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India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. 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, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. 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, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and 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 Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was 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, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
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Delhi
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Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi or NCT, is a city and a union territory of India. It is bordered by Haryana on three sides and by Uttar Pradesh to the east, the NCT covers an area of 1,484 square kilometres. According to 2011 census, Delhis city population was about 11 million, Delhis urban area is now considered to extend beyond the NCT boundary to include an estimated population of over 26 million people making it the worlds second largest urban area. As of 2016 recent estimates of the economy of its urban area have ranked Delhi either the top or second most productive metro area of India. Delhi is the second wealthiest city after Mumbai in India, with a wealth of $450 billion. Delhi has been inhabited since the 6th century BC. Through most of its history, Delhi has served as a capital of various kingdoms and it has been captured, ransacked and rebuilt several times, particularly during the medieval period, and modern Delhi is a cluster of a number of cities spread across the metropolitan region. New Delhi is jointly administered by the government of India and the local government of Delhi. Delhi is also the centre of the National Capital Region, which is a unique interstate regional planning area created by the National Capital Region Planning Board Act of 1985, Delhi ranks among the cities with the worst air pollution in the world. There are a number of myths and legends associated with the origin of the name Delhi, one of them is derived from Dhillu or Dilu, a king who built a city at this location in 50 BC and named it after himself. The coins in circulation in the region under the Tomaras were called dehliwal, according to the Bhavishya Purana, King Prithiviraja of Indraprastha built a new fort in the modern-day Purana Qila area for the convenience of all four castes in his kingdom. He ordered the construction of a gateway to the fort and later named the fort dehali, another theory suggests that the citys original name was Dhillika. The people of Delhi are referred to as Delhiites or Dilliwalas, the city is referenced in various idioms of the Northern Indo-Aryan languages. Dilli dilwalon ka shehr or Dilli Dilwalon ki meaning Delhi belongs to the large-hearted/daring, aas-paas barse, Dilli pani tarse, literally meaning it pours all around, while Delhi lies parched. An allusion to the sometimes semi-arid climate of Delhi, it refers to situations of deprivation when one is surrounded by plenty. The area around Delhi was probably inhabited before the second millennium BC, the city is believed to be the site of Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas in the Indian epic Mahabharata. According to Mahabharata, this land was initially a huge mass of forests called Khandavaprastha which was burnt down to build the city of Indraprastha, the earliest architectural relics date back to the Maurya period, in 1966, an inscription of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka was discovered near Srinivaspuri. Remains of eight cities have been discovered in Delhi
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Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
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Religion
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Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has considered a source of religious beliefs. There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, about 84% of the worlds population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. With the onset of the modernisation of and the revolution in the western world. The religiously unaffiliated demographic include those who do not identify with any religion, atheists. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs, about 16% of the worlds population is religiously unaffiliated. The study of religion encompasses a variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possible interpretation traced to Cicero, connects lego read, i. e. re with lego in the sense of choose, go over again or consider carefully. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders, we hear of the religion of the Golden Fleece, of a knight of the religion of Avys. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was understood as a virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice. In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations and it was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first emerged. Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, what is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Some languages have words that can be translated as religion, but they may use them in a different way. For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. There is no equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities
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Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
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History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
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Culture
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Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E. B, Tylor, it is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is the way of life, especially the customs and beliefs. As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a concept in anthropology. The word is used in a sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes seen to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of culture that emerged in the 20th century. When used as a count noun, a culture is the set of customs, traditions, in this sense, multiculturalism is a concept that values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes culture is used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a context, meaning something similar. His use, and that of many writers after him, refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensive to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, thus a contrast between culture and civilization is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Cultural invention has come to any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior. Humanity is in a global accelerating culture change period, driven by the expansion of commerce, the mass media, and above all. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change, Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change, for example, the U. S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors, Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices
8.
The arts
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The arts represent an outlet of expression that is usually influenced by culture in society and which in turn helps to change culture. As such, the arts are a manifestation of peoples internal creative impulse. Some art forms combine a visual element with performance or artwork with the written word, from prehistoric cave paintings to modern day films, art serves as a vessel for storytelling and conveying humankinds relationship with its environment. A debate exists in the arts and video game cultures over whether video games can be counted as an art form. In its most basic definition, art is a documented expression of a sentient being through or on an accessible medium so that anyone can view. The act itself of producing an expression can also be referred to as a certain art, or as art in general. If this solidified expression, or the act of producing it, is good or has value depends on those who access and rate it and this public rating is dependent on various subjective factors. Merriam-Webster defines the arts as painting, sculpture, music, theater, literature, etc. considered as a group of activities done by people with skill, and the study and application of the arts to the human environment. In Ancient Greece, all art and craft was referred to by the same word, thus, there was no distinction between the arts. Ancient Greek art brought the veneration of the form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features, in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths. Eastern art has worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning. A characteristic of this style is that the colour is often defined by an outline. This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet, religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The Artes Mechanicae were practised and developed in guild environments, the modern distinction between artistic and non-artistic skills did not develop until the Renaissance. In modern academia, the arts are usually grouped with or as a subset of the humanities, some subjects in the humanities are history, linguistics, literature, theology, philosophy, and/or logic. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax colour pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers
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Architecture
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Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures. Architectural works, in the form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements, Architecture can mean, A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures. The art and science of designing buildings and nonbuilding structures, the style of design and method of construction of buildings and other physical structures. A unifying or coherent form or structure Knowledge of art, science, technology, the design activity of the architect, from the macro-level to the micro-level. The practice of the architect, where architecture means offering or rendering services in connection with the design and construction of buildings. The earliest surviving work on the subject of architecture is De architectura. According to Vitruvius, a building should satisfy the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, commonly known by the original translation – firmness, commodity. An equivalent in modern English would be, Durability – a building should stand up robustly, utility – it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used. Beauty – it should be aesthetically pleasing, according to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible. Leon Battista Alberti, who elaborates on the ideas of Vitruvius in his treatise, De Re Aedificatoria, saw beauty primarily as a matter of proportion, for Alberti, the rules of proportion were those that governed the idealised human figure, the Golden mean. The most important aspect of beauty was, therefore, an inherent part of an object, rather than something applied superficially, Gothic architecture, Pugin believed, was the only true Christian form of architecture. The 19th-century English art critic, John Ruskin, in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, Architecture was the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by men. That the sight of them contributes to his health, power. For Ruskin, the aesthetic was of overriding significance and his work goes on to state that a building is not truly a work of architecture unless it is in some way adorned. For Ruskin, a well-constructed, well-proportioned, functional building needed string courses or rustication, but suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say, This is beautiful, le Corbusiers contemporary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. The notable 19th-century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design, function came to be seen as encompassing all criteria of the use, perception and enjoyment of a building, not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural
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Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
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Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
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Literature
