Śivasaṃhitā 1.3

This verse performs a deliberate act of exclusion: before defining what yoga is, the text declares what it sets aside. The doctrines of habitual disputants are rejected not merely as mistaken but as generators of durjñāna — corrupt or distorted knowledge. Philosophical controversy, however sophisticated, is here diagnosed as spiritually harmful rather than merely unproductive.

The compound vivādaśīla («disposed to dispute») pairs vivāda (debate, controversy, quarrel) with śīla (character, habitual tendency). This is not a neutral description but a character critique: these are people constitutionally oriented toward argument rather than realization. Durjñāna («false» or «harmful knowledge») stands in direct contrast to the eternal jñāna of verse one — it is knowledge that actively obscures rather than merely fails to illuminate.

The polemical context of this dismissal matters historically. The Śivasaṃhitā was likely composed between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period of vigorous inter-school debate among Advaita, Dvaita, Sāṃkhya, and various Tantric lineages. By rejecting disputational modes wholesale, the text positions itself above sectarian argument — a rhetorical move that paradoxically strengthens its own authority while claiming to transcend the very game of competing claims.