Somewhere between the second century before the common era and the fourth century after — the textual scholars argue, gently, in footnotes — a sage we call Patañjali sat down and wrote a single Sanskrit word: atha. Now. Then he wrote one hundred and ninety-six aphorisms, in the most compressed registered Sanskrit can sustain, each one a single thread (the literal meaning of sūtra) that could be unrolled into a lifetime's reflection. Together they make up the Yoga Sūtras — the most precise statement of the inner science of yoga that the tradition has ever produced. The PDF embedded below is one such unrolling. The interpretive edition takes the Sanskrit as its anchor and draws out, in English, what the…