10

Please use Jyotish as the main tag, and have Astrology redirect to Jyotish, instead of other way around.

Jyotish shastra is one of the 6 vedangas, and is an exact science that deals with astronomy (a pundit in a village in India with a Panchang, can predict exact eclipse times without complicated NASA telescopes), among many other things.

Reason - Words/Names/Terms are important, and the word Astrology has been given a bad reputation by untrained professionals using it to make money, by Westerners who have little to no knowledge of Vedas, by anti-theists using it to mock the scripture itself etc. Similar to how Mythology got a bad name

4
  • 3
    We usually use the popular (English) words e.g. scriptures, philosophy, deity, gods, worship etc. in tag naming so that everyone (who do not have much knowledge on Hinduism) can find it easily, except some words e.g. mythology which deemed to be problematic.
    – Pandya Mod
    Commented Dec 27, 2020 at 7:20
  • 3
    @Pandya, can we have both tags then (Jyotish & Astrology), so that people who do know the original can use it ? That way people who don't know Hinduism can at least learn the word Jyotish (if some of us add that tag to questions tagged with astrology), and realize it is a Vedanga and an exact science. I'm saying because, just like mythology which had lot of negative connotations, astrology is also slowly becoming like that. soon ayurveda & homeopathy also going down that track.
    – ram
    Commented Dec 27, 2020 at 8:48
  • 5
    We should make Jyotish and astrology as synonym tags for now.
    – Mr_Green
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 6:57
  • @Pandya As I recall, we stopped using the (academically correct) term "mythology" specifically BECAUSE popular belief was that the term had truth-value connotations. Despite this being a mistaken belief, the argument was that enough people believed it to have that connotation, so it should be avoided. I can't understand why we would continue to use the term "astrology" for exactly the reasons OP mentioned. How is it that we're trying to have it both ways? This indicates one of the arguments (either against "mythology" or for "astrology") is insincere. Commented Jul 3, 2022 at 21:35

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .