Talk:Flag of Bhutan

Source
Flag description taken from The CIA World Factbook entry on the flag of Bhutan, with minor changes. Note that the CIA text is public domain. --Dbenbenn 09:28, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reversed colors in 2nd flag
The article doesn't mention that the red and yellow as depicted in the image of the 2nd flag are reversed from the 1st and 3rd. Is the image accurate? Otherwise, why were the color positions switched? The description of the 2nd flag ("the red spreads from the base and forms the 'fluttering' end") makes it sound like the red should be on the bottom. Elphion (talk) 20:41, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Resolved -- see Correct colors etc below. Elphion (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Fimbriation
The reference glossary says "Fimbriation It is a narrow line separating two other colours in a flag." The description and picture do not show any Fimbriation between the red and yellow sections. If it exists, what colour is it? jnestorius(talk) 21:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Resolved -- see Correct colors etc below. Elphion (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Colours of triangles
This article states that "the upper triangle is yellow and the lower triangle is orange" (this text appears to have been sourced directly from the CIA factbook). However, to me the upper triangle looks more orangey (or a dark yellow at least), and the lower triangle is red. The comments in some of the threads above also refer to a red section. So is it really yellow and orange; is it orange and red; or is it yellow and red? Bazonka (talk) 11:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Resolved -- see Correct colors etc below. Elphion (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Correct colors in the Flag of Bhutan
''The following discussion is copied from the Humanities Reference Desk (sub November 20, 2009  ). Many thanks to User:Grutness for checking into this. The incorrect image of the Second Flag appears to have been created by Orange Tuesday -- I'll ask him if we can get an updated version. Elphion (talk) 14:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

There are some outstanding questions in Talk:Flag of Bhutan about the flag images in the article. (1) Three versions of the flag are shown. In the second the two background colors appear to be reversed; is this correct or an error? (2) The article refers to fimbriation between the colors but none is shown in the images; which is correct? (3) The article refers to one of the colors variously as "red" or "orange"; which is correct? Was the color in fact changed? (Judging from a Google image search, access to a Bhutanese official might be required to answer this!) Elphion (talk) 22:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) During the 1950s, Bhutan's flag seems to have shown the darker triangle at honour point (i.e., upper hoist), at least according to Flags of the World. I will check with their mailing list, though, since the text on their Bhutan page makes no mention of this change; 2) There has never been any fimbriation on the Bhutanese flag to the best of my knowledge. Flags of the World's Bhutan page suggests that the term "fimbriation" was incorrectly used by the Bhutanese authorities to simply refer to the join between the two coloured fields; 3) The colours are open to much debate - a quick glance at the FotW page makes that clear enough. The colours were initially listed as "yellow and red" with no further specification, have been interpreted as everything from yellow and maroon through to two shades of orange. According to FotW, the "red was changed to orange by royal command in 1968-69". Some countries (probably Bhutan included) do not specify exact shades for the colours on their flags, but some form of yellow and orange - probably a deep saffron yellow and a reddish or brownish orange - are about as close to official standard colours (no pun intended) as you're likely to get. Grutness...wha?  23:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I posed the question at FOTW, and got several responses. It appears that the image there (which may be the initial source for many of the red-over-yellow flags) was based on a mistranslation of the official Bhutanese description of the flag. It was initially - incorrectly - translated as "The yellow spreads from the summit to the base and forms the fluttering end." The correct translation, as shown at reads "The yellow spreads from the summit to the base while the red extends from the base and forms the fluttering end." So it seems as if yellow over red (or a lighter shade over a darker shade, at least0 has always been the standard. A further comment added numerous online sites showing images of the actual flag in use:, , , , , , . There's also a pdf of the United Nations' description of the flag here. (with thanks to FotW's Jonathan Dixon and Esteban Rivera). Grutness...wha?  22:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The flag should be correct now. I'm glad we've cleared up this error. Orange Tuesday (talk) 15:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Also according to that pdf, that second flag is supposed to be square. I'll go change that as well. Orange Tuesday (talk) 15:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for maintaining your many flag images -- they are beautifully executed. Elphion (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Are our depictions of the first flag correct?
So I just came across these two images of the Flag of Bhutan from 1949. They seem to show a white dragon pointing diagonally towards the top of the hoist, instead of a green dragon pointing horizontally towards the fly. It also appears to be 5:4 rather than square. Orange Tuesday (talk) 14:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Those are very interesting photos, though the host doesn't make finding them very easy! They look like prima facie evidence that our reference from the Centre for Bhutan Studies (who *ought* to know!) may not be quite on target.  The source does say that the design was "introduced in 1949 during the signing of the Indo-Bhutan Treaty", which the photos also purport to show.  I suppose it's possible that the flag in the photos is not the official one designed by Lharip Taw Taw -- but it's also possible that the Centre for Bhutanese Studies just goofed.  The photos don't help much to settle the color of the dragon:  depending on the film, the filter, and the shade of green or turquoise involved, the dragon might show up very light in photos (though if it *was* green, it was probably much lighter than we have represented).  And it's not clear just how the dragon is positioned, given that it is more S-shaped that the current avatar; I think a case could be made that it is intended to be parallel to the fly, especially given the later story about adjusting the position to the diagonal.  But there's no denying that it is pointed toward the hoist, not the fly.
 * Without a definitive official description, there's not much point in changing our representation of the flag; but we should probably mention and link to the photos as illustrating an alternative possibility.
 * Elphion (talk) 20:31, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If it is green, it is a very pale shade of green. Look at the Indian flag on the left. The relatively light green stripe on that flag comes out so dark that it nearly looks black. And as for the orientation of the dragon, if you line up the flags on the two images and rotate them to fit inside a square, you can see that the dragon is along the diagonal and not the horizontal. Check it out:
 * I mean, I don't want to venture too far into WP:SYNTH territory here, but we know that the 1949 flag was designed and constructed specifically for the signing of the Indo-Bhutanese treaty, right? So it's pretty reasonable to assume that the flag that we're seeing in those photographs is "the flag" of Bhutan. I would think at a minimum then, we need to resize the current images, flip the dragon to face the hoist, and lighten the green significantly. Orange Tuesday (talk) 22:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Good catch re the green on the Indian flag, which I didn't even take a good look at. Based on that, I would bet that the dragon is white.  And I think you're right about the orientation too.  So, how to proceed?  It would be easier if we had more confidence that the photos are correctly identified by ngmaindia.gov.in.  Given the doc from the Centre for Bhutanese studies (and the images all over the web based on its description), I think we should keep our existing image, but clearly identify it as "according to etc.etc."  -- and add a new image showing what the photos tell.  The latter should be identified as something like "as appearing in photos of the 1949 treaty signing, posted at etc.etc." It seems to me that both versions are worth noting, unless more evidence shows up to settle the matter definitively. -- Elphion (talk) 02:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay so I made two new images based on the photographs. Differences are:
 * Diagonal dragon rather than horizontal.
 * Pale almost turquoisey green instead of dark green.
 * Facing the hoist in the first one rather than the fly
 * 5:4 rather than perfectly square.
 * S-shaped dragon rather than straighter modern dragon.

