1.
Yin and Yang
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Many tangible dualities are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality symbolized by yin and yang. Duality is found in many systems, but Yin and Yang are parts of a Oneness that is also equated with the Tao. A term has been coined dualistic-monism or dialectical monism, Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The yin yang shows a balance between two opposites with a portion of the element in each section. In Taoist metaphysics, distinctions between good and bad, along with other dichotomous moral judgments, are perceptual, not real, so, the duality of yin and yang is an indivisible whole. In the ethics of Confucianism on the hand, most notably in the philosophy of Dong Zhongshu. The Chinese terms yīn 陰 or 阴 shady side and yáng 陽 or 阳 sunny side are linguistically analyzable in terms of Chinese characters, pronunciations and etymology, meanings, topography, and loanwords. The first phonetic yīn 侌 cloudy ideographically combines jīn 今 now, present and yún 云 cloud, the second phonetic yáng 昜 bright originally pictured 日 the sun with 勿 rays coming down. This phonetic is expanded with the sun radical into yáng 暘 rising sun, the mound, hill radical 阝full forms semantically specify yīn 陰 shady/dark side of a hill and yáng 陽 sunny/light side of a hill. Compare the Classical Chinese names for these two bodies, Tàiyīn 太陰 moon and Tàiyáng 太陽 sun. Reconstructions of Old Chinese have illuminated the etymology of modern Chinese words, Yin and yang are semantically complex words. A reliable Chinese-English dictionary gives the translation equivalents. Many Chinese place names or toponyms contain the word yang sunny side, similarly, yin refers to north side of a hill in Huayin 華陰, which is north of Mount Hua 華山 in Shaanxi province. English yin, yang, and yin-yang are familiar loanwords of Chinese origin, the Oxford English Dictionary defines, yin Also Yin, Yn. a. Also attrib. or as adj. and transf, comb. as yin-yang, the combination or fusion of the two cosmic forces, freq. attrib. Esp. as yin-yang symbol, a divided by an S-shaped line into a dark. Comb. yang-yin = yin-yang s. v. yin b, for the earliest recorded yin and yang usages, the OED cites 1671 for yin and yang,1850 for yin-yang, and 1959 for yang-yin
2.
Bagua
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The Bagua, or Pa Kua, are eight trigrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either broken or unbroken, respectively representing yin or yang, due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as trigrams in English. The trigrams are related to Taiji philosophy, Taijiquan and the Wu Xing, the relationships between the trigrams are represented in two arrangements, the Primordial, Earlier Heaven or Fu Xi bagua, and the Manifested, Later Heaven, or King Wen bagua. The trigrams have correspondences in astronomy, astrology, geography, geomancy, anatomy, the family, the ancient Chinese classic, I Ching, consists of the 64 pairwise permutations of trigrams, referred to as hexagrams, along with commentary on each one. There are two sources of bagua. The first is from traditional Yin and Yang philosophy and this is explained by Fuxi in the following way, Another possible source of bagua is the following, attributed to King Wen of Zhou Dynasty, When the world began, there was heaven and earth. Heaven mated with the earth and gave birth to everything in the world, Heaven is Qian-gua, and the Earth is Kun-gua. The remaining six guas are their sons and daughters, the trigrams are related to the five elements of Wu Xing, used by Feng Shui practitioners and in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Those five elements are Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, the Water and Fire trigrams correspond directly with the Water and Fire elements. The element of Earth corresponds with both the trigrams of Earth and Mountain, the element of Wood corresponds with the trigrams of Wind and Thunder. The element of Metal corresponds with the trigrams of Heaven and Lake, the Bagua used in Feng shui can appear in two different versions, the Earlier Heaven Bagua, used for burial sites, and the Later Heaven Bagua, used for the residences. In Xiantian Bagua, also known as Fu Xi Bagua or Earlier Heaven Bagua, the Heaven is in the higher part, the trigram Qian is at the top, the trigram Kun is at the bottom. Gen and Dui form the last pair, one opposite the other, the adjustment of the trigrams is symmetrical by forming exact contrary pairs. They symbolize the opposite forces of Yin and Yang and represent an ideal state, the sequence of the trigrams in Houtian Bagua, also known as the Bagua of King Wen or Later Heaven Bagua, describes the patterns of the environmental changes. Kan is placed downwards and Li at the top, Zhen in the East, contrary to the Earlier Heaven Bagua, this one is a dynamic Bagua where energies and the aspects of each trigram flow towards the following. It is the used by the Luo Pan compass which is used in Feng Shui to analyze the movement of the Qi that affects us. Feng shui was made popular in the Occident thanks to the Bagua of the eight aspirations. Each trigram corresponds to an aspect of life which, in its turn, applying feng shui using the Bagua of the eight aspirations made it possible to simplify feng shui and to bring it within the reach of everyone
3.
Guangxi
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Guangxi, officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is a Chinese autonomous region in South Central China, bordering Vietnam. Formerly a province, Guangxi became a region in 1958. Guangxis location, in mountainous terrain in the far south of China, has placed it on the frontier of Chinese civilization throughout much of Chinas history, the current name Guang means expanse and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in 226 AD. It was given provincial level status during the Yuan dynasty, but even into the 20th century it was considered an open, the abbreviation of the region is 桂, which comes from the name of the city of Guilin, the provincial capital during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Originally inhabited by a mixture of groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue. In 214 BC, the Han Chinese general Zhao Tuo claimed most of southern China for Qin Shi Huang before the emperors death, the ensuing civil war permitted Zhao to establish a separate kingdom at Panyu known as Nanyue Southern Yue. The name Guangxi can be traced to the Expansive or Wide province of the Eastern Wu, Guilin formed one of its commanderies. Under the Tang dynasty, the Zhuang moved to support Piluoges Yi-ruled kingdom of Nanzhao in Yunnan, Guangxi was then divided into an area of Zhuang ascendancy west of Nanning and an area of Han ascendancy east of Nanning. After the collapse of the Southern Zhao, Liu Yan established the Southern Han in Xingwangfu, although this state gained minimal control over Guangxi, it was plagued by instability and annexed by the Song dynasty in 971. The name Guangxi itself can be traced to the Song, who administered the area as the Guangnanxi Circuit, harassed by both Song and the Jiaozhi in modern Vietnam, the Zhuang leader Nong Zhigao led a revolt in 1052 for which he is still remembered by the Zhuang people. His independent kingdom was short-lived, however, and the tattooed Song general Di Qing returned Guangxi to China, the Yuan dynasty established control over Yunnan during its conquest of the Dali Kingdom in 1253 and eliminated the Southern Song following the Battle of Yamen in 1279. Rather than ruling Lingnan as a territory or military district. The area nonetheless continued to be unruly, leading the Ming dynasty to employ the different local groups against one another, at the Battle of Big Rattan Gorge between the Zhuang and the Yao in 1465,20,000 deaths were reported. The Qing dynasty left the region alone until the imposition of rule in 1726. A Yao revolt in 1831 was followed by the Taiping Rebellion in 1850, the execution of St. Auguste Chapdelaine by local officials in Guangxi provoked the Second Opium War in 1858 and the legalization of foreign interference in the interior. Although Louis Brière de lIsle was unable to invade its depot at Longzhou, largely ineffective within Vietnam, it was still able to repulse the French from China itself at the Battle of Zhennan Pass on 23 March 1885. Following the Wuchang Uprising, Guangxi seceded from the Qing Empire on 6 November 1911, the Qing governor, Shen Bingdan, initially remained in place, but was subsequently removed by a mutiny commanded by General Lu Rongting. General Lus Old Guangxi clique overran Hunan and Guangdong as well, Zhuang loyalty made his Self-Government Army cohesive but reluctant to move far beyond its own provinces
4.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
5.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
6.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
7.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
8.