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Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura was used to refer to all written accounts, developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature. There have been attempts to define literature. Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question What is Literature, with the observation, The quest to discover a definition for literature is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they change over time. In fact, the thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well, definitions of literature have varied over time, it is a culturally relative definition. In Western Europe prior to the century, literature as a term indicated all books. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction and this sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition when it classifies literature as the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. The formalist definition is that literature foregrounds poetic effects, it is the literariness or poetic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura learning, a writing, grammar, originally writing formed with letters, in spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Poetry is a form of art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of. Possibly as a result of Aristotles influence, poetry before the century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art. As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition, novel, a long fictional prose narrative. It was the close relation to real life that differentiated it from the chivalric romance, in most European languages the equivalent term is roman. In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the fifteenth century, with the meaning of news, it came to indicate something new
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Linguistics
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning, phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential sub-sets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology, morphology, modern theories that deal with the principles of grammar are largely based within Noam Chomskys ideological school of generative grammar. In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance in his theory of transformative or generative grammar. According to Chomsky, competence is an innate capacity and potential for language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used by individuals, groups. The study of parole is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline that comprises the study of a system of linguistic facets within a certain speech community. Discourse analysis further examines the structure of texts and conversations emerging out of a speech communitys usage of language, Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of scripts in language. Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language, through which linguistic, research on language through the sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics also focus on how languages change and grow, particularly over an extended period of time. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages, lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective, specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education, related areas of study also includes the disciplines of semiotics, literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology. Before the 20th century, the philology, first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the science of language
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Musicology
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Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology is part of the humanities, a scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist. Traditionally, historical musicology has been the most prominent sub-discipline of musicology, in the 2010s, historical musicology is one of several large musicology sub-disciplines. Historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and systematic musicology are approximately equal in size, Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context. Cognitive musicology is the set of surrounding the computational modeling of music. Musical knowledge is applied in medicine, education, and music therapy—which, Music history or historical musicology is concerned with the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time. Like the comparable field of art history, different branches and schools of historical musicology emphasize different types of musical works, there are also national differences in various definitions of historical musicology. In theory, music history could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music, in practice, these research topics are more often considered within ethnomusicology and historical musicology is typically assumed to imply Western Art music of the European tradition. The methods of historical musicology include source studies, paleography, philology, style criticism, historiography, musical analysis, Music historians may examine issues in a close focus, as in the case of scholars who examine the relationship between words and music for a given composers art songs. New musicology is a term applied since the late 1980s to a body of work emphasizing cultural study, analysis. Such work may be based on feminist, gender studies, queer theory, or postcolonial theory, or the work of Theodor Adorno. Charles Rosen, however, retorts that McClary, sets up, like so many of the new musicologists, a man to knock down, the dogma that music has no meaning. Ethnomusicology, formerly comparative musicology, is the study of music in its cultural context and it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music. Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of making music. Some ethnomusicologists primarily conduct historical studies, but the majority are involved in long-term participant observation, or combine ethnographic, therefore, ethnomusiological scholarship can be characterized as featuring a substantial, intensive fieldwork component, often involving long-term residence within the community studied. Closely related to ethnomusiology is the branch of sociomusicology. For instance, Ko proposed the hypothesis of Biliterate and Trimusical in Hong Kong sociomusicology, the first journal focusing on popular music studies was Popular Music, which began publication in 1981. The same year an academic society devoted to the topic was formed
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Mysticism
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Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, the term mysticism has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings. Derived from the Greek word μυω, meaning to conceal, mysticism referred to the liturgical, spiritual. During the early period, the definition of mysticism grew to include a broad range of beliefs. In modern times, mysticism has acquired a limited definition, with applications, as meaning the aim at the union with the Absolute. This limited definition has been applied to a range of religious traditions and practices. Since the 1960s scholars have debated the merits of perennial and constructionist approaches in the research of mystical experiences. The perennial position is now largely dismissed by scholars, most scholars using a contextual approach, Mysticism is derived from the Greek μυω, meaning I conceal, and its derivative μυστικός, mystikos, meaning an initiate. The verb μυώ has received a different meaning in the Greek language. The primary meanings it has are induct and initiate, secondary meanings include introduce, make someone aware of something, train, familiarize, give first experience of something. The related form of the verb appears in the New Testament. As explained in Strongs Concordance, it properly means shutting the eyes and its figurative meaning is to be initiated into the mystery revelation. The meaning derives from the rites of the pagan mysteries. Also appearing in the New Testament is the related noun μυστήριον, the term means anything hidden, a mystery or secret, of which initiation is necessary. According to Thayers Greek Lexicon, the term μυστήριον in classical Greek meant a hidden thing, a particular meaning it took in Classical antiquity was a religious secret or religious secrets, confided only to the initiated and not to be communicated by them to ordinary mortals. In the Septuagint and the New Testament the meaning it took was that of a purpose or counsel. It is sometimes used for the hidden wills of humans, but is often used for the hidden will of God. Elsewhere in the Bible it takes the meaning of the mystic or hidden sense of things and it is used for the secrets behind sayings, names, or behind images seen in visions and dreams
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Yoga
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Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. There is a variety of Yoga schools, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism. Among the most well-known types of yoga are Hatha yoga and Rāja yoga, the chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to Hindu Upanishads. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the first half of the 1st millennium CE, Hatha yoga texts emerged around the 11th century with origins in tantra. Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the west, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th, in the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of physical exercise across the Western world. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more physical exercise, it has a meditative. One of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism is also called Yoga, which has its own epistemology and metaphysics. Many studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of yoga as an intervention for cancer, schizophrenia, asthma. On December 1,2016, Yoga was listed as UNESCO’s Intangible cultural heritage, in Sanskrit, the word yoga comes from the root yuj which means to add, to join, to unite, or to attach in its most common senses. By figurative extension from the yoking or harnessing of oxen or horses, all further developments of the sense of this word are post-Vedic. More prosaic moods such as exertion, endeavour, zeal, there are very many compound words containing yoga in Sanskrit. Yoga can take on such as connection, contact, union, method, application, addition. In simpler words, Yoga also means combined, thus, bhaktiyoga means devoted attachment in the monotheistic Bhakti movement. The term kriyāyoga has a sense, meaning connection with a verb. But the same compound is given a technical meaning in the Yoga Sutras, designating the practical aspects of the philosophy. In the context of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the root yuj samādhau is considered by commentators as the correct etymology. In accordance with Pāṇini, Vyasa who wrote the first commentary on the Yoga Sutras, according to Dasgupta, the term yoga can be derived from either of two roots, yujir yoga or yuj samādhau. Someone who practices yoga or follows the philosophy with a high level of commitment is called a yogi or yogini
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Tantra
