Talk:Amritasiddhi/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 14:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks as always. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:22, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Images are appropriately tagged. Soundcloud is not generally reliable, but since it's a recording of a talk by an expert that's fine. Earwig shows a page at tr-ex.me with some overlap but it's an auto-generated page taking some text from Wikipedia. I don't have access to the sources so am assuming good faith instead of spotchecking.

• Noted.

• The WordPress.com source is presumably used with the idea that Burns is a reliable source. Burns is (or was than) still a post-grad, rather than having a doctorate. I see the source is always used in conjunction with another source. Do we really need it?

• He was acting as reporter for the SOAS group, so he's reliable here, and both more readable and (ahem) more accessible than the other sources.

• Religions is an MDPI journal; MDPI is listed as dubious on WP:RS/PS. Can it be cut?

• Well, it'd be a shame; Grimes has the advantage of not being Jim Mallinson in the reflist! The source comes up amber not red using the tool, so I'd say that given the very polite subject it should be accepted.

• Suggest combining the two short paras in the lead.

• Done.

• The lead could perhaps be a touch longer.

• Extended.

• "what came to be called Hatha yoga": any reason for the upper case? Actually looking through it's mostly upper case; are the lower case "hatha yoga"s an error?

• Yes, fixed. The idea is to reserve "hatha yoga" for unbranded modern yoga, i.e. not specifically Iyengar yoga, etc, and "Hatha yoga" for the medieval tradition.

• Suggest linking Siddha.

• Done.

• Not necessary for GA, but if the scholarship gives enough details, could a tree be drawn of the manuscripts, such as this?

• It's possible. Mallinson/Szántó have rather a complex one (and it's their copyright), so I'll have a think about making a simpler beast, outside this GAN.

• MS C is introduced twice, with more or less independent mentions, in the second and third paras of the "Context" section; could we draw the narrative together a bit more?

• Done.

• We say Mallison and Szántó made use of 12 manuscripts, but then list C and "the other nine".

• Fixed.

• "Liberation and yoga mean joining sun and moon together": I don't follow -- sounds like it's saying that liberation and yoga mean the same thing.
  • Ah, yes. "Yoga" is used widely to mean both the practice and the final goal. This is well explained in Mallinson & Singleton 2017.

    OK, but it's unclear in the article to someone unaware of both usages. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:43, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

• Glossed; what a thing to have to cover in a brief phrase!

• Suggest linking Prana. I see there's no article for Apana; is it worth a redlink? Actually I see you link them later, so it's just a link-on-first-use issue.

• Linked first instance. Apana is discussed in the Prana article.

• "Mahāmudrā, the "great seal", together with Mahābandha, the "great lock", and Mahāvedha hold back the bindu or lunar nectar": any reason only the first two are glossed?

• Added. The first two are widespread; the third is found only here.

• "The disturbances arise from Prakṛti, nature, manifesting as the three doṣas and the three Guṇas." Again a parenthetical explanation or two would help -- when there's only one technical term in a sentence one can often guess at the meaning, but this sentence will be meaningless to most readers.

• Glossed.

• "repeated practice of the three mudras": what are these?

• Listed, linked, and glossed.

• "As in earlier texts, the moon is in the head, dripping amṛta": above we say the moon is dripping nectar/Bindu, so this is confusing; I had to read this paragraph a couple of times to realize that amṛta is mentioned in the Amṛtasiddhi, since the "Text" section doesn't say that.

• Glossed.

• "the perineum lock and the throat lock": what's the throat lock?

• Glossed.

• And is the perineum lock the same thing as Mahāmudra?

• No, it's applied after Mahāmudra.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:29, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

All done to date. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:51, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

One point left. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:43, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

And fixed, passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:47, 11 September 2022 (UTC)