PROJECT MEMBERS

PROFESSOR JAMES MALLINSON

Principal Investigator

James (Jim) Mallinson is the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. From 2013–2023 he worked at SOAS University of London where from 2015–2020 he was the Principal Investigator of the Hatha Yoga Project. Professor Mallinson has a BA in Sanskrit and Old Iranian from the University of Oxford (1991), an MA in South Asian Area Studies (with ethnography as its primary subject) from SOAS (1993) and a DPhil. from the University of Oxford (2001). His doctoral thesis was a critical edition of the Khecarīvidyā, an early text on haṭha yoga, and was supervised by Professor Alexis Sanderson. A revised version of the thesis was published by Routledge in 2007.

After completing his doctoral studies Professor Mallinson worked as a principal translator for the Clay Sanskrit Library, for which he produced five volumes of translations of Sanskrit poetry. He has also published translations of two haṭha yoga texts, the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā (2004) and Śivasaṃhitā (2007) for YogaVidya.com. In addition to these books Dr Mallinson has published numerous articles, book chapters and encyclopedia articles. Roots of Yoga, a reader of translations of texts on yoga introduced and edited by Professor Mallinson and Dr Mark Singleton was published in the Penguin Classics series in January 2017.

Professor Mallinson’s primary research method is philology, in particular the study of manuscripts of Sanskrit texts on yoga, which he complements with ethnographic data drawn from extensive fieldwork with Indian ascetics and the study of art historical sources. In recognition of his long association with the Rāmānandī Indian ascetic saṃpradāya, in 2013 the order honoured him with the title of mahant, an event recorded in the Smithsonian Channel’s television documentary West Meets East. His work on art historical depictions of yogis led to his being invited to be a consultant and catalogue author for the 2013 exhibition ‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’ at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

Many of Professor Mallinson’s publications may be downloaded from here.

DR MARK SINGLETON

Senior Researcher

Mark Singleton’s research interests lie in the intersection of tradition and modernity in yoga. He was research assistant to Dr. Elizabeth De Michelis at Cambridge University’s Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research in 2002-3, and went on to complete a Ph.D at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity on the modern history of yoga. During this time he also began the formal study of Sanskrit with Drs. Eivind Kahrs and John Smith. He taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico) between 2006 and 2013.

He has been a senior long-term research scholar at the American Institute of Indian Studies, based in Jodhpur (Rajasthan, India), and was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2013 exhibition ‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’ at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.. He served as co-chair of the Yoga Consultation at the American Academy of Religions from 2012 to 2015. He is co-manager of the Modern Yoga Research website.

His books include Yoga in the Modern World (Routledge 2008, ed. with Jean Byrne); Yoga Body, The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press 2010); Gurus of Modern Yoga (Oxford University Press 2014, ed. with Ellen Goldberg); and Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, January 2017, with James Mallinson). He has also written articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries on yoga.

His work in the Haṭha Yoga Project focuses primarily on the history of physical practices that were incorporated into or associated with yoga in pre-colonial India. He is collaborating with partners at the Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, on a history of the yogic art and manuscript collections there (from the reign of Maharaja Man Singh, 1803-1843). He is also involved in the critical editing of three of the project’s core texts (the Yogacintāmaṇi, Haṭhasaṃketacandrikā and Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati).

Read some of Mark Singleton’s work.

DR JASON BIRCH

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Jason Birch (DPhil, Oxon) is an historian of South Asian traditions of yoga and medicine. He is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Alberta, a Research Associate at SOAS University of London, and an Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney. Through extensive fieldwork in India and the reconstruction of Sanskrit primary sources, Birch has revealed the early history of Rājayoga, the supreme yoga of meditation, as well as its physical counterpart, Haṭhayoga (the yoga of force). His research has also identified a corpus of Sanskrit and vernacular texts that emerged during Haṭhayoga’s floruit, the period in which physical yoga flourished on the eve of colonialism.

Among Birch’s major book publications on the history of yoga are A Manual on the Practice of Haṭhayoga: An Edition and Translation of the Pune Manuscript of the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati (with Mark Singleton and James Mallinson), Āsanas of the Yogacintāmaṇi: The Largest Premodern Compilation on Postural Practice, and The Amaraugha and Amaraughaprabodha of Gorakṣanātha: The Genesis of Haṭha and Rājayoga. He is also a co-author of the digital critical edition of the Haṭhapradīpikā, one of the main outputs of the Light on Haṭha Project.

His published work on the history of medicine includes the 2018 publication Premodern Yoga Traditions and Ayurveda: Preliminary Remarks on Shared Terminology, Theory and Praxis (DOI: 10.18732/hssa.v6i0.25), and his co-authorship of the 2023 project book On the Plastic Surgery of the Ears and Nose: The Nepalese Version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā (DOI: 10.11588/hasp.1203). In addition to other publications arising from the Suśruta Project, he wrote the chapter “Yoga and Ayurvedic Medicine” for the Comparative Guts project (book DOI: 10.38071/2024-00345-3, and website). He is a major contributor to the continuing work of editing and translating the Nepalese version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā, and is preparing a monograph on the concept of wellbeing (svāsthya) in early Ayurveda.

