ABSTRACT
The Indian tradition of yoga, first codified in the Yoga S≠tra of Patañjali in perhaps the third or fourth century CE, constitutes one of the world’s earliest and most influential traditions of spiritual practice. It is a tradition that, by the time of Patañjali, already had an extensive (if obscure) prehistory and one that was to have, after Patañjali, an extraordinarily rich and diverse future. As a tradition yoga has been far from monolithic. It has embraced a variety of practices and orientations, borrowing from and influencing a vast array of Indic religious traditions down through the centuries.
