The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
obscure neologism, though the subject of Buddhism and Hinduism is well researched, hardly results for google books. The main source for this article seems to be WP:Fringe books by David Frawley, so any redeemable contents could be merged there. See
Keep and discuss possible move to Dharma in religions or other suitable name. The subject is encyclopedic. Also, I would avoid making claims of WP:FRINGE in reference to Frawley. Google books is not a library (at least not yet) ≈ jossi ≈(talk)17:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Frawley is not Fringe, except if you think that Hinduism is fringe and not worth discussing. Frawley's books are popularizations and introductions of Ayurveda and Hinduism. Would you call the "Idiots Guide to Hinduism" also fringe? --Harryhouse 01:29, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you do not believe Frawley is fringe, take it up at the fringe noticeboard. I certainly intend to remove him as a reference from any article not in his specific area of expertise, which is the teaching if yoga, unless I am wrong. Hornplease00:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Dharmic religions being part of a classification of religions (as this article asserts-ed) is not attested by reliable sources. Or redirect to Dharma, which more or less covers what this article currently does and which is pretty much what the famous Frawley reference(page 27) merits. Doldrums17:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Having come across the term dharmic religion, I came upon this article last week and found its existence invaluable. I was looking for information on Dharmic religions and would not have looked for the Dharma article since I would assume that is about a concept rather than a group of religions. --Dajanes21:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. "Dharmic religion" is a neologism. The religions discussed have multiple points of contact, the concept of dharma being only one of them, as they all emerged in a common intellectual and philosophical milieu. There have been comparativist studies of various aspects, but no academically well-known source has been cited. (Frawley and Klostermeier are dilettantes, Guenon and Cousins are tangential, etc.) This is an OR puff job, with any salvageable material belonging in other pages such as Dharma. rudra22:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It is difficult to believe that the commonality among these religions has not been discussed by academics - if this isn't the name for it, then there must be another similar name this could be filed under. Providing a taxonomy of related religions is a basic building block of the study of world religions. MarkBul22:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per Sfacets, we use "Abrahamic religions" and don't consider it an "obscure neologism". Just seeing the term "Dharmic religions" used in a text made instant sense to me as a religious student. Also, bad "idea" to remove the term from the articles which use it, and then nominate it for deletion...bordering on bad faith. I notice otherusershave also pointed out your "personal crusade" and told you to stop trying to remove the term from every article that uses it. Sherurcij(Speaker for the Dead) 23:38, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a bad idea to remove a neologism from an article that uses it. It may have 'made sense' to you as a student of religions, but we cannot guarantee it would make sense to everyone, and further, we need a reliable source to tell us that it makes sense before it can be used everywhere. Hornplease00:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Neologism, possibly politically motivated. Less than five hits on google scholar. According to User:Buddhipriya on the Hinduism noticeboard "...its absence from a sampling of well-known works suggests to me that it is not widely used. I did not find it in the indexes of:
Kulki and Rothermund, A History of India
Keay, India
Thapar, Early India
Basham, The Wonder That Was India
Zimmer, Philosophies of India
Chatterjee and Datta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy
Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy
Flood, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
Conze, Buddhist Thought In India."
My own response on that occasion was: "6 links for "Dharmic tradition" on Scholar (1 on JSTOR), 18 on books, most of which talk about Gandhi, and only 4 of which use the phrase in the sense in which Encarta does."
