Wikipedia:Peer review/Economy of ancient Tamil country/archive1

Economy of ancient Tamil country

The Sangam age is considered an important period in the history of southern India. This article aims to give the reader a detailed account of the state of the economy in the ancient Tamil country. Please review and provide feedback, as to how to make this article FA quality. Thanks. Lotlil 02:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I haven't read the article in detail, but it contains very detailed information supported by appropriate citations. My initial suggestion is to include a discussion on the source of the information such as from the ancient literates, epigraphy, archeology, etc. I will add more comments when I find some time to read it in full. Also, attribution of Kallanai to the ancient Karikala has not been universally accepted by historians. Parthi ^{talk/contribs} 05:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments, Parthi. I've seen Kallanai attributed to Karikalan in many sources -journals and books - which is why I included that part. In any case, since there is doubt, I have removed his name from the article. We can take the discussion to the talk page once the review is over. As for the sources, currently the article mentions these primary sources not in one single section but wherever the reference to facts are made. For ex., in Foreign trade, I've included quotes from Periplus about the trade route. And, in the Markets section, I've mentioned the primary source to be Mathuraikanci etc. I will try to summarise all these into one section at the beginning, without repeating the info later. Lotlil 12:59, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up Both suggestions addressed. The sources section took longer than I thought, but it's there now. Lotlil 05:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.
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You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, DrKiernan 15:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for running the auto-review tool on this article. I believe most of the issues are taken care of already. I dont know if an infobox would be useful for this article. Lotlil 16:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Taprobanus:

1) Per WP:LEAD, you need to provide context as to what ancient Tamil country is. Atleast one ot twop sentence although you are linking to it. For a reader who does not understand the subject matter will not have any idea as to what you are talking about.
2) A map of ancient Tamil country would even be better
3) It is imperative the article on Korkai be complete

Thanks for the comments, Taprobanus. I'm working on the Korkai article, just havent had a chance to complete my edits. Point taken about the map. I'll get to the context thing shortly. Lotlil 23:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up Done. Korkai article is a stub, but has relevant info to give a context to the reader. I'll expand it in the coming days. I also created a simple map, doesn't look too professional.. so please feel free to improve it if you prefer.Lotlil 05:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This edit and its edit summary caught my eye. So I thought that article was in pr and I typed out a review. Now I see that it is a different article that is in pr. However, most of my concerns for this article and few other articles also remains the same. So I will go ahead and paste the review of that article that I had typed out.

Reply Thanks for reviewing the article(s).

Review

I dont know any other way to say this, but since it is in PR, let me say this. Will you guys for once stop blurring the lines between history, mythology and fictional poetry?! Forget wikipedia for a minute, do you realise that when it comes to real historical evidence of the so called Sangam age, there is next to nothing? Do you realise that almost all the content of this and other articles that you've created is gleaned straight from Sangam poetry which is not considered to be of any historical worth by several historians? Even historians like KANS who claim to see an underlying historical 'basis' in Sangam literature do not go so far as to take every line literally. Even he does not advance beyond a nominal reconstruction of history from these Sangam accounts. And here, you have gone ahead and reproduced the entirety of Sangam poetry as history!! No disclaimers, nothing!

Reply First of all, let’s clarify this minor detail: I did not interpret Sangam poems, nor did I glean any material from them directly. I gleaned it from the books and journals written by the dozen-odd scholars, historians and academicians mentioned in the footnotes. In other words, these articles are based entirely on secondary sources, per policy. I should also mention here that I intentionally ignored any work written in Tamil, for the benefit of verifiability by the wiki community, even if it meant I had to spend some extra time collecting sources in English.

As for the alleged lack of "real historical evidence", I hope you meant non-literary evidence, because contemporary literature is the foremost source for the history of any age before the modern era. But, even with the non-literary sources, we do not draw a blank like you want to believe. There is numismatic and epigraphic evidence, that have been used by scholars to give us a corroborated version of the history. For a sample, see this article and this sandbox page which is incomplete.

BTW, whatever gave you the impression that this is the entirety of Sangam literature??

Getting into specifics, I havent read the article fully, but let me try..

Among the five geographical divisions of the Sangam age Tamil country, the Marutam region was the most fit for cultivation, as it had the most fertile lands.[3]

Comment - Tinai belongs in poetry. It belongs in the poetic imagination of Sangam poets. It is NOT recorded history.

Reply It is the accepted history. Saying that it is someone’s imagination is OR.

