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 Journal of the American Academy of Religion 538

Sinister Yogis.  By David Gordon White. The University of ChicagoPress, 2009. 376 pages. $42.00.

Popular understandings of yoga today emphasize meditation, exercise, andinner peace. For those yoga groups that study Patañjali’s Yoga Sütras, the chap-ters on ethics and contemplation are generally the most important ones, whilethe chapter on vïbhütis  or supernatural powers is to be avoided, having onlytemptations for yogis on the spiritual path. David Gordon White’s SinisterYogis  shows the importance of that chapter, and the early understandings ofyoga that emphasized supernatural practices. These included possession,shape-shifting, creation of multiple selves, and heavenly ascents. He shows

modern yoga to be a small offshoot of a larger system, in which yogis evokedrespect, terror, and sometimes worship.White begins the book with his own encounters with two rather commer-

cial yogis, local magicians who ask him for money. But he is motivated towrite the book by a passage in the Mahäbhärata describing yogis who possessgods and sages, multiply bodies, and can bind and release souls. He examinesthe origins of yoga in South Asia from the Vedic period onwards, focusingon the yogic practitioner rather than yoga philosophy (which he dates fromabout the fourth-century CE, with the Yoga Sütras  as a foundational work).

His emphasis is on imagery, and thus he refers to this book as the third in histriptych (rather than trilogy), on alchemy, tantra, and now yogis. Workingprimarily with Sanskrit and Hindi sources, he examines yogis before theybecame peaceful, flexible enlightened people.

The book is structured around stories. The first chapter, “Tales of SinisterYogis,  begins with a recent tale of Bhairavanand, an evil and violent yogi, anddiscusses the earlier origins of this image of the yogi. The second chapter,“Ceci ne’st pas un Yogi,” examines understandings of räja yoga and hathayoga, and the role of äsanas  (with the lotus posture as a mark of royal ordivine status, not a meditation position). It includes the links between yogisand warriors, heroes and kings. The third chapter, “Embodied Ascent,Meditation and Yogic Suicide” discusses the rise of masters of yoga, withstories of visionary ascents, liberated sages, and links between death andenlightenment. The fourth chapter, “The Science of Entering Another Body,”examines the links between multiple bodies and worlds, especially in terms ofspiritual links or “yokings”; while the fifth chapter, “Yogi Gods,  describes theapplication of yogic ideas in the puranas and tantras, in which yogis aredeified, and gods are described in terms of their yogic powers. The finalchapter, “Mughal, Modern and Postmodern Yogis,” examines writings by tra-

velers and foreigners about yogis, with Muslim and Chinese writings, andimages from European travel narratives. Yogis are linked with Sufi fakirs, with

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 539 Book Reviews

warriors, sorcerers, and magicians, yogis who could fly through the air and res-urrect corpses. Yogis were supernatural beings, and those who remained on

earth meditating were “failed yogis.” Some yogis became tutelary deities ofkingdoms, legitimating dynasties and blessing or cursing the land. Many wereaggressive and demanding, with powers gained from asceticism. The term“yogi” was often used interchangeably, with sannyasi, bairägt, käpälika, naga,gosain, and later fakir. All of these were believed to have strange practices andmiraculous powers, and they sought supernatural powers rather than liberationfrom rebirth. By the thirteenth-century CE, the term “yogi” came to refer toNath yogis, but it was still linked to cultural outsiders known to travelers bytheir matted hair, ashes, rags, and iron implements. These yogis were notknown for their quiet meditation or postures, but rather for their extreme andoften painful practices. They were ambiguous figures: were their spiritual statessimilar to death, or a conquest of death? Did they go to the gods and live intheir heavens, or become gods themselves?

In ancient Sanskrit literature, yogic perception was true perception,knowing the whole universe by pervading it. The earlier penetration of bodies,shown in the gurus glance at his disciple in initiation, appears in later con-cepts like darsana  (the exchange of glances with a deity) and pränapratisthä (in which a deity is ritually placed in a statue, and can observe and beobserved). It also came to include entering all bodies, living or dead, a union

or yoking subject to the yogi’s will.With the British domination of India, the “wild, naked, drug-crazed warrior

ascetic” was tamed into a meditative, spiritual renouncer. Yogis were crimina-lized, portrayed as beggars and con-men, and they lost their reputation for mira-culous powers and their princely patrons. The focus of yoga began to change.

White notes that the Indian spiritual leader Vivekananda used yoga as away of unifying the Indian nation, rejecting the miracles and supernaturalpowers of earlier practice. Yogis were romanticized in the writings ofYogananda and Sivananda, and yoga was reinvented as “physical culture” in

the 1930s, with the addition of calisthenics and gymnastics. In modern yogaphilosophy, the Yoga Sütras came to be understood as the capstone of a con-tinuous yoga tradition, rather than as a new and relatively recent development.The Bhagavad Gita came to be understood as a yogic text rather than a sectar-ian tract that incorporated many previous traditions, including yoga. Instead ofa long tradition of “classical yoga,” we have a new set of developments thatreinterpret yoga for a different audience.

White’s goal in this book was to show “real world instantiations” of earlyyoga though the portrayal of yogis, and his translations do clearly show early

popular understandings of yogis and yoga. This is a very useful book for thosewith some Sanskrit training, but it should be noted that knowledge of Sanskritlit hi t d hil h i d d S k it t th t d

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 Journal of the American Academy o f Religion 540

most use of it—the modern practitioners of the “classical yoga” against whichthis book argues.

We should also note that one reason ancient Sanskrit texts spoke moreabout yogis as sorcerers and miracle-workers than as silent priests in medita-tion is that they made for better stories. Heroes and magicians and wild mencaptured the attention of listeners better than people sitting quietly in caveshoping for liberation. Virtually all of these texts were narrated before they werewritten, and narrative requires drama. It can be difficult to excite an audiencewith sages chanting stanzas and doing slow breathing exercises. And, ocourse, the state of ultimate liberation is beyond words.

Most books on yoga are written on practice or philosophy, with a smalle

number of biographies of famous yogis and their teachings. This book shows ahistory of religions approach in the use of Sanskrit texts, folklore, and themes. Ialso shows the influence of tantric studies, especially in the contrast of yogicpaths. These were perhaps best articulated by Alexis Sanderson, describing thepractices of Saiva tantric yogis: one path includes those whose chosen goal wasliberation from the bondage of transmigration, and the other elected to pursuesupernatural powers and experience rewards. These paths, the tantric “right path”and “left path,” work more broadly for yoga as well. Whites book is clearly fol-lowing the “left path” of yoga, as may be implied from its tide, Sinister Yogis.

This book gives an important alternative understanding of the yoga tra-dition, moving the goal of ancient yoga from liberation from rebirth to super-natural power, from stilling the mind to ascending into the sun. Itssignificance for the field is its description of yogic religious experience throughnarrative rather than philosophy. It has long been a challenge to describe theinner aspect of yogic experience, and most writing has emphasized philosophi-cal analysis rather than myth and story. This is an original approach, and avaluable one.

doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfql 02 June McDanie

Advance Access publication December 24, 2010 College of Charleston

 Emplacing a Pilgrimage: The Oyama Cult and Regional Religion in Early

 Modern Japan.  By Barbara Ambros. Harvard University Press, 2008.330 pages. $39.95.

How does a diverse and evolving group of caretakers of a highly combina-

tory mountain pilgrimage complex ensure a steady flow of pilgrims, minimizeinternal competition and conflict, and guard against external threats and thed bili i i fl f l di d id l i l li i l d

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