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Tantra is the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that co-developed most likely about the middle of 1st millennium CE. The term tantra, in the Indian traditions, also means any systematic broadly applicable text, theory, system, method, instrument, in Hinduism, the tantra tradition is most often associated with its goddess tradition called Shaktism, followed by Shaivism and Vaishnavism. In Buddhism, the Vajrayana tradition is known for its extensive tantra ideas, Tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions have influenced other religious traditions such as Jainism, Sikhism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism, and the Japanese Shintō tradition. Tantra as genre of literature in Hinduism have been influential to its arts, icons, Hindu puja, temples and iconography are tantric in nature. The Hindu texts that describe these topics are called Tantras, Āgamas or Samhitās, in Buddhism, its tantra-genre literature has influenced the artworks in Tibet, historic cave temples of India, and imagery in southeast Asia. Tantra literally means loom, warp, weave, the connotation of the word tantra to mean an esoteric practice or religious ritualism is a colonial era European invention. The term is based on the metaphor of weaving, states Ron Barrett and it implies interweaving of traditions and teachings as threads into a text, technique or practice. The word appears in the hymns of the Rigveda such as in 10.71 and it is found in many other Vedic era texts, such as in section 10.7.42 of the Atharvaveda and many Brahmanas. In these and post-Vedic texts, the meaning of Tantra is that which is principal or essential part, main point, model, framework. The term “Tantra” after about 500 BCE, in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism is a bibliographic category, the same Buddhist texts are sometimes referred to as tantra or sutra, for example, Vairocabhisambodhi-tantra is also referred to as Vairocabhisambodhi-sutra. The various contextual meaning of the word Tantra varies with the Indian text, the earliest definitions and expositions on Tantra come from the ancient texts of Panini, Patanjali and the literature of the language-focussed, ritual-oriented Mimamsa school of Hindu philosophy. The word tantra, states Patanjali, means principal, main, Patanjali also offers a semantic definition of Tantra, stating that it is structural rules, standard procedures, centralized guide or knowledge in any field that applies to many elements. The ancient Mimamsa school of Hinduism uses the term tantra extensively, for example, When an action or a thing, once complete, becomes beneficial in several matters to one person, or to many people, that is known as Tantra. For example, a lamp placed amidst many priests, in contrast, that which benefits by its repetition is called Āvāpa, such as massaging with oil. Medieval texts present their own definitions of Tantra, in modern era scholarship, Tantra has been studied as an esoteric practice and ritualistic religion, sometimes referred to as Tantrism. There is wide gap between what Tantra means to its followers, and what Tantra has been represented or perceived as since colonial era writers began commenting on Tantra, many definitions of Tantra have been proposed ever since, and there is no universally accepted definition of Tantra. André Padoux in his review of Tantra definitions offers two, then rejects both, another definition, more common among observers and non-practitioners, is some set of mechanistic rituals, omitting entirely the ideological side. According to David N. Lorenzen, two different kinds of definitions of Tantra exist, a definition and a broad definition
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Occult
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The occult is knowledge of the hidden. In common English usage, occult refers to knowledge of the paranormal, as opposed to knowledge of the measurable, the terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult, in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural. Occultism is the study of practices, including magic, alchemy, extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, religion. Alchemy was common among important seventeenth-century scientists, such as Isaac Newton, Newton was even accused of introducing occult agencies into natural science when he postulated gravity as a force capable of acting over vast distances. By the eighteenth century these unorthodox religious and philosophical concerns were well-defined as occult, inasmuch as they lay on the outermost fringe of accepted forms of knowledge and they were, however, preserved by antiquarians and mystics. Occult science is the research into or formulation of occult concepts in a manner that resembles the way natural science researches or describes phenomena. In his 1871 book Primitive Culture, the anthropologist Edward Tylor used the term occult science as a synonym for magic, Occult qualities are properties that have no known rational explanation, in the Middle Ages, for example, magnetism was considered an occult quality. Newtons contemporaries severely criticized his theory that gravity was effected through action at a distance, some religions and sects enthusiastically embrace occultism as an integral esoteric aspect of mystical religious experience. This attitude is common within Wicca and many other modern pagan religions, some other religious denominations disapprove of occultism in most or all forms. They may view the occult as being anything supernatural or paranormal which is not achieved by or through God, monistic in contrast to Christian dualistic beliefs of a separation between body and spirit, Gnostic i. e. Walker, Benjamin. Encyclopedia of the Occult, the Esoteric and the Supernatural, harold W. Percival, Joined the Theosophical Society in 1892. Blavatsky, Occultism versus the Occult Arts, Lucifer, May 1888 Bardon, true to His Ways, Purity & Safety in Christian Spiritual Practice, ISBN 1-932124-61-6. ISBN 1-57863-150-5 Forshaw, Peter, The Occult Middle Ages, in Christopher Partridge, The Occult World, London, Routledge,2014 Gettings, Fred, Vision of the Occult, ISBN 0-7126-1438-9 Kontou, Tatiana – Willburn, Sarah. The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, ISBN 978-0-7546-6912-8 Martin, W. Rische, J. Rische, K. & VanGordon, K. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.201 p. N. B, the scope of this study also embraces the occult. ISBN 0-8028-0262-1 Partridge, Christopher, The Occult World, London, the Tree of Life, An Illustrated Study in Magic. Newton, Isaac, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John by Sir Isaac Newton Rogers, L. W. Hints to Young Students of Occultism. Albany, NY, The Theosophical Book Company, joseph H. Peterson, Twilit Grotto, Archives of Western Esoterica Occult Science and Philosophy of the Renaissance
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Medicine
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Medicine is the science and practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. The word medicine is derived from Latin medicus, meaning a physician, Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Medicine has existed for thousands of years, during most of which it was an art frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an ancient philosopher. In recent centuries, since the advent of modern science, most medicine has become a combination of art, while stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, the knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science. Prescientific forms of medicine are now known as medicine and folk medicine. They remain commonly used with or instead of medicine and are thus called alternative medicine. For example, evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture is variable and inconsistent for any condition, in contrast, treatments outside the bounds of safety and efficacy are termed quackery. Medical availability and clinical practice varies across the world due to differences in culture. In modern clinical practice, physicians personally assess patients in order to diagnose, treat, the doctor-patient relationship typically begins an interaction with an examination of the patients medical history and medical record, followed by a medical interview and a physical examination. Basic diagnostic medical devices are typically used, after examination for signs and interviewing for symptoms, the doctor may order medical tests, take a biopsy, or prescribe pharmaceutical drugs or other therapies. Differential diagnosis methods help to rule out conditions based on the information provided, during the encounter, properly informing the patient of all relevant facts is an important part of the relationship and the development of trust. The medical encounter is then documented in the record, which is a legal document in many jurisdictions. Follow-ups may be shorter but follow the general procedure. The diagnosis and treatment may take only a few minutes or a few weeks depending upon the complexity of the issue, the components of the medical interview and encounter are, Chief complaint, the reason for the current medical visit. They are in the patients own words and are recorded along with the duration of each one, also called chief concern or presenting complaint. History of present illness, the order of events of symptoms. Distinguishable from history of illness, often called past medical history
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Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
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Astrology
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Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash
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Mahapurana (Jainism)
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The first part is Ādi purāṇa written by Acharya Jinasena. The second part is Uttarapurana which is the section composed by Gunabhadra, the Trishashthilkshana Mahapurana was composed by Jinasena, Gunabhadra and Chavundaraya in 9th century CE. The first part is Ādi purāṇa written by Acharya Jinasena, the second part is Uttarpurana which is the section composed by Gunabhadra. Adipurana contains about 37 chapters where as Uttarapurana contains about 65 chapters, the completed and edited text was released by Lokasena, pupil of Gunabhadra in a celebration at Bankapura in the court of Vira-Bankeyarasa in 898 CE. The first 42 Parvans of this text were written by Jinasena, Mahapurana is a work of Pushpadanta in 960 AD in Apabhramsa. This text gives an account of the Jain tradition. A widely used quote from Carl Sagans Cosmos, page 140 is, the doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was He before creation. How could God have made the world without any raw material, if you say He made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning, and it is based on the principles. - The Mahapurana, Jinasena, A number of Jain and non-Jain texts have been influenced by the Mahapurana, Mahapurana was the model for Saiva Siddhanta Periyapuranam which gives biographies of the 63 individuals
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Ramcharitmanas
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Ramcharitmanas, is an epic poem in the Awadhi dialect of Hindi, composed by the 16th-century Indian bhakti poet Goswami Tulsidas. Ramcharitmanas literally means Lake of the deeds of Rama, Ramcharitmanas is considered as one of the greatest works of Hindi literature. Tulsidas was a scholar of Sanskrit. However, he wanted the story of Rama to be accessible to the general masses, tradition has it that Tulsidas had to face a lot of criticism from the sanskrit scholars of Varanasi for being a bhasha poet. However, Tulsidas remained steadfast in his resolve for simplifying the knowledge contained in the Vedas, the Upanishads, subsequently, his work was accepted by all. Ramcharitmanas, for the first time in the history of North India, made available the story of Rama to the man to sing, meditate. The writing of Ramcharitmanas also heralded many a cultural tradition, most significantly that of the tradition of Ramlila, Ramcharitmanas is considered by many as a work belonging to the Saguna school of the Bhakti movement in Hindi literature. Tulsidas began writing the Ramcharitmanas in Ayodhya in Vikram Samvat 1631, the exact date is stated within the poem as being the ninth day of the month of Chaitra, which is the birthday of Rama, Rama Navami. Ramcharitmanas was composed at Ayodhya, Varanasi & Chitrakoot, India was under the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar during this period. This also makes Tulsidas a contemporary of William Shakespeare, the Ramcaritmanas is written in vernacular Avadhi language, The core of the work is considered by some to be a poetic retelling of the events of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana by Valmiki. The Valmiki Ramayana is centered on the narrative of Rama, the scion of the tree of king Raghu of the Sun Dynasty. Rama was the prince of Ayodhya and is considered in Hindu tradition as one of the Avataras of Vishnu. However, the Ramacharitmanas is by no means a word-to-word copy of the Valmiki Ramayana nor an abridged re-telling of the latter, Ramcaritmanas has elements from many other Ramayanas written earlier in Sanskrit and other Indian dialects as well as stories from Puranas. Tulsidas himself never writes Ramcharitmanas as being a retelling of Valmiki Ramayana and he calls the epic Ramcharitmanas as the story of Rama was stored in the mind of Shiva before he narrated the same to His wife Parvati. Tulsidas claims to have received the story through his guru, Narharidas. Tulsidas was a naive child, some understand this passage of the Ramcharitmanas to mean that Tulsidas at first could not grasp the story fully as he was a naïve young boy. His guru graciously repeated it again and again so that he could understand the remember it, then he narrated the story and named it Ramcharitmanas as Shiva himself called it. The epic poem is, therefore, also referred to as Tulsikrit Ramayana, the Ramcharitmanas is a masterpiece of vernacular literature. Some believe it to represent a challenge to the dominance of high-class Brahmanical Sanskrit, however, this interpretation appears faulty as Tulsidas himself was a brahmin and often talks very highly of the Brahmins in Ramcharitmanas and other books written by him