Thoughts? Orange Tuesday (talk) 20:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Your 1949 flag looks good, agreeing closely with the photo. I'm not sure what to do about the color of dragon.  Judging from the photo it was probably white.  The only evidence that it was green comes from the Centre for Bhutanese Studies (hereinafter "CBS"), but it's clear that the flag they're describing as the "first flag" is not the flag in the photo.


 * The only sense I can make this is that other flags were made in the early period, generally of the description in the CBS doc (square, green dragon oriented parallel to top and bottom, facing the fly end), with the "sample" in the Assembly Hall (made when?) having diagonal orientation instead.


 * The doc describes the "second" flag as having been inspired by the flag in the photo -- implying that earlier flags differed from the photo. But the only thing the description picks up from the photo is the white color of the dragon:  the "second" flag is still described as square, with dragon facing the fly end, and parallel to top and bottom.  The innovations explicitly mentioned for the "third" version are the non-square dimensions and the diagonal orientation.  So there's no real evidence supporting your second (1959-1969) design, and it's not clear that your 1949 design is representative for flags generally from the period 1949-1956 (if there were any -- the doc is very unclear about that).


 * Reconciling the photo and the CBS doc is almsot impossible without some hand-waving. I think the right approach is to say that the CBS describes three periods (represented by the three existing diagrams in the article), but that a photo, presumably of the original flag at the 1949 treaty celebration, tells a different story (represented by your first image above, but with a white dragon rather than a green one) -- and that the colors in the original are not precisely known as the photo is black and white.


 * Elphion (talk) 23:55, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding "other flags" being made on the CBS model, that doesn't seem very likely. The CBS source specifically says that the first flag was used only for the signing of the Indo-Bhutanese treaty and then never again after that. The fact that we have photographic evidence from two different sources of a different flag being used at that ceremony makes me think that maybe the CBS book just isn't a reliable description of the history of the Bhutanese flag.
 * As for the second flag, it's based on the FOTW image seen here, which (from what I can tell) was drawn from an image in The Observer’s Book of Flags from 1966. If the photo version is correct, I think it's likely that this version is as well. The dragons are nearly identical and the flags have the same ratio.
 * I don't know. It's really confusing. Orange Tuesday (talk) 00:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Also I'm rereading the CBS source text, and I'm not sure it actually describes a horizontal dragon at all. It says the dragon is "parallel to the fly, facing the fly end." But the fly is the edge of the flag furthest from the flagpole, isn't it? wouldn't that make it a vertical dragon? Orange Tuesday (talk) 00:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

First, the easy point: Your concern about "parallel to the fly" is answered by the doc:  it has a diagram in which "fly" is illustrated as the dimension from pole to the "fly end" along the bottom of the flag; clearly, "parallel to the fly" means parallel to the bottom. When the author refers to the edge away from the pole he writes explicitly "fly end", not "fly". Besides, a vertical dragon would either face up (in which case shifting it to the diagonal would be no better at solving the slump problem), or it would face down (in which case it would "face the earth" even when the flag wasn't slumping).

