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My primary concern is 1. Hinduism has no scripture which tells how Hindus should live etc. Like Bible and Quran, there is nothing in Hinduism.
Vedas are the closest one can find, but that too does not have the same kind of position which Quran/Bible has. Most Hindus live their life the way they want.
So, concern is, it will be very hard to refer things..
All the other scriptures like upanishads, manusmriti, ramayana etc ... are all scriptures that complemented by vedas .... but none of them are said to be perfect/authentic sources.
For example, if one were to speak about castes, one has to mention about Varnas, and Varnas are mentioned in Manusmriti.
But it has never been mentioned in Vedas that everybody should follow Manusmriti
So, the point I am trying to make is that there will be thousands of things mentioned in 1000s of Indian scriptures. Most probably people will pick up verses from here and there and ask questions. Many will contradict. Because each of those 1000 scriptures were written in different contexts.
I honestly don't know how we're going to deal with this.
Right, exactly.
The Buddhism site has it kind of easier - each sect (Theravada/Mahayana/etc) has its own established canon of texts, but we don't really have the same thing going for us in Hinduism.
Personally, I love that. Because that gives me the freedom. It is like the Open Source Culture we have. There are many open source softwares. Starting from unix, linux .. right up to github. Just like a programmer can use any module/sub-module one wants, a human being can also take anything from the APIs of Hinduism and use.
Advantage - ultimate freedom - like we see with open source. Dis-advantage - there is no single person to reveiew every code update (all hindu scriptures are true) / ensure that there is no bogus codes (some hindu scriptures were found with ill-percieved intentions)
I know SE does not tolerate ths kind of subjectivity
It encourages objective answers. And Hinduism is very subjective by nature.
I guess it will take some time to sort out.
I just wanted to give you a heads up so that I could brief you regarding my apprehensions.
@SRahulBose Yeah, definitely. I pretty much feel the same way about this. If the users can't avoid fighting amongst different sects, this site is going to crash and burn, like Islam was doing a while ago.
That certainly could work - it is much like how things work on sites like The Workplace, where people frequently answer based on their personal experiences, rather than by quoting from books or whatever.
Yeah I agree the site will become a mess if the boundaries aren't clearly established between the different sects under "Hinduism" as well the conception of Hinduism as a whole
Dear team, a kind request - I have tried my bit in framing a reasonable well referenced answer. But I cannot add it because I do not have the minimum 10 rep I need to answer. Request you to please take a look at hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/54/… . If you find the question good enough, please vote up so that I can cross the minimum barrier.
@SRahulBose What do you mean by a minimum 10 rep? You should be able to post an answer to any question on the Hinduism site as is. Are you getting some kind of error message?
@senshin : I found many questions to be sort of rants, so I could not frame answers. Hence I create a question.... and wanted to answer it myself.
A kind of question I hope will help the mods to refer to in future in case ...
But I cant answer to that Q because such types of Q and A needs minimum 10 rep..
Users with less than 10 reputation can't answer their own question for 8 hours after asking. You can answer 6/19/2014 6:05:06 AM. Until then please use comments, or edit your question instead.
@SRahulBose Note that you can also earn reputation by making edits to other questions and answers. For every edit that is approved, you earn 2 reputation. (Approval might take a little while, though, because we basically have to wait for a community manager to come by to approve edits.)
@senshin : The best possible way I can contribute to SE is in the form of answer I wrote at hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/54/… . Do you find this good enough? Like to hear your views. So that I can understand how well I fit/not into the SE norms.
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