Exploring Rāmacandra’s Tattvayogabindu: Implications for Late Medieval and Pre-Modern Yoga Research

SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies is delighted to host Dr Nils Jacob Liersch (Philipps-Universität Marburg) to present, 'Exploring Rāmacandra’s Tattvayogabindu: Implications for Late Medieval and Pre-Modern Yoga Research'.

This online webinar explores Rāmacandra’s Tattvayogabindu, a previously little-studied Sanskrit work on Rājayoga composed in northern India during the first half of the 16th century. Drawing on a critical edition and annotated translation, it examines the text’s transmission, historical setting, doctrinal structure, and significance for the study of late medieval and pre-modern yoga. The reconstruction of its textual history is based on sixteen manuscripts, one printed edition, its principal sources, and relevant testimonia.

Particular attention is given to the work’s intended audience and its distinctive interpretation of Rājayoga. The presentation argues that the Tattvayogabindu is one of the earliest known surviving texts to present Rājayoga explicitly as 'yoga for kings'. Rāmacandra adapts earlier Śaiva and yogic materials for members of the warrior aristocracy and the royal court, proposing a form of yoga compatible with political responsibility, courtly life, and worldly enjoyment.

The presentation also situates the text within the broader proliferation of yoga classifications in the early modern period. Its taxonomy of 15 forms of yoga is compared with three other complex systems from the same historical milieu. This comparison shows that apparently shared categories could carry markedly different meanings and were reorganised according to the theological, institutional, and soteriological priorities of individual authors and traditions. Rather than reflecting a single line of textual transmission, these taxonomies point to a dynamic, intertraditional discourse centered largely on 16th-century Benares. The Tattvayogabindu thus offers important evidence for processes of adaptation, competition, and intellectual exchange that shaped late medieval and pre-modern yoga traditions.