The Vāsiṣṭha Atlas · Calcutta, 1891–1899
The translator who called it hypnotism
“After Chúdálá had hypnotized her husband Sikhidhwaja.”
Mitra, VI.1.103.2
Vihari-Lala Mitra, the first complete English translator of the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (Calcutta, 1891–1899), rendered suṣupti, samādhi and yoga-nidrā as “hypnotism” some 67 times and as “trance” or “entranced” about a hundred times. Reading all sixty-four tales in full, we verified 441 instances of this vocabulary — hypnotism, trance, anaesthesia, somnambulism, clairvoyance, catalepsy, coma, hybernation — inside the tales alone.
He wrote in the city where James Esdaile had run his mesmeric hospital half a century before, and fifty years after James Braid named hypnotism. He calls Book VI “this book on anæsthesia” (VI.2.198.4). His choices are a translator’s interpretation, not an equivalence; but they are a witness. The lineage this project traces — Faria, Bengal, Braid — has a trace inside the standard translation of the text itself.
In his own words
“After Chúdálá had hypnotized her husband Sikhidhwaja”“He is verily the best to yoga, who mesmerises the body of his pupil, by his kind look, touch and sound”“Hypnotism is asleep over the phenomenal, but wakeful to the spiritual”“It is possible even in the waking state, to have this sound sleep of susupta hypnotism”“The fact of the Fakir of Lahore who lay buried underneath the ground is well known to many”“stead fast hypnotism, and settled intentiveness in the Supreme”“The vision of Lílá, called samádhi in Yoga and clairvoyance of spiritualism”“half hypnotism … samádhi or hypnotism”Chapters that carry the words in their titles
| Book.Chapter | Mitra’s title | Tale |
|---|---|---|
| V.28 | Description of Bali's anaesthesia | 19 · Bali, Virocana and Śukra |
| V.29 | Bali's resuscitation to sensibility | 19 · Bali, Virocana and Śukra |
| V.78 | Manner of conducting the Yoga Hypnotism | Discourse |
| VI.1.95 | The anaesthetic Platonism of Sikhidhwaja | 34 · Cūḍālā and Śikhidhvaja |
| VI.2.46 | On abstract meditation and hypnotism | Discourse |
| VI.2.53 | Explanation of Nirvāṇa — anaesthesia | Discourse |
| VI.2.202 | Recumbence of the assembly to their hypnotic rest | 64 · The Return: Rāma's Ecstasy, the Court's Hypnotic Rest and the Great Jubilee |
Source: Vihari-Lala Mitra, The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki (Calcutta, 1891–99), public domain. References: Book.Chapter.verse; VI.1 and VI.2 are the two halves of Book VI. The link between Mitra’s word “hybernation” and Braid is a plausible inference, not a proven fact.
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