Talk:Hinduism/Archive 18

message: I moved this section to this page (WT:HNB) because it is a discussion about Hinduism in general and not about this article. Thanks GizzaChat © 10:45, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Cremation and other death rites should definitely be added to the "Practice" section. Jpatokal 14:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, since nobody else did, I went ahead and added it.  As exceptions to cremation, the Japanese Wikipedia states "金が無い人、赤ん坊、妊婦、蛇に噛まれて", or "people with no money, babies, pregnant women and those bitten by snakes".  True or false? Jpatokal 12:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-cremation in Hinduism 

message: I suggest that we should take efforts to reduce article size to around 40-45 Kb.--Indianstar 16:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely the article should be judged more on the quality of it's content than on it's size? Hinduism is such a vast subject to give an informative overview of. Is there a way to reduce the KB size without removing so much text? The old version which was counted as a featured article was here (I'm presuming the date is correct) for a comparison. Regards, Gouranga(UK) 20:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The page was 100Kb and it took five editors to try to reduce the article size and much as possible without removing valuable information. At the moment, the article lacks a fair bit of important information so it will be almost impossible to shorten the article to 40Kb. Gouranga, that old version, if we were to change back to it, will not be featured standard anymore. There are many problems with the old featured version, one of which is its emphasis on the astik philosophies. The standard of writing is also quite poor. GizzaChat © 06:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I too think it is not feasible to reduce this article down to 40-50K without loosing too much information. Indianstar may have arrived at the 45K number based on his experience editing the article on India (another huge topic) which is currently 43K and a  Featured article ! That said, I think we should keep our goals reasonable, perhaps in the 65-70K neighborhood after inclusion of topics such as Tantra and the criticism section. Abecedare 07:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article size 

message: Reference/footnote #37 seems to be broken. I do not have much time right now to search history and get it back. It might be easier if someone knew the reference. 
EDITORS:
PLEASE be careful before deleting a reference that has a refname attached to it. Make sure you do not orphan footnotes.
ɤіɡʍаɦɤʘʟʟ 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The ISBN quoted in the reference belongs to "A Popular Dictionary of Hinduism (Curzon Press 1994)" but I can't work out how to add this back into the current ref format. Any takers? Ys, Gouranga(UK) 10:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. I also added back another broken reference #96. Abecedare 05:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  broken reference 

message: Article mentions Thailand as having high Hindu population!
According to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/th.html
"Thailand — Religions: Buddhist 94.6%, Muslim 4.6%, Christian 0.7%, other 0.1% (2000 census)"
Jamesdowallen 06:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. I was bold enough to remove it quickly. GizzaChat © 09:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thailand Hinduism???? 

message: DaGizza, I just ran into an edit conflict. Will you please make sure that I did not ruin this page?Kanchanamala 10:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't understand. I didn't see you edit the main page or talk page. May you please tell me more specifically. I don't think you ruined any page. GizzaChat © 11:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help 

message: I have just (hopefully correctly) archived some of the stale discussions (inactive for more than a month or so) from this talk page into archive18. Hopefully this will spark new vigorous discussions to similarly improve the quality of this article. ॐ नमःशिवाय Śaiva Sujīt सुजीत ॐ 03:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: While it is true that Smriti are non-Vedic in the sense that they do not include the Vedas, they are Vedic in the sense that (some of them) originated during the Vedic period, and they build upon/accept the authority of the Vedas. Since the adjective Vedic is almost always used in the latter sense (Vedic period, Vedic science, vedic mathematics, Vedic religion), I think,  referring to Shrutis as non-Vedic may be inaccurate or at least confusing. However I may be wrong on this, so can others weigh in before making any changes in article-space ? 
Also, the title "Many scriptures, many paths: attitude towards other beliefs" seems too long, especially for the Table of content. Any thoughts on alternate section title ? Abecedare 05:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about post-Vedic? It therefore doesn't imply there are no Vedic influences in the Smriti. GizzaChat © 06:18, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not sure that is accurate either, because (parts of) the Mahabharata (a smriti) were probably composed earlier than some of the Upanishads. As far as I understand the difference between Shruti and Smriti has more to do with the Shruti's primacy as a theological source, rather than the their chronological order of composition; not to mention that dating any of these is a minefield. Perhaps we can can simply title the sections Shruti and Smriti with the explanations left to the the following paragraphs and the main articles. Abecedare 06:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shruti and Smriti 

