The meaning of Hatha in early Hathayoga

28 In the same vein Monier- Williams (1899: 1287) gave a more elaborate explanation: [It is] a kind of forced Yoga . . . treated of in the Hatha-pradipika by Svatmarama and performed with much self-torture, such as standing on one leg, holding up the arms, inhaling smoke with the head inverted &c. Monier-Williams confounded Hathayoga with various extreme practices of asceticism (tapas) that appear in the puranas,29 but not at all in the corpus of Hatha texts used for this study. By the twelfth century Yoga texts had emerged that posited the practice of Yoga as the chief means to liberation, and the practice was accompanied by a radically simplified tantric metaphysics.145 However, their terminology and practice was closer to tantric Yoga than Patafijalayoga.146 Some of these Yoga texts incorporated four kinds of Yoga (Mantra, Laya, Hatha, and Raja), which eventually coalesced in the fifteenthcentury Hathapradipika. 147 In compiling the Hathapradipika it is clear that Svatmarama drew material from many different sources on various systems of Yoga such as Yajnavalkya's and Vasistha's Astafigayoga, the Amanaskayoga' s Rajayoga, the Vivekamartanda' s Sadafigayoga, adinath's Khecarividya, the Virüpaksanatha's Amrtasiddhi, and so on.