Gheranda Samhita is a Sanskrit text of Yoga in Hinduism. It is one of the three classic texts of hatha yoga, and one of the most encyclopedic treatises in yoga. Fourteen manuscripts of the text are known, which were discovered in a region stretching from Bengal to Rajasthan. The first critical edition was published in 1933 by Adyar Library, and the second critical edition was published in 1978 by Digambarji and Ghote. Some of the Sanskrit manuscripts contain ungrammatical and incoherent verses, and some cite older Sanskrit texts. It is likely a late 17th-century text, probably from northeast India, structured as a teaching manual based on a dialogue between Gheranda and Chanda. The text is organized into seven chapters and contains 351 shlokas.
Book
The Gheranda Samhitacalls itself a book on ghatastha yoga, which literally means "vessel yoga", wherein the body and mind are depicted as vessels that carry and serve the soul. It is generally considered a Hatha yoga text. The text teaches a seven limbed yoga, in contrast to eight limbed yoga in Patanjali's Yogasutras, six limbed yoga taught in Goraksha Samhita, and four limbed yoga discussed in Hatha Yoga Pradipika. It declares its goal to be the perfection of an individual's body, mind and soul through a seven step lifelong continuous self-development. The means of this goal include self purification, thirty two asanas it details for building body strength, twenty five mudras to perfect body steadiness, five means to pratyahara, lessons on proper nutrition and lifestyle, ten types of breathing exercises, three stages of meditation and six types of samadhi. The text reverentially invokes Hindu godShiva as well as Vishnu, with verses such as 5.77 and 7.4 suggesting that the writer was also inspired by Advaita Vedanta ideas such as "I am Brahman alone, and nothing else; my form is truth, consciousness and bliss ; I am eternally free".
Structure
Gheranda Samhita is a step by step detailed manual of yoga taught by sage Gheranda to student Chanda. Unlike other hatha yoga texts, the Gheranda Samhita speaks of a sevenfold yoga:
The text itself follows this division in seven chapters, and has a focus upon the ṣaṭkarmas, thus this text is sometimes said to describe ghatastha yoga. For instance, the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali describes an eightfold path. The closing stanzas on samadhi teach different methods than those described by Patanjali. The earliest translation of the text into English was by Srisa Chandra Vasu.
Asanas
The Gheranda Samhita describes the following āsanas.
