through the spinal n?df (channel) to the lotus in
the skull. This is the "regression practice," or ult?
s?dhana, which is the center of the hatha/kundalim
process. Through this "upwardization" the deva-deha,
or god-body, is believed to be obtained, with its
impressive array of powers. "It has been emphatically
125. Muktananda, op. cit., p. 99.
1 26. Gopi Krishna, Kundalini, The Evolutionary Energy in Man
(Boulder, 1971), pp. 151-52.
127. See Bhagat, op. cit., p. 119, n. 3; also Chakraborti, op. cit.,
pp. 7-9, and D. R. Bhandarkar, Some Aspects of Ancient Indian
Culture (Madras, 1940), pp. 39-44.
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declared in all texts of yoga that he who has been able
to give an upward flow to the fluid is a god and not a
man."128
Most hatha yoga techniques exist for the sake of this
ulta-s?dhana. Sv?tm?r?ma says, "Through contractions
of the m?l?dh?ra the normally downward flowing
current of ap?na is guided upward" (HYP III. 64).
Contraction of m?l?dh?ra means m?labandha (with
asvinl mudr?), of which, therefore, the Dhy?nabindu
Upanisad says, "One becomes young even when old
through performing m?labandha always."129 Speaking
of utkat?sana, Swami Brahmachari says, "This ?sana
. . . induces the semen to course upwards."130 Of
m?labandh?sana he says, "This ?sana unifies pr?n? and
ap?na, that is, the Pr?na is directed to flow in
sushumna ?ad?."131 On the third level of upwardization,
that of mind-stuff, the Yogatattva Upanisad says, "When
one's chitta enters Sushumna along with pr?na, it
reaches the high seat (of the head . . . )"132
But this three-leveled doctrine of upwardization is
likely to be a stratification, an accumulation of layers
from different ages of psychology. The "official"
doctrine is that the three substances are occultly linked
so closely as to behave as one: when any one of them
is "raised" or "regressed" the other two are
automatically drawn upward with it. But the motive to
this syncretism seems to be the backgrounding of the
physical level of yoga and the foregrounding of the
mental level that has consistently attempted to replace
it by a combination of censorship and allegorization.
The famous "intentional language" (sandhy?-bh?s?) of
the tantric texts has functioned, on one level at least, as
a method whereby educated spiritual seekers could
"tame" or "civilize" the raw physicality of primitive
Ur-yoga. In tantric "intentional language," for example,
the primitive "regression of semen" is read as a
regression of thought processes; k?ya-s?dhana (body
practice) becomes citta-s?dhana (mind-practice).133
The ult?-s?dhana in a rudimentary form is already
present in certain Upanisadic passages (of which more
128. Dasgupta, Obscure Relligious Cults, p. 246.
129. K. Narayanasvami Aiyar, trans., Thirty Minor Upanishads (El
Reno, Oklahoma, 1980, repr. of 1914 ed.), p. 207.
130. Brahmachari, op. cit., p. 63.
131. Ibid., p. 61.
132. Aiyar, op. cit., p. 197.
133. One might compare, for example, Philo's allegorical
readings of Greek myths, which overlaid primitive elements with
middle Platonist interpretations featuring idealist abstractions, thereby
converting the myths to new purposes that their earlier expounders
would probably not have understood.

later), but the earliest full version that we possess is that
of the Goraksa Sataka, which again shows stratification,
with a sexual version of ult?-s?dhana overlaid by a
celibate version.134
To begin with, bindu, or semen, is conceived as the
absolute essence or foundation of the body (Gor. Sat.
68). M bindu is lost, either through ejaculation or
through burning away in the fires of the lower cakras,
the body ages and dies. But bindu does not only mean
semen virile; in this context, it signifies the sexual fluids
of both the male and the female, the latter being
equated with menstrual blood. As Goraksa says:
The bindu is of two kinds, pale-white and blood-red.
The pale-white they call semen virile, the blood-red
menstrual fluid. (72)
The essence of yoga, according to the ult?-s?dhana,
is the accumulation of these two substances, their
upwardization through the spinal channel, and their
union in the lotus of the skull; this being accomplished,
the yoga has reached its goal, which is deva-deha,
immortality, and so on (Gor. Sat. 73-75). The female
bindu is also known as rajas, and, as Briggs said, "the
union of bindu and rajas is the aim of the yoga."135
It is in the definition of the bindu and the rajas (or
the pale-white and the blood-red bindu) that the
stratification appears. Three levels can be perceived: (1)
an archaic level in which the male literally took into his
own body the menstrual blood of his sex-partner; (2) an
occult or subtle or (as Bharati calls it) "imaginary" level
on which the rajas is conceived as a female substance
produced within the subtle body of the male himself (in
the navel cakra), and the union of the two bindus
within the yogin's body does not involve a female
partner; (3) a level in which the two bindus are
understood as purely mental essences, as Siva and
Sakti, absolute and relative, and so on.
The physiology of the process according to Goraksa is
as follows. As the top of the n?dT system, in the "hollow
above the throat," a "nectar of immortality" (amrita) is
secreted. This is the bindu, or semen virile. Secreted
through a mysterious duct called the "tenth door"
134. It is also known, but not fully expounded, in the Hevajra,
Heruka, and Guhya-sam?ja Tantras, and in the S?dhanam?la. For the
Goraksa Sataka see Briggs, op. cit., chap. 14; for traces of the same
doctrine in the Buddhist tantras, Shashi Bhusan Dasgupta, An
Introduction to Tantric Buddhism (Berkeley, 1974, repub. of 1958
ed.), p. 107, and Alex Wayman, yoga of the Guhyasam?jatantra
(Delhi, 1970), pp. 264-65.
135. Briggs, op. cit., p. 318.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 63
(dasamadv?ra), which is directly over the opening of the
spinal channel, the bindu drips down that channel, part of
it being burned up at the ca/cra-fires as it descends, the rest
being stored in the testicles until ejaculation; consequently
the body ages. For the attainment of immortality, this fluid
must either be prevented from descending to the lower
cakras, or, if it has already descended, it must be restrained
from ejaculation and returned upward through m?labandha
and related methods.
Various techniques are intended to prevent its descent,
including j?landhara bandha, a position in which the
throat is "sealed" or locked so as to prevent the bindu
from dripping into the spinal channels, or n?dTs. But the
most venerated technique, and one of the central
techniques of hatha yoga, is khecarT mudr?: the tongue is
progressively cut loose at the base and stretched till it can
reach back and up into the hollow above the throat and
close off the tenth door. Then, as Goraksa says:
By whom the hollow in the top of the throat is
sealed by khecarT, his bindu even (though he be)
embraced by a women, does not fall.
While the bindu remains in the body, there is no fear
of death. As long as the khecar?mudra is continued, so
long the bindu does not go down. (69-70)
The "descent" of the bindu, in other words, does not
mean ejaculation; it means the descent through the n?dfs,
which is prevented by the backward-turned tongue
blocking the drip-space. The bindu or nectar is then said to
be drunk by the yogin and, as the Yogatattva Upanisad
says, "He who drinks of the nectar thus is rendered
immortal day by day."136
But this is only half of the ult?-s?dhana, for the goal in
this basal level of the technique is not merely the
sublimation of semen virile, but the uniting of it, behind
the tenth door, with the rajas, or blood-red bindu of the
female. This part of the practice requires maithuna during
menstruation, and the technique known as vajroli mudr?,
another centerpiece of hatha yoga: by lengthy training at
controlling the usually involuntary muscles of the bladder
and urinary tract, the yogin develops the ability to draw
fluids into the urethra by exerting suction from the
bladder.137 The technique has two uses: first, while having
sexual intercourse during the woman's menstruation, the
yogin draws into the body, through vajroli mudr?,some of
the "blood-red bindu" of the female, forces it up susumn?
(the central n?d?) by m?labandha and unites it, with the
help of khecarT mudr?, with the "pale-white bindu" at the
136. Aiyar, op. cit., p. 200.
137. See Hatha Yoga PradTpik? lll.82ff.; Arthur Avalon (Sir John
Woodroffe), The Serpent Power (New York, 1974, repr. of 1919 ed.),
p. 201; Eliade, Yoga, pp. 232-33.
64 RES 1 SPRING 81
tenth door; second, if his own "pale-white bindu" has
been ejaculated, he can draw it back into himself through
vajroli mudr?, along with the blood-red bindu of his
partner.
In the view of Western physiologists, these practices
will force the semen into the bladder. But to the hatha
yogins, who believe that the urethra is connected to
susumn? n?df, it seems to be forced through that channel
to the brain. I will here venture no guess as to where the
doctrines of the spinal channel and the upwardization of
semen came from. Indian physiologists did not dissect
corpses, and so were free to fantasize about the inner
workings of the body.
The basic theme of upwardization of sexual fluids
suggests Freud's doctrine of sublimation and even more the
Jungian "constellation" of the "higher male and female
archetypes." It is interesting that recent archaeological
evidence suggests that the Indus Valley culture was at the
point of communal psychological development which the
Jungians associate with this event: the emergence of the
male god as a figure of importance beside the mother
goddess indicates in Jungian terms the emergence of the
ego from the Uroboros; the "constellation" of the higher
male and female archetypes, with its attendant shift of life
center from genitals to head, is the next event in
sequence.138
Elements of the ult?-s?dhana seem to belong within
primitive horizons. KhecarT mudr? suggests the various
body alterations and symbolic wounds (elongated ears,
enlarged lips, subincised penises, filed teeth, and so on)
practiced among modern primitives in India and
elsewhere. The stretching of the tongue till it reaches the
spot between the eyebrows, for example, which is
preparatory for khecarT mudr?, may have originated in
S?kta cults in ritual imitation of the lolling tongue that
expresses the goddess's thirst for blood. The S?kta
worshiper attempted to "become" the goddess through
female imitation practices, as Saiva yoga also is a matter of
"becoming" Siva. This again has shamanic parallels not
faraway: Tibetan oracle-shamans "became" the god or
goddess who was speaking "through" them.139 The
Siberian shaman at times "becomes" the totem ancestor,
imitating its voice, movements, and expressions.