As for the rest, there are no definitive answers, based on the sources we have. The FOTW source you point to shows no hard sources other than the two we have here: the photo and the doc quoted in the CBS doc. (All the various images in various flag books clearly go back to one or the other.) The CBS doc (and the doc it quotes) are the only textual sources anybody has come up with; we're sort of stuck with them, and using them without reconstructing our own version of history is going to be tricky.

It is clear from the doc that the transition from the original flag (presumably the one in the photo) to the modern flag (illustrated in the doc, which agrees with modern photos) happened by degrees. It is probably a mistake to identify a single version as "the flag" from 1956 (when multiple flags appear, if we're reading the doc right) to 1969 (when the modern form is finally established). The Martin Grieve illustration for the "second flag" in your FOTW link is simply the photo with the dragon reversed; there's no good evidence for it. (And Grieve was misled by the bad translation to reverse the yellow and red -- they were corrected later. My point is that the Grieve image is based on the photo, influenced by additional info quoted in the doc -- it's not an independent source, and not based on an actual example of a flag later than 1949.)

The doc never describes the flag in the photo; the photo seems unknown to the authors. They assume that the original flag was square and that the dragon was green, faced the fly end, and was parallel to the bottom -- all of which contradict the photo. (I'm assuming here the photo dragon is white, though it could be a very pale green. We don't know.)  But there must have been flags at some point illustrating each of those points, though perhaps no one flag showing all of them.

The doc's claim that "The flag in its present shape, dimension and design was made during one of the visits of the Gangtok-based Political Officer of India to Bhutan in the late 1950s" has to be taken with a grain of salt, even assuming that the date is correct. The doc speaks of 4 changes in the transformation to the modern flag:

(1) The dragon's color became white. This is mentioned specifically for the 1956 flags, but it's not clear whether there were other flags made (before or after) with green dragons (of whatever shade). Possibly the 1949 flag and the later "sample" were the only "green" dragons, but that's not the only reading possible.

(2) The flag became rectangular (3:2), and (3) the dragon was shifted to the diagonal. The doc implies that the 1956 flags were square and had dragons parallel to the bottom, and therefore that these changes happened later: perhaps "in the late 1950s" -- but again it's not clear that all flags uniformly observed the changes.

(4) The bottom color was changed from red to dark orange in 1968 or 1969, finally achieving the modern design.

So we have, as reasonably fixed endpoints in the process, (a) the photo flag (with the dragon of unknown color), and (b) the modern flag. The intermediate stages are perhaps best described verbally, not with images, since we really don't know the details.

Elphion (talk) 03:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Addition: I'm assuming that flag in the photo really is the first flag.  I don't seriously doubt that, but I wish we had a better source than the funky museum website. -- Elphion (talk) 04:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Another addition: I looked again at the photo, and I'm coming around to accepting a pale green dragon: the white in the Indian flag is noticeably lighter.  I still think it would be prudent to say that the color is not clear from the photo, but that the doc mentions green, and that a pale green is at least consistent with the photo. -- Elphion (talk) 04:40, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

URLs for reference:
 * http://www.ngmaindia.gov.in/upe_bhutan.asp -- the official gallery "Bhutan: An eye to History" (exhibition 24th December 2009 to January 31st 2010) at the Indian National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. The slide show displays the first of the following two images with the caption "Signing of the first Indo-Bhutan Friendship treaty at Darjeeling on the 8th of August 1949. Sri Harishwar Dayal, representing India, and Gongzim Sonam Tobgye Dorji representing Bhutan, signed the treaty."
 * http://ngmaindia.gov.in/images/showcase/bhutan/pic3-big.jpg -- direct link to the photo in the slide show.
 * http://www.bhutan2008.bt/en/node/61 -- page at Bhutan 2008 discussing the 1949 treaty, with the second photo showing the flag.
 * http://www.bhutan2008.bt/files/images/indo-bhutantreaty.jpg -- direct link to the second photo.
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8486717.stm -- BBC blurb about the exhibit, "In pictures: Rare images of Bhutan go on display". The first photo above is shown in the slide show with the caption "The India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty of 1949 is the basis of close ties between Bhutan and India.  It was signed at government house in Darjeeling in 1949.  (Image: Queen Grandmother of Bhutan)."
 * http://www.bignews.biz/?id=830644&keys=Bhutan-Eye-to-History -- News item about the exhibit from Bignews.biz, "National Gallery of Modern Art and the India-Bhutan Foundation presents ‘Bhutan: An Eye to History’".
 * http://www.bhutanstudies.org.bt/admin/pubFiles/NationalFlag.pdf -- "The doc" from the Centre for Bhutan Studies (CBS), "The Origin and Description of The National Flag and National Anthem of The Kingdom of Bhutan", including the correct translation of the Bhutanese government archive doc describing the "second flag".
 * http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/bt.html -- Flags of the World (FOTW) entry for Bhutan. See separate link there under the 2nd flag for a discussion of the accuracy of their description.  Note also that their depiction of the 1st flag follows "the doc" rather than the 1949 photos.

