Jai Singh
Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/jsae/v1n2/v1n221
[Article History: Received: 19 Jun 2024. Revised: 30 Aug 2024. Accepted: 18 Sep 2024. Published: 30 Dec 2024]
Abstract
Nāth Siddhas and Kānphaṭa Yogis were alchemists, philosophers, and yogis all rolled into one and they used the knowledge culled from these diverse disciplines to develop the ontology and epistemology of self. Various writers, dramatists, travelers from India and abroad discuss yogis as alchemists sometimes in a derogatory manner like Bāṇabhaṭṭa, a dramatist and author from the seventh century in his Bāṇa’s Kādambarī and sometimes positively and in a romantic manner like Marco Polo, the thirteenth-century travel writer in his The Travels of Marco Polo another European traveller from France, François Bernier visited India in the Seventeenth century during the reign of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb and described Nāth Siddhas and Kānphaṭa Yogis very romantically. This paper looks into the various aspects of Ontology and Epistemology of Self as understood by Nāth Siddhas and Kānphaṭa Yogis.
Keywords: Alchemy, Marco Polo, Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Kādambarī, François Bernier, Kundalinī Śakti.