Patanjala Yoga Philosophy with Reference to Buddhism (An Old and Rare Book)

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Born in 1949, the author, Koichi Yamashita specialized his subject in Indian and Buddhist Studies and completed the B.A., the M.A. and the Ph. D. programme at Otani University, Kyoto, Japan.

Besides his research work, he was teaching Japanese and English at High Schools in Kyoto. In 1984 when he was a Ph. D. candidate of Calcutta University, he Joined Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, as a Reader in Japanese, and now the Head of the Department of Japanese Studies. His Several papers were published on Indian Philosophy & Culture, Buddhist Studies and Japanese Language & Literature.

The present work was originally designed as a Ph. D. thesis titled "Studies in the Formation of the Analysis of Mind in Påtafijala Yoga Philosophy and Buddhism" and submitted to the University of Calcutta in 1987. I have added some papers as Appendix which were not included in the original thesis and rewritten this introductory part.

The philosophical school of Yoga formulated by Patañjali and supplemented with exhaustive interpretation by Vyasa has its dual aspects both theoretical and philosophical. That accounts for its special distinguished status in the whole range of Brahmanical schools of philosophy. The aphorism of Patanjali, Yoga-sutra, starts with the definition of Yoga which is no other than restraint of the function of mind. Through the text we get elaborate analysis of mind, citta, and its functions.

In the Buddhist philosophy also we have critical analysis of citta, cetasika and other matters relating to mind. It has, therefore, deemed worthwhile on our part to initiate a discussion on a comparative basis regarding the analysis of mind as we find in the Yoga-sutra, its commentary and in the Buddhist texts.

My thesis was distributed over five chapters as shown in the present book.

The first chapter is dedicated to the study of the parinama theory of the Yoga and the Samkhya, the purpose being that the concept of parinama of the Yoga philosophy and the Samkhya philosophy is to form the background of the parinama theory.