The vajroli practice of capturing within the male's body
some of the female fluids may be related to the Australian
practice of subincision whereby an imitation vulva is
created on the penis, "uniting" male and female powers in
138. Jean-Fran?ois Jarrige and Richard H. Meadow, "The
Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley," Scientific American,
243:2 (August 1980), pp. 122-37. Erich Neumann, Origins and
History of Consciousness, trans. R. F. C Hull, Bollingen Series, vol.
42 (Princeton, 1972).
139. Nebesky-Wojkowitz, op. cit., pp. 409-54.
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the person of the subincised male.140 The belief that
immortality is to be gained by this method may be a later
overlay pertaining to a cosmogony in which an unsexed or
bisexed first being initiates time by dividing itself into male
and female halves: the merging of these halves into a unity
reconstitutes the condition before the beginning of time.
XII
At some point in the process of celibatization, this
practice of maithuna with vajroli underwent deep
revision; specifically, the yogini was edited out. The
rajas was redefined not as the woman's menstrual fluid,
but as a subtle substance produced within the yogin's
own body (in the area of the navel cakra), which he
must then raise through susumn? and unite with bindu
at the tenth door. Goraksa already has this overlay:
Rajas (menstrual fluid) secreted in the place of the sun,
resembling vermilion, and the bindu secreted in the place
of the moon?the mingling of these two is very difficult to
accomplish. (Gor. Sat. 73)
The "place of the moon" is at the top of the hollow
above the throat (that is, the "tenth door"), and the
"place of the sun" is usually identified as the navel
cakra. If this reading is correct, then sexual intercourse
is no longer necessary for the union of the lunar and
solar fluids. On this celibate model, they flow through
the lunar and the solar n?dfs, respectively, which join
with susumn? at the cakras, and the manipulation of
them is a matter of pr?n?y?mas (special breathings) and
bandhas (muscular contractions) that operate within the
yogin's own physiology.141 This is the "official" version
of the process, and it can be found in the Buddhist
tantras and the later hatha yoga texts, with the older
version here and there discernible beneath the surface.
Along with the censoring of sexual intercourse and the
female partner, the identity of the lunar "nectar" with
semen also drops off the page. Goraksa is very explicit on
this point. Sv?tm?r?ma, some centuries later, is somewhat
confused about it, though he does imply it here and there
(e.g., III. 51). The still later Siva Samhit?, finally, has
forgotten it altogether, and most modern scholars seem
either unaware of it or disinclined to bring it up.
140. See Roheim, op. cit., pp. 164-66, etc. There is of course a
Proto-Australoid stratum in the non-Aryan population of India.
"Petroglyphs indentical with Australian petroglyphs have been found
in the vicinity of Benares. The use of the boomerang has survived in
Celebes, in Southeastern India, and in Gujarat" (Eliade, yoga, p. 430).
141. See, e.g., Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, p. 237:
Introduction to Tantric Buddhism, p. 107.

This in turn leads to other modifications of the system,
such as the revised function of khecarl mudr?. Goraksa as
interpreted above used khecari mudr? in an explicitly
mechanical way to block the drip-space between the tenth
door and the upper opening of susumn?. But with the loss
of the doctrine of the identity of amrta and bindu, the
descent of the bindu is revised to mean ejaculation, and
khecarT mudr? no longer has any mechanical connection
with it, a'svinT mudr? (the clenching of the sphincter around
the urethra) being called for instead.
At this point the revisionist doctrine developed: khecarT
mudr? closes off the windpipe, thus immobilizing the
breath; since the syncretic doctrine holds that breath,
mind, and semen are, as it were, wired in parallel, the
stoppage of the breath stops the semen also, preventing
ejaculation. Very likely the doctrine of the linkage of
breath and semen was strengthened greatly at this point, in
support of the celibate version. The original connection
may have been no more than the observed fact that in
practicing a'svinT mudr? to prevent ejaculation, one tends
to hold the breath. (This may be the meaning of BU
VI.4.10, though the passage is unclear.)
The Siva Samhit? shows a later stage of this revision, in
which the emphasis among; the three substances has
shifted from breath to mind: it is neither bindu at the tenth
door nor breath at the windpipe that khecarT mudr? stops,
but the fluctuations of thought (V.114). The physicalist hatha
yoga of Goraksa, with its emphasis on sexual fluids, has
been brought into the camp of the mentalist Pata?jali, for
whom the goal of yoga is the stoppage not of seminal
emission but of thought-fluctuation (citta-vrtti). In other
words, the doctrine of the triple linkage?mind, breath,
semen?either arose as a device of spirtualizing editors, or,
at any rate, was found useful by them.
As a part of the general mentalizing tendency that
Ved?nta, and Ved?ntized-Sarhkhya, encouraged, the
physiology taught in the Goraksa Sataka has come to be
regarded as merely symbolic or at most as a "subtle
body." Eliade, who is thoroughly r?ja yogin in his attitudes
(and who does not mention the amrta-bindu indentity in
his treatment of hatha yoga physiology),142 insists
repeatedly that "the yogins performed their experiments on
a 'subtle body'."143 Even Bharati, who is alert for disguises,
insists that the k?ya-siddhi process is merely a mental
visualization of an "imaginary body" with n?dis, and so
on, and the "imaginary" perfecting ofthat body through "a
method of creative imagination."144
Yet there are many indications that Goraksa's
physiology was literally believed among the low-caste
142. Very few do: Briggs, above all, and Dasgupta, Obscure
Religious Cults, p. 237.
143. Eliade, Yoga, p. 233. He bases his interpretation not on the
Goraksa Sataka but on the heavily Ved?ntized Siva Samhit?.
144. Bharati, Light at the Center, pp. 164-66.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 65
practitioners who have made up the great majority of
yogins. In the N?th tradition, for example, one technique
involved the guru inserting a lead wire deep into the
novice's urethra, seeking to open susumn? n??//~145
This Ved?ntic revisionism, whereby the central features
of hatha yoga as known to Goraksa were either edited out
or radically reinterpreted, is not at all out of the ordinary.
"Five centuries of puritanical subversion"146 have buried
virtually the whole sexual practice beneath a veil of
celibate ethics. Twice-born yogins, even those who declare
their fealty to the siddha tradition, seem to have forgotten
this level of practice altogether. Both Muktananda and
Gopi Krishna, while describing their experiences of
spontaneous erection during ?sana, purvey a totally
celibate version of ult?-s?dhana from which the blood-red
bindu and the yogini herself have long disappeared.147
After maithuna itself, that element of the ancient k?ma
s?dhana that has come under the heaviest fire is vajroli
mudr?. Several modern Hindu translators actually omit it
from their renderings of hatha yoga texts on the grounds
that "it is an obscene practice indulged in by low caste
Tantrists."148 A modern scholar has called it "sexual
perversion in the service of 'salvation'."149
Of course the hatha yoga texts leave no doubt that
vajroli mudr? is to be practiced in conjunction with
physical sexual intercourse. Sv?tm?r?ma specifies that "a
woman who will behave as desired" is necessary, and
makes repeated mention of sexual intercourse in describing
the process.150 Yet modern Hindu authors are especially at
pains to rationalize this practice puritanically. The official
line is that vajroli mudr? is a celibate practice that does
not involve any sexual activity. Swami Sivananda, for
example, says, "This Kriya is of immense use for keeping
up perfect Brahmacharya" (celibacy)?a thought that, it
145. Briggs, op. cit., p. 334. "Great powers are supposed to arise
through this practice," says Briggs. And compare Dasgupta, Obscure
Relligious Cults, pp. 192-93, on the literalness of the yogi's belief that
his body could be rendered immortal, or progressively transformed
into an immortal type of body (s?ksma sarTra).
146. Bharati, Light at the Center, p. 29. See n. 103 supra.
147. Muktananda, op. cit., p. 105; Gopi Krishna, op. cit., pp.
150-51.
148. The Siva Samhit?, trans. Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu
(Delhi, 1979, repr. of 1914 ed.), p. 51n.
149. J. W. Hauer, Der Yoga (Stuttart, 1958), p. 271.
150. There is no hint of the celibate morality, nor would it be
appropriate to this passage, which is frankly devoted both to the
practice of sexual intercourse and to the magical use of the fluids
produced in a state of sexual heat by the man and woman involved:
At the time of (the emission of the seminal fluid during) sexual
intercourse, practise slowly and well to draw (it) up. (III.85)
The semen that is about to fall into the genital organ of the
woman should be drawn up by this practice (of the vajroli mudr?).
If already fallen, he should draw up his own semen (and the
woman's seminal fluid) and (thus) preserve it. (III.87)
66 RES 1 SPRING 81
seems, could not have been farther from the mind of the
author(s) of the Hatha Yoga PradTpik?. He goes on: "Even
a drop of semen cannot come out of the Yogi who
practises this mudr?. . . ." And finally gets to the point:
"Even if it is discharged, he can draw it back through this
Mudr?". "For practicing this," he concludes, "there is no
necessity at all for a woman or for any sexual
intercourse,"151 though the Hatha Yoga PradTpik?
specifically says that a cooperative woman is a necessity.
