Talk:Ashtanga Namaskara

Image quality and unknown issue

I have removed a drawn image inserted by Crashed greek as not being of the required quality for yoga articles; the project's policy is to use high-quality photographs of a practitioner performing each asana skilfully and correctly. I have tried to understand the edit comment when the image was reinserted but could not work out what was being said, so I am at a disadvantage in terms of not knowing what exactly the issue at hand may be. However, following WP:BRD the original proposal was Bold; I Reverted; and here is a Discussion - the reinsertion was basically edit-warring, which is unacceptable, so I have simply reverted to the status quo ante and hope we can discuss this rationally so that we can reach a sensible and helpful conclusion. If it is felt that the article is not clear in its explanation of the asana, then we could, for example, add new sources, describe variations (if any) of the pose, and describe in more detail what the pose consists of. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:20, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have included it because, the first image in the article shows Ashtanga namaskara as chin touching the floor. And main form of Ashtanga namaskara is forehead touching the floor. So keeping only that image would be misleading for the readers, which is a sparsely used variant of the main form. So that image can be removed if quality of this image is not good. Or Chiswick Chap can provide the free image of the main variant, I have already searched google and it is not available. Crashed greek (talk) 04:11, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for discussing and stating your position clearly. The key point to make is that Wikipedia works from Reliable Sources, properly published and Verifiable by all editors. The article cites Singleton 2010 on the matter of the position, and he states on page 205 "astanga namaskara, in which eight parts of the body (feet, knees, hands, chest, and chin) touch the ground simultaneously". Singleton notes that Krishnamacharya's sequence replaces this with "the push-up posture known as caturanga dandasana", on the same page; that posture is found in Iyengar Yoga e.g. Mehta 1990 page 147. For an Indian source, the Bihar School of Yoga, Satyananda 1996 page 167 states that "the toes, knees, chest, hands and chin touch the floor.". Both postures remain in wide use around the world, as is easily verified from books and the Internet; it is demonstrably not true that the chin-to-floor pose is "sparsely used". (In fact, as you correctly observe, it is difficult to find images, free or otherwise, of the forehead-to-floor form on the Internet: a reasonable inference from this, given the thousands of images of the chin-to-floor form, is that it is the forehead form that is "sparsely used".) Lidell 1983's book on Sivananda Yoga page 34 however states "Exhaling, lower your knees, then your chest and then your forehead, keeping your hips up and your toes curled under." so that pose too exists; outside Yoga, it was found also in Pant Pratinidhi's 1929 Surya Namaskara (before Krishnamacharya brought that sequence into his experimental yoga), page 51. I'll add the forehead position to the article. You will find among Wikipedia's many articles on asanas that variations are not always illustrated - we do it where we have space, and can find high-quality CC-by-SA photographs of suitable clarity, seriousness, and precision of asana; we are not obliged to illustrate everything, and we certainly should not abandon the long-standing and very sensible image quality standards for this one case. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Pratinidhi's original illustration serves the purpose both of demonstrating the pose's origins and of illustrating the forehead variant, so I've written an NFUR and added the image here. BTW The book is out of copyright in India so it may well be PD worldwide, but that remains to be established. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:34, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]