Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 July 16

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July 16[edit]

Rukiye and Hatice Hanim; ? → Ottoman → Malaysia[edit]

Rukiye Hanim and  Hatice Hanim the two sisters were sent over by Ottoman royals to Malaysia royals ( still a politically influential family Malaysia).

Seeking help in citations and bibliographic information from English, Turkish, Malaysian languages.

Also whether Turkish or Malaysian language Wikipedias have any article about the sisters?

Thanks, Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 06:55, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that Hanım is a title, the feminine counterpart of the title Han, usually rendered as Khan, equivalent to "Lord". In English you'd say, "Lady Rukiye and Lady Hatice".  --Lambiam 07:40, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a link to a paper with the title "The Myth and Reality of Rukiye Hanim in the Context of Turkish Malay Relations (1864-1904)". I don't see anything related on the Turkish Wikipedia. The Malay Wikipedia has several search results for "Datin Roquaiya Hanim", but little information and no separate article.  --Lambiam 08:40, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And here is an archived article on Roquaiya Hanim published in The Star.  --Lambiam 08:47, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"We are muddled into war" - alleged quotation[edit]

I have recently (in the last twerty minutes or so) seen the phrase "We are muddled into war" appearing as an alleged quotation from David Lloyd George. I am fairly sure the attribution is spurious - and indeed I rather think the phrase itself is of recent coinage. Can anyone cast some light on the matter? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 11:50, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here it is in The Military Quotation Book, 1990 in the form "We all muddled into war". Not definitive since there's no source, but at least not made up yesterday. Further back, here it is again quoted by AJP Taylor, 1977.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:44, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen the form "We muddled into war" ascribed to LlG's War Memoirs, but without chapter and verse, and I can't find it in scans. DuncanHill (talk) 14:25, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Volume I p.596 has I had to undertake the terrible responsibility of Premiership in a muddled war, with at least half my own party and more than half the Labour Party bitterly hostile, and a considerable section of the Tory Party, and that's the closest I've found so far. I'm finding several weirdly similar quotes from different people, all writing in 1918: "we are muddling into peace even worse than we muddled into war", "Shall we, when the war has been won for us by America, muddle into an armed peace, as unarmed we muddled into war", "We muddled into war, and we shall muddle into peace". So perhaps this is something DLG said in 1918 and they're all echoing it.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The first byline is simply "The People" (i.e., the editorial staff of The Nation), the second is Austin Harrison who is editor of the journal he's writing in, and the third is (war) industrialist William Lionel Hichens. I mean, they all write pretty slick phrasings (except the second), but none of the names carry the gravitas of DLG, which is what you need for a good timeless quotation.
But for all three to have used almost identical phrasing at around the same time at different places, it had to have been a somewhat known description ("muddled" at the very least) for some time in higher circles. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On 19 December 1914 the Saturday Review was saying "We may well be said to have muddled into the war so far as our military preparations were concerned". A pamphlet which Google Books dates 1914 (but can we believe it?) has "Very likely we have muddled into this war. But it is not a muddle of which we need be ashamed." It feels to me like they're both making a topical allusion to a phrase that was being quoted at the time, but I have no solid attribution to Lloyd George. [1] --Antiquary (talk) 18:51, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In this case we can believe the date; the text appeared originally in The Morning Post of August 25, 1914.  --Lambiam 19:58, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I found August 1914 as well, and was surprised that nothing in it named the year of publication, only the dates within the year for each of the essays making up the book. However, one of them observes that Britain has now declared war. So yes, published in 1914. And the author is Spenser Wilkinson. So if David Lloyd George used the phrase, I'd guess Wilkinson made it famous and Lloyd George was alluding to his wording. --174.95.81.219 (talk) 02:37, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In 1899 the Morning Post was wondering whether "the class of men who have muddled into war are the most competent leaders to muddle out of it". DuncanHill (talk) 19:27, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, then, this was already an idiom in the early 20th century, which sprang to every pundit's mind when war broke out. One of the books I looked at (from the 1980s) called it "Lloyd George's famous admission that we muddled into war". It gave no source, naturally, though I've seen a couple of other places where it was attributed to his memoirs, 1934. Yet extensive searching through them says no. Maybe a fly crawled into the scanner at the crucial page? But I tried two different versions of all six volumes.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:03, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried scans of the Ivor Nicholson & Watson edition, the Little, Brown edition, and the Odhams edition. I am certain it is not in the War Memoirs. DuncanHill (talk) 20:23, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nor is it in The Truth About the Peace Treaties, Through Terror to Triumph, The Great Crusade, or Is It Peace?. DuncanHill (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I sat through an hour of a BBC Timewatch documentary, called I think Lloyd George's War,* in case the quote came up, but it didn't. I also watched a Pathé newsreel in which he didn't say it. It could have been something spoken aloud, though. Maybe it's yet to be found in some other newsreel. Or radio broadcast.
*This was a pleasant experience and passed the time while I inflated a paddling pool.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:38, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! It's also not in 1917's The Wit and Wisdom of David Lloyd George or 1929's Slings and Arrows. Now we've exhausted his books, there does remain his newspaper columns (sadly uncollected), and the numerous prefaces and forewords he wrote for the books of others. I am familiar with most of the latter, and do not recall seeing it in any of them, and given the combined assault on the problem by editors here I rather suspect that we would have turned it up by now if it had appeared in the press. I think Taylor misremembered, and then others have (mis)quoted his slip. DuncanHill (talk) 21:00, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a curious one: this is from yet another Liberal periodical, The Speaker, and uses the phrase "the men who muddled into and through the war" in the context of (but not about) Asquith and Lloyd George. The date, however, is 1903! So the second Boer War, presumably.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:57, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as was the 1899 Morning Post quotation above. The idea of war being a result of muddle rather than policy seems somewhat ingrained. DuncanHill (talk) 21:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite the same, but the phrase "meddle and muddle" shows up in the House of Lords on Feb 4, 1864, spoken by Lord Derby in criticism of Lord Russell's foreign policy; see here. Use of the word "muddle" in Parliament greatly increases after that point, as visible by searching Hansard. Shells-shells (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The pamphlet with that second quote was by military historian Spenser Wilkinson, and was reprinted in a 1914 book: "Very likely we have muddled into this war ..."  Card Zero  (talk) 19:54, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I know this isn't the language desk, but I'm kinda fascinated by the use of the "to be" auxiliary for the present perfect here. Modern English uses that pretty much only for "gone" as far as I know, and even that's arguable; it's not clear that "I am gone" is a present perfect rather than just a predicate adjective. Poetic uses still exist for "come" and "become", as in Oppenheimer's famous personal translation of the Upanishad and Dylan Thomas's "A Refusal to Mourn". How would it suddenly pop up for "muddle"? --Trovatore (talk) 19:00, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it just the simple present, like "I am fascinated by grammar"? (Or is that also an example of the present perfect? Am I muddling?)  Card Zero  (talk) 21:19, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's present passive, as I allude to below. --Trovatore (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, because of the be.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:59, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose another possibility is that it's a passive; that is, that someone else is muddling us into war. I'm not really familiar with "muddle" as a transitive verb, except what you do to the mint leaves in a julep. --Trovatore (talk) 19:10, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Were the Meenas called Bhils?[edit]