The confusion engendered by pious syncretizing has
clouded perception of the Indus Valley icons from
which we began. They show us not the yoga of the
Hindu renaissance or of Pata?jali, but the yoga of an
earlier and more primitive age. The yoga of Pata?jali
has no more to do with the activity on the seals than
the spiritualized and celibate Dionysus of the Orphies
had to do with maenadic ecstasies.
XIII
M?labandh?sana belongs, then, to a group of sexo
yogic practices that must have arisen before (or anyway
outside) the custom of monastic celibacy, and that have
undergone considerable distortion due to that custom.
M?labandh?sana, khecarT mudr?, vajroli mudr?, and
the rest, are interrelated elements of a yogic grammar,
and they make much more sense together than apart.
Since one element of the grammar, m?labandh?sana,
was present already in the Indus Valley, it is possible
that all were. But of course that cannot be assumed.
Our next step must be to work our way backward, as
far as we can, through Indian literature, seeking some
t?rminos ante quos for the elements of ult?-s?dhana and
k?ma-s?dhana.
The Mah?bh?rata, already aware of the ult?-s?dhana in
its partly celibatized form, tells, concerning a certain
ascetic, that, after he had practiced severe penance for
three thousand celestial years, "His semen, drawn upward,
(He should) preserve his own semen and that of the woman with
whom he has intercourse. (111.91)
After intercourse in the Vajroli, the man and woman, their activity
being ended, should while sitting in a happy frame of mind,
besmear the excellent parts of the body (with burnt cow dung
ashes and water). (III.93)
If a woman, making herself expert through sufficient practice,
draws up the semen of the man, and preserves her own through
(the practice of) Vajroli, she also becomes a YoginT. (III.99)
That bindu and that rajas, becoming united and remaining in the
body by the practice of Vajroli, confer all siddhis. (111.101)
(Quoted from the Adyar translation, op. cit.)
151. Sivananda, op. cit., p. 142.
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was changed into ambrosia and sprang forth from his eyes
..." (Salya Parvan 36). But the dynamism of physical
fertility still clings to the substance in this passage, which
continues, "Some drops of lunar ambrosia fell upon the
earth and became the useful plants on which the world
lives." The term ?rdhvaretas ("one whose semen goes up,"
that is, one who performed the ult?-s?dhana) is already
present, as is the image-complex moon-soma-bindu-amrta,
which implies the ult?-s?dhana of Goraksa in a kind of
shorthand. In fact, the equation of soma with the moon
appears in the late hymns of the Rg Veda and in the
Atharva Veda, but not in the earlier hymns of the Rg. The
implication is that this complex entered the Aryan
community at the beginning of the middle Vedic period. At
least, it was present already by the epic period.
The Brhad?ranyaka Upanisad has the doctrines of the
retention of semen for "vigor and lustre" and the attempt
to reclaim semen after sexual intercourse (BU VI.4.4-5).
Though the method is not specified, the only one known is
vajroli mudr?. Interestingly, the Upanisadic author says that
this activity is not known to many Br?hmans. The
K?palikas, as well as the N?ths and Tantrics, are known to
have practiced the reclaiming of semen.152 Like seminal
retention, it would seem to be a non-Aryan custom, which
entered the Aryan community in the middle or late Vedic
periods.
Another passage of the Brhad?ranyaka (BU VI.4.3)
shows the somewhat vampirical aspect of the sexo-yogic
tradition (present also in Taoist sexual yoga). The man is
advised on a method (unclear) to "turn the good deeds of
the woman to himself" while engaging in sexual
intercourse and is warned against her doing the same to
him. Similarly, if the man "draws up" the women's rajas
with vajroli mudr?, he has increased his own "vigor and
lustre" at her expense (unless she too does so, as
Sv?tm?r?ma says). This sexual black magic has a distinctly
primitive air to it and again is paralleled among Australian
tribal groups studied by Roheim.
In addition to the practices of retention and reclamation
of semen, the early Upanisads show knowledge of the n?dT
system which is necessary for the ult?-s?dhana. At the
moment of death, says the Ch?ndogya Upanisad
(VIII.8.5-6), the breath or soul (pr?na) ascends through a
channel to the sun-door in the skull, whence it proceeds
upward on the solar rays. The MaitrT Upanisad, in a
passage (VI.21) which, though not in the earliest stratum, is
pre-Pata?jalian, describes (1) the ascent of pr?na through
susumn? n?df, (2) a "turning back of the tongue," which
may be khecarT mudr?, (3) union with the limitless in the
crown of the head. A tantalizing question, which we
cannot answer, is whether the conception of the limitless
was a part of the pre-Aryan doctrine, or whether it was
part of the ideological overlav that these methods received
152. Lorenzen, op. cit., p. 91.

in the Aryan community. The ascent of the pr?na through
susumn? is brought about, in historical hatha yoga, by
m?labandha. The means is not specified in the MaitrT
passage, but may very well have been the same.
The rshis of the early Upanisadic period, then, knew the
doctrines of retention and reclamation of semen, of the
n?dTs, and of the ascent of pr?na through the n?dTs. The
ascent of bindu through the n?dTs is not specifically
mentioned, but is implied by the "grammatical" cohesion
of these elements as a group.
We may glimpse a period of Ur-yoga several centuries
earlier than the Upanisadic passages in the famous Muni
hymn of the Rg Veda (X.136). It describes what is widely
regarded as "a pre-Aryan magician,"153 who is long
haired" (ke'sin), "wind-girt" or naked (v?tarasana) and
"maddened or ecstatic with silence or austerity" (unmadita
mauneya), smeared with yellow dust,154 and possessed of
many siddhis.
This impressive figure seems to be non-Aryan, as his
ecstatic powers are not connected with the sacrifice. Yet
he is in the process of assimilation, for he is associated, in
the last line, with Rudra, with whom he is said to drink
either a poison or a drug.155 The connection with Rudra
suggests that pre-Aryan ascetic practices were assimilated
into the Vedic community by way of the cult of Rudra,
previously a very minor god (three hymns in the Rg Veda),
who may have had no prior cult to hinder such innovation.
In any case, the long hair, smearing of the body with dust
or ashes, and vow of silence are all characteristic of later
Saiva yogins, and Marshall's proto-Saiva interpretation of
the Indus material was in part implicitly based on this
hymn.
There are, however, numerous ?jivika and Jain
connections in the hymn also, which ought not to continue
to be overlooked by eyes that see only Saivism in Ur-yoga.
The ?jFvika as much as the Saiva smeared himself with
ashes and vowed silence and in fact is known to have
done so from an earlier date. Further, as Mrs. Stevenson
pointed out, "The Jaina monk is also called the Muni,"156
and the name Kesi (which is sometimes applied to Rudra
[e.g., AV Xl.2.18]) is also very prominent in Jain tradition.
Rishabha, the first tTrthankara, who became enlightened in
the k?y?tsarga position, which may be present on the
Indus seals, was called Kesi; Jain scholars claim that "this
153. Bhagat, op. cit., p. 72.
154. For this translation of the second sloka, see, e.g., Raimundo
Pannikar, The Vedic Experience (Berkeley, 1977), p. 436; Jeanine
Miller, "Forerunners of Yoga: The Kesin Hymn," in J. Miller and
George Feurerstein, yoga and Beyond: Essays in Indian Philosophy
(New York, 1972), p. 95; Hauer, Der Yoga, p. 29.
1 55. The word in the text later means "poison." For the view that
it was a drug, see, e.g., Hauer, op. cit., p. 29.
156. Quoted by Bhagat, op. cit., p. 11.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 67
Kesi [of the Rg Veda] alludes to Rishabha."157 Indeed, the
leader of the P?rsvaite community in Mah?v?ra's day seems
to have been named "Kesi," which, like Muni, may have
been a typical designation for a Jain ascetic of the pre
Mah?vTran (precelibate) period.158 The Muni's nakedness
also connects him with the ?jFvika-Jain tradition as much
as (more than?) the Saiva. The ?jfvikas were the only order
to go completely naked, till Mah?vira prescribed nakedness
for Jains also. Digambara, "sky-clad," an adjective applied
to one sect of Jains and sometimes to Siva, expresses the
same religious value as v?tarasana, "wind-girt." In short,
the Muni hymn, although it does indeed have Saiva
connections, has as many ?jivika and Jain ones, which
should remind us of the nonsectarian character of yogic
techniques, which can be fitted as well to one ideology as
another.
The Muni is also widely regarded as a shamanic figure,
and he may provide a link between shamanism and the
tradition of siddhis, or superpowers, which is so prominent
in the hatha yoga texts. The yogins' claim of bodily
invulnerability is implied in the Muni's ability to digest
poison, handle fire, and so on. This tradition represents a
curious quality of belief, since it must have been obvious
to, for example, the hatha yogins, when one of their gurus
died, that his invulnerability and immortality were less than
perfect. The same phenomenon is commonly found in
shamanic contexts. The Ostyak shamans, for example,
claimed bodily invulnerability, and the claim is common
among shamans around the world.159 Kroeber notes that
"field ethnographers seem quite generally convinced that
even shamans who know that they add fraud nevertheless
also believe in their powers." The attitude, he explains,
"whether there has been repression or not, seems to be as
toward a pious fraud."160 The tendency in the tradition of
Pata?jali to rationalize the belief in siddhis may represent
157. Kailash Chand Jain, Lord MahavTra and His Times (Delhi,
1974), p. 6.
158. For the "magico-religious value" of long hair, see Eliade,
Shamanism, p. 152 and n. According to Yogi Bhajan, "the hair was
the first technique to raise the kundalini energy. When the hair is at
its natural full length and coiled over the anterior fontenelle for men
or the posterior fontenelle for women it draws pranic energy into the
spine." (Cited by M. S. S. Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, "Exploring the
Myths and Misconceptions of Kundalini," in White, op. cit., p. 145.)
