The Yoga Stras of Patajali are 196 Indian stras (aphorisms) that constitute the foundational text of Ashtanga Yoga, also called Raja Yoga. In medieval times, Ashtanga Yoga was cast as one of the six orthodox stika schools of Hindu philosophy.

The Yoga Sutras were compiled around 400 CE by Patajali, taking materials about yoga from older traditions. Together with his commentary they form the Ptajalayogastra.

The Indian tradition attributes the work to Patajali. Much confusion has been caused by the late medieval traditions of conflating Patajali, the author of the grammatical Mahbhya, with the author of the same name who wrote the Yoga Stras. Yet the two works in Sanskrit are completely different in language, style and subject matter. Furthermore, before the time of Bhoja (11th century), Sanskrit authors did not conflate the authors, and treated them quite separately. And modern scholarship shows that these two authors are separated in time by about six hundred years. A third Patajali is sometimes also invented, an author on medicine, in order to fill out the meaning of Bhoja's verse that said a single Patajali cured speech through grammar, the mind through yoga, and the body through medicine. However, no major work of medicine by a Patajali is known to Sanskrit literature.[note 1]

The most recent assessment of Patajali's date, developed in the context of the first critical edition ever made of the Yoga Stras and bhya based on a study of the surviving original Sanskrit manuscripts of the work, is that of Philipp A. Maas.[6] Maas's detailed evaluation of the historical evidence and past scholarship on the subject, including the opinions of the majority of Sanskrit authors who wrote in the first millennium CE, is that Patajali's work was composed in 400 CE plus or minus 25 years.[6]

The Yoga Sutras are a composite of various texts. They resemble the Buddhist jhanas.[note 2] According to Feuerstein, the Yoga Sutras are a condensation of two different traditions, namely "eight limb yoga" (ashtanga yoga) and action yoga (Karma yoga). The Karma yoga part is contained in chapter 1, chapter 2 verse 1-27, chapter 3 except verse 54, and chapter 4. The "eight limb yoga" is described in chapter 2 verse 28-55, and chapter 3 verse 3 and 54.

Patajali's composition was entitled Ptajalayogastra ("The Treatise on Yoga according to Patajali") and consisted of both Stras and Bhya.[6] According to Wuyastik, referencing Maas,

Patanjali took materials about yoga from older traditions, and added his own explanatory passages to create the unified work that, since 1100 CE, has been considered the work of two people.

This means that the earliest commentary on the stras, the Bhya, that has commonly been ascribed to some unknown later author Vysa (the editor), was in fact Patajali's own work.[6]

Patajali divided his Yoga Sutras into four chapters or books (Sanskrit pada), containing in all 196 aphorisms, divided as follows:

Yoga consists of the following limbs as prescribed by Patanjali: The first five are called external aids to Yoga (bahiranga sadhana).

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Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia