Talk:Ayodhya

Untitled

Erm, this sounds strikingly similar to Ayodhya. Unless I'm mistaken, these two articles should be combined. DanKeshet

hi

some editors do not wish the recent history of the city to be included the city made news worldwide and sparked off riots all over india due to the destruction of a large mosque - this must be included because for many people worldwide this city is remembered for this incident rather than its place in hindu mythology (do a search on BBC archives or CNN, Time magazine) - i think there is a place for hindu mythology and its been discussed at length in the article but please dont vandalise this page just because you wish to wipe out history

l shastri

-Err.... this was mentioned. You have simply deleted it and other relevant information on the city and replaced it with your own views on the subject. --The industrialist 09:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi

See Ram Janmabhoomi page if you wish to read about the birthplace of Lord Rama but please do not use the Ayhodya page for this -

Lalit shastri

Expansion

There should be details of the current population, local industry and culture. The ==History== section needs to be expanded to cover the period from the seventh century to 1990.—Theo (Talk) 12:02, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Chinese

Can we get rid of the cluttering Chinese? I don't mind it at all, and infact have been tempted more than once (quite an understatement there) to insert Devanagari throughout pages, but it does not conform to WP style, and the way it is presented - no offence intended - looks a tad sloppy. Khirad^talk 22:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

put both. --Dangerous-Boy 22:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Legacy and importance

It says in this section that Tulsidas is said to have begun his composition of Ramayana in 1574? And that he was regarded as an incarnation of Valmiki. Well.. in that sense, it may be correct that he did compose the Ramayana, in a previous life.. but Valmiki was the author, and it most certainly is older than 1574. Perhaps this information should be corrected, according to the information in the article about Ramayana.

Neutrality and cleanup

This article Ayodhya has a biased POV. It doesn't mention that the Babri Mosque was burnt down by Hindus in 1992 who believed Ram was born there. I know that this issue is elaborated in the article Babri Mosque but this article makes it seem like the Babri Mosque still exists. It fails to mention that the mosque was burnt down in 1992. And also, the "Ayodhya Debate" should be changed to "Ayodhya Dispute". A dispute is violent, and this issue is violent indeed. BBC The "Ayodhya Debate has a subsection while the "Mob attack" has a full section. Why is the mob attack more important than the Ayodhya "Debate"? Actually, the mob attack should go under Ayodhya Debate since it was a part of the debate/dispute. In addition, the article makes the mob attack seem like a huge deal compared to the Ayodhya Debate. The mob attack generated headlines and the Babri Mosque burning didn't? That's really unfair and biased. The successful burning of Babri Mosque actually got more or at least equal the media attention that the unsuccessful mob attack got.

This article also needs some cleanup. The Chinese is important (I'm Chinese) but it is not clean at all (Why is the equal sign in there?). The romanisation is definitely not WP conformed. Can we get someone who knows how to deal with the treatment of Chinese on the English Wikipedia? And as I said, the "Mob attack" should go under "Ayodhya debate/dispute" since it is a part the dispute. And "Ayodhya debate/dispute" deserves its own section since it's a separate topic from the magnificence and ancient history of Ayodhya.

Basawala 02:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Here: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) --Dangerous-Boy 04:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I cleaned up the Chinese stuff on the article. I guess the cleanup tag can be removed now, unless there are any more objections.

Ok, I've edited the article so the info on the Ayodhia Debate is included. I basically paraphrased sentences from the Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Mosque articles to explain the situation. If anyone still has a problem with it please let me know.

