『게란다상히타』 Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā의 요가 자세(āsana)에 대한 일고찰－『하타프라디피카』Haṭhapradīpikā와의 비교를 중심으로

Abstract

Today, it is estimated that two million people practice yoga. But most of them just exercise bodily postures (āsanas). To recover the fundamental thought of yoga, namely liberation, traditional yoga which is the root of modern postural yoga has to be understood first. Especially, āsanas of Haṭha Yoga should be comprehended in detail. For this, I compared āsanas of Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā (GhS; 32 āsanas included) with those of Haṭhapradīpikā (HP; 15 āsanas included) in this paper. Along with Śivasaṃhitā, these two texts consist of three main representative works of Haṭha Yoga. In Chapter Two, I studied differences of four āsanas (bhadrāsana, dhanurāsana, vīrāsana, matsyendrāsana), which are called by the same names but have different methods to do, through aphorisms in two texts and pictures of those āsanas. And then uttānakūrmāsana and siṃhāsana are examined. These two āsanas have a same name and (almost) same ways to practice, according to the two texts. In particular, HP and Jyotsnā have more detailed description of siṃhāsana than GhS does, therefore it is possible to understand this āsana more deeply. Siddhāsana and padmāsana are dealt lastly. These two āsanas appear to have the same practice method in two texts. However, HP also introduces other ways to practice them which belong to other schools. Through this, those two āsanas can be comprehended more widely. In Chapter Three, I carry Saṃskṛta-Korean translations of aphorisms of āsanas in GhS's Chapter Two that do not appear in HP. This will be meaningful because the translation of GhS based on saṃskṛta texts has yet to be published.