India · c. 4th–5th c. CE? (dating disputed)
Patañjali
Compiler of the Yoga Sūtra
He defined yoga as ‘the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind’, set out eight limbs from ethical restraint to absorption (samādhi), and, within a Sāṃkhya-like framework, allowed a special self, Īśvara, as an object of devotion.
Life and thought
Patañjali is the name attached to the Yoga Sūtra, about 195 short aphorisms that are the classic text of the Yoga school. Most scholars now date the work, together with its earliest commentary (the Bhāṣya, which may be by the same hand), to around 400 CE; the old identification with the 2nd-century-BCE grammarian Patañjali is generally rejected. Of the man himself nothing is known.
The Sūtra defines yoga as “the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind”; when they are stilled, “the seer rests in its own nature”. The text maps the obstacles—ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and clinging to life—and the means: eight limbs, from ethical restraints and observances through posture, breath control and withdrawal of the senses to concentration, meditation and absorption (samādhi). Its metaphysics is largely Sāṃkhya’s, but it adds Īśvara, a special self untouched by karma, as an object and aid of concentration. Modern postural yoga claims the text as its charter, though it says little about postures.
Works
Shaped by
c. 4th–5th c. CEĪśvarakṛṣṇaPatañjali’s Yoga presupposes the Sāṃkhya scheme of puruṣa and prakṛti; the relative dates of the two texts are uncertain.Meanwhile, in other traditions
354–430Augustine of HippoNorth African bishop who fused Christianity with Platonismborn c. 350–370; died 415HypatiaMathematician and Neoplatonist teacher in Alexandria412–485ProclusHead of the Platonic school in Athens and Neoplatonism’s great systematiserOn the record
Patañjali compiled the Yoga Sūtra, c. 4th–5th century CE (dating disputed).
Estimates for the Yoga Sūtra run from 500 BCE to 450 CE, but later dates are more widely accepted; Philipp Maas places the Pātañjalayogaśāstra at about 400 CE. The older view that he was the grammarian Patañjali (2nd century BCE) is rejected by most scholars: no text before Bhoja (11th century) conflates the two.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” (citing Maas)