Talk:Matarajin

Matarajin

There is a longstanding lack of consistency regarding the formatting of names of Japanese deities on this site. It seems there's no set procedures on this this topic besides to generally follow the conventions of antiquated English translations of the Kojiki/Nihon Shoki for figures that appear in those texts. That doesn't cover a lot of situations including this one. I'm not sure if this is an ongoing area of debate or if it's been left to case by case bases and can't find evidence of the former so I'm treating it as the latter.

I think 摩多羅神 is better expressed as "Matarajin" over "Matara-jin". I don't know what this hyphen practice is called in these types of names but it's always inconsistent. We have Fujin, Raijin and Ugajin but not Fu-jin, Rai-jin or Uga-jin. I also see this with 天 in the names of Buddhist devas (for example sometimes Daikokuten is expressed as Daikoku-ten/Daikoku-Ten or even Daikoku Ten). It seems this sectioning off of kanji like 神 (jin/shin) and 天 and occasional hyphenation of 菩薩, 仏, 如来, etc was a more common practice in older English sources. Personal preference aside, the main source of this article, Matara: A Dream King Between Insight and Imagination, uses the romanization "Matarajin" right from the get go and, from what I've seen, the majority of what little English scholarship there is of this figure opts for that form. I think the article's title and body should reflect that. Hisouhihisouten (talk) 21:59, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

A quick survey of the most recent sources in English like Bernard Faure's Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 1-3 (most recent vol., Rage and Ravage, is from 2021) and Sujung Kim's Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (2019) shows "Matarajin" is indeed basically the default in English, I am in favor of the change. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 06:57, 26 August 2022 (UTC)