Science of Yoga & its Origin

Science of Yoga & its Origin

Yoga is one of the oldest sciences of the world originated from India, which is very useful for both getting and maintaining the physical, mental and moral health. This yoga was started with the development of civilization.
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THE BIG QUESTIONS

Traditional Yoga seeks to provide plausible answers to such profound questions as, “Who am I?”, “Whence do I come?”, “Whither do I go?,” and “What must I do?” These are the sorts of questions that, sooner or later, we all end up asking ourselves. Or at least, we have our own implicit answers to them, though may not get round to consciously formulating them. Deep down, we all are philosophers, because we all need to make sense of our life. Some of us postpone thinking about these questions, but they don’t ever go away. We quickly learn this when we lose a loved one or face a serious health crisis.

So, we might as well ponder these questions while we are in good shape. And don’t think you have to feel morose to do so. Yoga doesn’t champion dark moods, but it is definitely in favor of awareness in all its forms, including self-awareness. If we know the stuff we are made of, we can function a lot better in the world. At the very least, our self-knowledge will give us the opportunity to make conscious and better choices.
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Despite more than a century of research, we still don’t know much about the earliest beginnings of Yoga. We do know, though, that it originated in India 5,000 or more years ago. Until recently, many Western scholars thought that Yoga originated much later, maybe around 500 B.C., which is the time of Gautama the Buddha, the illustrious founder of Buddhism. But then, in the early 1920s, archeologists surprised the world with the discovery of the so-called Indus civilization—a culture that we now know extended over an area of roughly 300,000 square miles (the size of Texas and Ohio combined). This was in fact the largest civilization in early antiquity. In the ruins of the big cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, excavators found depictions engraved on soapstone seals that strongly resemble yogi-like figures. Many other finds show the amazing continuity between that civilization and later Hindu society and culture.

There was nothing primitive about what is now called the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, which is named after two great rivers that once flowed in Northern India; today only the Indus River flows through Pakistan. That civilization’s urbane population enjoyed multistory buildings, a sewage system unparalleled in the ancient world until the Roman empire, a huge public bath whose walls were water-proofed with bitumen, geometrically laid out brick roads, and standardized baked bricks for convenient construction. (We are so used to these technological achievements that we sometimes forget they had to be invented.) The Indus-Sarasvati people were a great maritime nation that exported a large variety of goods to Mesopotamia and other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Although only a few pieces of art have survived, some of them show exquisite craftsmanship.

For a long time, scholars thought that this magnificent civilization was abruptly destroyed by invaders from the northwest who called themselves Aryans (ârya meaning “noble” in the Sanskrit language). Some proposed that these warlike nomads invented Yoga, others credited the Indus people with its creation. Yet others took Yoga to be the joint creation of both races.

Nowadays researchers increasingly favor a completely different picture of ancient Indian history. They are coming to the conclusion that there never was an Aryan invasion and that the decline of the Indus-Sarasvati cities was due to dramatic changes in climate. These in turn appear to have been caused by a major tectonic catastrophe changing the course of rivers. In particular, it led to the drying up of what was once India’s largest river, the Sarasvati, along whose banks flourished numerous towns and villages (some 2500 sites have been identified thus far). Today the dry river bed runs through the vast Thar Desert. If it were not for satellite photography, we would not have learned about those many settlements buried under the sand.

The drying up of the Sarasvati River, which was complete by around 1900 B.C., had far-reaching consequences. Just imagine the waters of the Mississippi running dry instead of flooding constantly. What havoc this would cause! The death of the Sarasvati River forced the population to migrate to more fertile parts of the country, especially east toward the Ganges (Ganga) River and south into Central India and Tamilnadu.

Why is this important for the history of Yoga, you might ask? The Sarasvati River happens to be the most celebrated river in the Rig-Veda, which is the oldest known text in any Indo-European language. It is composed in an archaic (and difficult) form of Sanskrit and was transmitted by word of mouth for numerous generations. Sanskrit is the language in which most Yoga scriptures are written. It is related to languages like Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, and not least English. You can see this family relationship on the example of the word yoga itself, which corresponds to zugos, iugum, joug, Joch, yugo, and yoke in these languages. Sanskrit is like an older brother to the other Indo-European languages.

Now, if the Saraswati River dried up around or before 1900 B.C., the Rig-Veda must be earlier than that benchmark date. If that is so, then the composers of this collection of hymns must have been contemporaneous with the people of the Indus civilization, which flourished between circa 3000-1900 B.C. Indeed, astronomical references in the Rig-Veda suggest that at least some of its 1,028 hymns were composed in the third or even fourth millennium B.C.

Thus, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans, who created the Rig-Veda, did not come from outside India to destroy the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. They had been there all along. What, then, was their relationship with the Indus-Sarasvati people? Here opinions still differ, but there is a growing understanding that the Aryans and the Indus-Sarasvati people were one and the same. There is nothing in the Rig-Veda to suggest otherwise.

In fact, the Rig-Veda and the other archaic Sanskrit texts appear to be the “missing” literature of the Indus civilization. Conversely, the archeological artifacts of the Indus valley and adjoining areas give us the “missing” material base of the early Sanskrit literature—an elegant solution to a problem that has long vexed researchers.
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YOGA AND THE INDUS-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION

This means that Yoga is the product of a mature civilization that was unparalleled in the ancient world. Think of it! As a Yoga practitioner you are part of an ancient and honorable stream of tradition, which makes you a descendant of that civilization at least at the level of the heart. Many of the inventions credited to Sumer rightfully belong to what is now known as the Indus Saraswati civilization, which evolved out of a cultural tradition that has reliably been dated back to the seventh millennium B.C. In turn it gave rise to the great religious and cultural tradition of Hinduism, but indirectly also to Buddhism and Jainism.