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Manusmriti
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The Manusmṛti, also spelled as Manusmriti, is an ancient legal text among the many Dharmaśāstras of Hinduism. It was one of the first Sanskrit texts translated during the British rule of India in 1794, by Sir William Jones, the texts fame spread outside India, long before the colonial era. The medieval era Buddhistic law of Myanmar and Thailand are also ascribed to Manu, Manusmriti is also called the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra or Laws of Manu. The title Manusmriti is a modern term and a late innovation. The over fifty manuscripts discovered of the text, never use this title, in modern scholarship, these two titles refer to the same text. Later scholarship, shifted the chronology of the text to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, Olivelle adds that numismatics evidence, and the mention of gold coins as a fine, suggest that text may date to the 2nd or 3rd century CE. Most scholars consider the text a composite produced by many authors put together over a long period, Olivelle states that the various ancient and medieval Indian texts claim revisions and editions were derived from the original text with 100,000 verses and 1,080 chapters. However, the version in modern use, according to Olivelle, is likely the work of a single author or a chairman with research assistants. Manusmriti, Olivelle states, was not a new document, it drew on other texts, the root of theoretical models within Manusmriti rely on at least two shastras that pre-date it, artha, and dharma. Its contents can be traced to Kalpasutras of the Vedic era, the foundational texts of Manusmriti include many of these sutras, all from an era preceding the common era. Most of these ancient texts are now lost, and only four of have survived, the modern version of the text has been subdivided into twelve Adhyayas, but the original text had no such division. The text covers different topics, and is unique among ancient Indian texts in using “transitional verses” to mark the end of one subject, the text can be broadly divided into four, each of different length. The first 58 verses are attributed by the text to Manu, the Dharmasya Yonih has twenty-four verses, and one transition verse. Translation 2, The root of the religion is the entire Veda, and the tradition and customs of those who know, and the conduct of virtuous people, and what is satisfactory to oneself. Translation 2, The Veda, tradition, the conduct of good people and this section of Manusmriti, like other Hindu law texts, includes fourfold sources of Dharma, states Levinson, which include Atmana santushti, Sadachara, Smriti and Sruti. Olivelle notes instances of likely interpolation and insertions in the notes to this section, the verses 12.1,12.2 and 12.82 are transitional verses. This section is in a different style than the rest of the text, while there is evidence that this chapter was extensively redacted over time, however it is unclear whether the entire chapter is of a later era. The text dedicates 1,034 verses, the largest portion, on laws for and expected virtues of Brahmins, the statement of rules for the Vaishyas and the Shudras in the text is extraordinarily brief
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Indian Council of Historical Research
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The Indian Council for Historical Research is an autonomous body of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, which had been established by an Administrative Order of the then Ministry of Education. The ICHR has a corpus of funds which has been continued to be deposited with UCO Bank at Ferozeshah Road. It is the academic institution which chose to keep its deposit with a non-state bank of India. Based in Delhi with regional centers in Bengaluru and Gowahati, the Indian Council for Historical Research has served the scholarly community. The Regional Center of the ICHR at Bengaluru was established by eminent liberal historian Professor S Settar, the then Chairman of ICHR, and the then Director of ICHR, Dr Sushil Kumar. The Regional Center at Gauhati was established at the instance of the Minister of State hailing from Assam commenced functioning in the wing of Guwahati University. The Government of India has entered into cultural exchange programmes with many countries of the world for an exchange of historians, the ICHR was formed as a literary and charitable society, a fully funded autonomous body of the Ministry of Education with the historians R. S. Sharma the then Head Department of History, Delhi University, nominated as its first chairman, ICHR, Satish Chandra, prasad, the then the Director of the National Archives of India at the helm. The present Chairman of ICHR Professor Sudershan Rao is an eminent historian, some of the notable historian members/functionaries of the Indian Council have been Irfan Habib, Sushil Kumar, Tapan Raychaudhuri, and Barun De. The first review of the ICHR was ordered in 1981, the second in 1999, ICHR, as mentioned above, is fully funded by grants-in-aid received from the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development. ICHR also receives funds from the state governments of India. The government has signed Cultural Exchange Programs with many countries with the exception of the US, the host countries provide funds to the Scholars visiting under CEP. The audit of the aid in respect of the ICHR is regularly carried out by the Director General of Audit. The audit replies are required to be furnished by a permanent incumbent, a copy of the Yearly Audit Report is also marked to the Secretary, Department of Higher Education as also the replies of the Audit Paras/observations. There is no deadline for submitting applications for fellowships and Grants from the ICHR and these are received throughout the year. The ICHR, unlike its sister research body, the Indian Council of Social Science Research and it has continued to be housed in a building belonging to the Jawaharlal Nehru University, at 35 Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi, since 1972. The Member Secretary, ICHR is functions as the day to day Head of the Department in ICHR, the day-to-day functioning of the ICHR is looked after the Director who acts as ex officio Member Secretary of the Council. In 1991 a trend was started to have a separate post of Member Secretary of the ICHR, the institution has been continually embroiled in intra-rivalries between the Chairmen, Member Secretaries and the Directors, at the cost of historical research
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Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts
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Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi is a premier government-funded arts organization in India. It is an institution under the Union Ministry of Culture. It was established in the memory of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the IGNCA was launched on 19 November 1985 by Prime Minister Shri Rajiv Gandhi at a function where the symbolism of the components was clearly articulated at different levels. The elements - fire, water, earth, sky and vegetation - were brought together, five rocks from five major rivers - Sindhu, Ganga, Kaveri, Mahanadi and the Narmada were composed into sculptural forms. These remain at the site as reminders of the antiquity of Indian culture, in a simulated pool, the first of the principles of vegetation, the lotus bloomed. Rajiv Gandhi floated lighted lamps on the water at the inauguration, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Trust was constituted and registered at New Delhi on 24 March 1987. The founder trustees of IGNCA were Shri Rajiv Gandhi, Shri R. Venkataraman, pupul Jayakar, the Finance Minister of 1987, Shri H. Y. Sharada Prasad and Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, established in memory of Smt. This view of the arts, integrated with, and essential to the matrix of human culture, is predicated upon Smt. Gandhis recognition of the role of the arts as essential to the quality of person, at home with himself. It partakes of the holistic worldview so powerfully articulated throughout Indian tradition, in its initial stages the Centre will focus attention on India, it will later expand its horizons to other civilizations and cultures. Through diverse programmes of research, publication, training, creative activities and performance, the fundamental approach of the Centre is all its work will be both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. One of the programmes of this centre, in collaboration with UNDP, is to utilize multimedia computer technology to create a variety of software packages that communicate cultural information. Multimedia technology allows the user to interact and explore the subject in a mode by combining audio, text, graphics, animation. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts 1, C. V. Kalānidhi is a library on multimedia collections. Kālakośa is the research and publication division, investigating the intellectual traditions in their dimensions of multi-layers, janapada Sampadā, is the division engaged in lifestyle studies. It has a programmatic character classified as Lifestyle Studies, Multi-media Presentation and Events, kalādarśana is the executive unit that transforms researches and studies emanating from the IGNCA into visible forms through exhibitions. Cultural Informatics Laboratory, where there are applied technology tools for preservation and propagation
27.
Indian Council for Cultural Relations
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It was founded on 9 April 1950 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India. The ICCR Headquarters are situated in Azad Bhavan, I. P. Estate, New Delhi, with offices in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cuttack, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, Pune, Shillong. ICCR has opened new cultural centers in Dhaka, Thimpu, Sao Paulo, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, the Council addresses its mandate of cultural diplomacy through a broad range of activities. It also administers the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding established by the Government of India, to showcase the best of Indian performing and visual arts, the Council empanels performing artists who are proficient in their field. Empanelled artistes are added to a reference list, and may receive sponsorship from the Council when they perform internationally, the ICCR offers 1804 scholarships every year, on behalf of the Government of India, to international students who choose to study various artistic and cultural disciplines in India. Undergraduate and Postgraduate students from over 70 countries have benefited from this scheme, promoting India’s rich cultural heritage overseas is a central role of the Council. To this end, it sponsors exhibitions of India’s contemporary, and traditional arts, under various cultural exchange programmes, the ICCR also sponsors exhibitions of Indian art and crafts in foreign countries, and hosts return exhibitions from overseas. The ICCR has a publication programme. Six quarterly journals, are published in five different languages, In addition the Council has published a range of books. Published works include the writings of eminent Indian statesmen and philosophers like Mohandas K. Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, the ICCRs Publication Programme, focusses on books relating to Indian culture, philosophy and mythology, traditional music, dance, and theatre. Official ICCR Website ICCR Regional office Jaipur Official facebook fanpage
28.