Yet the ?j?vikas, who were within the "tantric circle," plucked their
heads, and this seems to revert to some ecstatic practice. The
significance of the distinction is not clear. The TaittTriya Samhit? of
the Yajur Veda (IV.5.5d) affirms both modes, saying, "Homage to the
wearer of braids and to him of shaven hair." (Trans. Arthur Berriedale
Keith, Harvard Oriental Series, vols. 18 and 19 [Cambridge, Mass.,
1914].)
159. See, e.g., Adolph Erman, Travels in Siberia, 2 vols., English
trans. (Oxford, 1848), ll:45.
160. A. L. Kroeber, The Nature of Culture (Chicago, 1952),
p. 311.
68 RES 1 SPRING 81
the reform of an age of consciousness that could no longer
practice this primitive "repression" in the service of "pious
fraud."161
The Muni's ability to fly, and his familiarity with the
spirits of the various levels of the universe, also have many
shamanic parallels.162 The Altaic shaman announces his
progress through the various regions of the sky and, like
the Muni, visits the deities indigenous to each region.163
Among the Ostyak and Yurak-Samoyed shamans, as with
the Muni, the flight is narrated without any mention of the
specifically shamanic task of guiding, or finding, a soul.164
Similarly, to complete the continuum North Asia-Tibet
India, the lamas, like the Buddha and virtually every
important figure in Indian religious legend, are credited
with the ability to fly; in Lamaism, of course, this attribute
is found in a context that reduplicates, while redefining in
Buddhist terms, the entire shamanic complex.165
The Muni's nakedness, furthermore, like that of the
?jfvikas and Jains of a later stage of the tradition, is
paralleled by the Lapp shamans and others who perform
their "seances" entirely naked.166
The siddhi of "supervision," which is attributed to the
Muni, is also characteristic of the whole shamanic milieu
from India north to Alaska. Rasmussen reported an Eskimo
shaman's experiences of "a mysterious light which the
shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head within
the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire,
which enables him to see in the dark, both literally and
metaphorically speaking, for he can now, even with closed
eyes, see through darkness and perceive things and coming
events which are hidden from others; thus they look into
the future and into the secrets of others. ... he sees
through mountains . . . and his eyes could reach to the
ends of the earth."167 Extraordinarily similar descriptions of
this experience are found in yogic texts.
To sum up: the Muni is credited with most of the
characteristic shamanic powers: ecstasy, flight, the ability
to see the forms of all things, friendship with the gods of
the various levels of the cosmos, the knowledge of the
inner thoughts of others, and bodily invulnerability. It is
161. Invulnerability may be a necessary belief on a shaman's part,
due to the dangers to which he is exposed?both from spirits and
from rival shamans. The belief that one had the ability, for example,
to digest poisons must have been reassuring when one was engaged
in a "shamanic duel." With the increasing yogic orientation toward
ahims?, this belief was rendered less necessary.
162. Czaplicka, op. cit., p. 224; Findeisen, op. cit., p. 69.
163. Wilhelm Radioff, Aus Sibirien: lose Blatter aus dem
Tagebuche eines reisenden Linguisten, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1884),
11:20-50.
164. Eliade, Shamanism, pp. 225-26.
165. Bleichsteiner, op. cit., p. 189.
166. Ake Ohlmarks, Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus
(Lund, 1939), pp. 34, 50-51.
167. Rasmussen, op. cit., pp. 112ff.
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possible, as for example Hauer and Hermanns both
believe,168 that he represents the lineage of the Indus
Valley priest-magicians; but it is also possible that he
represents a fresh incursion of shamanic activity into India,
perhaps related to the diffusion of Central Asian
shamanism into Europe that is hypothesized for about 1000
B.c. by Kirchner.169
Another work of the middle Vedic period, the TaittirTya
?ranyaka, speaks of some ascetics who are probably of the
same group as the Muni, since they also are described as
ke'sin, or long-haired (V.6) and v?tarasana, or wind-girt
(II.7), and are further said to eat only air (V.5), that is, their
bodies have become "immortal" like that of the Muni,
who can drink poison without being harmed. In later yogic
tradition this deva-deha or immortal body is developed by
the ult?-s?dhana, and not surprisingly that seems to be the
case for these earlier "siddhas" also, since they are
described as ?rdhvamanthin (II.7), which according to
S?yana is a synonym of ?rdhvaretas, a term that also
occurs in the same text (X.12). Both words mean "one
whose semen goes up," and they indicate that these
ascetics of the middle Vedic period were engaged in the
ult?-s?dhana and that they, like the figure on the Indus
seals, probably spent time "exerting themselves in the
squatting posture."
Staal marshals the term ?rdhvalinga, "whose penis goes
up," and suggests that the yogins who are ?rdhvaretas
have erections. He ridicules the idea that they "keep their
semen or penis 'above' or 'up'" that is, that "they live in
chastity."170 But neglect of the details of the yogic process
seems to have caused confusion here. "Whose semen goes
up" does not mean, yogically, that they are "above" sex; it
means that through the practice of the ult?-s?dhana they
have forced their semen to "go up" through susumn?
n?dTS71 and this, as Sv?tm?r?ma makes clear, is not a
celibate or chaste practice, but a tantric practice involving
maithuna.
The idea that ?rdhvaretas means "chaste" may be
another sign of the overlay of a celibate interpretation on
the sexo-yogic tradition. Monier Williams gives it in the
Sanskrit-English Dictionary: ?rdhvaretas, "keeping the
semen above, living in chastity"; ?rdhvalinga, "having the
membrum above (i.e., chaste)."172 The definition is
accurate enough for the time in which it was written; it is
168. Hauer, op. cit., p. 31; Hermanns, op. cit., 1:58-59.
169. Horst Kirchner, "Ein arch?eologicsher Beitrag zur
Urgeschicht des Schamanismus," Anthropos 47 (1952), pp. 245-48,
etc.
170. Staal, op. cit., p. 77.
1 71. For the term ?rdhvaretas see lyengar, op. cit., p. 244, who
asserts that it is precisely through m?labandha that one becomes
?rdhvaretas; Muktananda, op. cit., p. 104; Gopi Krishna, op. cit.,
pp. 150-51; etc.
1 72. Sir Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary
(Oxford, 1976), p. 222.

the voice of the Hindu Renaissance assimilating hatha to
r?ja yoga. But Hauer is more faithful to earlier ages of yoga
when he glosses it as "dessen Samen oben bleibt oder
nach oben steigt," "whose semen either remains above or
ascends above."173 A fully unpacked yogic definition
would read: whose semen is prevented, by khecarT mudr?,
from descending through the n?dTs, or, if it has already
descended, is relaimed, by vajroli mudr?, and forced, by
m?labandha, to reascend.174 It is likely that ?rdhvaretas
already brought with it the full yogic meaning in the age of
the Aranyakas, since the celibate meanings seem always to
be later overlays; and if this inference is correct, then the
ult?-s?dhana; was known already to pre-Upanisadic proto
yogins.
XIV
We have traced the ult?-s?dhana back to the naked
ecstatics of the middle Vedic period and have seen also
that they were both in the Central Asian shamanic
stream and in the yogic stream from which ?j?vikism
and Jainism, as well as Saivism, arose. At the same
period we find in the Atharva Veda "the curious and
enigmatical figure of the Vr?tya,"175 whom both Hauer
and Hermanns regard as related to the wind-girt Muni
and hence to the ?rdhvamanthin sages of the Taittirlya
?ranyaka also.176
The Vr?tyas figured prominently in Chanda's original
derivation of yoga from the Indus Valley. They are
defined in the Atharva Veda (XV) as Aryans who have
been living for three generations or more among non
Aryans without practicing the Vedic religion, and who
require ritual readmission to Aryan society, whereupon
they become Br?hmans and participate in the sacrifice.
Yet Bhandarkar was not alone in concluding: "that this
was a non-Aryan cult can scarcely be doubted/'177 His
173. Hauer, op. cit., p. 31.
1 74. Even the phrase ?rdhvalinga may have had a technical hatha
yoga definition that has been lost. Monier-Williams gives "chaste";
Staal prefers "ithyphallic." But Woodroffe in discussing the full-scale
closing of all bodily apertures which is called yonimudr?, says, "The
right heel is pressed against the anus and the left against the region of
the genital center, and in order to close the aperture of the penis, it is
contracted and withdrawn into the pubic arch so that it is no longer
seen." He adds in a note, "Some yogis can make both the penis and
testes disappear in the pubic arch so that the body has the
appearance of a woman." (Woodroffe, Serpent Power, p. 203 and n.)
1 75. Arthur Berriedale Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the
Veda and Upanishads, 2 vols., Harvard Oriental Series, vols. 31 and
32 (Delhi, 1976, repr. of 1925 ed.), p. 402.
176. Hauer, op. cit., p. 28; Hermanns, op. cit., 1:58.
1 77. Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 40. Harmanns (op. cit.) and others
share this view.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 69
arguments, which I will not reproduce, are impressive.
It seems to be a fact that the Aryan community
proselytized for "conversions" among the tribal groups.
The Mah?bh?rata, which insists that the Vedic rites
were laid down "for the whole world" (Santi Parvan
65), says that the original rshis begat children here and
there, providing fictitious lineages for any group to be
assimilated (Santi Parvan 296). But even if they had
once been Aryan, the Vr?tyas had become non-Aryan,
as their need for readmission shows, and they represent
the official introduction of non^Aryan religious practices
into the Aryan community. That they were people of
religious importance in the non-Aryan milieu, who
brought with them practices or teachings of value to
their Br?hmanical allies, is clearly shown by their
absorption into the Brahman, rather than the s?dra,
caste.
