User:David J Wilson: Difference between revisions
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→How to deal with persistent misuse of dubious sourcing?: — fix anachronisms |
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Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita ... |
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{{Babel | :Sejanus/Box:En-au-n | en-5 | it-3 | fr-1| |
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:David J Wilson/userboxes/Template:Gtrasp}} |
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[[/sandboxes]] |
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<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> |
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==How to deal with persistent misuse of dubious sourcing?== |
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Sorry, I have no panacea for the problems raised by question in the above heading. Over the coming months I intend to expand these few brief paragraphs into a more detailed account of my investigations into several related dubious sources over a period of more than 5 years, one of which {{diff|805700317|805708457| |was added}} to the article ''Flat Earth'' in October 2017. I do not wish to imply that the citation of the source on ''this'' occasion was part of persistent pattern of misuse, because I have no reason whatever for believing that it was. It was another editor, now banned, who several years ago was responsible for persistently misusing one of these sources—despite the negative opinions of other editors—as well as many others of even worse quality. |
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In the meantime, for anyone sufficiently interested in the Sanskrit passage which cropped up in [[Talk: Flat Earth/Archive 7#Samuel Warren Carey's book|the more recent discussion]] to check its translation, here is a colour-coded pairing of the transliterated Sanskrit with an English translation, and links to the pages of the 1899 [[Monier-Williams]] Sanskrit-English dictionary containing the definitions of the words in the Sanskrit. |
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:Transliterated Sanskrit: |
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::[http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=1243 {{color|brown|Súrya-maṇḍala}}][http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=782 {{colour|Aqua|madhya-stha}}]{{colour|Aqua|m}} [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=1111 {{color|orange|sa}}][http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=83 {{color|red|Ambā́}}]{{color|red|m}} [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=1119 {{color|gray|Saṃ-sāra}}][http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=766 {{color|green|bheshajá}}]{{color|green|m}}<br> |
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::[http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=566 {{color|Blue|Nī́la-grīva}}]{{blue|m}} [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=984 {{color|fuchsia|ví-rūpâksha}}]{{color|fuchsia|m}} [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=528 {{color|#999900|nam}}][http://sanskrit.inria.fr/cgi-bin/SKT/sktconjug?lex=SH&q=nam&t=KH&c=1&font=roma {{color|#999900|āmi}}] {{color|lime|Shivam}}[http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=111 {{color|teal|a-vyaya}}]{{color|teal|m}}. |
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:Translation: |
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::{{color|orange|Along with}} {{color|red|his wife, Amba}}, {{color|#999900|I bow to}} {{color|blue|blue-necked}}, {{color|fuchsia|many-eyed}}, {{color|teal|unchangeable}} {{color|lime|Lord Shiva}}, |
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::{{colour|Aqua|heart of}} {{color|brown|the Sun's disc}}, and {{color|green|remedy against}} {{color|gray|metempsychosis}}.<br> |
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::[i.e. remedy against the cycle of death and rebirth which must be suffered by those who have not succeeded in being released from it]. |
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The reason why I sought to obtain a proper translation of this passage is that some of the dubious references referred to above maintain that its opening words, transliterated as "Soura mandala madhyastham Sambam", mean "The Sun is at the center of the solar system", and have been cited in Wikipedia articles as supporting assertions that ancient Indians already knew that the Earth is spherical, and the solar system heliocentric, some 2000 years BC. |
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In the recent discussion of this passage, one editor correctly pointed out that many of the words in it can have a wide variety of meanings, and choosing the correct one will depend heavily on the context where the word occurs. While this is true, the amount of wiggle room one has available is nevertheless limited to the range of meanings recorded in a comprehensive dictionary or other ''scholarly'' literature. Alleged meanings for any of these words which are simply made up out of whole cloth by non-experts—such as "solar system", in this instance—and cannot be found in either a comprehensive dictionary or the writings of an ''expert'' scholar can, and should, be rejected as illegitimate. |
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More particularly, it was pointed out that the 1899 Monier-Williams dictionary [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=775 records around 30 or more] widely ranging senses for the word "maṇḍala", with the presumed implication that this must cast doubt on the accuracy of the above translation. This, however, ignores the fact that the word "maṇḍala" does not occur in isolation here, but as part of a compound "Súrya-maṇḍalamadhya-stham". For the first part of that compound "Súrya-maṇḍala", the Monier-Williams dictionary [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2014/web/webtc/servepdf.php?page=1243 records] just the ''single'' meaning, "the orb or disc of the Sun", so the wiggle room available for the meaning of this compound is rather more limited than the above-mentioned objection would appear to be suggesting. |
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All the same, however, [[:hi:सौर मण्डल|सौर मण्डल]] (Saura maṇḍal) ''is'' the ''modern Hindi'' expression for “solar system”, so it would be a little hasty to dismiss the same interpretation of a ''Sanskrit'' source as being impossible merely because that meaning is not recorded in some particular dictionary. I will further discuss the problems posed by this purported translation in the account of my investigations referred to above. |
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