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Talk:Śramaṇa

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There's an account in the archives of how the page ended up at its current eyesore (my browser can't even produce all the characters in a consistent font) that is demonstrably false—one user claimed that the ngram comparison between Sramana and Śramaṇa was misleading because they were identical and "in every case" clicking through showed the scholars were actually using Śramaṇa. That isn't true, was never true, and will never be true but apparently the other voters at the time were too lazy to actually check what he was saying. Ś has only ever been a snotty way of writing /ʃ/ (i.e., sh) and will always be less common in English. The completely incorrect version s will always be more common in English, despite it being completely wrong.

In any case, the difference has never been between those two. The actual WP:COMMON WP:ENGLISH term for Indian asceticism—mostly because it has usually focused on the early period in the life of the Buddha—is and has always been samana/samaṇa from Pali instead of Sanskrit. (That assumes everyone's uncomfortable with using Indian asceticism or asceticism in India. Just calling it asceticism is far more common than any transliteration and more accurately captures that this article is talking about a general idea that varied over time and traditions and not a single overarching-but-specifically-Indian concept.) Sure, there may be some distinctions some scholars would prefer to draw between the idea in Pali-speaking cultures versus the idea in Sanskrit literature, but it's the same idea and that word is the more common way of discussing it, except among people who grew up reading this article. — LlywelynII 02:22, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pali

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It's theoretically possible no one has ever bothered to discuss one of Pali's most important religious concepts in Pali on the internet but at the moment "𑀲𑀫𑀦" only shows up 7 times on the Google and every single one of them is copying this article. I assume it's just completely wrong, similar to how it's completely wrong that it is transcribed Śramaṇa, which is what the current formatting means. — LlywelynII 02:31, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhh... I see the problem(s). (a) Pali never had a dedicated script and most discussion now happens in romanized form. (b) Whoever added the Pali here didn't actually have any source. They just went to the Brahmi script page and did their best... with an inaccurate romanization. Brahmi distinguishes between na and ṇa and they used the wrong one. Fixed. — LlywelynII 03:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation

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Yes, there's an "English" transcription into IPA at Wiktionary. I think it's fairly useless and misleading. We needed IPA in the lead but, if anyone adds an English version, we'll need all the sourced English versions and it will probably balloon enough to be an eyesore without creating a dedicated #Names section and putting the English IPA laundry list there instead.

(For the curious, Wiktionary has unsourced /ˈˌʃɹʌmənə/ "shruh-muh-nuh" from an editor who hears it that way in their head; most English speakers will parse the initial sound as /s/ until they know better and won't be able to help themselves accenting the penultimate syllable; before seeing the Sanskrit IPA but knowing about ś, I would've read it as /ˈʃɹəˌmɒːnə/ "shruh-mah-nuh" myself; and now having looked up the Sanskrit vowels and what the ṇ is trying to get across it'd be /ʃɹɒːˌmɒːnhɒː/ "shrah-mah-nhah" if I were going slowly or /ʃɹəˌmɒːnə/ "shruh-mah-nuh" if I wasn't. Point is, this isn't common enough for there to be a "right" way of doing it and we're better off not pretending that there is, except pointing out in some fashion what the ś is trying to say.)

To that end, it seems the best solution is to add the single standard Sanskrit form. The only problem there is that this IPA is based on our transcription but Wiktionary says that it should properly be "śramaṇá" instead, which—depending on what that's trying to get across—would change [ʃrɐmɐɳɐ] to [ʃrɐmɐˌɳɐ], [ʃrɐmɐɳɐː], or [ʃrɐmɐɳaː]. — LlywelynII 03:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism

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Hello @Joshua Jonathan:

There has been considerable vandalism on this page for months now - at least since Septemeber 2023 from what i can tell.

Please take a look at this vandalism.

These edits remains unsourced, I will clean up but please take note there is considerable clutter on this page still. 117.198.114.26 (talk) 02:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed

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@Livingstonshr: please explain what exactly you dispute. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:42, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The terms like Muni, Yati and Rishi simply mean sages, they are incorrectly interpreted as shramans which amounts to pov pushing. In Vedic Hinduism, "shraman" term is just absent. The two sources given in the page themselves don't give a very clear justification to defend their own claims. Apart from this, a claim that Shraman culture originated from Vedic culture is incorrect. Upanishads were written during the same time (or later) when the 23rd Jain Tirthankar was born. Jain history prior to this is obscure. The entire writing lacks philosophical and historical foundation. Livingstonshr (talk) 15:46, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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