1.
Given name
–
A given name is a part of a persons personal name. It identifies a person, and differentiates that person from other members of a group, such as a family or clan. The term given name refers to the fact that the name usually is bestowed upon a person and this contrasts with a surname, which is normally inherited, and shared with other members of the childs immediate family. Given names are used in a familiar and friendly manner in informal situations. In more formal situations the surname is commonly used, unless it is necessary to distinguish between people with the same surname. The idioms on a basis and being on first-name terms allude to the familiarity of addressing another by a given name. The order given name – family name, commonly known as the Western order, is used throughout most European countries and in countries that have cultures predominantly influenced by Western Europe. The order family name – given name, commonly known as the Eastern order, is used in East Asia, as well as in Southern and North-Eastern parts of India. The order given name - fathers family name - mothers family name is used in Spanish-speaking countries to acknowledge the families of both parents. Today the order can also be changed legally in Spain using given name - mothers family name - fathers family name, under the common Western naming convention, people may have one or more forenames. If more than one, there is usually a main forename for everyday use, sometimes however two or more forenames may carry equal weight. There is no particular ordering rule for forenames – often the main forename is at the beginning, a childs given name or names are usually chosen by the parents soon after birth. If a name is not assigned at birth, one may be given at a ceremony, with family. In most jurisdictions, a name at birth is a matter of public record, inscribed on a birth certificate. In western cultures, people normally retain the same name throughout their lives. However, in some cases names may be changed by petitioning a court of law. People may also change their names when immigrating from one country to another with different naming conventions, in France, the agency can refer the case to a local judge. Some jurisdictions, like in Sweden, restrict the spelling of names, parents may choose a name because of its meaning
Given name
–
Most popular US baby names in 1880–2012
2.
Family name
–
A surname or family name is a name added to a given name. In many cases, a surname is a name and many dictionaries define surname as a synonym of family name. In the English-speaking world, it is synonymous with last name because it is usually placed at the end of a persons given name there. In most Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries, two or more surnames may be used, in Hungary, Hong Kong, Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, Madagascar, Taiwan, Vietnam, and parts of India, the family name is placed before a persons given name. The concept of a surname is a recent historical development. Based on an occupation or area of residence, a byname would be used in situations where more than one person had the same name. A family name is typically a part of a personal name which. The use of names is common in most cultures around the world. However, the style of having both a name and a given name is far from universal. In many countries, it is common for people to have only one name or mononym. Also, in most Slavic countries and in Greece, for example, Surname laws vary around the world. If a childs paternity was not known, or if the putative father denied paternity and that is still the custom and law in many countries. The surname for children of married parents is usually inherited from the father, in this article, family name and surname both mean the patrilineal surname, handed down from or inherited from the fathers line or patriline, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Thus, the maternal surname means the patrilineal surname which ones mother inherited from either or both of her parents. For a discussion of matrilineal surnames, passing from mothers to daughters, mrs. Ms. Miss, Dr, and so on. Generally the given name, first name, forename, or personal name is the one used by friends, family and it may also be used by someone who is in some way senior to the person being addressed. This practice also differs between cultures, see T–V distinction, the study of proper names in family names is called onomastics. A one-name study is a collection of vital and other data about all persons worldwide sharing a particular surname
Family name
–
First/given, middle, and last/family/surname diagramwith
J. S. Bach as example. J. S. Bach shared his given name with six immediate family members and many extended family members. He shared his family name with most family members.
3.
Celtic languages
–
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, in all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO, the spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages, the other two, Cornish and Manx, died in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children, taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages, shelta, based largely on Irish with influence from an undocumented source. Some forms of Welsh-Romani or Kååle also combined Romany itself with Welsh language, beurla-reagaird, Highland travellers language Celtic divided into various branches, Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language. Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria, coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the Iberian peninsula, in parts of modern Galicia, Asturias, La Rioja, Aragón, Cantabria, Old Castile, the relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in the northwest of the peninsula, is uncertain. Gallaecian, anciently spoken in the former Gallaecia, northwest of the peninsula, Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These languages were spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language in the Isle of Man. Goidelic, including the living languages Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to scarceness of primary source data. Other scholars distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group, the P-Celtic languages are sometimes seen as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic and it has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages
Celtic languages
–
Classification of Indo-European languages. (click to enlarge)
4.
English language
–
English /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/ is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, English is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. It is the third most common language in the world, after Mandarin. It is the most widely learned second language and a language of the United Nations, of the European Union. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch, English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England, Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London and the King James Bible, and the start of the Great Vowel Shift. Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, English is an Indo-European language, and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Most closely related to English are the Frisian languages, and English, Old Saxon and its descendent Low German languages are also closely related, and sometimes Low German, English, and Frisian are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic languages. Modern English descends from Middle English, which in turn descends from Old English, particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other English languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy dialects of Ireland. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares new language features with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German and these shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor, which linguists call Proto-Germanic. Through Grimms law, the word for foot begins with /f/ in Germanic languages, English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic. The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon, in the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain and the Romans withdrew from Britain. England and English are named after the Angles, Old English was divided into four dialects, the Anglian dialects, Mercian and Northumbrian, and the Saxon dialects, Kentish and West Saxon. Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the period of Old English were written using a runic script. By the sixth century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms and it included the runic letters wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ð⟩, and ash ⟨æ⟩
English language
–
The opening to the Old English epic poem
Beowulf,
handwritten in
half-uncial script: Hƿæt ƿē Gārde/na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon... "Listen! We of the Spear-Danes from days of yore have heard of the glory of the folk-kings..."
English language
–
Countries of the world where English is a majority native language
English language
–
Title page of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales c.1400
5.
Iberian Peninsula
–
The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, also known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia. Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
Iberian Peninsula
–
Satellite image of the Iberian Peninsula.
Iberian Peninsula
–
Iberian Peninsula and southern France, satellite photo on a cloudless day in March 2014
Iberian Peninsula
–
Map of Spain and Portugal, Atlas historique, dated approximately 1705–1739, of H.A. Chatelain.
Iberian Peninsula
–
An 18th-century map of the peninsula depicting various topographical features of the land, as published in Robert Wilkinson's General Atlas, circa 1794.
6.
North Germanic languages
–
The language group is sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Swedish and Norwegian scholars and laypeople. Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries have a Scandinavian language as their native language, languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are spoken commonly on Greenland and, to a lesser extent, by immigrants in North America. Dialects with the assigned to the northern group formed from the Proto-Germanic language in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe. At last around the year 200 AD, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers, the early development of this language branch is attested through runic inscriptions. The original vowel remained when nasalised *ōn and when before /z/, Proto-Germanic *geƀō ‘gift’ > Northwest Germanic *geƀu >, North Germanic *gjavu > with u-umlaut *gjǫvu > ON gjǫf, and West Germanic *gebu > OE giefu, cf. Goth giba. Proto-Germanic *tungōn ‘tongue’ > late Northwest Germanic *tungā > *tunga > ON tunga, OHG zunga, OE tunge, vs. Goth tuggō. *geƀōz ‘of a gift’ > late Northwest Germanic *geƀāz >, North Germanic *gjavaz > ON gjafar, the rhotacism of /z/ to /r/, with presumably a rhotic fricative of some kind as an earlier stage. This change probably affected West Germanic much earlier and then spread from there to North Germanic and this is confirmed by an intermediate stage ʀ, clearly attested in late runic East Norse at a time when West Germanic had long merged the sound with /r/. The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this, Germanic *sa, sō, þat ‘this, that’ + proximal *si ‘here’, Runic Norse, nom. sg. þeim-si, etc. with declension of the 1st part, fixed form with declension on the 2nd part, ON sjá, þessi m. Some innovations are not found in West and East Germanic such as, Sharpening of geminate /jj/ and /ww/ according to Holtzmanns law Occurred also in East Germanic, Proto-Germanic *twajjôN > Old Norse tveggja, Gothic twaddjē, but > Old High German zweiio Word-final devoicing of stop consonants. Proto-Germanic *nahtuN > *nāttu > *nǭttu > Old Norse nótt /ɑi̯/ > /ɑː/ before /r/ Proto-Germanic *sairaz > *sāraz > *sārz > Old Norse sárr, with original /z/ Proto-Germanic *gaizaz > *geizz > Old Norse geirr. General loss of word-final /n/, following the loss of short vowels. Proto-Germanic *bindanaN > *bindan > Old Norse binda, but > Old English bindan and this also affected stressed syllables, Proto-Germanic *in > Old Norse í Vowel breaking of /e/ to /jɑ/ except after w, j or l. The diphthong /eu/ was also affected, shifting to /jɒu/ at an early stage and this diphthong is preserved in Old Gutnish and survives in modern Gutnish. In other Norse dialects, the /j/-onset and length remained, the word *ek, which could occur both stressed and unstressed, appears varyingly as ek and jak throughout Old Norse. Loss of initial /j/, and also of /w/ before a round vowel, Proto-Germanic *wulfaz > North Germanic ulfz > Old Norse ulfr The development of u-umlaut, which rounded stressed vowels when /u/ or /w/ followed in the next syllable. This followed vowel breaking, with ja /jɑ/ being u-umlauted to jǫ /jɒ/, Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe Islands around 800
North Germanic languages
–
Danish
7.
Armenian language
–
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
Armenian language
–
Armenian manuscript, 5th–6th century.
Armenian language
–
regions where Armenian is the language of the majority
Armenian language
–
The Four Gospels, 1495, Portrait of St Mark Wellcome with Armenian inscriptions
Armenian language
–
First Armenian language Bible.
8.
Slavic languages
–
The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones
Slavic languages
–
Baška tablet, 11th century,
Krk,
Croatia.
Slavic languages
–
Countries where an
East Slavic language is the national language
Slavic languages
–
14th-century
Novgorodian children were literate enough to send each other
letters written on birch bark.
Slavic languages
–
10th–11th century
Codex Zographensis, canonical monument of Old Church Slavonic.
9.
William (name)
–
William is a popular given name of old Germanic origin. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the names shortened familiar version in English is Bill, Billy, Will, Willy, or Willie. A common Irish form is Liam, female forms are Willa, Willemina, Willamette, Wilma and Wilhelmina. William comes ultimately from the given name Wilhelm, the Anglo-Saxon form should be *Wilhelm as well. That is a compound of two elements, wil = will or desire, helm, Old English helm helmet, protection. In fact, the form William is from the Old Norman form Williame, the development to -iam is the result of the diphthongation + in Old Norman-French, quite similar in Old Central French + from an early Gallo-Romance form WILLELMU. This development can be followed in the different versions of the name in the Waces Roman de Rou, the Modern French spelling is Guillaume. The first well-known carrier of the name was Charlemagnes cousin William of Gellone, guilhelm, William of Orange, Guillaume Fierabrace, or William Short-Nose. This William is immortalized in the Chanson de Guillaume and his esteem may account for the subsequent popularity among European nobility. During the Middle Ages the word cock was used to describe a young man. As a result, this nickname was applied to a number of names, the name Wilkin is also of medieval origin taken from the shortened version of William with the suffix kin added. Գուլիելմոս ウィリアム 윌리암 威廉 – for persons whose original name is in English, German, Dutch, or Afrikaans, shortened names Bill Billy Will Willy, Willie Gui Guiguille, Guigui Guille Liam Memo Yam Related names Wilson
William (name)
–
William the Conqueror The name William became very popular in the English language after the
Norman conquest of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror.
10.
