On the Boundary between "Yogakkhema" in the "Suttapiṭaka" and "Yogakṣema" in the "Upaniṣads" and "Bhagavadgītā"

Abstract

The combination of the stems yoga- and khema-/kṣema- occurs in phrases or compounds in both ancient and in middle Indo-Aryan sources but what is intriguing is that such a combination is generally interpreted as coordinating in the former occurrences and as subordinating in the latter ones. In particular, yogakkhema- within the Buddhist Theravāda Canon and its commentarial literature is regularly analysed as a tatpuruṣa and often translated as ‘freedom from bondage or safety’.We recently presented a part of the Vedic and Pali documentation collected in the context of more broadly shared research on this subject during the 18th Conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Section: “Buddhism and Its relation to other religions”) held at the University of Toronto on August 20th–25th, 2017, now published as Pontillo and Neri 2019. The case of yogakṣema/yogakkhema in Vedic and Suttapiṭaka sources. In response to Norman. In: Journal of Indian Philosophy 47(3): 527–563. Here, we shall take a further step in the above-mentioned comparison by concentrating on the occurrences of the compound yogakṣema/yogakkhema as found in the upaniṣads and in the Bhagavadgītā and in some comparable Suttapiṭaka passages with the aim of understanding what might have been the boundary that this word historically crossed in the framework of an assumed dialogue between different traditions.