Talk:Sushruta Samhita

message: Thanks very much to whoever wrote the bulk of this imformative and well-written article . It was an eye-opener for me .  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.81.85 (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: fix talk

message: Sources agree that dating the Shushtra is problematic the article needs to reflect this. J8079s (talk) 14:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  dating the Sushruta 

message: Two names are given in the title - the correct transliteration is Suśrutasamhitā, and the simpler one is Sushruta Samhita. Please do not change this. Jose Mathew (talk) 12:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name in title 

message: Thank you for updating this article. Some different references you added were named the same ":1", which generated reference sections errors, and made verification difficult. I separated them and assigned new names, please double check. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 08:44, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks very much for fixing this!  I was aware of the problem, and intended to go back and fix it, but haven't had time recently.  Most grateful. Wujastyk 17:49, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  January 2016 updates 

message: Dear colleagues, Jose Mathew and others, I notice with dismay that my recent edits to this page have largely been reverted without discussion.  Please follow the Wikipedia guidelines, and discuss revisions here before reverting them wholesale.  My own fairly extensive edits were carefully referenced to the latest research, and are designed to reflect the current opinion of the professional research literature in the history of medicine.  This is a field in which I am a professional participant.  Early versions of this article on Suśruta are mainly based on obsolete or amateur literature, and it badly needs to be brought into line with current knowledge.  If this is your main research area, and you can reference your edits to the current research literature, then by all means do so.  But please don't just revert references to up-to-date research back to obsolete, nineteenth-century materials or amateur references in secondary literature.
How shall we proceed from here?  It is important that this page gives accurate information.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wujastyk (talk • contribs) 18:46, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: @Wujastyk: I saw the back and forth good faith edits between @Jose Mathew and you. Indeed significant parts of this article are unreferenced or from obsolete and amateur literature. See "contents" and "surgical procedures described" sections, for example. Every line, or significant fact/conclusion, ideally should be referenced to WP:RS, preferably recent. Further, given wikipedia's AGF policy that invites anyone to edit, it is likely that this article will see people reinserting the same obsolete literature in this article in future. One way to reduce instances of reverts or such reinsertions is to acknowledge the obsolete source, followed by a statement that this is obsolete according to XYZ (with recent reliable source added). I would cheer if we would add WP:RS to the "contents" and "surgical procedures described" sections, cleanup the remaining sections. Let us work on WP:LEAD last. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 21:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear Wujastyk, are you talking about the edits made on 9 Jan or 26 Jan? The latter was because you said "The best modern English translation ... ". This may be true, but unfortunately Wikipedia cannot make a value-based judgement. It cannot, therefore, say that a particular version is better than another. Of course, if an authority on this field has called it the best translation, s/he can be quoted as saying so. I made many changes on 9 Jan, so if you can please point out which ones you were referring to, I will give an explanation. And yes, many refs are old. But please do not remove them, it is better to just add newer data. That way, readers can see not only what is right, but also what is wrong. Thanks. Jose Mathew (talk) 10:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

text: Thank you both, @Ms Sarah Welch and @Jose Mathew, for responding.  I'm really glad we can discuss things here, calmly.  (The "ayurveda" page has been a nightmare, for quite different reasons.)  I can't attend now, but I will get back to your queries and the page very soon.  Just to mention, Suśruta is one of my principal research areas, so I find it hard to be patient about citations of literature by non-specialists (by which I mean physicians writing general history of medicine, who themselves are unacquainted with Indian history, and do not know Indian languages and have never read the source texts even in translation).  It is also hard to be patient with citations of literature that is a century old, on topics that have been the subject of continuous research since then.  That wouldn't normally be tolerated in Physics or Mathematics, why should we have lower standards?  <end rant :-) >  More later.  Wujastyk 17:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  January 2016 updates and modern scholarship 

