Talk:Shussan Shaka

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mpm263.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

• Congratulations! Few student assignment contributions are as good as this! Johnbod (talk) 15:28, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 4 August 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There IS a consensus that the current title is not apropos, but no consensus on what the new title should be specifically. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:18, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

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Shussan Shaka → Shakyamuni Descending from the Mountain – This is the normal English title for this subject in art. We should use English, especially as the subject is also common in Chinese, Korean & other art, not just Japanese (the language of the current title). This is used (with variations) by sources in English, eg the British Museum, Denise Leidy here, the Met in New York, and so on Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 4 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:23, 11 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• Agreed per WP:COMMONNAME.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 18:16, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
• I doubt that the title should be capped if it is moved, since (as noted) there are variations in the titles from painting to painting and the story itself is not a particular text. Dekimasuよ! 13:36, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

It is a title for works of art, and should be capitalized as that, the British Museum & others do. Johnbod (talk) 13:51, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

The shared theme of these pieces might be Śākyamuni descending from the mountains, but it is not the accepted title translation for of all of the works. This article alone has Śākyamuni Descending the Mountain After Asceticism, Śākyamuni Emerging from the Mountains, Śākyamuni Descending the Mountain, Shaka Descending from the Mountains, and Shaka Descending the Mountain for different works. The article also uses "Śākyamuni" rather than "Shaka" in the English text, so I'm not sure why we would use "Shakyamuni". I do agree that "Shussan Shaka" is not a good English title for this article, particularly since the title is in Japanese but the text also covers Chinese examples. Dekimasuよ! 15:09, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

This is a very common situation for translated titles, whether of individual works, or a subject (not a "theme" in art history-speak) in general. The standard Christian subjects, all translated into English from Latin, show similar variations. There is no single "accepted title translation", but we have to go with something; WP:COMMONNAME can cope with this. WP:USEENGLISH favours Shakyamuni over Shaka (which the vast majority of English readers will assume refers to Shaka (the Zulu king, on WP the primary meaning), and in titles there is a convention favouring the omission of Indic diacritical marks. "Emerging" may be a more literal translation, but is not idiomatic English. Really one can only descend from one mountain at a time, and the images show a single moment. And so on. After reviewing several sources, I've chosen what seems the most common, bearing these points in mind. Since you "agree that "Shussan Shaka" is not a good English title for this article", what do you suggest? Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Obviously all plausible variations can (and should already have) be redirected. Johnbod (talk) 15:53, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

• Well, after nearly a month all participants agree the current title "is not a good English title for this article" (to quote Dekimasu) and no particular alternative has been proposed, so I think it is time to close this. Johnbod (talk) 01:04, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: I agree with Dekimasu that, if we opt for an English title, title case would be inappropriate – it should be something descriptive of the episode while also being concise, and for that type of descriptive article title we use sentence case. I also agree with Johnbod that it doesn't matter if the formula isn't used in all English-language titles for artworks depicting this scene. As the topic is "a Buddhist story" as much as an art-historical subject, I'd suggest something along the lines of Shakyamuni's descent from the mountains. I'll defer to others on the best spelling of "Śākyamuni" (that spelling being the one that's used throughout the article), and I assume "Buddha" isn't being suggested for a reason. Ham II (talk) 17:26, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

But it isn't a "Buddhist story" at all, being apparently unknown for the first 1,400-odd years of Buddhism, and afaik emerging first as a subject in art before it was covered in literature. We use title case for all the equivalent standard subjects in the Life of Christ in art and I don't see why we shouldn't here, nor why we need to make a new translation up. All the variants used in the article, or in sources cited by me above use title case, naturally, because they are titles, so why suddenly switch? On the conventional placement of the episode, at the end of his "austerities" and before his Enlightenment, he is properly not referred to as Buddha yet. Johnbod (talk) 03:22, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

For the examples in Life of Christ in art, usage in running text in the articles is mixed: on the one hand, there's the Annunciation, the Nativity (in Nativity of Jesus in art, but in nativity of Jesus it's lowercased; same pattern for Resurrection of Jesus in Christian art and resurrection of Jesus), the Presentation at the Temple, the Finding in the Temple, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the Denial of Peter, the Flagellation, the Descent from the Cross, the Lamentation and the Harrowing of Hell. But on the other hand: the circumcision of Jesus, the flight into Egypt, the baptism of Jesus, the miraculous catch of fish, the temptation of Christ, the wedding at Cana, the Samaritan woman at the well, the raising of Lazarus, the cleansing of the Temple, the arrest of Jesus, the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus and the burial of Jesus.

So really, Wikipedia is in two minds over whether to treat the names of these Christian episodes as proper names – it could be done for most if not all of them (and that's what art-historical writing would do, albeit with different terms in some cases), but in the latter examples it seems editors have chosen not to. (It would be hard to do them all that way; I don't think "Annunciation" could be "annunciation" and still accurately reflect usage.) I think they can only be treated as proper names, though, because of established usage and familiarity in English – otherwise title case would be thrown out. In the case of this article, we're dealing with a subject that as far as I can tell isn't treated as a proper name in English – but of the course the titles of individual artworks mentioned in the article are proper names, and therefore use title case. Ham II (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The "episodes" may not be treated as proper names, but as standard subjects in art they are titles (and also use "Christ" rather than "Jesus"). Some of these articles are purely, or mainly, on the iconography, some have that added on to to a religious article. In fact most of the Christian episode names aren't long enough (and mostly only include proper names after the first word - Baptism of Jesus etc) for a clear distinction to emerge in the WP article title. There are others you don't mention, like Massacre of the Innocents and Christ Carrying the Cross. This article is mainly concerned with works of art, and is a title rather than a descriptive phrase. Johnbod (talk) 14:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

• Support (with sentence case). I'm afraid that I have no particular preference for any one of the slight variations mentioned in discussion so far (a/the, mountain/mountains, descending/'s descent). Perhaps the closer could flip a coin? Furius (talk) 22:08, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Or we could follow the proposal, based on a (small) survey of what the most major institutions use. Johnbod (talk) 03:22, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The three institutions that you posted differ on whether it is "a mountain" or "the mountain" or "the mountains", but I see that they all agree on "descending" Furius (talk) 10:04, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. As I say above, "emerging" may be the literal translation of the Japanese, but in English one doesn't "emerge" from mountains. Johnbod (talk) 14:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.