Yogasopana Purvachatushka

The Yogasopana Purvachatushka is written in the style of an instruction manual. It covers yoga in terms of Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, with sections on the yamas (prohibitions), niyamas (observances), asanas (postures), and pranayama (breath control). It describes 37 asanas including Dhanurasana, Kukkutasana, Matsyendrasana, Mayurasana, and Sarvangasana, along with mudras such as Mahamudra and Viparita Karani. Each posture is illustrated with a halftone plate by Purusottam Sadashiv Joshi of the author, Yogi Narayana Ghamande, demonstrating the practice. The book is written in Marathi and published in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1905 by Janārdana Mahādeva Gurjara at Nirṇayasāgara Press. A translation into Hindi, with verses in Sanskrit, was published in 1906. Further editions were brought out in India, including in 1927 and 1951. == Analysis ==

A transitional book and its seven chakras in the Jogapradīpikā, a few years before Yogasopana, 1899 The yoga scholar Mark Singleton writes that the publication of Yogasopana was in several ways a "key transitional moment" from medieval hatha yoga to modern yoga as exercise. For the first and probably also the last time, the yogic body was represented naturalistically, using modern halftone engravings, as a muscled, three-dimensional body in physical postures. Innovations In the museum curator Debra Diamond's view, the book "was conceived as a work of art", not just as a practically useful guide to the illustrated asanas, and it was "self-consciously modern". The yoga teacher and researcher Laura Denham-Jones calls the book one of the early yoga asana self-help manuals; she notes that Ghamande "even provided his address so that students could write to him with any questions." Ghamande was, Singleton observes, consciously acknowledging and breaking the hatha yoga rule of secrecy, with the "somewhat sophistic" justification that "nobody says from whom you have to keep it secret, nor how much you have to hide". File:Ardhavrikshasana in Yogasopana Purvacatuska.jpg|Ardhavrikshasana, a variant of Shirshasana File:Vrikshasana in Yogasopana 1905.jpg|Vrikshasana File:Kukkutasana in Yogasopana 1905.jpg|Kukkutasana File:Mahamudra in Yogasopana Purvacatusca 1905.jpg|Mahamudra File:Dhanurasana in Yogasopana Purvacatuska 1905 (image).jpg|Dhanurasana File:Mayurasana in Yogasopana 1905.jpg|Mayurasana File:Salabhasana in Yogasopana 1905.jpg|Salabhasana == References ==