&lt;Add more as appropriate&gt; -- Elphion (talk) 05:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I popped over to the library this morning and found some relevant flagbook images. With callous disregard for intellectual property rights, I've taken some pictures of their depictions and uploaded them off-site:
 * The Observer's Book of Flags by I.O. Evans (1963):
 * The Book of Flags by Gordon Campbell and I.O. Evans (1965):
 * Flags of the World by E. M. C. Barraclough (1965):
 * The Observer's Book of Flags by I.O. Evans (1975):
 * Flaggen Wappen Daten by Karl-Heinz Hesmer (1975):
 * Quality isn't great, but the important details are there. The black and white images from Evans all give the same colour description: yellow-orange over red with a white dragon, even on the otherwise modern looking 1975 image. These were the oldest books I could find (at the Toronto Reference Library, anyway) that differed in any way from the modern Bhutanese flag. Orange Tuesday (talk) 18:06, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * So I think you're right that we have to approach this as three periods of flag design, rather than a timeline of different flag designs. I don't think we have the sources we need to reconstruct any kind of well-defined timeline and the changes were probably too piecemeal anyway. My thoughts are that it goes something like this:
 * 1949-1956: A single flag, which was designed for the signing of the Indo-Bhutanese treaty and then fell into disuse. A black-and-white photo of the ceremony shows the design of the flag. The colour isn't clear from the picture but the CBS doc describes it as a yellow over red bicolour with a green dragon. Illustration is File:Flag of Bhutan (1949-1956).svg (labeled as a reconstruction)
 * 1956-1969: Mutliple flags produced, originally based on a photo of the original, but gradually changing to resemble the modern flag. Official description is a yellow-red bicolor with a white dragon (as quoted in "the doc") but that description leaves the ratio of the flag and the orientation of the dragon ambiguous. Many different designs are reported during this period. Illustrations are File:Second Flag of Bhutan.svg ("as described in [the CBS doc]", possibly tweaked to have an S-shaped dragon rather than the straighter version in there now.), a new image to match some of those flagbook images ("typical design from contemporary flag books" or something. basically this: ), and maaaaybe File:Flag of Bhutan (1956-1969).svg ("as shown on FOTW"). Or maybe just the first two since we don't really have a source for the last one. In any case, we stress that they're examples of reported flags during this period.
 * 1969-Present: The modern standardized design of the flag. Illustration is File:Flag of Bhutan.svg
 * Orange Tuesday (talk) 18:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting: four of your flag books essentially follow the photo (with some understandable disagreement about color), while one gives the modern flag. No intermediate versions need apply! (Actually, the Evans 1975 version is worth note: modern in all respects except the bottom color and the old 4:5 aspect ratio -- would be interesting to know why he chose those dimensions.)

I would describe the first version as following the photo with "colors as described in the CBS doc", pointing out that the photo limits any green to a pale shade. The 1956 version in the WP article is fine as is: I wouldn't make the dragon more S-shaped because (a) we don't know when it acquired the straighter form, it might be this early -- and (b) we need a version that clearly shows the difference between parallel and diagonal orientation, since that change is explicitly called out as happening after 1956. I don't think a third diagram (before the modern version) is necessary, and in any event, the 1956 version is the only one between 1949 and 1968 that we have an explicit description of.

There are really 7 changes (not just the 4 mentioned in the doc) from 1949 to 1969:
 * 1) Dragon becomes white (described already for 1956)
 * 2) Dragon flips to face fly end (ditto, but not described as a change; CBS seems unaware that the original faced the hoist)
 * 3) Dragon acquires a more linear shape (timing unknown)
 * 4) Dragon acquires 4 pearls instead of 2 (timing unknown)
 * 5) Dragon gets tilted to the diagonal (sometime after 1956)
 * 6) Shape becomes square (in 1956), then 3:2 (sometime after 1956)
 * 7) Bottom color changes from red to dark orange (1968-69)

In sum, I think your new version of the 1949 flag is fine, and the existing version of the 1956 flag in the article is consistent with all the evidence. I'm not convinced yet that including diagrams representing other flag book descriptions is a good idea -- they're variations on the same theme from the same sources with no physical evidence to back them up. I think, however, that we should mention that the CBS doc's description of the original flag does not entirely agree with the photo, so its description of the 1956 flag may not be entirely correct either; we cannot be sure of the timing or the order of any of the changes except the last.