The Vr?tyas introduced a proto-tantric ritual style
into the Aryan community, possibly including the Ur
yoga of the ult?-s?dhana. They made their living as
traveling magician clans specializing in sex, song, and
dance, and there is some cogency (not to say historical
basis) for the claim of the Bauls of Bengal to be their
descendants.178 Various scholars believe that the Five
Ms of tantric practice are basd on the Vr?tya rituals,
which seem to have included sexual intercourse,
alcohol, animal sacrifice, and meat eating.179 Their
snake and tree worship, unknown in the Rg Veda, may
provide a link with the Indus Valley, and it has been
suggested that the Indus statues of dancing girls may
show the prototypes of their ritual hetairai.180
The Atharva Veda describes "the Vr?tya" as a
cosmicized figure, conversant, like the Muni, with the
universe as a whole, and implies ecstatic practices.
Again, the specific association of the Vr?tyas, as later of
the ?jivikas, with singing and dancing should
perhaps be seen in the light of shamanic performances,
where singing and dancing are the primary means to
develop inner heat and attain the ecstatic state
necessary for the out-of-the-body journey.181 The
connection of alcohol use, singing, dancing, and
ecstatic flight is common among North Asian shamans
who in modern times often use alcohol before and in
178. Kshitimohan Sen, Medieval Mysticism of India (Delhi, 1974),
p. 68.
179. E.g., Hauer, op. cit., p. 28; Hermanns, op. cit., 1:60-62.
180. Keith, Religion and Philosophy, p. 18; Bhandarkar, op. cit.,
p. 43.
181. See Karl Meuli, "Scythica," Hermes 70 (1935), pp. 121-76;
Shirokogoroff, op. cit., pp. 326-27.
70 RES 1 SPRING 81
conjunction with the drumming and rhythmic
movements that will induce their ecstatic condition.182
A whole book of the Atharva Veda is devoted to this
movement, which seems to to have influenced the Aryan
community deeply. Scholars have attributed to them both
the magic of the Atharva Veda (and with it many echoes in
the tantras) and the musical settings of the Sama Veda.183
At the same time the Vr?tyas themselves were being
Aryanized (or re-Aryanized) by the familiar procedure of
sublimating sexual practices into allegorized abstractions.
The technique is as old as the Atharva Veda, which
interprets the Vr?tya's hetaira (pumscalT; ancestress of the
Bhairavi, the Sakti, and so on) as his "faith" (sraddh?): by
a rotation of the semantic field, the anti-Vedic is made
Vedic. Presumably those Vr?tyas who were admitted
among the high-caste Aryans lost in time their shamanic
and sexo-yogic orientation; those who remained outside
continued to practice it in the vast undocumented non
Aryan world.
Quite as important as proto-tantrism, in terms of the
history of yoga, is the Atharva Veda's information that
"the Vr?tya" stood upright for a year. The Vedic gods
are presented as perplexed by this activity:
For a whole year he stood erect. The gods said unto
him, "Why standest thou, Vr?tya?" (AV XV.3)
Yet this is typical of the non-Aryan stream of yoga, from
which the Vr?tyas seem to have been among the first to
emerge into documentary history. Remnants of the
practice survive in Jainism, where one of the ?vasyakas,
or essential duties of a monk, is "the stabilization of the
body without the least motion" in "different postures
. . . which benefit the soul and which are difficult to
perform."184 The most common of these positions is
k?y?tsarga, standing motionless for long periods of
time, which is probably what the Vr?tya was doing. It is
also what the tTrthankaras Rishabha and P?rsva were
doing when they became enlightened. It was a
common austerity of the ?jFvikas. And it has tentatively
been identified in the Indus seals. Again the Vedic
literature provides a link beween the Indus Valley and
the ?jlvika-Jain tradition.
It is possible that some forms of meditation arose in part
from the deliberate practice of immobility, which in
sufficient time will progressively immobilize mental
182. E.g., Findeisen, op. cit., p. 121; Shirokogoroff, op. cit.,
p. 306.
183. Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 43, and Chintaharan Chakravarti,
"Antiquity of Tantricism," IHQ VI (1930), p. 122.
184. Chakraborti, op. cit., pp. 368, 437.
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processes also. The roots of this practice may be
speculatively sought in shamanism. The Jain Uttara S?tra
(XXX.6) says, "If a monk remains motionless when lying
down, sitting, or standing upright, this is called abandoning
the body."185 The phrase suggests "leaving the body" as
the shaman is believed to do on his magical journeys,
when his body often remains motionless as if dead or
abandoned. That such activity was a part of the Ur-yoga is
definite, for the Muni of Rg Veda X.136 says:
Exulting in our seerhood, upon the winds we have
ascended.
Of us, you mortals, only our bodies do you behold.
Presumably the Munis's bodies, when their spirits were
in shamanic flight, were "beheld" by "mortals" in a state
like the shaman's cataleptic trance. Radloff says that the
Altaic shaman during his flight remains motionless and
silent and "awakens" upon the return of his spirit as after a
long absence.186 Similarly, according to Shirokogoroff,
when the Tungus shaman departs for the other world his
body falls to the ground and lies insensible till his return.187
The Yukaghir shaman does the same,188 and indeed the
phenomenon is known worldwide.
The "bat-penance" seems to be a vestige of the
shamanic performance of transformation and flight. In Jain
practice it was "equivalent" to an act of flight: the yogin
hung upside down and motionless, then left his body and
flew like a bat to another realm.189 In shamanism in
general the bird (or "flying creature") is the most common
and ?mporant form into which the shaman changes for his
flight to the sky. Feather costumes (which seem to be
present on Indus Valley funereal urns) are considered
necessary equipment among the Tungus shamans.190 And
farther afield, among the Carib shamans, there is a precise
parallel: the young shaman is taught in his initiation how
to turn into a bat, and the education involves hanging and
swinging (as in the "bat-penance") as preparation for flying
to the sky.191 The connection of this activity, in the Pali
suttas, with m?labandh?sana and k?y?tsarga, indicates
again the primitiveness of those practices, which were
common among the ?jfvikas and Jains, and denounced by
the modernizing Buddha.
Eliade derived meditation strictly from the interiorization
of the soma sacrifice among the Vedic priesthood. But this
does not account for the nirguna types of meditation,
which may derive at some remove from shamanically
185. Cited by Chakraborti, ibid., p. 371.
186. Radloff, loc. cit.
1 87. Shirokogoroff, op. cit., p. 306.
188. Jochelson, op. cit., pp. 196-99.
189. Schubring, op. cit., p. 318.
190. Shirokogoroff, op. cit., p. 296.
191. Friedrich Andres, "Die Himmelsreise der caraibischen
Medizinm?nner," Zeitschrift f?r Ethnologie 70 (1938), pp. 331?42.

induced cataleptic states. Eliade's valuable distinction
between shamanic ecstasis and yogic enstasis does not
preclude the development of one from the other. In fact,
the standard techniques (as known today, anyway) for
inducing out-of-the-body experiences are very like
elementary meditation practices.
Other shamanic methods are proto-meditative also. The
Yakut shaman sits on a horsehide facing south and
"dreams" while holding his breath.192 We may compare
the figure of the yogin, seated on a tiger or deer skin,
facing in some prescribed direction, doing pr?n?y?ma to
"restrain and fix" his breath, and meditating by
visualization. The practice of deliberate visualizations is
paralleled in various shamanic contexts by the initiate's
sitting and "trying to see the spirits," which have
previously been described to him by the "father shaman,"
or initiator. It seems that the activity of meditating for
realization of the brahman, once stripped of its ideological
superstructure, is not radically different from the activity of
fasting and holding vigil in solitude for the obtaining of
power visions.
XV
We have traced backward from modern times to the
middle Vedic period a stream of yogic practice that
merges at countless points with fertility ritual and
shamanism. Our documents can take us no farther.193
Between the middle Vedic period and the Indus Valley
culture there is a gap in the evidential chain of nearly a
thousand years. Nevertheless, some degree of continuity
may be presumed throughout the period, as the
persistence of m?labandh?sana shows. Whether the
entire ult?-s?dhana existed in the Indus Valley we still
cannot say. But we have located it in the non-Aryan
realm as early as c. 1000 B.c., clearly opening the
possibility. Passing over the gap, we will return to the
Indus material, and explore its implications more fully.
Sullivan's valuable (if ignored) suggestion that the
person in figure 1 may be a woman can now be
appreciated more fully. He argued that "the head-dress
itself is like that worn by the Great Goddess in her tree
epiphanies." The waistband tassel (if indeed it is that
and not a phallus) he feels is like the ones found on
female figurines and seal representations. "Also,
192. Wenceslas Sieroszewski, Yakuty (St. Petersburg, 1896),
pp. 326-30.
193. I omit extended discussion of the Yatis of the Rg Veda,
whom Chanda included in the lineage of yoga, because so little is
known of them. I will mention, however, that Jacobi thinks that the
"Rules for Yatis" in the Kalpa S?tra were derived from ?jfvika rules?
i.e., that the Yatis may have been proto-AjTvikas. (Jacobi, op. cit.,
1:300, Ihxxxi.)
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 71
waistbands and girdles are found only on the female
figurines, the males always shown nude. Furthermore,
the arm bangles and necklaces worn by the figure are
the jewelry which lavishly adorns the female figure in
Harapp?n art. Finally, the pigtail worn by one of the
other two 'proto-Siva' figures [fig. 4] is the same as that
seen on the tree goddess, and the coif framing the face
on the other figure [fig. 3] is like that on some of the
female figurines. All in all, there seems to be no
positive evidence for the figure's being male, but
considerable suggestion for its being female."194
Although the waistband similarity is not visually very
impressive, I will nevertheless agree with parts of
Sullivan's conclusion as stated in the last quoted
sentence.
