The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Edwin Bryant. North Point Press; fsgbooks.com

Ricahrd Rosen reviews a new translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra.

By Richard Rosen

The thousands of English translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra and their accompanying commentaries run the gamut from the widely read to the highly technical.

Usually the translator provides only a single perspective, but from Edwin Bryant, a professor of Indology at Rutgers University, come interpretations from a variety of angles, providing readers with a much broader perspective on the Yoga Sutra's teaching and transformative potential. Bryant's book opens with a beautifully written account of the history of yoga from before Patanjali's time, followed by an overview of classical yoga. In the following 450 pages, Bryant reveals his considerable insights and includes wisdom gained from other commentaries, including Vyasa's famous 1,600-year-old bhashya (discussion) and the 1963 commentary by Swami H. Aranya. Bryant pulls in works from other Hindu yoga schools and traditional texts, such as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Puranas (known as the "old stories"), to position the Yoga Sutra in the broader context of Indian spiritual literature.

The individual commentaries run from one or two paragraphs to 10 pages or more. The inclusion of different commentaries on the Yoga Sutra makes this translation quite unusual. If that's not enough, there are more nuggets of information in the 50 pages of detailed footnotes at the book's end. This is a textbook for serious students of the sutras. But the nice thing is, it's written in a way that makes it accessible to every student. All you need is a willingness to apply yourself and a strong desire to dive deep into Patanjali's yoga.

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