James Mallinson, Nath Yogis and their ‘Amazing Apparel’ in Early Material and Textual Sources In: Objects, Images, Stories. Edited by: Francesca Orsini, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190123963.003.0004 3 Nath Yogis and their ‘Amazing Apparel’ in Early Material and Textual Sources James Mallinson When the theoretical principles of lived asceticism confront its practical- ities, compromises are made. Indian ascetics renounce material posses- sions, yet they are as closely identied as any other Indian social group with the wearing of specic material insignia. 1 e ascetic lifestyle may it- self result in the development of corporeal attributes such as long matted hair or an emaciated body and may require the acquisition of implements such as re tongs or a begging bowl; in addition, ascetic lineages dier- entiate themselves from one another by the wearing of sect markers such as earrings or forehead markings. Artists, poets, and travellers have long been fascinated with India’s ascetics and, in their depictions and descrip- tions of them, have paid close attention to such insignia. In this chapter, I examine the insignia sported by ascetics of the Nath sampradaya (reli- gious order), an order of yogis whose rst historical members lived at the end of the rst millennium CE and which continues to ourish today. 2 In so doing, I shall demonstrate how, similar to the close reading of texts, the 1 I thank Imre Bangha, Daniela Bevilacqua, Helmut Buescher, Patton Burchett, Debra Diamond, Ann Grodzins Gold, Daniel Gold, B. N. Goswamy, Ludwig Habighorst, David Lund, Lubomir Ondračka, Francesca Orsini, Zac Pelleriti, Seth Powell, Kazuyo Sakaki, Saarthak Singh, and Bruce Wannell for their help with this article. is article is an output of the Hatha Yoga Project, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 647963. 2 On the history of the Nath sampradaya and the use of the name Nath as a generic term for members of the order, see James Mallinson, ‘e Nāth Saṃpradāya’, Brill Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, Vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 407–28. In this chapter, I use ‘Nath’ to refer to all yogis of this tradition, including those predating the term’s generic use. When referring to those Nath lineages which claim Gorakhnath as the order’s head, I use the more specic term ‘Gorakhnathi’.