What is "real" or “authentic” yoga and who gets to define it? Discourses of authenticity have been central to the history of yoga, shaping how yoga has been understood and practiced in South Asia and globally. This panel explores how, why, and to what effect different communities have made (and continue to make) competing claims about the “true” essence of yoga. Our five papers each analyze the rhetorical power plays and value judgments inherent in authenticity discourses about yoga coming out of multiple religious traditions and different historical contexts, from the medieval period to the present day. Two papers deal with authenticity in medieval Jain yoga, and another paper continues this to the authenticity discourses around Indian yogis in modernity. Another paper extends this to debates over authentic sadhus in Bengali Bāul-Fakir musical contexts, while the final paper addresses what counts as “authentic” in the contemporary yoga world or "Yogaland."
The Yogapradīpa, a medieval Jain yoga text, survives in two distinct recensions: a shorter version (90 verses) and a longer version (142 or 143 verses). While the longer recension is attested in many manuscripts, two early 16th-century manuscripts containing bālāvabodha (vernacular) commentaries preserve only the short recension, suggesting that it had a distinct role in monastic education. This paper examines three key printed editions: the 1911 Hindi edition, which references 143 verses but omits verses 67–99; a multi-text edition that ends at verse 90, confirming the short recension’s circulation in print; and the 1960 Gujarati edition, which selects the longer recension (143 verses) based on seven manuscripts. These versions raise important questions about textual transmission, manuscript versus print culture, and shifting notions of authenticity in Jain yoga. By analyzing which verses were omitted or added, this study explores how different manuscript and printed traditions shaped competing definitions of “real” Jain yoga.
This paper explores discourses surrounding the authenticity of yoga within Jain intellectual traditions, focusing on the works of Haribhadra (6th–8th century) and Yaśovijaya (1624–1688). These thinkers positioned their yoga practices as the "true" or "authentic" form in juxtaposition with other religious traditions. By categorizing practitioners based on their capabilities and progress in yoga practice, their texts reflect hierarchical judgments and reinforce Jain identity. I examine Haribhadra’s classifications of yogins across various works and investigate how Yaśovijaya expands on these ideas, offering original translations. Both authors emphasize avañcaka-yoga ("authentic yoga") as the final stage in yoga practice, achieved through purification resulting from adherence to Jain ethical precepts and ascetic disciplines. I show how they engaged with broader intellectual currents while firmly situating their systematizations of yoga within Jain soteriology and Jain karma doctrine.
This paper examines a variety of “authenticity discourses” about the figure of the Indian yogi that were circulating from the mid-19th to early-20th century, exploring how different representations of the yogi-fakir shed light on the contested, dialogical construction of Western and Indian modernities. Were yogis representative of an authentic Indian cultural essence (and how so)? What sorts of yogis were “real” yogis (and what sort were fakes)? Were yogis genuine possessors of occult powers or were they charlatans? These questions, and the competing authenticity claims that emerged in answers to them, were never as simple as they seemed on the surface, but were intimately tied to larger political and social agendas, ethical value judgments, and even metaphysical assertions about the nature of reality. Debates about the authenticity of the yogi were part and parcel of constitutively “modern” local and global negotiations regarding “religion,” “science,” and “magic” in this period.
This paper analyzes the topic of "authenticity" in Bāul-Fakiri musical contexts, specifically on how the authentic fakir or sadhu is constructed in both emic and etic discourses. Special attention is given to how the yoga of breath-work and other related practices contributes to the perceived authenticity of fakirs or sadhus in these discourses. The paper begins by setting the stage of the world of sadhus, including the place of Bāul-Fakirs within it. It then shifts to discussion of how "Musical Language Worlds" facilitated the emergence of another kind of Bāul-Fakiri sadhu who makes use of sound and music. The paper then shifts to consider an emic example of authenticity by Lalon Fakir, the first line of which is "Stop Faking and Follow the Fakir Way" (phereb cheṛe karo phakiri). The final part of the paper contrasts these emic indicators of authenticity with etic authenticators often imposed from outside.
Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores American spiritual seekers who, having started doing yoga for any number of reasons, decide to “go deeper” into their practice. This is a context of not only postural practice, but also mantra, devotional singing, festival-going, astrology, and murti-puja, among others. Despite appearances to the contrary, such cultural borrowing or appropriation is rarely as hodgepodge as it initially seems. Rather, there is a guiding principle that shapes the contours of individual choice: authenticity. That is, spiritual seekers in the yoga world “go deeper” both by adopting “authentic” practices, and by choosing practices that feel personally “authentic.” But what does this mean? Authentic to what? And to whom? In this paper, I address how the effort of “going deeper”–both its associated practices, and the rhetoric around it–is navigated through a multi-faceted discourse about what counts as “authentic.”