Scandinavian languages
–
The language group is sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Swedish and Norwegian scholars and laypeople. Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries have a Scandinavian language as their native language, languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are spoken commonly on Greenland and, to a lesser extent, by immigrants in North America. Dialects with the assigned to the northern group formed from the Proto-Germanic language in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe. At last around the year 200 AD, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers, the early development of this language branch is attested through runic inscriptions. The original vowel remained when nasalised *ōn and when before /z/, Proto-Germanic *geƀō ‘gift’ > Northwest Germanic *geƀu >, North Germanic *gjavu > with u-umlaut *gjǫvu > ON gjǫf, and West Germanic *gebu > OE giefu, cf. Goth giba. Proto-Germanic *tungōn ‘tongue’ > late Northwest Germanic *tungā > *tunga > ON tunga, OHG zunga, OE tunge, vs. Goth tuggō. *geƀōz ‘of a gift’ > late Northwest Germanic *geƀāz >, North Germanic *gjavaz > ON gjafar, the rhotacism of /z/ to /r/, with presumably a rhotic fricative of some kind as an earlier stage. This change probably affected West Germanic much earlier and then spread from there to North Germanic and this is confirmed by an intermediate stage ʀ, clearly attested in late runic East Norse at a time when West Germanic had long merged the sound with /r/. The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this, Germanic *sa, sō, þat ‘this, that’ + proximal *si ‘here’, Runic Norse, nom. sg. þeim-si, etc. with declension of the 1st part, fixed form with declension on the 2nd part, ON sjá, þessi m. Some innovations are not found in West and East Germanic such as, Sharpening of geminate /jj/ and /ww/ according to Holtzmanns law Occurred also in East Germanic, Proto-Germanic *twajjôN > Old Norse tveggja, Gothic twaddjē, but > Old High German zweiio Word-final devoicing of stop consonants. Proto-Germanic *nahtuN > *nāttu > *nǭttu > Old Norse nótt /ɑi̯/ > /ɑː/ before /r/ Proto-Germanic *sairaz > *sāraz > *sārz > Old Norse sárr, with original /z/ Proto-Germanic *gaizaz > *geizz > Old Norse geirr. General loss of word-final /n/, following the loss of short vowels. Proto-Germanic *bindanaN > *bindan > Old Norse binda, but > Old English bindan and this also affected stressed syllables, Proto-Germanic *in > Old Norse í Vowel breaking of /e/ to /jɑ/ except after w, j or l. The diphthong /eu/ was also affected, shifting to /jɒu/ at an early stage and this diphthong is preserved in Old Gutnish and survives in modern Gutnish. In other Norse dialects, the /j/-onset and length remained, the word *ek, which could occur both stressed and unstressed, appears varyingly as ek and jak throughout Old Norse. Loss of initial /j/, and also of /w/ before a round vowel, Proto-Germanic *wulfaz > North Germanic ulfz > Old Norse ulfr The development of u-umlaut, which rounded stressed vowels when /u/ or /w/ followed in the next syllable. This followed vowel breaking, with ja /jɑ/ being u-umlauted to jǫ /jɒ/, Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe Islands around 800
Scandinavian languages
–
Danish
11.
Andrew (given name)
–
Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in English-speaking countries, in Italian, the equivalent to Andrew is Andrea, though Andrea is feminine in most other languages. Andrew is frequently shortened to Andy or Drew, the word is derived from the Greek, Ανδρέας, Andreas, itself related to Ancient Greek, ἀνήρ/ἀνδρός aner/andros, man, thus meaning manly and, as consequence, strong, courageous, and warrior. In the King James Bible, the Greek Ἀνδρέας is translated as Andrew, in 2000, the name Andrew was the second most popular name in Australia. In 1999, it was the 19th most common name, while in 1940, Andrew was the first most popular name given to boys in the Northern Territory in 2003 to 2015 and continuing. In Victoria, Andrew was the first most popular name for a boy in the 1970s, Andrew was the 20th most popular name chosen for male infants in 2005. Andrew was the 16th most popular name for infants in British Columbia in 2004, the 17th most popular name in 2003, in 2001, it was the 18th most common name. From 1999 –2003, Andrew was the sixth most often chosen name for a boy, in the United Kingdom in 1974, Andrew was the fourth most common name for a boy among infants, and it was third in 1964. In Norway, with the spelling Andreas, the name has been the second most common name given to boys of the 1990s, the eleventh most common baby name in 2006, Andrew was among the ten most popular names for male infants in 2005. Andrew was the sixth most popular choice for an infant in 2004. In 2002 and 2001, Andrew was the seventh most popular name in the United States. In the 1980s, Andrew was the 19th most popular choice of name in the United States. In the 1970s it was the 31st most popular name, from the 1960s stretching back at least as far as the 1880s, Andrew was not among the forty most popular names in America
Andrew (given name)
–
For other uses, see
Andrew (disambiguation).
12.
Peter (given name)
–
Peter is a common masculine given name. It is derived, via Latin petra, from the Greek word πέτρος meaning stone or rock, according to the New Testament, Jesus gave Saint Peter the name Kephas or Cephas meaning stone in Aramaic. Saint Peter, according to ancient tradition, became the first bishop of Rome, roman Catholics consider him to have been the first Pope and all subsequent popes to have been his successors, and therefore sometimes refer to the Pope or the Papacy itself as Peter. The following names can be interpreted as Peter in English Afrikaans, Pieter, Petrus Albanian, Petro, Pjetër, Pjetri Amharic, ጴጥሮስ Arabic, بطرس, بيار, بيتر Aragonese, Pietro, Pero, Piero, Pier. The name is spelled Pierre and pronounced pyè, also meaning stone, diminutives/hypocoristics include Piotrek, Piotruś, and Piotrunio. Piotr has several name days in Poland
Peter (given name)
–
Saint Peter as painted by
Peter Paul Rubens
13.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
–
Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
–
Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
–
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
14.
Alexander
–
Alexander is a common male first name, and less common surname derived from the Greek Αλέξανδρος. The most famous is Alexander the Great, who created one of the largest empires in ancient history and it is an example of the widespread motif of Greek names expressing battle-prowess, in this case the ability to withstand or push back an enemy battle line. The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek feminine anthroponym
Alexander
–
Paris, depicted in this c. 1636 painting by
Peter Paul Rubens making his famous
judgment, was given the
surname Alexander as a child when he routed a gang of cattle-thieves.
15.
Iceland
–
Iceland is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of 332,529 and an area of 103,000 km2, the capital and largest city is Reykjavík. Reykjavík and the areas in the southwest of the country are home to over two-thirds of the population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active, the interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence still keeps summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a tundra climate. According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in the year 874 AD when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the first permanent settler on the island. In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, emigrated to Iceland, the island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the Althing, one of the worlds oldest functioning legislative assemblies. Following a period of strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. The establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397 united the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, Iceland thus followed Norways integration to that Union and came under Danish rule after Swedens secession from that union in 1523. In the wake of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Icelands struggle for independence took form and culminated in independence in 1918, until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture, and was among the poorest in Europe. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity, in 1994, it became a part of the European Economic Area, which further diversified the economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing. Iceland has an economy with relatively low taxes compared to other OECD countries. It maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. Iceland ranks high in economic, political and social stability and equality, in 2013, it was ranked as the 13th most-developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index. Iceland runs almost completely on renewable energy, some bankers were jailed, and the economy has made a significant recovery, in large part due to a surge in tourism. Icelandic culture is founded upon the nations Scandinavian heritage, most Icelanders are descendants of Germanic and Gaelic settlers. Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is descended from Old Norse and is related to Faroese
Iceland
–
Norsemen Landing in Iceland – a 19th Century depiction by
Oscar Wergeland.
Iceland
–
Flag
Iceland
–
Ingólfr Arnarson (modern Icelandic: Ingólfur Arnarson), the first permanent Scandinavian settler in Iceland
Iceland
–
Ósvör, a replica of an old fishing outpost outside
Bolungarvík
16.
Icelandic name
–
Icelandic names differ from most current Western family name systems by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic, they indicate the father of the child and not the historic family lineage. Iceland shares a cultural heritage with the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden. Icelanders, however, unlike other Scandinavians, have continued to use their traditional name system, the Icelandic system is thus not based on family names. Generally, a persons last name indicates the first name of their father or in some cases mother, some family names do exist in Iceland, most commonly adaptations from last name patronyms Icelanders took up when living abroad, usually Denmark. Since 1925, one cannot adopt a name unless one explicitly has a legal right to do so through inheritance. First names not previously used in Iceland must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee before being used, the criterion for acceptance of names is whether or not they can be easily incorporated into the Icelandic language. A man named Jón Einarsson has a son named Ólafur, Ólafur’s last name will not be Einarsson like his father’s, it will become Jónsson, literally indicating that Ólafur is the son of Jón. The same practice is used for daughters, Jón Einarssons daughter Sigríður’s last name would not be Einarsson but Jónsdóttir. Again, the name literally means Jón’s daughter, in some cases, an individual’s surname is derived from a parents middle name instead of the first name. For example, if Jón is the son of Hjálmar Arnar Vilhjálmsson he may either be named Jón Hjálmarsson or Jón Arnarsson, the reason for this may be that the parent prefers to be called by the middle name instead of the first name, this is fairly common. It may also be that the middle name seems to fit the child’s first name better. This practice has now become common, but features conspicuously in the Icelandic sagas. The vast majority of Icelandic last names carry the name of the father, some women use it as a social statement while others simply choose it as a matter of style. In all of these cases, the convention is the same, Ólafur, one well-known Icelander with a matronymic name is football player Heiðar Helguson, another is novelist Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir. One medieval example is the poet Eilífr Goðrúnarson, in the Icelandic film Bjarnfreðarson the title characters name is the subject of some mockery for his having a womans name – as Bjarnfreðurs son – not his fathers. In the film this is connected to her radical feminism and shame over his paternity, some people have both a matronymic and a patronymic, for example, Dagur Bergþóruson Eggertsson, the current mayor of Reykjavík. Another example is the girl Blær mentioned above, her name is Blær Bjarkardóttir Rúnarsdóttir. In Iceland, listings such as the directory are alphabetised by first name rather than surname
Icelandic name
–
Features
Icelandic name
–
A simple family tree showing the Icelandic patronymic naming system
17.
Hausa people
–
The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The largest population of Hausa are concentrated in Nigeria and Niger, most Hausa, however, live in small villages or towns in Africa, where they grow crops, raise livestock including cattle, and engage in trade. They speak the Hausa language, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Chadic group, the Hausa aristocracy had historically developed an equestrian based culture. Still a status symbol of the nobility in Hausa society. Daura city is the origin of Hausawa, Hausa people, the town predates all the major Hausa towns in tradition and culture. A table of Hausa ethnic population by country, Daura, in northern Nigeria is the oldest city of Hausaland. The Hausa of Sokoto, also in northern Nigeria, speak the oldest surviving classical vernacular of the language, historically Sokoto was the centre of Hausa Islamic scholarship. Migrants from these areas were introducing Islam to many of the Hausa by the 14th century, all of these groups live in the Sahel, Saharan and Sudanian regions, and as a result have influenced each others cultures to varying degrees. Today some Fulani people cannot be distinguished from Hausa people in northern states of Nigeria, due to inter-marriage. In Agadez and Saharan areas of central Niger, the Tuareg and Hausa groups are indistinguishable from each other in their traditional clothing, but the two groups differ in language, lifestyle and preferred beasts of burden. Islamic Shari’a law is loosely the law of the land in Hausa areas, well understood by any Islamic scholar or teacher, known in Hausa as a mallam, mallan or malam. This pluralist attitude toward ethnic-identity and cultural affiliation has enabled the Hausa to inhabit one of the largest geographic regions of non-Bantu ethnic groups in Africa, the Nok culture appeared in Northern Nigeria around 1000 BC and vanished under unknown circumstances around 300 AD in the region of West Africa. It is believed to be the product of a nation that branched to create the Hausa, Gwari, Birom, Kanuri, Nupe. The Kwatarkwashi Culture or Sokoto Culture located to the North west of Nok is thought to be the same as or an ancestor of the Nok. Noks social system is thought to have highly advanced. The Nok culture is considered to be the earliest sub-Saharan producer of life-sized Terracotta, the refinement of this culture is attested to by the image of a Nok dignitary at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The dignitary is portrayed wearing a crooked baton, the dignitary is also portrayed sitting with flared nostrils, and an open mouth suggesting performance. Other images show figures on horseback, indicating that the Nok culture possessed the horse, iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in Nok culture in Africa at least by 550 BC and possibly earlier
Hausa people
–
Hausa
Hausa people
–
The Emir of Muri Alhaji Abbas Tafida and his
vizier.
Hausa people
–
Emir of Kano and officials, 1911.
Hausa people
–
Photo of Sultan of
Zinder 's palace courtyard, 1906.
18.
