Talk:सह

RFC discussion: September 2013–July 2023

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सह

Sanskrit: Rfc-sense: "a species of plant" and "name of various plants"

These are virtually worthless as definitions, but similar definition are common among Sanskrit entries here. Can this be improved upon at all? Similar situations in Latin and especially Greek usually generate plausible conjectures. Some of the cases where a species name is given are not much better as the species name may be used nowhere but in dictionaries or south Asian languages. DCDuring TALK 00:53, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

There are analogous cases in Old French especially regarding plants where there's no way to be sure all the authors are talking about the same plant. I can see a lot of problems on that page, "a species of plant" seems redundant but "name of various plants" is probably as good as it can get. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

That is a typical Sanskrit page with typical problems, including no differentiation of proper nouns, except for higher prevalence of "name of" as part of the definition. The definitions look like wikiformatted copies of old Sanskrit-English dictionaries, possibly different ones combined, with the old dictionaries not being as well done as LSJ (Ancient Greek)or L&S (Latin). The definiens often use polysemic English words with no gloss to suggest which modern sense. DCDuring TALK 01:59, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

You haven't begun to guess at the true enormity of the problem: I've copypasted the relevant part of the Monier-Williams entry from a pdf I downloaded (enclosed in collapsible header templates for those who don't care to read through it all), and interleaved it with our definitions. The OCR severely mangled the romanized Sanskrit and it would have taken too long to fix it, so don't try to decipher that part. As you can see, our entry is simply the Monier-Williams translated into our format, stripped of the source abbreviations, and paraphrased a bit.

It seems like a combination of multiple dictionaries because Monier-Williams went through libraries-full of sources and made notes, then compressed those notes into an incredibly dense and cryptic format in order to fit everything (barely) into one very large volume. All the bulleted lines below take up what looks like a single 2 or 3 inch square in a much larger three-column page, with nothing separating them but spaces and semicolons. The amount of detail in that work is astonishing- it would take years to properly unpack all the abbreviations and taxonomic names and convert them to modern equivalents. Just one page would take days! Nobody has all the necessary reference material at hand to do it, anyway, so the best we seem to be able to do is reformat this massive lump of condensed shorthand to make it look like a Wiktionary entry, without properly decoding it.

Related terms

1. powerful, mighty

• powerful, mighty, RV. ;

1. (ifc.) overcoming, vanquishing

• (ifc.) overcoming, vanquishing, MBh. ;

1. bearing, enduring, withstanding, defying, equal to, a match for (+ genitive or compound)

• bearing, enduring, withstanding, defying, equal to, a match for (gen. or comp.), MBh.;

1. causing, effecting, stimulating, exerting

• KSv. &c.; causing, effecting, stimulating, exerting, Sis. ;

1. able to, capable of (infinitive or compound)

• able to, capable of (inf. or comp.), Kalid. ;

1. the month मार्गशीर्ष (mārgaśīrṣa)

• m. the month Margasirsha (see sahas), VS.;

1. a particular fire

• a partic.Agni, MBh.;

1. a species of plant

• a species of plant, AV. ;

1. name of a son of manu

• N. of a son of Manu, Hariv.;

1. name of a son of प्राण (prā-ṇa) and ऊर्जस्वती (ūrjasvatī)

• of a son of Prana and Urjasvati, BhP. ;

1. name of a son of धृतराष्ट्र (dhṛtarāṣṭra)

• of a son of Dhritarashtra, MBh. ;

1. name of a son of Krishna and Madri

• of a son of Krishna and Madri, BhP.;

1. (with Buddhists) name of a division of the world

• (with Buddhists) N. of a division of the world (with loka-dhatu,'the world inhabited by men'),Karand.;

1. name of various plants

• N. of various plants (accord, to L.-Aloe Perfoliata, dandotpala, rasna &c.), VarBrS.;

1. Unguis odoratus

• Unguis Odoratus, L. ;
• (a), f. the earth, L.;

1. = बल (bala)

• n. = bala, L. ;

1. kind of salt

• a kind of salt, L. =I .

Chuck Entz (talk) 06:22, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I had looked at some of the Dictionary pages given as references.

My interests and "expertise" are quite limited. I think I can modernize some of the taxonomic names from the 130-year-old ones that were the best he had to work with, but I have to always look at the dictionary page itself. Some of the species names I cannot find in any authoritative online source.

