This first module introduces the founding of the Theosophical Society (TS) and the objectives that characterized its early phases from New York to Adyar, including its motto "There is no religion higher than truth." We explore the vidyā or "knowledge" of yoga, as framed by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, and how it fits into the organization's larger aim of generating public interest in occult spirituality and Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. We will also analyze how the Theosophical approach to spirituality was initially criticized by more scholarship-focused philologists like Friedrich Max Müller, who edited the important Sacred Books of the East series, and how this continues to be relevant to debates on how scholars or practitioners—or scholar-practitioners—navigate questions of authority on yoga.

We also critically examine a few essays in the main journal of the TS, called The Theosophist, and take a closer look at how South Asian supporters like Tookaram Tatya helped generate discussion on a variety of yoga-related topics, especially via printed editions of the so-called "Aphorisms" of Patañjali as well as the Haṭha Pradīpikā. Finally, we will also explore how initially members of the TS saw yoga as a kind of mesmeric or astral trance that could facilitate divine realization, and how this continued to be emphasized by yoga authors in South Asia despite being minimized in later literature.

The second module brings to light a new dimension of Theosophical attitudes towards yoga, namely a "Lahore scene" that started to coalesce at an early stage in the Theosophical Society's development. The main actors in this scene were two pandits who were just young students at Government College Lahore at the time Blavatsky and Olcott visited Lahore on their first trip to the Punjab Province, today split between India and Pakistan. The first pandit, S.C. Vasu, or Shrish Chandra Basu, came from a Bengali family that had migrated to the Punjab from what is today Bangladesh, and had picked up an interest in yoga from a Nāth follower named Shivnath who lived near his house growing up. While Vasu had a complicated relationship with haṭha yoga, he nevertheless published the first English translations of both Śiva Saṃhitā as well as Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, two important Sanskrit texts and/or compilations on yoga from the medieval and early modern periods respectively. While comparatively less is known about the second pandit Rama Prasad's life, he was a student at Government College around the same time as S.C. Vasu, and published a partial commentary and translation of Śivasvarodaya with the titles Occult Science of Breath and Nature's Finer Forces.  

This module analyzes the above works as well as the relationship between these two pandits and the Theosophical Society, which they both joined and were active members of while publishing their important translations and commentaries on religious texts out of Allahabad, today Prayagraj, many of which were with the series "Sacred Books of the Hindus." We track the way some of these translations changed in subsequent editions, certain disagreements and stigmas about haṭha yoga—as black magic, for example—and also the implications of these for the reception history of modern yoga.

The third module turns to the life and yoga of the Tamil author Sri Sabhapati Swami, the so-called "Madras Yogi" who practiced a yoga called Śivarājayoga or the "royal yoga for Śiva" and who also contributed to the Theosophical conceptualization of the astral body. We examine how Blavatsky and Olcott met Sabhapati in Lahore, how this led to a pamphlet edited by Shrish Chandra Basu whom we met in the last module, how their relationship continued in subsequent years despite Sabhapati never joining the Theosophical Society, and how they parted ways over a story Sabhapati told about a flight to Kailāsa, the legendary mountain of the god Śiva. 

Beyond just historical information, however, in this module, we track how a colorful diagram depicting Sabhapati as mapped on to a Śivaliṅga or "phallic stone of Śiva" was central to Sabhapati's method of yoga. We also point out the importance of his Indic-language vernacular works on mantra and ritual, and how Theosophical ideas on mesmerism enabled him to interpret traditional practices of dīkṣā or "initiation" by a guru through the transfer of jñāna (also popularly known as "shaktipata" < śaktipāta) as an India-specific form of mesmerism.

The final module dives into the story of one of the most enigmatic early Theosophical authors, the Telugu author Tallapragada Subba Row (or Rao), who also produced several short but important essays on yoga. T. Subba Row was probably best known for his interpretations of the Bhagavadgītā and disagreement with Helena Blavatsky over cosmological principles (tattvas). Yet often overlooked are his writings under the penname “Solar Sphinx,” a reference to the Egyptian solar deity Harmachis, “Horus in the horizon.” These writings, as Solar Sphinx, often contained a great number of esoteric as well as yogic interpretations that reveal Subba Row's deep engagement with Egyptian theosophical writings—highly unique for a South Asian author in that time—and willingness to compare embodiment in the “ancient Hermetic philosophy” with that of Vedānta and Buddhism. 

In this module, we show the wide range of topics that Subba Row / Solar Sphinx was able to cover by first summarizing his critical review of The Virgin of the World (1884), an interpretive translation by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland of Hermetic texts. We then turn to his piece "Notes on Hata Yoga," an exceptionally unique esoteric commentary that promoted a positive attitude towards haṭha yoga at a time in which many other Theosophical authors had mixed views on the practice at best.