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Breathing in India, c. 1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

NILE GREEN
NILE GREEN*
Affiliation:
Dept. of History, UCLA, CAC0095-1473, USA
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Abstract

This essay examines a series of ‘Hindustani’ meditation manuals from the high colonial period against a sample of etiquette and medicinal works from the same era. In doing so, the essay has two principal aims, one specific to the Indian past and one pertaining to more general historical enquiry. The first aim is to subvert a longstanding trend in the ‘history’ of religions which has understood meditational practices through a paradigm of the mystical and transcendent. In its place, the essay examines such practices—and in particular their written, and printed, formulation—within the ideological and technological contexts in which they were written. In short, meditation is historicised, and its ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ expressions, compared in the process. The second aim is more ambitious: to test the limits of historical knowledge by asking whether it is possible to recount a history of breathing. In reassembling a political economy of respiration from a range of colonial writings, the essay thus hopes to form a listening device for the intimate rhythms of corporeal history. In doing so, it may suggest ways to recount a connected and necessarily political history of the body, the spirit and the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2-3: Islam in South Asia , March 2008 , pp. 283 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 Sunita, Yogini, Pranayama Yoga: The Art of Relaxation (Walsall: West Midlands Press, 1968), p. 22.Google Scholar

2 I have been heartened in undertaking this historiographical venture through the studies in which Alain Corbin has attempted to map a ‘history of the senses’. See in particular his Les Cloches de la terre: paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle (Paris: A. Michel, 1994).

3 On the history of medical understandings of breathing, see Proctor, Donald F., A History of Breathing Physiology (New York: Dekker, 1995)Google Scholar.

4 The most influential example is Eliade, Mircea, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958)Google Scholar. However, universalist assumptions about the means and ends of meditation have been most influentially reflected in twentieth century definitions of zen as universal a priori experience, standing outside the usual ideological trappings of ‘religion’. The political genealogy of these formulations is unearthed in Sharf, Robert, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism”, History of Religions 33, 1 (1993), pp. 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Cf. Orsini, Francesca, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

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8 In the words of one precolonial Tantric work, ‘The fool who, overpowered by greed, acts after having looked up [the matter] in a written book, without having obtained it from the guru's mouth, he also will be certainly destroyed.’ Cited in Heehs, Peter (ed.), Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience (London: Hurst, 2002), p. 194Google Scholar.

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11 Alter (2004).

12 Jagannāth Prashād, Yogritī bā taswīr (Meerut, 1910), p. 120: ‘This is the final level of meditation (yē ākhirī daraja samādhī kā hai)’. Such ideas clearly drew on older traditions associated with Nath and Siddha Yogis. See Briggs, George Weston, Gorakhnāth and the Kānphata Yogīs (London: Oxford University Press, 1938)Google Scholar.

13 Lāl Varman, Shīv Brit, Yōg kē ‘amalī sabaq (Lahore: Bharat Literature Company, n.d. [1910?])Google Scholar.

14 Jagannāth Prashād (1910), pp. 90–96, 111–120.

15 Idem., pp. 101–102.

16 ‘Alī, Sūfī Sa'ādat, Asrār-e-darwēsh mūsūma ba bahr al-ma'rifat (Muradabad, 1898)Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., pp. 44–66, 186–192.

18 Idem., pp. 18–27.

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20 Husayn, Mīrzā Habīb, Ma'dan-e-tahzīb (Lucknow, 1901)Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., pp. 33–34, 47, 75–76, 93–95.

22 Ibid., pp. 194–195.

23 See ‘Abd al-Rahmān, Muhammad, Kriket gā'id (Lucknow, 1898)Google Scholar and Chānd, Nānak, Gā'id tū kriket ya'nī rāhnumā-e-kriket (Sialkot, 1891)Google Scholar. As clerk to the Municipal Committee in Sialkot, Chānd was close to the wider colonial re-conditioning of Indian behaviour articulated through notions of public property and its accompanying behaviour.

24 ‘Abd al-Hayy, Mawlwī, Adāt al-tanabbuh fī bayān ma'nī al-tashabbuh (Delhi: Tuhfa-e-Hind, 1326/1909), pp. 4–25Google Scholar.

