Talk:Ayodhya (Ramayana)

Identification of Ayodhya

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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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

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Single citiy not 2 cities

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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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)

Please see WP:RNPOV. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 05:58, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

The lead sentence does not state that the legendary city was definitely a purely mythical place, or that it was definitely a historical place and same as the modern city. It states in a neutral way that modern scholars variously subscribe to either of these theories. The article body has sources to support this. As for Jerusalem, there is hardly any (if at all) controversy about its identification with the "Jesusalem legendary city". That is obviously not true about Ayodhya. For example, see:

• "There are two Ayodhyas, the Ayodhya of legend that appears in the Ramayana and the small town in northern Uttar Pradesh. There is considerable controversy whether the present-day town in Uttar Pradesh is the same as that mentioned in the Ramayana."

• "However, there has been a great deal of confusion among scholars regarding the location of the mythological Ayodhya. While some argue that the contemporary town is not the place referred to in Valmiki's epic, others swear to the contrary. [...] Whatever the actual position regarding the identification of contemporary Ayodhya with the mythological city, it has evoked great interest since the beginning of the nineteenth century..."

• "The narratives kept proliferating, while archaeologists were left wrangling over whether any of the finds in the Ayodhya trenches could qualify as conclusive evidence about prior temple remains and while historians went to lengths to show that present-day Ayodhya could not be equated with the ancient mythical city..."

• "These historians raised two questions: whether Ayodhya is the birthplace of Rama and whether present-day Ayodhya is the Ayodhya of the Ramayana. Although they do not explicitly refer to Bakker, their argument is largely based upon his hypothesis that the town Saketa was renamed Ayodhya by a fifth-century Gupta king in order to create a link between his rule and the ideal rule of lord Rama. These historians argue that if present day Ayodhya was known as Saketa before the fifth century, then the Ayodhya of Valmiki's Ramayana was fictional..."

Omitting this topic just because it is "controversial" is not appropriate. Per MOS:LEADELEMENTS, significant controversies should be mentioned in the lead. utcursch | talk 15:01, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Legendary city

JayB91, You claim that "one side" believes it is the same as the modern Ayodhya. This "one side" consists of just two individuals, BB Lal and Sankalia, neither of whom is a historian and hasn't managed to convince any historians. So, their view is only briefly stated for NPOV, but it cannot be given any more weight. The definitive historian of Ayodhya is Hans T. Bakker, who is categorical that there is no mention of a real city called Ayodhya in any texts until Skandagupta named it so. The removal of "legendary" from the first paragraph doesn't make sense because it is referred to in the second paragraph. You are making the content incoherent while pushing a POV.

And, you should be following WP:BRD when an edit is reverted. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:07, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Does it matter who is a historian or who is not? Are we at Wikipedia now analyzing their degrees and rate them? At Wikipedia we try to put neutral wording and the word legendary means "is of or relating to an old story or set of stories from ancient times, or the stories that people tell about a famous event or person" so balantly claiming Ramayana is fictional/mythical which can create another raging debate. Now this is sure POV. The wording "Ayodhya is a city mentioned in Ramayana" is better worded than "Ayodhya is a legendary(not real) city mentioned in Ramayana." As for other words I am putting "Ayodhya is closely/traditionally linked to modern city of Ayodhya" is no brainer. I am not saying IT IS archaelogically the same city (That will be POV) but again balantly claiming when That there is NO link between old and new city wether traditional, devotional or any other is plain ridiculous. Millions of pilgrims visit the city each year traditionally believing it to be, so few historians have an opinion. So do we run to Ayodhya and tell pilgrims that at the Great Wikipedia taking opinion of few "esteemed" better degree historians we have claimed the city is fake with no link to the text mentioned old city and stop them from claiming. Really??? JayB91 (talk) 02:33, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

On the first question, "Does it matter who is a historian or who is not?" the answer is yes. As per WP:HISTRS, historians get the first call to tell us what is historically true and what is not. The page itself describes quite extensively why the present day Ayodhya is not "linked" (whatever that means) to Valmiki's Ayodhya in the view of historians. Your revised wording of the LEAD is a blatant contradiction of that. If you edit with NPOV, you report what the reliable sources, not what you believe. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

By the way, I moved this page from Ayodhya (legendary city) to Ayodhya (Ramayana). So I know where you are coming from and how much concession to give it. Please don't attempt to lecture me. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:07, 15 September 2019 (UTC)