Measuring Mantras, Breath, and Brahmanical Asceticism

Although well known as repositories of Hindu law, the Dharma Sūtras and Dharma Śāstras are also rich and untapped sources for the study of Brahmanical yoga in early India. Designating the recitation of Vedic mantras (svādhyāya) as yoga, these texts classify chanting as a form of asceticism (tapas) which confers knowledge, expiates sins, and purifies the practitioner. Mantra-based yoga is made physically arduous by the integration of breath control (prāṇāyāma) in fixed sequences calculated in “measures” (mātrās), a measurement originally associated with chanting and ritual speech. In this paper, I analyze the practice of yoga as taught in the Dharma texts by highlighting the close relationship of mantras and breath control, exemplified by this shared unit of measure. The aim is to shed light on the nexus of mantras and asceticism as complementary aspects of Brahmanical yoga in the opening centuries of the Common Era.