Follow-up: I've reworded this part a bit, clarifying that the division exists in literature. I will look for more instances that may need clarification, if you see any do mention them here. Lotlil 23:27, 28 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The prosperity of a farmer depended on getting the necessary sunlight, seasonal rains and the fertiliy of the soil. Among these elements of nature, sunlight was considered indispensable by the ancient Tamils, because if rains fail other methods of irrigation could be put to use and if the soil wasn't naturally fertile, artificial manuring would enrich the soil.

Comment - Inanities. Is there any farmer or farming community in the world that does not depend on sunlight, rains and fertility of the soil? "Sunlight was considered indispensible"!! wow! I dont want to point out each one but the article is full of inanities like this.

Reply It was indeed thoughtful of you to remove that snide remark that you had made. Anyway, the bigger point to be grasped here is that their techniques were advanced enough that rain and soil fertility were *not* indispensable. People knew how to enhance shortcomings among these two elements of nature, but with sunlight they were helpless. Now, if you have a suggestion to reword, without compromising the information, I'm all ears.

Questionable historicity

Apart from the traditional landlords and cultivators, there were absentee landlords too. There are various instances in which the kings donated tax-free lands to poets, brahmins, educational institutions and hospitals. Lands given to brahmins was known Brahmateya. When lands were gifted to brahmins and poets, these donees quite often left the donated lands in the hands of tenants or farm laborers. The terms of tenancy in respect of such cultivation are not known. Sometimes independent laborers were engaged for specific puposes and were known as Adiyor. Regardless of the nature of ownership, ranging from great landlords who owned vast stretches of land to an ordinary cultivator who owned a tiny piece of land, there was a feeling of pride in the fact that they were the producers of food.

Comment - How do you/we know? Do you realise that to reconstruct a history of this sort, we'd need 'epigraphic' evidence? We'd need something like the copper plate grants of the later Cholas or Chalukyas or Hoysalas, Vijayanagara etc.,.? Do you realise that of epigraphic evidence there is next to nothing when it comes to the 'Sangam age'? For starters, there is no evidence even to prove the historicity of any of the Sangam kings.(see Early Chola kings). So how is it that you've managed to reconstruct the most minor details of how much land he held, how much he gave away as grants etc? Do you really think that reconstructing the most specific of details is possible from poetry?

Reply First of all, there are (unfortunately) no details of exactly how much the king owned and how much he gave away. But, like I said, to know more about how these details have been inferred from literature, I humbly refer you to my sources. They are better equipped than I am, to say why and how they did it.

About the apparent disrespect to literary sources, do you realize that all the accounts of early history has been arrived at using literature mostly. Other scientific evidence merely provides corroborative evidence. You wouldn’t, for example, find the entire account of Mauryan administration engraved in stone. But, let’s digress a bit: why do we even stop at epigraphic evidence, we could question that too. After all, they are just graffiti engraved on stone. Whoever did that could’ve imagined whatever they scribbled, couldn’t they? That is the very nature of reconstructing history. Any Tom, Dick and Harry can come up with their version of history or start questioning scholarly versions of history. We, at wikipedia, have the responsibility to give due weightage to every opinion, solely based on how popular it is among scholars. If you can bring sources that say all that I have written is trash, I will be happy to AfD these articles.

Coming back to literary sources, most of Roman and Greece history comes to us through literature, much more than epigraphy or archaeology. Ancient Ceylon became clear to us due to the Mahavamsa and the Culavamsa. For that matter, should we (as a fun exercise) analyse the articles on Gangas and Kadambas and find out exactly how much of the information is sourced from epigraphy or archaeology?

Let’s address the other issue about authenticity of Sangam literature, specifically. That was the very first thing I convinced myself of, before setting about writing these articles. The unanimous opinion is that the society, culture and polity that has been portrayed in Sangam poems is a reliable account of life during that time. I know people can opine all they want, but nobody can say so for sure. Which is why we need to accept the majority scholarly view as fact. If you can furnish proof that scholars are opposed to using Sangam literature to study history, we can talk.

I strongly advise you to -

Move the article to Accounts of Tamil country from Sangam literature or something like that

Reply I don’t see the need to do that. It is the accepted history of ancient Tamil country and we should say so. And, there are other corroborative sources, not just Sangam.

Add a section about the primary sources involved in these articles.

