ABSTRACT
This chapter advances further into the nineteenth-century scholarship on Yoga, starting with N.C. Pal’s Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy and Rájendralála Mitra’s Yoga Aphorisms of Patañjali. One of the major questions at the time was whether yoga consists of soul liberation or union with the divine. Mitra’s distinction between the two opened up a framework for Max Müller’s interpretation of Yoga as a system with weak theological commitments. At the same time, this chapter shows how Vivekananda worked to find constructive links between Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras and the schools of Vedanta and Bhakti. Vivekananda, without conflating the Yoga Sūtras with these philosophical traditions, worked to reconcile their underlying commitments. For Vivekananda, the key is to understand what uniting with God actually means.