-- Elphion (talk) 22:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I actually don't think those drawings are the same as the photo. They're similar, but the dragon is considerably larger in the books, and it's closer to the horizontal line in most of them than it is to the diagonal.
 * See, here's my problem. We have an explicit description, yes. But how reliable is that description? I mean, consider the other description in the source. CBS says the 1949 flag was square. It wasn't, it was rectangular. CBS says the dragon ran horizontally across the flag. It didn't, it was on a sharp diagonal. CBS says it faced the fly. It didn't, it faced the hoist. I mean, it's wrong on nearly every single point. The only thing it's probably right about are the colours, and for all we know, those might be wrong too.
 * So if they got that description so completely wrong, what else did they get wrong? Was the second flag really square? It's certainly possible, but why would it have become square if it was based off of a picture of the original, which was rectangular? And why, for that matter, would the dragon have been reversed and placed on the horizontal? If the story about the 1956 flag being based off of a photo of the 1949 flag is true, then the depictions in Evans and Barraclough are much more logical. I'm not saying we should discard the doc entirely, but I don't think we should treat it as authoritative. Half of the information we're concerned with is unsourced and the other half all comes from an interview with a single individual describing events that took place 45 years earlier. Maybe this guy just messed up the details.
 * I'm fine with keeping that image on the page, but I don't want it to be "the image" when there's no other source backing it up. We either need to put alternate renderings on there or dispense with images for that period altogether.
 * Oh and about the straightness of the dragon: That is really just due to a lack of technical skill on my part. When I first made that image I didn't have the Inkscape skills to make a new body for the dragon, so I just rotated the dragon from the modern flag and hoped that it would be a close enough approximation. If I had been making File:First Flag of Bhutan.svg today, it would have had a curved body to match and File:Second Flag of Bhutan.svg would have been the same. There's no specific evidence that the "straighter" dragon existed before the modern flag was designed. I'd hate to be responsible for spreading misinformation via the unstoppable google juggernaut that is Wikipedia. Orange Tuesday (talk) 00:26, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Should we bring this conversation to the attention to the FOTW people? I'd be interested to get their take on everything. Orange Tuesday (talk) 00:33, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's more or less what I've been saying. We have three sources: the photos, the government archive quoted in CBS for the 1956 flag (probably trustworthy, but incomplete), and the anecdotal descriptions in CBS (from several sources identified in the introduction). The anecdotal descriptions we know are fallible, but (except for the 1949 flag) we don't know how fallible. I trust the description of the 1956 flags as square with horizontal dragons, precisely because of the dissatisfaction that led to rectangular flags and diagonal placement later. And the dragon in 1956 was probably facing the fly, because the whole anecdote about "facing the earth" makes no sense otherwise. Beyond that nothing is clear, so => any illustration is necessarily a reconstruction without firm basis. The seven changes I mentioned above might have happened in almost any order at any time. We can reconstruct a plausible sequence based on the sources, but that is at best a reconstruction. The flag books are no help because they're relying on the same sources we are. So any illustration for a flag between 1949 and 1969 is going to be at best a conjecture unless we turn up a new source.

(I don't think the four books are that different from the photo -- they are not different enough to convince me that another unknown flag is involved. The size of the dragon is tolerably similar to the photo (especially given the absence of any prescribed size), and the orientation is not very different.  I still get an impression of horizontal placement from the photo -- the hind feet are at about the same level as the forefeet, e.g.; it's only when you flip the dragon around against the diagonal that you see that there's a definite rise to it.)

I would be comfortable with an image for the 1956 flag only if we indicate what conforms to the government archive and that the rest is inferred from the anecdotal descriptions and the modern flag, both uncertain sources for 1956. For any other intermediate version we're just whistling in the dark. I wouldn't read too much into the statement that the 1956 flag was based on the photo; I think that means simply that no flag survived to 1956, and the photo simply gave them the basic parameters, which they played pretty freely with. The notion of an official, fixed design for a national flag was not something they grokked in 1956.

-- Elphion (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

And yes, if we can get the attention of FOTW it would be good to get their input. I already notified Grutness, who was involved in our last disaster :-), but he seems to be on break. -- Elphion (talk) 02:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's what the anecdotal portion of the source definitively says about the initial 1956 design:
 * "the colour of the dragon was changed to white."
 * "The flag was square"
 * "the dragon, instead of being diagonally placed, was straight."
 * You'll note there's no mention in the 1956 section about the dragon facing the fly at all. That is assumed to be an inheritance from the 1949 flag. And when we take into account that the fact that the 1949 dragon faced the hoist, I don't think we can reasonably say that the dragon faced the fly in 1956. At least, not based on this text alone. It might have, but we have zero evidence to support that.
 * I also don't think it's reasonable to dismiss the flag books as "working from the same sources we are". We don't know what sources they used. You could say that the similarity to the photo is evidence that they just copied a photo, but here's another explanation which is just as reasonable: They based their drawings off of actual 1956 flags, and the reason they look so similar to the photo is that the 1956 flag was based off the photo. Orange Tuesday (talk) 12:54, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's another possibility: What if "square" in the source doesn't literally mean 1:1 square. What if it's just a relative term? Compared to the modern 2:3 Bhutanese flag, the 5:4 flag is, well, kind of "square". Normally that would just be idle speculation, but we do know that the source described the 1949 flag as "square" when it was actually 5:4. Maybe there's a subtlety lost in translation here, or maybe they're just considering it to be square by comparison, or maybe they're just not being specific enough with their wording.
 * If you consider it that way and take into account the fact that the source never says that the flag in 1956 faced the fly, Barraclough's image suddenly conforms to the source really nicely. The dragon was changed to white, check. The flag was "square", check. The dragon was straight, I think you could say so. If you apply the same diagonal line test we used on the 1949 flag you can see that it is much closer to the horizontal than it is to the diagonal:  (1949 for comparison: )
 * Also: The Indian flag story works just as well with a 5:4 flag as it does with a 1:1 flag. Neither would flutter quite the same as a 3:2 flag. Orange Tuesday (talk) 13:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Your argument just reinforces my previous statement: any illustration for flags between 1949 and 1969 is not firmly based on evidence. We don't know what order the changes occurred in. The photos make clear that the doc knows 1949 only from hearsay; so using its erroneous description of that flag as the basis for these theories is (your words) "idle speculation" ;-).