Reply Fair enough. This is what Parthi has suggested above and I’m working on it (the sanbox article I referred to earlier)

Not letting people know that

a) these accounts are almost entirely drawn from poetry belonging to the "fiction" genre

b) several historians do not consider accounts in the Sangam literature to be of any historical worth; even the ones who grant it any historical legitimacy do it with qualifications and reservations and do not grant the corpus in its entirety any blanket historical legitimacy.

does not make for NPOV.

Reply This is POV and OR. I haven’t seen any historian worth his salt stand up and say that all of Sangam literature isnt worthy of historical study. I urge you to bring up sources that make these claims directly. I’m not looking for taken-out-of-context statements. Need solid accounts of scholars who say that *all* of Sangam literature is not to be used for historical study. Not only that, there needs to be enough of them, lest we violate UNDUE.

Change the tone of the article. Right now it reads like a {{story}}. Do not present accounts in a matter-of-fact tone as if their historicity has been established beyond a shadow of doubt!

Reply Specifics, please. All of what I said is paraphrased from accomplished scholars. The matter-of-fact tone is a direct consequence of the universal acceptance of what is being said.

I have typed this in a hurry and my choice of words may not be the best, but I really do hope that you see the point I am trying to make and take suitable action. Sarvagnya 20:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again, thanks for taking the time to review the article. May I suggest further discussions along these lines be carried on in the article talk page. If you would like other reviewers to know about your notes there, you can post a message there and a single-line link to it over here. I will do the same for my follow-ups. Lotlil 23:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up Sources section is done. Let me know if there are other concerns of POV.Lotlil 05:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The article has the potential to be the single-most comprehensive resource on the web on this subject. Good work, Lotlil.

The prose flow needs to be tightened.
More pictures can be added.
Someone who can work with Inkscape can add more maps based on any geographic information available.
Cited references should include quotes wherever they add value.

Once content addition is complete, we can do some copyediting. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 11:30, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply Thanks, Sundar. Most of the text content is there, except a section on primary sources, which was suggested by couple of reviewers above. I should be done with that section before end of this week. I will leave you a note then and we can work on the specifics of the flow/cpedit issues. As for the pictures, I tried to get relevant ones that are already in wiki with proper copyright. If there are other pictures that you can suggest, please let me know. Lotlil 13:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up Done with the content (text) addition. The sources section def.ly needs some cpedit. I will try and come back to it in a couple of days. In the meantime, please feel free to improve the flow/prose if you get a chance.Lotlil 05:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: Great work collating this information. The sources section and the child article show the quantity of work that has gone into this article. As Sundar says, when the text is stable we can go through a series of copyedits to tighten the prose to fit a summary article. Although citing each sentence is superflous, some may demand citations for assertions such as 'Surface irrigation, sprinkler mechanism and drip irrigation methods were followed to prevent wastage of water.' In such cases it will probably be sufficient to not be very specific. Parthi ^{talk/contribs} 23:12, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nice work. A few comments. 1) The lead still needs work. I tried to help, but I couldn't think of how the third paragraph should be expanded. Three fully developed paragraphs that properly summarize the most important facets of the article would be ideal. 2) Is Ancient Tamil country really the accepted term scholars use? I'm not saying it's not, it's just rather jarring on first glance. 3) The Sangam era link and dates need to be looked at. The link isn't useful since it redirects to Sangam not really what the reader would be expecting, perhaps a stub should be created to Sangam era or Sangam just needs to be reworked a bit or the link should be taken out. The information in some of the related Sangam articles don't seem consistent at first pass. Sangam literature for example gives a 200BCE-300CE date range while Sangam gives a different one. And there's Sangam period which just seems to add to the confusion. 4) I agree with the comment Parthi made. A statement of such specificity and of a perhaps surprising assertion such as that is an excellent candidate to be cited directly. Try to directly cite only the most important or surprising conclusions such as that and not the mundane stuff that would be common knowledge to anyone familiar with the field. The references section covers that, so nice work organizing it that way. 5) Work to expand, merge or eliminate one or two sentence paragraphs. They break up the flow of the prose too much. 6) The rest looks pretty good to me, though perhaps the artistic license of the sources was followed a bit too much. For ex. "The ships returned from Tamilakam with rich cargo which, as soon as it was transported on the back of camels from the Red Sea to the Nile and descended the river as far as Alexandria, was poured without delay into the capital of the Roman empire." "Poured without delay" is possibly not true, and unless the source specifically expanded upon that point with evidence it isn't properly supported. - Taxman ^Talk 13:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]