Talk:Chaturdasa Devata

Discussion on Chaturdasa devata

User:Alivardi: The ref (Saigal et al.) does not mention about any such mention of Cahturdasa devata as local Tripuri deities. Please do not change on this page with non-sense about our tradition of Hinduism in Tripura. These 14 deities are our as Hindu as Tippera they are! Let us write on our deities rather putting the Tripuris against Hinduism as a tool of "Divide and Rule." perpetuated by British. Hinduism is a religion of "Unity in diversity", where the ParaBrahman (supreme reality) is perceived as many deities over millenia merging many cultures over 7000 years. Each state of India and countries of Southeast Asia has their local names of the same Hindu Gods and Goddesses in local language and customs. That does not mean that A Tripuri God Hara is different than Shiva and God Hari is different than Vishnu. In fact, those names are Sanskrit name and synonyms of same deities. Similarly, Bani of Tripura is not different from Sarada of Kashmir, in fact they are part of the 108 names of Saraswati. In fact, in your country Bangladesh, Saraswati Puja is celebrated as Bani Archana. So, please let not write based on limited knowledge on Hinduism and local Tripuri culture. Sanjoydey33 (talk) 02:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sanjoydey33: From Omesh Saigal's Tripura, page 71:

In Tripura the Bodos have adjusted their culture and myths with that of the Hindus. For ages the Chaturdas Devta or the Fourteen Gods has been the ruling deity of Tripura.

Regarding the rest of your comment, I'm not really seeing the issue? The article doesn't say anywhere that the Chaturdasa Devata aren't Hindu. In fact, the first sentence directly states that it is a "Shaivite Hindu pantheon".
Alivardi (talk) 10:54, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

My problem was not whether the deities were tied to Hinduism or not, but with this particular statement that "... Hinduism when the latter's influence reached the region... with the deities being identified with a corresponding Brahmanical name.". This gives an impression that Hindus were foreigner to Tripura and only appropriated local deities. The references said only that the cultural mingle had happened between Bodos and Hindus, but never said the direction of cultural appropriation. It's much difficult to prove, since the Vedas, Mahabharatas and Puranas mentioned Tripurasura and Tripuri Sundari at least 3500 years ago and all the Tripura tribes participated in Kurukshetra battle and paid homage to king Yudishtira during his Ashvamedha Yagna, which basically unified all of tribes of current India to one religious culture. Archeologically, the Hindu deities were present since 6th century in Unakoti. Also ass per Tripura Rajmala, all the Tripuri tribes draw their linage from Hindu lunar dynasty from time immemorial. So, there are enough counter-argument to that Hinduism arrived Tripura pretty late in 15th century. Regarding non-Brahmin priests, there are many temples throughout the world, where non-Brahmins were employed as the highest priest by several saints after being satisfied by their devotion towards God/Goddess. This hypothesis was created by British Indologists first to project Hindus as foreigners, so that local Tripuris get away from Hinduism and thus can easily be converted to Christianity. It is later carried down by Marxist historians later, which is today considered very biased.

So, the bottom-line is let not go to the debate on who influenced whom historically. Rather, the focus of this article should be more on the description of the 14 deities. Btw, I did not completely deny the point of Sagai in my previous edit, rather I made it shorter in contrast to 4 lines now. So, lets come to middle ground and lets put one line on it. Sanjoydey33 (talk) 01:46, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sanjoydey33: Your argument is almost entirely based on descriptions of mythological events from ancient texts and legends. These cannot reasonably be expected to provide accurate historical accounts and their use in such a way again violates WP:RNPOV. With such logic, a Muslim could just as easily argue based on hadiths that the monotheistic faith of their prophets predate Hinduism in India.
Alivardi (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

All my arguments I said are based on scientific and archeological evidences by even Western Indologists, which said Veda is 1500 BCE and Mahabharata war around 1st millenium of BC timeframe. The traditional Hindus believes that Vedas are millions of years old from the inception of time and Mahabharata happened in 3100BCE, which some scholars consider as myth, since lack of enough evidences of such antiquity surviving till today. Now, coming to your Islamic supremacist agenda, no hadith and Quranic verse ever mentioned that any prophet of Islam ever sent to India or China or Southeast Asia or Romans or Australia or current American continent. Rather, all the Quranic 25 prophets were from Jewish descent except the last prophet (PBUH). So, let not diverge the topic from the Tripuri devata. If you want to establish the supremacy of Islam, and dilute the history of Hinduism, thats a different agenda. Just be honest and donot edit articles related to Hindusim with such poor knowledge and bias against Hindus. Since you cannot counter my point on this topic, I am going to edit it with my proposal. Sanjoydey33 (talk) 15:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

A background speculation about Tripuris is indeed WP:UNDUE. I have updated the page with a much better and modern scholarly source. Wareon (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Wareon: Could you clarify why you believe WP:UNDUE is applicable here? Nearly every publication I could find which discusses the origins of the pantheon mentions the content in question. If you find issue with the reference which I had initially used, I have replaced it with two more from academic journals. The second of these new references actually list a number of historians who had also discussed this origin. On a separate note, I have removed the content you had added because that information had already been provided in the next paragraph.
Alivardi (talk) 19:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)