Post 30:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This is a balkanic statue from 4500 bC in LOTUS yoga position:
http://images.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=ht...D%26sa%3DN
http://jyee1.netian.com/crete-heramuseum...dess-l.jpg <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(Yoga is a Hindu concept and a Samskritam term, and that's how I will refer to it here)
The Lotus position is called Padmaasana (Padma is Samskritam for lotus). The statues whose pictures you have posted are not doing the Padmaasana. Here's a picture of the Padmaasana: http://holisticonline.com/Yoga/hol_yoga_pos_lotus.htm
Padmaasana is what Shiva does when he performs Tapas (it's also what rishis, sannyasis generally do when doing tapas). There's a world of difference between what the statue is doing and the Padmaasana.
Or I suppose you might have meant that the statues are in the much more general and simpler Siddhaasana position - http://holisticonline.com/Yoga/hol_yoga_...hasana.htm However, on closer observation I can't completely agree with that either. In the correct position, palms tend to face upwards in this posture, not inwards as in the case of the statues (although the statue of Goddess Hera in Crete shows her holding her hands low enough, the palms still seem to be facing inwards). Yoga positions are very particular. Since the feet are also missing in both statues, there's no way to tell whether either statue would have had their feet in the correct Siddhaasana way even if their hands had been acceptable.
And even if the feet were present and correctly placed, the Siddhaasana is too generic a position: it doesn't mean it's yoga that the statues represent. For an example of its genericness, the position of the legs in the Romanian statues is only the second most common sitting position of Indians when we sit on the ground. In small Indian stores where they make dosais (something like pancakes) or fix bicycles, Indians can often been seen with their legs folded in either the Sukaasana or Siddhaasana. That doesn't mean they're doing Yoga. And as I've seen on tv, Siddhaasana-like position is also a very common sitting position in many traditional cultures around the world - but again, that doesn't make it yoga. One of our Hindu Goddess forms is famous for being presented in this sitting position (her feet are very correct for Siddhaasana though, but her hands are not in the required position so it's not the complete Siddhaasana).
<b>Even had you found photos of circa 4000bce statues in <i>correct</i> Yoga positions, I'd have posed the following:</b>
(1) Why is it a requirement that ancient Indians <i>should</i> have made statues of people doing Yoga? Should all ancient people have thought of capturing all their religious practises, culture and lifestyles in statues so that future generations can have evidence that their ancestors invented them?
What if there was merely no need for ancient Indians to have made statues of any yoga position at the time?
Even today, it's not a common passtime. It is more common for Yoga practitioners in western countries to release dvds and photos of yoga instruction than it is for us Indians to do so. In India, it is still the norm for people to learn from experts in yoga, although there are now not a few schools which have come up in the last centuries that teach it as well.
Why must ancient Indians have been preoccupied with making yoga statues, especially in times when one could actually see rishis, sannyasins, and other practitioners quite often? Yoga, never being an art like dancing was, was considered a science (Hindu philosophical, religious) and therefore perhaps less likely to have been inspiration for statues.
(2) Even if you argue that Indians should have made statues of the more basic yogic postures, since Romanians were able to do generic sitting positions, I have the following arguments:
- It is a fact in archaeology that "Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence". It's a phrase AIT people kept parroting for a long time whenever archaeology showed no signs of an Aryan Invasion or migration or influx even (genetics more conclusively supported the archaeological record here). The phrase is no less apt here.
Therefore, just because no earlier statues in India have been unearthed as yet, does not mean we don't have them. No one has searched every nook and cranny of India's historical layers.
- Suppose India introduced Yoga into countries to the west of India (quite a natural assumption, by the way) as has been the case with countries to the east. Yoga being familiar in India, would have been a common sight and everyone would know the basic positions. Yoga being yet unknown in these western countries, Indian visitors might perhaps have explained the precise positions and then described them to the local populace who then made statues of the descriptions to serve as a reminder of how exactly to position oneself.
It would make more sense that statues would be made of a non-art form like Yoga in countries where it was an unknown practice, than in India, where it has been well-known and one could easily have seen it performed everyday.
