India
India known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia; the Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Gupta empires. In the medieval era, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived, Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
A pluralistic and multi-ethnic society, it is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historical local appellation for the Indus River; the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus". The geographical term Bharat, recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations, it is a modernisation of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan is a Middle Persian name for India, it was introduced into India by the Mughals and used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety; the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh. After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, storage of agricultural surplus, appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan; these developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan, relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilization engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones; the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.
Most historians consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas; the emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of Mahavira.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process, it is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometers, or 109 times that of Earth, its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth. It accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen; the Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class. As such, it is informally and not accurately referred to as a yellow dwarf, it formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System; the central mass became so hot and dense that it initiated nuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that all stars form by this process.
The Sun is middle-aged. It fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result; this energy, which can take between 10,000 and 170,000 years to escape from its core, is the source of the Sun's light and heat. In about 5 billion years, when hydrogen fusion in its core has diminished to the point at which the Sun is no longer in hydrostatic equilibrium, its core will undergo a marked increase in density and temperature while its outer layers expand to become a red giant, it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and Venus, render Earth uninhabitable. After this, it will shed its outer layers and become a dense type of cooling star known as a white dwarf, no longer produce energy by fusion, but still glow and give off heat from its previous fusion; the enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity.
The synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of solar calendars, one of, the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun may be related to south. Cognates to English sun appear in other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian sunne, Old Saxon sunna, Middle Dutch sonne, modern Dutch zon, Old High German sunna, modern German Sonne, Old Norse sunna, Gothic sunnō. All Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn; the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not used in everyday English. Sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet, such as Mars; the related word solar is the usual adjectival term used for the Sun, in terms such as solar day, solar eclipse, Solar System. A mean Earth solar day is 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian'sol' is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.244 seconds. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, itself a translation of the Greek ἡμέρα ἡλίου.
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star. The Sun has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. The Sun is heavy-element-rich, star; the formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from more nearby supernovae. This is suggested by a high abundance of heavy elements in the Solar System, such as gold and uranium, relative to the abundances of these elements in so-called Population II, heavy-element-poor, stars; the heavy elements could most plausibly have been produced by endothermic nuclear reactions during a supernova, or by transmutation through neutron absorption within a massive second-generation star. The Sun is by far the brightest object in the Earth's sky, with an apparent magnitude of −26.74. This is about 13 billion times brighter than the next brightest star, which has an apparent magnitude of −1.46. The mean distance of the Sun's center to Earth's center is 1 astronomical unit, though the distance varies as Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July.
At this average distance, light travels from the Sun's horizon to Earth's horizon in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds, while light from the closest points of the Sun and Earth takes about two seconds less. The energy of this sunlight supports all life on Earth by photosynthesis, drives Earth's climate and weather; the Sun does not have a definite boundary, but its density decreases exponentially with increasing height above the photosphere. For the purpose of measurement, the Sun's radius is considered to be the distance from its center to the edge of the photosphere, the apparent visible surface of the Sun. By this measure, the Sun is a near-perfect sphere with an oblateness estimated at about 9 millionths, which means that its polar diameter differs from its equatorial diameter by only 10 kilometres; the tidal effect of the planets is weak and does not affect the shape of the Sun. The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles; this differential rotation is caused by convective motion
Aryabhata
Aryabhata, आर्यभट or Aryabhata I was the first of the major mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His works include the Arya-siddhanta. For his explicit mention of the relativity of motion, he qualifies as a major early physicist. While there is a tendency to misspell his name as "Aryabhatta" by analogy with other names having the "bhatta" suffix, his name is properly spelled Aryabhata: every astronomical text spells his name thus, including Brahmagupta's references to him "in more than a hundred places by name". Furthermore, in most instances "Aryabhatta" would not fit the meter either. Aryabhata mentions in the Aryabhatiya that he was 23 years old 3,600 years into the Kali Yuga, but this is not to mean that the text was composed at that time; this mentioned year corresponds to 499 CE, implies that he was born in 476. Aryabhata called himself a native of Pataliputra. Bhāskara I describes Aryabhata as āśmakīya, "one belonging to the Aśmaka country."