Hanyu Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
9.
Wu Chinese
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Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in the whole city of Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu province and bordering areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou/Oujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is only in national popularity to Peking opera, as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer. Wu is also spoken in a number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Shanghai, Qingtian. Suzhou has traditionally been the center of Wu and was likely the first place the distinct variety of Sinitic known as Wu developed. Suzhou dialect is considered to be the most linguistically representative of the family. Due to the influence of Shanghainese, Wu as a whole is incorrectly labelled in English as simply, Shanghainese, among speakers of other Sinitic languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is an idiom in Mandarin that specifically describes these qualities of Wu speech, Ngu nung nioe ngiu, Wu varieties have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghais Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due to their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the history of the Chinese languages. More pressing concerns of the present are those of language preservation, however, many analysts believe that a stable state of diglossia will endure for at least several generations if not indefinitely. Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Romance language and it is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch. They do this by affixing 話 Wo to their locations endonym, for example, 溫州話 Wēnzhōuhuà is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing 閒話 xiánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division, Wu, the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature. Northern Wu, Wu typically spoken in the north of Zhejiang and it by default includes the Xuanzhou division in Anhui as well, however this division is often neglected in Northern Wu discussions. Southern Wu, Wu spoken in southern Zhejiang and periphery, comprising the Oujiang, Wuzhou, Western Wu, A term gaining in usage as a synonym for the Xuanzhou division and modeled after the previous two terms since the Xuanzhou division is less representative of Northern Wu. Shanghainese, is also a common name, used because Shanghai is the most well-known city in the Wu-speaking region. The term Shanghainese is never used by linguists to refer to anything
10.
Hakka Chinese
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Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintellegible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is classified as a variety of Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features, Taiwan, where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the islands residents, is a center for the study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialects and Mainland Chinas Hakka dialects, even in Taiwan, two local varieties of Hakka exist. The Meixian dialect of northeast Guangdong in China has been taken as the dialect by the Peoples Republic of China. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created a romanization of Moiyen in 1960. The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the variety literally means guest families or guest people, Hak 客 means guest, and ka 家 means family. Among themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa 客家話, Hak-fa, 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa 土廣東話, literally Native Guangdong language, and Ngai-fa 我話, My/our language. The forebears of the Hakka came from present-day Central Plains provinces of Henan and Shaanxi, the presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese varieties, but which have been lost in Mandarin. Due to the migration of its speakers, Hakka may have influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary is found in Hakka, Min, in recent times, many She people have become Hakka speakers. A regular pattern of change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese varieties. Some examples, Characters such as 武 or 屋, are pronounced roughly mwio and uk in Early Middle Chinese, have an initial v phoneme in Hakka, being vu and vuk in Hakka respectively. Like in Mandarin, labiodentalisation process also changed mj- to a sound in Hakka before grave vowels. Middle Chinese initial phonemes /ɲ/ of the characters 人 and 日, among others, for comparison, in Mandarin, /ɲ/ became r-, while in Cantonese, it merged with initial /j/. The initial consonant phoneme exhibited by the character 話 is pronounced f or v in Hakka, the initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with an h approximant in Hakka and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative in Mandarin. Hakka has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers as the majority, some of these Hakka dialects are not mutually intelligible with each other. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan, Dabu, Jiaoling, Xingning, Wuhua, each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest
11.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
12.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
13.
Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
14.
Hokkien
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Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia
15.
Eastern philosophy
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This is because in Asia there is no single unified philosophical tradition with a single root. Some Western thinkers claim that philosophy as such is only characteristic of Western cultures, martin Heidegger is even reported to have said that only Greek and German languages are suitable for philosophizing. It is still commonplace in Western universities to teach only Western philosophy and to ignore Asian philosophy altogether, Hinduism is the dominant religion, or way of life, in South Asia. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among numerous other traditions, and a spectrum of laws and prescriptions of daily morality based on karma, dharma. Hinduism is a categorisation of distinct intellectual or philosophical points of view, rather than a rigid, Hinduism, with about one billion followers is the worlds third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some refer to it as Sanātana Dharma. Western scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and it prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings, patience, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, among others. Nevertheless, the schools are in many ways related. The āstika schools are, Samkhya, an atheistic and strongly dualist theoretical exposition of consciousness, Yoga, a school emphasising meditation, contemplation and liberation. Nyaya or logic, explores sources of knowledge, vaisheshika, an empiricist school of atomism Mīmāṃsā, an anti-ascetic and anti-mysticist school of orthopraxy Vedānta, the last segment of knowledge in the Vedas, or the Jnan Kanda. Vedanta came to be the dominant current of Hinduism in the post-medieval period, in Hindu history, the distinction of the six orthodox schools was current in the Gupta period golden age of Hinduism. Nyaya survived into the 17th century as Navya Nyaya Neo-Nyaya, while Samkhya gradually lost its status as an independent school, its tenets absorbed into Yoga, Jain philosophy deals extensively with the problems of metaphysics, reality, cosmology, ontology, epistemology and divinity. Jainism is essentially a religion of ancient India. It continues the ancient Śramaṇa tradition, which co-existed with the Vedic tradition since ancient times, Jain philosophy attempts to explain the rationale of being and existence, the nature of the Universe and its constituents, the nature of bondage and the means to achieve liberation. It has often described as an ascetic movement for its strong emphasis on self-control, austerities. Jainism strongly upholds the individualistic nature of soul and personal responsibility for decisions. Throughout its history, the Jain philosophy remained unified and single, although as a religion, Jainism was divided into various sects, the contribution of Jain philosophy in developing the Indian philosophy has been significant. Jain philosophical concepts like Ahimsa, Karma, Moksa, Samsara, Buddhism is a system of religious beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama
16.
