Talk:The Principal Upanishads

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3 options for naming this page re Radhakrishnan's book "The Principal Upanishads"

Decision: The decision was made to use the page name:

"The Principal Upanishads (book)"

(several links now added) -- Health Researcher (talk) 00:40, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This message was left on the User talk:Scapler by me (this page's creator). Does anyone have any opinion about what's the best name for this page?

Hello Scapler, Thanks for your attention to my recently created article on the principal Upanishads, a book by Radhakrishnan. You moved the article from "The Principal Upanishads (book by Radhakrishnan)" to "The Principal Upanishads", stating (in the change log) that "no need for author here". I agree it's nicer and simpler if the article's name can be shorter. However, there are two things that you might want to be aware of with regard to the name, and that I'd like to know your thoughts about their implications:

The term "principal Upanishads" has for a long time (centuries I think) been in wide usage as a technical term to describe a particular subset of Upanishads (see a subsection of the Upanishads page by that name). Hence, Radhakrishnan did not invent the phrase, nor is his the only discussion of it nor necessarily a definitive discussion; this could create confusion if the page is named "The Principal Upanishads" rather than something more specific like "The Principal Upanishads (book)"

There have been several other books with the same title (see Google Book Search RESULTS). For example, there are also books by that exact same title by Swami Nikhilananda (2003 ISBN 048642717X) and Alan Jacobs (2003 ISBN 1903816505); other books have similar titles (e.g., "The principal upanishads: Isa, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mindaka, Taittiriya, Aitareya and Svetasvatara Upanisads" by Swami Shivananda, 1983).

So it would seem that 1) omitting "book" from the title could cause confusion with the root concept; and 2) confusion with other books might be possible if we omit the author's name. However, among the books, Radhakrishnan's is almost surely the most well-known, although I believe the Nikhilananda version is also somewhat well-known (e.g., another Wikipedia editor quoted from it on a talk page discussion with me only a couple of weeks ago).

In these circumstances, what criteria should be used for naming the page? Some options might be

leave the article as you left it, at "The Principal Upanishads";
move to "The Principal Upanishads (book)"; and if pages ever are created for other books of the same title, there could be some sort of disambiguation notice at the top of the page. (should that also be mentioned somewhere in the lead even if other pages aren't created?)
move the page back to "...(book by Radhakrishnan)".

I find myself inclined to go with #2 or perhaps #1, but perhaps there are standard operating procedures for such issues? It seems most efficient to decide this issue wisely now, so that we don't need to deal later with redirecting lots of links.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. I am putting this message on your user talk, and also copying it to the article's talk page (currently at Talk:The Principal Upanishads), where you might want to respond. -- Health Researcher (talk) 17:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notifying the page here: Wikipedia:Requested moves would automatically invited editors from across wiki into the discussion, and using template move mentioned there in, also post messages at WP India and Hinduism would help too. Though, this is a simple issue, I would go for The Principal Upanishads (book). Thanks! --Ekabhishek^talk 19:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

Though "Outline of book" gives an index-like idea of what's in the book, it does not elaborate on the views of the author. What are the central ideas of each of the 19 section headers in a para? For e.g. The Upaniṣads as the Vedanta: a non-expert will not understand what is Vedanta is? A section about what are the Upanishads (Translated Upanishads - basic ideas in these texts, what are they about) are and their importance/dating needs to be discussed too. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 17:12, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The same applies to Spiritual Heritage of India (book) too. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 17:13, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]