Lahore
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Lahore is the capital city of the Pakistani province of Punjab. It is the second most populous city in Pakistan and the 32nd most populous city in the world, the city is located in the north-eastern end of Pakistans Punjab province, near the border with the Indian state of Punjab. Lahore is ranked as a world city, and is one of Pakistans wealthiest cities with an estimated GDP of $58.14 billion as of 2014. Lahore is the cultural centre of the Punjab region, and is the largest Punjabi city in the world. The city has a history, and was once under the rule of the Hindu Shahis, Ghaznavids, Ghurids. Lahore reached the height of its splendour under the Mughal Empire, the city was contested between the Maratha Empire and Durrani Empire, then became capital of the Sikh Empire, before becoming the capital of the Punjab under British rule. Following the independence of Pakistan in 1947, Lahore became the capital of Pakistans Punjab province, Lahore is one of Pakistans most liberal and cosmopolitan cities. It exerts a strong influence over Pakistan. Lahore is a centre for Pakistans publishing industry, and remains the foremost centre of Pakistans literary scene. The city is also a centre of education in Pakistan. Lahore is also home to Pakistans film industry, Lollywood, and is a centre of Qawwali music. The city is much of Pakistans tourist industry, with major attractions including the old Walled City. Lahore is also home to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Lahore Fort, the etymology of Lahore is uncertain, but according to legend the city was once known as Lavapura, in honour of Prince Lava of the Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana. Lahore Fort also contains a vacant Lava temple, dedicated to the founder of the city. Lahore was called by different names throughout history, to date there is no conclusive evidence as to when it was founded. Lahore is described as a Hindu principality in the Rajput accounts, keneksen, the founder of Suryavansha, is believed to have migrated out from the city. The Solanki tribe, belonging to Amukhara Pattan, which included the Bhatti Rajputs of Jaisalmer, Lahore appears as the capital of the Punjab for the first time under Anandapala – the Hindu Shahi king who is referred to as the ruler of –after leaving the earlier capital of Waihind. Few references to Lahore remain from before its capture by Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznavi in the 11th century, the sultan took Lahore after a long siege and battle in which the city was torched and depopulated
29.
Ranjit Singh
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Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was the founder of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. He survived smallpox in infancy but lost sight in his left eye and he fought his first battle alongside his father at age 10. After his father died, he fought wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years. His empire grew in the Punjab region under his leadership through 1839, prior to his rise, the Punjab region had numerous warring misls, twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. Ranjit Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire. He repeatedly defeated invasions by Muslim armies, particularly those arriving from Afghanistan, Ranjit Singhs reign introduced reforms, modernization, investment into infrastructure, and general prosperity. His Khalsa army and government included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and he was popularly known as Sher-i-Punjab, or Lion of Punjab. Maharaja Ranjit Singh was succeeded by his son, Maharaja Kharak Singh, Ranjit Singh was born on 13 November 1780, to Mahan Singh Sukerchakia and Raj Kaur – the daughter of Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind, in Gujranwala, in the Majha region of Punjab. The childs name was changed to Ranjit by his father to commemorate his armys victory over the Muslim Chatha chieftain Pir Muhammad, Ranjit Singh contracted smallpox as an infant, which resulted in the loss of sight in his left eye and a pockmarked face. He was short in stature, never schooled, and did not learn to read or write anything beyond the Gurmukhi alphabet, however, he was trained at home in horse riding, musketry, at age 12, his father died. He then inherited his fathers Sukkarchakkia misl estates and was raised by his mother Raj Kaur, the first attempt on his life was made when he was age 13, by Hashmat Khan, but Ranjit Singh prevailed and killed the assailant instead. At age 18, his mother died and Lakhpat Rai was assassinated, in his teens, Ranjit Singh took to alcohol, a habit that intensified in the later decades of his life, according to the chronicles of his court historians and the Europeans who visited him. However, he neither smoked nor ate beef, and required all officials in his court, regardless of their religion, Ranjit Singh married many times, in various ceremonies, and had twenty wives. Some scholars note that the information on Ranjit Singhs marriages is unclear, according to Khushwant Singh in an 1889 interview with the French journal Le Voltaire, his son Dalip Singh remarked, I am the son of one of my fathers forty-six wives. At age 15, Ranjit Singh married his first wife Mahitab Kaur, the daughter of Sada Kaur and this marriage was pre-arranged in an attempt to reconcile warring Sikh misls, wherein Mahitab Kaur was betrothed to Ranjit Singh. However, the failed, with Mahitab Kaur never forgiving the fact that her father had been killed by Ranjit Singhs father. The separation became complete when Ranjit Singh married his second wife Raj Kaur of Nakai Misl in 1798, Raj Kaur, the daughter of Sardar Ran Singh Nakai, the third ruler of Nakai Misl, was Ranjit Singhs second wife and the mother of his heir, Kharak Singh. She changed her name from Raj Kaur to avoid confusion with Ranjit Singhs mother, throughout her life she remained the favourite of Ranjit Singh, who called her Mai Nakain
30.
Amritsar
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According to the 2011 census, the population of Amritsar was 1,132,761. The city is situated 217 km northwest of state capital Chandigarh and 456 km northwest of Delhi and it is near Pakistan, with the Wagah Border being only 28 km away. The nearest city is Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, Amritsar is home to the Harmandir Sahib, the spiritual and cultural centre for the Sikh religion. The city also houses the Akal Takht, the highest seat of authority of the Khalsa. The Ramtirth temple situated at Amritsar is believed to be the Ashram site of Maharishi Valmiki, according to the Hindu mythology, Goddess Sita gave birth to Lava and Kusha, sons of lord Rama at Ramtirth ashram. Large number of people visit Ramtirth Temple at annual fair, nearby cities to Amritsar, Lahore and Kasoor were said to be founded by Lava and Kusha, respectively. During Ashvamedha Yagna by Lord Rama, Lava and Kush captured the ritual horse, during Navratra festivities it is considered to be auspicious by Hindu population of the city to visit that temple. The main commercial activities of Amritsar include tourism, carpets and fabrics, farm produce, handicrafts, service trades, the city is known for its rich cuisine, and culture, and for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 under British Rule. Amritsar is home to Central Khalsa Orphanage, which was home to Udham Singh. Gandhi Ground is the sports complex in the city which is home to the Amritsar Games Association. Amritsar has been chosen as one of the cities for HRIDAY - Heritage City Development. Amritsar is one of the largest cities of the Punjab state in India. The city origin lies in the village of Tung, and was named after the lake founded by the fourth Sikh Guru Ram Das in 1574 on land bought by him for 700 rupees from the owners of the village of Tung. Earlier, Guru Ram Das had begun building Santokhsar Sarovar, near the village of Sultanwind in 1564 and it could not be completed before 1588. In 1574, Guru Ram Das built his residence and moved to this place, at that time, it was known as Guru Da Chakk. Amritsars central walled city has narrow streets mostly developed in the 17th and 18th century, the city is a peculiar example of an introverted planning system with unique areas called Katras. The Katras are self-styled residential units that provided unique defence system during attacks on the city and this led to a general strike in Amritsar. Excited groups of citizens soon merged into a crowd of about 50,000 marching on to protest to the deputy commissioner against the arrest of the two leaders, the crowd, however, was stopped and fired upon near the railway foot-bridge
31.