"No results on Lexis, less than 10 results for DR on Google News Archive from reliable sources. One throwaway Encarta reference is insufficient for an entire article title. Meanwhile, the article itself is merely a collection of stubs about Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, with little or no real analysis, obviously, since there are no reliable sources on which to base this analysis. The Buddhism and Hinduism article is better, but here, again, there isn't any organic analysis. This is a neologism. I am now convinced." This was in mid-June. I have waited this long for any major further information; none has come to light. Let it be clear: there is absolutely no justification for perpetrating the hoax that there is reliable research linking these religions in this particular fashion. Obviously comparative studies have been done, but implying that Dharma means the same thing across these religions, that this is their main point of correspondence, etc. etc.... all original research. Hornplease00:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, removal of the term from many articles should go on even if this article is kept. I have sought dispute resolution in the case of human (the term is now removed) and I will seek dispute resolution for some other cases if I am reverted. Using this obscure neologism in the article human is absurd. Andries00:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If this article is kept, I am rewriting it in line with the only reliable source reference for it, which is about the political use of the term. It might become six lines, and open to PROD-ding by the next person who happens by, but at least it won't be original research. Hornplease00:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Buddhipriya didn't read the books, he only looked up the index. The books could use a synonym --Harryhouse 01:52, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of the list he used, only Radhakrishnan and Moore, I think, is not indexed full-text by Google books; if they contained the term, it would have shown up in the search. (And R&M is a sourcebook.) Hornplease02:20, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would add as a personal comment that in my own experience I do not recall ever seeing the term used in any academic text. I understand that my personal views of this sort are worthless as evidence, but nevertheless, it is the case. There is no question in my mind that this is a neologism that was devised primarily to acheive certain political objectives. It is not in general use to refer to any group of religions. Buddhipriya02:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt - Per my comments above. I am now more convinced than ever that the term is a neologism and that unless salted it probably will be put back into use. Buddhipriya02:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to an Amazon search, the book doesn't support the statement in the Taoic religion article (at least in pages 70-76). Incidentally it does not even use the words Taoic or Abrahamic and uses Dharmic only once in an unrelated sense (based on both amazon and google book search). Abecedare01:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment:Google.com has more than enough of results for "dharmic religion" [2]. With such many results, I am more than surprised that Hornplease calls it a "neologism" (which of course it is, like also "Abrahamic or Semitic religions", or "wikipedia", but a widely used one). It may seem a clever idea to use Google Books as a argument in the AFD, but Google Books is not strong at all in Indology books. (No Internet source is really strong in Indology books, but at least one or two are better than Google (I'd have to look that one up.)) Secondly, the term is probably more often used as "dharmic tradition", dharmic beliefs" and such. See [3], [4], [5], Prabhu, Joseph, Some challenges facing multiculturalism in a globalized world, ReVision, June 22, 2001·
Lexis is a database for legal documents and legal research. I don't know, you can search there maybe for a million years for religious terms without success. Why not try the Fauna and Flora of India database?
The motivation (at least for Hornplease) behind this AFD was apparently this:
"It states that the phrase [Dharmic religion] is used as a political ploy to indicate solidarity -and indeed, identity- between non-Semitic religions on the subcontinent by the VHP. I then looked at the talkpage of the article, which gave rise to further concern when viewed in that light. I need some more input on this soon, please." Hornplease 17:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC) [6]
First, the book that User:Hornplease describes seems to use the term "dharmic religions" itself for the dharmic religions. Secondly, Hornplease's statements reads like that of a nationalist who is upset when he hears that Christianity is a "Jewish creation", or has a "divide and conquer" mentality. This is probably not true, but he should be careful how he says things, otherwise someone who doesn't look up his edits might mistaken him for such. Thirdly, the term exists and has a history, and all that can be said about the quote is that politicians are not always anti-intellectual.
The Encarta encyclopedia uses the term. [7] It says: :Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism share with Hinduism the concept of dharma along with other key concepts, and the four religions may be said to belong to the dharmic tradition. ...between Hinduism and other dharmic traditions..... In many ways, labeling the other dharmic traditions as non-Hindu has a basis that derives more from politics than from philosophy. Indeed, greater differences of belief and practices lie within the broad family labeled as Hinduism than distinguish Hinduism from other dharmic systems.
There are three possibilities for this AFD: First one, we delete this article together with the Abrahamic religions article. The second possiblity is to keep it, and the Abrahamic religions article. The third possibility is to move it to another title. The major reason for the apparent confusion among some editors is that there are many different terms for the same thing. Prior to 1950, Dharmic religions were usually called Aryan or Indo-Aryan religions in the West. After 1950, obviously the term has become a bit less used (Semitic religions has also become less used). After 1950, in the West, alternative terms like Dharmic tradition or "dharmic beliefs" or more scientifically "Indic religion" are used. Dharmic religions is probably not the most scientific term, more scientific is Indic religions. We could move the article to "Indic religion", and explain all the other terms in the same article. For Indic religion, see [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16] and many others. This website [17] says:
The term ‘Indic’ is how the field is recognized by American scholars, hence our choice.
(I think I cannot vote, thats why I'm only commenting on this, although I am not completely new (I once had an account, I lost it and had left Wikipedia)) --Harryhouse 01:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this remark. AfD is not a vote, so your comments are certainly not unwelcome. I have no opinion on Indic religions, and will look into that possibility. I myself proposed 'Religions of Indian origin', which seems to be fairly common and is a neutral phrase.
