What Yoga Means

Few words have travelled as far from their original meaning, in as short a time, as this one. It is worth recovering what it meant, not to disparage what it has become, but because the older meaning is genuinely useful and has been almost entirely lost in transit.

Yoga derives from √yuj, and the lexicon's first attested sense — from the Ṛgveda — is the act of yoking, joining, attaching, harnessing, putting to, said of horses. Then: a yoke, a team, a vehicle. Then: employment, use, application, performance. Then a very long list of further technical senses across mathematics, astronomy, grammar and medicine.