Rajendra Prasad
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Rajendra Prasad was the first President of the Republic of India. An Indian political leader, lawyer by training, Prasad joined the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement, a supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad was imprisoned by British authorities during the Salt Satyagraha of 1931 and the Quit India movement of 1942. Prasad served one term as President of the Indian National Congress from 1934 to 1935, after the 1946 elections, Prasad served as minister of food and agriculture in the central government. Upon independence in 1947, Prasad was elected president of the Constituent Assembly of India, when India became a Republic in 1950, Prasad was elected its first President by the Constituent Assembly. Following the general election of 1951, he was elected President by the college of the first Parliament of India. As President, Prasad established a tradition of non-partisanship and independence for the office-bearer, although a ceremonial head of state, Prasad encouraged the development of education in India and advised the Nehru government on several occasions. In 1957, Prasad was re-elected to the presidency, becoming the president to have been in the office twice. Rajendra Prasad was a Hindu and born in Zeradai, in the Siwan district of Bihar. His father Mahadev Sahai, was a scholar of both the Sanskrit and Persian languages, while his mother, Kamleshwari Devi, was a woman who would tell stories from the Ramayana to her son. When Prasad was five years old, his parents placed him under the tutelage of a Moulavi, an accomplished Muslim scholar, to learn the Persian language, Hindi and arithmetic. After the completion of elementary education, he was sent to the Chapra District School Meanwhile, in June 1896, at an early age of 12. He, along with his elder brother Mahendra Prasad, then went to study at T. K, ghoshs Academy in Patna for a period of two years. He secured first in the examination to the University of Calcutta and was awarded Rs.30 per month as a scholarship. Prasad joined the Presidency College, Calcutta in 1902, initially as a science student and he passed Intermediate level classes then called as F. A. under the University of Calcutta in March 1904 and further graduated with First Division from there itself in March 1905. Impressed by his intellect, an examiner once had commented on his answer sheet examinee is better than examiner, later he decided to focus on the study of arts and did his M. A. in Economics with first division from the University of Calcutta in December 1907. There he lived with his brother in the Eden Hindu Hostel, a devoted student as well as a public activist, he was an active member of The Dawn Society. It was due to his sense of duty towards his family, Prasad was instrumental in the formation of the Bihari Students Conference in 1906 in the hall of the Patna College. Rajendra Prasad served in various institutions as a teacher
32.
Partition of India
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The Partition of India was the division of British India in 1947 which accompanied the creation of two independent dominions, India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India and Dominion of Pakistan, the partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, the two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947. The violent nature of the created an atmosphere of hostility. The term partition of India does not cover the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the earlier separations of Burma and Ceylon from the administration of British India. It does not cover the incorporation of the enclaves of French India into India during the period 1947–1954, nor the annexation of Goa, other contemporaneous political entities in the region in 1947, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, and The Maldives were unaffected by the partition. The Hindu elite of Bengal, among many who owned land in East Bengal that was leased out to Muslim peasants. The pervasive protests against Curzons decision took the form predominantly of the Swadeshi campaign led by two-time Congress president, Surendranath Banerjee, sporadically—but flagrantly—the protesters also took to political violence that involved attacks on civilians. The violence, however, was not effective, as most planned attacks were either preempted by the British or failed, the unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcuttas English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. Since Calcutta was the capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became nationally known. In conjunction, they demanded proportional legislative representation reflecting both their status as rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This led, in December 1906, to the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca, although Curzon, by now, had resigned his position over a dispute with his military chief Lord Kitchener and returned to England, the League was in favour of his partition plan. In the three decades since that census, Muslim leaders across northern India, had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups. In 1905, when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to positions in the Congress. It was not lost on many Muslims, for example, that the rallying cry, World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. Indias international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s, back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress, it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians. Secretary of State for India, Montagu and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford presented a report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter
33.
Bikaner
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Bikaner is a city in the northwest of the state of Rajasthan in northern India. It is located 330 kilometres northwest of the capital, Jaipur. Bikaner city is the headquarters of Bikaner District and Bikaner division. Formerly the capital of the state of Bikaner, the city was founded by Rao Bika in 1486. The Ganges Canal, completed in 1928, and the Indira Gandhi Canal, completed in 1987, the city celebrates its foundation day on Akshaya Tritiya by flying kites and eating special Rajasthani food that includes Bajre Ka Khichda and Imli ka Paani among other snacks. The celebration lasts for two days, known as Chhoti Akha Teej and Badi Akha Teej, people can be seen flying kites during these two days right from the early morning at 5-6am till late sunset. Given the extreme weather, standing for long hours under the bright Sun is a torture in itself. Hence, a quick home-made drink like Tamarind Water really helps in controlling body temperature, prior to the mid 15th century, the region that is now Bikaner was a barren wilderness called Jangladesh. Rao Bika established the city of Bikaner in 1488 and he was the first son of Maharaja Rao Jodha of the Rathor clan, the founder of Jodhpur and conquered the largely arid country in the north of Rajasthan. As the first son of Jodha he wanted to have his own kingdom and he therefore decided to build his own kingdom in what is now the state of Bikaner in the area of Jangladesh. Though it was in the Thar Desert, Bikaner was considered an oasis on the route between Central Asia and the Gujarat coast as it had adequate spring water. Bikas name was attached to the city he built and to the state of Bikaner that he established. Bika built a fort in 1478, which is now in ruins, around a century after Rao Bika founded Bikaner, the states fortunes flourished under the sixth Raja, Rai Singhji, who ruled from 1571 to 1611. Rai Singhs successful military exploits, which involved winning half of Mewar kingdom for the Empire, won him accolades and he was given the jagirs of Gujarat and Burhanpur. With the large revenue earned from these jagirs, he built the Chintamani durg on a plain which has an elevation of 760 feet. He was an expert in arts and architecture, and the knowledge he acquired during his visits abroad is amply reflected in the monuments he built at the Junagarh fort. Maharaja Karan Singh, who ruled from 1631 to 1639, under the suzerainty of the Mughals, later rulers added more floors and decorations to this Mahal. Anup Singh ji, who ruled from 1669 to 1698, made additions to the fort complex, with new palaces and the Zenana quarter
34.
Padma Shri
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Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. Awarded by the Government of India, it is announced every year on Indias Republic Day and it has also been awarded to some distinguished individuals who were not citizens of India but did contribute in various ways to India. The selection criteria have been criticized in some quarters with the claim that many highly deserving artists have left out in order to favor certain individuals. On its obverse, the words Padma, meaning lotus in Sanskrit, and Shri, the geometrical pattern on either side is in burnished bronze. All embossing is in white gold, as of 2017,2913 people have received the award
35.
Government of India
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It is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. There is a bicameral Parliament with the Lok Sabha as a lower house, the judicial branch systematically contains an apex Supreme Court,24 high courts, and several district courts, all inferior to the Supreme Court. Similar to the government, individual state governments each consist of executive, legislative. The legal system as applicable to the federal and individual state governments is based on the English Common, the full name of the country is the Republic of India. No other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name appears on legal banknotes, in treaties. The Union Government, Central Government or Government of India are often used in an official and unofficial capacity to refer to the Government of India, because the seat of government is in New Delhi, New Delhi is commonly used as a metonym for the Central Government. Legislative branch in India is exercised by the Parliament and a legislature consisting of the Rajya Sabha. The latter is considered the house or the House of the people. The Parliament does not have control and sovereignty, as its laws are subject to judicial review by the Supreme Court of India. However, it does exercise some control over the executive branch, the members of the cabinet, including the prime minister and the Council of Ministers, are either chosen from parliament or elected there to within six months of assuming office. The cabinet as a whole is responsible to the Lok Sabha, the Lok Sabha is a temporary house and can only be dissolved when the party in power loses the support of the majority of the house. Whereas the Rajya Sabha is a permanent house which can never be dissolved though the members of the Rajya Sabha who are elected for a six-year term, the Executive Branch of government is the one that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers. The executive power is vested mainly in the President of India, the President has all constitutional powers and exercises them directly or through officers subordinate to him as per the aforesaid Article 53. The President is to act in accordance with aid and advice tendered by the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers remains in power during the pleasure of the President. However, in practice, the Council of Ministers must retain the support of the Lok Sabha, if a President were to dismiss the Council of Ministers on his or her own initiative, it might trigger a constitutional crisis. Thus, in practice, the Council of Ministers cannot be dismissed as long as it holds the support of a majority in the Lok Sabha, the President is responsible for making a wide variety of appointments. His/Her work is to facilitate smooth transaction of business in Ministries/ Departments of the Government, the President is de jure the Commander in Chief of the Indian Armed Forces
36.
