Matsyendranath, Gorakhnath and the Nine Naths

Nath tradition traces its authority through a semi legendary lineage often summarised as the Nine Naths and Eighty Four Siddhas, though the exact roster of names shifts from one regional list to another, reflecting centuries of oral transmission across different parts of North and Central India rather than one fixed founding document.

At the head of most versions stands Matsyendranath, sometimes identified with the fisherman who is said to have overheard Shiva teaching the secret of yoga to his consort Parvati and thereby became the first human recipient of the teaching. His disciple Gorakhnath, also called Gorakshanath, is credited with systematising this inheritance into a coherent tradition, giving it the institutional and doctrinal shape that later Nath monasteries preserved. The tradition sits close to, and grew up alongside, Tantric Shaivism and in particular the Kaula current, with which Matsyendranath is also independently associated in other Tantric lineages, so that Nath teaching absorbed a considerable amount of Shakta and Tantric vocabulary even as it developed its own distinct emphasis on the physical, alchemical transformation of the practitioner's own body as the primary vehicle of liberation, rather than external ritual alone.