Person · grammarian & yoga compiler · India
Patanjali
Also known as Patanjali, Pātañjali, Patañjali
Ancient Sanskrit grammarian and philosopher traditionally credited with three major works: the Mahabhashya, a c. 2nd-century BCE commentary on Panini's Ashtadhyayi that is the central text of Sanskrit grammatical tradition; the Yoga Sutras, c. 2nd-century BCE compendium of yoga philosophy that organises classical yoga into eight limbs (ashtanga); and the Charaka Samhita's medical compilation, though the last attribution is probably legendary. Whether the Patanjali of grammar and the Patanjali of yoga are the same person is unresolved and probably unresolvable; Hindu tradition treats them as one figure. The Yoga Sutras are the single most widely translated Sanskrit text of the modern period after the Bhagavad Gita.
- Date
- -200–-100
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
Worth knowing
Hindu tradition makes Patanjali an incarnation of Shesha, the thousand-headed cosmic serpent on whose coils Vishnu reclines, and he is depicted in temple sculpture with a snake's lower body and multiple serpent-hoods above. His three works correspond to the three cleansings — speech by grammar, mind by yoga, body by medicine — which is the frame in which Shaivite tradition reads him. The Chidambaram temple carries his image in the Nataraja shrine's mandapa.
About the place
Placed in the ancient Sanskrit learning tradition. His historical dates and location are both uncertain.
Connections (1)
- Commented onPānini
Patanjali's Mahabhashya is the central commentary on Panini's Ashtadhyayi — the earliest surviving grammatical treatise of any Indo-European language — and is the text through which the Sanskrit grammatical tradition reached the European Orientalists in the eighteenth century. The Mahabhashya is itself in sutra and bhashya form, with Patanjali's explanations longer than Panini's rules; it preserves fragments of Katyayana's intermediate commentary and makes the entire post-Paninian grammatical tradition legible.