Basawala 19:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, someone just edited the Debate section to say that "the mosque was merely a sham". If anyone wants to add stuff the even might be controversial to the Ayodhya Debate section, please make a comment on this talk page. Basawala 22:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ghaghara/Sarayu River

59.163.30.2 (talk · contribs) changed the reference to the Gogra river to the Sarayu river. My brief research indicates that Sarayu was the name of the river on which Ayodhya was situated in ancient times, but that Sarayu became extinct (dried up?). Ghaghara/Gogra is the name of the modern river that flows by Ayodhya. Someone more familiar with the area needs to address this. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 10:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ramayana and Sarayu

According to Dr Rajesh Kochar ('The Vedic People' published by Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2000) the story of Ramayana took place in Southern Afghanistan after Indo-Iranian people reached Persia And afghanistan from central Asia. The river Sarayu mentioned in Ramayana is the present day Horayu or Harurud in Afghanistan. When Indo-Aryans gradually moved to Gangetic plains via Panjab, they named the rivers and newly established towns in memory of their ancestors and the places where they came from. His arguments sound logical.Kumarrao 08:27, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Another reference: (http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/306/contrasarav.htm).Kumarrao 08:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Saketa

Saketa redirects to here. Is this correct? Is it the same city ([1])? Maybe this could be mentioned in the article?Greetings, Sacca 12:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no mention of Saketa as the city that was essentially re-christened as Ayodhya during the Gupta ages. It was a conscious decision by the Gupta Emperors to identify their capital city with that of Rama's own capital city. The historical authenticity in the claims of modern day Ayodhya being the birth place of Rama is debatable, as indeed is the historical accuracy of Ramayana itself. Therefore, this article is in serious need of revision, of the kind that would make the content more appropriate for a real city that exists today and has some elements of mythology associated with it, as well as a fair share of controversy in recent times. This article should not make it sound like Ayodhya of modern days is unquestionably the birth place of Rama. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arindam.mukherjee (talk • contribs) 09:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Why is there no history section?

How come there's no history section on Ayodhya? I was watching this Ayodhya - Birth Place of Shri Ram. thought it was interesting. But there's no history section in the wikipedia article.--D-Boy (talk) 21:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

This was the edit [2] where the history section was renamed into "Legacy and importance" three years ago. I guess half of the stuff in the section is still history like when it talks about Tulsidas, the Ghori invasions, the birth of Jainism, the Korean prince etc. But it probably needs to be reordered properly so that it is less confusing. The non-history information should also be taken out. Gizza^{Discuss ©} 12:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Ayutthaya of Thailand?

Ayutthaya of Thailand under Korean prince story is wrong because Ayutthaya was founded more than 1000 years later by U-Thong of Thailand in 1350, Kim Saro or Suro's marriage tale goes back to (r. 42 - 199). It's Ayodhya in India, because in Korean it's Ayuta (아유타).

Pāli City of Ayojjhā

In the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta (S 22.95) we do find a city called Ayojjhā but the text says-

Ekaṃ samayaṃ bhagavā ayojjhāyaṃ viharati gaṅgāya nadiyā tīre. (S iii.140)

At one time the Bhagavan was staying on the banks of the Ganges River at Ayojjhā. [my translation]

The modern day city of Ayodhyā is not on the Ganges River, it is on the Saryu River. There are several possibilities-

1. it is the same city but the Ganges moved
2. it is the same city but the texts got the river mixed up
3. it is not the same city but has the same name.

Jayarava 08:14, 23 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahaabaala (talk • contribs)

Also the Pāli texts are confused between the spelling ayojjhā and ayujjhā. Jayarava 08:18, 23 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahaabaala (talk • contribs)

Legend and fact

Could someone who has the appropriate knowledge tone down the heavy mythology in the Background and History sections please? It would be better to phrase mythical attributes in their rightful context rather than outright asserting its validity without reason.117.201.201.196 (talk) 14:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Rama's birth place

@Mr.vivek0305: It is not appropriate to state in Wikipedia's voice that Ayodhya is Rama's birthplace. You can only say that people believe so. The sources that you have added here are no good. Three of them are self-published sources with no authenticity. The Hindustan Times article is stating that one judge out of three opined that it was Rama's birthplace. It is just an opinion. Unless there is a scholarly consensus among all scholars of history, as per the requirements of WP:HISTRS, you cannot include such a statement as if it were a fact. Please stop edit-warring. - Kautilya3 (talk) 14:58, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ayodhya/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

I am the assessor of this article; if you would like some commentary, come and give me a holler. --Starstriker7(Say hior see my works) 12:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 12:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 08:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

New content

@Utcursch: a lot of this new content seems to depend on Kishore Kunal, who is a retired civil servant, not a historian. I am happy to use statements of fact from him, but not interpretations, especially not interpretations that contradict established historians. Is there any real evidence that there was a city called Ayodhya prior to Skandagupta moving his capital there? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Kishore Kunal's book has several pages devoted to his argument, but I've not given much space to his interpretations in this article. Most of the content in the section "Identification of ancient Ayodhya" presents the historians' arguments. Feel free to remove anything, if you feel it's undue. utcursch | talk 22:40, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, I would want to remove this entire section. As I said, I haven't seen any evidence for Ayodhya before Skandagupta moved his capital there and renamed it Ayodhya. Prior to that it was called Saketa. I don't see why you call it "arguments". I don't see any historian contesting it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:33, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean the "Description in ancient texts" section? This content was already present in "Origins" and "Tradition" sectons of the article. I just trimmed this content, added some sources, and put it in a new section. Feel free to remove it, although I'd devote 1-2 sentences to give some context about the next section.

If you are talking about removing the "Identification with ancient Ayodhya" section, I'd disagree. The controversy about the identification of present-day Ayodhya with the ancient Ayodhya is a notable topic (and relevant to this article). Nearly every significant work on present-day Ayodhya covers it. Around 3/4th of the paragraph is about why present-day Ayodhya cannot be identified with the city described in the ancient texts. utcursch | talk 01:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The ancient texts section also needs work because the Valmiki Ramayana probably predates all the Puranas, the latter are dependent on the Ramayana. They are not independent testimony.

But my concern is more with the the identification section. It is currently written as if there is a serious debate among historians. I don't see any. The JNU historians haven't "argued". They only summarised the historical consensus. Meenakshi Jain, whose book I have, hasn't contested any of their points. Kishore Kunal is not a historian. So where is the controversy? If the lay folk believe that it is the same as the ancient Ayodhya of Ramayana, it is understandable, but we need to label it as a belief rather than history. Pinging Vanamonde93 for a third opinion. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:18, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Note also that the real authority on Ayodhya is Hans T. Bakker, who has done his work long before any Ayodhya dispute. I have mostly used his writings in my earlier text of the History section. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm a little hesitant to offer an opinion here as I don't know too much about the ancient sources; the stuff I've worked with is the material pertaining to post-1800s history. That said, I'd tend to agree that Kunal should be dumped altogether. When serious historians have studied a subject, I don't see much reason to give him weight; it would be different if there were no sources more reliable. Vanamonde (talk) 09:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe we're on the same page. This is how the "Origins" and "Legacy" sections looked before my edits: the article read if the Ayodhya of Atharvaveda, Ayodhya of Ramayana, and the present-day Ayodhya are all same. There was no mention of any criticism of this belief. So, I added the section about the historians' views to bring balance to the article. To retain any salvageable content, I added the only somewhat-decent sources I could find that support the popular belief. Feel free to change the wordings if your objection is the historians' words being presented as "arguments", or if you want to present the opposing views as "beliefs". utcursch | talk 13:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, now I get what you are trying to do. I added a history section here, relabeling the prior "History" section as "Tradition". It seemed as if those distinctions got erased in your edit. I would still like to keep them separate, and perhaps add a section at the end to discuss how the two came together. Vasudha Paramasivan's article has a good discussion of this. Other than Kishore Kunal, I don't think anybody has ventured to identify the historical Ayodhya and the Puranic Ayodhya. Even VHP says that it is a matter of "faith". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

OK, go ahead and make the changes you want to. utcursch | talk 13:08, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

References

Religion adherence

Couldn't understand why religion of attackers was mentioned in case of Hindus but dropped in case of Muslims. Either religion should be dropped from everyone ( as we claim terrorism has no religion ) or mention " Muslim " terrorists if you're mentioning " attacked by Hindus ". Either one is fine by me.

