Origins (before 500 BCE)[edit]
Pre-Vedic India[edit]
Yoga may have pre-Vedic elements.[56][57]
Indus Valley Civilisation (before 1900 BCE)[edit]
Some argue that yoga originates in the Indus Valley Civilization.[62] Marshall argued in the 1920s that Several seals discovered at Indus Valley Civilization sites depict figures in positions resembling a common yoga or meditation pose.[63] This interpretation is rejected by more recent interpretations.[64]
Vedic civilisation (1700-500 BCE)[edit]
According to Crangle, Indian researchers have generally favoured a linear theory, which attempts "to interpret the origin and early development of Indian contemplative practices as a sequential growth from an Aryan genesis",[65][note 6] just like traditional Hinduism regards the Vedas to be the source of all spiritual knowledge.[66][note 7]
Ascetic practices, concentration and bodily postures used by Vedas priests to conduct Vedic ritual of fire sacrifice may have been precursors to yoga.[69][70]
North-eastern India (before 500 BCE)[edit]
According to Zimmer, Yoga is part of the pre-Vedic heritage, which also includes Jainism, Samkhya and Buddhism:[57]
[Jainism] does not derive from Brahman-Aryan sources, but reflects the cosmology and anthropology of a much older pre-Aryan upper class of northeastern India - being rooted in the same subsoil of archaic metaphysical speculation as Yoga, Sankhya, and Buddhism, the other non-Vedic Indian systems."[71][note 8]