Fulani
–
The Fula people or Fulani or Fulɓe, numbering between 20 and 25 million people in total, are one of the largest and a widely dispersed Muslim ethnic group in Sahel and West Africa. The Fula people are believed to have roots in the people from North Africa and the Middle East. As an ethnic group they are bound together by the Fula language, culture, history, their religious affiliation and their efforts to spread Islam in Sahel region and the West Africa. A significant proportion of the Fula – a third, or an estimated 7 to 8 million – are pastoral people, the majority of the Fula ethnic group consisted of semi-sedentary people, as well as sedentary settled farmers, artisans, merchants and nobility. Spread over many countries, they are mainly in West Africa and northern parts of Central Africa. Many Fulbe was also taken to the New World during 16th to 19th century Atlantic Slave Trade and they were largely captured from the Senegal and Guinea with a significant percentage also taken from Mali and Cameroon. Some of the Fulbe of note were Bilali Muhammad, Ayuba Diallo, Salih Bilali, Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, some of Bilali Muhammads known descendants still live on Salepo Island Georgia and he also left descendants in the Bahama Archipelago who are not known. Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori and many others have many descendants in the USA, there are many names used in other languages to refer to the Fulɓe. Fulani in English is borrowed from the Hausa term, Fula, from Manding languages, is also used in English, and sometimes spelled Fulah or Fullah. Fula and Fulani are commonly used in English, including within Africa, the French borrowed the Wolof term Pël, which is variously spelled, Peul, Peulh, and even Peuhl. More recently the Fulfulde / Pulaar term Fulɓe, which is a noun has been Anglicised as Fulbe. In Portuguese, the terms Fula or Futafula are used, the terms Fallata Fallatah or Fellata are of Kanuri origins, and are often the ethnonyms by which Fulani people are identified by in Sudan. The Fula people are distributed, across the Sahel from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea. Alongside, many speak other languages of the countries they inhabit. Such languages include Hausa, Bambara, Wolof, and Arabic and this is the area known as the Fombina, literally meaning The South in Adamawa Fulfulde, because it represented the most southern and eastern reaches of Fulɓe hegemonic dominance in West Africa. In this area, Fulfulde is the lingua franca. Further east of this area, Fulani communities become predominantly nomadic, the Fulani People occupy a vast geographical expanse located roughly in a longitudinal East-West band immediately south of the Sahara, and just north of the coastal rain forest and swamps. There are an estimated 20-25 million Fulani people, there are generally three different types of Fulani based on settlement patterns, viz, the Nomadic/Pastoral or Mbororo, The Semi-Nomadic and the Settled or Town Fulani
Fulani
–
Fulani, Fula, Fulɓe
Fulani
–
Fulani calabashes used for
cheese production
Fulani
–
Tassili rock art
19.
Naming conventions in Ethiopia and Eritrea
–
The naming convention used in Eritrea and Ethiopia does not have family names and typically consists of an individual personal name and a separate patronymic. This is similar to the Arabic, Icelandic and Somali naming conventions, traditionally for the Habesha people the lineage is traced paternally, legislation has been passed in Eritrea that allows for this to be done on the maternal side as well. The word Habesha is an ethnonym for the Abyssinian people, in this convention, children are given a name at birth, by which name they will be known. To differentiate from others in the generation with the same name, their fathers first name. In the West, this is mistaken for a surname —but unlike European names. In marriage, unlike in some Western countries, women do not change their name, in the example above, the progenitors, Feiven and Senai, may be differentiated from others in their generation by their fathers name. In this example, Feivens and Senais fathers first names are Tewolde, Feiven and Senai have a daughter and a son, each of whom is married and has a child. The first to have a child is their daughter, Yordanos Senai, she, the next sibling to have a child is Yordanos brother, Zerezghi Senai, this child is also a son. As it is against custom to name a child after a family member, his parents give him a different first name than his cousin. Ammanuel and Afwerki would each get their fathers first name for their last, in the diaspora, this method is sometimes dropped in favor of adopting the grandfathers name as a surname in accordance with Western naming conventions. In contemporary Eritrea, a legal name consists of their given name, followed by the given name of a parent. Meanwhile in modern Ethiopia, a legal name includes both the fathers and grandfathers names, so that the fathers name becomes the childs middle name
Naming conventions in Ethiopia and Eritrea
–
Example Eritrean family tree explained below. Blue: male; red: female.
20.
Maasai language
–
Maasai or Maa is an Eastern Nilotic language spoken in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania by the Maasai people, numbering about 800,000. It is closely related to the other Maa varieties, Samburu, the language of the Samburu people of central Kenya, Chamus, spoken south and southeast of Lake Baringo, and Parakuyu of Tanzania. The Maasai, Samburu, il-Chamus and Parakuyu peoples are historically related, properly speaking, Maa refers to the language and the culture and Maasai refers to the people who speak Maa. Because the Maasai have resisted forms of colonization and Western expansion, their systems of communication and exchange revolve primarily around the trade they do within the tribe. The loss of the Maasai language, while not rapid, is happening as a result of contact with other tribal groups in East Africa. The Maasai way of life is embedded in their language, specifically, the economic systems of trade that the Maasai rely on in order to maintain their nomadic way of life, relies on the survival of the Maasai language, even in its minority status. With language endangerment, the Maasai tribe would continue to be threatened, the minority status that the language currently faces has already threatened traditional Maasai practices. Less and less groups of Maasai continue to be nomadic in the region, choosing to settle instead in close knit communities to keep their language, tone is extremely important for conveying correct meaning in the Maasai language. In the table of consonant phonemes below, phonemes are represented with IPA symbols, when IPA conventions differ from symbols normally used in practical writing, the latter are given in angle brackets. For some Maasai speakers, the stop consonants are not particularly implosive. In Arusha Maa, /p/ is typically realized as a voiceless fricative, at least in native Maa words, and occur in complementary distribution, with the former occurring directly after consonants and the latter elsewhere. Like the other Maa languages, Maasai has advanced tongue root vowel harmony, there are nine contrasting vowels, with the vowel /a/ being neutral for harmony. Word order is usually verb–subject–object, though order can vary because tone is the most important indicator of subject versus object, what really determines order in a clause is topicality, order in the most simple clauses can be predicted according to the information structure pattern. Thus, if the object is highly topical in the discourse, the Maasai language has only two fully grammatical prepositions, but can use relational nouns along with a most general preposition to designate specific locative ideas. Noun phrases begin with a prefix or a gender-number prefix. Other modifiers follow the noun, including possessive phrases. In Maasai, many morphemes are actually tone patterns, for example, The Maasai language carries three forms of gendered nouns, feminine, masculine, and place. Native speakers of the language attach a gendered prefix to a noun, the meaning of the noun in context then refers to its gender
Maasai language
–
Masai Woman
21.
Zulu people
–
The Zulu are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa and the largest ethnic group in South Africa, with an estimated 10–11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, the Zulu were originally a major clan in what is today Northern KwaZulu-Natal, founded ca.1709 by Zulu kaMalandela. In the Nguni languages, iZulu means heaven, or weather, at that time, the area was occupied by many large Nguni communities and clans. Nguni communities had migrated down Africas east coast over centuries, as part of the Bantu migrations probably arriving in what is now South Africa in about the 9th century, the Zulu formed a powerful state in 1818 under the leader Shaka. Shaka, as the Zulu King, gained an amount of power over the tribe. On 11 December 1878, agents of the British delivered an ultimatum to 11 chiefs representing Cetshwayo, the terms forced upon Cetshwayo required him to disband his army and accept British authority. Cetshwayo refused, and war followed January 12,1879, during the war, the Zulus defeated the British at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January. The British managed to get the hand after the Battle at Rorkes Drift. After Cetshwayos capture a month following his defeat, the British divided the Zulu Empire into 13 kinglets, the sub-kingdoms fought amongst each other until 1883 when Cetshwayo was reinstated as king over Zululand. This still did not stop the fighting and the Zulu monarch was forced to flee his realm by Zibhebhu, one of the 13 kinglets, Cetshwayo died in February 1884, killed by Zibhebhus regime, leaving his son, the 15-year-old Dinuzulu, to inherit the throne. In-fighting between the Zulu continued for years, until Zululand was absorbed fully into the British colony of Natal, under apartheid, the homeland of KwaZulu was created for Zulu people. In 1970, the Bantu Homeland Citizenship Act provided that all Zulus would become citizens of KwaZulu, KwaZulu consisted of a large number of disconnected pieces of land, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. By 1993, approximately 5.2 million Zulu people lived in KwaZulu, the Chief Minister of KwaZulu, from its creation in 1970 was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. In 1994, KwaZulu was joined with the province of Natal, Inkatha YeSizwe means the crown of the nation. In 1975, Buthelezi revived the Inkatha YaKwaZulu, predecessor of the Inkatha Freedom Party and this organization was nominally a protest movement against apartheid, but held more conservative views than the ANC. For example, Inkatha was opposed to the struggle. Inkatha was initially on good terms with the ANC, but the two came into increasing conflict beginning in 1976 in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising. The modern Zulu population is evenly distributed in both urban and rural areas
Zulu people
–
Jeff Radebe
Zulu people
–
Shaka, king of the Zulu. After a sketch by Lt. James King, a Port Natal merchant
Zulu people
–
Lucas Radebe
Zulu people
–
Zulu in traditional clothes
22.
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
–
Shaka kaSenzangakhona, also known as Shaka Zulu, was one of the most influential monarchs of the Zulu Kingdom. He was born near present-day Melmoth, KwaZulu-Natal Province, due to persecution as a result of his illegitimacy, Shaka spent his childhood in his mothers settlements where he was initiated into an ibutho lempi. In his early days, Shaka served as a warrior under the sway of Dingiswayo, the initial Zulu maneuvers were primarily defensive in nature, as Shaka preferred to apply pressure diplomatically, aided by an occasional strategic assassination. His changes to local society built on existing structures, although he preferred social and propagandistic political methods, he also engaged in a number of battles, as the Zulu sources make clear. In turn, he was assassinated by his own half brothers, Dingane. When Senzangakhona died in 1816 Shakas younger half-brother Sigujana assumed power as the heir to the Zulu chiefdom. Sigujanas reign was short however as Shaka, with the help of Dingiswayo and his half brother Ngwadi, had Sigujana assassinated in a coup that was relatively bloodless, when the Mthethwa forces were defeated and scattered temporarily, the power vacuum was filled by Shaka. He reformed the remnants of the Mthethwa and other regional tribes, when Dingiswayo was murdered by Zwide, Shaka sought to avenge his death. At some point Zwide barely escaped Shaka, though the details are not known. In that encounter Zwides mother Ntombazi, a Sangoma, was killed by Shaka. Shaka chose a particularly gruesome revenge on her, locking her in a house and placing jackals or hyenas inside, they devoured her and, in the morning, despite carrying out this revenge, Shaka continued his pursuit of Zwide. It was not until around 1825 that the two leaders met, near Phongola, in what would be their final meeting. Phongola is near the present day border of KwaZulu-Natal, a province in South Africa, Shaka was victorious in battle, although his forces sustained heavy casualties, which included his head military commander, Umgobhozi Ovela Entabeni. In Qwabe, Shaka may have intervened in a succession dispute to help his own choice, Nqetho, into power. As Shaka became more respected by his people, he was able to spread his ideas with greater ease, because of his background as a soldier, Shaka taught the Zulus that the most effective way of becoming powerful quickly was by conquering and controlling other tribes. His teachings greatly influenced the outlook of the Zulu people. The Zulu tribe soon developed a warrior mindset, which Shaka turned to his advantage, Shakas hegemony was primarily based on military might, smashing rivals and incorporating scattered remnants into his own army. He supplemented this with a mixture of diplomacy and patronage, incorporating friendly chieftains, including Zihlandlo of the Mkhize, Jobe of the Sithole and these peoples were never defeated in battle by the Zulu, they did not have to be
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
–
1824 European artist's impression of Shaka with a long throwing
assegai and heavy shield. No drawings from life are known.
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
–
Large statue representing Shaka at
Camden Market in London, England.
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
–
Sketch of a Zulu warrior
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
–
Shaka's military innovations such as the "iklwa", the age-grade regimental system and encirclement tactics helped make the Zulu one of the most powerful nations in southern and southeastern Africa.
23.
Yi people
–
The Yi or Lolo people are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Numbering 8 million, they are the seventh largest of the 55 ethnic minority officially recognized by the Peoples Republic of China. They live primarily in areas of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou. As of 1999, there were 3,300 Lô Lô people living in Hà Giang, Cao Bằng, the Yi speak various Loloish languages, Sino-Tibetan languages closely related to Burmese. The prestige variety is Nuosu, which is written in the Yi script. Of the more than 8 million Yi people, over 4.5 million live in Yunnan Province,2.5 million live in southern Sichuan Province, and 1 million live in the northwest corner of Guizhou Province. Nearly all the Yi live in areas, often carving out their existence on the sides of steep mountain slopes far from the cities of China. The altitudinal differences of the Yi areas directly affect the climate and these striking differences are the basis of the old saying that The weather is different a few miles away in the Yi area. Yi populations in different areas are different from one another. The appellations of Nuosu, Nasu, Nesu, Nisu, and other names are considered derivatives of the original autonym “ꆀ” appended with the suffix -su. The name Sani is also a variety of this group, further, it is widely believed that the Chinese names 夷 and 彝 were derived from Ni. The appellations of Lolo, Lolopu, etc. are related to the Yi people’s worship of the tiger, lo is also the basis for the Chinese exonym Luóluó 猓猓, 倮倮, or 罗罗. The original character 猓, with the dog radical 犭and a guǒ 果 phonetic, was a graphic pejorative, languages reforms in the PRC replaced the 猓 character in Luóluó twice. First by Luó 倮, with the human radical 亻and the same phonetic, but that was a variant for luǒ 裸 naked. Paul K. Benedict noted, a leading Chinese linguist, has remarked that the name Lolo is offensive only when written with the dog radical and this group includes various other appellations of different groups of Yi. Some of them may be of other groups but are recognised as Yi by the Chinese. The Pu may be relevant to an ancient ethnic group Pu, in the legends of the northern Yi, the Yi people conquered Pu and its territory in the northeastern part of the modern Liangshan. Some scholars believe that the Yi are descended from the ancient Qiang people of todays western China and they migrated from southeastern Tibet through Sichuan and into the Yunnan Province, where their largest populations can be found today
Yi people
–
Alternative names: Nuosu and dozens of others
Yi people
–
A Yi woman in traditional dress
Yi people
–
A Yi woman of
Butuo County of
Sichuan Province
Yi people
–
A Yi woman of
Shiping County of
Yunan Province
24.