Nagarjuna
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Nāgārjuna is widely considered one of the most important Mahayana philosophers. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, he is considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nāgārjuna is also credited with developing the philosophy of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras and, in sources, with having revealed these scriptures in the world. Furthermore, he is supposed to have written several treatises on rasayana as well as serving a term as the head of Nālandā. Very little is known of the life of Nāgārjuna, since the surviving accounts were written in Chinese. According to some accounts, Nāgārjuna was originally from South India, some scholars believe that Nāgārjuna was an advisor to a king of the Satavahana dynasty. Archaeological evidence at Amarāvatī indicates that if this is true, the king may have been Yajña Śrī Śātakarṇi, on the basis of this association, Nāgārjuna is conventionally placed at around 150–250 CE. According to a 4th/5th-century biography translated by Kumārajīva, Nāgārjuna was born into a Brahmin family in Vidarbha, some sources claim that in his later years, Nāgārjuna lived on the mountain of Śrīparvata near the city that would later be called Nāgārjunakoṇḍa. The ruins of Nāgārjunakoṇḍa are located in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, the Caitika and Bahuśrutīya nikāyas are known to have had monasteries in Nāgārjunakoṇḍa. There exist a number of influential texts attributed to Nāgārjuna though, as there are many pseudepigrapha attributed to him, the only work that all scholars agree is Nagarjunas is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, which contains the essentials of his thought in twenty-seven chapters. TRV Murti considers Ratnaavali, Pratitya Samutpaada Hridaya and Sutra Samuccaya to be works of Nagarjuna as the first two are quoted profusely by Chandrakirti and the third by Shantideva, in addition to works mentioned above, several others are attributed to Nāgārjuna. There is an ongoing, lively controversy over which of those works are authentic, contemporary research suggest that these works belong to a significantly later period, either to late 8th or early 9th century CE, and hence can not be authentic works of Nāgārjuna. However, several works considered important in esoteric Buddhism are attributed to Nāgārjuna and these historians try to account for chronological difficulties with various theories. For example, a propagation of later writings via mystical revelation, for a useful summary of this tradition, see Wedemeyer 2007. Lindtner considers that the Māhaprajñāparamitopadeśa Commentary on the Great Perfection of Wisdom is not a work of Nāgārjuna. This work is attested in a Chinese translation by Kumārajīva. There is much discussion as to whether this is a work of Nāgārjuna. Étienne Lamotte, who translated one third of the work into French, the Chinese scholar-monk Yin Shun felt that it was the work of a South Indian and that Nāgārjuna was quite possibly the author. These two views are not necessarily in opposition and a South Indian Nāgārjuna could well have studied the northern Sarvāstivāda, neither of the two felt that it was composed by Kumārajīva, which others have suggested
17.
Adi Shankara
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Adi Shankara was a philosopher and theologian from India who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta. He is credited with unifying and establishing the main currents of thought in Hinduism and his works in Sanskrit discuss the unity of the ātman and Nirguna Brahman brahman without attributes. He wrote copious commentaries on the Vedic canon in support of his thesis and his works elaborate on ideas found in the Upanishads. Shankaras publications criticised the ritually-oriented Mīmāṃsā school of Hinduism and he also explained the key difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, stating that Hinduism asserts Atman exists, while Buddhism asserts that there is no Soul, no Self. Shankara travelled across the Indian subcontinent to propagate his philosophy through discourses and debates with other thinkers and he established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the Mīmāṃsā school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism. He is reputed to have founded four mathas, which helped in the development, revival. Adi Shankara is believed to be the organiser of the Dashanami monastic order and he is also known as Adi Shankaracharya, Shankara Bhagavatpada, sometimes spelled as Sankaracharya, Śaṅkarācārya, Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda and Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya. There are at least fourteen different known biographies of Adi Shankaras life, many of these are called the Śankara Vijaya, while some are called Guruvijaya, Sankarabhyudaya and Shankaracaryacarita. Of these, the Brhat-Sankara-Vijaya by Citsukha is the oldest hagiography but only available in excerpts, other significant biographies are the Mādhavīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ, the Cidvilāsīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ, and the Keraļīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ. Some biographies are probably forgeries by those who sought to create a basis for their rituals or theories. Adi Shankara died in the thirty third year of his life, the Sringeri records state that Shankara was born in the 14th year of the reign of VikramAditya, but it is unclear as to which king this name refers. This conforms to the chronology calculated based off the Hindu Puranas, 44–12 BCE, the commentator Anandagiri believed he was born at Chidambaram in 44 BCE and died in 12 BCE. 6th century CE, Telang placed him in this century, sir R. G. Bhandarkar believed he was born in 680 CE. 788–820 CE, This was proposed by early 20th scholars and was accepted by scholars such as Max Müller, Macdonnel, Pathok, Deussen and Radhakrishna. The date 788–820 is also among those considered acceptable by Swami Tapasyananda, sometime between 700-750 CE, late 20th-century scholarship has questioned the 788-820 CE dates, placing Adi Shankaras life of 32 years in the first half of the 8th century. The popularly accepted dating places Adi Shankara to be a scholar from the first half of the 8th century CE and his father died while Shankara was very young. Shankaras upanayanam, the initiation into student-life, had to be delayed due to the death of his father, Shankaras hagiography describe him as someone who was attracted to the life of Sannyasa from early childhood. A story, found in all hagiographies, describe Shankara at age eight going to a river with his mother, Sivataraka, to bathe, Shankara called out to his mother to give him permission to become a Sannyasin or else the crocodile will kill him
18.
Confucius
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Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death. Confuciuss principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief and he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government and he espoused the well-known principle Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself, the Golden Rule. Confucius is also a deity in Daoism. According to tradition, three generations before Confucius time, his ancestors had migrated from the Song state to the Lu state, Confucius was a descendant of the Shang dynasty Kings through the Dukes of Song. Confucius family and personal name respectively was Kong Qiu, in Chinese, he is most often known as Kongzi. He is also known by the honorific Kong Fuzi, in the Wade–Giles system of romanization, the honorific name is rendered as Kung Fu-tzu. The Latinized name Confucius is derived from Kong Fuzi, and was first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China, within the Analects, he is often referred to simply as the Master. In 1 AD, Confucius was given his first posthumous name, in 1530, he was declared the Extremely Sage Departed Teacher. He is also known separately as the Great Sage, First Teacher and it is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28,551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state and his father Kong He, also known as Shuliang He, was an officer in the Lu military. Kong died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his mother Yan Zhengzai in poverty and his mother would later die at less than 40 years of age. At age 19 he married his wife Qiguan, and a year later the couple had their first child, Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child. Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned the Six Arts, Confucius was born into the class of shi, between the aristocracy and the common people. When his mother died, Confucius is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition, the Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions in the Lu bureaucracy
19.
Abhinavagupta
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Abhinavagupta was a philosopher, mystic and aesthetician from Kashmir. He was also considered an influential musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian and he was born in Kashmir in a family of scholars and mystics and studied all the schools of philosophy and art of his time under the guidance of as many as fifteen teachers and gurus. In his long life he completed over 35 works, the largest and most famous of which is Tantrāloka, Another one of his very important contributions was in the field of philosophy of aesthetics with his famous Abhinavabhāratī commentary of Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata Muni. Abhinavaguptas thought was influenced by Buddhist logic. Abhinavagupta was not his name, rather a title he earned from his master, carrying a meaning of competence. In his analysis, Jayaratha – who was Abhinavaguptas most important commentator – also reveals three more meanings, being vigilant, being present everywhere and protected by praises. As an author he is considered a systematiser of the philosophical thought, various contemporary scholars have characterised Abhinavagupta as a brilliant scholar and saint, the pinnacle of the development of Kasmir Śaivism and in possession of yogic realization. The term by which Abhinavagupta himself defines his origin is yoginībhū, in Kashmir Shaivism and especially in Kaula it is considered that a progeny of parents established in the divine essence of Bhairava, is endowed with exceptional spiritual and intellectual prowess. Such a child is supposed to be the depository of knowledge, the father, Narasiṃha Gupta, after his wifes death favoured an ascetic lifestyle, while raising his three children. He had a mind and a heart outstandingly adorned with devotion to Mahesvara. He was Abhinavaguptas first teacher, instructing him in grammar, logic, Abhinavagupta had a brother and a sister. The brother, Manoratha, was a well versed devotee of Shiva and his sister, Ambā, devoted herself to worship after the death of her husband in late life. His cousin Karṇa demonstrated even from his youth that he grasped the essence of Śaivism and was detached of the world and his wife was presumably Abhinavaguptas older sister Ambā, who looked with reverence upon her illustrious brother. Ambā and Karṇa had a son, Yogeśvaridatta, who was talented in yoga. Abhinavagupta also mentions his disciple Rāmadeva as faithfully devoted to scriptural study, Another cousin was Kṣema, possibly the same as Abhinavaguptas illustrious disciple Kṣemarāja. Mandra, a friend of Karṇa, was their host in a suburban residence, he was not only rich and in possession of a pleasing personality. The emerging picture here is that Abhinavagupta lived in a nurturing and protected environment, everyone around him was filled with spiritual fervor and had taken Abhinavagupta as their spiritual master. Such a supporting group of family and friends was equally necessary as his qualities of genius
20.
