Patanjali

Patanjali appears in ancient Indian records as the author of the Yoga Sutras, a foundational yoga text likely composed sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 5th century CE. An author by the same name wrote the Mahābhāṣya, a major Sanskrit grammar work firmly dated to the 2nd century BCE, and may have written medical texts from centuries later. The language and subject matter differ sharply across these works, and no source before the 11th century linked them to a single person. Western scholars now generally hold that multiple authors shared the name, though traditional circles still ve…