Several possibilities follow. First of all, it is possible
that the figure is indeed a woman. Marshall declared it
to be "a highly reasonable supposition" that the Indus
Valley culture was matriarchal,195 and it must not be
forgotten that in historical tantrism "female
shamanesses called bhairavis and yoginls still occupy
an important place."196 Furthermore, the myth of the
dismemberment of the goddess locates three of her four
burial places in and around the Indus Valley area.
But the great weakness in Sullivan's argument is the
claimed analogy between the waistband tassel of the
female figures and the possible phallus of the person in
figure 1. The seal, as mentioned above, shows not only
an upright member which is ambiguous by itself, but
the clear delineation beneath it of two round objects
that reduce the range of the ambiguity considerably,
since there is nothing on the waistband tassels of other
Indus Valley pieces to correspond to them. It seems that
we are presented with a figure whose physiology is
male, but whose apparel is female. And, as we shall
presently see, there is nothing surprising in that.
Briffault has demonstrated with a huge collection of
instances that "the adoption of female dress by male
shamans and priests is a worldwide phenomenon."197
Some Chukchee shamans wear women's clothing and
even marry other men.198 Similar phenomena are found
among the Koryaks and other North Asian shamanic
cultures.199 Certain Tibetan visulization practices that
194. Sullivan, op. cit., pp. 119-20.
195. Marshall, op. cit., 1:51.
196. Chattopadhyaya, Lok?yata, p. 278; and see 232ff.
197. Robert Briffault, The Mothers, abr. ed. (London, 1959),
p. 276; and see unabr. 2nd ed. (London, 1952), vol. 2, pp. 532ff.
198. Waldemar G. Bogoras, The Chukchee, American Museum of
Natural History Memoirs 11 (New York, 1904), p. 448.
199. Findeisen, op. cit., chapter XIII, etc.
72 RES 1 SPRING 81
appear to be vestiges of Bon shamanism involve the
yogin assuming, mentally, the female personality of a
DakinT. Most relevant perhaps, due to the many
connections (which will not be reviewed here) between
Indus Valley and Mesopotamian religions, is the fact
that Akkadian priests of Ishtar wore female attire.
Chattopadhyaya has noted that the tantric term
v?m?c?ra, usually translated "left-hand way," literally
means "the woman practice" and quotes the
?c?rabheda Tantra saying, "The ultimate female force
is to be propitiated by becoming a woman."200 In the
rituals of Durg?, the male worshiper drew closer to the
goddess by thinking of himself as a woman. And the
practice was not purely mental: Ramakrishna, a Durg?
worshiper, wore women's clothing for several years as a
part of his s?dhana.2
It is altogether plausible, in the context of Bronze
Age religion, that the activity that is being worshiped by
serpents on the seals is an attempt by sympathetic
magic to stimulate the sexuality of the earth and hence
her yield. It is not to be wondered at, then, that a male
figure or shaman should wear the hairstyle, jewelry,
and "girdle" of the goddess herself. In fact, it is to be
expected. The female is more powerful in such rituals
than the male.
The v?m?c?ra practice of "becoming a woman" is,
according to some tantric texts, the only true form of
tantrism. In terms of primitive practice in general, it is a
means of acquiring for the male magician the power
that the female expresses by giving birth, and that he
will express by magically manipulating events. A
Sahaji? song of the middle ages is explicit, saying,
"Discard the male (purusa) in thee and become a
woman (pra/crt/)."202 We might recall again that the
?jTvika initiation rite exhibits the structure of "rebirth
from the fathers," that is, of transferring to the males,
through initiation, the fertitity power of the females.203
200. Chattopadhyaya, Lok?yata, p. 278.
201. Nioradze speculates that among circumpolar peoples the
first shamans were women, the occupation being transferred
subsequently to males through an intermediate stage of transvestitism.
(Georg Nioradze, Der Schamanismus bei den sibirischen V?lkern
[Stuttgart, 1925], pp. 51 ff.) Chattopadhaya (op. cit., p. 285) speculates
similarly that tantric practice was originally the sphere of women
alone.
202. Chattopadhyaya, Lok?yata, p. 284.
203. The priests of Cy be le gelded themselves, dressed in women's
style, and were called "females" (Grant Showerman, The Great
Mother of the Gods [Chicago, 1969], pp. 16-18). The retraction of
the male genitals which Woodroffe testified to was a part of
yonimudr?, "vagina-position."
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Marshall found at Mohenjo-daro a seal "on which a
nude female figure is depicted upside down with legs
apart and with a plant issuing from her womb."204 The
posture of this female is in several ways like the
m?labandh?sana on the seals. Her hands are on her
knees, and her knees are extended all the way to the
sides, in what may have been conventionalized as a
birth-giving posture. It is a variation of the "displayed
female" motif that is first encounered at ?atal Huyuk in
Anatolia some three thousand years earlier, and that is
common in Indian tribal art.205 It is possible, in other
words, that some elements of the Indus Valley proto
yogin's posture as well as of his garb may have derived
from the program of incorporating the female principle.
The later Ardhan?n icons, which show the male and
female in one body, and which belong to the tantric
circle, may derive at some remove from this practice.
Marshall found a bearded figure with breasts at Taxila,
and another at Vaisali was ithyphallic too.206
Weare approaching a somewhat speculative
synthesis of the various sexo-ritual activities that are
implied in figure 1. There are tensions within it that
arise from the dual role of sexuality in agricultural
magic. Either an abundant outer expression of sex, or
an intense inner accumulation of its unspent energy,
creates "power." In modern India both approaches
have been found in tribal contexts: on the one hand,
couples copulating in the newly plowed fields in the
hope that the earth's fertility will be increased by
analogy or contagion; on the other hand, couples
refraining from sex at planting time, in the belief that if
they accumulate sexual energy inwardly, the excess will
overflow, or can be ritually transferred, to the
environment.207 It is possible that the practice of sexual
intercourse with seminal retention (or reclaiming) arose
from a combination of these two purposes. The figure
on the Indus Valley seals may represent a complex
activity of this type. That is, he may be: (1) dressing like
a woman to establish (through analogy) direct contact
with, or power over, the earth's fertility; (2) maintaining
his penis erect, through m?labandha, to generate heat
power; and (3) refusing to ejaculate in order to
204. Marshall, op. cit., 1:52.
205. See, e.g., James Mellaart, Earliest Civilizations of the Near
East (New York, 1965), ill. 83; Mookerjee, op. cit., pis. XXXIV and
XXXVII.
206. Jash, op. cit., pp. 154-55.
207. Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, Reflections On the Tantras
(Delhi, 1978), p. 20.

accumulate and retain that power for use in ritual
magic.208
XVI
"Tantrika usages," as A. S. Geden wrote,209" . . .
belong to a type of thought that is primitive, and among
primitive peoples varies little in the course of
centuries." Something similar could, in my opinion, be
said of yogic practices in general, though not without
exception. So persistently does the yogic tradition retain
elements (or vestiges) of its primitive past that in
addition to shamanic and agricultural magic, totemic
magic may be seen behind it. An obvious case is the
custom of the "beast-vow," practiced by a number of
the sects within the tantric circle.
The P?supata, for example, spent a part of each day
bellowing like a bull and in general trying to transform
himself into a bull. These practices are presumed to
antedate not only the Saiva philosophy, but even the
connection of the bull with Siva.210 They have a
clearcut function in sympathetic magic for the increase
of animal fertility, as is indicated by the JaiminTya
Br?hmana, which says that "the enactor of the bull-vow
should have sexual congress in defiance of all human
laws, that is, indiscriminately with forbidden members
of his family as well as with others."211 Such a
suspension of mating taboos is a common part of
fertility magic.
Buddhist texts mention bovine ascetics who wore
tails and horns and brayed like bulls.212 The Indus
Valley figures of thehanthropic males with horns and
tails may have represented persons who had taken such
a vow. Indeed, the horned person in figure 1 may have
done so. Vows to live like a dog, an elephant, a horse,
a cow, a snake, and others, are also known from
Buddhist literature.213
The practice would seem to connect to the very ancient
substrate of "primitive magic," as shamans all over the
208. This is not presented as a dogmatic interpretation, but
exempli gratia, to show the kind of account that might emerge if fuller
evidence were available, and if, in light of that evidence, the
primitivist hypothesis still held up.
209. ERE xii.192.
210. See Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, 5:130.
211. Cited by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, "Cynics and P?'supatas,"
HThR LV(1962), p. 295.