During the Buddha's time, a branch of the Aśmaka people settled in the region between the Narmada and Godavari rivers in central India. It has been claimed that the aśmaka where Aryabhata originated may be the present day Kodungallur, the historical capital city of Thiruvanchikkulam of ancient Kerala; this is based on the belief. The fact that several commentaries on the Aryabhatiya have come from Kerala has been used to suggest that it was Aryabhata's main place of life and activity. K. Chandra Hari has argued for the Kerala hypothesis on the basis of astronomical evidence. Aryabhata mentions "Lanka" on several occasions in the Aryabhatiya, but his "Lanka" is an abstraction, standing for a point on the equator at the same longitude as his Ujjayini, it is certain that, at some point, he went to Kusumapura for advanced studies and lived there for some time. Both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, as well as Bhāskara I, identify Kusumapura as Pāṭaliputra, modern Patna. A verse mentions that Aryabhata was the head of an institution at Kusumapura, because the university of Nalanda was in Pataliputra at the time and had an astronomical observatory, it is speculated that Aryabhata might have been the head of the Nalanda university as well.
Aryabhata is reputed to have set up an observatory at the Sun temple in Taregana, Bihar. Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on astronomy, some of which are lost, his major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, plane trigonometry, spherical trigonometry, it contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, a table of sines. The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary and mathematicians and commentators, including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I; this work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta and uses the midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. It contained a description of several astronomical instruments: the gnomon, a shadow instrument angle-measuring devices and circular, a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called the chhatra-yantra, water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.
A third text, which may have survived in the Arabic translation, is Al-nanf. It claims that it is a translation by Aryabhata. Dating from the 9th century, it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī. Direct details of Aryabhata's work are known only from the Aryabhatiya; the name "Aryabhatiya" is due to commentators. Aryabhata himself may not have given it a name, his disciple Bhaskara I calls it Ashmakatantra. It is occasionally referred to as Arya-shatas-aShTa, because there are 108 verses in the text, it is written in the terse style typical of sutra literature, in which each line is an aid to memory for a complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to commentators; the text consists of the 108 verses and 13 introductory verses, is divided into four pādas or chapters: Gitikapada:: large units of time—kalpa and yuga—which present a cosmology different from earlier texts such as Lagadha's Vedanga Jyotisha. There is a table of sines, given in a single verse.
The duration of the planetary revolutions during a mahayuga is given as 4.32 million years. Ganitapada: covering mensuration and geometric progressions, gnomon / shadows, quadratic and indeterminate equations. Kalakriyapada: different units of time and a method for determining the positions of planets for a given day, calculations concerning the intercalary month, kShaya-tithis, a seven-day week with names for the days of week. Golapada: Geometric/trigonometric aspects of the celestial sphere, features of the ecli
Jantar Mantar, Jaipur
The Jantar Mantar monument in Jaipur, Rajasthan is a collection of nineteen architectural astronomical instruments built by the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh II, completed in 1734. It features the world's largest stone sundial, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is located near Hawa Mahal. The instruments allow the observation of astronomical positions with the naked eye; the observatory is an example of the Ptolemaic positional astronomy, shared by many civilizations. The monument features instruments operating in each of the three main classical celestial coordinate systems: the horizon-zenith local system, the equatorial system and the ecliptic system; the Kapala Yantraprakara is one that works in two systems and allows transformation of the coordinates directly from one system to the other. The monument was damaged in the 19th century. Early restoration work was undertaken under the supervision of Major Arthur Garrett, a keen amateur astronomer, during his appointment as Assistant State Engineer for the Jaipur District.
