Performing Yoga in Fiction: From "Yoghis" to rNal 'byor pas—with Reference to the Earliest Tibetan Novel in a European Language

From the nineteenth century onwards, figures of yogins regularly appeared in European fiction under various guises. While a substantial body of scholarship has examined these literary representations, I briefly survey significant yet overlooked examples in esoteric novels in French and English, highlighting the emergence of the Tibetan yogi in the Euro-American imagination at the turn of the century. Building on this, I focus on the first Tibetan novel written in a European language, Le Lama aux Cinq Sagesses (1935), also known in English as Mipam. The novel was published under the name of the Sikkimese lama Aphur “Albert” Yongden (1899–1955) and/or the celebrated French Buddhist writer Alexandra David-Neel (1868–1969), reflecting a complex interplay of authorship and the promotion of a Tibetan author's name in the European literary sphere. Drawing on archival materials, I examine the writing process, the construction of specifically Tibetan yogic figures in contrast with their Indian counterparts, and the depiction of Tibetan psychophysical practices within European imaginings, as well as the novel's publication and reception. In doing so, I explore intertwined issues of authenticity, authority, and adaptation that shaped both the production and perception of a Tibetan novel for a broad interwar audience. Against the backdrop of the global history of modern writings on yoga and the question of exemplariness in fiction, I broadly investigate the relationship between yoga and fiction writing, considering not only how yoga is represented but also how it is enacted through literary form. In light of the authors' extensive published and unpublished writings, I ask why the fictional novel—rather than a manual with practical instructions, a translation of Tibetan source texts, or direct teaching—was chosen as the medium both to communicate Tibetan yoga and to function as a form of yogic performance.