Agastya
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Agastya is a revered Vedic sage of Hinduism. In the Indian traditions, he is a recluse and an influential scholar in diverse languages of the Indian subcontinent. He and his wife Lopamudra are the authors of hymns 1.165 to 1.191 in the Sanskrit text Rigveda. Agastya is considered by many to be the father of the Tamil language, Agastya is a character in numerous inconsistent mythologies and regional epics including the major Ramayana and Mahabharata. He is also revered in the Puranic literature of Shaktism and Vaishnavism and he is one of the Indian sages found in ancient sculpture and reliefs in Hindu temples of South Asia, and Southeast Asia such as in the early medieval era Shaiva temples on Java Indonesia. He is the figure and Guru in the ancient Javanese language text Agastyaparva. He is also referred to as Mana, Kalasaja, Kumbhaja, the etymological origin of Agastya is unclear and there are several theories. One states that it is derived from a tree called Agati gandiflora. This theory suggests that Agati evolved into Agastih, and favors Dravidian origins of the Vedic sage, a third theory links it to Indo-European origins, through the Iranian word gasta which means sin, foul, and a-gasta would mean not sin, not foul. The word is written as Agasti and Agathiyar. The origins of Agastya are mythical, unlike most Vedic sages, he has neither a human mother nor a father. According to Hindu mythology, his miraculous birth follows a yajna being done by gods Varuna and Mitra and they are overwhelmed by her extraordinary sexuality, and ejaculate. Their semen falls into a mud pitcher, which is the womb in which the fetus of Agastya grows and he is born from this jar, along with his twin sage Vashistha in some mythologies. This mythology gives him the name kumbhayoni, which means he whose womb was a mud pot. Agastya leads a life, educates himself, becoming a celebrated sage. He is not born to Brahmin parents, but is called a Brahmin in many Indian texts because of his learning, in the Tamil traditions, he is considered a form of the Hindu god Shiva, one well versed in Sanskrit and a symbol of Tamil learning. According to inconsistent legends in the Puranic and the epics, the ascetic sage Agastya proposed to Lopamudra and her parents were unwilling to bless the engagement, concerned that she would be unable to live the austere lifestyle of Agastya in the forest. Therewith, Lopamudra becomes the wife of Agastya, Agastya and Lopamudra have a son named Drdhasyu, sometimes called Idhmavaha
21.
Ashtavakra
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Ashtavakra is a revered Vedic sage in Hinduism. His name literally means eight bends, reflecting the eight physical handicaps he was born with and his maternal grandfather was the Vedic sage Aruni, his parents were both vedic students at Arunis school. Ashtavakra studied, became a sage and a character in the mythologies of the Hindu Epics. Ashtavakra is the author of the text Aṣṭāvakra Gītā, also known as Aṣṭāvakra Saṃhitā, the text is a treatise on Brahman, Atman and monism. Little is known about the life or century in which Ashtavakra actually lived, except for the found in the major Indian Epics. The legends state that sage Aruni, mentioned in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, kahoḍa was one of his students, along with Arunis daughter Sujata. She got pregnant, and during her pregnancy, the developing baby heard the chanting of the Vedas, according to one version of the legends surrounding Ashtavakra, his father was once reciting the Vedas, but erred in correct intonation. The fetus corrected his father, the father got angry and cursed him, the curse caused him to be born crooked, with eight bends, which is what his name Ashtavakra means. The different versions of the legends chronologically place him with Janaka, Aṣṭāvakra is credited as the author of the Ashtavakra Gita, which means song of Ashtavakra. The text is known as Aṣṭāvakra Saṃhitā. Results in consistency building by the audience, which enables the transcendence of these two viewpoints, Aṣṭāvakra is referenced in verse 6.119.17 of Yuddha Kāṇḍa in Vālmikīs Rāmāyaṇa. When the Gandharva then bowed down to Ashtavakra, Ashtavakra said that he would be released from the curse by Rama in Treta Yuga, in the Vana Parva of the Mahābhārata, the legend of Aṣṭāvakra is described in greater detail. On losing the game of dice with the Kauravas, the five Pāṇḍava princes, on their pilgrimage, they meet the sage Lomaśa, and he narrates to the Pāṇḍava princes the legend of Aṣṭāvakra, over three chapters of Vana Parva of the Mahābhārata. Aṣṭāvakras wisdom on various aspects of existence is recited in the Mahābhārata. For example, Aṣṭāvakra and Śvetaketu made his way to Janakas palace, Aṣṭāvakra first faced the gatekeeper who tried to keep the young boy out. On convincing the gatekeeper that he was versed in the scriptures and hence old. Then Janaka tested Aṣṭāvakra with cryptic questions which Aṣṭāvakra answered with ease, Janaka decided to let Aṣṭāvakra face Vandin. Vandin and Aṣṭāvakra began the debate, with Vandin starting and they alternately composed six extempore verses on the numbers one to twelve
22.
Atri
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Atri or Attri is a Vedic sage, who is credited with composing a large number of hymns to Agni, Indra and other Vedic deities of Hinduism. Atri is one of the Saptarishi in the Hindu tradition, the fifth Mandala of Rigveda is called the Atri Mandala in his honour, and the eighty seven hymns in it are attributed to him and his descendants. Atri is also mentioned in the Puranas and the Hindu Epics such as the Ramayana, Atri is one of the seven great Rishi or saptarshi along with Marichi, Angiras, Pulaha, Kratu, Pulastya and Vashistha. According to the legends of the Vedic era, sage Atri was married to Anasuya Devi and they had three sons, Dattatreya, Durvasas and Soma. As per divine account, he is the last among the seven saptharishis and is believed to have originated from the tongue, the wife of Atri was Anusuya, who is considered one of the seven female pathivrathas. When instructed by divine voice to do penance, Atri readily agreed, pleased by his devotion and prayers, the Hindu trinity, namely, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva appeared before him and offered him boons. He sought all the three to be born to him, another version of the legend states that Anusuya, by the powers of her chastity, rescued the three gods and in return, they were born as children to her. Brahma was born to her as Chandra, Vishnu as Dattatreya, the mention about Atri is found in various scriptures, with the notable being in Rig Veda. He is also associated with various ages, the notable being in Dvapara Yuga during Ramayana, the pair is also attributed to bringing river Ganga down to earth, the mention of which is found in Shiva Purana. He is the seer of the fifth Mandala of the Rigveda, Atri had many sons and disciples who have also contributed in the compilation of the Rig Veda and other Vedic texts. Mandala 5 comprises 87 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra, but also to the Visvedevas, the Maruts, the twin-deity Mitra-Varuna, two hymns each are dedicated to Ushas and to Savitr. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the Atri clan composers and these hymns of Rigveda was composed in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, most likely between c. The Atri hymns of the Rigveda are significant for their structure as well as for featuring spiritual ideas in the form of riddles. These hymns include lexical, syntactic, morphological and verb play utilizing the flexibility of the Sanskrit language, the hymn 5.44 of the Rigveda in Atri Mandala is considered by scholars such as Geldner to be the most difficult riddle hymn in all of the Rigveda. The verses are known for their elegant presentation of natural phenomenon through metaphors. While the fifth mandala is attributed to Atri and his associates, sage Atri is mentioned or credited with other verses of the Rigveda in other Mandalas. In the Ramayana, Rama, Sita and Lakshmana visit Atri, a number of sages named Atri are mentioned in the various medieval era Puranas. The mythical legends therein about Atri are diverse and inconsistent and it is unclear if these refer to the same person, or to different Rishis who had the same name
23.
Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at Kings College, Cambridge and he was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bomb outrages linked to his organisation, but was only convicted and imprisoned for writing articles against British rule in India. He was released when no evidence could be provided, following the murder of prosecution-witness during the trial, during his stay in the jail he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. During his stay in Pondicherry, Aurobindo developed a method of practice he called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of life into a life divine. He believed in a spiritual realisation that not only liberated man but transformed his nature, in 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He died on 5 December 1950 in Pondicherry and his works also include philosophy, poetry, translations and commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1943, Aurobindo Ghose was born into a Kayastha family in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, India on 15 August 1872. His mother was Swarnalata Devi, whose father was Shri Rajnarayan Bose and she had been sent to the more salubrious surroundings of Calcutta for Aurobindos birth. Aurobindo had two siblings, Benoybhusan and Manmohan, a younger sister, Sarojini, and a younger brother. Young Aurobindo was brought up speaking English but used Hindustani to communicate with servants, although his family were Bengali, his father believed British culture to be superior. Darjeeling was a centre of British life in India and the school was run by Irish nuns, through which the boys would have exposed to Christian religious teachings. Krishna Dhun Ghose wanted his sons to enter the Indian Civil Service, to achieve this it was necessary that they study in England and so it was there that the entire family moved in 1879. The three brothers were placed in the care of the Reverend W. H. Drewett in Manchester, Drewett was a minister of the Congregational Church whom Krishna Dhun Ghose knew through his British friends at Rangapur. The boys were taught Latin by Drewett and his wife and this was a prerequisite for admission to good English schools and, after two years, in 1881, the elder two siblings were enrolled at Manchester Grammar School. Aurobindo was considered too young for enrolment and he continued his studies with the Drewetts, learning history, Latin, French, geography and arithmetic. Although the Drewetts were told not to teach religion, the boys inevitably were exposed to Christian teachings and events, Drewett emigrated to Australia in 1884, causing the boys to be uprooted as they went to live with Drewetts mother in London. In September of that year, Aurobindo and Manmohan joined St Pauls School there and he learned Greek and spent the last three years reading literature and English poetry
24.
Buddha
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Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, after the title of Buddha, was an ascetic and sage, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the part of ancient India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region and he later taught throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala. Gautama is the figure in Buddhism. He is recognized by Buddhists as a teacher who attained full Buddhahood. Accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death, various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later. Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the facts of the Buddhas life. Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddhas lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential schools of thought like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism. Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thought, thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time. The times of Gautamas birth and death are uncertain, most historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE. These alternative chronologies, however, have not yet accepted by all historians. It was either a republic, or an oligarchy, and his father was an elected chieftain. He obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath, no written records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter. One Edict of Asoka, who reigned from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, another one of his edicts mentions the titles of several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the precursor of the Pāli Canon and they are written in the Gāndhārī language using the Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to the third century CE. The sources for the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different and these include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā. Of these, the Buddhacarita is the earliest full biography, a poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa in the first century CE. The Lalitavistara Sūtra is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE, the Mahāvastu from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE
25.
Chanakya
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Chanakya was an Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor. He is traditionally identified as Kauṭilya or Vishnugupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise, as such, he is considered the pioneer of the field of political science and economics in India, and his work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics. His works were lost near the end of the Gupta Empire, Chanakya assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in his rise to power. He is widely credited for having played an important role in the establishment of the Maurya Empire, Chanakya served as the chief advisor to both emperors Chandragupta and his son Bindusara. There is little historical information about Chanakya, most of it comes from semi-legendary accounts. Thomas Trautmann identifies four distinct accounts of the ancient Chanakya-Chandragupta katha, In all the four versions, Chanakya feels insulted by the Nanda king, after dethroning the Nandas, he installs Chandragupta as the new king. The ancient Arthashastra has been attributed to Chanakya by a number of scholars. The Arthashastra identifies its author by the name Kauṭilya, except for one verse that refers to him by the name Vishnugupta, Kauṭilya is presumably the name of the authors gotra. One of the earliest Sanskrit literatures to identify Chanakya with Vishnugupta explicitly was Vishnu Sharmas Panchatantra in the 3rd century BCE. K. C, ojha puts forward the view that the traditional identification of Vishnugupta with Kauṭilya was caused by a confusion of the texts editor and its originator. He suggests that Vishnugupta was a redactor of the work of Kauṭilya. Thomas Burrow goes even further and suggests that Chanakya and Kauṭilya may have two different people. Chanakya was the teacher of Chandragupta Maurya and he served as a minister in the court of Chandragupta and Bindusara. The legend of Chanakya and Chandragupta is detailed in the Pali-language Buddhist chronicles of Sri Lanka and it is not mentioned in Dipavamsa, the oldest of these chronicles. The earliest Buddhist source to mention the legend is Mahavamsa, which is dated between 5th and 6th centuries. Vamsatthappakasini, a commentary on Mahavamsa provides some details about the legend. Its author is unknown, and it is dated variously from 6th century CE to 13th century CE, some other texts provide additional details about the legend, for example, the Maha-Bodhi-Vamsa and the Atthakatha give names of the 9 Nanda kings who supposedly preceded Chandragupta. According to the Buddhist legend, the Nanda kings who preceded Chandragupta were robbers-turned-rulers, Chanakya was a Brahmin from Takkāsila. He was well-versed in three Vedas and politics and he had canine teeth, which were believed to be a mark of royalty
26.
