Material and textual evidence for interaction between Vajrayāna Buddhists and Nāth Yogis in the Konkan during the 10th to 15th centuries

James Mallinson (SOAS)

Note: Internal event not open to external attendees.

The earliest text to teach the principles and techniques of haṭha yoga is the Amṛtasiddhi of Mādhavacandra. Many of its verses are reused or paraphrased in later works on haṭha yoga associated with the Nāth Yogi tradition and other “Hindu” orders. In this talk Dr Mallinson will show how recent study of a twelfth-century manuscript of the Amṛtasiddhi in collaboration with Dr Péter-Dániel Szántó has shown conclusively that the text was composed in a Vajrayāna Buddhist milieu. He will then draw on other texts and recent fieldwork in the Konkan in order to present his working hypothesis of how the Vajrayāna and Nāth traditions interacted during the tenth–fifteenth centuries.