My objection to 'dharmic religions' was primarily that it is a neologism overused on WP, and only tangentially that it may be a neologism created to push a particular POV, so we must be particularly careful. As I said above, I was aware of the Encarta reference; it was considered perhaps not enough on which to hang this article given the paucity of any other sources.
Google results per se are not enough, which is why I linked Google scholar results; Google per se includes a large number of sources that do not meet our criteria for reliability. Lexis, similarly, was checked because it indexes news and reviews from sources that do meet those criteria. The term is practically unknown in reliable sources. Google books contains the entire contents of (at least) the Harvard University library system, which contains a very large Indology section and is the largest academic library in the world.
I have no opinion on 'Abrahamic', which seems marginal; I definitely think 'Taoic' needs investigation. (Oh, and, no fervour of any sort, nationalistic or otherwise, motivates me on WP.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hornplease (talk • contribs) 01:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Google books may possibly contain the entire list titles of books in the Harvard Library system; it does not contain their contents by any stretch of the imagination - if only!. Johnbod01:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They are most certainly not available online. Surely you have noticed that only out-of-copyright books are all available - a very different matter. Actually hardly any of the books one actually needs on a particular subject aere available. Johnbod11:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're surely not basing your claim on that 20%? simply put, the onus is then on you to demonstrate that the term is used in several mainstream studies of comparative religion. Hornplease02:31, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
True, but the term dharmic religion or dharmic tradition does not appear in the index of the book A Comparative Sociology of World Religions: virtuosos, priests, and popular religion. Pp 71-72, 75-76. New York: NYU Press, 2001. ISBN0814798055, so these phraces are most probably not used in the book and not extensively treated. Does anyone have access to the book? Andries02:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not every term used in a book is also listed in the index, and the book could also use a synonym. Does it use Semitic/Abrahamic religion in the index? --Harryhouse 02:15, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment it has been suggested during these discussions that the term is in common use. possible, but that is not enough for us to put together an article without sources that "address the subject directly in detail", as WP:NOTABILITY demands. we haven't found a book, a chapter of a book, a section, or even a paragraph that talks about Dharmic religions as such. what we have are asides - a sentence each in various sources saying these four religions are sometimes grouped together under this name. other than this statement, we haven't sourced anything about Dharmic religions from reliable sources, instead the article pulls together general information about the individual religions - it's a list with lead sections. the non-list sections are entirely OR in the sense that none of it is spoken of in the sources in the context of something called Dharmic religions. there's no source to suggest that what's been so put together is what characterises Dharmic religions. it has also been suggested that sources have not been found because we've not looked in the right place for them (or that there's a synonym we've missed). again, possible but saying so (as opposed to finding it) won't affect this deletion. Doldrums10:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But none of the various discussions on the subject appear to have contributions from people who know the current academic literature on comparative religion (the most relevant subject). Everyone appears to be relying on the web. The phrase is clearly relatively recent; it does not bother me that it is not (as mentioned above) indexed in Basham, The Wonder That Was India (1954) or Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (1957) etc. That it is not books over 50 years old does not make it a neologism. Johnbod12:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not relying on the web. Please review the results of book index checking which I gave above, plus my personal experience with reading books. The term is a neologism not used widely, if at all, in the published academic literature. Buddhipriya08:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have searched the following academic article indexes (which AFAIK are the largest and most comprehensive for humanities, social sciences and religion studies) for the phrase "dharmic religion":
JSTOR
Thomsons-ISI's Arts & humanities citation index
American Theological Library Association religion database
Bibliography of Asian studies
and found exactly zero hits. If you can suggest alternate academic databases that are worth looking into, I can give them a try too. Incidentally, and not surprisingly, all these indexes give thousands of hits for the search-word "dharma" itself. Abecedare12:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I repeated the search for "dharmic religion", "dharmic tradition", "dharmic faith" and their plurals in all four academic indexes, and the result was same as above; except for one anomaly: JSTOR gave this article as a hit for "dharmic tradition" but the article PDF itself does not contain the word "dharmic", let alone "dharmic tradition" and anyways the article does not talk about anything relevant to the topic of the Dharmic Religion article (in summary the article compares the attitudes towards world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism to conceptualization of "primitive" religions like Nuer and Lugbara; Jainism and Sikhism are not even mentioned). Abecedare 14:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC) PS As pointed by Fullstop the article does contain the phrase "dharmic tradition" but it is used specifically to refer to brahmanical religion, and not as an umbrella term. Abecedare00:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Note that JSTOR contains but a very small subset of articles on religion. I am not familiar with the American Theological Library Association. I will ask an expert on the subject and report back. ≈ jossi ≈(talk)14:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
@Abecedare: page 210, 11th line from the bottom; page 211, 10th line from the bottom.