212. Majhima Nik?ya 1.387ff; Dhammasangani 261.
213. The Mah?nidessa and Cullaniddesa, cited by Bhagat, op.
cit., p. 145. Chattopadhyaya, Lok?yata, ch. 2, adds much of interest
on the subject.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 73
world are known to employ beast imitations in their
performances. The Tungus shaman acts and speaks like a
wolf.214 In the Altaic horse sacrifice, the shaman
"becomes" the horse, whinnies and rears when the latter is
captured, and so forth. Later in his performance, as each of
the animal spirits answers his summons, he "becomes" it,
moving like a bird and uttering bird cries, and so on.215
Czaplicka notes that the shaman's animal protector is "of
one blood and flesh" with the shaman himself. "The
shaman may in a state of ecstasy himself embody this
animal ancestor."216 Shamans most frequently appear as
bulls, and Yakut shamans may fight as bulls.217
In fact, the yogic ?sanas, most of which have animal
names, may have originated in shamanic-totemic beast
imitation practices. (Consider the Goraksa Sataka's claim
that "There are as many postures [?sanas] as there are
species of living begins" [8].) Orgininally, it seems, the
?sanas worked to some extent by sympathetic magic. The
Gheranda Samhit? (II.42-3), for example, says that by
acting like a serpent, that is, adopting the serpent pose,
you will awaken the serpent power. Resonances of very
ancient magic cling round the statement. In particular,
beast imitation is closely associated with utkat?sana, since
in that position the "frog motion" was performed. Ancient
practitioners would stay in this position for long periods of
time, moving, when necessary, like a frog, by hopping. The
whole practice may have been a beast imitation. Swami
Muktananda indicates that the frog motion is still a part of
siddha yoga practice, and at times comes upon the yogin
unexpectedly, as may a shaman's animal ally: "Sometimes
I would zigzag along the ground like a snake, sometimes
hop like a frog."218
Shamanic beast imitation of course involved not only
the wearing of horns, and so on, and the adoption of
animal motions, but also the use of animal voices.
Samoyed shamans speak during their performances in a
variety of bird and animal voices, as do the Yukaghir and
the Koryak.219 The Yakut shaman is uncontrollably
"possessed" by a variety of bird and animal voices during
his seances.220 Similarly, Swami Muktananda relates that
during his kundalinT practice he was at one time possessed
by the voice of a lion. "I began to roar like a lion. My
214. Shirokogoroff, op. cit., p. 309.
215. Radloff, loc. cit.
216. Czaplicka, op. cit., p. 140.
217. Findeisen, op. cit., pp. 30ff.; Friedrich and Buddruss, op. cit.,
p. 212.
218. Muktananda, op. cit., pp. 101, 104. The frog motion may be
very old indeed: Sumerian amulets showing a posture very close to
utkat?sana occur in both frog and human forms. See Beatrice Laura
Goff, Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia (New Haven, 1963),
figures 436, 440.
219. Jochelson, op. cit., p. 197; The Koryak, American Museum
of Natural History, Memoirs 10 (New York, 1905-8).
220. Sieroszewski, loc. cit.
74 RES 1 SPRING 81
tongue came right out of my mouth. I went on roaring for
forty-five minutes, getting more and more frightened." "I
roared so much that the cows nearly broke their ropes and
ran helter-skelter, dogs barked madly, and people rushed
to my hut."221 Swami Tirtha even reckons this
phenomenon among the "signs of an awakened
kundalini": "when . . . your speech begins to utter sounds
like those of animals, birds and frogs or of a lion or like
those of jackals, dogs, tigers, fear-inspiring and not pleasing
to hear, understand that the great goddess KundalinT has
come into action." 222
The fact that such experiences are most common during
the "initiatory" phase of hatha yoga may be a vestige of
the shamanic initiation in which the novice was first taught
to summon, and "become," his various animal allies.
Indeed, as Hermanns has suggested, the tradition of guru
initiation in hatha and kundalinT yoga may revert to the
initiation of the would-be shaman by the "father
shaman."223
XVII
Another feature of the historical tanric circle that
may with some certainty be traced to an age at least as
early as the Indus culture is the connection of
goddesses, human sacrifice, and siddhis. Here there are
signs of continuity over enormous ages. The Indus
Valley seal that shows on one side a goddess with a
plant growing from her vagina seems to show on the
other side a human sacrifice. The two sides may be
presumed to have a (roughly "causal") relationship.
This activity persisted in historical times in the non
Aryan traditions. The historical goddesses known as the
Seven Mothers (Sapta M?trk?) were worshiped with
regular human sacrifice.224 Virtually all the cults that are
involved in the non-Aryan "substrate" worshiped them
atone time or another, including P?supatas, K?palikas
Aghoris, ?jTvikas, and even Jains. The tradition was in
fact resolutely non-Aryan: the K?lik? Pur?na, which
gives instructions for human sacrifice to the goddess
with the lolling tongue, permits the practice only to
s?dras.
This tradition has proved remarkedly persistent. A news
item from Reuters in 1980 reported "the ritual murder of
221. Muktananda, op. cit., pp. 95-96, 103-4.
222. In White, op. cit., p. 96. For a complementary approach to
the totemic background of tantrism see Alex Wayman, "Totemic
Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantras," History of Religions 1 (1961),
pp. 81-94.
223. Hermanns, op. cit., 1:53.
224. Chanda connects them, tenuously, with the seven sprout
headed figures on the famous Tree Goddess seal.
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three children by a Hindu mystic"; "a shaggy haired [cf.
kesin] Yogi who lived in a cemetery" "slit the throats of
his victims and offered their blood to a Hindu goddess
during the full moon in order to acquire supernatural
powers."225 The belief that siddhis can be attained through
such methods was present already in the K?p?lika
tradition, which taught that an offering of human flesh
obtains as reward the ability to fly.226
Such rites, in the context of aricultural magic, are of
course related to the fertility of the fields. "The meriah of
the Khonds was strangled, then cut into pieces, which
were buried in the fields to promote fertility."227 It is very
revealing that the males who volunteered for sacrifice
claimed that the goddess had called them to be her
spouses, and were in the interim "treated as privileged
characters and could do whatever they desired. Every
woman was at their command."228 The sacrificial victim, as
in Frazer's Dying Cod, was becoming the god himself and
accordingly was treated as if he had the god's powers.
That such practices are found among specifically yogic
sects is not an accident, but a sign of continuity. The fact
that "every woman was at their command" echoes the
siddhi promised by Svatmarama of having all women
available as sex partners. It is no more nor less than the
power of the phallic god that the siddha yogin, like the
sacrificial volunteer, aspires to; the eight siddhis of the
yogic tradition, which arise with the obtaining of "god
body," again echo the powers attributed to the designated
"god"-victim.
Closely related is the practice of self-mutilation for
magical benefits, which is attested in shamanic,
agricultural, and non-Aryan yogic contexts. In Asian
shamanism it is related to the dismemberment initiation, as
well as to the claim of invulnerability. The Tungus
shamans cut themselves while in ecstatic states, as do the
Samoyeds.229 The Koryak shows a later stage, by
pretending to cut himself.230 Tibetan shamans "were
considered capable of cutting open their own bellies and
taking out the entrails."231
The practice survives in agricultural magic, though
redefined for its new horizon: not dismemberment
initiation but fertility sacrifice is intimated. The priests of
Cybele not only emasculated themselves (as an element of
"female imitation") but also, in the midst of frenzied
225. Los Angeles Times, 10 December 1980, section 1-A, p. 9.
226. Jash, op. cit., p. 63.
227. Eliade, Yoga, p. 306.
228. Briggs, op. cit., p. 168.
229. Shirokogoroff, op. cit., p. 364; V. M. Michaelowski,
"Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia, Being the Second Part of
Shamanstro," journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24 (1894),
p. 66.
230. Jochelson, The Koryak, p. 51.
231. Sierksma, op. cit., p. 73.

dancing (like shamans), would cut themselves and offer the
blood to their goddess. The S?kta devotee in India did the
same, being informed by the K?lik? Pur?na that his
goddess "becomes satisfied for one thousand years by the
offering of one's own blood and . . . fulfills all desires in
six months' time when one offers her a small piece of flesh
close to his heart."232 Br?hmans are forbidden to
participate in these rites also, not only by the Br?hmanical
establishment, but by the texts of the tantric circle.
The ancient affiliation of the Jains with these
semiprimitive sects is shown by the fact that, despite
their famous obsession with ahimsa, they also engaged
in these rites, cutting off pieces of their own flesh and
throwing them into a fire233 (echoing the "cooking" of
the dismembered body of the shaman). Self-mutilation
and human sacrifice were combined in the incredible
act of offering one's own head; Frazer reports a special
two-handled knife for the purpose.234 Within the
horizon of Neolithic religion such practice appear to
have been associated with the motif of "king" sacrifice,
as the Kum?ri Tantra remembers when it offers kingship
to one who gives blood from his own body.235
XVIII
We have touched repeatedly on the traditional
scholars' dichotomy between the Aryran and non-Aryan
aspects of Indian religion. Rahurkar has summed it up
in his distinction between the Vedic Aryan rshis who
"sponsored the Indra-cult, recited prayers and
performed homa," and the pre-Aryran ascetic munis
who "practised yoga austerities, and orgiastic rites . . .
[and] glorified [the] life of renunciation, isolation and
wandering mendicancy."236 In terms of yoga, this
dichotomy attributes the k?ya-s?dhana to the pre-Aryan
stratum, and the citta-s?dhana in its various mentalist
forms to the Aryan.
Various scholars have questioned this dichotomy.
Staal, for example, ridicules the "prejudice that Yoga is
of Dravidian origin" (though he then begs the question
by noting that the Indus Valley culture may not have
232. Pushpendra Kumar, Sakti Cult in Ancient India (Benares,
1974), p. 206; and see Lorenzen, op. cit., pp. 17, 76.
233. Kalipada Mitra, "Magic and Miracle in Jaina Literature,"
IHQ XV (1930), p. 108.
234. Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, part III: The
Dying God (New York, 1935), p. 54.
235. Kumar, op. cit., pp. 206-7.
236. V. G. Rahurkar, The Seers of the Rigveda (Poona, 1964),
p. xv.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 75
been Dravidian).237 But his (or anyone's) denial that the
Indus Valley material shows signs of yoga must be
based on a denial that the person in figures 1 through 4
is portrayed in a yogic ?sana. I hope I have shown that
this denial is unreasonable. Not only is the posture an
?sana, but it is an ?sana that brings with it a clearly
identifiable yogic context that fits harmoniously into the
Bronze Age milieu of the seals. The origins of yoga
cannot possibly be separated from the Indus Valley
material, and unless a radical redating of the Vedic
literature should occur,238 the Indo-Aryans cannot have
had much to do with its physical aspect, though they
might have contributed much of the spiritualist
superstructure with which the physical technology has
become known to the world.
