Fact-Check Policy

Primary sources first

Where a claim concerns what a text says, we go to the text. For scripture, that means the verse itself, in the original Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali, or Prakrit where a writer is equipped to read it, and a named, citable translation where they are not. For history, it means inscriptions, copper-plate grants, archaeological reports, and contemporary accounts before it means a later retelling of them. A secondary summary is never treated as equivalent to the primary source it summarises.

Secondary sources

Commentaries, translations, and scholarship are essential to reading primary material responsibly — a verse read without its commentarial tradition is often a verse misread. We cite the specific commentary or scholarly work we rely on, by name and edition, rather than attributing an interpretation to “tradition” or “scholars” in the abstract. Where a secondary source is translating from a language the writer does not read, that dependency is treated as a primary source substitute and flagged as such internally during review.

Multiple-source verification

A factual or historical claim that rests on a single source is treated as provisional until a second, independent source corroborates it. This applies with particular force to numerical claims — dates, dimensions, quantities — which are the category of fact most often garbled in retelling. Where we cannot find independent corroboration for a striking claim, we either qualify it plainly in the text or leave it out, rather than repeating it because it is widely believed.

Scriptural references

Every scriptural quotation carries a specific citation — text, chapter, and verse — rather than a vague gesture toward “the Gita says” or “the Upanishads teach.” Where a verse is genuinely read differently across commentarial traditions, we say so rather than presenting one reading as the text’s only meaning. Where we are aware that a popular quotation is misattributed, paraphrased beyond recognition, or apocryphal, we say that too, even where the misattribution is well-loved.

Historical claims

For dating, we prefer the range accepted by the current epigraphic, archaeological, or art-historical consensus over a traditional date where the two diverge, and we note the divergence rather than silently picking the more flattering figure. Where scholarly dating is itself unsettled — as it is for a great deal of ancient Indian chronology — we present the range of serious estimates rather than a single false-precise year.

Academic references

Where we draw on modern scholarship, we cite the specific work, not a general reputation. We weigh a scholarly claim on the strength of its evidence and its standing among specialists in that particular field, not on whether its conclusion is convenient for the piece we are writing. Scholarship that is contested within its own field is presented as contested, with the substance of the disagreement, rather than adopted or dismissed wholesale.

AI is never treated as a source

An AI system is a tool that can help locate, summarise, or translate material — it is never itself evidence for a claim. No fact in a published Prajna Insights article is sourced to “AI” in the way it might be sourced to a text, an inscription, or a named scholar, because an AI system has no epistemic standing of its own: it reproduces patterns in what it was trained on, which is not the same thing as knowing something. Every factual claim traces to a citable primary or secondary source, verified by a human editor, regardless of what tools assisted in finding or drafting it. See our Editorial Policy for how we use AI more broadly.

Stating uncertainty

Not everything about a three-thousand-year-old tradition is knowable with confidence, and we do not manufacture certainty the text or the record does not support. Where the evidence is thin, the dating disputed, or the textual history unclear, our essays say so plainly — “the traditional account holds,” “most scholars now place this in the period,” “this attribution is disputed” — rather than flattening genuine uncertainty into a single confident sentence for the sake of readability.

Handling disputed viewpoints

Sanatana Dharma contains real, long-standing disagreements — between darshanas, between sampradayas, and within them — and we do not treat our own coverage as the tiebreaker. Where a question is genuinely disputed within the tradition, we represent the principal positions on their own terms and attribute each to the school or scholar who holds it, rather than adjudicating the dispute ourselves or quietly favouring one side. Where a dispute is between the tradition’s self-understanding and the conclusions of modern historical or scientific scholarship, we present both, clearly labelled, and let the reader see the disagreement rather than resolving it on their behalf.