message: I cancelled vandalism on the article. TwoHorned 18:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: I think that there is support for the term Vedic religion rather than Hinduism, which is a more geographical term. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NotyourPOV (talk • contribs) May 2, 2007
Abecedare and other fellow editors: The article is on Hinduism and not on "Sanatana Dharma". As I have pointed out above, 'Hiinduism' is an English word, and 'Sanatana Dharma' is no Sanskrit equivalent of 'Hinduism'. Thanks.Kanchanamala 09:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Import of 'Hinduism' 

message: I'm looking at the page Idol Worship, and it says
:Idol worship is most prevailant in Hinduism, the oldest  practised religion of the world.
:Special features
:1. Generally, the idols are in pairs, that is a God accompanying a Goddess. For example, Shiv-Parvati, Brahma-Saraswati, Radha-Krishna etc., those in italics being the male counterparts.
:2. Idols may not be necessarily have human resemblance as is common in Greek and Roman cultures but can be any inanimate object like the Shivlinga which is a stone structure resembling, approximately, a hemisphere mounted on a cylinder. Fire (Agni) is also worshipped as God.
:3. Animals and plants also have idol status, like the cow, basil shrub, banyan tree, the Ganga etc.
:4. The various avataars (form in which the Gods and Goddesses came down in earth from heaven to salvage the human race) are also worshipped, like Ma Durga is an avataar of Parvati, Ram is an avataar of Vishnu etc.
:5. Even devils have been idolised, like Ravana (the villain of the epic Ramayana) etc. However, they are not worshipped, they are condemned.
:Mythology
:Hindu religion and idol worship are intricately interwoven with mythology, for example: In the epic Ramayana, the earth is the mother of Sita, wife of Ram(an avataar of Vishnu) and Pawan (wind) is the father of Hanuman, the greatest loyalist of Ram.
:Thus wind and earth have godly status and have been given human forms.Hanuman is himself an ape.
:Myths 
:People often regard Hinduism as a religion of many gods and goddesses. But the Rigveda (one of the four vedas; vedas are to Hindus what the Quran is to Muslims, and the Bible is to the Christians; the main religious document) states clearly that God is ekam wa adityam (one and unparalleled); the idolic Gods are just various manifestations of Him.
:Conclusion
:Idols are a means of identifying an abstract divinity. It is also a tribute to various natural forces sustaining our existence. They are symbolic of the great personages that have walked on this earth during different ages. They are the brainchild of a vivid imagination of the religious Gurus and Pundits to simplify to the layman follower, the abstract concept of divinity.
Some of this seems questionable to me: most worship with which I'm familiar is not worship of the object, but of the deity it represents or the indwelling spirit it houses.
Could someone with knowledge of Hinduism take a look at this article and see if it's accurate?
*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 14:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article you mention above is a poor 'duplicate' of Idolatry. I have since re-directed the page back to the main link. Regards, Gouranga(UK) 15:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looking For Assistance 

message: There is considerable usage of IAST and Unicode text throughout the article. While it might make it look "authentic", it also makes it look cryptic, very unreadable and user unfriendly. I would like to remove  IAST/Unicode versions of the words and replace them with normal English equivalents. The suggestions proposed here are excellent. I think this article is the best place to showcase ideal usage of IAST/Unicode text. ɤіɡʍаɦɤʘʟʟ 16:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for raising the issue.  I hope you will hold off on removal of any IAST pending better agreement on overall standards for use of IAST.  I have been trying to raise this issue here. as you note.  I see a great deal of inconsistency in IAST use but it has been difficult to get people to focus on the issue.  Because there was an objection by one editor to having a policy discussion on the IAST talk page, and the current language pages for Indic articles appear to be defunct, I am retaining some discussion threads about this at User:Buddhipriya/IASTUsage.  I think it is time to reactive the policy question at a larger level.  There is also frequent confusion about the role of Unicode tags.  The purpose of the IAST tag is to specify which of the many transliteration systems for Devanagari is being used, not to specify a computer encoding method (Unicode).  IAST may be implemented either in ASCII or in Unicode encodings, as is noted in the discussions in the threads on the pages I have noted.  I am going to try to get the policy pages reactivated and assemble these frequent questions in one place. I think the best thing would be to revive Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) and begin to refactor old threads pertaining to IAST usage. If at least one person agrees with this, I will try to work on it. Buddhipriya 19:55, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage of [[IAST ]]and [[Unicode ]]in article body text 