@Jossi: religion is reasonably well covered on JSTOR. Just to give you an idea: "Vedic religion" returns 285, "Dharma" 5024, "Karma" 4014, "Dharmic" 187, "Karmic" 894.
CommentThe idea of this article is interesting, and worth to be worked on. (Its name may be worth changing). Dharma is an all round term, almost impossible to translate. It has the same diffuse status as Logos has in the West. The religions that have sprung forth on the Indian peninsula do have certain features in common, that you cannot find in the "Religions of the book" in this article called Abrahamic religions. All of them believe in a cyclic time of long subcycles ending in the destructing of the cosmos followed by its reapperances (Sanskrit: Shristi and pralaya.) The goal of life is not salvation, but enlightenment/nirvana. In order to attain nirvana/enlightenment you have to purify yourself of the personal side of your being. The personal side is that that clings to the familiar, different desires and cravings, self-importance etc. Patanjali Yoga Sutras classifies the obstructions/klesas: Avidya, asmita, raga, dvesa and abhinivesa (Sanskrit) that is: Ignorance, me and mine, all that we consider our own and are attached to, desire for the pleasant, the enjoyable, disgust of anything, and as the last: fear of death. Reincarnation is also common in all of them, as is the belief of a common substratum of all human beings and the whole world, a metaphysical monism.
I don't know mutch about Sikhism. It is a combination of Islam and Hinduism, and more practically oriented than Hinduism. Of course its Muslim roots ought to be included in the article. Lots of other small faults, like considering "Bhagavad Gita" a summary of the "Vedas". References should be more substantial etc.--Tellervo19:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the idea is not interesting, except to support political ideology. From an academic point of view, the sum total content is the commonplace that the religions emerged in a common religio-philosophical milieu, and as a result, have substantial overlap in concerns and terminology. But there it ends. The terms may be the same -- dharma, karma, saṃsāra, mokṣa, etc -- but the definitions differ considerably. That's why rather than trying to "unify" all of them under some common (generally useless) rubric, the bulk of academic effort has been to clarify differences in the individual terms. "Dharmic religions" has about as much validity as "karmic religions", "samsaric religions" or "moksic religions" -- all of them nothing but politically motivated tendentious neologisms. rudra20:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are clearly coming at this from a particular sub-continental perspective. In the West the use of the term has no politicl connotations. Actually the web evidence for political use is as thin as it is for scholarly use - what is it? - about 1 1/2 web uses that treally fit your description? Johnbod11:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Dharma and redirect to there. Dharma has pretty much the same material but a lot less politicking. Editors who prefer the term "Dharmic religion" can continue to do so with no loss of comfort for the reader. The question of whether the *title* of an article is "supported" in the academic world or not is rather moot. If that were the benchmark of all article titles, Wikipedia would all but vanish. The question is whether the *subject* matter of that article is supported, and given that "Dharmic religions" has almost no material not already covered at "Dharma", a redirect would certainly suffice. -- Fullstop00:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply] ps: The notion that JSTOR doesn't cover religion-related subjects is not correct, a search for "Vedic religion" turns up quite a bit. Delete followed by re-create protect. Trusting soul that I am, :) I hadn't realized that it was a VHP propaganda phrase. I'm almost surprised they didn't use "Aryan religion." -- Fullstop00:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
redirect to Dharmadisambiguate. I am surprised to find the term is not in widespread use, but I have to recognize the evidence presented. The question presents itself, then, what is the umbrella term for "non-Abrahamic world religions" or "Hinduism+Shramana"? Clearly, when categorizing world religions, these should be grouped together, but under what name? dab(𒁳)09:58, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
the most recent work suggested as additional reading is Fred Louis Parrish, The Classification of Religions: Its Relation to the History of Religions (1941)! Doldrums10:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(1) Middle Eastern religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and a variety of ancient cults; (2) Far Eastern religions, comprising the religious communities of China, Japan, and Korea, and consisting of Confucianism, Taoism, Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”) Buddhism, and Shinto; (3) Indian religions, including early Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and sometimes also Theravada Buddhism and the Hindu- and Buddhist-inspired religions of South and Southeast Asia; (4) African religions, or the cults of the tribal peoples of black Africa, but excluding ancient Egyptian religion, which is considered to belong to the ancient Middle East; (5) American religions, consisting of the beliefs and practices of the Indian peoples indigenous to the two American continents; (6) Oceanic religions—i.e., the religious systems of the peoples of the Pacific islands, Australia, and New Zealand; (7) classical religions of ancient Greece and Rome and their Hellenistic descendants.