India’s civilization can claim to be the oldest enduring civilization in the world. Its present-day problems should not blind us to its glorious past and the lessons we can learn from it. Yoga practitioners in particular can benefit from India’s protracted experimentation with life, especially its explorations of the mysteries of the mind. The Indian civilization has produced great philosophical and spiritual geniuses who between them have covered every conceivable answer to the big questions, which are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.
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VEDIC YOGA

Now we are entering somewhat more technical territory, and I will have to use and explain a number of Sanskrit terms.

The yogic teachings found in the above-mentioned Rig-Veda and the other three ancient hymnodies are known as Vedic Yoga. The Sanskrit word veda means “knowledge,” while the Sanskrit term rig (from ric) means “praise.” Thus the sacred Rig-Veda is the collection of hymns that are in praise of a higher power. This collection is in fact the fountainhead of Hinduism, which has around one billion adherents today. You could say that the Rig-Veda is to Hinduism what the Book of Genesis is to Christianity.

The other three Vedic hymnodies are the Yajur-Veda (“Knowledge of Sacrifice”), Sama-Veda (“Knowledge of Chants”), and Atharva-Veda (“Knowledge of Atharvan”). The first collection contains the sacrificial formulas used by the Vedic priests. The second text contains the chants accompanying the sacrifices. The third hymnody is filled with magical incantations for all occasions but also includes a number of very powerful philosophical hymns. It is connected with Atharvan, a famous fire priest who is remembered as having been a master of magical rituals. These hymnodies can be compared to the various books of the Old Testament.

It is clear from what has been said thus far that Vedic Yoga—which could also be called Archaic Yoga—was intimately connected with the ritual life of the ancient Indians. It revolved around the idea of sacrifice as a means of joining the material world with the invisible world of the spirit. In order to perform the exacting rituals successfully, the sacrificers had to be able to focus their mind for a prolonged period of time. Such inner focusing for the sake of transcending the limitations of the ordinary mind is the root of Yoga

When successful, the Vedic Yogi was graced with a “vision” or experience of the transcendental reality. A great master of Vedic Yoga was called a “seer”—in Sanskrit rishi. The Vedic seers were able to see the very fabric of existence, and their hymns speak of their marvelous intuitions, which can still inspire us today.

Source: A Short History of Yoga by Georg Feuerstein
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Yog originated from Lord Shiva

In ancient times, India did not exist as one country, but still it was considered as one entity which they called 'Bharat Varsha'.

By race, by language they were not same; by religion, they did not worship the same Gods; politically, they were never one, but still the land south of the Himalayas was referred to as Bharat Varsha . So somewhere, there was some sense of unity because of the common spiritual ethos they carried in them.

Spiritual ethos means, no matter what you are doing, whether you are a king or a peasant, whatever is the nature of your activity, there is only one ultimate goal for everybody - liberation. Even today, even the simplest farmer in this country will talk about mukti. This is a result of the phenomenal amount of spiritual work done in this country. One person who is largely responsible for this, who is of paramount significance in shaping the human consciousness is Shiva.

In the yogic culture, Shiva is not known as a God, but as the first Guru or the Adi Guru. He is the Adi Yogi or the first Yogi. Out of his realisation, he became ecstatic and danced all over the mountains or sat absolutely still. He was constantly into bouts of stillness and bouts of mad dancing. All the gods who saw him, saw something was happening to him that they themselves did not know. Suddenly heaven felt like a bad place, because this guy is having such a good time! They felt, "We are missing out on something." When they finally got him to teach the method, Shiva expounded various types of yogas depending upon the level of preparedness of the person who was sitting in front of him.

The first part of Shiva's teaching was to Parvati, his wife. The yoga sutras of Shiva are such that almost in every sutra, he refers to her as the resplendent one, the gracious one, the beautiful one.

The second set of yogic teaching was expounded to the Sapta Rishis/Sages, or the first seven sages. When we use the word yoga, you should not think of twisting your body or holding your breath or anything like that we are not talking about a particular exercise or a technique. We are talking about the very science of creation and how to take this piece of creation (you) to its ultimate possibility. We are looking at gaining mastery over the fundamental processes of life; the very process of creation and dissolution. It doesn't matter at what level of evolution a person is right now, for him also, there is a way. For every being on the planet, there is a certain way that is the advantage of yoga. This teaching happened on the banks of Kanti Sarovar, near Kedarnath (Himalayas). This is when the world's first yoga programme happened.

Today, yoga is said to be the world's fastest growing wellness regimen because it presents spirituality as technology. Mahashivratri is a festival that was chosen to honour Shiva, the Adi Guru, from whom yoga originated. On this night the planetary positions in the northern hemisphere are such that there is a natural upsurge of energies. If one just stays awake and keeps one's spine erect throughout the night, it naturally pushes a person towards his spiritual peak.

http://www.himavanti.org/en/c/himavanti-1/shiva-the-founder-and-owner-of-all-yoga-and-tantra
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/Yoga-originated-from-Shiva/articleshow/4170824.cms
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