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29 See Athanasius, , The Life of Saint Antony, trans. Meyer, Robert T. (Westminster: Newman Press, 1950)Google Scholar. On these themes more generally, see Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

30 Allāh Farūqī, Imdād, Ziyā al-qulūb in idem., Kulliyat-e-Imdādiyya (Kanpur, 1898), p. 137Google Scholar.

31 Imdād Allāh Farūqī (Kanpur, 1898), p. 137.

32 Iftikhār ‘Alī Shāh Watan, Irshādāt-e-Watan (Hyderabad, repr. 1384/1964), pp. 2–3, 5, 72–74.

33 See Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas, Shāh ‘Abd al-'Azīz: Puritanism, Sectarian, Polemics and Jihād (Canberra: Ma'rifat Publishing, 1982)Google Scholar.

34 Allāh, Hājjī Imdād, Risāla-e-jihād-e-akbar, in idem, Kulliyat-e-Imdādiyya (Kanpur, 1898), pp.182–203Google Scholar. Drawing on well-established tradition, such imagery was by no means unknown to Yoga works of the period; the Yogritī bā taswīr contains a section describing Yoga ascesis in terms of a battle (pp. 50–52). However, perhaps Imdad Allah's closest Hindu counterpart was the Maratha woman Tapasvini Mataji (b. 1835), who fought alongside the Rani of Jhansi in 1857 before escaping to Nepal and spending three decades engaged in meditation. Returning to India, she established a neo-orthodox Hindu girls' school in Calcutta in 1893 (Taylor 2001: 82).

35 See Chowdhury-Sengupta, Indira, “Reconstructuring Spiritual Heroism: The Evolution of the Swadeshi Sannyasi in Bengal”, in Leslie, Julia (ed.), Myth and Mythmaking (Richmond: Curzon, 1996)Google Scholar.

36 On Ghose and nationalist politics, see Mukherjee, Haridas and Mukherjee, Uma, Sri Aurobindo and the New Thought in Indian Politics (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1997)Google Scholar. On Ghose's Yoga, see especially Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga (Madras: Sri Aurobindo Library, 1948)Google Scholar.

37 The title of Aurobindo's newspaper was borrowed from the famous Bengali nationalist song of the same name, which first appeared in Bankim Chandra Chatterji's nineteenth century novel, Ānandamath (‘Abode of Bliss’, 1882), which itself dealt with a group of politicised nationalist sannyasis.

38 ‘Religion and Politics’, published in Bande Mataram Daily on 2 August 1907 and reprinted in Mukherjee and Mukherjee (1997).

39 See Dasgupta, Atis K., The Fakir and Sannyasi Uprisings (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1992)Google Scholar and Kolff, Dirk, “Sanyasi Trader-Soldiers”, Indian Economic and Social History Review 8, 2 (1971), pp. 213–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See Heehs, Peter, “Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism 1902–1908”, Modern Asian Studies 28, 3 (1994), pp. 533–556CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See Sarma, G. N., Sri Aurobindo and the Indian Renaissance (Bangalore: Ultra Publications, 1997)Google Scholar.

42 See De Michelis (2004) and Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal (Richmond: Curzon, 2001).

43 See Catlin, George, The Breath of Life; or Mal-respiration and its Effects upon the Enjoyments & Life of Man (London: Trübner, 1862)Google Scholar.

44 See Laurence, and Oliphant, Alice, Sympneumata: or, Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1885)Google Scholar. On Oliphant himself, see Henderson, Philip, The Life of Laurence Oliphant: Traveller, Diplomat, and Mystic (London: R. Hale, 1956)Google Scholar.

45 See Ayangar, C. R. Srinivasa and Iyer, Narrainasawmy, Occult Physiology: Notes on Hata Yoga (London: Theosophical Publication Society, 1893)Google Scholar.

46 See Anon., Health and Right Breathing (London: Cassell, 1912), pp. 28–29 on Catlin and pp. 48–49, 58 on Vivekananda.

47 Anon (1912), pp. 66–68.

48 Alter (2004).

49 See Vivekananda, Swami, Raja-Yoga, or Conquering the Internal Nature (Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 1930), pp. 38–39Google Scholar with reference to the laughing gas experiments of Sir Humphrey Davy (1778–1829). The text was originally published in English in 1896 in London and New York, with an Indian edition appearing in Calcutta shortly afterwards. Several translations of Vivekananda's Raja-Yoga into Indian languages were made during the first years of the twentieth century, including Bengali editions and an Urdu translation (Vivekānand, Swāmī, Rāj Yūg (Delhi: Sādhū Prēs, 1916)Google Scholar).

