International Yoga Day: Why is it hard to pinpoint the origin of yoga?

People from around the world celebrated the International Yoga Day on Saturday (June 21) with large scale gatherings, virtual events, and messages of peace and harmony.
The genesis of yoga can be traced to ancient India. But it is impossible to pinpoint exactly how old it is. While the words '5,000-year-old tradition' are often thrown around, available evidence simply does not allow for such specificity. Here's why.
Two key pieces of archaeological evidence are often cited as proof of yoga's antiquity.
* The first is a small staetite seal recovered from the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) site of Mojenjodaro (now in Pakistan). Dated to circa 2,500-2,400 BCE, the seal 'depicts an impressive seated figure… sitting with legs crossed in what many have taken to be the mulabandhasana, a posture later to be much favoured by tantric yogis,' historian Alistair Shearer wrote in The Story Of Yoga: From Ancient India To The Modern West (2020).
But ascribing meaning to millenia-old objects whose contexts are not fully understood, especially given that the IVC script is yet to be deciphered, is not sound historical practice. Could the so-called Pashupati seal be depicting a yogic pose? Yes. But it could also simply be depicting someone sitting cross-legged, as is common across South Asia till date.
* The other, more recent, archaeological find comes from Balathal, Rajasthan, one of the 90-odd sites of the chalcolithic Banas culture. Excavated from the site was a roughly 2,700-year-old skeleton 'sitting in the samadhi position,' a posture 'that many yogis adopt for meditation and it is also assumed at the time of their burial,' Shearer wrote.
The exact posture of the buried figure — 'cross-legged, hands resting on his knees with thumb and index fingers touching in the yogic jnanamudra' — makes this piece of evidence more credible. Nonetheless, this only helps establish a baseline date of the yoga's origin: logically, the genesis of yoga would predate what is preserved in the archaeological record.
In ancient literature
The word 'yoga' finds mention in the Vedic corpus (1,500-500 BCE), the earliest (surviving) literature from the sub-continent. But it appears in a context far removed from postural or even meditational exercise — the sense in which it is understood today.
It is in the Mahabharata, composed over six centuries from 300 BCE to 300 CE, that yoga is used in a sense that would be familiar today. 'Some of these citations [in the Mahabharata] refer to yoga in a philosophical sense,' while others use the word 'when describing arduous physical penances and austerities performed by holy men,' Shearer wrote. Contemporaneous and later texts, such as the Upanishads, also use the term similarly.
One school of thought states that yoga is not of Vedic provenance at all, but has its origins in heterodox traditions of the first millennium BCE (and before), most notably Buddhism and Jainism. 'The unifying feature of this freelance religious movement was the practice of yoga,' Vivian Worthington asserts in A History of Yoga (1982). Various Buddhist and Jain texts mention yoga.
The Yoga Sutra of Maharishi Patanjali is the most well-known text on the matter, and composed around 350 CE, the oldest text dedicated solely to the subject. Most scholars agree that the present understanding of yoga is shaped by this text.
What is an 'origin'?
None of the texts mentioned above provide definite, empirical answers on the origin of yoga. This is largely because India does not have a tradition of history-writing like in the West, where a sharp distinction is drawn between history, based on empirical evidence, and myth, whose credibility lies in its meaning rather than veracity.
As Worthington wrote, 'One of the difficulties of tracing a history of yoga has been that by its nature it leaves nothing behind except myths and legends of miraculous powers possessed by some of the more accomplished practitioners of the art.'
There are no contemporary sources on yoga which can provide empirical specifics on its provenance. While analysing textual evidence can provide clues about the evolving meaning of the term and the evolution of the practice, it cannot with certainty provide a singular point in time when yoga originated.
Like any other facet of culture, yoga is a product of diverse, interacting influences. And just as it continues to evolve today, it underwent constant in the past. As such, it is often impossible to determine any facet of culture distinguishes itself from antecedents that shape it.

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