Dignaga
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Dignāga was an Indian Buddhist scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian logic. Dignāgas work laid the groundwork for the development of logic in India and created the first system of Buddhist logic. According to Georges B Dreyfus, his philosophical school brought about an Indian epistemological turn and became the standard formulation of Buddhist logic and epistemology in India, Dignāgas thought influenced later Buddhist philosophers like Dharmakirti and also Hindu thinkers of the Nyaya school. Dignāgas epistemology accepted only perception and inference are valid instruments of knowledge, Dignāgas epistemology holds that there are only two instruments of knowledge or valid cognitions, perception and inference. Perception is a non-conceptual knowing of particulars which is bound by causality, while inference is reasonable, linguistic and this conservative epistemic theory was in contrast to the Nyaya school who accepted other means of knowledge such as Upamāṇa. During Dignāgas time, the Nyaya school of Hinduism had begun to hold debates using their approach to making and evaluating arguments with logic. Dignāga was a student of Vasubandhu, and therefore believed that dharmas are empty, in other words, there are not universal qualities such as dog-ness or mammal-ness. To do this he employed what is referred to in formal logic in the West as contraposition, or in Sanskrit, Apoha, therefore, the example premise above, all dogs are mammals becomes all non-mammals are non-dogs. These two statements are logically equivalent, once this had been done, Dignāga could make arguments about non-mammals without explicitly positing that mammals have an essential nature. Still, using this method Dignāga and other Buddhist logicians were able to further their logical discourse, among Dignāgas works there is Hetucakra, considered his first work on formal logic, advancing a new form of deductive reasoning. It may be regarded as a bridge between the doctrine of trairūpya and Dignāgas own later theory of vyapti which is a concept related to the Western notion of implication. Dignāgas most important work, the Pramāṇa-samuccaya, examined perception, language and it presents perception as a bare cognition, devoid of conceptualization and sees language as useful fictions created through a process of exclusion. Dignaga also influenced non-Buddhist Sanskrit thinkers and that is, when making any claim at all, it came to be seen as incumbent on a philosopher to situate that claim within a fully developed theory of knowledge. The systematic articulation and interrogation of the presuppositions of all knowledge claims thus became the central preoccupation of most Sanskrit philosophers. Buddhist logic Critical Buddhism Dharmakirti Epistemology Nyaya Chu, Junjie, studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition, pp. 129–146 Mookerjee, S. The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, an Exposition of the Philosophy of Critical Realism as expounded by the School of Dignāga Sastri, N. Aiyaswami, Diṅnāgas Ālambanaparīkṣā and Vṛtti. Restored with the commentary of Dharmapāla into Sanskrit from the Tibetan and Chinese versions and edited with English translations, tucci, G The Nyāyamukha of Dignāga, the oldest Buddhist Text on Logic after Chinese and Tibetan Materials Vidyabhusana, S. C. History of the Mediaeval School of Indian Logic, 佛家因明的理性思考 蔡禮德 Hetu－Vidyā Of Rational Thinking, Choy L. T
27.
Gaudapada
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Gauḍapāda, also referred as Gauḍapādacharya, was an early medieval era scholar of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. While details of his biography are uncertain, his ideas inspired others such as Adi Shankara who called him a Paramaguru, Gaudapada was the author or compiler of the Māṇḍukya Kārikā, also known as Gaudapada Karika. The text consists of four chapters, of which Chapter Four uses Buddhist terminology thereby showing it was influenced by Buddhism, however, doctrinally Gaudapadas work is Vedantin, and not Buddhist. The first three chapters of Gaudapadas text have been influential in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, the century in which Gaudapada lived and his life details are uncertain. Estimates vary from early 6th to 7th century CE and he is generally dated from estimates for Adi Shankara, whose teacher Govinda Bhagavatpada is presumed to be the direct disciple of Gaudapada. Shankara in some texts, refers to Gaudapada as the teacher who knows the tradition of the Vedānta. Assuming how long each lived and when, Gaudapada is estimated to have lived sometime in the 7th century CE, alternatively, states Potter, the phrase teachers teacher should not be taken literally, and more in the sense of another phrase he uses for Gaudapada, namely Paramaguru. He may have been the guru of Sankaras teacher, but was likely a more distant guru, another estimate places him around the early 6th century. This estimate is based on Buddhist literature, and particularly those of scholars Bhavaviveka, Santaraksita, Bhavaviveka was a contemporary of Dharmapala, states Karl Potter, while Chinese texts and travel accounts place Dharmapala in the mid 6th century CE. Assuming the Buddhist and Chinese records are reliable, and for Bhavaviveka to have quoted Gauḍapada kārikās, Gaudapada must have lived around 500 CE, or sometime in the first half of 6th century CE. But, it is certain that Gaudapada lived after the 4th century because he cites some Buddhist views of Nāgārjuna and Asanga, Gaudapada wrote or compiled the Māṇḍukya Kārikā, also known as the Gauḍapāda Kārikā and as the Āgama Śāstra. Some scholars, states Karl Potter, doubt that Gaudapada Karika was written by one author, the Māṇḍukya Kārikā is a concise explanation, in verse form, of the doctrines in Mandukya Upanishad, one of the shortest but a profound Upanishad, consisting of just 12 sentences. Even before the time of Adi Shankara, Mandukya Upanishad was considered to be a Śruti, in later periods it acquired a higher value, and expressing the Upanishadic essence. Gaudapadas text, adds Nakamura, was treasured but not considered a Sruti by Advaita scholars, while Ramanuja, most of Chapter Three of the compilation of Gaudapada Karika was complete by 400–500 CE, states Nakamura. He estimates that most of Chapter One was complete by 300–400 CE, while Chapter Two which presupposes Chapter One can be dated to have been complete after Chapter One. Most of the Chapter Four was written sometime between 400 and 600 CE, the Self resides in ones body in three forms, waking state, sleeping dreamy state and in deep sleep state, according to Potters translation. The description of these states of self are similar, states Arvind Sharma, to found in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Gaudapada presents the traditional theories about life in vogue, before and in his times
28.
Kapila
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Kapila is a given name of different individuals in ancient and medieval Indian texts, of which the most well-known is the founder of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy. Kapila of Samkhya fame is considered a Vedic sage, estimated to have lived in the 6th-century BCE, rishi Kapila is credited with authoring the influential Samkhya-sutra, in which aphoristic sutras present the dualistic philosophy of Samkhya. Kapilas influence on Buddha and Buddhism have long been the subject of scholarly studies, many historic personalities in Hinduism and Jainism, mythical figures, pilgrimage sites in Indian religion, as well as an ancient variety of cow went by the name Kapila. The name Kapila appears in texts, and it is likely that these names refer to different people. The most famous reference is to the sage Kapila with his student Āsuri, while he pre-dates Buddha, it is unclear which century he lived in, with some suggesting 6th-century BCE. Others place him in the 7th century BCE and this places him in the late Vedic period, and he has been called a Vedic sage. Kapila is credited with authoring an influential sutra, called Samkhya-sutra and these sutras were explained in another well studied text of Hinduism called the Samkhyakarika. Beyond the Samkhya theories, he appears in many dialogues of Hindu texts, the name Kapila is used for many individuals in Hinduism, few of which may refer to the same person. The term Kapileya, meaning clans of Kapila, occurs in the Aitareya Brahmana VII.17, the pariśiṣṭa of the Atharvaveda mentions Kapila, Āsuri and Pañcaśikha in connection with a libation ritual for whom tarpana is to be offered. In verse 5.2 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad, states Larson, tam agre. which when compared to other verses of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad Kapila likely construes to Rudra and Hiranyagarbha. Kapila, states George Williams, lived long before the composition of the Epics and the Puranas, Kapila and hermits then went to Kapilasangama, a holy place where rivers meet. The Brahma Purana also mentions Kapila in the context of Sagaras 60,000 sons who looking for their Ashvamedha horse and he woke up, the brilliance in his eyes burnt all but four of Sagaras sons to ashes, leaving few survivors carrying on the family lineage. As Vishnus incarnation, The Narada Purana enumerates two Kapilas, one as the incarnation of Brahma and another as the incarnation of Vishnu, the Puranas Bhagavata, Brahmanda, Vishnu, Padma, Skanda, Narada Purana, and the Valmiki Ramayana mentions Kapila is an incarnation of Vishnu. The Padma Purana and Skanda Purana conclusively call him Vishnu himself who descended on earth to disseminate true knowledge, Bhagavata Purana calls him Vedagarbha Vishnu. The Vishnusahasranama mentions Kapila as a name of Vishnu, in his commentary on the Sankyasutra, Vijnanabhikshu mentions Kapila, the founder of Sankya system, is Vishnu. As son of Kardama muni, The Book 3 of the Bhagavata Purana, states Kapila was the son of Kardama Prajapati, Kardama was born from Chaya, the reflection of Brahma. Vishnu advises Kardama to marry Devahuti, and blesses Kardama that he himself will be born as his son. H. H. Wilson notes the Bhagavatha adds a third daughter Devahuti to introduce the long legend of Kardama, and of their son Kapila, in the Bhagavata Purana, Kapila presents to his mother Devahuti, the philosophy of yoga and theistic dualism
29.
