Abstract (eng)
This thesis explores the modern reinvention of prāṇāyāma (lit. “breath control”) within early modern yoga. Originally rooted in Pātañjalayoga and Haṭhayoga, prāṇāyāma is still of great importance in modern yoga. However, premodern practices were also subject to considerable change, and from c. 1850 onwards, new concepts and techniques seeped from Euro-American into South Asian contexts. I therefore employ the term “yogic breath cultivation” to encompass all traditional and imported techniques. By examining major developments between c. 1850 and 1945 of this understudied subject, this thesis intents to contribute to modern yoga research, particularly to the entangled history of its salient practices. Additionally, I discuss significant concepts related to the practices that address the human embeddedness in the cosmos, first and foremost prāṇa, which denotes “breath” in its life-sustaining quality. Since Vedic times, the broader meaning of prāṇa is also “vitality”, but in modern yoga it takes on even wider connotations, such as “energy” and “force” as in Swami Vivekananda’s seminal Râja Yoga (1896). By addressing prāṇāyāma as a form of “self-cultivation” to foster physical health and well-being on the one hand and religious aspirations on the other, I traverse a wide spectrum of influential fields and their salient ideas. These are the premodern legacy of prāṇa and prāṇāyāma, notable developments within the Hindu reform movements Arya and Brahmo Samaj, the influence of nineteenth-century occultism, and the contributions of transnational hygienic and physical culture. I also describe the reinvention of prāṇa and prāṇāyāma as it accelerated through Indian nationalism and anti-colonialism, the impact of medical and (proto-)scientific investigation, and the emerging print culture that started to disseminate yoga manuals and translations of premodern Sanskrit texts. Against the backdrop of these diverse influences, I give voice to several pioneers of modern yoga and elucidate their respective interpretations of prāṇa and prāṇāyāma. In the work of most yoga pioneers, the fields of yoga, occultism, and hygienic culture overlap, and, as this thesis argues, an analysis of yogic breath cultivation that takes all of these fields into account can sufficiently explain prāṇāyāma as we know it today.