Talk:Victor H. Mair

Tibetan mummies
I've seen the documentary Mystery of the Tibetan Mummy about Mair's investigation into a recently discovered body of a Tibetian monk, datable to ca. 1475. He compares it with several Japanese mummies and Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov and claims that hundreds of similar mummified bodies of Buddhist monks were destroyed by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution or were cremated by the Lamaists in order to prevent their desecration. According to him, self-mummification was achieved by long starvation and slow self-suffocation using a special belt that connects the neck with the knees in a Lotus position. --Ghirla-трёп- 17:21, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Pinyin example
This example of single-sort order seems somewhat misleading. Between the first two example entries (家 and 间), the 1996 ABC C-E Dictionary has 2 pages of entries and the 2000 Comprehensive has 3 pages. Wouldn't it be better to use an abridged example from one of these dictionaries? Keahapana (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If you have the dictionary handy (I don't), it would be great if you would replace this sample with a contiguous one. Or even make a small separate article on Single-sort ordering. Vmenkov (talk) 21:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry it took so long, but I've finally revised the example. This section still needs work (should bǎba "baby poop" be omitted?). Please make further improvements. Thanks, Keahapana (talk) 03:10, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The re-write is definitely welcome! Still, it would be nice to also give some examples illustrating the fact that in the single-sort ordering, words that all begin with the same syllable (e.g. "jia", "jian", or "chun") no longer will be all grouped together, as in a traditional "sorted morphems" ordering. E.g. "jia+ba, jian+ba, jiang, jiang+da, jian+la, jia+pa" etc. These examples are nonsensical, but in my first version I tried to come up with real ones. I don't care about this enough to try to improve it myself, but if you feel like it - maybe by creating a separate article, called e.g. Single-sort alphabetical ordering (Chinese dictionaries) - that would be great. Vmenkov (talk) 13:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that would be better, but I couldn't find any brief examples from the dictionaries. It might be better to treat this topic under Chinese dictionaries. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 20:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Unjustified deletion?
Hi Arpingstone. Thanks for your useful 30 July 2008 edits to this Mair article. With one seemingly arbitrary exception, all your changes are constructive improvements upon style and readability. However I can't understand why you removed the Boucher, Schmid, and Sen (2006) quote, and wanted to check with you before reverting it.

Would you please explain your criteria for judging these 130 words as a "[l]ong and desperately wordy "testimonial" removed (not encyclopedic)"? Aren't many WP quotations from scholarly publications much lengthier and wordier? To which negative connotation of "testimonial" are you referring? Would you likewise delete, for example, this James Gleick testimonial? While "not encyclopedic" could be a difference between British and American English usage, I'm afraid I don't understand your analysis. The OED defines encyclopædic as, "Of, pertaining to, or resembling an encyclopædia (see encyclopædia 1); that aims at embracing all branches of learning; universal in knowledge, very full of information, comprehensive." What other meanings does it have in your idiolect?

In the interest of full disclosure, I added this quotation on 22 July 2008 after reading it in Asia Major. I thought citing from "The Scholarly Contributions of Professor Victor H. Mair: A Retrospective Survey" would enhance any encyclopedia article about Mair. Since AM is an eminent, peer-reviewed journal in sinology, I didn't imagine that anyone would quibble about it. I've never met professors Boucher, Schmid, or Sen, but perhaps you have some personal knowledge that would justify dismissing their published evaluations.

I'm assuming good faith and presuming you might be following some Wikipedia guidelines or policies of which I'm unaware. If that’s the case, please provide the links and accept my apologies. Best wishes. Keahapana. Keahapana (talk) 03:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I would agree that the quotation was worth keeping. Vmenkov (talk) 13:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll revert it. Thanks again, Keahapana (talk) 20:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Indo-Europeanist?
Mair was in the category "Indo-Europeanists", but the article does not justify this, so I removed it. (The mere fact of studying Sanskrit does not make one an Indo-Europeanist.) --John Cowan (talk) 22:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)