The Contested Science of Yoga

Abstract

Perceptions of yoga as an occult science prepared the setting for the “Bengali intervention” in the 1880s. The Theosophical conceptualization of yoga was significantly shaped by Indian viewpoints, which claimed the superiority of Indian occult science over Western mesmerism. Crucially, the Theosophists’ conceptualization of yoga was not fixed but subject to controversies among learned Indians. It is in that context that the Bengali intervention introduced Tantric elements into Theosophical understandings of yoga, challenging the viewpoints of both Western orientalists and Indians such as Dayananda. The resulting controversies allow for instructive insights into the ambiguous power dynamics between Western Theosophists and their Indian partners, as well as into the problems of translating and comparing notions such as occultism, occult sciences, and yoga.