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Talk:Kos (unit)

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Dubious

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I think that this is meant to say 2 vitastas, not 4. Just thinking about it as you read it indicates there's definitely a mistake there since human anatomy can't have changed that much since 2500BC! I'm not going to change this now but hope it gets resolved by someone else soon. Donama 02:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The source is a geocities page, whose source is an annotation in an Internet publication of verse 5 of chapter 69 of book 3 (Aranya Kanda) of an ancient Indian epic poem/story (Ramayana, which has over 500 chapters spread over 7 books). The summary of ancient Indian units is given by the translators/annotators as follows:

The Ancient Indian measures for distance, as per Kautilya's Artha Shaastra, a republication of Penguin are: 1 angula = 3/4 of present day inch; 4 angula-s = dharnugraha [bow grip]= 3 in; 8 angula-s = 1 dhanurmuSTi [fist with thumb raised]= 6 in; 12 angula-s = 1 vitasta [span-distance of stretched out palm between the tips of a person's thumb and little finger]= 9 in; 4 vitasta-s = 1 aratni / hasta [cubit]= 18 in; 4 aratni-s = 1 danDa / dhanus [bow]= 6 ft; 10 danDa-s = 1 rajju = 60 ft; 2 rajju-s = 1 paridesha = 120 ft; 2000 dhanus-s = 1 krosa / goruTa = 4000 yards or 2 1/4 miles, nearly 3.66 km; 4 krosa-s = 1 yojana = 9 miles, nearly 15 km; and this being so, the British revenue measured a yojana as a 5 mile distance and Chambers and Oxfords has this 5 mile figure in their dictionaries, while traditionally a yojana is said as a distance of 10 miles.

Those translators/annotators are credited as:

...translated and presented by Sri Desiraju Hanumanta Rao (Bala, Aranya and Kishkindha Kanda ) and Sri K. M. K. Murthy (Ayodhya and Yuddha Kanda) with contributions from Durga Naaga Devi and Vaasudeva Kishore (Sundara Kanda); Smt. Desiraju Kumari; Smt. K. Rajeswari...

None of this would be considered properly verifiable by the Wikipedia guidelines (see WP:RELY). I am removing this source from the page and adding a notice about the lack of references. --Donama 02:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to improve this article

• neatly organise the info under subheadings
• Info box added
• added references to the Arthsashtra english translation with specific page number. Feel free to add more robust references
• conversion to SI units (km) and imperial units (miles) added but it still needs reference improvement (not to my own satisfaction yet). Please help with this, by finding more reputed and acceptable conversion standards with reliable references. If you make changes to this section then do not forget to edit info box also.

Thanks Being.human (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:36, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]