Patanjali

Patanjali was the name of one or more authors, mystics and philosophers in ancient India, recorded as the author or compiler of a number of Sanskrit works, the greatest of which is the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text whose author or authors are estimated to have lived between the second century BCE and the fifth century CE. An author of the same name is credited with the Mahabhasya, a classic text on Sanskrit grammar firmly datable to the second century BCE, and with medical texts possibly dating from the eighth to tenth centuries CE, though the indologist Louis Renou has shown significant differences in language, grammar and vocabulary between the Mahabhasya and the Yoga Sutras, and before the eleventh century no known text conflates the identity of the two authors. Whether the sage Patanjali is the author of all works attributed to him remains debated by scholars, with the view that these were likely different authors now generally accepted by Western scholars, even as the glorification of Patanjali as a singular author of the yoga, grammar and medical texts remains, in the words of one indologist, an oft repeated article of faith in more traditional circles and yoga culture. Patanjali is regarded in tradition as an avatar of Adi Shesha.