Future Project of The Lonavla Yoga Institute (India)
Project on three selected Yogopanishads

Twenty Yogopanishads along with the Commentary authored by Shri Upanishad-brahmayogin was first published in the year of 1920 by Adyar Library, Madras. Pt. A. Mahadeva Shastri, an erudite scholar from Adyar Library edited the Yogopanishads and thus rendered a great service to the aspirants of Yoga by bringing in light these Upanishads, which otherwise remained unknown.

However, this work is entirely based on a few Mss. and not critically edited. Moreover, the original texts are published in Sanskrit (in Devanagari script) which is not understandable to a larger portion of the Yoga enthusiasts and therefore they are deprived of the valuable knowledge described therein. Later on they were translated in English and published in a separate volume.

The Yogopanishads deal in a wide range of topics chiefly of Hathayoga. In most of the cases, each Yogopanishad provides exhaustive, detailed and in-depth knowledge on one specific subject. These Upanishads also give rarely available practicable guidelines on the topic or practice it deals in. Therefore, these Upanishads are a treasure house of knowledge which are certainly to be of practical use for the students of Yoga.

We have information regarding several more Mss. of Yogopanishads deposited in the Oriental Libraries and three more distinct commentaries authored by Shankarananda (1400 AD), Appayadikshitar and Narayana. In our project on Yogopanishads, we plan to consult these valuable source materials with a view to enhance the quality of the work which can be accessed by world Yoga community to derive maximum benefit.

We have an ambitious objective to critically edit and publish all the twenty Yogopanishads. However, at present we have undertaken this project to critically edit three selected Yogopanishads, namely, Yogakundalyupanishad, Yogacudamanyupanishad and Trisikha-brahmanopanishad. In its final form we shall provide original text along with text of commentaries, transliteration of the main text, English translation, critical notes and footnotes with an exhaustive introduction. We shall also give word index, glossary etc.

We plan to publish the work by 2008.