Talk:Kingdom of Haihaiyavansi

Issue with respect to identity of the king
The latest reference openly calls the king as Rajput rule on page 27- I quote here- "The two kingdoms were each subdivided into 18 districts known as garhs (forts), which were under the charge of thakurs or diwans, who owed allegiance to the Rajput King.

Even Grant Duff's source which forms the basis of it calls the clan as Rajput on page 160 ( Editors may check it). Since there are not enough new references on it. I think Saurabh Dube reference would clear it out. In any case this is 1700s and this dynasty and clan were sure referred to as such. RS6784 (talk) 11:53, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Merger
This page has been merged with Kalachuris of Ratnapura, that article represents the same Haihaiya dynasty

- Pls I dank memer (user|talk)


 * What is the source for your assertion that this article represented the same dynasty? This article seems to have been about the Kalachuris of Raipur - they branched off from the Kalachuris of Ratnapura, who continued to rule separately. Several sources, including those cited in the article (e.g. Archaeological Excavations in Central India, p. 14) make a clear distinction between the two dynasties. Common descent doesn't mean they should have a single article. utcursch &#124; talk 09:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Also, several sources in this article were subpar, such as government gazetteers and unpublished Ph.D. dissertations, which do not meet WP:HISTRS (or WP:RS) criteria. Merging content to Kalachuris of Ratnapura using these sources is not a great idea. utcursch &#124; talk 09:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Had a look at some of the reliable sources - they clearly distinguish between the two branches. As such, I'm undoing merger: this is best discussed at WP:MERGEREQ. utcursch &#124; talk 21:55, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * British government gazetteers are often our only option to turn to when it comes to history on a neglected topic of history. Besides, some scholars say that the British gazetteers are reliable since they are contemporary records and based on local knowledge. You deleted a lot of information which was mentioned in several sources. I believe that it should have been enough to not be completely deleted. The Academia article was not reliable, but other sources like government gazetteers and Philip Mc Eldowney's P.h.D dissertation are often used on other articles, where they are not said to be "unreliable" sources. I will try to remove those.
 * Regarding the merger, I was reluctant to believe a few sources that these dynasties were the same. But I delved deeper in time and found several British and indigenous records which corroborated this fact. And no, the article wasn't about the Kalachuris of Raipur, check the preceding revisions and see the capital's name, the dynasty's start date. The data given was about the Kalachuris of Ratanpur. I thought it my duty to clear up the confusion since the article was about the same dynasty. I included some matter about the Kalachuris of Raipur in the Kalachuris of Ratnapura article. There were simply no citations but general references of what you call "unreliable sources". Simply no mention of them being different. Everything about these dynasties, from their Kalachuri descent and most of the early rulers' names, were strikingly similar.
 * The source you cited for the two articles to be different- Archaeological Excavations in Central India, p. 14, is just the surface. The author evidently did not do enough research on the topic and jumped to a conclusion. This conclusion was due to the fact that inscriptions of the Kalachuris seemed to largely dwindle after the 13th century. However, I found mentions of some Kalachuri inscriptions dated later than the 13th century in British records. I could provide much more points, but I think you'll get the gist.
 * I'll remove the unreliable sources, merge the matter about the Haihaivanshi branch at Ratanpur with the Kalachuris of Ratnapura, and re-write this article entirely about the Kalachuris of Raipur. Pls I dank memer (talk) 04:55, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Gazetteers are written by civil servants, not historians: they are not reliable sources in this context - this has been discussed several times at WP:RSN and elsewhere. Dissertations are not great sources either per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, unless cited extensively by other sources or written by scholars recognized as experts. I have hardly deleted any information from the pre-merger page: I've just tagged the sources with unreliable source / better source needed as per Wikipedia guidelines. If this content is supported by scholarly works by actual historians, the refs should not be hard to replace. utcursch &#124; talk 16:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * You removed a large portion of content at Kalachuris of Ratnapura though, because you assumed that the deleted matter was about the Kalachuris of Raipur. If gazetteers and dissertations are considered unreliable, then some of my articles like Gonds of Deogarh have at least 70% of their references gone. In any case, I'll try to remove the content. Pls I dank memer (talk) 14:14, 30 March 2023 (UTC)