Chennai
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Chennai /ˈtʃɛnnaɪ/, formerly known as Madras /məˈdrɑːs/ or /-ˈdræs/) is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is one of the biggest cultural, economic, according to the 2011 Indian census, it is the sixth-largest city and fourth-most populous urban agglomeration in India. The city together with the adjoining regions constitute the Chennai Metropolitan Area, Chennai is among the most visited Indian cities by foreign tourists. It was ranked 43rd most visited city in the world for year 2015, the Quality of Living Survey rated Chennai as the safest city in India. Chennai attracts 45 percent of tourists visiting India, and 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. As such, it is termed Indias health capital, as a growing metropolitan city in a developing country, Chennai confronts substantial pollution and other logistical and socio-economic problems. Chennai has the third-largest expatriate population in India at 35,000 in 2009,82,790 in 2011, tourism guide publisher Lonely Planet named Chennai as one of the top ten cities in the world to visit in 2015. Chennai is ranked as a city in the Global Cities Index and was ranked the best city in India by India Today in the 2014 annual Indian city survey. In 2015 Chennai was named the hottest city by the BBC, National Geographic ranked Chennais food as second best in the world, it was the only Indian city to feature in the list. Chennai was also named the ninth-best cosmopolitan city in the world by Lonely Planet, the Chennai Metropolitan Area is one of the largest city economies of India. Chennai is nicknamed The Detroit of India, with more than one-third of Indias automobile industry being based in the city, in January 2015, it was ranked third in terms of per capita GDP. Chennai has been selected as one of the 100 Indian cities to be developed as a city under PM Narendra Modis flagship Smart Cities Mission. The name Madras originated even before the British presence was established in India, the name Madras is said to have originated from a Portuguese phrase mae de Deus which means mother of god, due to Portuguese influence on the port city. According to some sources, Madras was derived from Madraspattinam, a north of Fort St George. However, it is whether the name was in use before the arrival of Europeans. The British military mapmakers believed Madras was originally Mundir-raj or Mundiraj, Madras might have also been derived from the word Madhuras meaning juice of honey or sugarcane in Sanskrit. The nativity of name Chennai, being of Telugu origin is clearly proved by the historians. The first official use of the name Chennai is said to be in a deed, dated 8 August 1639
37.
Kanchi matha
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Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham is a Hindu monastic institution located in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu kanchipuram is one of the five pancha-bhUta-sthalas. The five pancha-bhUta-sthalas or material sites represent earth, sky, air, fire and it is known as Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, and the head of the matha is referred to as a Sankaracharya. The mutt is founded by the Adi Sankara, the Brindavan of Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi is worshipped here. The Kamakoti Peetam however, traditionally refers to Kamakshi, referred popularly as Kamakoti referring to Goddess Durga, kancheepuram is referred to as Kanchi. The Vyakarana Mahabhashya of Patanjali uses the word Kanchi and it can be understood that the word Kanchi also has a Sanskrit base. Under the guidance of Sureshvarachaya, Adi Shankara appointed Sarvajnatman as the second Peetadhipathi, the mutt however has no historical chronology before the 1820s. As per claims of the The Kanchi Mutt it was established by Adi Sankara in 482 BC though Adi Sankaras historically accepted period is 8th century AD. The following order of guru parampara given by the mutt is subject to proof of existence of the prior to 1823. kamakoti. org/
38.
Jayendra Saraswathi
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Swami Jayendra Saraswathi shankaracharya is the 69th Shankaracharya Guru and head or pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham. He is one of the religious figures in Hinduism today. On account of his office and his profound knowledge of the Hindu religion. The Kanchi Math has grown into an organization under him. Further, the Kanchi Mutt is also patronised by many NRIs. The Kanchi Mutt runs many schools, eye clinics and hospitals, CHILDS Trust Hospital, Hindu Mission Hospital, Tamil Nadu Hospital and countless other public welfare institutions. Jayendra Saraswathi was caught in controversies when the mutth could not have his darshan in 1987 during Chaturmasya vrata for a few weeks. In 2002 and 2004, two different cases were filed against Jayendra Saraswathi, Vijayendra Saraswathi and others, the proceedings are still going on in the courts. For allegedly ordering the murder of Sankararaman, a temple manager, for allegedly ordering murderous assault on auditor Radhakrishnan who questioned the missing gold of 83 kg that was meant for Kamakshi temple. The cases are still under trial, final verdict on Sankararaman murder case was given on 27-Nov-2013 and all 23 accused were acquitted by the court. The judge held that the failed to support the prosecution case that the two Sankaracharyas were part of a conspiracy to eliminate the temple official in September 2004. He also said the witnesses, including Sankararamans daughter, failed to identify the accused in the court, none of them identified any accused in the court and no incriminating evidence was made out against the accused, the judge noted. The Jayalalithaa government in Tamil Nadu enacted a law to ban religious conversion, the Tamil Nadu government also started to enforce a pre-existing ban on animal sacrifice in temples, echoing concerns raised by the pontiff. Cover Story on Jayendra Saraswathi, in Frontline news magazine, consolidated news on Legal proceedings on Sri Jayendra Saraswathi. Controversy over Jayendra Saraswathi on YouTube Ten Minutes in a Life
39.
Bangalore
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Bangalore /bæŋɡəˈlɔːr/, officially known as Bengaluru, is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of about 8.42 million and a population of about 8.52 million, making it the third most populous city. It is located in southern India on the Deccan Plateau and its elevation is over 900 m above sea level, the highest of Indias major cities. In 1638, the Marāthās conquered and ruled Bangalore for almost 50 years, after which the Mughals captured and it was captured by the British after victory in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, who returned administrative control of the city to the Maharaja of Mysore. The old city developed in the dominions of the Maharaja of Mysore and was capital of the Princely State of Mysore. In 1809, the British shifted their cantonment to Bangalore, outside the old city, and a grew up around it. Following Indias independence in 1947, Bangalore became the capital of Mysore State, the two urban settlements of Bangalore – city and cantonment – which had developed as independent entities merged into a single urban centre in 1949. The existing Kannada name, Bengalūru, was declared the name of the city in 2006. Bangalore is sometimes referred to as the Silicon Valley of India because of its role as the leading information technology exporter. Indian technological organisations ISRO, Infosys, Wipro and HAL are headquartered in the city, a demographically diverse city, Bangalore is the second fastest-growing major metropolis in India. Numerous state-owned aerospace and defence organisations, such as Bharat Electronics, Hindustan Aeronautics, the city also houses the Kannada film industry. The name Bangalore represents a version of the Kannada language name. It is the name of a village near kodegehalli and was copied by Kempegowda to the city of Bangalore, Bangalore was built on a venue earlier called as Shivanasamudram in the 16th century. The earliest reference to the name Bengalūru was found in a ninth-century Western Ganga Dynasty stone inscription on a vīra gallu, in this inscription found in Begur, Bengalūrū is referred to as a place in which a battle was fought in 890 CE. It states that the place was part of the Ganga Kingdom until 1004 and was known as Bengaval-uru, an apocryphal story recounts that the 12th century Hoysala king Veera Ballala II, while on a hunting expedition, lost his way in the forest. Tired and hungry, he came across an old woman who served him boiled beans. The grateful king named the place benda-kaal-uru, which evolved into Bengalūru. On 11 December 2005, the Government of Karnataka announced that it had accepted a proposal by Jnanpith Award winner U. R. Ananthamurthy to rename Bangalore to Bengalūru, on 27 September 2006, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike passed a resolution to implement the proposed name change
40.
