Videos by James Mallinson
The Mahudi Gate was built in 1230 CE. It has over a hundred sculptures on it, including twelve Si... more The Mahudi Gate was built in 1230 CE. It has over a hundred sculptures on it, including twelve Siddhas, eight yoginīs, eight Bhairavas with the goddess, and eighty-four yogis. Some of the yogis are in complex yoga postures and these are the earliest known depictions of such postures by at least 250 years. The film shows an introduction to the gate by James Mallinson, PI of the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project, who first visited the site in 2016 with Daniela Bevilacqua. The images of siddhas had been noted before in a 1957 article by U.P. Shah (Shah 1957 Nāgarīpracāriṇī Patrikā varṣa 62 Nāth Siddhoṃ kī Prācīn Śilpamūrtiyāṁ) but he does not mention the yoginīs, Bhairavas or yogis. This film was made when Mallinson returned to Dabhoi with Mark Singleton in 2017 in order to try to get better photographs of the images. To see the photographs visit the project website, hyp.soas.ac.uk. 1927 views
Papers by James Mallinson
Purana Media, 2025
https://journals.flvc.org/purana-media/article/view/139131
This article adduces textual, epigrap... more https://journals.flvc.org/purana-media/article/view/139131
This article adduces textual, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence to identify vestiges of the Pāśupata ascetic tradition in Nāth Yogī lineages. The Pampāmāhātmya reveals links between Pāśupata and Nāth teachings on yoga. A combination of all three varieties of sources identifies forerunners of the Nāth Yogī Dhaj Panth subdivision within the Pāśupatas. Further, Nāth iconography from its beginnings to the early modern period depicts yogis carrying clubs similar to those seen in material representations of the Pāśupata teacher Lakulīśa. Together this evidence indicates that the Pāśupatas were among the various tantric traditions that survived in modified forms in lineages of the Nāth Yogīs.
Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts, ed. Dagmar Wujastyk, pp. 255–270, 2025
The Amṛtasiddhi is an eleventh-century Vajrayāna work written in Sanskrit, which is the first tex... more The Amṛtasiddhi is an eleventh-century Vajrayāna work written in Sanskrit, which is the first text to teach any of the practices and principles of what came to be classified in later texts as haṭhayoga, yoga in which physical texts predominate. Much of the text is couched in alchemical metaphors, and the names of the three primary techniques describing yogic processes such as breathing exercises and their effects on the body and the mind each have alchemical parallels. This chapter presents the various alchemical aspects of the text and analyses their reception—including their rejection or misinterpretation—in later works on yoga and provides insight into the spread of alchemical thought and methods into other Indic disciplines, and among different religious groups.
Yoga Studies in 5 Minutes, 2025
Pp.158–159 in Yoga Studies in 5 Minutes, eds. Barbora Sojkova and Theodora Wildcroft. Equinox, 2025.
The Dattātreyayogaśāstra, 2024
This book introduces, edits and translates the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, a Sanskrit text on yoga comp... more This book introduces, edits and translates the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, a Sanskrit text on yoga composed in about 1200 CE in South India. It teaches four types of yoga practice but devotes the majority of its 193 verses to haṭhayoga, which it divides into two varieties, one which consists of the eight auxiliaries first taught by Patañjali and one which has nine physical methods. It is thus the first text to combine the aṣṭāṅga system of Patañjali with physical techniques, and its teachings were highly influential on later authors and commentators of yoga texts. The book is addressed primarily to scholars but will also be of interest to students and practitioners of yoga.
Objects, Images, Stories Simon Digby’s Historical Method, 2021
A comparison of descriptions of yogi insignia in Old Hindi Prem Kathās and their depiction in sta... more A comparison of descriptions of yogi insignia in Old Hindi Prem Kathās and their depiction in statuary and Mughal-era painting.
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, edited by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021
Summary of history of haṭha yoga.
Masterpieces at the Jaipur Court, 2022
A brief account of the Yogabhāskara, a haṭhayoga manual from a Vaiṣṇava bhakti tradition which wa... more A brief account of the Yogabhāskara, a haṭhayoga manual from a Vaiṣṇava bhakti tradition which was thought to be lost until a manuscript of it was found in Jaipur in 2019.
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Videos by James Mallinson
Papers by James Mallinson
This article adduces textual, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence to identify vestiges of the Pāśupata ascetic tradition in Nāth Yogī lineages. The Pampāmāhātmya reveals links between Pāśupata and Nāth teachings on yoga. A combination of all three varieties of sources identifies forerunners of the Nāth Yogī Dhaj Panth subdivision within the Pāśupatas. Further, Nāth iconography from its beginnings to the early modern period depicts yogis carrying clubs similar to those seen in material representations of the Pāśupata teacher Lakulīśa. Together this evidence indicates that the Pāśupatas were among the various tantric traditions that survived in modified forms in lineages of the Nāth Yogīs.