Sinister Yogis - Softcover

White, David Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226895149 ISBN 13: 9780226895147

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2011

Synopsis

Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga’s origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize.

To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga’s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia’s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities—which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation—to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren’t downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

About this title

About the Author

David Gordon White is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books, including The Alchemical Body, Kiss of the Yogini, and Sinister Yogis, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226895149
• ISBN 13: 9780226895147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376