Kukai
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Kūkai, also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi, 774–835, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist who founded the Shingon or True Word school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the title of Odaishisama. Kūkai is famous as a calligrapher and engineer, among the many achievements attributed to him is the invention of the kana, the syllabary with which, in combination with Chinese characters, the Japanese language is written to this day. His religious writings, some fifty works, expound the Esoteric Shingon doctrine, the major ones have been translated into English by Yoshito Hakeda. Kūkai was born in 774 in the present-day Zentsū-ji precincts in the province of Sanuki on the island of Shikoku and his family were members of the aristocratic Saeki family, a branch of the ancient Ōtomo clan. There is some doubt as to his name, Tōtomono is recorded in one source. Mao is generally used in modern studies, little more is known about Kūkais childhood. At the age of fifteen, he began to receive instruction in the Chinese classics under the guidance of his maternal uncle, the family fortunes had fallen by 791 when Kūkai journeyed to Nara, the capital at the time, to study at the government university, the Daigakuryō. Graduates were typically chosen for prestigious positions as bureaucrats, biographies of Kūkai suggest that he became disillusioned with his Confucian studies, but developed a strong interest in Buddhist studies instead. Around the age of 22, Kūkai was introduced to Buddhist practice involving chanting the mantra of the Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha, during this period, Kūkai frequently sought out isolated mountain regions where he chanted the Ākāśagarbha mantra relentlessly. At age 24 he published his first major work, Sangō Shiiki, in which he quotes from an extensive list of sources, including the classics of Confucianism, Daoism. The Nara temples, with their libraries, possessed these texts. During this period in Japanese history, the government closely regulated Buddhism through the Sōgō and enforced its policies. Ascetics and independent monks, like Kūkai, were banned and lived outside the law. Though Kūkai soon managed to obtain a copy of this sūtra which had recently become available in Japan. Much of the sūtra was in untranslated Sanskrit written in the Siddhaṃ script, Kūkai found the translated portion of the sūtra was very cryptic. Because Kūkai could find no one who could elucidate the text for him, ryuichi Abe suggests that the Mahavairocana Tantra bridged the gap between his interest in the practice of religious exercises and the doctrinal knowledge acquired through his studies. In 804 Kūkai took part in an expedition to China in order to learn more about the Mahavairocana Tantra
30.
Longchenpa
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Longchen Rabjampa, Drimé Özer, commonly abbreviated to Longchenpa, was a major teacher in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Along with Sakya Pandita and Je Tsongkhapa, he is recognized as one of the three main manifestations of Mañjuśrī to have taught in Central Tibet. His major work is the Seven Treasuries, which encapsulates the previous six hundred years of Buddhist thought in Tibet, Longchenpa was a critical link in the exoteric and esoteric transmission of the Dzogchen teachings. He was abbot of Samye, one of Tibets most important monasteries and the first Buddhist monastery established in the Himalaya, but spent most of his life travelling or in retreat. Longchen Rabjampa was born at Gra-phu stod-gron in g. Yo-ru in Eastern dBus in Central Tibet on the day of the second lunar month of the Earth-Male-Ape year. The date of Longchen Rabjampas parinirvāṇa was the day of the twelfth lunar month of the Water-Female-Hare year at O-rgyan-rdzong in Gangs-ri thod-kar. Longchenpa is regarded as an incarnation of the princess Pema Sal. He was born to the master Tenpasung, an adept at both the sciences and the practice of mantra, and Dromza Sonamgyen, who was descended from the family of Dromton Gyelwie Jungne. Legend states that at age five, Longchenpa could read and write, Longchenpa was first ordained at the age of twelve and studied extensively with the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje. He received not only the Nyingma transmissions as passed down in his family, at the age of nineteen, Longchenpa entered the famous shedra Sangpu Neutok, where he acquired great scholarly wisdom. He later chose to practice in the solitude of the mountains, when he was in his late twenties two events occurred that were to be of decisive importance in his intellectual and spiritual development. One was a vision of Guru Padmasambhava and his consort Yeshe Tsogyal, therefore, someone will come to hold my lineage. Together with Rangjung Dorje, Longchenpa accompanied Kumaraja and his disciples for two years, during which time he received all of Rigdzin Kumaradzas transmissions. After several years in retreat, Longchenpa attracted more and more students, during a stay in Bhutan, Longchenpa fathered a daughter and a son, of which the latter, Trugpa Odzer, also became a holder of the Nyingtig lineage. A detailed account of the life and teachings of Longchenpa is found in Buddha Mind by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, Pema Lingpa the famous terton of Bhutan is regarded as the immediate reincarnation of Longchenpa. In the Nyingma lineage, Longchenpa, Rongzom, and Mipham are known as the Three Omniscient Ones, Longchenpa is widely considered the single most important writer on the Dzogchen teachings. He is also a commentator of the Kunyed Gyalpo Tantra, a text belonging to the Mind Class of the Ati Yoga Inner Tantras, the Precious Treasury of Pith Instructions. The Precious Treasury of Philosophical Systems, padma Publishing 2007 The Treasury of Doxography
31.
Mozi
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Mozi, original name Mo Di, was a Chinese philosopher during the Hundred Schools of Thought period. A book named him, the Mozi, contains material ascribed to him. Born in what is now Tengzhou, Shandong Province, he founded the school of Mohism that argued strongly against Confucianism and Taoism and his philosophy emphasized self-restraint, self-reflection and authenticity rather than obedience to ritual. During the Warring States period, Mohism was actively developed and practiced in many states, during that period, many Mohist classics are by many believed to have been ruined when the emperor Qin Shi Huang supposedly carried out the burning of books and burying of scholars. The importance of Mohism further declined when Confucianism became the dominant school of thought during the Han Dynasty, for the modern juvenile audience of Chinese speakers, the image of his school and its founder were popularized by the animated TV series The Legend of Qin. There has been debate about the actual name of Mozi. Three concepts of its origin exist as of today, traditionally, Mozi was said to have inherited the surname Mo from his supposed ancestor, the Lord of Guzhu, himself descended from Shennong, the legendary emperor. As Mo came to be the name of the Mohist school itself, it might have derived from the name of a criminal punishment and it signals the Mohists identification with the lowest of common people. The actual ancestral name and clan name of Mozi is not known and it may be that, because he was likely born into the lower classes, he did not have an ancestral or clan name. During Chinese antiquity, the vast majority of the Chinese people who were not related to aristocratic families did not possess ancestral, a plausible source of Mozis name may have been the philosophers skin complexion itself, which is referred to as dark in the text. Mozi was going north to Qi and met a fortune teller on the way, the fortune teller told him, God kills the black dragon in the north today. Most historians believe that Mozi was a member of the artisan class who managed to climb his way to an official post. It is known, however, that his parents were not affectionate towards him, Mozi was a native of the State of Lu, although for a time he served as a minister in the State of Song. Like Confucius, Mozi was known to have maintained a school for those who desired to become officials serving in the different ruling courts of the Warring States. Mozi was a carpenter and was skilled in creating devices, designing everything from mechanical birds to wheeled. Though he did not hold an official position, Mozi was sought out by various rulers as an expert on fortification. He managed to attract a following during his lifetime which rivaled that of Confucius. His followers—mostly technicians and craftspeople—were organized in an order that studied both Mozis philosophical and technical writings
32.