Or another scenario: perhaps one small wave of Indian immigrants, say the Jats, settled in ancient Romania and made statues (for future generations perhaps) of their Indian traditions which they could no longer see performed in their new environment.
If it has not been yet investigated whether the statues might emanate from outside Romania, consider even the case of them being exported from the Indian subcontinent to the west as keepsakes or souvenirs or methods of instruction.
Who is to say none of the above is true? Archaeology might show that the statues were not imported to Romania, but they cannot show that immigrant settlers did not create them or Indian visitors did not have them described to the ancient Romanians who then sculpted them. This is exactly the limitation with the more precise sciences dealing with the past: they cannot really reconstruct history to say what happened and how - they can only say what the end result was.
There's no way to be exactly sure that things happened in any particular way. All that archaeology can tell us is that at (a) some time (b) some culture existed that (c ) either was imported or was indigenous and part of a continuous local culture. However, there can still be influences by or inspiration taken from neighbouring cultures. There can be a host of other explanations.
But consider that Yoga is a known Hindu tradition for thousands of years, one whose purpose, development, and philosophy are well-documented in India. You have only the statues, not even certain in its depiction of any yogic posture.
(3) Yoga is a Samskritam term for a <b>Hindu religious concept</b>. (Buddhism eventually also inherited it. Though according to tradition Buddha tried and abandoned yoga, the early Buddhists in India were of the brahmana profession, and so were already trained for the most part in Yoga and didn't quit practising it.)
Yoga is a practise that spans many fields, not limited to physical exercise only. The most commonly known forms of Yoga in the west are the physical ones, which most there tend to think is the only form of Yoga. This form is what looks like physical exercise and has many, many positions (only a few of which are the various meditative/Tapas-like positions) and many, many movements.
Buddhist practitioners in the west know of Meditation (also another Hindu Yogic practise inherited by Buddhism). This is what I think is called Hatha Yoga - others please correct me on this, it's been a while since I read of the different forms of Yoga. In English, the Gita describes this as Meditation and/or Concentration (one of these is Hatha Yoga and the other is some other form of Yoga). Then there is Karma Yoga, which is the yoga of action where one performs one's prescribed duty with a certain state of mind. There's also Chakra-based yoga which might be a subset of Tapas (concentration). There might possibly be more forms of Yoga, but I can't remember.
However, <b>Yoga is not just the outward physical practises</b> (Karma Yoga wouldn't be registered as Yoga then). Instead, the practise always involves developing a particular mental state, sometimes requires mantras (as in doing tapas and in some forms of meditation), is often accompanied by breathing practices (in tapas, meditation, sandhya, physical yoga, chakra-based yoga), and involves renunciation of the fruits of one's action (the basic requirement of Karma Yoga). Yoga is a Hindu philosophical system - the lessons on the physical aspects of these forms of Yoga are always accompanied by the teacher imparting an even more important means to develop a mental state that will allow the spirit to evolve. Likewise, the outward physical positions allow one to get the quiteness of mind and develop the frame of mind that will help in achieving the spiritual state.
But to do this Yoga (the real Yoga) requires self-discipline. That is why there are 8 basic requirements to self-harmony and self-control (they collectively have a name which I've forgotten, not being a yoga practitioner) all of which need to be satisfied if one is to practise yoga successfully and lead the life of a yogi. Generally, one <i>starts</i> on yoga when one has satisfied at least a first few of these requirements, after which one has to practise <i>all</i> of them.
All of these religious and philosophical aspects are integral to real Yoga (which is Hindu), whose final aim is nothing less than becoming one with Brahman. It is the means by which the body and the mind are made conducive to the spiritual search and realisation of Brahman. Yoga (all its forms) is one of the many means by which a creature can transcend this world and obtain Moksha.
One final illustration on what is and isn't Yoga. When I was little, I was highly active and invented all sorts of movements and positions and gymnastics. Having grown up outside of India, I knew nothing of Yoga and there was none in my immediate family who was knowledgeable about it either. When I returned to India for a while, I got a booklet on Yoga from a friend. In it, I discovered no less than 12 positions and movements - 5 of which were quite complex movements and only 3 of which were simple positions (like Savaasana) - that matched exactly what I had loved to do since I'd been a toddler.
