Talk:Hanuman

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To-do list for Hanuman: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
  • Create inline references for statements lacking sources.
  • Fix grammar and spelling mistakes.
  • Remove multiple wikilinks per MOS.
  • Shorten story sections, expand sections that provide historical and social context.

I added devanagari for Hanuman. If anyone wants, I can do more, but only if requested. I don't want to clutter the page with ?????? for those without unicode. Similarly, is Änjanèya supposed to be Āñjaneya (अाञ्जनेय)? Is the e-grave a stress mark? I know Hindi but will admit Sanskrit is way out of my realm - just wondering. Give me proper transliteration (IAST or ITRANS) or verse numbers and I can enter the Sanskrit in Devanagari to the verse given as well. Khiradtalk 11:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Writing style...

This page is about mythology. However, there are no qualifiers in any of the sentences. The sentences are stated like facts when they should be stated as beliefs to adhere to NPOV. Ex: "He is easily reachable - Just by chanting the name - 'Ram'." This sentence decribes a belief and not an undisputed fact. It should have been stated as "In Hinduism it is believed that Hanuman can be reached by chanting the name 'Ram'." The article needs to rewritten to take this into account. Bshengan 17:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)Bshengan

  • This page certainly needs help, but IMHO, most definitely not of the type you suggest. Qualifiers like "in Hinduism" beginning the article and scattered throughout are more than enough to inform a reader that beliefs in Hanuman's existence and nature are based in a particular faith and are not (necessarily) objective fact. Articles about characters from Christian mythology are not treated any differently. For instance, "At the height of his ministry, Jesus attracted huge crowds..." and "Jesus was condemned for blasphemy...". This article (like many other Hindu-faith articles) suffers from poor grammar, dropped words and difficult syntax, but I see no POV violations. Kevin/Last1in 18:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with the original complaint by user Bshengan: this article has a lot of good material in it, but it is an advocacy piece; its non-neutral point of view is inppropriate for an encyclopedia entry. As presently written the article is "tractarian": it represtents the point of view of an adherant. It needs editing to reduce it's language to the moderacy appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. The use of the bold phrase "Lord" (such as Lord Rama and Lord Siva, etc.) is especially inappropriate since those phrases are not used in scholarly works on Hinduism, when the scholar's religion is not Hindu. User Kevin/Last1in, above, gives what may be a valid criticism, but the connection made is doubtful to me: Jesus of Nazareth is a historical person who has become the subject of a mythology, and Hanuman is an exclusively a mythological character. Be that as it may, if articles on Jesus of Nazareth have faults, it does not excuse the same faults in other articles: if it remains as Kevin/Last1in describes, then the conclusion that I come to is that both the articles on Jesus and this article on Hanuman need to be toned down. Tom Lougheed 16:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)



Prove that jesus existed.--Dangerous-Boy 03:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that's a very important and valid issue, that you should raise on the talk page for the article on Jesus. The issue for this talk page is how to fix this article on Hanuman so that it is not tractarian. Tom Lougheed 19:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that an encyclopaedia should not present any particular point of view as a fact that is "rammed down the throats" of those who do not adhere to it. As far as this article is concerned, I believe that by the presence of phrases like 'in Hinduism', 'in the Hindu faith' , etc... at several places in the article, this end is achieved. I have been editing this article every now and then by adding material, 'tightening' the language and making grammatical corrections to the best of my ability. I do not think that it is appropriate to insist that a non-believer write an article merely in order to 'ensure neutrality'; it is very possible that a non-adherent may present his/her own views. -- 69.81.17.22 21:21, 10 June, 2006.
  • i completely agree with Kelvin. Also when the article is about a mythological character/event, one must be wise enough to understand that everything is believed to be true and that the author or the adherents, for that matter, can provide no proof of the stated. Moreover it does not reflect in any way whatsoever that the author is "ramming things down the readers' throat." What is stated is most widely accepted and believed. This must be enough. I hope the objectionists shall understand that it is illiterary to state, "It is believed..." before every sentence in the text.i would add that the article is quite comprehensive and still sticks to the subject well.

--202.65.145.4 00:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC) himanshu

  • Also i think dangerous boy has a point here. It looks like Mr. Lougheed is hedging from answering Dangerous Boy when he expresses concern about the appropriateness of the question/challenge raised by DB here on this page. There is no substantial proof of Jesus' existence apart from the records deemed Holy. He must answer/accept the question/challenge when he states, "Jesus of Nazareth is a historical person who has become the subject of a mythology".Also to add to his knowledge i would state that on several ocasions exsistence of Hanuman has been verified by people in the recent past. But if words of mouth or of the ancient scriptures be considered "non-scientific evidence", i suppose all befiefs whether about Hanuman or Jesus or Allah can be questioned. --202.65.145.4 00:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC) himanshu

Legend of Icarus It is obvious that there exists a tradition of incorporating ideas and values from other civilizations not only now but even in the ancient world. This is obvious in the interesting similarities that abound in the legend of Hanuman jumping towards the sky and Icarus, from Greek mythology, also doing the same thing. Both of them, not surprisingly, are injured in the process. So I've added this in the section under "Childhood, Education and Curse". It is of course debatable as to who drew from whom but the point is moot as long as people have a recourse to both ideas.Sriram sh 10:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Start of cleanup

I moved a lot of the intro into a new section called "Beliefs about Hanuman" and placed it near the end of the article. This should address some of the concerns above and allow us to get rid of a lot of the icky passive voice statments.

This article still needs:

  • sources for certain statements.
  • grammar checking
  • more reduction of multiple links
  • some shortening is probably in order also.

TheRingess 01:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ramayana war legend

It seemed best to just make this section a kind of spoiler (but not needing the warning) by putting the story into story telling voice using present tense and cleaning up the passives; and by heading the selected incidents since they are about attributes of Hanuman as much as a divinity's relationship with humans according to legend. Whether it was written then or read now, the Ramayana still "recounts", so to speak. Anyway I got carried away and kept on with it. To me, it sits better this way.

About the Jesus tip - I like that one. Documents and records prove Jesus was an historical figure, much as Buddha and others like that, but interpretations of that kind of reputation is something else again. Julia Rossi 01:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding request for peer review

The article in general does not provide references for most of the content. Hanuman is such an important figure he could certainly get more complete citations. In general there does not seem to be good differentiation between material in primary scriptural sources and devotee impressions about what those sources mean. This is common in the Hinudism articles and is not meant as a criticism, just an observation that much of the content was probably originally entered by devotees and can now be further cited by those who wish to do so. I am not sure of the criteria for good article status, but I would think the article would be stronger if it had more references. Buddhipriya 19:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Perhaps you could include this comment on the articles peer review page. The criteria for a good article can be found by clicking on the quality scale link included as part of the WikiProject Hinduism template.TheRingess (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
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