there is no point of a disambig. Irrespective of how one slices it, there is only one meaning of "Dharmic religion": religions that have "Dharma" as a principle. -- Fullstop15:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: judging from the opinions expressed above, there are three issues that are being conflated in this AFD:
What is the collective name for Hinduism/Buddhism/Jainism/Sikkhism? This is irrelevant to this AFD because the premise - is it possible/necessary to have a collective name for those four? - has to be addressed first. It is in any case perhaps more worthy of discussion over at Indic religions.
Does the material in the "Dharmic religions" article justify a separate article? No, the material in the article is to a great extent covered at Dharma.
Is the title of the "Dharmic religions" article appropriate for the content? There are two issues here:
it implies that Hinduism/Buddhism/Jainism/Sikkhism are so similar that they are treatable as a cohesive unit.
any proposal to retain the article title overlooks that the term "Dharmic religions" was coined as a propaganda term, and no matter how "handy" the term may be on an intellectual plane (see #1), any use of it to do what it was coined to do gives the neologism currency. That does not preclude that "Dharmic religions" cannot redirect to "Dharmic religions (propaganda term)" and which is fleshed out along those lines.
... because JSTOR finds 10 hits for "Abrahamic religion" and 48 for "Abrahamic religions" (not overwhelming, but infinitely more than zero for "Dharmic religion(s)"). It is a false parallelism to compare the two terms. Abecedare15:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
the concept is useful, but the term is not in use. No problem. Per my EB quote above, "Indian religions" includes "early Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and sometimes also Theravada Buddhism and the Hindu- and Buddhist-inspired religions of South and Southeast Asia". This is clearly what we are looking for. "Dharmic religions should hence be a disambiguation between (a) Dharma (explains the "Dharmic") and (b) Indian religions (is rarely used as a synonym for that group). Problem solved. dab(𒁳)16:35, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem of what to call the concept is reflected in varying usages in academic texts that try to lump these issues together. Finding the perfect term to express the idea of "religions that originated in India and which may still have some things in common, but which may have diverged quite a bit, and spread to other countries" need not be solved here in order to prove that "Dharmic Religions" is a neologism. Thus the finding of a replacement term is not essential to this AfD. Buddhism as practiced in Japan is quite different from the Indian roots. Buddhipriya08:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
it doesn't exactly have more currency than "Dharmic". It is still very useful for topics of comparative religion to be able to say, in first approximation, "Abrahamic: 54%, Dharmic: 20%, irreligious: 14%, Taoic: 7%". --dab(𒁳)19:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I personally find the term "Dharmic religion" convenient and thought that it was widely used outside wikipedia. However a reasonably thorough literature search has shown that the suspected usage is completely absent in academic literature and reliable secondary sources (as evidenced above). The term does show up in numerous (unreliable) website and blogs as seen through a google search, but a passing reference to dharmic tradition in Encarta's Hinduism article is still the closest that I have seen to a reliable source. That perhaps justifies a redirect/disambiguation as suggested by dab, but not an article on its own or ubiquitous use of the terminology on wikipedia. Of course, the article content itself is notable and is already covered under Indian religions - a better if still imperfect title. Abecedare22:46, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete and/or rename to "Dharma in Religions." The term Dharmic religion is used, but not in the way this article is written. As it is, this entire article is OR. Wikipedia is better then that. Sethie14:55, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
keep as it is a well used term. If the conflict is factual inaccuracies, tag the article with ((totallydisputed)) and fix it. But this is clearly a notable encyclopediac topic and isn't a firnge neologism.--SefringleTalk06:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, I think that contributors who say that the article must be kept should mention reliable sources with which the article can move beyond the list or stub, copied contents that it is now. Otherwise proponents of the article demand the impossible from other contributors. Andries10:49, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.