message: The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated, through the relative, and the images,
crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols?so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is
necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.
At the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893. Complete Works, 1: 17
We are to become divine by realizing the divine. Images or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of
our spiritual childhood. But on and on we must progress. We must not stop anywhere.
We can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the
material image calls up the mental idea, and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will
tell you that it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the IMAGE is not GOD 
and is not omnipresent.
After all, how much does omnipresence mean to the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If
not, when we repeat that word ?omnipresent,? we think of the extended sky or of space, that is all
At the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893. Complete Works, 1: 16
210.19.225.8 10:29, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  About Idol worship, this is what Vivekananda has to say 

message: In following up on a suggestion about a potential edit to Ganesha I posted a question about formats for the See also section that has drawn some interesting discussion about the role of the See also section versus navigation templates.  I am wondering if anyone else would like to take a look at the discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout#See also and repetition of links in article.  Action item for the Hinduism article might be to rethink the organization of the See also section. Buddhipriya 21:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideally, See also should be minimized and relevant links should be worked into the article text.  If See also is getting unreasonably large, it may be time to design a navigational template.  You can find several samples at :Category:History navigational boxes.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since we already have a Hinduism portal and a Hinduism template on this page, I am wondering what role the See also section really plays.  My foray into Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout#See also and repetition of links in article turned up some interesting related discussions about confusing the see also section with other types of navigation aids.  Does anyone else have an opinion on this?  Buddhipriya 00:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  See also section and navigation issues 

message: Is it common practice to capitalize the monotheistic Hindu god amongst Hindus?  Might this not be mistaken as being the Judeo-Christian God?  Should it be changed instead to Brahman, akin to how the Islamic monotheistic deity is referred to as Allah? Chiss Boy 08:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting question!  Because the Hindu concept of divinity is complex, sometimes you do often see the concept of Ishvara (Lord) capitalized.  However Brahman is not the name of a god, but the name of a philosophical concept.  There is a god named  but he is a specific deva.  The terms Brahman and  are often confused, particularly when simple English transliteration is used, which makes the diacritical mark go away.  There is no single monotheistic deity in Hinduism that corresponds to Allah.  It will be interesting to see what others think in regard to this question.  Buddhipriya 08:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

text: The question does not actually make sense. It is English convention to capitalize the first letter of all nouns and pronouns that refer to the divine. When you say "to capitalize the monotheistic Hindu god" you must mean to capitalize the name of a devata, which must be capitalizes anyway, as a proper noun. ॐ नमःशिवाय Śaiva Sujīt सुजीत ॐ 21:38, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization 

message: Hindi is NOT Sanskrit's heir to canonicity in Hinduism! If anything, its heavy infusion with Arabic and Persian elements would disqualify it and languages like Bengali or Marathi would be more appropriate. But these are IRRELEVANT issues! Sanskrit is the only language with any claim to ultimate canonicity in Hinduism, being the language intimately connected with the Vedas, Upanishads, the epics, Yoga Sutras, Nyaya, Samkhya, Vaisheshika, etc etc etc Lots of Apabhramsa-derived languages (IE Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, etc) and 'Dravidian tongues' (Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Tulu, etc.) are used as vernacular tongues for the transmission of and practice of Hindu belief or devotional elements. 
By using HINDI (where the Devnagari is identified as HINDI and not Sanskrit or, for that matter, Marathi) the page takes a political stance on the legitimacy of the Indian Republic (which is NOT ancient or medieval India, or 'Bharat' of yore per se, or a Vedist state) calling Hindi a national language. The Indian Republic is quite different from the India of the rishis, as is evidenced by the fact that a non-entity like Pakistan is now suddenly a political entity where no Pakistan existed before and Bangladesh (The so-called Land of Bengal) is really only one-half of what the kingdom of Vanga once was. My whole point is that Hindi cannot be cited as or implied to be canonical, as it was by placing it in the beginning paragraph. The majority of Hindus in the world don't even speak Hindi! (Please be smart about this, those who are about to argue... for 700 million Indians Hindi is at best a second language, then you have Nepalis, Baha Indonesians, etc.)--69.203.80.158 18:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hindi and Hinduism 

