Talk:Rigveda/Archive 1

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Text from before page move

I think there was a lots of very confusing stuff here, strangly repetitious. I think we have to balance the conventional scolarship of the vedas with the deire of some Hindus to see the scriptures as ultra-ancient and as native in origin. I've tried to keep a balance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Barlow (talk • contribs) 19:04, 20 January 2004 (UTC)

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I've tried to further clean up the article. The subject is slightly delicate, since a lot of crackpots and/or hindu religious/nationalist fundamentalists swarm around the Rig Veda. I think such views deserve to be mentioned, but they need to be put in perspective. Therefore I tentatively created 3 sections, "internal evidence" for 'western science' style deduction about the origin of the Rig Veda, "native tradition" for data recorded in post-vedic indian tradition, and "recent indian views" for views held by modern Hinduists (the RV is very much pre-hinduist, and therefore claims by Hinduists, while valid for Hinduism itself, are not necessarily true for the vedic civilization). The paragraph on "The rigvedic view..." I left standing under "recent views" (even though no details are given as to the source), since it is nigh impossible to summarize any "rigvedic view" on internal evidence, because the Rigveda consists of out-of-context hymns of considerable opacity.

As it stands, this is a suggestion for the organization of the article, which would have to be edited to fit this structure.

(I have also removed links to Aurobindo and Mary Pat Fisher, since neither is particularly relevant to the Rig Veda at all (while many very informed books on the matter go unmentioned). I also split the link section, separating links to the actual text from links to spiritualists claiming a 'rigvedic' tradition. Dbachmann 17:11, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Rigveda or Rig Veda

User:LordSuryaofShropshire, if you move a page, move it with "move page", please, otherwise history and talk will be left behind. We have now Rigveda, Rig-Veda and Rig Veda which are redirects of each other. But which is the "correct title"? In sansktrit, it is very clearly one word, a compound. Also, google gives 70000 hits for "rigveda" and only 50000 for "rig veda". Therefore, the article should be Rigveda, and the variants redirects. Why do you make this move (a) manually, like a newbie (you should know how to move a page) (b) without commenting on what you did, in (c) a minor edit and (d) without changing the article text to reflect your name change?? Now we have talk pages and histories spread over 3 articles :-( I think I will move it back to the "correct" Rigveda anyway. dab 17:55, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In Sanskrit sandhis, or conjuncts, do not render the phrase in question 'one word'. It would be like writing Newtestament as Newtestament, as opposed to what's truly being meant, which is New Testament. The grammar of Sanskrit does not translate to English. Regardless of Google hits (which aren't impressive here), in this case this is clearly not a question of popular usage but of correct usage. 'Yajur', 'Sama' and 'Atharva' are the other Vedas are are often referred to without the additional name 'Veda' in tow, which is indicative of the fact that this splicing is a linguistic peculiarity of Sanskrit, not an adjuration to keep them joint. As for the move, I'm sorry... I completely forgot about move and just did a cut and paste. I should have been more explicit in my reasoning. However, with a promise that future moves will be done more according to protocol, I will add that Rig Veda, (as opposed to Rigveda or Rig-Veda) is more appropriate (most appropriate, in fact, would be Rig Ved, since Veda is a plural)--LordSuryaofShropshire 20:09, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

ok. I understand sandhi, and indeed you cannot decide phonologically if it is one or two words. You can, however, morphologically. It is a tatpurusha compound. If it were two words, it would be "ricaam veda", "the Veda of the hymns". The fact that "rik-" appears as the bare stem necessarily implies that it is a compound. So far for Sanskrit. For the article title, however, it is required to choose the form most current in English, which is, in accordance with the sanskrit, "Rigveda". Granted, "Rig Veda" and "Rig-Veda" are not terribly uncommon, so your edit is not a disaster, but why deviate from the grammatically correct form, if it is in accord with actual usage? (rik-, yajus-, saman- and atharvan- are independent words, btw, so it is misleading to call their occurrence "splicing". If they appear independently, however, they will always be properly inflected. If you mean that you can say "Yajur" and really mean "the Yajurveda", well, this may be Hindu slang, but it is certainly not correct sanskrit.) dab 08:15, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is no one set standard. Also, were speaking in English, not Sanskrit. The convention in English is to understand that there are four Vedas, and the names of the four are the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. Using alien compound forms in English is only confusing. It makes infinitely more sense to leave them split. As I said, Newtestament makes much less sense than New Testament. Lastly, most people, even Hindus, don't know the Sanskrit root forms rik, yajus, saman and atharvan, so actual Sanskrit doesn't really mean anything in this context. This isn't the Sanskrit wiki.--LordSuryaofShropshire 23:59, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Sep 18: in this case this is clearly not a question of popular usage but of correct usage. ... Sep 20: Using alien compound forms in English is only confusing. — 70000 out of 120000 google hits stand against this, but fine. As I said, I don't think it's terrible. Just please make sure the article text reflects your choice (we don't wan't all three forms used interchangeably in the same article) dab 11:07, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, it should be Rg Veda. The R should have a dot under it. The R with a dot under it is the accepted way to say "ri"