The name is derived from jantar, mantar. Therefore, Jantar Mantar means'calculating instrument'. Jai Singh noticed that the zij used in his time the predictions of the position of celestial objects such as the moon, did not match the positions calculated on the table, he constructed five new observatories in different cities. The astronomical tables Jai Singh created, the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi was continuously used in India for a century although the table had little significance outside of India; when Jai Singh began construction in Jaipur is unknown, but several instruments had been built by 1728, the construction of the instruments in Jaipur continued until 1738. During 1735, when construction was at its peak, at least 23 Astronomers were employed in Jaipur, due to the changing political climate, Jaipur replaced Delhi as Jai Singh's main observatory, remained Jai Singh's central observatory until his death in 1743; the observatory lost support under Isvari Singh because of a succession war between him and his brother.
However, Mado Singh, Isvari Singh's successor, supported the observatory, although it did not see the same level of activity as under Jai Singh. Although some restorations were made to the Jantar Mantar under Pratap Singh, activity at the observatory died down again. During this time, a temple was constructed, Pratap Singh turned the site of the observatory into a gun factory. Ram Singh began the restoration of the Jantar Mantar, completed restoring it in 1876, made some of the instruments more durable by inserting lead into the lines in the instruments, restoring some of the plaster instruments with stone instead. However, the observatory soon became neglected again, was not restored until 1901 under Madho Singh II The observatory consists of nineteen instruments for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking location of major stars as the earth orbits around the sun, ascertaining the declinations of planets, determining the celestial altitudes and related ephemerides; the instruments are: Chakra Yantra Dakshin Bhitti Yantra Digamsha Yantra Disha Yantra Dhruva Darshak Pattika Jai Prakash Yantra Kapali Yantra Kanali Yantra Kranti Vritta Yantra Laghu Samrat Yantra Misra Yantra Nadi Valaya Yantra Palbha Yantra Rama Yantra Rashi Valaya Yantra Shastansh Yantra Unnatamsa Yantra Vrihat Samrat Yantra Yantra Ra
Mathura
Mathura is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is located 50 kilometres north of Agra, 145 kilometres south-east of Delhi, it is the administrative centre of Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh. In ancient times, Mathura was an economic hub, located at the junction of important caravan routes; the 2011 Census of India estimated the population of Mathura at 441,894. In Hinduism, Mathura is believed to be the birthplace of Krishna, located at the Krishna Janmasthan Temple Complex, it is one of the Sapta Puri, the seven cities considered holy by Hindus. The Kesava Deo Temple was built in ancient times on the site of Krishna's birthplace. Mathura was the capital of the kingdom of Surasena, ruled by the maternal uncle of Krishna. Mathura has been chosen as one of the heritage cities for the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana scheme of Government of India. Mathura has an ancient history and believed to be the homeland and birthplace of Krishna, born in Yadu dynasty. According to the Archaeological Survey of India plaque at the Mathura Museum, the city is mentioned in the oldest Indian epic, the Ramayana.
In the epic, the Ikshwaku prince Shatrughna slays a demon claims the land. Afterwards, the place came to be known as Madhuvan as it was thickly wooded Madhupura and Mathura. Archaeological excavations at Mathura show the gradual growth of a village into an important city; the earliest period belonged to the Painted Grey Ware culture, followed by the Northern Black Polished Ware culture. Mathura derived its importance as a center of trade due to its location where the northern trade route of the Indo-Gangetic Plain met with the routes to Malwa and the west coast. By the 6th century BCE Mathura became the capital of the Surasena Kingdom; the city was ruled by the Maurya empire. Megasthenes, writing in the early 3rd century BCE, mentions Mathura as a great city under the name Μέθορα, it seems it never was under the direct control of the following Shunga dynasty as not a single archaeological remain of a Shunga presence were found in Mathura. The Indo-Greeks may have taken control, direct or indirect, of Mathura some time between 180 BCE and 100 BCE, remained so as late as 70 BCE according to the Yavanarajya inscription, found in Maghera, a town 17 kilometres from Mathura.