In a similar manner, when I watched my first Olympics I'd noticed that the people doing the acrobatics did stuff I myself had "invented" with no external influence: standing on my hands, somersaults, backflips and cartwheels. Whether that means I reinvented gymnastics or not, I certainly didn't re-invent yoga. With respect to the yoga-moves: I had just latched onto natural positions and movements that I felt were comfortable and interesting to do when I was a bored child. It is possible to independently come up with a few of them, because the external forms of yoga exercises are merely natural.
However, it was not Yoga that I had been doing, not only because it was incomplete (only 12 of the many Yoga exercises) and lacked the breathing, it was also not coupled with the mental training and spiritual teachings that are integral to what constitutes Yoga. In short, even if someone had independently performed what looks outwardly like a few "yoga" moves in 50,000bce or 100,000bce or even today (of which statues might have been made), that doesn't make it Yoga.
In Hinduism, those simple physical positions that anyone can invent, imitate and practise, do not represent merely physical positions in Yoga. In Yoga, they are part of an integrated religious lifestyle that had been extensively developed, described, taught and eventually written down by our ancestors. <b>So even if you have statues that <i>looked</i> like they were in some yoga-like positions:</b>
(1) they do not cover all Yogic positions
(2) the statues do not show any Yoga movements which are also an integral part of physical yoga (besides which all movements and positions are connected with particular breathing which statues can neither confirm nor deny)
(3) physical yoga is merely one of many forms of yoga
(4) in Yoga, the outward physical practises are combined with the (at least) as important internal teachings (mental training and spiritual realision), which are integral to yoga and without which it does not qualify as such. Yoga without the mental and spiritual practises is not yoga - it is merely physical exercise, some parts of which anyone can invent evidently
(5) where are the philosophical treatises in Romania describing the positions of these statues in the context of complete Yoga (mental, spiritual as well as physical).
(6) India has an ancient tradition of developing and teaching Yoga (not just the physical exercise). You have merely statues that don't even confirm a basic yogic posture.
You might still think the statue is proof of the ancient Romanians having known about Yoga. I found them merely proof of ancient sculpture showing a generic, common sitting position. They're no more proof of Yoga than an ancient Romanian's possible observation of an apple falling might lead us to surmise that he too, like Newton, immediately grasped the concept of gravity.
<b>For proving that ancient Romanians knew or even <i>invented</i> Yoga, you require</b> more than statues to prove your point (besides showing that it was indeed Yoga):
(1) Need to prove that they had developed the philosophical aspects of it and had reasoned as to why it was beneficial for one's spirit as well as for training the mind and body to come under spiritual control.
(2) Where's your literature showing or describing this?
(3) Then you need to disprove that the ancient Hindus of India had developed all these aspects relating to Yoga along with the physical postures themselves. Prove (not speculate) that these Hindu teachings were imported - from Romania in your case.
(4) Show that the Romanians visited India and imparted the knowledge of Yoga (all aspects) to us. Of course, again, you need to show the prerequisie and (1) first: that the Romanians knew actual Yoga positions and besides knew all aspects of it. I'm basically asking you to give conclusive evidence of the RIT: the Romanian Invasion/Migration/Benevolent teacher-tourist theory. Genetics, archaeology, anthropology, philology. Hey, why not add linguistics into the equation ("...therefore proves that the word Yoga is from the language spokem by the ancient Romanians, not Samskritam. As are such words as the various -aasanas). Yes don't forget linguistics - the Indologists never do.
