Christopher P. Tompkins, is a Sanskrit scholar and Yoga practitioner specializing in the Shaiva traditions of Medieval Kashmir. He holds several advanced degrees in South Asian Religions and Sanskrit, from Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches courses on the History and Evolution of the Yoga tradition (in the 'Great Books' of India).
Christopher founded the Kashmir Shaivism Preservation Project, which seeks to preserve and promote the literary legacy of Kashmir Shaivism. In 2012, he returned from Srinagar, Kashmir with 12,500+ pages of scanned manuscripts of endangered texts belonging to the Tantric traditions of this region. Samples of these can be viewed here (work in progress).
PhD work - The pan-Tantric Yoga System of early Śaivism: a Critical Study of the Kālottara Tantra.
My dissertation presents a detailed study of the yoga regimen (yogavidhi) ubiquitous to all lineages of medieval Tantrik Śaivism. This regimen is comprised of a self-purification rite known as bhūtaśuddhi (the ‘purification of the elements’). The primary text utilized for this study is the formative Kālottara Tantra of 350 verses (Sārdhatriśati Kālottara). Composed in the 6th century C.E., the Kālottara contains the oldest and most authoritative account of the bhūtaśuddhi rite. This dissertation includes a critical edition of relevant Kālottara chapters, drawn from seven manuscripts composed in three different scripts of the Sanskrit language. It also references more than three dozen source texts of the tradition (most of which are unpublished).focuses on the ritualized practices of Hatha Yoga as originally presented in the earliest surviving Tantras - untranslated works that pre-date the later Hatha Yoga manuals by centuries.
At it's essence, my work is for the yoga community, to enrich our understanding of history, lineage, and current evolution of practices today. I would be honored by your support, and honored to share discoveries with you from my years investigating the original Kundalini-based Yoga taught in the Tantras, most of which has been lost to the modern world.
For more information regarding my Online ‘Patreon’ Community, please click here.For opportunities for further study please click here.
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