The opening of the 3 line text of this inscription in Brahmi script translates as: "In the 116th year of the Yavana kingdom..." or'"In the 116th year of Yavana hegemony" However, this corresponds to the presence of the native Mitra dynasty of local rulers in Mathura, in the same time frame pointing to a vassalage relationship with the Indo-Greeks. After a period of local rule, Mathura was conquered by the Indo-Scythians during the first 1st century BCE; the Indo-Scythian satraps of Mathura are sometimes called the "Northern Satraps", as opposed to the "Western Satraps" ruling in Gujarat and Malwa. However, Indo-Scythian control proved to be short lived, following the reign of the Indo-Scythian Mahakshatrapa Rajuvula, c. 10–25 CE. The Kushan Empire took control of Mathura some time after Rajuvula, although several of his successors ruled as Kushans vassals, such as the Indo-Scythian "Great Satrap" Kharapallana and the "Satrap" Vanaspara, both of whom paid allegiance to the Kushans in an inscription at Sarnath, dating to the 3rd year of the reign of the Kushan emperor Kanishka c. 130 CE.
Mathuran art and culture reached its zenith under the Kushan dynasty which had Mathura as one of its capitals. The preceding capitals of the Kushans included Kapisa and Takshasila/Sirsukh/. Faxian mentions the city as a centre of Buddhism about 400 CE while his successor Xuanzang, who visited the city in 634 CE, mentions it as Mot'ulo, recording that it contained twenty Buddhist monasteries and five Hindu temples, he went east to Thanesar, Jalandhar in the eastern Punjab, before climbing up to visit predominantly Theravada monasteries in the Kulu valley and turning southward again to Bairat and Mathura, on the Yamuna river. The city was sacked and many of its temples destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1018 CE and again by Sikandar Lodhi, who ruled the Sultanate of Delhi from 1489 to 1517 CE. Sikander Lodhi earned the epithet of'Butt Shikan', the'Destroyer of Hindu deities'; the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, built the Shahi-Eidgah Mosque during his rule, adjacent to Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi believed to be over a Hindu temple.
Mathura is a holy city for the world's third-largest religion. There are many places of religious importance in Mathura and its neighbouring towns; the twin-city to Mathura is Vrindavan. As the home of Krishna in his youth, the small town is host to a multitude of temples belonging to various sects of Hinduism proclaiming Krishna in various forms and avatars; some notable religious sites in and around Mathura are: Keshav Dev Temple Dwarkadheesh temple Mathura Vishram Ghat Krishna Balaram Mandir Prem Mandir, Vrindavan Kusum Sarovar, Govardhan Baldeo Shri Siddh Shani Mandir, Mundesi Lohwan Mata Mandir Shri Ratneshwar Mahadev Gopinath Maharaj Mandir Shri Jagannath Temple Bhuteshwar Mathura Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir, Vrindavan Mathura Museum Birla Mandir Madan Mohan Temple, Vrindavan Naam yog Sadhna Mandir Banke Bihari Temple Radha Raman
Declination
In astronomy, declination is one of the two angles that locate a point on the celestial sphere in the equatorial coordinate system, the other being hour angle. Declination's angle is measured north or south of the celestial equator, along the hour circle passing through the point in question; the root of the word declination means "a bending away" or "a bending down". It comes from the same root as the words recline. In some 18th and 19th century astronomical texts, declination is given as North Pole Distance, equivalent to 90 -. For instance an object marked as declination -5 would have a NPD of 95, a declination of -90 would have a NPD of 180. Declination in astronomy is comparable to geographic latitude, projected onto the celestial sphere, hour angle is comparable to longitude. Points north of the celestial equator have positive declinations, while those south have negative declinations. Any units of angular measure can be used for declination, but it is customarily measured in the degrees and seconds of sexagesimal measure, with 90° equivalent to a quarter circle.
