From Guruphiliac
India Moves To Protect Its Heritage From Greedy Gurus
File under; The Siddhi of PR
Mother India is out to save Her spiritual heritage from greedy,
patent-trolling gurus [Ed.note: Remember Bling-Bling Bikram?] who try
to turn yoga culture into their own, personal cash cows:
Instances of self-styled yoga gurus claiming copyrights to ancient
‘asanas', especially from the West, is now becoming rampant. This has
made 200 scientists and researchers from the Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Union health ministry's department
of Ayush join hands to put on record all known yoga postures and
techniques that originated in India.
Scientists are presently scanning through 35 ancient Sanskrit texts,
including the Mahabharata, Bhagawad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali to identify and document all known yoga concepts, postures
and terminology.
Till now, 600 ‘asanas' (physical postures) have already been
documented. The team plans to put on record at least 1,500 such yoga
postures by the end of 2009.
That is a yoga guide we'd love to see.