Mencius
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Mencius or Mengzi was a Chinese philosopher who is the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself. He was an itinerant Chinese philosopher and sage, and one of the interpreters of Confucianism. Supposedly, he was a pupil of Confucius grandson, Zisi, like Confucius, according to legend, he travelled throughout China for forty years to offer advice to rulers for reform. During the Warring States period, Mencius served as an official and he expressed his filial devotion when he took three years leave of absence from his official duties for Qi to mourn his mothers death. Disappointed at his failure to effect changes in his contemporary world, Mencius is buried in the Mencius Cemetery, which is located 12 km to the northeast of Zouchengs central urban area. A stele carried by a giant stone tortoise and crowned with dragons stands in front of his grave, Menciuss mother is often held up as an exemplary female figure in Chinese culture. As an expression, the idiom refers to the importance of finding the environment for raising children. Menciuss father died when he was very young and his mother Zhǎng raised her son alone. At first they lived by a cemetery, where the mother found her son imitating the paid mourners in funeral processions, therefore, the mother decided to move. The next house was near a market in the town, there the boy began to imitate the cries of merchants. So the mother moved to a next to a school. Inspired by the scholars and students, Mencius began to study and his mother decided to remain, and Mencius became a scholar. Another story further illustrates the emphasis that Menciuss mother placed on her sons education, as the story goes, once when Mencius was young, he was truant from school. His mother responded to his apparent disregard for his education by taking up a pair of scissors and this was intended to illustrate that one cannot stop a task midway, and her example inspired Mencius to diligence in his studies. There is another legend about his mother and his wife, involving a time when his wife was at home alone and was discovered by Mencius not to be sitting properly, Mencius thought his wife had violated a rite, and demanded a divorce. She is one of 125 women of which biographies have been included in the Lienü zhuan, Duke Huan of Lus son through Qingfu was the ancestor of Mencius. He was descended from Duke Yang of the State of Lu 魯煬公 Duke Yang was the son of Bo Qin, the genealogy is found in the Mencius family tree. Mencius descendants lived in Zoucheng in the Mencius Family Mansion, where the Mencius Temple was also built, Meng Haoran and Meng Jiao were descendants of Mencius who lived during the Tang dynasty
33.
Jaimini
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Jaimini was an ancient Indian scholar who founded the Mimansa school of Hindu philosophy. He is traditionally attributed to be the author of the Mimamsa Sutras text and he is estimated to have lived around the 4th-century BCE. His school is considered non-theistic, but one that emphasized rituals parts of the Vedas as essential to Dharma, jaiminis guru was Badarayana, the latter founded the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, emphasizing the knowledge parts of the Vedas, and credited with authoring Brahma Sutras. Jaimini is most known for his great treatise Purva Mimamsa Sutras, also called Karma-mimamsa, the text founded the Purva-Mimamsa school of Ancient Indian philosophy, one of the six Darsanas or schools of Ancient Indian philosophy. Dated to ca. the 4th century BCE, the text contains about 3,000 sutras and is the text of the Mimamsa school. The text aims at an exegesis of the Vedas with regard to practice and religious duty. Jaiminis Mimamsa is a ritualist counter-movement to the Self-knowledge speculations of the Vedanta philosophy and his Mimamsa Sutra was commented upon by many, of which Śābara was among the earliest. He divided the Veda into four, namely Rig, Yajur, Sama, the histories and the Puranas are said to be the fifth Veda. - Brahmanda Purana 1.4.21 One of the major Puranas, samaveda Guru Purnima Indian Mathematics Purva Mimansa homepage
34.
Madhvacharya
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Madhva Acharya, also known as Purna Prajña and Ananda Teertha, was a Hindu philosopher and the chief proponent of the Dvaita school of Vedanta. Madhva called his philosophy as Tattvavada meaning the realist viewpoint, madhvācārya was born on the west coast of Karnataka state in 13th-century India. As a teenager, he became a Sanyasin joining Brahma-sampradaya guru Achyutapreksha, Madhva studied the classics of Hindu philosophy, particularly the Principal Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras. He commented on these, and is credited with thirty seven works in Sanskrit and his writing style was of extreme brevity and condensed expression. His greatest work is considered to be the Anuvyakhyana, a supplement to his bhasya on the Brahma Sutras composed with a poetic structure. In some of his works, he proclaimed himself to be an avatar of Vayu and he was a critic of Adi Shankaras Advaita Vedanta and Ramanujas Vishishtadvaita Vedanta teachings. He toured India several times, visiting places such as Bengal, Varanasi, Dwarka, Goa and Kanyakumari, engaging in philosophical debates, Madhva established the Krishna Mutt at Udupi with a murti secured from Dwarka Gujarat in AD1285. His schools theistic dualism teachings disagreed with the monist teachings of the two most influential schools of Vedanta based on Advaitas nondualism and Vishishtadvaitas qualified nondualism. Salvation, asserted Madhva, is only through the grace of God. Madhvas historical influence in Hinduism, state Kulandran and Kraemer, has been salutary, the biography of Madhvacharya is unclear. Many sources date him to 1238–1317 period, but some place him about the 1199-1278 period, madhvācārya was born in Pajaka near Udupi, a coastal Malabar region of south-west India in the state of Karnataka. Traditionally it is believed that Naddantillaya was the name of his father, born in a Vaishnavite Brahmin household, he was named Vāsudeva. Later he became famous by the names Purnaprajna, Anandatirtha and Madhvacarya, pūrnaprajña was the name given to him at the time of his initiation into sannyasa, as a teenager. The name conferred on him when he became the head of his monastery was Ānanda Tīrtha, all three of his later names are found in his works. Madhvācārya or Madhva are names most commonly found in literature on him. Madhva began his school after his Upanayana at age seven, became a monk or Sannyasi in his teenage and he joined an Advaita Vedanta monastery in Dwarka, accepted his guru to be Achyutrapreksha, who is also referred to as Achyutraprajna in some sources. Madhva never acknowledged Achyutrapreksha as his guru or his lineage in his writings. A number of semi-fictional hagiographies have been written by Madhvas disciples, of these, the most referred to is the sixteen cantos Sanskrit biography Madhvavijaya by Nārāyana Panditācārya – son of Trivikrama Pandita, who himself was a disciple of Madhva
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