Valters Negribs' research concerns Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina ascetic and yogic literature in Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit. As a Gonda Fellow, he will work on early yogic traditions with specific reference to notions of controlled dying, ascent to heaven and separation of the soul from the body during meditation.

Several scholars have already taken an interest in the striking phenomena of yogic dying or yogic ascent, which is known in late texts as utkrānti (White 2009; Malinar 2011; Yonker 2021; Gerety 2021). In the Sanskrit epics, such ascent is often associated with imagery of light (Brockington 2010). White argues that ‘the image of the dying warrior who is “hitched to his rig [i.e. yogayukta],” or “ready to hitch up” in order to advance upward to the highest path, formed the basis for the earliest yoga paradigm’ (White 2009:73). This argument would have far-reaching consequences for the understanding of the early history of yoga. While working on the Sanskrit epics during his doctoral studies, Valters Negribs observed that such practices of voluntary dying and luminous ascent are neither exclusively associated with warriors nor are they always labelled as “yoga”. To properly understand these practices and beliefs about dying, the soul, and the afterlife, it is necessary to read widely in the Sanskrit epics and beyond. The proposed research will pursue this agenda by conducting a close reading of all relevant passages in the Sanskrit epics and bringing them in dialogue with comparable passages from early Buddhist and Jaina texts. The goal of this research is to map a range of little-understood beliefs about the soul and its separation from the body at the time of death or during meditation. Such beliefs about a luminous soul that ascends to heaven are found throughout the Sanskrit epics and appear to be related to the Jaina notion that perfected beings (siddhas) ascend to the topmost part of the universe as well as to the Buddhist notion of a mind-made body (manomayakāya), which is discussed in Buddhist accounts of meditation.