th ts, Yooa SAECOVery little is known about the author of this book apart from the facts that he is a retired Government of India officer, now in his late nineties, apparently hoary, but healthy. When requested for more bio-data, he wrote back: ...The real author of the Original Yogais the Lord Siva. In the mundane world, Patanjali is the prime propagator of yoga. Any other claim to authorship, therefore, cannot but be spurious. ...It is Truth that matters, not the utterer of the Truth. No Truth ever becomes a bit truer even when repeated by the most distinguished person. ..-Hence all genuine aspirants of yoga should be content to remain unknown and unnoticed by others. His other published work is Hindu Concept of Life and Death.The Original Yoga The concept of yoga is exclusively an Indian product. Yoga appears in history for the first time as estimated between the third and second centuries Bc. At this time, though still without a definite date, there flourished a person called Pataiijali, who is believed moulded the extant knowledge of yoga and wrote Yogasiutra. The author of this book once replied against some requests: . .. The real author of the Original Yogais the Lord Siva. In the mundane world, Patafijali is the prime propagator of yoga. Any other claim to authorship, therefore, cannot but be spurious. ... Itis Truth that matters, not the utterer of the Truth. No Truth ever becomes a bit truer even when repeated by the most distinguished person. ... Hence all genuine aspirants of yoga should be content to remain unknown and unnoticed by others. Shyam Ghosh (1904-2000) was a Vedic research scholar. He studied other Hindu scriptures as well, some of which he translated and published, including an exhaustive commentary on Pataiijali’s Yogasitra. Having boycotted his school at the call of Mahatma Gandhi in 1920, Shyam Ghosh joined Freedom Movement and participated in meetings and rallies organized by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders. Later, after a few years of self-education, he worked his way to the editorial staff of three national daily newspapers before being selected as the editor of the AIR journals—The Indian Listener, Awaz, and Sarang (now defunct). After a few years he was shifted to the Publications Division of the same Ministry as Deputy Director, and then on to the Finance Ministry, where he worked as Financial Advisor to the Director-General of Supply and Disposal. He had always been averse to personal publicity. “An author should be judged by his work, and not by his personal qualifications,” was his firm view. Some of his other works are: Rgveda for the Layman (2002) and Hindu Concept of Life and Death (1989; repr., 2002).