[1] -- Karsan Chanda (talk) 13:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC) Karsan Chanda (talk) 13:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Kumar, Pramod (1984). Folk Icons and Rituals in Tribal Life. Abhinav. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-8-17017-185-0.

An influential Hungarian lady[edit]

In Chapter II of David Lloyd George's War Memoirs we read "I remember that some time in July [1914], an influential Hungarian lady, whose name I have forgotten, called upon me at 11, Downing Street, and told me that we were taking the assassination of the Grand Duke much too quietly; that it had provoked such a storm throughout the Austrian Empire as she had never witnessed, and that unless something were done immediately to satisfy and appease resentment, it would certainly result in war with Serbia, with the incalculable consequences which such an operation might precipitate in Europe". Who was that lady? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 14:38, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That was Rosika Schwimmer, according to this paper Between Front Lines. (Read from "Setting the Scene - Schwimmers's Pacifist Prelude in London".)  Card Zero  (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Card Zero: Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Religious education in Kerala[edit]

I started the article Religious education in Kerala with hope like Islamic education I will get some citations for Christian religious education in Kerala being involved in organized educational activity but practically finding bit difficult to get citations; Idk if I am missing something in my searches. Requesting help for bibliographic info for religious education other than Islam.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 17:10, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on your coverage of Islam. You should mention the St Thomas Christians who have been in Kerala since at least the second century. The Portuguese, who are fiercely Roman Catholic, disrupted the Nestorian hierarchy, and they are now split between uniates, various non-Chalcedonian oriental churches other than the Nestorian, and Protestants. 78.149.211.210 (talk) 15:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You could try:
Good hunting! Alansplodge (talk) 12:23, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks @Alansplodge Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]