50 See in particular the chapters on ‘Physical Control’ and ‘Health’ in Khan, Hazrat Inayat, Sufi Teachings, Vol. 8, The Sufi Message (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990), pp. 49–56Google Scholar. On his life and teachings, see Keesing, Elisabeth, Hazrat Inayat Khan: A Biography (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1981)Google Scholar.

51 Cf. van der Veer, Peter, “Taming the Ascetic: Devotionalism in an Indian Monastic Order”, Man 22, 4 (1987), p. 693CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Till the nineteenth century asceticism was a most rewarding and promising option. Especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when ascetic orders dominated major parts of trade and soldiery . . . With the Pax Britannica this world of opportunity gradually disappeared . . . .” See also Dasgupta (1992) and Kolff (1971).

52 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 33–34. In the Urdu edition of Raja-Yoga (Swāmī Vivekānand, 1916, pp. 36–65), the sections on prāna describe the power of breath through the vocabulary of qudrat and tāqat.

53 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 33–34.

54 Ibid, p. 43.

55 Shīv Brit Lāl Varman (n.d. [1910?]), pp. 67–95.

56 In reflection of this neo-classical swing in colonial India, Vivekananda had included a rendering of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra as a legitimising appendix to his own Raja-Yoga.

57 Varman (n.d.), p. 67. A few pages later Varman re-emphasised the point by describing pran as ‘in essence a kind of special power (khas taqat)’. Idem., p. 70.

58 Idem., pp. 71–72.

59 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 48–49.

60 See Khakhar, Dalpatrâm Prânjivan, “History of the Kânphâtâs of Kachh”, The Indian Antiquary 7 (1878), pp. 47–53Google Scholar; Leonard, G. S., “Notes on the Kanphâtâ Yogîs”, The Indian Antiquary 7 (1878)Google Scholar and Postans, T., “An Account of the Kânphatîs of Danodhâr, in Cutch, with the Legend of Dharamnâth, their Founder”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5 (1839), pp. 268–271Google Scholar. For translations from mid-twentieth century Hindi versions of the Gorakhnath cycle, see Digby, Simon, Wonder Tales of South Asia (Jersey: Orient Monographs, 2000), pp. 140–220Google Scholar.

61 On similar legends from the nineteenth century Deccan, see Green, Nile, “Who's the King of the Castle? Brahmins, Sufis and the Narrative Landscape of Daulatabad”, Contemporary South Asia 13, 3 (2004), pp. 21–37Google Scholar.

62 Khakhar (1878), pp. 48–49; Postans (1839), pp. 268–269.

63 Khakhar (1878), p. 49.

64 See also Veronique Bouillier, “Des prêtres du pouvoir: les Yogi et la fonction royale”, in V. Bouillier and G. Tofffin (eds), Prêtrise, pouvoirs et autorité en Himalaya (Purusartha 12, 1989) and Gold, Daniel, “The Instability of the King: Magical Insanity and the Yogis' Power in the Politics of Jodhpur, 1803–1943”, in Lorenzen, David N. (ed.), Bhakti Religion in North India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

65 Khakhar (1878), pp. 49–50.

66 See Bouillier, Veronique, “The King and his Yogi: Prithvi Narayan Śah, Bhagavantanath and the Unification of Nepal in the 18th Century”, in Neelsen, J. P. (ed.), Gender, Caste and Power in South Asia: Social Status and Mobility in Transitional Society (Delhi: Manohar, 1992)Google Scholar and Green, Nile, “Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad”, Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004), pp. 419–446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Cf. Peter Gaeffke's remarks on the main writers of Hindi essayist prose in the early twentieth century: “All of them believed in the glories of the Hindu past, and all were convinced that only the reform of Hindu society on the basis of tyāg (asceticism) and patriotism could bring about self-government.” See Gaeffke, Peter, Hindi Literature in the Twentieth Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1978), p. 21Google Scholar.