We do not need to give any proofs such as the above for ourselves: our living Yoga tradition and surviving literature shows that it has been a Hindu practise since very ancient times. Besides, Yoga is a Samskritam word, the practise is mentioned throughout our epics (and even elaborated on by the Gita), further developed by Patanjali, known as far as the Afghan portion of ancient India and no doubt exerted its influence further west, inherited by Buddhism, exported to the East. Far and wide in India, one may see Yogis practising - people who have never seen a country beyond our land but know all aspects of Yoga.
http://images.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=ht...D%26sa%3DN
http://jyee1.netian.com/crete-heramuseum...dess-l.jpg <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(Yoga is a Hindu concept and a Samskritam term, and that's how I will refer to it here)
The Lotus position is called Padmaasana (Padma is Samskritam for lotus). The statues whose pictures you have posted are not doing the Padmaasana. Here's a picture of the Padmaasana: http://holisticonline.com/Yoga/hol_yoga_pos_lotus.htm
Padmaasana is what Shiva does when he performs Tapas (it's also what rishis, sannyasis generally do when doing tapas). There's a world of difference between what the statue is doing and the Padmaasana.
Or I suppose you might have meant that the statues are in the much more general and simpler Siddhaasana position - http://holisticonline.com/Yoga/hol_yoga_...hasana.htm However, on closer observation I can't completely agree with that either. In the correct position, palms tend to face upwards in this posture, not inwards as in the case of the statues (although the statue of Goddess Hera in Crete shows her holding her hands low enough, the palms still seem to be facing inwards). Yoga positions are very particular. Since the feet are also missing in both statues, there's no way to tell whether either statue would have had their feet in the correct Siddhaasana way even if their hands had been acceptable.
And even if the feet were present and correctly placed, the Siddhaasana is too generic a position: it doesn't mean it's yoga that the statues represent. For an example of its genericness, the position of the legs in the Romanian statues is only the second most common sitting position of Indians when we sit on the ground. In small Indian stores where they make dosais (something like pancakes) or fix bicycles, Indians can often been seen with their legs folded in either the Sukaasana or Siddhaasana. That doesn't mean they're doing Yoga. And as I've seen on tv, Siddhaasana-like position is also a very common sitting position in many traditional cultures around the world - but again, that doesn't make it yoga. One of our Hindu Goddess forms is famous for being presented in this sitting position (her feet are very correct for Siddhaasana though, but her hands are not in the required position so it's not the complete Siddhaasana).
<b>Even had you found photos of circa 4000bce statues in <i>correct</i> Yoga positions, I'd have posed the following:</b>
(1) Why is it a requirement that ancient Indians <i>should</i> have made statues of people doing Yoga? Should all ancient people have thought of capturing all their religious practises, culture and lifestyles in statues so that future generations can have evidence that their ancestors invented them?
What if there was merely no need for ancient Indians to have made statues of any yoga position at the time?
Even today, it's not a common passtime. It is more common for Yoga practitioners in western countries to release dvds and photos of yoga instruction than it is for us Indians to do so. In India, it is still the norm for people to learn from experts in yoga, although there are now not a few schools which have come up in the last centuries that teach it as well.
Why must ancient Indians have been preoccupied with making yoga statues, especially in times when one could actually see rishis, sannyasins, and other practitioners quite often? Yoga, never being an art like dancing was, was considered a science (Hindu philosophical, religious) and therefore perhaps less likely to have been inspiration for statues.
(2) Even if you argue that Indians should have made statues of the more basic yogic postures, since Romanians were able to do generic sitting positions, I have the following arguments:
- It is a fact in archaeology that "Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence". It's a phrase AIT people kept parroting for a long time whenever archaeology showed no signs of an Aryan Invasion or migration or influx even (genetics more conclusively supported the archaeological record here). The phrase is no less apt here.
Therefore, just because no earlier statues in India have been unearthed as yet, does not mean we don't have them. No one has searched every nook and cranny of India's historical layers.
- Suppose India introduced Yoga into countries to the west of India (quite a natural assumption, by the way) as has been the case with countries to the east. Yoga being familiar in India, would have been a common sight and everyone would know the basic positions. Yoga being yet unknown in these western countries, Indian visitors might perhaps have explained the precise positions and then described them to the local populace who then made statues of the descriptions to serve as a reminder of how exactly to position oneself.
It would make more sense that statues would be made of a non-art form like Yoga in countries where it was an unknown practice, than in India, where it has been well-known and one could easily have seen it performed everyday.