Centenarian
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A centenarian is a person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are less than 100, the term is associated with longevity. A supercentenarian is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or more, there has only been one known case of a person of 120 years of age or older. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide, as life expectancy is increasing across the world, and the world population has also increased rapidly, the number of centenarians is expected to increase quickly in the future. According to the UK ONS, one-third of babies born in 2013 in the UK are expected to live to 100. The United States currently has the greatest number of known centenarians of any nation with 53,364 according to the 2010 Census, in 2010,82. 8% of US centenarians were female. Japan has the second-largest number of centenarians, with an estimated 51,376 as of September 2012, Japan started recording its centenarians in 1963. The number of Japanese centenarians in that year was 153, but surpassed the 10,000 mark in 1998,20,000 in 2003, and 40,000 in 2009. According to a 1998 United Nations demographic survey, Japan is expected to have 272,000 centenarians by 2050, the incidence of centenarians in Japan was one per 3,522 people in 2008. In Japan, the number of centenarians is highly skewed towards females, Japan in fiscal year 2016 had 57,525 female centenarians, while males were 8,167, a ratio of 7,1. The increase of centenarians was even more skewed at 11.6,1, the total number of living centenarians in the world remains uncertain. It was estimated by the Population Division of the United Nations as 23,000 in 1950,110,000 in 1990,150,000 in 1995,209,000 in 2000,324,000 in 2005 and 455,000 in 2009. The following table gives estimated centenarian populations by country, including both the latest and the earliest known estimates, where available, in many countries, people receive a gift or congratulations on their 100th birthday. In the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, the British monarch sends greetings on the 100th birthday, the practice was formalised from 1917, under the reign of King George V, who also sent congratulations on the attainment of a 60th Wedding anniversary. NBCs Today Show has also named new centenarians on air since 1983, Centenarians born in Ireland receive a €2,540 Centenarians Bounty and a letter from the President of Ireland, even if they are resident abroad. Japanese centenarians receive a cup and a certificate from the Prime Minister of Japan upon their 100th birthday. Swedish centenarians receive a telegram from the King and Queen of Sweden, Centenarians born in Italy receive a letter from the President of Italy. In Japan, a National Respect for the Aged Day has been celebrated every September since 1966, an aspect of blessing in many cultures is to offer a wish that the recipient lives to 100 years old
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Sudhakar Chaturvedi
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Sudhakar Chaturvedi is an Indian Vedic scholar, Indologist, and alleged supercentenarian. At the claimed age of 119 years,352 days, some Indian newspapers report him as the oldest living Indian, Chaturvedi claims to have been born on April 20,1897 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. One report also claims an age of 121 in 2011, which would put his birth in 1890, Chaturvedi was given his title Chaturvedi, which literally means master of the four Vedas, for his knowledge of the Vedas. He is a disciple of Swami Shraddhanand at Gurukul Kangri in Haridwar, Chaturvedi was a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he first met when studying the Vedas in a gurukula in northern India. Subsequently, he became an ardent follower of Gandhian methods and he was a witness to many events in the Indian independence movement, including being an eyewitness to the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was known as Gandhijis Postman, as he took down and he lost the use of his right arm in 1938 while travelling with Gandhi, when the railwayman detached the last three compartments of the train as it was struggling to climb uphill. He took part in the struggle and was arrested at least 31 times during the freedom struggle. He was offered the post of minister in the old Mysore state by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and he also campaigned for the unification of the state. In his later life, he became a follower of Dayanand Saraswati of the Arya Samaj and he adopteda man named Arya Mitra as his son, and has three grandchildren. He has never married, My youth was spent in the struggle, by the time we got freedom, I was over 50 years. Who would give me a girl then, Chaturvedi was the first teacher of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. In 2011 he took part in the India Against Corruption campaign and he lives in Jayanagar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. And in 2010 stated he was working for eight hours every day. This includes a lecture he gives on the Vedas every Saturday. He wakes up at 3 am or 3,30, going to bed by 7 pm and he advises people to follow the instructions in the Vedas and a happy life awaits you. He practices a strict vegetarian diet and he says he wants to live to 300. He was honoured by Motilal Banarsidass for his contributions to Indology, the Karnataka Sahitya Anuvada Academy gave him an honorary award for 2007–08. In 2009 he was given a Socio Economic Development Teacher Award and he was honoured by his alma mater, Gurukul Kangri university, in 2010
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Hyderabad
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Hyderabad is the capital of the southern Indian state of Telangana and de jure capital of Andhra Pradesh. At an average altitude of 542 metres, much of Hyderabad is situated on hilly terrain around artificial lakes, established in 1591 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, Hyderabad remained under the rule of the Qutb Shahi dynasty for nearly a century before the Mughals captured the region. In 1724, Mughal viceroy Asif Jah I declared his sovereignty and created his own dynasty, the Nizams dominions became a princely state during the British Raj, and remained so for 150 years, with the city serving as its capital. The city continued as the capital of Hyderabad State after it was brought into the Indian Union in 1948, since 1956, Rashtrapati Nilayam in the city has been the winter office of the President of India. In 2014, the formed state of Telangana split from Andhra Pradesh. Relics of Qutb Shahi and Nizam rule remain visible today, the Charminar—commissioned by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah—has come to symbolise Hyderabad, Golconda fort is another major landmark. The influence of Mughlai culture is evident in the regions distinctive cuisine. The Qutb Shahis and Nizams established Hyderabad as a cultural hub, the Telugu film industry based in the city is the countrys second-largest producer of motion pictures. Hyderabad was historically known as a pearl and diamond trading centre, many of the citys traditional bazaars remain open, including Laad Bazaar, Begum Bazaar and Sultan Bazaar. Special economic zones dedicated to technology have encouraged companies from India. The emergence of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the 1990s led to the naming as Indias Genome Valley. With an output of US$74 billion, Hyderabad is the fifth-largest contributor to Indias overall gross domestic product, according to John Everett-Heath, the author of Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, Hyderabad means Haydars city or lion city, from haydar and ābād. It was named to honour the Caliph Ali Ibn Abi Talib, andrew Petersen, a scholar of Islamic architecture, says the city was originally called Baghnagar. One popular theory suggests that Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of the city, named it Bhagyanagar or Bhāgnagar after Bhagmati and she converted to Islam and adopted the title Hyder Mahal. The city was renamed Hyderabad in her honour, French traveller Jean de Thévenot visited the Deccan region in 1666–1667 refers to the city in his book Travels in India as Bagnagar and Aiderabad. Archaeologists excavating near the city have unearthed Iron Age sites that may date from 500 BCE, the region comprising modern Hyderabad and its surroundings was known as Golkonda, and was ruled by the Chalukya dynasty from 624 CE to 1075 CE. The Kakatiya dynasty was reduced to a vassal of the Khilji dynasty in 1310 after its defeat by Sultan Alauddin Khilji of the Delhi Sultanate and this lasted until 1321, when the Kakatiya dynasty was annexed by Malik Kafur, Allaudin Khiljis general. During this period, Alauddin Khilji took the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which is said to have mined from the Kollur Mines of Golkonda
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University of Delhi
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The University of Delhi informally known as Delhi University is a public central collegiate university, located in New Delhi, India. The University of Delhi was established in 1922 as a unitary, teaching, the University was originally to be named Prince Charles University. He suggested the name by which it is known today, the university thus had modest beginnings with only four colleges, two faculties, and about 750 students. The seat of power in British India had been transferred from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, the Viceregal Lodge Estate became the residence of the Viceroy of India until October,1933, when it was given to the University of Delhi. Since then, it has housed the office of the vice-chancellor, when Sir Maurice Gwyer came to India to serve as Chief Justice of British India, he was nominated as Vice-Chancellor of University of Delhi. Daulat Singh Kothari in Physics, Prof. T. R. Sheshadri in Chemistry, Prof. Panchanan Maheshwari in Botany, Sir Maurice Gwyer is also called the maker of university. He served the post of vice-chancellor till 1950. S, twenty-five years later the golden jubilee celebrations of 1973 were attended by then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Amrita Pritam and M S Subbulakshmi. The University has grown one of the largest universities in India. There are also 261,169 students in non-formal education programme, five departments namely Chemistry, Geology, Zoology, Sociology and History have been awarded the status of the Centres of Advanced Studies. These Centres of Advanced Studies have carved a niche for themselves as centres of excellence in teaching, in addition, a good number of university departments are also receiving grants under the Special Assistance Programme of the UGC in recognition of their outstanding academic work. DU is one of the most sought after institution of education in India. It is also among the university with highest publication count in India, K. Laxman, Scientist CNR Rao and former Prime Minister of United Kingdom - Gordon Brown. There are about 77 colleges affiliated to the University of Delhi, There are two main campuses of the University, the North Campus & the South Campus. North Campus hosts the three founding colleges of the university which constituted the University of Delhi when it was founded, ramjas College, St. Stephens College and Shri Ram College of Commerce. The extended off campus also has colleges in Old Rajendra Nagar, Pitampura, the campus also houses other centres and institutes of Delhi which includes Cluster Innovation Centre, Delhi School of Economics, etc. It moved to its present location on Benito Juarez Road, near Dhaula Kuan, the Campus is spread across 28 hectares of green, hilly terrain and its buildings blend attractively with the natural surroundings. The various Departments are located in the Faculty of Arts, Inter-disciplinary, Applied Sciences, Faculty of Applied Social Sciences & Humanities, The faculty has two departments namely - Business Economics and Slavonic & Finno-Ugrian Studies. Faculty of Commerce and Business Studies, It has two departments, - Commerce Financial Studies, Faculty of Education, There is only one department of Faculty of Education i. e. Department of Education
