The work Classical Yoga is devoted to the study of «yoga-sutras» (Patanjalasutrani) with Vyasabhasya — two basic texts of Indian religious and philosophical system (darsana) of samkhya-yoga which evolved at the time of antiquity and early Middle Ages. The texts have become known as the oldest and most authoritative instruction for yoga as a traditional system of psychophysical regulation of consciousness. It was precisely this interpretation of Patanjali's text's pragmatic purpose that awakes a wide interest in it going far beyond the confines of scholarly Indian studies.
The attempt, however, to take «yoga-sutras» as an instruction and a guide to «mastering yoga» becomes inevitably frustrating since the text -of Patanjali does not explain the technique, while yoga as a method of influencing consciousness should not be considered a distinct branch of Indian culture or a unique achievement of any religious-philosophical school.
In the history of the development of the Indian religious-philosophical thought yoga has kept a stable and quite a definite position of its own and has been part of both the orthodox Brahmanic systems recognizing the authority of the vedas, and of non-orthodox systems, which fact is known to us in the first place from written sources of Buddhist schools and teachings.
In the functional aspect, the Indian religious-philosophical schools of ancient times and early Middle Ages are characterized by a clearly expressed polymorphism. The school tradition was based, as a rule, upon a combination of dogmatic precepts (a religious doctrine) which set themselves the aim of spiritual transformation of man (emancipation, enlightenment). The tradition also. prescribed the way for attaining such a state — a consequential practice of psychotechnical methods of regulating one's consciousness (yoga). This practice varied from school to school each having a more or less extensive literature of a logical-discourcive nature (treatises and commentaries to them), that is, a literature which set out, in a theoretically demonstrative form, the conceptual perception of the original ideas and experience of consciousness transformation.
Samkhya-yoga was no exception in this respect and in would be unjust to look at the author of «yoga-sutra» as the originator of the yoga practice or its only theoretician. As it has been noted by S. Dasgupta, «Patanjali not only collected the different forms of yoga practices, and gleaned the diverse ideas which were or could be associated with the Yoga, but drafted them all in the Samkhya metaphysics, and gave them the form in which they have been handed down to us».
Thus the researcher is faced with the following quite important question: what particular written texts make the logically cohesive semantic context which would provide a background for an approach to the problem of historical-philosophical interpretation of Patanjali's «yoga-sutras»? How much useful is Vyasa's commentary in helping to perform this function?
Since Patanjali's «yoga-sutras» and Vyasabhasya are distanced from each other by time varying from one to several centuries, this time-lag makes the researcher wonder if the commentator renders correctly the original meaning of Patanjali's text. Is it possible, proceeding from Vyasa's explanations, to establish what exactly the sutras' author meant?
It is a known fact that, strictly speaking, the sutras as a form of religious-philosophical literature pose as a synoptic fixation of the system's nodular concepts in the form of aphorisms and do not make any one wholesome expression. Precisely such are Patanjali's sutras. They cannot be understood or interpreted of themselves and call for resorting to a wider version of the system, i. e., to the text (sastra, in traditional terminology). But it is doubtless that by the time of Vyasa's -commentaries, the school of samkhya-yoga had gone through a certain evolution of ideas, especially in the course of its polemics with Buddhism. We, therefore, should not overestimate the commentator's claimed loyalty to the original meaning of the sutras. Holding polemics with Buddhist philosophers — the abhidharmist or vijnanavadin — Vyasa strived to re-interpret the meaning of Patanjali's sutras in such a way as if the sutras' author knew apriori the contents of this polemics. It would be only logical to suggest that the commentator set out the meaning of Patanjali's text in accordance with the tradition which was synchronous with him, Vyasa.
This supposition has been put forward in various forms by most Indologists who went back to «yoga-sutras» and « Vyasabhasya» at various times and with different purposes. They all noted that within the framework of scholarly cultural studies it is quite desirable to establish the original meaning of Patanjali's ideas without making them identical to Vyasa's interpretations. But at the same time the researchers ran against the historico-cultural fact of the samkhya-yoga school being based precisely on a combination of the two texts, those of «yoga-sutras» and «Vyasabhasya». So if we are to study this particular tradition as something whole and known in the history of Indian philosophy as Patanjaladarsana (Patanjali's system), then the matter of establishing the original meaning of the «yoga-sutras» may as well be abandoned.
This work sets itself the purpose of presenting Patanjaladarsana in its traditional function, trying to show in the first place what had become of Patanjali's ideas by the time the commentary was written. This approach, however, inevitably presupposes the need of recourse to the problem of terminology. In Patanjali's text — and this fact should be emphasized — no clear terminological system is traced. The right of philosophical notions and terms are enjoyed by the metaphors whose literal translation would lead to a nonsensical situation and a monstrous «darkening» of the text. These metaphors pose as traditional codes to denote quite definite philosophical concepts. Any elaboration of these concepts, which would be synchronous to «yoga-sutras» is unknown, so the metaphors are filled with terminological contents only due to Vyasa's commentary where we discover their conceptual decoding. Thus the system becomes operational only in Vyasa's interpretation.
But trying to show historical fates of the ideas interpreted by Vyasa in the context of the medieval history of Indian philosophy, we also resorted to a later treatise — that of «Tattva-vaisaradi», which is a basic and quite authoritative glossary to Vyasabhasya written by Vachaspati Mishra in the 9th century A. D., or to the intermediary commentary («vivarana») to it.
The translation has been made from the original Sanscrit text published in: Patanjaladarsanam, or the System of Yoga Philosophy by Maharshi Kapila with the Commentary of Vyasa and the Gloss of Vachaspati Mishra. Ed. and publ. by Pandit Jivananda Vidyasagara. Second Edition. Calcutta, 1895. Use has also been made of; Patanjala-sutrani with the Scholium of Vyasa and the Commentary of Vacaspati. Ed. by R. S. Bodas. Bombay, 1892 (Bombay Sanskrit Series. 46).
The work consists of four parts. The introductory part contains a reconstruction of the main philosophical concepts of Patanjaladarsana, a confinement of the subject-matter of the terms, a substantiation of the definition of this school as representative of the nominalistic trend in Indian philosophy. Part two, which is the main one, is a translation of Patanjali's «yoga-sutras» and of «Vyasa-bhasya». Part three is a commentary to the translation. The work is concluded by a reference section containing proper names, index of the school's philosophical , terminology, and the bibliography.