Selective Reception: Herman Walter and the Shaping of Haṭhayoga in German Indology (1890–1935)

In 1893, Herman Walter published the first German translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā, combining philology with contemporary anatomical and medical perspectives. His translation framed Haṭhayoga not merely as a set of techniques but as a soteriological system, while simultaneously reinterpreting yogic concepts through the lens of Western science.

This paper examines how Walter's interpretation influenced, and was reworked by, German Indologists such as Richard Garbe, Richard Schmidt, and Wilhelm Hauer. Through comparative textual analysis, it traces how key elements of Walter's framing—such as his emphasis on the yogic body—were adopted in terminology but also reinterpreted or stripped of their original context. Later scholars tended to subordinate Haṭhayoga to hierarchical models privileging Patañjali's Yogasūtra, often recasting it as derivative, excessive, or of merely therapeutic value.

Using reception theory and Wilhelm Halbfass' concept of intercultural hermeneutics, the paper argues that Walter's translation functioned both as a textual contribution and as an act of epistemic framing. Its reception reveals how Indological scholarship selectively appropriated, reshaped, or silenced aspects of Haṭhayoga according to broader intellectual agendas. The case highlights how knowledge transfer between Indic sources and European scholarship was mediated by competing frameworks of science, philology, and intellectual traditions.