First Session – Dr. Jason Birch on The second chapter of the Amanaska

Wednesday 1^st February, 10-12pm

Session 1

 Dr Jason Birch

The second chapter of the Amanaska – the earliest extant Rāja Yoga text 

The Amanaska is a medieval Sanskrit yoga text of one hundred and ninety-eight verses in two chapters (adhyāya). Seventy-five manuscripts have been consulted for this edition and thirty-two were selected for the full collation on the basis of stemmatic analysis on a sample collation of all the manuscripts. The critical apparatus contains references to parallel verses in other works. On the importance of the Amanaska in the history of Rājayoga, see Birch 2014: 406-408 (title: “Rājayoga: The Reincarnations of the King of All Yogas”), available on his academia.edu page.

 

Please note we will only be making Jason’s text available to session participants. 

 

Room T101 (first floor),

21-22 Russell Square (The Language Centre), London, WC1B 5EA

https://www.soas.ac.uk/soas-life/location/maps/

  

For booking or any other enquiries please contact Karen O’Brien Kop or Avni Chag

Karen_O’Brien-Kop@soas.ac.uk or Avni_Chag@soas.ac.uk

 

Brief Bio:

Jason Birch received a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2013. His area of research is the medieval yoga traditions of India, in particular, those called Haṭha- and Rājayoga.

He is currently working on the Haṭhayoga Project at SOAS University of London. His role is to edit and research manuscripts of Sanskrit yoga texts that were written on the eve of colonialism. Many of these texts provide insight into the Brahmanization of Haṭha- and Rājayoga and the proliferation of physical yoga techniques, some of which have become prominent in modern yoga, such as the practice of numerous postures (āsanas).

Jason is teaching a course on the history of medieval yoga for the SOAS Master of Arts in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation and an undergraduate Sanskrit reading class on yoga texts. He has taught courses on the history of Rājayoga and Haṭhayoga at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and the Masters of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He also shares the fruits of his research with practitioners of yoga by collaborating with Jacqueline Hargreaves on the Luminescent blog and by teaching history modules on various Teacher Training programs.