Identification of Ayodhya

I am not clear about the purpose of the section on "Identification of Ayodhya". I see everybody identifying Saketa and Ayodhya. We also know roughly when the renaming of Saketa as Ayodhya was done. So, the identity of Ayodhya doesn't seem to be an issue.

The JNU historians, I guess, hinted at the possibility of the "Ayodhya" of Ramayana being another Ayodhya on the bank of Ganges. But it was purely speculative. I am not sure what more can be said about it.

The issue is whether the "Ayodhya" of Ramayana was a fictional city or a real one. Hans T. Bakker apparently makes a strong case that it was fictional, but I don't have access to his volumes. The JNU scholars' arguments seem rather wishy-washy to me. I don't see why we need to spend space on them.

Pinging Utcursch. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:54, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe move this stuff to Ayodhya (Ramayana)? utcursch | talk 21:48, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Utcursch, that seems like a good idea. Lutgendorf also has a lot of content that could go into such an article. But you would need to watch over it so that it doesn't acquire scruff like all those Mahabharata pages.

The current text also needs considerable revision. None of the JNU scholars ever did any research on Ayodhya or Ramayana, either before the dispute or after. So, their statements come across as being rather naive. For instance, we don't know for sure who renamed Saketa as Ayodhya. It could have been Kalidasa or his contemporary Chandragupta II. Their claim that Skandagupta renamed it, left open the gap that Kishore Kunal could attack. It is a wishy-washy political statement, if you ask me.

Another problem is their talk of Treta yuga, which is a red herring. No serious Indologist would claim that Ramayana was narrating the purported events of trata yuga. Rather they would say that some old legends must have been passed down which were written up whenever Ramayana was composed. So, the question really is what "Ayodhya" meant when Ramayana was composed. There are references to a certain "Ayodhya" in Buddhist texts. There was indeed a city Saketa on Sarayu, in fact the only major city on Sarayu. So it is very well possible that the Ayodhya of imagination was indeed fashioned on the Saketa of real world. When Kalidasa identified the two, he was doing the obvious thing. Perhaps the identification had already been done before Kalidasa.

So in my view the talk of an "ancient Ayodhya" and a "modern town" is a mistake. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:34, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll go through Bakker's writings -- will take some time. utcursch | talk 18:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Sure. Try this article first. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:56, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I see this discussion has led to separation of Ayodhya (legendary city) and modern Ayodhya, this might prove to be controversial as going as per some non-scholar controversial research, we can't just separate the legendary city with the modern one. It was perfectly fine with the Identification section on the main article which gave neutral point of view and questioning the authenticity as well as giving generally accepted consensus. Separating the page is just like pushing POV on wikipedia that the current city is fabricated which is very controversial topic. The header also has been re-written that Ayodhya dispute is central to authenticity which is again not general consensus as the dispute is centered on the topic if the temple stood on the controversial site before or not. We can't use a few opinionated pieces to separate the city as two distinct entity, the identification was fine on the main page. We should revert it to earlier version. 2405:205:A08E:F4AB:CD30:F596:9CE7:F978 (talk) 22:25, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-scholar" research. Hans T. Bakker, M. C. Joshi, Bhagwan Singh Josh, Bipan Chandra, Harbans Mukhia, K. N. Panikkar, Madhavan K. Palat, Mridula Mukherjee, Muzaffar Alam, R. Champakalakshmi, Rajan Gurukkal, Romila Thapar, Sarvepalli Gopal et al. are all mainstream scholars. Their writings are not "few opinionated pieces", but peer-reviewed scholarly research. Even some of those who believe that Babur demolished a temple at present-day Ayodhya recognize that the Ayodhya of Ramayana was a mythical city. utcursch | talk 23:37, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

