lit. "possessed of reverence." A Saivite Natha siddha who lived sometime between about 200 B.C.E. and 200 C.E., but the exact date is unknown. Patanjali traveled throughout much of India, studying and analyzing what different practitioners and teachers were doing under the name of "yoga" and then codified the ancient yoga philosophy that outlines the path to enlightenment through purification, control, and transcendence of the mind. Patanjali probably did not actually contribute any new ideas or practices to yoga, rather he provided a valuable structural analysis of the yoga of his day. His great work, the Yoga Sutras, comprises 200 aphorisms delineating Ashtanga (eight-limbed), raja (kingly) or siddha (perfection) Yoga. Still today it is the foremost text on meditative yoga.