Hani people
–
The Hani or Ho people are an ethnic group. They form one of the 56 officially recognized nationalities of the Peoples Republic of China, in Laos, the Hani are more commonly known as Ho. There are 12,500 Hani living in Lai Châu Province, the Ho reside in the mountainous northern regions of Phongsaly Province in Laos, near the Chinese and Vietnamese borders. Over ninety percent of present-day Hani peoples live in the Province of Yunnan in southern China, located across the Ailao Mountains, the Hani oral traditions state that they are descended from the Yi people, and that they split off as a separate tribe fifty generations ago. One of their oral traditions is the recital of the names of Hani ancestors from the first Hani family down to oneself, Hani houses are usually two or three stories high, built with bamboo, mud, stone and wood. The traditional clothing of the Hani is made dark blue fabric. The men dress in jackets and in long wide pants. They also wear white or black turbans, the women dress depending on which clan they belong to. There is no difference in the clothing of children under the age of seven. Hani are known for their vocal polyphonic singing, eight-part polyphony was recorded in the 1990s. They play traditional instruments, end-blown flute labi. and three-stringed plucked lute lahe. Part of thousand years old culture are terraced fields, the Hani are polytheists and they profess a special adoration toward the spirits of their ancestors. They are used to practicing rituals to venerate to the different gods and this last charge can be performed indistinctly by men and women. Some Hani also practice Theravada Buddhism, the Hani language spoken by many of the Hani belongs to the Lolo-Burmese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Many Hani speak languages related Lolo-Burmese languages, oral tradition tells of an ancient written script, tradition says it was lost on the migration from Sichuan. They now use a romanization of the Luchun dialect as a written script, according to You Weiqiong, Hani subgroups were classified as follows in 1954, with 11 primary branches. Respective locations are listed as well, the Sanda people live in Sanda Township 三达乡 of Jinghong City, and speak a Yi language with many Hani loanwords. There are 2 elderly women in Dazhai 大寨 who can remember just over 40 words in the Sanda language
Hani people
–
An ethnic Hani girl with a typical Hani headgear for children. Near
Yuanyang,
Yunnan Province, China
Hani people
–
Typical daily attire of ethnic Hani in China. In
Yuanyang County, Yunnan Province.
Hani people
–
A Ho (Hani) woman and her child in Laos, circa 2003.
Hani people
–
A Hani house in Vietnam.
25.
Atayal people
–
The Atayal, also known as the Tayal and the Tayan, are a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines. In 2014, the Atayal tribe numbered 85,888 and this was approximately 15. 9% of Taiwans total indigenous population, making them the third-largest tribal group. The meaning of Atayal is genuine person or brave man, the first record of Atayal inhabitance is found near the upper reaches of the Zhuoshui River. However, during the late 17th century they crossed the Central Mountain Ranges into the wilderness of the east and they then settled in the Liwu River valley. Seventy-nine Atayal villages can be found here, Taiwan is home of a number of Austronesian tribal groups since before 4,000 BC. Genetic analysis however suggests that the different tribes may have different ancestral source populations originating in mainland Asia, the Atayal people are believed to have migrated to Taiwan from Southern China or Southeast Asia. Genetic studies have found similarities between the Atayal and other people in the Philippines and Thailand, and to a lesser extent with south China. The Atayal are genetically distinct from the Amis people who are the largest tribal group in Taiwan, as well as from the Han people, studies on Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms suggest ancient migrations of two lineages of the various tribes into Taiwan approximately 11, 000-26,000 years ago. Nevertheless modern people are very interbred with Han Chinese immigrants, recent DNA studies show that the Lapita people and modern Polynesians have a common ancestry with the Atayal and the Kankanaey people of the northern Philippines. The Atayal are visibly different from the Han Chinese of Taiwan, intermarriage with Chinese also produced a significant number of Atayal-Chinese mixed offspring and celebrities such as Vivian Hsu, Vic Zhou, Yuming Lai, Kao Chin Su-mei. According to stories told by their elders, the first Atayal ancestors appeared when a stone, Pinspkan, there were three people, but one decided to go back into the stone. One man and one woman who lived together for a long time. But the boy was shy and wouldnt dare approach her, whereupon, the girl came up with an idea. She left her home and found some coal with which to blacken her face so she could pose as a different girl, after several days, she crept back into their home and the boy mistook her for another girl and they lived happily ever after. Not long after, the couple bore children, fulfilling their mission of procreating the next generation, the Atayal custom of face tattooing may have come from the girl blackening her face in the story. The Atayal Tribe has a well-developed culture and they originally lived by fishing, hunting, gathering, and growing crops on burned-off mountain fields. The tribe also practices crafts such as weaving, net knotting and they also have traditional musical instruments and dances. The Atayal are known as great warriors, the Atayal were known to be fierce fighters as observed in the case of the Wushe Incident, in which the Atayal fought the Japanese
Atayal people
–
Atayal sculpture in Wulai.
Atayal people
–
An Atayal tribal woman with tattoo on her face as a symbol of maturity, which was a tradition for both males and females. The custom was prohibited during
Japanese rule.
Atayal people
–
Traditional aboriginal designs are often found on modern buildings in
Taiwan in places where aborigines traditionally live. Here is an Atayal-inspired community center in rural
Ilan County.
26.
Amis people
–
The Amis are an indigenous people of Taiwan. They speak Amis, an Austronesian language, and are one of the sixteen officially recognized peoples of Taiwanese aborigines, in 2014, the Amis numbered 200,604. This was approximately 37. 1% of Taiwans total indigenous population, the Amis are primarily fishermen due to their coastal location. Traditional Amis villages were relatively large for indigenous groups, typically between 500 and 1,000, in todays Taiwan, the Amis also comprise the majority of urban aboriginals and have developed many urban tribes all around the island. In recent decades, Amis have also married exogamously to Han as well as indigenous people. The Amis people generally identify themselves as Pangcah, which means human or people of our kind, nonetheless, in todays Taiwan, Amis is much more frequently used. This name comes from the word amis, meaning north, there is still no consensus in the academic circle how Amis came to be used to address the Pangcah. One supposition is that it was used by the Puyuma to call the Pangcah. Another supposition holds that those who lived in the Taitung Plain called themselves Amis because their ancestors had come from the north and their closest genetic relative appears to be the Filipinos. It does not match the observed differences in culture, language, family affairs including finance of the family are decided by the female householder, in the Ami tradition. Not many people may have seen the Ami, but many people may have heard the Ami, the musical project Enigma used an Ami chant in their song Return to Innocence in their second album, The Cross of Changes. This song was the song of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The main chorus of it was sung by Difang and his wife, Igay, maison des Cultures du Monde recorded their singing while they were on tour and released a CD, which was subsequently used by Enigma. The case was settled out of court. Ami singing is known for its complex contrapuntal polyphony, the most important traditional ceremony is the Harvest Festival. The Amis Harvest festival is to show the peoples thanks and appreciations to the gods and it takes place every July to September
Amis people
–
Chang Chen-yue
Amis people
–
Tank
Amis people
–
Harvest Festival
Amis people
–
Amis Folk Center
27.
South Asia
–
Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as Nepal and northern parts of India situated south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. South Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean and on land by West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985, South Asia covers about 5.1 million km², which is 11. 51% of the Asian continent or 3. 4% of the worlds land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion or about one fourth of the worlds population, overall, it accounts for about 39. 49% of Asias population and is home to a vast array of peoples. The area of South Asia and its extent is not clear cut as systemic. Aside from the region of South Asia, formerly part of the British Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar is included by some scholars in South Asia, but in Southeast Asia by others. Some do not include Afghanistan, others question whether Afghanistan should be considered a part of South Asia or the Middle East, the mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included as well. Myanmar is often added, and by various deviating definitions based on often substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the common concept of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the Raj, have not been proposed as any part of South Asia. Additionally Burma was administered as part of the Raj until 1937, the 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining Union of India or Dominion of Pakistan. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of members of SAARC. This bloc of countries include two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj – Nepal, and Bhutan, Afghanistan was a British protectorate from 1878 until 1919, after the Afghans lost to the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The United Nations Statistics Divisions scheme of sub-regions include all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia, population Information Network includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as part of South Asia. Maldives, in view of its characteristics, was admitted as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network only in principle, the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region includes only the original seven signatories of SAARC. The British Indian Ocean Territory is connected to the region by a publication of Janes for security considerations, the inclusion of Myanmar in South Asia is without consensus, with many considering it a part of southeast Asia and others including it within South Asia. Afghanistan was of importance to the British colonial empire, especially after the Second Anglo-Afghan War over 1878–1880, Afghanistan remained a British protectorate until 1919, when a treaty with Vladimir Lenin included the granting of independence to Afghanistan. Following Indias partition, Afghanistan has generally included in South Asia
South Asia
–
While South Asia had never been a coherent
geopolitical region, it has a distinct geographical identity
South Asia
–
South Asia
South Asia
–
Ethno-linguistic families of South Asia.
28.
Tamil Nadu
–
Tamil Nadu is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai, Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Puducherry and the South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The state shares a border with the nation of Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu is the eleventh-largest state in India by area and the sixth-most populous, the state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011, with the second-largest state economy after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state economy in India with ₹13,842 billion in gross domestic product after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu was ranked as one of the top seven developed states in India based on a Multidimensional Development Index in a 2013 report published by the Reserve Bank of India and its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. Tamil Nadu is home to natural resources. In addition, its people have developed and continue classical arts, classical music, historic buildings and religious sites include Hindu temples of Tamil architecture, hill stations, beach resorts, multi-religious pilgrimage sites, and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Archaeological evidence points to this area being one of the longest continuous habitations in the Indian peninsula, the ASI archaeologists have proposed that the script used at that site is very rudimentary Tamil Brahmi. Adichanallur has been announced as a site for further excavation. About 60 per cent of the epigraphical inscriptions found by the ASI in India are from Tamil Nadu. A Neolithic stone celt with the Indus script on it was discovered at Sembian-Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, according to epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, this was the first datable artefact bearing the Indus script to be found in Tamil Nadu. Mahadevan claimed that the find was evidence of the use of the Harappan language, the date of the celt was estimated at between 1500 BCE and 2000 BCE. The early history of the people and rulers of Tamil Nadu is a topic in Tamil literary sources known as Sangam literature, numismatic, archaeological and literary sources corroborate that the Sangam period lasted for about six centuries, from 300 BC to AD300. Three dynasties, namely the Chera, Chola and Pandya, ruled the area of present-day Tamil Nadu, the Chera ruled the whole of present-day Kerala and parts of western Tamil Nadu comprising Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Karur, Salem and Erode districts from the capital of Vanchi Muthur. The Chola dynasty ruled the northern and central parts of Tamil Nadu from their capital, Uraiyur, All three dynasties had extensive trade relationships with Rome, Greece, Egypt, Ceylon, Phoenicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia. Trade flourished in commodities such as spices, ivory, pearls, beads, Chera traded extensively from Muziris on the west coast, Chola from Arikamedu and Puhar and Pandya through Korkai port. A Greco-Roman trade and travel document, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea gives a description of the Tamil country, besides these three dynasties, the Sangam era Tamilakam was also divided into various provinces named nadu, meaning country
Tamil Nadu
–
Location of Tamil Nadu (marked in red) in
India
Tamil Nadu
–
Sage
Agastya father of Tamil literature,
Sangam period
Tamil Nadu
–
Megalithic Sarcophagus burial from Tamil Nadu.
29.
