Talk:U Dhammaloka

A fact from U Dhammaloka appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 February 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that U Dhammaloka (pictured) was an Irish hobo who became one of the first known western Buddhist monks and was twice tried for sedition?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/February.

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Shortened footnotes[edit]

I've come here for a DYK review. Great work setting up this article. My suggestion is to convert this to shortened footnotes and I've provided one as an example. It's one of the DYK requirements to have inline citations (I wouldn't call the present hardcoded referencing inline) and it's certainly a better system, as it generates hyperlinks. If you need further explanations, let me know through my talk page. Schwede 66 22:19, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The rest of the article has been converted to shortened footnotes. There are three good things about this:

The footnote is linked to the reference itself (click on the footnote and it will highlight the corresponding reference)
Multiple references to the same page of the same source can be grouped in the footnotes
The template used for the footnote references can be easily switched back to parenthetical citations that still maintain the reference link with the addition of some more parameters to the citation. And here, by "easily" I mean "with a little work."

Cheers. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 08:02, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, it's a much better article for it now :) Schwede 66 17:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"He was trialled"[edit]

Hi Victuallers,

I've undone your change for two reasons:

(1) "He was trialled" is not correct English; (2) The sentence runs "... between 1900 and his trial for sedition in 1911"; the insertion throws the whole sentence out.

Thanks,

Laurence Cox (talk) 18:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)Laurence Cox[reply]

AE or BE[edit]

One more thought. I'm not clear whether this article uses American or British English. See, for example, traveled and travelled. If somebody could clarify what it's supposed to be, then it gives others a chance to go through and tidy things up. Schwede 66 21:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I wrote it mostly BE but apologies if AE has crept in (the perils of international collaboration). BE would be an easier standard - I will clean it up when I get a chance.--Laurence Cox (talk) 21:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

minor[edit]

Hi Rms - just to say "A man of work and few words" in the title of the Bocking article is a quote from Dhammaloka - hence the inverted commas.

Thanks for the other edits.

--Laurence Cox (talk) 08:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recent changes[edit]

Thanks to everyone who's been editing this page recently. It's improved it considerably.

I've gone through and reversed some changes. Those reversals which aren't stylistic are mentioned / explained below.

There were various objections to "hobo", but this isn't adequately replaced by "migrant worker" (at least outside the US): there was a distinct and (as the articles referenced make clear) self-identified "hobo culture" in the US at this period, and the term was freely used by members of that culture, often with a sense of pride.

One edit replaced "the British" with "the Europeans" as the target of Dhammaloka's alleged seditious comments, but these (if true) were directly aimed at the British empire and this was the basis of a charge of sedition.

Someone queried proof as to his Catholic origins - it is referenced in the various articles.

I have restored a number of relevant categories removed without explanation but mostly relating to Ireland - Dhammaloka is a significant figure in Irish Buddhist and Irish atheist history as well as in the history of Irish solidarity with other colonised countries in this period.

Thanks again for all the editing help. --Laurence Cox (talk) 09:47, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Name[edit]

Was his name Dhammaloka = Dhamma + loka, meaning 'World of Dhamma' or was it Dhammāloka = Dhamma + āloka, meaning 'Light of Dhamma'? The latter spelling with the long ā would be the appropriate and normal one. --Nyanatusita (talk) 10:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The contemporary Burmese and Japanese sources give Dhammaloka; while the Japanese periodical may well have been relying on the man himself (who may not have grasped the phonetic difference) the Burmese paper, which lists the various monks taking part in his ordination, is likely to have had its information from a monastic source. However he was reported as saying that his name meant 'Light of the World' (which may have been his misunderstanding of Dhamma=reality, a journalists' misrecollection or indeed a conflation of the two possible names), supporting the possibility of Dhammāloka. For now the Burmese source seems most likely to be accurate in terms of its closeness to a Pali-using monk and the actual ordination, and since the vast bulk of reports found to date are in European languages without the long a, it seems safest to use "Dhammaloka" until we have more evidence. --Laurence Cox (talk) 00:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.45.56.58 (talk) [reply]