You are going on wrong track, Ayodhya whether or not attached to legendary city or not is a research done by modern scholars but the identification of the modern city that is generally accepted as being linked to the ancient city should not be copletely ignored and hence should not be declared as as distinct city. Its like creating distinction declaring Boston, Lincolnshire and Boston, US as completely different sharing the name only which is not the case of Ayodhya. If the above scholars have opinionated that they are distinct city, there are many scholars that link it to the modern city too. So will we look at one side of the coin (POV) on Wikipedia without considering argument for the linkage? 2409:4064:399:C851:B5D6:DF79:D29:ECA6 (talk) 19:50, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

IP, Utcursch has separated what is known historically from what is believed. There is a real city (what we now call Ayodhya), one of the oldest cities in India. It simply wasn't called Ayodhya, as far as we know, until about Kalidasa's time.

Utcursch, perhaps Ayodhya (Ramayana) will be less controversial than Ayodhya (legendary city)? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:55, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

I honestly believe just merge back the page as it was initially. Let the identification questioning be as it was on the main page. As is is generally traditionally believed to be linked to modern city, calling them two distinct city is Wikipedia declaring them completely dissimilar and is inviting controversy. 2409:4064:399:C851:B5D6:DF79:D29:ECA6 (talk) 19:49, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Ayodhya is not a modern city. It is one of the oldest cities in India. It has no identification problems whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to have a section called "Identification of Ayodhya" here.

All those problems exist for the "Ayodhya" of Ramayana. The real city is real. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@IP: Existence of a separate article is not endorsement or non-endorsement of the legendary Ayodhya's identification with a historical city. Even in cases where there is little or no controversy over identification of a legendary and a historical place, we've two separate articles to separate legends from history. For example, see Gandhara Kingdom and Gandhara, Kosala Kingdom and Kosala, Lanka and Sri Lanka etc. This is necessary because of content size as well as the need to separate legends from history. As for "inviting controversy": there is already a controversy -- the identification issue has been discussed in so many scholarly journals and books, that it can have a stand-alone article.

@Kautilya3: I originally planned to go with Ayodhya (Ramayana), but changed my mind because the Mahabharata also mentions the city, besides several other texts narrating the legend of Rama. utcursch | talk 18:53, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Ok, but Mahabharata is not an independent source. It was just copying Ramayana.

The Mahabharata, besides giving the Rama story as an episode (the Ramopakhyana), has four direct references to the Ramayana (Brockington 2002:326). The first was the citation of a verse actually found in the extant poem of Valmiki, as pointed out by Professor Jacobi. It presupposed knowledge of the Ramayana (Jacobi 1960:54-64; Hopkins 1969:61-64). Professor Sukthankar argued that the verse was a late addition to the Great Epic, but that did not affect the general conclusion about the relationship between the Ramopakhyana and the Ramayana'. He tabulated eighty-six passages of the Ramopakhyana with clear verbal parallels in Valmiki's Ramayana in its different recensions, which reinforced Jacobi's argument (Sukthankar 1941:472-487).

Of course, the Mahabharata is an older story. But the text was added to over a much longer period and acquired a lot of stuff from various places. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

OK, I don't mind if the article is moved to Ayodhya (Ramayana). utcursch | talk 20:29, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

References

Single cities not 2 cities

Few editors seem hell bent on proving ayodhya and legendary ayodhya as different cities when clearly the 2 cities are linked culturally and religiously. Just because they can't prove some events that happened here doesn't mean that it is completely mythical city. Same way now can we have a Jerusalem and Jerusalem legendary city? These are controversial edits and have no broad community consensus45.249.143.9 (talk) 22:28, 1 August 2018 (UTC)