So our Sanskrit entries are "pretend" entries, even worse than the unchanged Webster 1913 entries (for current words). DCDuring TALK 16:55, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess what's worst is that many of the pages don't have the reference to the dictionary page. DCDuring TALK 16:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

DCDuring keeps repeating that we're dealing with a "130-year old dictionary" but he fails to mention that the dictionary is a synthetic result of tens of thousands of man-hours, and that it's perfectly valid today due to the simple fact that Sanskrit is an extinct language that doesn't change anymore. If the respected authorities have failed to determine what exact species of plants saha denotes in some works, then probably nobody else will. Comparing it to Webster 1913 and modern English is stupid. Regarding proper nouns - they are not recognized as a separate lexical category by Sanskrit grammarians (there is no uppercase/lowercase distinction, there are tens of thousands of deities in Hinduism representing just about any imaginable concept). I have been separating proper/common nouns in some early entries, but have stopped doing so. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a great dictionary. It's available online for free to scholars, so Wiktionary's having copied pages is simply duplicative. It's copied pages are only a first draft of a Wiktionary entry. DCDuring TALK 16:27, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Apart from the research done on the new interpretation of meanings of Sanskrit words in the 20th and 21th century, it's a complete entry. Sanskrit entries copied from MW dictionary are far more complete than English entries copied from Webster 1913, because the language is not productive anymore as a literary device. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I have three problems with our English entries based on MW 1913 and two with the Sanskrit entries. To me they have one problem in common.

1. with English entries from MW 1913:
   1. it has English words whose meaning and usage context have changed in some cases, whereas we have not brought the entry up to date.
   2. it uses a dated English for all of its definitions
   3. it includes lists of synonyms in the definiens (instead of under Synonyms), a defining style we don't use.
2. with Sanskrit entries:
   1. it does not adhere to Wiktionary format and structure eg, not having distinct L3/4 sections for proper and common nouns and non-definiens material in the definitions.
   2. it uses a dated English for all of its definitions.

Just as with MW 1913 entries: I am glad we have the Sanskrit entries. They are an excellent first draft. They need work to be up to our high standards. DCDuring TALK 01:13, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

1. I've told you already: proper nouns are not recognized as a separate lexical category by Sanskrit grammarians. This "e.g." of yours is the only objection you actually have to the structure of Sanskrit entries, and yet you keep parroting it as if it is one of many. Non-definiens material (i.e. the list of works were the set of meanings makes appearance) is essential due to the fact that Sanskrit literature stretches over three millennia, and someone reading Rgveda is not interested in the same meanings as someone reading Gita Govinda. We already include non-definiens material in all of the entries - they are called context labels. I fail to see how "this meaning is only used in UK" is any different than "this meaning is only used in the Vedas".
2. Most of its English is perfectly fine. You're needlessly exaggerating. If you find "dated English" feel free to update it. Perhaps some terms are a bit dated, but often no clear non-dated synonyms exist, and replacing them could introduce new interpretation of some words. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

All of this makes it seem as if a user of the material would be better off to be using the complete text, not Wiktionary's half-formatted, subject-to-insufficiently-respectful-editing version. For example, see Category:Sanskrit proper nouns. Do we need 97 RfC for them?

What value are we adding if all we do is copy? One value might be that we can link to the Sanskrit from other language entries. But that is not for Sanskrit scholars who know the peculiarities of the original dictionary; it is for ordinary Wiktionarians and folks who are simply curious, even recreational users. As scholars have the free online source and should have page links in the Wiktionary entry to that source from every entry copied from it, our Sanskrit entries ought be rendered consistent with Wiktionary format to facilitate use by those other than scholars. DCDuring TALK 17:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Half-formatted subject-to-insufficiently-respectful-editing version? I'm not annoyed by your half-baked attempts of pretend-trolling. Goodbye. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The really terrible one is the neuter noun = बल (bala), because बल has 28 noun definitions. Which one of the 28, or all 28 of them? Limiting only to neuter nouns transliterated as bala, that's down to 14. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

@Mahagaja, AryamanA if either of you would like to modernize the entry any. - -sche (discuss) 21:34, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

• Well, it took ten years to add the gloss unknown which plant. Lethant (talk) 23:25, 24 July 2023 (UTC)