Kerala
–
Kerala historically known as Keralam, is an Indian state in South India on the Malabar Coast. It was formed on 1 November 1956 following the States Reorganisation Act by combining Malayalam-speaking regions, spread over 38,863 km2, it is bordered by Karnataka to the north and northeast, Tamil Nadu to the east and south, and the Lakshadweep Sea to the west. With 33,387,677 inhabitants as per the 2011 Census, Malayalam is the most widely spoken language and is also the official language of the state. The region has been a prominent spice exporter since 3000 BCE, the Chera Dynasty was the first prominent kingdom based in Kerala, though it frequently struggled against attacks by the neighbouring Cholas and Pandyas. In the 15th century, the spice trade attracted Portuguese traders to Kerala, after independence, Travancore and Cochin joined the Republic of India and Travancore-Cochin was given the status of a state in 1949. In 1956, Kerala state was formed by merging Malabar district, Travancore-Cochin, Hinduism is practised by more than half of the population, followed by Islam and Christianity. The culture is a synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian cultures, developed over millennia, under influences from other parts of India, the production of pepper and natural rubber contributes significantly to the total national output. In the agricultural sector, coconut, tea, coffee, cashew, the states coastline extends for 595 kilometres, and around 1.1 million people in the state are dependent on the fishery industry which contributes 3% to the states income. The state has the highest media exposure in India with newspapers publishing in nine languages, mainly English, Kerala is one of the prominent tourist destinations of India, with backwaters, beaches, Ayurvedic tourism and tropical greenery as its major attractions. The name Kerala has an uncertain etymology, One popular theory derives Kerala from Kera and alam is land, thus land of coconuts, this also happens to be a nickname for the state due to abundance of coconut trees and its use by the locals. The word Kerala is first recorded in a 3rd-century BCE rock inscription left by the Maurya emperor Ashoka, the inscription refers to the local ruler as Keralaputra, or son of Chera. This contradicts the theory that Kera is from coconut tree, at that time, one of three states in the region was called Cheralam in Classical Tamil, Chera and Kera are variants of the same word. The word Cheral refers to the oldest known dynasty of Kerala kings and is derived from the Proto-Tamil-Malayalam word for lake, the earliest Sanskrit text to mention Kerala is the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rigveda. It is also mentioned in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two Hindu epics, the Skanda Purana mentions the ecclesiastical office of the Thachudaya Kaimal who is referred to as Manikkam Keralar, synonymous with the deity of the Koodalmanikyam temple. Keralam may stem from the Classical Tamil cherive-alam or chera alam, the Greco-Roman trade map Periplus Maris Erythraei refers to Keralaputra as Celobotra. According to Hindu mythology, the lands of Kerala were recovered from the sea by the warrior sage Parasurama. Parasurama threw his axe across the sea, and the water receded as far as it reached, according to legend, this new area of land extended from Gokarna to Kanyakumari. The land which rose from sea was filled with salt and unsuitable for habitation, so Parasurama invoked the Snake King Vasuki, out of respect, Vasuki and all snakes were appointed as protectors and guardians of the land
Kerala
–
A houseboat near
Alappuzha, Kerala
Kerala
–
Parasurama, surrounded by settlers, commanding
Varuna (the
Hindu God of water) to part the seas and reveal Kerala.
Kerala
–
A
dolmen erected by Neolithic people in
Marayur
Kerala
–
Silk Road map. The spice trade was mainly along the water routes (blue).
30.
R. K. Narayan
–
R. K. Narayan, full name Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, was an Indian writer known for his works set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was an author of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand. The fictional town of Malgudi, was first introduced in Swami, narayan’s The Financial Expert, was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951, and Sahitya Akademi Award winner The Guide, was adapted for film and for Broadway. Narayans short stories have been compared with those of Guy de Maupassant, however, he has also been criticised for the simplicity of his prose. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the house of Indias parliament. R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, British India and he was the oldest of three brothers, the second being Ramachandran and the youngest being Laxman, a future cartoonist. His father was a headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his fathers school. As his fathers job entailed frequent transfers, Narayan spent part of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, during this time his best friends and playmates were a peacock and a mischievous monkey. His grandmother gave him the nickname of Kunjappa, A name that stuck to him in family circles and she taught him arithmetic, mythology, classical Indian music and Sanskrit. According to Laxman, the family mostly conversed in English, and grammatical errors on the part of Narayan, while living with his grandmother, Narayan studied at a succession of schools in Madras, including the Lutheran Mission School in Purasawalkam, C. R. C. High School, and the Christian College High School, Narayan was an avid reader, and his early literary diet included Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy. When he was years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for which he was reprimanded by his uncle. Narayan moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred to the Maharajahs College High School, the well-stocked library at the school, as well as his fathers own, fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. It took Narayan four years to obtain his bachelors degree, a longer than usual. The experience made Narayan realise that the career for him was in writing. His first published work was a review of Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England. Subsequently, he started writing the local interest story for English newspapers. Although the writing did not pay much, he had a life and few needs
R. K. Narayan
–
R. K. Narayan
31.
Graham Greene
–
Henry Graham Greene OM CH, better known by his pen name Graham Greene, was an English novelist regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired an early in his lifetime as a major writer. He was shortlisted, in 1966 and 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature, through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective. Greene was born in Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire into a large, influential family that included the owners of the Greene King Brewery and he later boarded at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, where his father taught and became headmaster. Unhappy at the school, he attempted several times. He went up to Balliol College, Oxford, to study history, after graduating, Greene worked first as a private tutor and then as a journalist – first on the Nottingham Journal and then as a sub-editor on The Times. He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, later in life he took to calling himself a Catholic agnostic, or even at times a Catholic atheist. He published his first novel, The Man Within, in 1929 and he supplemented his novelists income with freelance journalism, and book and film reviews. His 1937 film review of Wee Willie Winkie, commented on the sexuality of the nine-year-old star and this provoked Twentieth Century Fox to sue, prompting Greene to live in Mexico until after the trial was over. While in Mexico, Greene developed the ideas for The Power, Greene had a history of depression, which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife, Vivien, he told her that he had a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary life, and that unfortunately. William Golding described Greene as the chronicler of twentieth-century mans consciousness. He died in 1991, at age 86, of leukaemia, Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St. John’s House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where his father was housemaster. He was the fourth of six children, his brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC, and his elder brother, Raymond. Charles Greene was second master at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry, another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II. In his childhood, Greene spent his summers with his uncle, Sir William, in Greenes description of his childhood, he describes his learning to read there, It was at Harston I found quite suddenly I could read — the book was Dixon Brett, Detective. Graham also attended the school as a boarder, bullied and profoundly depressed, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London
Graham Greene
–
Graham Greene
Graham Greene
–
Greene was born in
Berkhamsted School where his father taught
Graham Greene
–
Gravestone at
Corseaux, Switzerland
32.
Maharashtra
–
Maharashtra is a state in the western region of India and is Indias second-most populous state and third-largest state by area. It is the wealthiest Indian state and it is also the worlds second-most populous sub-national entity. It has over 112 million inhabitants and its capital, Mumbai, has a population of approximately 18 million, Nagpur is Maharashtras second capital as well as its winter capital. Maharashtras business opportunities along with its potential to offer a standard of living attract migrants from all over India. Ancient and medieval Maharashtra included the empires of the Satavahana dynasty, Rashtrakuta dynasty, Western Chalukyas, Mughals, the major rivers of the state are Godavari, and Krishna. The Narmada and Tapti Rivers flow near the border between Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, Maharashtra is the second most urbanised state in India. The state has several popular Hindu places of pilgrimage including Pandharpur, Dehu and Alandi, other places that attract pilgrims from other parts of India and beyond include Hazur Sahib Gurudwara at Nanded, Sai Baba shrine at Shirdi and Dikshabhumi at Nagpur. Maharashtra is the wealthiest and one of the most developed states in India, as of 2011, the state had a per capita income of ₹1.0035 lakh, more than the national average of ₹0.73 lakh. Its GDP per capita crossed the ₹1.20 lakh threshold for the first time in 2013, however, as of 2014, the GDP per capita reduced to ₹1.03 lakh Agriculture and industries are the largest parts of the states economy. Major industries include chemical products, electrical and non-electrical machinery, textiles, petroleum, Jai Maharashtra The modern Marathi language developed from the Maharashtri Prakrit, and the word Mahratta is found in the Jain Maharashtri literature. The terms Maharashtra, Maharashtri, Marathi and Maratha may have derived from the same root, however, their exact etymology is uncertain. But the Marathas as a people do not seem to be mentioned before the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the most widely accepted theory among the linguistic scholars is that the words Maratha and Maharashtra ultimately derived from a combination of Maha and rashtrika. The word rashtrika is a Sanskritized form of Ratta, the name of a tribe or dynasty of petty chiefs ruling in the Deccan region. Another theory is that the term is derived from Maha and ratha / rathi, an alternative theory states that the term derives from the word Maha and Rashtra. However, this theory has not found acceptance among scholars who believe it to be the Sanskritised interpretation of later writers. Maharashtra was ruled by the Maurya Empire in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, around 230 BCE Maharashtra came under the rule of the Satavahana dynasty for 400 years. The greatest ruler of the Satavahana Dynasty was Gautamiputra Satakarni, in 90 CE Vedishri, son of the Satavahana king Satakarni, the Lord of Dakshinapatha, wielder of the unchecked wheel of Sovereignty, made Junnar, thirty miles north of Pune, the capital of his kingdom. The state was ruled by Western Satraps, Gupta Empire, Gurjara-Pratihara, Vakataka, Kadambas, Chalukya Empire, Rashtrakuta Dynasty, and Western Chalukya before finally
Maharashtra
–
Trimurti sculpture of
Lord Dattatreya from
Elephanta Caves, an
UNESCO World Heritage Site in Maharashtra
Maharashtra
–
Ajanta Caves in
Aurangabad, Maharashtra
Maharashtra
–
Late Harappa figure from
Daimabad hoard,
Indus Valley Civilization
Maharashtra
–
Bronze statue of
Shivaji Maharaj in the collection of the Shri Bhavani Museum of
Aundh, Maharashtra.
33.
Karnataka
–
Karnataka is a state in south western region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, originally known as the State of Mysore, it was renamed Karnataka in 1973. The capital and largest city is Bangalore, the state covers an area of 191,976 square kilometres, or 5.83 percent of the total geographical area of India. It is the seventh largest Indian state by area, with 61,130,704 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Karnataka is the eighth largest state by population, comprising 30 districts. Kannada, one of the languages of India, is the most widely spoken. Most of these rivers flow out of Karnataka eastward into the Bay of Bengal, though several etymologies have been suggested for the name Karnataka, the generally accepted one is that Karnataka is derived from the Kannada words karu and nādu, meaning elevated land. Karu nadu may also be read as karu, meaning black, the British used the word Carnatic, sometimes Karnatak, to describe both sides of peninsular India, south of the Krishna. With an antiquity that dates to the paleolithic, Karnataka has been home to some of the most powerful empires of ancient, the philosophers and musical bards patronised by these empires launched socio-religious and literary movements which have endured to the present day. Karnataka has contributed significantly to both forms of Indian classical music, the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions, Karnatakas pre-history goes back to a paleolithic hand-axe culture evidenced by discoveries of, among other things, hand axes and cleavers in the region. Evidence of neolithic and megalithic cultures have also found in the state. Gold discovered in Harappa was found to be imported from mines in Karnataka, prior to the third century BCE, most of Karnataka formed part of the Nanda Empire before coming under the Mauryan empire of Emperor Ashoka. Four centuries of Satavahana rule followed, allowing them to large areas of Karnataka. The decline of Satavahana power led to the rise of the earliest native kingdoms, the Kadambas, the Kadamba Dynasty, founded by Mayurasharma, had its capital at Banavasi, the Western Ganga Dynasty was formed with Talakad as its capital. These were also the first kingdoms to use Kannada in administration, as evidenced by the Halmidi inscription, the Western Chalukyas patronised a unique style of architecture and Kannada literature which became a precursor to the Hoysala art of 12th century. Parts of modern-day Southern Karnataka were occupied by the Chola Empire at the turn of 11th century, the Cholas and the Hoysalas fought over the region in the early 12th century before it eventually came under Hoysala rule. At the turn of the first millennium, the Hoysalas gained power in the region, literature flourished during this time, which led to the emergence of distinctive Kannada literary metres, and the construction of temples and sculptures adhering to the Vesara style of architecture. The expansion of the Hoysala Empire brought minor parts of modern Andhra Pradesh, in the early 14th century, Harihara and Bukka Raya established the Vijayanagara empire with its capital, Hosapattana, on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the modern Bellary district. The empire rose as a bulwark against Muslim advances into South India, in 1565, Karnataka and the rest of South India experienced a major geopolitical shift when the Vijayanagara empire fell to a confederation of Islamic sultanates in the Battle of Talikota
Karnataka
–
Mallikarjuna temple and Kashi Vishwanatha temple at
Pattadakal, Karnataka, built successively by the kings of the
Chalukya Empire and
Rashtrakuta Empire is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Karnataka
–
Map of Karnataka
Karnataka
–
Hoysala Empire sculptural articulation in
Belur.