Declinations with magnitudes greater than 90° do not occur, because the poles are the northernmost and southernmost points of the celestial sphere. An object at the celestial equator has a declination of 0° north celestial pole has a declination of +90° south celestial pole has a declination of −90°The sign is customarily included whether positive or negative; the Earth's axis rotates westward about the poles of the ecliptic, completing one circuit in about 26,000 years. This effect, known as precession, causes the coordinates of stationary celestial objects to change continuously, if rather slowly. Therefore, equatorial coordinates are inherently relative to the year of their observation, astronomers specify them with reference to a particular year, known as an epoch. Coordinates from different epochs must be mathematically rotated to match each other, or to match a standard epoch; the used standard epoch is J2000.0, January 1, 2000 at 12:00 TT. The prefix "J" indicates. Prior to J2000.0, astronomers used the successive Besselian Epochs B1875.0, B1900.0, B1950.0.
A star's direction remains nearly fixed due to its vast distance, but its right ascension and declination do change due to precession of the equinoxes and proper motion, cyclically due to annual parallax. The declinations of Solar System objects change rapidly compared to those of stars, due to orbital motion and close proximity; as seen from locations in the Earth's Northern Hemisphere, celestial objects with declinations greater than 90° − φ appear to circle daily around the celestial pole without dipping below the horizon, are therefore called circumpolar stars. This occurs in the Southern Hemisphere for objects with declinations less than −90° − φ. An extreme example is the pole star which has a declination near to +90°, so is circumpolar as seen from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere except close to the equator. Circumpolar stars never dip below the horizon. Conversely, there are other stars that never rise above the horizon, as seen from any given point on the Earth's surface. If a star whose declination is δ is circumpolar for some observer a star whose declination is −δ never rises above the horizon, as seen by the same observer.
If a star is circumpolar for an observer at latitude φ it never rises above the horizon as seen by an observer at latitude −φ. Neglecting atmospheric refraction, declination is always 0 ° at west points of the horizon. At the north point, it is 90° − |φ|, at the south point, −90° + |φ|. From the poles, declination is uniform around the entire horizon 0°. Non-circumpolar stars are visible only during certain seasons of the year; the Sun's declination varies with the seasons. As seen from arctic or antarctic latitudes, the Sun is circumpolar near the local summer solstice, leading to the phenomenon of it being above the horizon at midnight, called midnight sun. Near the local winter solstice, the Sun remains below the horizon all day, called polar night; when an object is directly overhead its declination is always within 0.01 degrees of the observer's latitude. The first complication applies to all celestial objects: the object's declination equals the observer's astronomic latitude, but the term "latitude" ordinarily means geodetic latitude, the latitude on maps and GPS devices.
In the continental United States and surrounding area, the difference is a few arcseconds but can be as great as 41 arcseconds. The second complication is that, assuming no deflection of the vertical, "overhead" means perpendicular to the ellipsoid at observer's location, but the perpendicular line does not pass through the center of the earth. For the moon this discrepancy can reach 0.003 degrees.
Jaipur
Jaipur is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. It was founded on 18 November 1727 by Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amer, after whom the city is named; as of 2011, the city had a population of 3.1 million, making it the tenth most populous city in the country. Jaipur is known as the Pink City, due to the dominant color scheme of its buildings, it is located 268 km from the national capital New Delhi. Jaipur is a popular tourist destination in India and forms a part of the west Golden Triangle tourist circuit along with Delhi and Agra, it serves as a gateway to other tourist destinations in Rajasthan such as Jodhpur, Jaisalmer Udaipur and Mount Abu. Jaipur is located 616 km from Shimla. Jaipur is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Amer Fort; the city of Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Jai Singh II, the Raja of Amer who ruled from 1699 to 1743. He planned to shift his capital from Amer, 11 kilometres from Jaipur to accommodate the growing population and increasing scarcity of water.