message: Suggestions, for those more learned than me in Hinduism: 
* create Boon (Hinduism), even if only as a redirect. Arjuna mentions a boon but it isn't linked. 
* Hindu is an adjective as well as a noun, so the adjective references should direct to Hinduism - of course, this can only be resolved by a disambiguation page, and also by changing links to Hindu into piped links (Hinduism or Hindu people). Hindu's current contents, about Hindu people, would be better moved to Hindu people, with Hindu as a disambiguation page. --Chriswaterguy talk 07:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't know how important it is to focus efforts on writing a separate article on boons for Hinduism... boons, wishes, genie-in-the-lamp, this stuff's so tangential to major world mythologies that it doesn't really deserve separate attention... Also, in Hinduism, boons are important only insofar as they drive folktale stories... they're not at all a major aspect of the faith... indeed, boons are not at all a part of Hinduism as much as they are a part of Indian folklore (just as boons aren't a big part of Islam but they figure as a narrative trope in the Arabian Nights). --69.203.80.158 02:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Boons are of some relevance to Hindus as they often appear in mythological stories like the Ramayana. Creating a page on it however, is probably not high on anyone's list of priorities since there are plenty of other more important things we need to do. GizzaChat © 08:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Boons do come up a lot, and their acquisition is a stock theme in Hindu literature.  I don't see a need for a separate Wikipedia article on the subject.  But I would not be surprised to find that some academic has done a paper on them (which I would enjoy reading). A name for Ganesha, by the way, is Varada (Boon-Giver = Vara+da), but the epithet varada is also applied to other deities as well (e.g., Vishnu Sahasranamastotra v. 49; MBH Shiva Sahasranamastotra v. 1), since the boon-giving function is a basic idea and probably cross-cultural, but I am ignorant of the facts.  The occurance of the name Varada in the opening verse of the Shiva Sahasranamastotra is an indication that the name was considered important in association with Shiva. Buddhipriya 09:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  I'll be presumptuous and say that I believe you guys are only supporting my initial statements... bear with me briefly... let me quote buddhipriya: "stock theme in Hindu literature" (emph. mine)... and Gizza: "they often appear in mythological stories"... I know literature can be read two or three ways, but it's rarely if ever an important element in philosophical or theological discussions. The sahasranama stotra is a collection of a THOUSAND names.... and Varada is among at least hundreds of other names collectively distributed across the pantheon... what I'm contesting is not its admitted appearances and reappearances in all sorts of Hindu folklore and mythology, but its importance to Hinduism qua faith. Hence, if we were to go through with a page on boons, I would vote to have it fall under boon (Hindu mythology). Otherwise, it can lure those unfamiliar with the faith into the highly mistaken belief that boons are on a level with things like paapa, karma, dharma, yoga, dhyaan, shraddha, vishvas, etc. to Hindus/Vedists/Santanists.--69.203.80.158 15:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll leave it to others to decide (since I know little about this). But it would be nice if boon in an article such as Arjuna could at least be linked to a section of an article, however small. --Chriswaterguy talk 16:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boon and [[Hindu]] 

message: Atheism with 68 KB size is promoted as Featured article on 28-Apr-2007. I think if we reduce size by 20 KB and make article as summary, we should be able to make this as featured article.--Indianstar 04:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Many editors tried this and we got close. There was a time when this page was 100kb+. However, after a while it becomes difficult to reach a consenus on what should be removed from the article because of differing opinions. Initially, copyediting and removing redundancies accounted for a drop of 20 kb or so. Now "important" content but not important enough for the main Hinduism page will need to be removed. Remember that at the moment, this page lacks vital sections, such as a criticism section. If you have the time, you may want to look at the past discussions at the archives, particulary the last two or three where many Hinduism editors tried to renovate the article. We were reasonably successful, but didn't manage make this article reach the ever so desirable Feature article status. Another problem with removing content is that sectarian biases develop because not all POVs are adequately presented. GizzaChat © 08:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do we need criticism section? Sikhism which is a featured article does not have criticism section? --Indianstar 05:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: People have mentioned it in previous FACs and many active editors tend to agree that we need a criticism section, as saddening as it is for some of us Hindus. Sikhism is a relatively small and new religion compared to Hinduism. Other old and big religions such as Christianity and Islam have criticism sections. And some people want other sub-sections. One I remember is a section on sacred rivers like the Ganga. GizzaChat © 07:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: More power to you if you want to try it.  I can assist in some ways but it is a huge challenge and will require few weeks of work. On the bright side, the article did go through a FARC successfully which should arguably provide an idea of what can make it featured. --Blacksun 09:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These two links should help: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hinduism/archive2 and Wikipedia:Featured article review/Hinduism. The main issues are length, writing quality, a few missing sections and possible philosophical/sectarians biases that may develop. At one time, there was a strong Advaita bias for example. GizzaChat © 09:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Size & Making as Featured article