Karnataka
–
Shilabalika sculpture at the Chennakeshva Temple in Belur
34.
Gujarat
–
Gujarat is a state in Western India, sometimes referred to as the Jewel of Western India. It has an area of 196,024 km2 with a coastline of 1,600 km, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula, and a population in excess of 60 million. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the north, Maharashtra to the south, Madhya Pradesh to the east, and the Arabian Sea and its capital city is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. Gujarat is home to the Gujarati-speaking people of India, the state encompasses some sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, such as Lothal and Dholavira. Lothal is believed to be one of the worlds first seaports, Gujarat was known to the ancient Greeks, and was familiar in other Western centres of civilisation through the end of the European Middle Ages. Modern-day Gujarat is derived from Sanskrit term Gurjaradesa, the Gurjar nation, parts of modern Rajasthan and Gujarat have been known as Gurjaratra or Gurjarabhumi for centuries before the Mughal period. Gujarat was one of the centres of the Indus Valley Civilization. It contains ancient metropolitan cities from the Indus Valley such as Lothal, Dholavira, the ancient city of Lothal was where Indias first port was established. The ancient city of Dholavira is one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India, the most recent discovery was Gola Dhoro. Altogether, about 50 Indus Valley settlement ruins have been discovered in Gujarat, the ancient history of Gujarat was enriched by the commercial activities of its inhabitants. There is clear evidence of trade and commerce ties with Egypt, Bahrain. The early history of Gujarat reflects the grandeur of Chandragupta Maurya who conquered a number of earlier states in what is now Gujarat. Pushyagupta, a Vaishya, was appointed governor of Saurashtra by the Mauryan regime and he ruled Giringer and built a dam on the Sudarshan lake. Between the decline of Mauryan power and Saurashtra coming under the sway of the Samprati Mauryas of Ujjain, in the first half of the 1st century AD there is the story of a merchant of King Gondaphares landing in Gujarat with Apostle Thomas. The incident of the cup-bearer killed by a lion might indicate that the city described is in Gujarat. For nearly 300 years from the start of the 1st century AD, the weather-beaten rock at Junagadh gives a glimpse of the ruler Rudradaman I of the Saka satraps known as Western Satraps, or Kshatraps. Mahakshatrap Rudradaman I founded the Kardamaka dynasty which ruled from Anupa on the banks of the Narmada up to the Aparanta region which bordered Punjab, in Gujarat several battles were fought between the south Indian Satavahana dynasty and the Western Satraps. The greatest ruler of the Satavahana Dynasty was Gautamiputra Satakarni who defeated the Western Satraps, the Kshatrapa dynasty was replaced by the Gupta Empire with the conquest of Gujarat by Chandragupta Vikramaditya
Gujarat
–
Clockwise from top: High Court of Gujarat, Dwarka Beach, Laxmi Vilas Palace, Kankaria Lakefront, Gandhi Ashram, Salt Desert of Kutch
Gujarat
–
The docks of ancient Lothal as they are today
Gujarat
–
Ancient sophisticated water reservoir at Dholavira
Gujarat
–
Rani ki vav 11th century.
35.
Sunil Gavaskar
–
Sunil Manohar Sunny Gavaskar pronunciation is an Indian former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for the Bombay cricket team and Indian national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs. He held the record of 34 Test centuries for almost two decades before it was broken by Sachin Tendulkar in December 2005. He was the first person to score centuries in both innings of a Test match three times, but unlike Ricky Ponting and David Warner after him, none of his games yielded a win. He was the first Test batsman to score 10,000 Test Runs in a Career and his captaincy of the Indian team, however, was less successful. Gavaskar is a recipient of the Indian civilian honours of the Padma Shri, in 2012, he was awarded the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award for Cricket in India. On 28 March 2014, Supreme Court of India, appointed Gavaskar as the Interim BCCI President primarily to oversee 7th Season of Indian Premier League, the Court also directed him to relinquish his job as a Cricket Commentator. Born in Bombay and growing up in the city, young Sunil was named Indias Best Schoolboy Cricketer of the year in 1966 and he scored 246*,222 and 85 in school cricket in his final year of secondary education, before striking a century against the touring London schoolboys. He made his first-class debut for Vazir Sultan Colts XI against an XI from Dungarpur, in 1966/67, an alumnus of Bombays renowned St. He responded with 114 against Rajasthan in his match. He followed this with his first century,116 and 64* in the third Test in Georgetown, Guyana, and 1 and 117* in the Fourth Test in Bridgetown, Barbados. He returned to Trinidad for the fifth Test and scored 124 and 220 to help India to its first ever victory over the West Indies. His performance in the Test made him the player after Doug Walters to score a century. He was the first Indian to aggregate more than 700 runs in a series, Trinidad Calypso singer Lord Relator wrote a song in Gavaskars honour, the Gavaskar Calypso. Gavaskars arrival in England in 1971 for a three-Test series generated substantial publicity in light of his debut series and he was unable to maintain his performance, making only two half centuries. He was involved in controversy when taking a single from the bowling of John Snow. They collided and Gavaskar fell over, Snow was charged with deliberately barging into Gavaskar and was suspended. Gavaskars 144 runs at the low average of 24, led some to question Gavaskars worthiness in international cricket, in 1972–73, England toured India for a five-Test series, Gavaskars first on home soil
Sunil Gavaskar
–
Sunil Gavaskar
36.
Sachin Tendulkar
–
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is a former Indian cricketer and captain, widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. Later in his career, Tendulkar was a part of the Indian team that won the 2011 World Cup and he had previously been named Player of the Tournament at the 2003 edition of the tournament, held in South Africa. In 2013, he was the only Indian cricketer included in an all-time Test World XI named to mark the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers Almanack. After a few hours of his match on 16 November 2013. He is the youngest recipient to date and the first ever sportsperson to receive the award and he also won the 2010 Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the ICC awards. In 2012, Tendulkar was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the house of the Parliament of India. He was also the first sportsperson and the first person without a background to be awarded the honorary rank of group captain by the Indian Air Force. In 2012, he was named an Honorary Member of the Order of Australia, in December 2012, Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs. Tendulkar played 664 international cricket matches in total, scoring 34,357 runs, Tendulkar was born at Nirmal Nursing Home in Dadar, Bombay on 24 April 1973 in a Maharashtrian family. His father, Ramesh Tendulkar, was a well-known Marathi novelist and his mother, Rajni, Ramesh named Tendulkar after his favourite music director, Sachin Dev Burman. Tendulkar has three siblings, two half-brothers Nitin and Ajit, and a half-sister Savita. They were Rameshs children from his first marriage, although, Sachin has not mentioned this even in his autobiography. He spent his years in the Sahitya Sahawas Cooperative Housing Society in Bandra. As a young boy, Tendulkar was considered a bully, and he also showed an interest in tennis, idolising John McEnroe. To help curb his mischievous and bullying tendencies, Ajit introduced him to cricket in 1984 and he introduced the young Sachin to Ramakant Achrekar, a famous cricket coach and a club cricketer of repute, at Shivaji Park, Dadar. In the first meeting, the young Sachin did not play his best, Ajit told Achrekar that he was feeling self-conscious due to the coach observing him, and was not displaying his natural game. Ajit requested the coach to give him another chance at playing and this time, Sachin, apparently unobserved, played much better and was accepted at Achrekars academy. Ajit is ten years elder and is credited by Sachin for playing a role in his life
Sachin Tendulkar
–
Tendulkar at an awards event in January 2013
Sachin Tendulkar
–
Sachin Tendulkar and his wife Anjali
Sachin Tendulkar
–
Tendulkar waits at the bowler's end.
Sachin Tendulkar
–
Tendulkar celebrates upon reaching his 38th Test century against Australia in the 2nd Test at the
SCG in 2008, where he finished
not out on 154
37.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
–
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the first Deputy Prime Minister of India. In India and elsewhere, he was addressed as Sardar, which means Chief in Hindi, Urdu. He was employed in practice as a lawyer. He rose to the leadership of the Indian National Congress, in which capacity he organised the party for elections in 1934 and 1937 even as he continued to promote the Quit India Movement. As the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel organised relief efforts for refugees fleeing from Punjab and Delhi and he led the task of forging a united India, successfully integrating into the newly independent nation those British colonial provinces that had been allocated to India. Besides those provinces that had been under direct British rule, approximately 565 self-governing princely states had been released from British suzerainty by the Indian Independence Act of 1947. Employing frank diplomacy with the option to deploy military force. His commitment to integration in the newly independent country was total. He is also remembered as the Patron saint of Indias civil servants for having established the modern all-India services system. He is also called the Unifier of India, a commemoration of Patel, held annually on his birthday,31 October, known as the Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, was introduced by the government of India in 2014. Vallabhbhai Patels date of birth was never recorded, Patel entered it as 31 October on his matriculation examination papers. Patel travelled to schools in Nadiad, Petlad, and Borsad. He reputedly cultivated a stoic character, a popular anecdote recounts how he lanced his own painful boil without hesitation, even as the barber charged with doing it trembled. When Patel passed his matriculation at the late age of 22. Patel himself, though, harboured a plan to study to become a lawyer, work and save funds, travel to England, Patel spent years away from his family, studying on his own with books borrowed from other lawyers, passing his examinations within two years. Fetching his wife Jhaverba from his parents home, Patel set up his household in Godhra and was called to the bar, during the many years it took him to save money, Patel – now an advocate – earned a reputation as a fierce and skilled lawyer. The couple had a daughter, Maniben, in 1904 and a son, Dahyabhai, Patel also cared for a friend suffering from Bubonic plague when it swept across Gujarat. When Patel himself came down with the disease, he sent his family to safety, left his home
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
–
Vallabhbhai Patel
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
–
Azad, Patel and
Gandhi at an
AICC meeting in Bombay, 1940
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
–
Somnath temple ruins, 1869
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
–
Patel ordered
Somnath temple reconstructed in 1948.
38.
Narendra Modi
–
Narendra Damodardas Modi is an Indian politician who is the 14th and current Prime Minister of India, in office since May 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is a Hindu nationalist and member of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Born to a Gujarati family in Vadnagar, Modi helped his father sell tea as a child and he was introduced to the RSS at the age of eight, beginning a long association with the organisation. He left home after graduating school, partly because of an arranged marriage which he rejected. Modi traveled around India for two years, and visited a number of religious centres and he returned to Gujarat and moved to Ahmedabad in 1969 or 1970. In 1971 he became a worker for the RSS. During the state of emergency imposed across the country in 1975, the RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985, and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary. Modi was appointed minister of Gujarat in 2001, due to Keshubhai Patels failing health. Modi was elected to the assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots, or otherwise criticised for its handling of it and his policies as chief minister, credited with encouraging economic growth, have received praise, and several industrial projects were begun during his tenure. His administration has been criticised for failing to improve health, poverty. Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in the Lok Sabha, Modi himself was elected to parliament from Varanasi. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy, and centralised power through the abolition of the planning commission and he has begun a high-profile sanitation campaign, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws. Narendra Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district and he was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and Hiraben Modi. Modis family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government, as a child, Modi helped his father sell tea at the Vadnagar railway station, and later ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus. Modi completed his secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where a teacher described him as an average student. Modi had a gift for rhetoric in debates, and this was noted by his teachers. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image, when eight years old, Modi discovered the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and began attending its local shakhas
Narendra Modi
–
Narendra Modi
Narendra Modi
–
Modi with his mother, Heeraben, on his 63rd birthday in 17 September 2013.
Narendra Modi
–
Chief Minister Modi and his
cabinet ministers at a
Planning Commission meeting in New Delhi, 2013.
39.
