Template:Did you know nominations/Subala Upanishad

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Jolly Ω Janner 05:27, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Subala Upanishad[edit]

  • ... that the medieval era Sanskrit text Subala Upanishad states Vishnu is the inner self in everyone and is all of the universe?

Created by Nvvchar (talk) and Ms Sarah Welch (talk). Nominated by Ms Sarah Welch (talk) at 17:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC).

  • New enough, long enough, no copyvio on the Earwig detector, QPQ done. Much of the sourcing is to translations of the text itself, which could run into WP:OR problems. However, it seems that statements cited to the text are all of the "plot summary" type, while interpretation and statements of impact are cited to secondary sources, so this is okay. The main problem here is the prose, which is a bit of a mess. I did my best to clean it up - please go over my edits to see if they are okay. I think some more cleanup/copyediting is still necessary, however. As for the hooks, I think ALT1 (which is short enough) should be used, as it is the only one cited to a secondary source; the others are derived directly from the text. A2soup (talk) 20:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @A2soup: Thank you for the review and the copyedit. It helped. I added the clarification you tagged, and copyedited the text a bit more. The main hook is sourced to three secondary sources, in the Reception section, one to Oberhammer, second to Adluri, third to Overzee. ALT2 has support in Aiyar translation (see quote box in the article), I added another secondary source. I am okay if you want to strike off the main hook, or ALT2, or both. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 21:28, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Looking better! The prose is still far from great, but it'll do for DYK. I did some more copyediting, so make sure that's okay. Just a couple final adjustments:
  • In the second paragraph of the Cosmogeny section, the divine person the same as Brahman? If so, this should be made more clear.
  • Per MOS:ITALICS, titles of major works and foreign words should be italicized. This means that every instance of Subala Upanishad and every Sanskrit(?) word for a Hindu concept should be italicized. The names of deities should not be italicized, I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A2soup (talkcontribs)
  • @A2soup: It is looking a lot better. Indeed, all titles of major works should be in italics. I believe I fixed it this time. I am not too sure about the italics for foreign words guidelines, and how to apply them in this article. MOS:ITALICS and Foreign terms section guidelines leave it as a judgment call. Most of these words are commonly used in scholarly works and rarely italicized there, but some of them are indeed uncommon in non-scholarly works. Would too many italics make the article look strange, less readable? The divine person in the manuscript and translations is Purusha, not the metaphysical concept of Brahman, which I have clarified. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 04:46, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Divine person has been clarified, italics applied for works. Not gonna hold this back over italics consistency or application for foreign terms, this isn't WP:GAN. Going over the hooks:
  • for ALT0, it is referenced to secondary sources, but the statement referenced thus states that the concept described is Ramanuja's and justified by "theological arguments partly based on the Subala Upanishad". The hook needs to reflect that this concept is from Ramanuja drawing on the text, not necessarily the text itself.
  • for ALT1, secondary source (Oberhammer and Rastelli) is offline so it's AGF.
  • Struck out ALT2 as referenced to only primary source.
Good job! If I could offer any advice going forward (but not necessary for DYK standards), it would be to standardize the use of just one English or Sanskrit term to refer to each concept throughout the article - it would make it much more informative! A2soup (talk) 05:28, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @A2soup: Thank you. Will try. A challenge with Sanskrit (and Asian languages) is the heavy-context sensitive meaning of concepts (the word Dharma has over 25 meanings for example). It is difficult to stick with one English term, particularly when the underlying reliable sources are using multiple terms. Using only Sanskrit terms would make wiki articles less useful/understable to readers who know little to no Sanskrit (which I guess would be most readers). Clarity, no OR, no Copyvio, faithful summary... this is our challenge. This and this is a secondary source by George Thibaut for ALT0, but I have struck it off, since ALT1 is more interesting any way. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:52, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
I see the difficulty, it's a tricky topic. For the record, the article is a fascinating and wild read, and I enjoyed it very much. A2soup (talk) 06:57, 24 February 2016 (UTC)