Gorakhnāth at Gorakhpur

Gorakhnath at Gorakhpur

The head of the Nath tradition

Gorakhnath is the central figure of the Nath tradition, the great siddha lineage of yogis that spread across north India from the medieval period and is one of the most important of the siddha currents of the Hindu tradition. The city of Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh takes its name from him, and the Gorakhnath temple and mutt there are the principal seats of the lineage. Gorakhnath is presented in the Nath literature as a disciple of Matsyendranatha and as the systematiser of Hatha yoga — the hathayoga that the Naths are credited with transmitting and that underlies much of later Indian yoga practice. The chronology of the Natha founders is traditional and is not securely established; the "eleventh century" attached to Gorakhnath in earlier versions of this entry is a traditional placement, and the Nath lineages have their own genealogies that reach back to Shiva himself and are not historical in the ordinary sense.

The Nath tradition is far wider than Gorakhpur. Its disciples and successors include Jalandharanatha, Gopichand, and the saint-poet Gogaji with his companion Bharthri — both of whom are separately honoured in Rajasthan, and whose shrines are part of the wider Nath-siddha pantheon across the Gangetic plain. Regional forms of the Nath current include the Kanphata yogis of Rajasthan, the Jogis of Bengal, and the Dada and Akhara traditions that are politically alive in north India. The relationship between the Nath yogis and the Gorakhnath line in Gorakhpur is one of affiliation and dispute at the same time — the Gorakhpur mutt has been a claimant to the lineage's headship, and other Nath groups contest it, and the current political leadership of the mutt has not always been uncontested.

On the current head of the mutt. Earlier versions of this entry identified a serving Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh as the current head of the Gorakhpur mutt from 2014. This is a political fact that changes and is not appropriate to state as a fixed attribute of a religious entry; the mathadhipati relationship is a matter of the Nath institution's own succession and should be given from the mutt's own record. The audio placeholder in the frontmatter is machine-generated and is not a faithful recitation of any mantra and should be replaced with a human recording before publication.

The festival calendar of Gorakhpur turns on the winter month. The Makar Sankranti brings a month-long fair, and the khichdi distributed at the temple in enormous quantities is a distinctive feature of the Gorakhpur Sankranti. The Gorakhnath Jayanti is kept in the month of Magh. The New Year of the Nath tradition is also kept at Gorakhpur on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada, the day of the Holi festival.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in the Nath tradition's own textual and lineage material, in the standard scholarship on the siddha lineages, in the Gorakhpur mutt's own published record, and in the Gorakhpur district gazetteer. A human guardian from the Nath tradition, or a scholar of the siddha lineages, should supply and check: the mathadhipati succession as the mutt itself states it; the relationship of the Gorakhpur mutt to the wider Nath groups and the basis of its claim; the Gogaji and Bharthri shrines as they relate to this line; and the local form of the Sankranti khichdi rite. The eleventh-century placement of Gorakhnath is traditional and is flagged. The identification of a serving political officeholder as head of the mutt in the earlier version of this entry has been removed as both unverified and inappropriate to the entry's subject.