Or another scenario: perhaps one small wave of Indian immigrants, say the Jats, settled in ancient Romania and made statues (for future generations perhaps) of their Indian traditions which they could no longer see performed in their new environment.
If it has not been yet investigated whether the statues might emanate from outside Romania, consider even the case of them being exported from the Indian subcontinent to the west as keepsakes or souvenirs or methods of instruction.
Who is to say none of the above is true? Archaeology might show that the statues were not imported to Romania, but they cannot show that immigrant settlers did not create them or Indian visitors did not have them described to the ancient Romanians who then sculpted them. This is exactly the limitation with the more precise sciences dealing with the past: they cannot really reconstruct history to say what happened and how - they can only say what the end result was.
There's no way to be exactly sure that things happened in any particular way. All that archaeology can tell us is that at (a) some time (b) some culture existed that (c ) either was imported or was indigenous and part of a continuous local culture. However, there can still be influences by or inspiration taken from neighbouring cultures. There can be a host of other explanations.
But consider that Yoga is a known Hindu tradition for thousands of years, one whose purpose, development, and philosophy are well-documented in India. You have only the statues, not even certain in its depiction of any yogic posture.
(3) Yoga is a Samskritam term for a <b>Hindu religious concept</b>. (Buddhism eventually also inherited it. Though according to tradition Buddha tried and abandoned yoga, the early Buddhists in India were of the brahmana profession, and so were already trained for the most part in Yoga and didn't quit practising it.)
Yoga is a practise that spans many fields, not limited to physical exercise only. The most commonly known forms of Yoga in the west are the physical ones, which most there tend to think is the only form of Yoga. This form is what looks like physical exercise and has many, many positions (only a few of which are the various meditative/Tapas-like positions) and many, many movements.
Buddhist practitioners in the west know of Meditation (also another Hindu Yogic practise inherited by Buddhism). This is what I think is called Hatha Yoga - others please correct me on this, it's been a while since I read of the different forms of Yoga. In English, the Gita describes this as Meditation and/or Concentration (one of these is Hatha Yoga and the other is some other form of Yoga). Then there is Karma Yoga, which is the yoga of action where one performs one's prescribed duty with a certain state of mind. There's also Chakra-based yoga which might be a subset of Tapas (concentration). There might possibly be more forms of Yoga, but I can't remember.
However, <b>Yoga is not just the outward physical practises</b> (Karma Yoga wouldn't be registered as Yoga then). Instead, the practise always involves developing a particular mental state, sometimes requires mantras (as in doing tapas and in some forms of meditation), is often accompanied by breathing practices (in tapas, meditation, sandhya, physical yoga, chakra-based yoga), and involves renunciation of the fruits of one's action (the basic requirement of Karma Yoga). Yoga is a Hindu philosophical system - the lessons on the physical aspects of these forms of Yoga are always accompanied by the teacher imparting an even more important means to develop a mental state that will allow the spirit to evolve. Likewise, the outward physical positions allow one to get the quiteness of mind and develop the frame of mind that will help in achieving the spiritual state.
But to do this Yoga (the real Yoga) requires self-discipline. That is why there are 8 basic requirements to self-harmony and self-control (they collectively have a name which I've forgotten, not being a yoga practitioner) all of which need to be satisfied if one is to practise yoga successfully and lead the life of a yogi. Generally, one <i>starts</i> on yoga when one has satisfied at least a first few of these requirements, after which one has to practise <i>all</i> of them.
All of these religious and philosophical aspects are integral to real Yoga (which is Hindu), whose final aim is nothing less than becoming one with Brahman. It is the means by which the body and the mind are made conducive to the spiritual search and realisation of Brahman. Yoga (all its forms) is one of the many means by which a creature can transcend this world and obtain Moksha.
One final illustration on what is and isn't Yoga. When I was little, I was highly active and invented all sorts of movements and positions and gymnastics. Having grown up outside of India, I knew nothing of Yoga and there was none in my immediate family who was knowledgeable about it either. When I returned to India for a while, I got a booklet on Yoga from a friend. In it, I discovered no less than 12 positions and movements - 5 of which were quite complex movements and only 3 of which were simple positions (like Savaasana) - that matched exactly what I had loved to do since I'd been a toddler.