The idea that "square" doesn't mean square is possible but WP:OR -- you're bending the existing source to postulate a 1956 flag as the basis for the book illustrations, but there's no evidence for that. The old flag book images can all reasonably be explained as based on the 1949 flag (or more likely, the photo) -- i.e., based on a flag for which there *is* solid evidence.

What the doc *does* say about the 1956 flag includes your three bullets above, but also the clear assumption that the dragon faces the fly. You have to willfully bend its clear meaning to read a hoist-facing dragon from the doc. => Moreover, the doc's story about the dragon facing the earth when the flag slumped makes no sense unless the dragon faces the fly. Again, ignoring that amounts to WP:OR.

I grant that we can imagine scenarios for various possibilities. I grant that the evidence is not clear. But the configuration for 1956 that best fits the evidence at hand is a square flag with a horizontal, fly-facing, white dragon. I think we're bending the rules going even that far -- but reconstructing anything else really breaks them.

-- Elphion (talk) 14:24, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that the doc supports a hoist facing dragon necessarily, but the dragon facing the fly is implictly based on claims earlier in the document which appear to be false. If I understand correctly, the doc says that the 1949 dragon faced the fly and that the 1956 flag was based on the 1949 flag. And from that we draw the conclusion that the document says the 1956 dragon faced the fly. Now that's a reasonable reading to make, but that chain of logic doesn't fit the evidence, because we know that the 1949 dragon didn't face the fly. If we're largely disregarding the 1949 description as hearsay (which it seems like we have to in light of its multiple disagreements with the photo), then we don't really have a specification of which way the dragon faced in 1956.
 * Between the flag books and the CBS doc, we seem to have two competing depictions of the flag. One is a square flag with the dragon facing the fly, the other is a rectangular flag with the dragon facing the hoist. The problem is, there's no independent evidence supporting either of those depictions, and neither source reliable enough for us to trust outright (errors crop up in flag books all the time, and the CBS source is decidedly wrong on at least one of its three flag descriptions). And the only government source we have is non-specific enough that both versions could technically be correct. Yes, the dragon slumping story supports the CBS version, but that's a circular argument. The only source for that anecdote is the CBS document in the first place.
 * I feel like we have to have both possible renderings on there. If nothing else, just to illustrate how complicated and uncertain this history really is. Either that or have no images at all for that period. But to only have the square flag reconstruction when it comes from a source that we can't trust 100% seems iffy to me. I'm not going to say it's a violation of NPOV (because that would be a bit of a silly extreme for a flag) but it does seem to violate some "NPOV-ish" principle, where we present all the evidence to the reader without giving anything undue weight.
 * My point about the flag books is that we can't assume that the flag books are based on the photo absent any concrete evidence that they are. Barraclough's rendering is similar to the photo, but there are significant differences between the two:

The flag book images all look like the 1949 flag to me. Yes there's variation, but they were working from an imperfect source and the differences are all acceptable within artistic license -- drawing dragons is not a precise science. I'm not saying that's *evidence* that they were drawn from the 1949 flag -- but I am saying the variation is not evidence that they weren't.

The flag-slumping argument is not circular: it's solid evidence that at some point there was a fly-facing horizontal dragon that was deemed unacceptable. Was it the 1956 flag? That's certainly the sense of the doc, which suggests that the change to the diagonal was made as early as 1959.

Thought experiment: What's on the other side of the flag in the photo? Possibly nothing. Possibly another dragon facing the hoist. But suppose you are Lharip Taw Taw, tasked by the king with painting the dragon. You paint two copies, one for each side, both happening to face to the left since you are careful to make them exact copies of each other. They are cut out and appliqued to the flag, one on each side: one facing the hoist, one facing the fly. Which is the front? you have no idea, because the whole western understanding of flags seems to have taken Bhutan by surprise in 1949. The one we see in the photo is just an accident of the way the flags were hung by the Nepalese in the conference room.

Did it happen that way? I have no idea. It's at least plausible. => and it has the brilliant consequence of saving the doc's description of the 1949 flag: everybody *remembers* that the dragon faced the fly! Even the "sample" (what we would call a "reconstruction from memory long after the fact", clearly influenced by the modern flag) has a green dragon facing the fly. (I'd bet on that, since it is explicitly described as placed along the "fimbriation" or diagonal, and it's not likely to be facing downward toward the hoist!)

(Yeah, there's the bit about "square" -- who's to know what they truly meant by that.)

