10-12-2025, 11:01 AM
I very much agree with this. The reason why Daenism is from Aldegar is indeed because that's the way it's been for a long time, but I think that moving to a new forum and a new wiki gives us an opportunity to clean up less than ideal things we've been stuck with. When I first proposed changing "Buddhism" into "Daenism" during the religion retcon back in 2012 there was very little information on the context of its emergence, with the only reference being a short mention on the Illustrated Catalogue of Religion that Buddhism was born in Eastern Seleya from the interaction of various scholars known as Buddhas. Based on that I tried to square the circle and came up with this fictional religion that emerged with the background of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. Making it originate in Vascania was not really an option anyone considered back then, as it did not have its Indian culture firmly established, and at the same time Geraja (the equivalent of Hinduism) was already established in Malivia (though confusingly Malivia was not Indian back then).
Now we’re no longer stuck with these, and I also think that changing the terminology should not be all that difficult. Overall I do favour Option A for terminology that is very entrenched, like the name of the religion itself and its founder, while we can use option B for everything else. I originally came up with the term “Daenism” when I found out that Sanskrit dhyāna had a cognate in Avestan (daena), which gave me the idea of a sort of Avestan Buddhism. We could maybe rename the religion as Dhyanism, or keep Daenism and claim it as a “corruption” of the original Sanskrit, or take Wu’s suggestion to have it originate from दैन्य. As for “Bidar”, turns out there is a town called Bidar in Karnataka, with a Kannada etymology (apparently from the Kannada word for bamboo), so it would not be a stretch to have Bidar be a proper name for the founder with a Tannata origin for his name. For everything else I think we are free to use whichever Sanskrit terms fit best.
Now we’re no longer stuck with these, and I also think that changing the terminology should not be all that difficult. Overall I do favour Option A for terminology that is very entrenched, like the name of the religion itself and its founder, while we can use option B for everything else. I originally came up with the term “Daenism” when I found out that Sanskrit dhyāna had a cognate in Avestan (daena), which gave me the idea of a sort of Avestan Buddhism. We could maybe rename the religion as Dhyanism, or keep Daenism and claim it as a “corruption” of the original Sanskrit, or take Wu’s suggestion to have it originate from दैन्य. As for “Bidar”, turns out there is a town called Bidar in Karnataka, with a Kannada etymology (apparently from the Kannada word for bamboo), so it would not be a stretch to have Bidar be a proper name for the founder with a Tannata origin for his name. For everything else I think we are free to use whichever Sanskrit terms fit best.