message: For most of the twentieth century, the study of Indian medicine was dominated by a very small number of serious studies. These included the works of Lietard, Cordier, Hoernle (before the wars) and Jolly and Filliozat after the wars.  These scholars did valiant work, considering that many works had not previously been printed, let alone studied historically.  They were pioneers, the first generation.
During the last twenty years, there have been huge strides forward in the understanding of the history of Indian medicine.  These began with Chatopadhyaya's Science and Society in Ancient India, Emmerick's publication and studies of Ravigupta's Siddhasāra, Zysk's Medicine in the Veda and then his critically important Asceticism and Healing: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery, and  interpretative works like Zimmermann's The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats.  The many books and studies of Priya Vrat Sharma have opened up many historical questions and answered many questions. My own Roots of Ayurveda (Penguin Classics) has also contributed to a wider understanding of Ayurveda.  But above all, the pathbreaking researches of Meulenbeld, at first expressed in his articles and his book The Mādhavanidāna.  But then, Meulenbeld's publication of A History of Indian Medical Literature (HIML) in five volumes (1999-2002) has created a major revolution in ayurveda studies.  HIML is a vast reference work that summarizes all the previous scholarship on Indian medical history, and offers fresh clarity and certainty for the dating and interpretation of literally hundreds of ayurvedic works.  There is a problem, however.  HIML is a big book, and is marketed by Brill, who currently charge over €600 for the five volumes.  This means that the book has not reached a wide audience in India or amongst physicians who write amateur studies about Indian medicine.  Specialist libraries like the Wellcome Library in London have the book, obviously, and other university libraries that support serious historical work on Indian science and medicine.  But the book's price mean that it is poorly distributed and as not had the impact it deserves on current public writing about Indian medicine and its history.  
In short, the study of Indian medical history has gone through major professionalization during the last couple of decades.  Much of the public writing about Indian medicine offered by non-specialists relies on obsolete secondary literature.  Additionally, amateur scholars, including some retired doctors and other authors not trained in Sanskrit and Indian historical methodology, feel a false sense of confidence in writing about Indian medical history, remaining unaware of the profound advances that have been made by recent scholarship.  Physicists writing after 1905 would hesitate to engage seriously with theories of an absolute ether.  Similarly, current scholars of ayurveda would never propose that Suśruta lived in 600 BCE (an obsolete dating proposed by Hoernle a century ago). 
I have provided an annotated overview of contemporary ayurveda research in my entry Indian Medicine in the Oxford Bibliographies Online (also )
I therefore call on my fellow Wikipedia authors interested in the history of medicine in India to write and edit in the light of the current professional scholarship on the subject.  Wujastyk 17:09, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Please continue your edits. A few comments: [1] The main article, particularly Contents and Surgical procedures sections remain mostly without source. Your contributions there, with citations, will significantly improve this article. [2] Any conclusions/interpretation/theories about this text in the lead should have a discussion in the main, per WP:LEAD. [3] We need to avoid taking sides, and summarize all sides, particularly if multiple recent peer-reviewed scholarly reliable sources state something that you personally disagree with. That will be the NPOV. [4] A section summarizing various scholarly sides on the text's association, or lack thereof, with Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism would improve this article. [5] The "Date/Text Dating/Chronology" section should be separate, and it should not be entirely in the lead, as it then dominates the lead. See WP:UNDUE and WP:LEAD. [6] The lead would be better if it includes a few more summary sentences on what the text contains in its 184 chapters. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 18:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

text: Thanks for your response.  We were writing here at the same moment, so I have re-inserted my passage below that was bumped by your last save.  I completely agree with your point [1], but it's a big job to fix that section.  I will get to it, if someone else doesn't first. Re [2], I'm not sure what you mean.  But should we transfer part of what I've written above into the main article somewhere?  I'll go and read what WP:LEAD means.  [3]  Yes, the POV issue.  This is tricky, and I agree that some sort of statements and orientations are needed, otherwise people will just keep reverting and counter-reverting.  It's an issue about the history of scholarship too, as I've tried to explain above.  Wikipedia entries on Astronomy don't keep justifying that they don't put the earth at the centre of the solar system, because there is a consensus amongst working professionals that the planets revolve around the sun. It's the same with the history of medicine.  People professionally involved in the field are not spending all their time combating points of view that were current in 1900.  The field has moved on.  The trouble is, with ayurveda there's a lot of literature out there, including in peer-reviewed journals, that is written by people who are not themselves historians or specialists in Sanskrit literature.  They are still putting the earth in the middle.  It's a problem, in spite of the fact that there's abundant good historical literature out there on the subject. One of my approaches in writing for WP has been to support assertions with citations from original Sanskrit sources as often as possible, and refer to the original Sanskrit text editions on archive.org, where they exist. [4] and [5], agree completely.  Wujastyk 19:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: @ Wujastyk: On [3], your "earth at the centre of the solar system" is a good example. You can't find a non-fringe, peer reviewed scholarly paper in last 50+ years that asserts that. But you acknowledge, rightly, "the trouble is, with ayurveda there's a lot of literature out there, including in peer-reviewed journals" with different views. We can't right great wrongs in wikipedia. We can only summarize that "which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion". If we don't present all sides, people in good faith will do so, because they just read or remember something. I suggest you add just a sentence or two about each incorrect theory on Susruta Samhita, followed by why that is outdated, citing reliable sources. On quoting Sanskrit texts as well, yes please do. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  February 2016 updates and modern scholarship 

message: Substituted at 07:24, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: If this book is an ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and surgery, what does it have to do with  template? 140.0.19.54 (talk) 01:35, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation to Hinduism