Yogic texts: complete references

Every source cited in The Subtle Body: an evolutionary atlas, grouped by era. Where a text has entered the public domain, the card links straight to a free, complete edition — a period translation, not a modern paraphrase. Where no legitimate free edition exists, that's stated plainly rather than linked around.

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A note on the links: most public-domain editions here are 19th- and early-20th-century translations (Griffith, Max Müller, Woods, Pancham Sinh, Vasu, and others) — the same translators scholars still cite for these texts, but their English inevitably carries the vocabulary and assumptions of their era. They are excellent primary-source reading, not necessarily the most current scholarship.

Vedic

c. 1500–800 BCE

Hymn and ritual; breath, wind, and cosmos not yet distinct objects of study.

Ṛgveda
tr. Ralph T. H. Griffithc. 1500–1200 BCE (tr. 1896)
Hymns to Vāyu and the breath-deities; no systematic subtle-body doctrine yet.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →
Atharvaveda
tr. Ralph T. H. Griffithc. 1200–1000 BCE (tr. 1895–96)
Early speculative hymns treat the body as a ritual cosmos; prāṇa as animating but undifferentiated force.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →

Upanishadic

c. 800–200 BCE

The first inward turn: sheaths, channels, and a five-part breath-physiology appear.

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
tr. F. Max Müllerc. 700 BCE (tr. 1884, SBE vol. 15)
Describes nāḍīs carrying the self through sleep and death — the root of channel anatomy.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →
Chāndogya Upaniṣad
tr. F. Max Müllerc. 700–600 BCE (tr. 1879, SBE vol. 1)
The "hundred and one nāḍīs from the heart" passage; early, functional prāṇa doctrine.
Public domain · Read free (Müller tr.) →
Taittirīya Upaniṣad
tr. F. Max Müllerc. 6th c. BCE (tr. 1884, SBE vol. 15)
Lays out the pañca kośa — the five sheaths — with unusual internal consistency.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →
Kaṭha Upaniṣad
tr. F. Max Müllerc. 5th–4th c. BCE (tr. 1884, SBE vol. 15)
The chariot simile for senses and mind; an early image for what becomes pratyāhāra.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →
Praśna Upaniṣad
tr. F. Max Müllerc. 4th c. BCE (tr. 1884, SBE vol. 15)
A sustained, quasi-technical inquiry into the nature and function of prāṇa.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →

Classical Yoga

c. 200 BCE – 400 CE

Patañjali and Sāṃkhya formalize mind and body into precise technical categories — no nāḍīs or cakras appear.

Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra
tr. Charles Johnstonc. 2nd c. BCE – 4th c. CE (tr. 1912)
The eight-limbed path and a rigorous psychology of mind; no cakras or nāḍīs anywhere in it.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Sāṃkhya Kārikā (Īśvarakṛṣṇa)
tr. H. T. Colebrooke & H. H. Wilsonc. 4th–5th c. CE (tr. 1887)
Formalizes the gross/subtle/causal body distinction behind the later "three bodies" teaching.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Vyāsa's Yoga-Bhāṣya
tr. James Haughton Woodsc. 5th c. CE (tr. 1914)
The foundational commentary that shaped nearly all later readings of the Sūtra.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org (Woods ed.) →

Tantra & Hatha

c. 800–1650 CE

Cakras, kuṇḍalinī, bandhas, and mudrās built out as a working technology of the body — incompatibly, across lineages.

Early Śaiva & Kaula Tantras
various authorsc. 8th–11th c. CE
First developed cakra and kuṇḍalinī cosmologies, varying widely between lineages.
No single edition · A diffuse category of manuscripts, not one text — see Woodroffe's Serpent Power below for translated material from this stream.
Gorakṣaśataka (attrib. Gorakṣanātha)
c. 11th–13th c. CE
One of the earliest systematic Hatha treatments of the cakras.
No free edition found · No reliable public-domain English translation located online.
Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (Svātmārāma)
tr. Pancham Sinhc. 15th c. CE (tr. 1914)
Codifies bandhas, mudrās, and channel-purification (nāḍī-śodhana) as concrete technique.
Public domain · Read free at sacred-texts.com →
Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā
tr. Srisa Chandra Vasuc. 17th c. CE (tr. 1914–15)
An expanded, sometimes divergent catalogue of mudrās and purificatory practices.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Śiva Saṃhitā
tr. Srisa Chandra Vasuc. 17th–18th c. CE (tr. 1914)
Offers its own, partly incompatible, cakra and nāḍī correspondences.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →

Colonial Encounter

c. 1850–1950 CE

Translation into English recasts these ideas in the vocabulary of Western physiology, vitalism, and esotericism.

Vivekananda, Raja Yoga
1896
Presents Patañjali's psychology in language deliberately resonant with contemporary Western science.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Sir John Woodroffe ("Arthur Avalon"), The Serpent Power
1919
Translation and study of the Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa aimed at a Western readership.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Charles Leadbeater, The Chakras
1927
Fuses tantric material with Theosophical colour/vibration theory — ancestor of the popular 7-chakra model.
Public domain · Read free at archive.org →
Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine
1888
A Theosophical framework blending Indian and Western esoteric vocabulary wholesale.
Public domain · Read free (Theosophical Univ. Press ed.) →

Global Contemporary

c. 1950–present

Standardized, marketed, and academically re-examined — often in the same sentence.

Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom
1954
A landmark academic historicization treating yoga as a datable textual tradition.
Still in copyright · No legitimate free edition — widely held in libraries and in print (Princeton University Press).
B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga
1966
Codifies the posture-centered practice that became the template for modern global yoga.
Still in copyright · No legitimate free edition — in print (Schocken Books).
Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition
1998
Scholarly synthesis carefully distinguishing the textual layers this atlas draws on.
Still in copyright · No legitimate free edition — in print (Hohm Press).
Fascia Research Congress proceedings
2007–present
Unrelated Western anatomical research, occasionally paralleled with subtle-body concepts.
Open access · Fascia Research Society →