it is the "IAST way" of expressing a syllabic r, yes. dab (ᛏ) 16:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Naming conventions

As per WP:MOS guidelines: "Deities begin with a capital letter:". Not sure why user Dbachmann reverted this change. Please discuss your reason on the talk page.

User Macrakis says: 'God takes a capital when it refers to a unique entity (monotheistic god); takes small letter when it refers to one of many'. In Hinduism, God can take many forms, and each form is, for his/her followers, God itself. Your view smacks of a Judeo-christian bias. I am undoing your change. Please discuss on talk page.

the name of deities (e.g. Indra) is capitalized. English "god" vs. "God" is not the same at all, "God" refers to the monotheistic concept. There is no plural "Gods", you may want to read the "capitalization" section on God. No bias. The Vedic religion is pretty much the archetype of a polytheistic religion. dab (ᛏ) 10:29, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I do not buy this argument. The WP:MOS guidelines say that Deities begin with a capital letter, and 'Mythical creatures, such as elves, fairies, nymphs or genies should not be capitalized'. Surely you are not trying to imply that the Judeo-christian concept of God is God with a capital G, and the Gods of polytheistic faith are mythic? Besides, should not the practitioners of the Vedic religion decide how the name of their Gods are written, and not outsiders?. I am reverting the change you made.

Further more, the section you quote ("capitalization" section on God) says- "The use of capitalisation, as for a proper noun, has persisted to disambiguate the concept of a singular God from pagan deities for which lowercase god has continued to be applied". This is, as the article itself notes, an inherent Judeo-christian bias, a historical POV if you may! As a 'pagan', I would find this as offensive as surely practitioners of other religions would if we tried to use our POV on them.

Finally, the "capitalization" section on God documents the historical basis of the spelling, and does NOT dictate the style used in Wikipedia. WP:MOS does that. An evidence of this is in the fact that the "capitalization" section on God says "Pronouns referring to God are also often capitalised and are traditionally in the masculine gender, i.e. "He", "His" etc.", where as WP:MOS says- "Pronouns referring to deities, or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, do not begin with a capital letter.". Everywhere in Wikipedia, the latter is the case- see Peace be upon him.

nonsense. Fortunately, you don't get to define English orthography. maybe you could find a more constructive way of contributing to Wikipedia, dear anonymous? Such as adding material, or writing articles, instead of wasting editors' time with unfounded orthographical bickering. dab (ᛏ) 06:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

It is interesting how you term my reasoning as 'nonsense' when you can't refute it. I agree I don't get to define English orthography, but since someone made you made you the editor here, you certainly get to define the rules. Playing by your rules, I have changed the two occurrences of 'god' in the singular to God.

English orthographic conventions use capitals for proper names. The capitalized "God" makes sense in a Hindu context when talking about a unique entity: some Hindus will say, for example, that Shiva is God. However, it does not make sense in a Hindu (or other) context when saying "one of these gods", "the god Indra and the god Ganesh", etc. --Macrakis 18:15, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

thank you. "anyone can edit" does not mean "all edits will be accepted, regardless of their quality". Certainly, "Shiva is God" is correct. Vedic religion, otoh, is polytheistic, and polytheistic gods are spelled lowercase, see God. dab (ᛏ) 06:54, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

sumeru

[1] Sanskrit sumeru is from su-meru, i.e. refers to Mt. Meru. Somehow this apparently came to mean North Pole in Hindi (?). Sumer is unrelated. Whatever Tilak intended to say should be discussed on his article, I suppose. A Sumerian origin of the Vedas is still pure kookery, of course, but not quite as insane as the North Pole. To the best of my knowledge, Tilak did argue for an arctic origin of the Aryans (this ties in with Nordic theory and what not), but maybe somebody can check out Tilak's precise statement. dab (ᛏ) 11:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I was confused there for a minute. Of course Tilak argued for an Arctic Home, in 1903. With [2], "true madness", of course, but it should be noted in all fairness that similar madness was rampant all over Europe too, at that time. (That doesn't excuse people of today, of course, to indulge in these century-old hallucinations). dab (ᛏ) 11:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Vedic geography