Tamils
–
Tamil people with a population of approximately 76 million living around the world are one of the largest and oldest of the existing ethno-linguistic cultural groups of people in the modern world. Tamils comprise 24. 87% of the population in Sri Lanka,5. 91% in India,10. 83% in Mauritius, 5% in Singapore, among languages spoken today, the Tamil language is the oldest written language. Between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century AD, Tamil people produced native literature that came to be called Sangam literature, Tamils were noted for their martial, religious and mercantile activities beyond their native borders. Pandyas and Cholas were historically active in Sri Lanka, the Chola dynasty successfully invaded parts of Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Southern Thailand and Indonesia. Medieval Tamil guilds and trading organizations like the Ayyavole and Manigramam played an important role in the Southeast Asia trade, Pallava traders and religious leaders travelled to Southeast Asia and played an important role in the cultural Indianisation of the region. Locally developed scripts such as Grantha and Pallava script induced the development of many scripts such as Khmer, Javanese Kawi script, Baybayin. Tamil visual art is dominated by stylised Temple architecture in major centres, Chola bronzes, especially the Nataraja sculpture of the Chola period, have become notable as a symbol of Hinduism. Tamil performing arts are divided into popular and classical, classical form is Bharatanatyam, whereas the popular forms are known as Koothu and performed in village temples and on street corners. Tamil cinema, known as Kollywood, is an important part of the Indian cinema industry, music too is divided into classical Carnatic form and many popular genres. Although most Tamils are Hindus, most practice what is considered to be folk Hinduism, a sizeable number are Christians and Muslims. A small Jain community survives from the period as well. Tamil cuisine is informed by varied vegetarian and non-vegetarian items usually spiced with locally available spices, the music, the temple architecture and the stylised sculptures favoured by the Tamil people as in their ancient nation are still being learnt and practised. It is unknown as to whether the term Thamizhar and its equivalents in Prakrit such as Damela, Dameda, the well-known Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga ruler Kharavela refers to a Tmira samghata dated to 150 BC. It also mentions that the league of Tamil kingdoms had been in existence 113 years before then, in Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh there is an inscription referring to a Dhamila-vaniya datable to the 3rd century AD. Another inscription of about the time in Nagarjunakonda seems to refer to a Damila. A third inscription in Kanheri Caves refers to a Dhamila-gharini, in the Buddhist Jataka story known as Akiti Jataka there is a mention to Damila-rattha. There were trade relationship between the Roman Empire and Pandyan Empire, as recorded by Strabo, Emperor Augustus of Rome received at Antioch an ambassador from a king called Pandyan of Dramira. Hence, it is clear that by at least 300 BC, Thamizhar is etymologically related to Tamil, the language spoken by Tamil people
Tamils
–
Grey pottery with engravings,
Arikamedu, 1st century AD.
Tamils
–
Megalithic Sarcophagus burial from
Tamil Nadu.
Tamils
–
Virampatnam jewelry from funerary burial, 2nd century BC,
Tamil Nadu
Tamils
–
Souttoukeny jewelry, 2nd century B.C.
Tamil Nadu
40.
Singapore
–
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, sometimes referred to as the Lion City or the Little Red Dot, is a sovereign city-state in Southeast Asia. It lies one degree north of the equator, at the tip of peninsular Malaysia. Singapores territory consists of one island along with 62 other islets. Since independence, extensive land reclamation has increased its size by 23%. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan, after early years of turbulence, and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation developed rapidly as an Asian Tiger economy, based on external trade and its workforce. Singapore is a global commerce, finance and transport hub, the country has also been identified as a tax haven. Singapore ranks 5th internationally and first in Asia on the UN Human Development Index and it is ranked highly in education, healthcare, life expectancy, quality of life, personal safety, and housing, but does not fare well on the Democracy index. Although income inequality is high, 90% of homes are owner-occupied, 38% of Singapores 5.6 million residents are permanent residents and other foreign nationals. There are four languages on the island, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil. English is its language, most Singaporeans are bilingual. Singapore is a multiparty parliamentary republic, with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. The Peoples Action Party has won every election since self-government in 1959, however, it is unlikely that lions ever lived on the island, Sang Nila Utama, the Srivijayan prince said to have founded and named the island Singapura, perhaps saw a Malayan tiger. There are however other suggestions for the origin of the name, the central island has also been called Pulau Ujong as far back as the third century CE, literally island at the end in Malay. In 1299, according to the Malay Annals, the Kingdom of Singapura was founded on the island by Sang Nila Utama and these Indianized Kingdoms, a term coined by George Cœdès were characterized by surprising resilience, political integrity and administrative stability. In 1613, Portuguese raiders burned down the settlement, which by then was part of the Johor Sultanate. The wider maritime region and much trade was under Dutch control for the following period, in 1824 the entire island, as well as the Temenggong, became a British possession after a further treaty with the Sultan. In 1826, Singapore became part of the Straits Settlements, under the jurisdiction of British India, prior to Raffles arrival, there were only about a thousand people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese. By 1860 the population had swelled to over 80,000, many of these early immigrants came to work on the pepper and gambier plantations
Singapore
–
Raffles Square around 1900.
Singapore
–
Flag
Singapore
–
Victorious Japanese troops marching through Singapore City after the British capitulation at the
Battle of Singapore in 1942.
Singapore
–
A cheering crowd welcome the return of British forces, 1945
41.
Malaysian Indians
–
The Malaysian Indians or Indian Malaysians consists of people of full or partial Indian descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia. In 2015, there were around 2 million people self-identifying as Indian who hold Malaysian nationality, most are descendants from those who migrated from India during the British colonisation of Malaya. There is a possibility that the first wave of Indians migration towards Southeast Asia happened when the Asokas invasion towards Kalinga, today, they form the third largest ethnic group in Malaysia after the Malays and the Chinese. Malaysia is home to one of the largest populations of Overseas Indians, Malaysias Indian population is notable for its class stratification, with large elite and lower income groups and diverse racial differences even within its fold. Ancient India exerted an influence over Southeast Asia through trade, religious missions, wars. Pre-colonial Malaysia was part of Indianised Kingdoms like Chola, Srivijaya, Malacca, Kadaram and the Majapahit, the kings welcomed Buddhist missionaries from India, accepting their teaching of the Mahayana sect, which spread through their territories. The ancient Indian Kalinga was located in southeastern India occupying modern day Orissa, in the 7th century an Indonesian kingdom was named Kalingga after the aforementioned Kalinga in India. Chinese sources mention this kingdom as a center for Buddhist scholars around 604 before it was overshadowed by the Sanjaya or Mataram Kingdom, the most famous Kalingga ruler is Ratu Sima. There is evidence of the existence of Indianised kingdoms such as Gangga Negara, Old Kedah, early contact between the kingdoms of Tamilakkam and the Malay peninsula had been very close during the reigns of the Pallava dynasty and Chola dynasty. The trade relations the Tamil merchants had with the ports of Malaya led to the emergence of Indianised kingdoms like Kadaram and Langkasugam, the Cholas had a powerful merchant and naval fleet in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. These people were Goan Catholics and East Indians, kuparis who were of mixed Samvedic Brahmin, Goan and Portuguese descent also arrived. Sinhalese and their children from Portuguese that include Portuguese Burghers from Portuguese Ceylon also came later and their children already intermarried with Malay population, losing their ethnic identities. British acquisition of Penang, Melaka, and Singapore - the Straits Settlements from 1786 to 1824 started a steady inflow of Indian labour and this consisted of traders, policemen, plantation labourers and colonial soldiers. Apart from this there was substantial migration of Indians to work in the British colonial government. The Indian population in pre-independence Malaya and Singapore was predominantly adult males who were single with family back in India, hence the population fluctuated frequently with the immigration and exodus of people. As early as 1901 the Indian population in the Straits Settlements, by 1931 there were 640,000 Indians in Malaya and Singapore and interestingly they even outnumbered the native Malays in the state of Selangor that year. However, during World War II many Indian men and women left for Burma as part of the Indian National Army with thousands thought to have perished, as a result, the population of Indians in 1957 had only increased to 820,000. Today, Malaysian Indians account for approximately 7 per cent of the population of Malaysia and 9 per cent in Singapore
Malaysian Indians
–
Devan Nair
Malaysian Indians
–
S. A. Ganapathy
Malaysian Indians
–
Tony Fernandes
Malaysian Indians
–
Syed Thajudeen
42.
Muslim
–
A Muslim is someone who follows or practices Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts, Muslim is an Arabic word meaning one who submits. Most Muslims will accept anyone who has publicly pronounced Shahadah as a Muslim, the shahadah states, There is no god but the God and Muhammad is the last messenger of the God. The testimony authorized by God in the Quran that can found in Surah 3,18 states, There is no god except God, which in Arabic, is the exact testimony which God Himself utters, as well as the angels and those who possess knowledge utter. The word muslim is the active participle of the verb of which islām is a verbal noun, based on the triliteral S-L-M to be whole. A female adherent is a muslima, the plural form in Arabic is muslimūn or muslimīn, and its feminine equivalent is muslimāt. The Arabic form muslimun is the stem IV participle of the triliteral S-L-M, the ordinary word in English is Muslim. It is sometimes transliterated as Moslem, which is an older spelling, the word Mosalman is a common equivalent for Muslim used in Central Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans, although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God. Other obsolete terms include Muslimite and Muslimist, musulmán/Mosalmán is a synonym for Muslim and is modified from Arabic. In English it was sometimes spelled Mussulman and has become archaic in usage, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi said, A Muslim is a person who has dedicated his worship exclusively to God. Islam means making ones religion and faith Gods alone. The Quran states that men were Muslims because they submitted to God, preached His message and upheld His values. Thus, in Surah 3,52 of the Quran, Jesus disciples tell him, We believe in God, and you be our witness that we are Muslims. In Muslim belief, before the Quran, God had given the Tawrat to Moses, the Zabur to David and the Injil to Jesus, who are all considered important Muslim prophets. The most populous Muslim-majority country is Indonesia, home to 12. 7% of the worlds Muslims, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. About 20% of the worlds Muslims lives in the Middle East and North Africa, Sizable minorities are found in India, China, Russia, Ethiopia. The country with the highest proportion of self-described Muslims as a proportion of its population is Morocco
Muslim
–
Afghan Muslims praying inside
Gardens of Babur in
Kabul,
Afghanistan.
Muslim
–
Famous
Muslim converts from various fields.
43.
Fiqh
–
Figuratively, fiqh means, knowledge about Islamic legal rulings from their sources. He must look deep down into a matter and not suffice himself with just the apparent meaning, a person who only knows the appearance of a matter is not a faqīh. Conceptually, the attempt to understand divine law. Whereas shariah is immutable and infallible, fiqh is fallible and changeable, fiqh is distinguished from usul al-fiqh, the methods of legal interpretation and analysis. Fiqh is the product of application of usul al-fiqh, the product of human efforts at understanding the divine will. A hukm is a ruling in a given case. Fiqh deals with the observance of rituals, morals and social legislation in Islam, in the modern era, there are four prominent schools of fiqh within Sunni practice, plus two within Shia practice. A person trained in fiqh is known as a Faqih, the word fiqh is an Arabic term meaning deep understanding or full comprehension. Technically it refers to the body of Islamic law extracted from detailed Islamic sources and this definition is consistent amongst the jurists. In Modern Standard Arabic, fiqh has come to mean jurisprudence in general and it is separated in Sunni, shia and others. Qiyas, i. e. analogy which is deployed if Ijma or historic collective reasoning on the issue is not available. For example, the Quran states one needs to engage in prayers and fast during the month of Ramadan. Details about these issues can be found in the traditions of Muhammad, so Quran, some topics are without precedent in Islams early period. In those cases, Muslim jurists try to arrive at conclusions by other means, Sunni jurists use historical consensus of the community, a majority in the modern era also use analogy and weigh the harms and benefits of new topics, and a plurality utilizes juristic preference. The conclusions arrived at with the aid of additional tools constitute a wider array of laws than the Sharia consists of. Thus, in contrast to the sharia, fiqh is not regarded as sacred and this division of interpretation in more detailed issues has resulted in different schools of thought. This wider concept of Islamic jurisprudence is the source of a range of laws in different topics that guide Muslims in everyday life, Islamic jurisprudence covers two main areas, Rules in relation to actions, and, Rules in relation to circumstances surrounding actions. The Sunni schools are Hanafi Maliki Shafii Hanbali see Wahhabism Zahiri Qurtubi No longer exists Laythi No longer exists, the schools of Shia Islam comprise, Jafari Zaydi Entirely separate from both the Sunni and Shia traditions, Khawarij Islam has evolved its own distinct school
Fiqh
–
Legal systems of the world
Fiqh
–
Green Dome and Prophet's Mosque at sunset.
44.
