Chiswick Chap

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guidance on improving Yajna article

Hi @Chiswick Chap, I'm currently working on improving the Yajna article within the Hinduism topic space, perhaps eventually bringing it up to GA status. Given your experience with improving articles, I wanted to ask if you could help me out or offer some guidance on what I can do to improve it significantly. I'd really appreciate it! Chilicave (talk) 02:43, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Chilicave, I'll see what I can do.

The first thing I'd say at a casual glance is that if you'd told me it was a GA and you were working it up to FA, I'd not have been surprised; it looks to be in a reasonable state. So, getting it to GA shouldn't be too hard, I hope.

If you're not familiar with the 6 GA criteria, you should make their acquaintance. The key questions are does it cover the main points of its subject, and is it reliably sourced throughout. The "main points" question requires some knowledge of the subject to answer; my guess is "yes" but the "Types" section does look a bit thin. The sources look suitable at a first glance.

Some more detailed comments:

Sources

The 'Sources' list covers some but not all of the books cited, which looks untidy. It would be best to move all the books there and to link to them (all) using the mechanism {{sfn|Boyce|1975|pp=147–191}} and so on.

References

The references are uneven in multiple ways. To give a few examples among many:

• [8] Nigal, p. 81. lacks date (and should use the sfn template as above)
• [9] Drower, 1944:78 uses a non-standard format for page.
• [16] Hume again lacks date; there are many other examples.
• You sometimes have "pages", sometimes "P.", sometimes "p./pp.", and sometimes the pages are missing altogether (e.g. [44] Sinha 2008).
• [39] bizarrely says "ISBN" but does not provide one. ISBN is actually optional, but if you're providing them for books then all the books should have them (or an OCLC if there is no ISBN for early books).
• [43] Prinja 2009 does not correctly provide either the article title ("Weddings") nor the publisher ("BBC").
• Authors are sometimes given as Bloggs, Joe M.; sometimes as Joe M. Bloggs; and sometimes as Bloggs JM. I suggest we always use |last=Bloggs |first=Joe M. in the {{cite book |last= ...}} or equivalent template.

Text

Suggest you move all the citations out of the lead; I notice that [1], [3], and [4] occur only in the lead, which is an error: everything in the lead should already be discussed and cited in the article body. That means that the lead should say nothing "new": if it's cited, that claim and citation are in the wrong place; if it's uncited, it's in the wrong place and is possibly WP:OR as well.

Once you've done that and tidied up the article body, revisit the lead and ensure it provides a coherent summary of the article's main points.

Agni is sometimes in italics, sometimes in roman.

All the texts named should be in italics.

In 'Upanishads', I suggest we have a transliteration into Latin characters (or IAST) beside the Devanagari text, with the translation beneath it. The existing "translation" is actually heavily interpreted, an "unpacking" translation at best, as immediately evidenced by its inordinate length: if we were to use such a thing, the interpretation would need to be reliably sourced, so I suspect it's unusable as it stands. Google Translate offers a transliteration and a direct translation:

ath yadyagnya ityachakshate bramacharyamev
tadbramacharyen hyev yo dnyata tam
vindate̕th yadishtamityachakshate bramacharyamev
tadbramacharyen hyeveshtvatmanamanuvindate

Then if they call it sacrifice, it is celibacy
That is the one who is known by celibacy
Then he finds what he desires, and they call it celibacy
That, by celibacy, he worships and attains to himself

"Tadeusz Skorupski states" - who's he? We try to gloss and wikilink attributed authorities.

Why do "yagam" and "yagnam" redirect here? They're not found anywhere in the article, so either they should be added (and cited) in the text, or the hatnotes and the redirects should be deleted.

Having the incomprehensibly Delphic hatnote "For concurrent Hindu usage, see Homa (ritual)" is not satisfactory, as there is plainly some relationship between the two things, and that relationship needs to be explained in a paragraph of cited text (maybe even a whole section called '== Ritual context ==' or something of that kind). Something important seems to be missing there.

'Types' first paragraph introduces several terms, but never explains any of them except śrauta (which it links only later, and spells it differently). If the types are worth introducing then they must be clearly explained and differentiated (what are they and how/when are they each used?). The second paragraph partially explains "srauta" with an interpolation of yet another type not mentioned in the first paragraph, "Grhya" in the middle before the text returns to srauta again. The whole section needs to be rewritten for the average Wikipedia reader (Joe M. Public): Joe has heard of Hinduism and supposes it is quite like Buddhism, but never heard of yajna let alone of its subtypes. (I suspect Joe would have quite a lot of trouble with most of the other sections.)

'Method' mentions obliquely that the altar is "set in a mandapa or mandala or kundam," and the next sentence mentions that this encompasses a "square principle". The *very* determined reader can discover by searching for mandala that such things are square ... a link and an explanation are needed.

See also

Remove "yasna" as it's already discussed and linked in the text. Also "vedi"; maybe others.

Images

Diagrams must be big enough to be readable; the sacrificial space diagram was too small so I've adjusted it, but it needs redrawing with larger text labels (should be made in PowerPoint and saved to an SVG file, then uploaded to Commons), as even enlarged the text is very tiny.

The other images mostly seem relevant and well-chosen; they are on Commons and are plausibly licensed. The exception is "A miniature illustration of a falcon bird Athirathram yajna altar built using the square principle" which is uncited and not explained in the text. (Oh, "falcon bird" and "square principle" are mentioned higher up in the text, see 'Text' above, but it's really scrappy, and the bird's name is not mentioned or cited at all.) If it's relevant it needs to be explained a good deal more (why a falcon? who's Athirathram? what's the square principle? etc) and cited in a paragraph of text; if not, delete it.

The pair of images in 'Types' is headed "Different types of yajna" but it does not say what types they are, so it's unhelpful. The left image says its "Vedic" but it seems that applies to all yajnas? The other one has no hint of its type at all (and the image quality is, ahem, dreadful).

Summary

As always, the devil is in the detail. The article makes a worthy attempt at the subject, but in detail it is not coherent, not easy to follow, and does not seem to cover the topic; whether it covers the "main points" is not easy to ascertain. I suspect that quite a lot of rewriting will be necessary. Good luck! Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:28, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm so delighted to receive such helpful (and very thorough) advice. I truly appreciate it! Thank you very much! Chilicave (talk) 02:16, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap, pertaining to the sources section, I am trying to follow your advice by placing all the books there. I have started off by adding Frits Staal, Agni, the Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar. However, when I add the sfn template to generate Staal, 1983, p.35-50, clicking on the blue link of "Staal, 1983" does not take me to the sources list as I expected. In fact, nothing happens. What is it that I'm doing wrong? Chilicave (talk) 03:45, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Chilicave Ah, you would need {{sfn|Staal|Somayajipad|1983|pp=35-50}} as by default all the authors appear in the link anchor. This is clear and simple but can get rather long.

An alternative is to name the link at the target as |ref={{harvid|Staal|1983}} and then you can link to the target as you had expected using {{sfn|Staal|1983|pp=35-50}} (as long as there isn't another source of that name). Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:42, 12 July 2026 (UTC) Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:42, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Chilicave (talk) 18:33, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	Thanks for your help on my edits to Moomin articles. Are you a Moomin fan? Loc863 (talk) 12:14, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks! More of a Jansson fan. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:43, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

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