घेरण्ड संहिता (महर्षि घेरण्ड - सप्ताङ्ग हठयोग सटीक)

xiv INTRODUCTION The early texts of Hatha Yoga showed no trace of Vedanta; their doctrinal framework was Tantric. As Hatha Yoga and its proponents, the Nathas, gained in popular- ity and patronage, the religious orthodox, amongst whom Vedanta had become the predominant ideology, had to sit up and take notice. As they had done with other heterodox movements that threatened their hegemony (e.g., renunci- ation and vegetarianism) they claimed Hatha Yoga as their own. This process culminated in the eighteenth century with the compilation of several new Upanishads and the rewriting of some older ones; these are now known collec- tively as the Yoga Upanishads. The unknown compiler(s) used verses from established works on Hatha Yoga to create the texts. The Vedantic and Vaishnava leanings in this book, combined with its use of verses from established works on Hatha Yoga, suggest that it probably resulted from a similar process. In the light of this, as well as the fact that errors in the manuscript of 1802 c.e. imply an established manuscript tradition, the absence of citations in seventeenth-century commentaries, and the location of most of its manuscripts in Bengal, we may hazard a guess that the Gheranda Samhita was composed in Bengal around 1700 c.e. The Sanskrit text presented here is based on the edition of Swami Digambarji and Dr. M. L. Gharote, first published at Lonavala, Maharashtra, in 1978, for which they collated fourteen manuscripts and five printed books, including the Adyar Library edition of 1933, which formed the foundation of their edition. The best known edition of the text is that of Chandra Vasu, which was first published in 1915. It was