68 Rām, Mahāshāh Kāshī, Akhlāqī wa rūhānī sihhat (Lahore: Āryā Pritī Nidhū Sabhā, 1904)Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., pp. 2–5.

70 Ibid., p. 6. Cf. the words of Aurobindo: “Subjection makes a people wholly tamasik, a sort of physical, intellectual and moral palsy seizes them . . .”. ‘Politics and Spirituality’, published in Bande Mataram Daily (9 November 1907) and reprinted in Mukherjee and Mukherjee (1997), pp. 189–192.

71 al-dīn, Muhammad Najm, Āyina-e-khōd-shināsī (Lucknow, 1890)Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., p. 7.

73 Ibid., pp. 6–16.

74 Ibid., pp. 12–17.

75 Sālih, Mawlwī Muhammad, Silsila-e-Islām (Lahore: Munshī Dīn Muhammad, 1328/1910), pp. 103–109Google Scholar.

76 Imdād Allāh Farūqī, Ziyā al-qulūb in idem., Kulliyat-e-Imdādiyya (Kanpur, 1898), p. 137.

77 See Green, Nile, “Mystical Missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu'īn Allāh Shāh and his Sufi Reform Movement”, Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, 2 (2005), pp. 187–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 The 1891 Census recorded the existence of 38,137 Muslim Yogis in Punjab alone. By the time of the 1921 Census, only 31,158 Muslim Yogis were recorded in the whole of India (figures cited in Briggs (1938), pp. 4–6).

79 Of course, these appeals to antique scripture were part of a wider neo-classical ethos that evolved through the interaction of Indian scholars with European Orientalists, a movement whose invention of a ‘classical’ era involved no less a denigration of a marginalised ‘middle’ ages than its European counterpart.

80 See Green, Nile, “Oral Competition Narratives of Muslim and Hindu Saints in the Deccan”, Asian Folklore Studies 63, 2 (2004), pp. 222–242Google Scholar.

81 On these Sufi Yoga romances, see McGregor, R. S., Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), pp. 21–24, 66–71, 107, 148, 151, 188Google Scholar.

82 See Briggs (1938), plates v and viii and Khakhar (1878), pp. 48–51.

83 See Dahnhardt, Thomas, Change and Continuity in Indian Sūfism: A Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī Branch in the Hindu Environment (Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2002)Google Scholar. On Yoga and Sufi synthesis beyond India, see Winstedt, Richard, The Malay Magician: Being Shaman, Saiva and Sufi (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

84 See Ernst, Carl W., “The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 13, 2 (2003), pp. 199–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Situating Sufism and Yoga”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 15, 1 (2005), pp. 15–43.

85 Cf. the Persian and Arabic texts studied in Ernst (2003, 2005) with the Bengali works of Sufi Yoga studied in Cashin, David, The Ocean of Love: Middle Bengali Sufi Literature and the Fakirs of Bengal (Stockholm: Association of Oriental Studies, Stockholm University, 1995), pp. 116–157Google Scholar.

86 Both Khakhar (1878) and Postans (1839) remarked on the extensive use of opium at the Yoga maths they visited in Kuchch.

87 See Gupta, Charu, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)Google Scholar and idem., “Procreation and Pleasure: Writings of a Woman Ayurvedic Practitioner in Colonial North India”, Studies in History 21, 1 (2005), pp. 17–44. On semen retention as an assertion of political control over the self, see Sanjay Srivastava, “Introduction: Semen, History, Desire and Theory” in ibid. (ed.), Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia (London: Sage, 2004).

88 See Homāyūnī, Mas‘ūd, Tārīkh-e-silsilahā-ye-tarīqa-ye-ni'matullāhiyya dar īrān (London: Bonyād-e-‘Irfān-e-Mawlānā, 1371/1992), pp. 258–262Google Scholar. On Safī's travels more generally, see Green, Nile, “A Persian Sufi in British India: The Travels of Mīrzā Hasan Safī ‘Alī Shāh”, Iran 42 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 See Sir Ahmad Husayn Amīn Jang, Falsafa-e-fuqarā (Hyderabad: Dār al-taba‘-e-sarkār-e-‘ālī, n.d. [c. 1932]) and Dahnhardt (2002).

90 We refer of course to the likes of the Ram Sena and Lakshman Sena or the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.