ABSTRACT
The installation of the YS as the Classical Yoga text in the modern age is bound up with several dialectically interlinked, ideological currents. These include colonial translation projects intended to inculcate the critical habits and values of european philosophy in Indian minds via Hindu scripture and subsequent reclamations of these texts by Indian cultural nationalists seeking to identify and interpret the definitive canon of modern Hinduism. The refurbishment of the YS as the exemplary expression of practical Indian philosophy culminates in Vivekananda’s innovative translation and commentary in his Rāja Yoga of 1896, a publication that was to be prototypical for many subsequent englishlanguage formulations of yoga in the twentieth century. Vivekananda’s creative
interpretation is partially based on an understanding of spiritual life informed by Western esotericism and the para-Christian, metaphysical frameworks pervasive in some quarters of late-nineteenth century America (De Michelis 2004). These and other influences contribute to the “modern” quality of Vivekananda’s work, and many forms of popular transnational yoga today bear the imprint of this eclectic revisioning.