Jason Birch received his bachelor’s degree in Sanskrit and Hindi from the University of Sydney. He was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship to pursue doctoral studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under Alexis Sanderson. He completed his DPhil in 2013. In 2014, he was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and in 2015 he joined AyurYog, an ERC-funded Project at the University of Vienna. Later that year he joined the five-year Haṭha Yoga Project at SOAS University of London, where he translated and edited Sanskrit texts on Haṭha and Rājayoga. He is a founding member of SOAS’s Centre for Yoga Studies and of the diamond open-access Journal of Yoga Studies.

DR DANIELA BEVILACQUA

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Daniela Bevilacqua is an Indianist who uses ethnographic and historical methodologies to dig into religious issues of Indian culture. In 2006 she accomplished her BA in Oriental Languages at the University of Rome, Sapienza, presenting the thesis Nityasumangali, the ritual and propitiatory role of the Devadasi. In 2009 she completed her MD, specializing in Modern and Contemporary Indian History. Her thesis, Rāmjanmabhūmi: Myth, Religion, History and Politics, analysed historically the origin and development of the Rāmjanmabhūmi issue. On the wave of this work, she decided to focus on the Rām bhakti and especially on the Rāmānandī sampradāya for her PhD. She received her doctorate in 2015 in “Civilizations, Cultures and Societies of Asia and Africa”, supervised by Professor Mario Prayer at University of Rome, Sapienza, and a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Paris X Nanterre Ouest La Défense, supervised by Professor Véronique Bouillier. Her work based on a multidisciplinary approach titled A Past for the Present:The Role of the Śrī Maṭh and the Jagadgurū in the Evolution of the Rāmānandī Sampradāya. Through this work, she came to know Dr Mallinson, who asked her to join the HYP team due to her ethnographic work among ascetics.

Her role in the project is to collect, through fieldwork, historical evidence of yoga practice and ethnographic data among living ascetic practitioners of yoga.

Read some of Daniela Bevilacqua’s work.

Dr. S V B K V Gupta

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Dr. S. V. B. K. V. Gupta works on unpublished Sanskrit manuscripts, Yoga and Pāṇini’s grammar. He holds a doctoral degree in Sanskrit from Pondicherry University. Prior to that, Dr. Gupta also completed his M.Phil in Śābdabodha Systems & Language Technologies from the University of Hyderabad. He worked on the doctoral thesis “A Critical edition of Kumāradāsa’s Jānakīharaṇa (Up to 7th Canto)”, under the supervision of Dr. K E Dharaneedharan. It is a Mahākāvya critically edited up to 7th Canto (until Janaki’s marriage). He also worked as a researcher for the ANR, France sponsored project: “Pāṇini and Paninéens in the 16th and 17th centuries (pp16-17.org)”, under Prof. Jan E M Houben. He edited a book Viz. Kāvyadarpaṇa of Rājacūdāmanidīkśita. He also published several research articles in the field of Sanskrit in reputed national & International journals. Dr. Gupta delivered a guest lecture at the University of Sorbonne, Paris. He is also an editorial board member of International Journal of Indian Languages and Literature.

Dr. Gupta is currently working as a Assistant Professor in Sanskrit at Amrita International Center for Spiritual Studies, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Deemed to be University). He worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher from 2015 to 2019 for the ERC project on Haṭhayoga for SOAS, London University from EFEO, Pondicherry, India. His role was to locate, transcribe and research manuscripts of Sanskrit yoga texts in South Indian libraries, under the supervision of Prof. Dominic Goodall, Dr. James Mallinson, Dr. Jason Birch and Dr. Mark Singleton. At present he is collaborating with Dr. Jason Birch on an edition and translation of an unpublished text called the Yogārṇava.

Dr. Priyanka Avula

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Dr. Priyanka Avula holds a doctoral degree in Sanskrit from the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP). The title of her doctoral thesis is: “MAXIMS IN THE PANINIYAN GRAMMAR – A CRITICAL STUDY”. It was completed under the supervision of Dr. S. Lakshminarasimham. She has also published several research articles in the field of Sanskrit in reputed national and international journals.

Currently Dr. Priyanka holds a research position at the EFEO, Pondicherry. She is working on unpublished Sanskrit manuscripts for the Haṭha Yoga Project. Her role is to locate, transcribe and research manuscripts of Sanskrit yoga texts in south-Indian scripts and languages, under the supervision of Prof. Dominic Goodall, Dr. James Mallinson and Dr. Jason Birch.

RAMYA RAJAGOPAL

Researcher

Eloisa Stuparich

Post-Doctoral Researcher