OK, that's OR: plausible reconstruction going well beyond the evidence, but seemingly supported by the evidence. I'm not introducing it as evidence! But it should reinforce that we are operating under hidden assumptions -- that the Bhutanese understood the notion of the front of a flag in 1949, or that the doc and the photo are beyond reconciliation. We just don't know. It makes sense to discuss the changes to the flag from 1949 to 1969, and to illustrate the endpoints, both of which we know tolerably well. The rest is just too poorly known for any image to be anything but misleading.

-- Elphion (talk) 16:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I think we're agreed that intermediate illustrations should probably just be avoided then. Orange Tuesday (talk) 17:40, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I've made changes to the article along the lines discussed above; specifically:


 * Replaced the 1949 flag image with Orange Tuesday's new one following the 1949 photos.
 * Discussed differences between the photos and CBS doc.
 * Rewrote the "Second national flag" section as "Later flags", describing the changes from 1949 to 1969 and the uncertainty about when or in what order they occurred.
 * The first paragraph of "Current flag" was moved to "Later flags".
 * Removed the old 1956 image as too reconstructed.

-- Elphion (talk) 22:00, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Updates?
This is a good article and top importance for WikiProject Bhutan. Is there still anyone working on the article beacuse it has potential for GA maybe FA if improved a lot? Spongie555 (talk) 22:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Just curious: what changes do you think would improve it "a lot"?  (My own take:  the article depends almost entirely on the problematic CBS document for the evolution of the flag.  There is almost no other source for this history, but the doc does not appear to mesh well with the photographic evidence.  A more authoritative treatment would appear to require new sources.) -- Elphion (talk) 14:58, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I have never reviewed or writtien a GA but i agree it needs more sources. I can ask some other people to help you if you want. Spongie555 (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Or just change the sources. When you do quote about the actual legal code from 1972, I found it as a separate document on a government website. The biggest thing we should do now is make sure the sources actually say what they say. The 1972 legal code does not mention the finial at all, but according to the text here, it does. The 1972 legal code mentions only "two third of it must be kept as the width. For example, dimension such as 9 by 6. " when it comes to the ratio and does not mention any flag sizes. I will be working on this article, by request of Spongie555, to help get it to GA. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 17:54, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing
My question is this; what photos are you talking about? If there are in the CBS document, they are not present. I am looking at the 2009 paper given about the Bhutan flag at a conference I went to and there are some photos of the flag involved. I am trying to check the text in our article against this paper, but this is something that needs to be figured out. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 05:56, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The article is not accusing the CBS document of internal inconsistency, just that its information is not consistent with surviving photos taken at the 1949 treaty conference (and referenced in the article). Are the photos in the paper you cite identical with either of the photos referenced in the article?


 * The photo you found of the Flag Behind the Throne (at the Kuensel site) is a nice find, but it makes clear that the throne flag was re-created long after the fact, and is not an accurate representation of the flag in the 1949 photos. Interestingly, though, the dragon behind the throne is made to face to the left, just as in 1949 -- but by reversing the flag so that the fly is on the left.  The fly is colored orange, not red, so the throne flag clearly dates from after 1969. So as a source for reconstructing the flag of 1949, the throne flag is not very trustworthy.


 * -- Elphion (talk) 08:01, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Judging by the photos and the text in the article, I think they are the same. I can send you the paper via email. As for the flag, the text reads "The first flag was used only for the occasion of the signing of the Indo-Bhutan Treaty, and a sample of the flag (with some changes) is displayed behind the throne in the National Assembly Hall in Thimphu." The sample could mean modern reproduction, a copy, etc. I will change the wording. The problem I had is from the previous wording it felt like the CBS studies has the photographs, which it does not have. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 08:17, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You say in the edit summary that you want to rely less on the CBS document.  But the reference to Kuensel alone is misleading, since (a) this implies information independent of the CBS document, and (b) it implies that Kuensel is the source for all of the information in that sentence.  Neither is true:  except for the photo (for which Kuensel *is* an appropriate reference; I'm not advocating removing it), Kuensel is completely dependent on CBS, and CBS supplies more information than Kuensel does (in particular, how the throne flag was influenced by the modern flag.  So both references are appropriate, and I have reinstated the ref to CBS. -- Elphion (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits hide the documentation difficulty
Recent edits have gutted the careful description of where the information is coming from. If this is being done as a result of the "GA review", then the review needs to reconsider the problem here. There are essentially two basic sources of documentation for the early flags: the CBS (Center for Bhutanese Studies) history of the flag, and black and white photographs of the 1949 flag. The problem is that the CBS document is essentially our *only* early documentary source (and that needs to be acknowledged), but that its description of the 1949 flag does not entirely agree with the photos. The current version says "Bhutanese documents does not [sic] contain photographs of the first versions of the flag" -- that's certainly more than we know (and it is in fact false: at least one of the black and white photos came from the Queen Grandmother of Bhutan). What is true is that the primary source, namely the CBS document, does not contain such photos. It's important to make clear where our knowledge is coming from, and which source says what. -- Elphion (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I apologize for only going part of the way with the edits and leaving the text in a confusing condition. To clarify, the modifications I made to the 1949 Flag section while conducting the GA review were the beginning of an effort to fix what came across as undue emphasis on one document. Let's make some revisions to this section to reincorporate some of what I removed, while also explicitly stating the importance of the document and photos as key primary sources (explaining why); this will justify the detailed discussion by framing these sources as the crucial documents they are. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 01:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I've made some revisions along those lines. -- Elphion (talk) 23:32, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Lupant's paper
The paper Flags over Bhutan by Michael Lupant, though it draws together a lot of interesting material, is not (so far as I can determine) a published source. We should avoid citing it unless some bibliographic data (and in particular a reputable publisher) are forthcoming. -- Elphion (talk) 00:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I know it is being published in a congress report next year (because I am the guy publishing it). Most of the information is pulled from the CBS paper and some websites. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 06:42, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Is this document online somewhere? Orange Tuesday (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not until everything is published. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 18:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Someone took off the refernce from Lupant's paper just to say. Spongie555 (talk) 04:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am well aware. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Lupant has recently published a book on the subject (Symbols of Bhutan, CEBED, Ottignies, March 2011); I have bought it at the recent International Congress of Vexillology, but I only had a superficial glance at it right now.--12.187.228.2 (talk) 01:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Too bad I could not be in DC right now to pick up his book or at least read it. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 02:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Dzongkag?
This sentence in the section Code of conduct makes no sense: "The 1972 rules also state that each dzongkhag will fly the national flag; if no dzongkhag is present, the building of the head government officer will fly the flag." The problem is that we don't know what a "dzongkag" is. WP has an article Dzongkhag defining the word as meaning any of the twenty districts of Bhutan. So far so good; but then "if no dzongkhag is present" makes no sense. (I would look up the relevant passage in the code of conduct, but the PDF will not download for me.) -- Elphion (talk) 23:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The relevant text is below:

"5. Admissibility of Hoisting the National Flag a) Starting  from  the  capital,  every  dzongkhag  will  hoist  the national flag. b)  Where there are no dzongkhag, the national flag will be hoisted in front of the office of the main government officer. c)  If  officials  above  the  rank  of  ministers  do  not  reside  near  the capital,  they  can  hoist  the  national  flag  in  front  of  their residence. d)  In relation to the hoisting of the national flag by Bhutanese and foreign embassies, the ambassadors can hoist the flag according to their legal tradition."

User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 23:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * So, the rule must mean something like the following? "The districts (dzongkhag) of the kingdom are to fly the flag; and in areas not assigned to a district, the building of the head government officer will fly the flag."  The problem with this interpretation is that according to Districts of Bhutan the entire country appears to be assigned to districts (though perhaps this was not true in 1972?). -- Elphion (talk) 00:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess so? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe they ment a building like for example Rinpung Dzong instead of a district? Spongie555 (talk) 08:06, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The only time a building is mentioned is if a "dzongkhag" was not present. I think the legal language really needs to be updated, but until something is passed, we have to stick by this. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 11:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am primarily concerned that the ordinary reader won't have a clue what this is talking about. Since we can't really do much to clarify it, beyond linking to Dzongkhag, I've replaced what we had before with the language of the rules directly.  We don't know just what they had in mind, so we are better off using their language rather than trying to interpret it.  (I also restructured this so that it is contained in its own paragraph.  That way we can remove it cleanly if it is judged to be too cryptic.) -- Elphion (talk) 15:23, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * In the CBS document, there is a footnote explaining that dzongkhag refers to the district headquarters (the building). I clarified this in the text. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Article about early Bhutan flags
There is some good information in the article linked below. Including some of it could help to enrich the information contained in this article.

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=16483


 * Unfortunately, the link above no longer leads to the article, which appears to be no longer posted at Kuensel -- Elphion (talk) 20:31, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

For fun, here's one about the Bhutanese flag flying in space: http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13574


 * Is the picture of the flag in space in public domain? If NASA took the picture it might be in public domain. Spongie555 (talk) 03:47, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The credit on the image is not NASA and I found nothing by using a .gov image search on Google. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 13:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well that's too bad it would have been a good edition. Also would a image of the first flag like in the first source be in public domain? Spongie555 (talk) 21:30, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Original research?
The history section has recently been tagged as OR. I disagree: there are no conclusions there that are not in the original sources, except that the sources disagree, which is fair to point out. Without some statement indicating that the sources are not consistent, we would be propagating misinformation. -- Elphion (talk) 21:24, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hearing no response, I'm removing the tag. -- Elphion (talk) 20:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Dragon on the Flag?
Is the current dragon/druk on the current svg flag here on wikipedia the official one. I found that there is a more stylized druk, here and here. The image on the right also shows that the druk is different from what we currently have here. Any thoughts?--Hariboneagle927 (talk) 15:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Reference URL update
Apologies for being a newbie, but the rules for the use of the flag (reference 3) are dead. This appears to be the new reference: https://oag.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/National-Flag-Rules-1972-English.pdf Walnut Iguana (talk) 16:05, 10 May 2024 (UTC)