Jai Singh consulted several books on architecture and architects while planning the layout of Jaipur. Under the architectural guidance of Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, Jaipur was planned based on the principles of Vastu shastra and Shilpa Shastra; the construction of the city began in 1726 and took four years to complete the major roads and palaces. The city was divided into nine blocks, two of which contained the state buildings and palaces, with the remaining seven allotted to the public. Huge ramparts were pierced by seven fortified gates. Jaipur is a standout amongst the most rich legacy urban areas in India. Established in the year 1727, the city is named after Maharaja Jai Singh II, the primary organizer of this city, he was a Kachhwaha Rajput and ruled the region in the vicinity of 1699 and 1744. During the rule of Sawai Ram Singh I, the city was painted pink to welcome H. R. H. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1876. Many of the avenues remained painted in pink, giving Jaipur a distinctive appearance and the epithet Pink city.
In the 19th century, the city grew and by 1900 it had a population of 160,000. The wide boulevards were paved and its chief industries were the working of metals and marble, fostered by a school of art founded in 1868; the city had three colleges, including a Sanskrit college and a girls' school opened during the reign of the Maharaja Ram Singh II. Large areas of the city including the airport were flooded in August 1981, resulting in the death of eight people and much damage to the city's Dravyavati River; the floods were caused by three days of cloud burst. Jaipur has a hot semi-arid climate under Koppen's climate classification, it receives over 63 cm of rainfall annually. But most rains occur in the monsoon months between September. Temperatures remain high during summer from April to early July having average daily temperatures of around 27.6' C. During the monsoon there are frequent, heavy rains and thunderstorms; the winter months of November to February are mild and pleasant, with average temperatures ranging from 18' C and with high humidity, but with occasional cold waves.
Jaipur is a high urban heat island zone with surrounding rural temperatures falling below freezing in winters. According to provisional report of 2011 census, Jaipur city had a population of 3,073,350; the overall literacy rate for the city is 84.34%. 90.61% males and 77.41% females were literate. The sex ratio was 898 females per 1,000 males; the child sex ratio stood at 854. According to the 2011 census, Hindus form the majority religious group comprising 77.9% of the city's population, followed by Muslims and others. Jaipur Municipal Corporation is responsible for maintaining the city's civic infrastructure and carrying out associated administrative duties; the Municipal Corporation is headed by a mayor. There are 91 wards and each ward is represented by an elected member. Jaipur Development Authority is the nodal government agency responsible for the planning and development of Jaipur. Jaipur consists of two parliamentary constituencies Jaipur Rural. In January 2019 Vishnu Laata was elected Mayor of Jaipur.
Jaipur is a major tourist destination in India forming a part of the Golden Triangle. In the 2008 Conde Nast Traveller Readers Choice Survey, Jaipur was ranked the 7th best place to visit in Asia. According to TripAdvisor's 2015 Traveller's Choice Awards for Destination, Jaipur ranked 1st among the Indian destinations for the year; the Presidential Suite at the Raj Palace Hotel, billed at US$45,000 per night, was listed in second place on CNN's World's 15 most expensive hotel suites in 2012. Jaipur Exhibition & Convention Centre is exhibition centre, it is famous for organising events such as Vastara, Jaipur Jewellery Show, Stonemart 2015 and Resurgent Rajasthan Partnership Summit 2015. Visitor attractions include the Hawa Mahal, Jal Mahal, City Palace, Amer Fort, Jantar Mantar, Nahargarh Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Birla Mandir, Govind Dev Ji Temple, Garh Ganesh Temple, Moti Dungri Ganesh Temple, Royal Gaitor cenotaphs, Sanghiji Jain temple and the Jaipur Zoo; the Jantar Mantar observatory and Amer Fort are one of the World Heritage Sites.
Hawa Mahal is a five-storey pyramidal shaped monument with 953 windows that rises 15 metres from its high base. Sisodiya Rani Bagh and Kanak Vrindavan are the major parks in Jaipur. Raj Mandir is a notable cinema hall in Jaipur. J