Eliade also tries to mitigate this dichotomy, by
asserting that "the theory and practice of tapas is
clearly documented in the Rg Veda."239 But when citing
instances he does not distinguish between books 1
through 9 of the Rg Veda on the one hand and book 10
on the other. The word tapas is never used in books 1
through 9 with the meaning of ascetic or creative heat,
yet it is used in both those ways in book 10, which
"represents a definitely later stratum of composition"
than books 1 through 9.240 Book 10 belongs, in fact, to
the same period as the Atharva Veda, when pre-Aryan
practices were being adopted and rationalized by the
Aryan community. It would seem, then, that ascetic
tapas was not indigenous to the Aryan population but
entered it from outside at a time after the composition
of Rg Veda 1 through 9.241 We have seen abundant
evidence that in the middle Vedic period aboriginal
ascetics began to influence the Aryan community and
to be admitted more and more freely to it. In fact, a
specific series of events seems to have taken place that
would have been very likely to have the effect of
opening Aryan culture to the aboriginal ecstatic
practices at that time.
237. Staal, op. cit., p. 76.
238. As suggested, for example, by Sastri, op. cit., 11:147.
239. Eliade, yoga, pp. 105-6.
240. A. A. MacDonell, History of Sanskrit Literature (Delhi, 1958),
p. 45.
241. Cf. J. Van Troy, "The Origin of Asceticism and of the
Asrama Dharma," Bharati VIII, pt. 1, pp. 6-10: "Tapas was a non
Rigvedic practice." "The word tapas came to be used for a practice
already existing with all its basic characteristics before it was assumed
in Rigvedic society." And see Geden in ERE II.88. David M. Knipe (In
the Image of Fire [Delhi, 1975]) defends Eliade's position with the
Dumezilian argument that the documents of the priestly class would
not show attitudes and customs from the producing class that was
involved with agriculture and breeding. The Atharva Veda he regards
 76 RES 1 SPRING 81
Wasson and others have demonstrated rather
convincingly that the Vedic priesthood used the
amanita muscaria mushroom as a stimulant to visionary
feeling and religious re-identification.242
If he is correct, then it seems very unlikely that true
shaman craft still survived among the Indo-Aryans. At
least in Eliade's judgment, when a shamanic tradition
becomes dependent on drug use, it is in a decadence
and has already lost the ecstasy-generating craft which,
for example, the Muni still had.243 And the hymns of Rg
Veda 1 to 9 are clearly dependent on soma for
visionary feeling and theological certainty:
We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have
attained the light, the gods discoverd. (RV Vlll.48.3)244
Wasson has speculated that the use of this
uncultivable mushroom began during a northerly
migration from the Indo-European homeland into the
circumpolar zone of shamanism, which preceded the
southerly migration leading to India. When distance
from the original mushroom fields, and the difficulty of
finding new sources, became overwhelming,
nonpsychotropic substitutes, or placebos, were
introduced into the ritual. The hypothesis has received
impressive linguistic confirmation.245
When, finally, the ecstatic mushroom experience was
completely lost, the Vedic religion was deeply shaken.
An emptiness had arisen at its core?and into this
as a document of the vai'sya caste, not involving input from the non
Aryan s?dras (pp. 102ff.). This alternate model is of course possible,
and it is well to have it articulated. But some problems in it are: (1)
Why does Rg Veda 10 not show the priestly purity of 1-9? It is easy
to propose a reason why the Brahmans admitted, in Rg Veda 10, non
Aryan contents, less easy to show why they would suddenly admit
vai'sya contents. (2) Why should ascetic heat appear in producer
documents rather than priestly documents? (3) The tantras that closely
echo Atharvan magic are later associated not with the vai'sya but the
non-Aryan s?dra caste. (4) This model tacitly excludes any significant
non-Aryan influence on the middle Vedic literature, although cultural
mixing is almost certain to have gone on in this period of extensive
intermarriage. (5) To account for the early development of ascetic
practices that obviously predate their appearance in the Vedic
literature, Knipe is forced to "keep in mind" the possibility of a fourth
(i.e., outside Dumezilian tripartition) group of "specialists in ecstasy"
(p.10); but why should this fourth group not have been non-Aryan?
242. R. Gordon Wasson, Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality
(New York, n.d.); "Soma Brought Up-to-Date." JAOS 99 (1970),
pp. 100-5.
243. Eliade, Yoga, pp. 338-39.
244. Trans, by Ralph T. H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigveda,
2 vols. (Benares, 1896).
245. See Wasson, "Soma Brought Up-to-Date."
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emptiness flowed the ecstatic practices of the
surrounding tribal communities. At this stage the non
Aryan ecstatics, with their mingled lore of shamanic
technique and fertility magic, became increasingly
impressive to the Aryans; segments of the priesthood
made specific alliances with them and began to
introduce them into the Aryan community, forming in
time a new religious establishment whose expression is
the middle Vedic literature.
This view is in line with Wasson's conjectural dating of
the end of the use of amanita muscaria. Hymns 85 to 191
of book 10, those that show the emergence of pantheistic
speculation and a turning toward a yogic sensibility, seem,
according to Wasson, to have been written "when the
original Soma had already fallen into disuse, when only
priests still remembered what it was, and when substitutes
were currently accepted as the genuine article."246 The
next stratum of Vedic literature, the Br?hmanas, talks a
great deal about substitutes for original soma and also, of
course, contains the seeds of the yogic tradition. The
Upanisads in turn know nothing of the original soma, and
emphasize substitute practices such as meditation and
elements of k?ya-s?dhana.
Wasson speculates that "questions of supply, which
must always have been awkward, became impossible
when the Indo-Aryans spread out over all of India."247 The
spread over the Gangetic plain and the Deccan, usually
dated to the midle Vedic period, would have been
sufficient to remove many Aryan communities from access
to the high places (over 8,000 feet) where alone the
mushroom can be found. It is finally possible that the
Upanisadic movement, and the large-scale defections to
non-Aryanism that Jainism and Buddhism represented, can
be seen to some extent as consequences of the loss of the
mushroom experience that was the warrant of legitimacy at
the heart of the Vedic religion.248
246. Wasson, 5oma, p. 14.
247. Ibid., p. 69.
248. A more radical version of this position is suggested by
Wasson's collaborator, O'Flaherty, that "the whole of Indian mystical
practice from the Upanishads through the more mechanical methods
of yoga is merely an attempt to recapture the vision granted by the
Soma plant" (Soma, p. 95). Her statement, however, takes insufficient
notice of the likelihood that "the more mechanical methods of yoga"
existed much earlier in India than their adoption by the Aryans; a
revision that would be acceptable on this count would read "The
adoption by the Aryans of mystical practice, etc." It might be
mentioned that the apparent presence of Akkadian words In the
Atharva Veda suggests a wave of Near Eastern influence that, along
with Indian "tribal" input, may have been a shaping force on the
middle Vedic religion. Various Near Eastern hymns of the period
parallel the macranthropy of the Purusas?kta, for example. The whole
relation of Indian religion to the ancient Near East is a subject I am
dealing with elsewhere.

XIX
The decision between the primitivist and the
scientific hypotheses has long pivoted on the question
whether the Indus seals really show yoga, which I hope
to have settled. If this paper had done no more than
clearly and solidly identify the posture on the seals as a
yogic ?sana, it would already have closed the door on
any exclusivist version of the scientific model.
Believing that the ?sana on the seals necessitates the
primitivist hypothesis more clearly than has been
realized before, I have attempted to work it out in some
detail (albeit somewhat exempli gratia), constructing an
Ur-yoga complex consisting of generation of inner heat,
female imitation, sexual magic in the service of a
variety of goals, shamanic journey, totemic ritual, and
other elements.
The "stratigraphie analysis" that I have offered for
yoga is a reflection of the stratification of different
cultural-psychological layers in Indian religions in
general:249 a composite primitive stratum of shamanic
magic, totemic magic, and agricultural magic; possible
fresh shamanic input from Central Asia at about the end
of the second millennium b.c. (not to mention other
249. On the stratification of Indian religion see, e.g., j. Gonda,
Die Religionen Indiens, vol. 1 : Veda and altern Hinduismus (Stuttgart,
1960), p. 342; Hermanns, op. cit., 1:51-52.
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McEvilley: An archaeology of yoga 77
possible outside influences); an overlay of Vedic
ritualism in the middle Vedic period; and a general
redefinition under the influence of idealist philosophy
in the following periods. It must be emphasized that
this mixing of elements cannot be limited by a purely
chronological scheme; the characteristic of "uneven
development," which may be more pronounced in
India than anywhere else in the world, has allowed this
interplay of elements from various stages of religious
history to continue to renew itself down to modern
times.
At the same time, it is clear that the primitivist
hypothesis cannot get us all the way to the yoga of
Pata?jali. His map of the stages of sam?dhi no doubt
results from deliberate, "scientific" work in the area of
meditation. For Pata?jali, we need a composite model,
including the primitive root, the influence of idealist
philosophies, and a long period of experimental
investigation into meditation.
The model that I have presented may seem to
devotees of yoga to be offensively reductionist. But I
have not questioned the efficacy of yogic practices to
induce unusual physiological and psychological states,
for whatever purpose. It is the axiological superstructure
that has been reduced, in the sense that it has been
shown to have no original, and hence no essential,
relationship to the practices that it describes.