In a similar manner, when I watched my first Olympics I'd noticed that the people doing the acrobatics did stuff I myself had "invented" with no external influence: standing on my hands, somersaults, backflips and cartwheels. Whether that means I reinvented gymnastics or not, I certainly didn't re-invent yoga. With respect to the yoga-moves: I had just latched onto natural positions and movements that I felt were comfortable and interesting to do when I was a bored child. It is possible to independently come up with a few of them, because the external forms of yoga exercises are merely natural.
However, it was not Yoga that I had been doing, not only because it was incomplete (only 12 of the many Yoga exercises) and lacked the breathing, it was also not coupled with the mental training and spiritual teachings that are integral to what constitutes Yoga. In short, even if someone had independently performed what looks outwardly like a few "yoga" moves in 50,000bce or 100,000bce or even today (of which statues might have been made), that doesn't make it Yoga.
In Hinduism, those simple physical positions that anyone can invent, imitate and practise, do not represent merely physical positions in Yoga. In Yoga, they are part of an integrated religious lifestyle that had been extensively developed, described, taught and eventually written down by our ancestors. <b>So even if you have statues that <i>looked</i> like they were in some yoga-like positions:</b>
(1) they do not cover all Yogic positions
(2) the statues do not show any Yoga movements which are also an integral part of physical yoga (besides which all movements and positions are connected with particular breathing which statues can neither confirm nor deny)
(3) physical yoga is merely one of many forms of yoga
(4) in Yoga, the outward physical practises are combined with the (at least) as important internal teachings (mental training and spiritual realision), which are integral to yoga and without which it does not qualify as such. Yoga without the mental and spiritual practises is not yoga - it is merely physical exercise, some parts of which anyone can invent evidently
(5) where are the philosophical treatises in Romania describing the positions of these statues in the context of complete Yoga (mental, spiritual as well as physical).
(6) India has an ancient tradition of developing and teaching Yoga (not just the physical exercise). You have merely statues that don't even confirm a basic yogic posture.
You might still think the statue is proof of the ancient Romanians having known about Yoga. I found them merely proof of ancient sculpture showing a generic, common sitting position. They're no more proof of Yoga than an ancient Romanian's possible observation of an apple falling might lead us to surmise that he too, like Newton, immediately grasped the concept of gravity.
<b>For proving that ancient Romanians knew or even <i>invented</i> Yoga, you require</b> more than statues to prove your point (besides showing that it was indeed Yoga):
(1) Need to prove that they had developed the philosophical aspects of it and had reasoned as to why it was beneficial for one's spirit as well as for training the mind and body to come under spiritual control.
(2) Where's your literature showing or describing this?
(3) Then you need to disprove that the ancient Hindus of India had developed all these aspects relating to Yoga along with the physical postures themselves. Prove (not speculate) that these Hindu teachings were imported - from Romania in your case.
(4) Show that the Romanians visited India and imparted the knowledge of Yoga (all aspects) to us. Of course, again, you need to show the prerequisie and (1) first: that the Romanians knew actual Yoga positions and besides knew all aspects of it. I'm basically asking you to give conclusive evidence of the RIT: the Romanian Invasion/Migration/Benevolent teacher-tourist theory. Genetics, archaeology, anthropology, philology. Hey, why not add linguistics into the equation ("...therefore proves that the word Yoga is from the language spokem by the ancient Romanians, not Samskritam. As are such words as the various -aasanas). Yes don't forget linguistics - the Indologists never do.
We do not need to give any proofs such as the above for ourselves: our living Yoga tradition and surviving literature shows that it has been a Hindu practise since very ancient times. Besides, Yoga is a Samskritam word, the practise is mentioned throughout our epics (and even elaborated on by the Gita), further developed by Patanjali, known as far as the Afghan portion of ancient India and no doubt exerted its influence further west, inherited by Buddhism, exported to the East. Far and wide in India, one may see Yogis practising - people who have never seen a country beyond our land but know all aspects of Yoga.