There is lot of debate regarding geography of Rig veda.Here is some information (Rigveda to Raigarh-making of Shivaji the great)--- Indrayani,Vedganga,Panchganga,Sindphana,Bheema,Savitri,Vashishti,Gautami(Godavari),Pravara,Indravati clearly indicates Rigvedic geography.look at Trambakam yajamahe in Rigveda, it clear speaks of present day Trambakeswhar near Nashik.Further maruts/maruti is still worshipped in maharashtra countryside.Fasting on Adit war(Sunday) is still observed by almost entire population.These larger traditions speak conclusively of origin of Rigveda or at least a portion of it.These new facts needs to be taken into account in addition to earlier various theories viz.steppes or Arctic.

Caution on reverts

A lot of effort has gone into converting the existing Sanskrit/Devanagari words into IAST. A strong advise againt any edits/reverts that make lose the IASTisation. --ΜιĿːtalk 12:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

ok, I think it is important to get some sort of guideline when to use IAST, and when not to. Linking Sanskrit names in English text, like Vishnu, Agni etc. does not need to use IAST; IAST is important when introducing or discussing terms, or when quoting Sanskrit passages. Thus, we should have

ṛgveda from ṛc "praise" + veda "knowledge"

1.1.1a agním īḷe puróhitaṃ

but we don't necessarily need to IASTify each and every name. Anglicized spellings are perfectly alright for article prose. If you IASTify names, however, you have to be sure you get it right; unfortunately, Agnī, Vrtra, Ushas, Ṛdra, Braḥṃanaspati, Varuna, Pṛthavī, Rbḥu are all incorrect as IAST transcriptions. As a rule, let's say that we set IAST transcriptions in italics to indicate that we are transliterating a Sanskrit word, and not using an anglicized spelling. dab (ᛏ) 11:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I made a mistake too. I misspelled Bashakala (I must have been misled by Shakala somehow), and this misspellig of mine is now all over the internet :( I get 347 google hits for "rigveda bashakala". Really, we need more Hindu editors proofreading rather than getting bogged down in political discussions. dab (ᛏ) 12:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Thats all right, dab. We all make mistakes when we are learning new things. Well, do let me know when you are done, and we could may be put the IAST notice template in place. --rgds. ΜιĿːtalk 07:17, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment

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Contribution of Madhvacharya (13-14th Century Vedantic Philosopher) for the interpretation of Vedas is completely ignored. Before Dayananda Saraswati and Sri Aurobindo, Sri Madhvacharya has declared that each mantra in the Vedas speak of one and only God Almighty. It is Sri Madhvacharya who IN RECENT TIMES first interpreted Vedas in a symbolic and mystic ways, later followed by Dayananda Saraswati and Aurobindo. Commentary of Sri Madhvacharya on the first 40 suktas of Rigveda are available. Dayananda Saraswati's interpretation of Vedas is presented in a bad light contradictory to how the people of the very religion of Vedas perceive it. This article doesn't relate to the vedic PRACTICE prevalent in today's Hindu society. This article completely ignores core Hindu beliefs about the Vedas. For example, the mantra drashtara rishis have been touted as AUTHORS of the hymns. This is not how a Hindu believes it. The hymns were HEARD by (shruti) the rishis. Vedas are perceived to be eternal by Hindus. There is no 'date' tag attached to the Vedas. At the least, there should be mention of the Hindu perception of Vedas here. In total, this is western propoganda of completely ignoring the views of Vedic/Hindu Religion while writing about the Vedas. Not good article for a beginner to read, with the skewed western views lacking even the mention of the core Hindu beliefs about the Vedas.

Last edited at 21:58, 8 September 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 21:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)