Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The Bhagavad Gita is a mess (unsurprisingly).

1. There are many duplicate entries (e.g. cover but no data) which need separating out for merges.
2. Currently there are many variations on who is primary author, but all editions need to have the same primary author.

* Point 2 is debatable:

Using the Sacred Texts rule, they ALL need to have the first author as Anonymous and then secondary author position for translators, introductions and so on. If we're using a variant of Vyasa, then that needs to be uniformly primary.

The Bhagavad Gita is roughly chapters 23–40 of the 6th book of Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is traditionally ascribed to the Sage Vyasa (lit. "Describer"), AKA Veda Vyāsa, and Krishna Dvaipāyana (the first is "Describer/Splitter of the Vedas" and the latter a byname). The LC Auth version of the name is "Vyāsa". Depending on whether this name is chosen for use (Rivka?), then records should probably also have the corresponding Sanskrit variant as original author name: e.g. व्यास = Vyasa, वेदव्यास = Veda Vyasa.

This person has records on Goodreads under the names:
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
Krishna Dvaipāyana
Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa
Vyasa
Veda Vyasa

The Bhagavad Gita

I'm currently separating off editions of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is as it looks like a separate adaptation of the main work.

Partly posting because I'd like to help with this (I've already been puddling around in this one thanks to my Penguin project)

Related: The Upanishads (which are more clearly attributable to "Anyonymous" as primary author.)

Also related: As I understand it, Shri and Swami are both honorifics or titles, and should be removed from author names. Is this correct? There's a bunch of authors involved in both these two books--many are scholars who have either written about, annotated or translated both of them--named variants of "Shri *" or "Swami *" or even "Shri * Swami". Even just consolidating those all down would clarify the state of things a lot.

On the Bhagavad-Gita itself, is Vyasa even a real person? Wikipedia implies it's a title (or at least Veda Vyasa is, and there have been 28 of them), the Ancient Encyclopedia calls Vyasa a legendary figure, comparable to Homer, who probably didn't actually write the Iliad either. (I'm inclined to let that go, and use some agreed variant of Vyasa as the main author anyway, because getting those all out of Anonymous makes them a lot easier to deal with for combining/merging etc, and it works for Homer :)

Krazykiwi wrote: "Partly posting because I'd like to help with this (I've already been puddling around in this one thanks to my Penguin project)

Related: The Upanishads (which are more clearly attributable to "Anyo..."

Hi, I think I can help regarding the title?

'Shri' is the title used for people who are enlightened, who have realized a higher level of consciousness.

'Swami' is used for people who use their knowledge to guide others to a more spiritual path.

[Side note: "God-men" these days affix these titles to themselves just to sound grander. Traditionally, the title needs to be bestowed by the community.]

The titles are also a mark of respect. For example, we don't address the pope just by his name; we refer to him as Pope Francis. So I'd recommend we continue using the titles.

For the sake of clearer organisation on GR, I suggest we use the title for the person that they're most well known by.

About the '28' thing -- it's a belief that God himself came down to the Earth to compile all the various texts (and Vedas) at different points of time over the yugas. And the '28' times that he did, he was known as 'Veda Vyāsa'. So he's considered the same person.

(I like your comparison to Homer, makes a lot of sense! :D)

The most popular name for Vyaasa is 'Veda Vyāsa' -- this is the name that's told to kids when their parents tell them about the legends and lores of Hindu mythology. So it figures to uniformly refer to him as 'Veda Vyāsa' on Goodreads.

Ad wrote: "The titles are also a mark of respect. For example, we don't address the pope just by his name; we refer to him as Pope Francis. So I'd recommend we continue using the titles."

That is not consistent with Goodreads policy. We say Pope Francis because Francis alone is unclear and means too many possible people. But we generally do not include authors' titles, regardless of whether they are religious, academic, or anything else.

rivka wrote: "Ad wrote: "The titles are also a mark of respect. For example, we don't address the pope just by his name; we refer to him as Pope Francis. So I'd recommend we continue using the titles."

That is ..."

I used the Pope example because that's the only parallel which fits. Vivekananda is a common Hindu name, but unless you say Swami Vivekananda, people won't know you're talking about this guy.

Vivekananda is just a name and offers no recognition when used without the title.

It's the same logic as what you said for Pope Francis —

"We say Pope Francis because Francis alone is unclear and means too many possible people."

I'm aware of the Goodreads policy, and that's why I said this:

For the sake of clearer organisation on GR, I suggest we use the title for the person that they're most well known by.

What I should have been clear about is that in India, most of these names (Just like Francis) are common, and they hold recognition to the masses only if the relevant title is affixed.

[Side Note: Francis/Frank is a popular name here too.]

—I'm not referring to titles like 'Sir', which are bestowed by the Queen of England, whose equivalent the Indian government bestows upon people for valour, sportsmanship, etc.
—I'm not referring to the titles that contemporary "leaders" bestow upon themselves.

TL;DR: This is not an issue of respect (either religious or academic in nature), it's an issue pertaining to recognition by GR users, and avoiding ambiguities while archiving.

If the only reason for GR to call Pope Francis (and other popes) thus is to distinguish him/them from other people with the same name, I think the same should count for other single-named persons who are addressed with a title.

I'd support that suggestion as general policy - single-named persons may have a title in their name when used to disambiguate them from others of the same single name. Is this worth putting in Policies?

Subscribing to this thread.

Also, I may be able to assist here and there, once we have a clear path forward. Anonymous is so ridiculously unwieldy that almost anything we can do to move large, well-known texts such as this out of that profile when appropriate strikes me as A Good Thing, of also A Difficult Thing.