Talk:Postural yoga in India

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Postural yoga in India/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Edwininlondon (talk · contribs) 11:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Although yoga is not a special interest of mine, I plan on reviewing your article. You have reviewed so many articles by others, your own do not deserve to gather dust. Edwininlondon (talk) 11:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, I'll look forward to it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:05, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

I see you already discovered my draft notes in my Sandbox. Sorry about doing the review piecemeal. I had planned to piece the review together in my Sandbox and post it all at once, but this works fine too. I like the lead much better already. I agree that it's likely that only with contortion is it possible to get the phrase Postural yoga in India highlighted. And the guidelines say not to force the issue. So let's leave it like this.

Noted.

• This sentence is perhaps a bit too long: "Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of ... postural yoga." I think a full stop after century would be good. And then maybe follow it with "A revival of postural yoga was mainly driven by Indian nationalism.

Done.

• The second paragraph of the lead could maybe start a bit earlier. I think the first paragraph could end with "with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next." And then the second one could take on the concept of it going to the West, and returning.

Done.

• Image: it would be nice to say which posture is which.

Done.

• Time: I can see "20th century", "second century CE", "c. 1100-c. 1900" and "19th century". From the guidance on MOS:ERA I gather the second one could be "2nd century". The 3rd one I'm not so sure. To flourish in the sense of being in its prime, I don't think we need c. 1900, especially as it is later said to be nearly extinct by then. Perhaps this could simply be "Haṭha yoga started to spread around the 11th century" and leave the 1900 bit out here, since it is mention at the end of this section.

Done.

• Ancient origins: I think the reader would benefit from an opening sentence that describes yoga and places its origin in time.

The opening sentence does describe yoga, and the next sentence does its best to give a date; it's a notoriously hard thing to pin down any Sanskrit scholar to an actual date (usually they give you a a range of a few centuries on either side and hurry on to something more philological).

• I'm not keen on the link label "spiritual and philosophical goal" as link to the Yoga (philosophy) page. This looks better to me: Yoga's spiritual and philosophical goal was to unite the human spirit with the Divine.

Done.

• "The branch of yoga that makes use of physical postures is Haṭha yoga." If this is mentioned here in the ancient section, then it should be mentioned when this first came about (1st century I believe). This would help contrasting it with the next section, where it is all about it gaining traction.

Moved it into the Medieval section.

• If we have the Sanskrit for Haṭha, should we not also have the Sanskrit for yoga somewhere?

Added.

• kundalini energy needs to be linked

Done.

• "Hatha yoga made use of a small number of asanas". It may be worth while then to list them.

Not possible, as every author gives different ones, some are identifiable and some aren't, the correspondences between names and asanas shifted constantly, and the numbers don't even increase monotonically. None of this however matters for this article. The table in List of asanas gives dates and sources.

Sorry, my ignorance of the subject.

• "That changed when Yogendra (from 1918) and Kuvalayananda (from 1924) began .." I found that "from" a bit odd. In combination with began I think "in" is better.

Done.

• "They were soon followed by Krishnamacharya..." I think this deserves a more precise time. Plus the label of "father of modern yoga" should appear here as well.

Not possible; all the scholarly sources are marvellously vague about the dates here. Probably he began in a very small way with gymnastics and gradually it became more conspicuous. Added the gloss.

• "Mysore Palace; he experimented" It feels like there are about a dozen semicolons in the article. I'm no fan but most I can tolerate. This one particularly seems unnecessary (as does the one after Labanya Palit).

I chopped it in the previous item!

• "transitions (vinyasas) between them" --> "transitions between them (vinyasas)"

Done.

• "One factor influencing ... colonial rule." Originally I like the section header, but now I start to wonder if it is descriptive enough for these 12 lines of text with only this one sentence referring to it.

Added more, as both Yogendra and Kuvalayananda had a similar motivation. I've tweaked the heading to make it cover these cases also.

• "rather than a thousand hard-to-follow words" First of all, that seems like a lot. That's 3 pages.

Cut. Of course the phrase is proverbial.

• Secondly, did they not draw the positions in the olden times?

No, they didn't. Illustrations began very late, with a few palace manuscript texts illustrated in the 19th century.

• Returning to section headers, the first paragraph of the "Exotic exercise for the Western world" section is not about the western world. Should it perhaps live in the previous paragraph? And I wonder of the various schools of yoga should be mentioned in the lead as well. Are they prominent enough to warrant a place there?

Edited the first sentence: the point is that India created and disseminated the 'Exotic exercise for the Western world', starting in India and moving outwards, forming the major schools that everyone sees in the West; so the start in India and the schools in the West are key points in what we could call the EEftWW process.

I see, yes, now I get it. Sorry.

• "The Calcutta-born yoga teacher Bikram Choudhury (born 1944) ..." That double "born" is not so elegant. Perhaps something like "Yoga teacher Bikram Choudhury (born in Calcutta in 1944).." would be better?

Fixed.

• "emigrating" .. "fleeing" This feels overuse of the same construction. I's suggest " ..writings. He emigrated .."

Done.

• Actually the sentence "Fleeing legal action in America... yoga studios." breaks the flow of the argument in this section. The section tries to describe the spread to the west, but up to this point hasn't been able to say much about that, and now already we have someone coming back to India, which is the topic of the next paragraph.

Moved it to the Return section.

• I see that reference 28 uses the term "hot yoga" but that term is not mentioned at all in this article. Should it not be?

I think it's fine as it is really. Bikram's yoga called for a hot room with carpets (yes, very smelly). And we've given him quite enough oxygen of publicity already.

• "Yoga has grown into a widespread and valuable commodity" Is this a widely held opinion?

Widespread isn't in doubt, it's around the globe; valuable can be measured in tens of billions of dollars, so it's not in doubt either. The source covers it but I've added Jain 2015 for you.

I should have been more clear that it was the word commodity that made me wonder. But it's fine as it is I think.

• I think perhaps the section about the spread to the west could be expanded a bit. Where did it go first? How widely spread is it now?

That's a matter for Yoga as exercise and other articles; this article's focus is India.

Yes, you're right. That only would have mattered if different parts of the world influenced yoga's return to India differently.

• we have "The Beatles" in the lead and "the Beatles" further down.

Fixed.

More

• "quests to India are gently satirised". The rest of the paragraph is in past tense.

Fixed.

• Having "as well as" part of the link label "as well as observing" is a bit odd. Just "observing" would be better, but maybe there is a way to rewrite the sentence so the name of the destination article is the link label.

Done.

• "Fleeing legal action ... yoga studios." Hmm, entirely my fault, but now this sentence is a bit of an orphan. Sorry about that! Perhaps it's better as a footnote to the sentence in the Exotic exercise for the Western world section? In the grand scheme of things how important is this for the article?

Yes. Done.

• "Modi personally led ... Kolkata and Lucknow." That's three times "demonstration" in one sentence.

Copyedited.

Pass: This article passes all Good Article criteria: Well written prose, verifiable from reliable sources, broad in its coverage, neutral, stable and illustrated. Great work. I enjoyed reviewing this article.