Malaysia
–
Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy located in Southeast Asia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government, with a population of over 30 million, Malaysia is the 44th most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia, Tanjung Piai, is in Malaysia, located in the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries on earth, with large numbers of endemic species. Malaysia has its origins in the Malay kingdoms present in the area which, from the 18th century, the first British territories were known as the Straits Settlements, whose establishment was followed by the Malay kingdoms becoming British protectorates. The territories on Peninsular Malaysia were first unified as the Malayan Union in 1946, Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. Malaya united with North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963 to become Malaysia, less than two years later in 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation. The country is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, which plays a role in politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian Indians. The constitution declares Islam the state religion while allowing freedom of religion for non-Muslims, the government system is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is the king, known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and he is an elected monarch chosen from the hereditary rulers of the nine Malay states every five years. The head of government is the prime minister, since its independence, Malaysia has had one of the best economic records in Asia, with its GDP growing at an average of 6. 5% per annum for almost 50 years. The economy has traditionally been fuelled by its resources, but is expanding in the sectors of science, tourism, commerce. Today, Malaysia has a newly industrialised market economy, ranked third largest in Southeast Asia, the name Malaysia is a combination of the word Malay and the Latin-Greek suffix -sia/-σία. The word melayu in Malay may derive from the Tamil words malai and ur meaning mountain and city, land, malayadvipa was the word used by ancient Indian traders when referring to the Malay Peninsula. Whether or not it originated from these roots, the word melayu or mlayu may have used in early Malay/Javanese to mean to steadily accelerate or run. This term was applied to describe the current of the river Melayu in Sumatra. The name was adopted by the Melayu Kingdom that existed in the seventh century on Sumatra
Malaysia
–
"Malaysia" used as a label for the
Malay Archipelago on a 1914 map from a United States atlas
Malaysia
–
Flag
Malaysia
–
The Dutch fleet battling with the Portuguese armada as part of the
Dutch–Portuguese War in 1606 to gain control of
Malacca.
Malaysia
–
Statue of
Francis Light in the
Fort Cornwallis of Penang, marking the first step of
British expansion in the 18th century over the Malay Archipelago.
45.
Brunei
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Brunei, officially the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace, is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its coastline with the South China Sea, the country is surrounded by the state of Sarawak. It is separated into two parts by the Sarawak district of Limbang, Brunei is the only sovereign state completely on the island of Borneo, the remainder of the islands territory is divided between the nations of Malaysia and Indonesia. Bruneis population was 408,786 in July 2012, the maritime state was visited by Spains Magellan Expedition in 1521 and fought against Spain in the 1578 Castille War. During the 19th century, the Bruneian Empire began to decline, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to James Brooke and installed him as the White Rajah, and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888, Brunei became a British protectorate and was assigned a British resident as colonial manager in 1906, after the Japanese occupation during World War II, in 1959 a new constitution was written. In 1962, an armed rebellion against the monarchy was ended with the help of the British. Brunei gained its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984, Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s, with the GDP increasing 56% from 1999 to 2008, transformed Brunei into an industrialised country. It has developed wealth from petroleum and natural gas fields. Brunei has the second-highest Human Development Index among the Southeast Asian nations, after Singapore, according to the International Monetary Fund, Brunei is ranked fifth in the world by gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. The IMF estimated in 2011 that Brunei was one of two countries with a debt at 0% of the national GDP. Forbes also ranks Brunei as the fifth-richest nation out of 182, based on its petroleum, according to legend, Brunei was founded by Awang Alak Betatar, later to be Sultan Muhammad Shah. He moved from Garang, a place in the Temburong District to the Brunei River estuary, according to legend, upon landing he exclaimed, Baru nah, from which the name Brunei was derived. He was the first Muslim ruler of Brunei, before the rise of the Bruneian Empire under the Muslim Bolkiah Dynasty, Brunei is believed to have been under Buddhist rulers. It was renamed Barunai in the 14th century, possibly influenced by the Sanskrit word varuṇ, the word Borneo is of the same origin. In the countrys name, Negara Brunei Darussalam, darussalam means abode of peace. The people are pagans and are men of goodwill and their colour is whiter than that of the other sort. in this island justice is well administered. One of the earliest Chinese records is the 977 AD letter to Chinese emperor from the ruler of Po-ni, which some scholars believe to refer to Borneo
Brunei
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The tomb of a ruler of Po-ni in
Nanjing,
China.
Brunei
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Flag
Brunei
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Ahmad Tajuddin, the
27th Sultan of Brunei with members of his court in April 1941, eight months before the Japanese invaded Brunei.
Brunei
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Japanese battleships at Brunei in October 1944.
46.
Batak people
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Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The term is used to include the Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba, Angkola, while the archaeology of southern Sumatra testifies to the existence of neolithic settlers, it seems that the northern part of Sumatra was settled by agriculturalists at a considerably later stage. Reliable historical records of the Batak before 1800 are virtually non-existent, the Batak may be mentioned in Zhao Ruguas 13th-century Description of the Barbarous People, which refers to a Ba-ta dependency of Srivijaya. The Suma Oriental, of the 15th century, also refers to the kingdom of Bata, bounded by Pasai and it has been suggested that the important port of Barus in Tapanuli was populated primarily by Batak people. Tamil remains have been found on key trade routes to the Batak lands, tamil influence on Karo religious practices are also noted, with the pekualuh secondary cremation ritual being specific to the Karo and Dairi people. Moreover the Pustaka Kembaren, a story of the Sembiring Kembaren suggests linkages with Pagarruyung in Minangkabau Highlands. From the 16th century onward, Aceh increased the production of pepper, an important export commodity, in exchange for rice, which grew well in the Batak wetlands. Batak people in different areas cultivated either sawah or ladang, the increasing importance of rice had religious significance, which increased the power of the Batak high priests, who had responsibility for ensuring agricultural success. The Batak speak a variety of related languages, all members of the Austronesian language family. Simalungun is an offspring of the southern branch. Some Simalungun dialects can be understood by speakers of Batak Karo and this is due to the existence of a linguistic continuum that often blurs the lines between the Batak dialects. Batak dialect still influences the dialects in Medan city today, the Batak possess their own script known as the Surat Batak. The writing has chiefly ceremonial importance within traditional religious ceremonies, and was subject to change for this reason. It is likely that the Batak people originally received their writing system from southern Sumatra, the traditional occupation of the Batak was agriculture, hunting and farming. The great lake of Toba provided vast opportunity for freshwater aquaculture since ancient times, the port of Barus on the western coast of Batak lands has become famous as the source of kapur barus. In ancient times, Batak warriors were recruited by neighboring Malay courts as mercenaries. In the colonial era, the Dutch introduced commercial cash crops, such as coffee, sawit palm oil, throughout the history of modern Indonesia, the Batak community has been a significant contributor. Batak people have filled a range of occupations, from running modest tire service workshops to serving as state ministers
Batak people
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A traditional Toba Batak house (see
Batak architecture).
Batak people
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Bark book with charms written in native
Batak script, 1910.
Batak people
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Traditional boat (circa 1870), photograph by
Kristen Feilberg
Batak people
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Abdul Haris Nasution, General of the
Indonesian Army.
47.
North Sumatra
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North Sumatra, is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the island of Sumatra, and its capital is Medan, after independence, the first session of the National Committee of Regions, Sumatra was then divided into three sub-provinces namely North Sumatra, Central Sumatra and South Sumatra. North Sumatra province itself is an amalgamation of three regions called residency namely, Residency of Aceh, East Sumatra Residency, and residency of Tapanuli. With the publication of the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No, date 15 April 1948 subsequently determined as the anniversary of North Sumatra Province. In early 1949, the reorganization of government back in Sumatra, with the decision of the Government Emergency R. I. No.22 / Govt / Emergency Government on May 17,1949, furthermore, the Government Emergency Decree R. I. on December 17,1949, established the province of Aceh and Tapanuli Province / East Sumatra. Then, with a Government Regulation in lieu of Law No.5 Year 1950 on August 14,1950, such provisions shall be lifted and reshaped North Sumatra Province. No.24 of 1956, promulgated on December 7,1956, established an autonomous region of Aceh province, the province of North Sumatra stretches across the island of Sumatra between the Indian Ocean and the Strait Malacca. It borders Aceh province on the northwest and Riau and West Sumatra provinces in the southeast and it has an area of 72,981 km². The province contains a broad, low plain along the Strait of Malacca on which the provincial capital, Medan, is located. In the south and west, the rises to the mountain range that runs the length of Sumatra. Several large islands in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra are currently part of North Sumatra, most notably Nias Island, there are 419 islands in propisi North Sumatra. The outer islands is the island Simuk, and the island Berhala in the Strait of Sumatra, Nias archipelago consists of the island as the main island and other smaller islands in the vicinity. Nias Islands located off the coast of western Indian Ocean, administration center located in Gunung Sitoli. Batu Islands consist of 51 islands with four islands, Sibuasi, Pini, Tanahbala. Pulautelo administrative center on the island Sibuasi, Batu Islands located in the southeast of the island of Nias. Other islands in the North Sumatra, Imanna, Pasu, Bawa, Hamutaia, Batumakalele, Lego, Masa, Bau, Simaleh, Makole, Jake, in North Sumatra, there are currently two national parks, the Gunung Leuser National Park and Batang Gadis National Park. According to the Ministerial Decree, No.44 of 2005, but this figure character is de jure alone
North Sumatra
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Lake Toba
North Sumatra
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Lake Toba, World's largest volcanic lake
North Sumatra
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Great Mosque of Medan, North Sumatra
North Sumatra
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Tangkahan, North Sumatra
48.
Sunda language
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Sundanese /sʌndəˈniːz/ is the language of about 39 million people from the western third of Java or about 15% of the Indonesian population. Sundanese appears to be most Closely related to Madurese and Malay, priangan, which covers the largest area of Sunda, is the most widely spoken type of Sundanese language, taught in elementary till senior-high schools in West Java and Banten Province. Sundanese can be written in different writing systems, the Old Sundanese script and Pegon in historical times, and in times the Latin script. There are seven vowels, a /ɑ/, é /ɛ/, i /i/, o /ɔ/, u /ʊ/, e /ə/, and eu /ɤ/. The consonantal phonemes are transcribed with the p, b, t, d, k, g, c, j /d͡ʒ/, h, ng, ny /ɲ/, m, n, s /s/, w, l, r /r~ɾ/. Other consonants that appear in Indonesian loanwords are mostly transferred into native consonants, f → p, v → p, sy → s, sh → s, z → j. However, Sundanese inserts the ar infix into the stem word, if the stem word starts with l, or contains r following the infix, the infix ar becomes al. Also, as with other Sundanese infixes, if the word starts with vowel, examples, Mangga A, tarahuna haneut keneh, The plural form of tahu tofu is formed by infixing ar after the initial consonant. Barudak leutik lalumpatan, formed from budak with the ar infix and modified to barudak to create plural child, ieu kaen batik aralus sadayana, formed from alus with the infix ar that becomes a prefix because alus starts with a vowel. It denotes the adjective beautiful for the plural subject/noun, siswa sakola eta mah balageur, formed from bageur with the infix ar to denote the adjective well-behaved for plural students. However, it is reported that use of al instead of ar does not to occur if the r is in onset of a neighbouring syllable. For example, the form of the adjective curiga is caruriga and not *caluriga. The prefix can be repeated twice to denote very-, or the plural of groups, for example, bararudak denotes many, many children or many groups of children. Another example, balalageur denotes plural adjective of very well-behaved, most of active form in Sundanese verb are in their root verb like diuk or dahar. Explanation, From the above example, henteu is used for negative term, buku abdi mah sanes nu ieu. Explanation, From the above example, sanes is used for negative term, Dupi - example, saya Polite- Dupi Bapa aya di bumi. Explanation, dibantun and ngabantun The other examples, Pulpen ditambut ku abdi, soal ieu digawekeun ku abdi. example, teuas, tiis, hipu, lada, haneut, etc
Sunda language
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A Sundanese
lontar manuscript written in
Sundanese script.
Sunda language
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Languages Spoken in Java
49.
Sundanese people
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The Sundanese are an ethnic group native to the western part of the Indonesian island of Java. They number approximately 40 million, and are the second most populous of all the nations ethnicities, in their own language, Sundanese, the group is referred to as Urang Sunda, and Orang Sunda or Suku Sunda in the national language, Indonesian. The Sundanese have traditionally been concentrated in the provinces of West Java, Banten, Jakarta, Sundanese migrants can also be found in Lampung and South Sumatra. The provinces of Central Java and East Java are home to the Javanese, the name Sunda derives from the Sanskrit prefix su- which means goodness or possessing good quality. The example is used to describe gold. Sunda is also name for Hindu God Vishnu. In Sanskrit, the term Sundara or Sundari means beautiful or excellence, the term Sunda also means bright, light, purity, cleanness and white. The Sundanese are of Austronesian origins who are thought to have originated in Taiwan, migrated though the Philippines, the Sunda Wiwitan belief contains the mythical origin of Sundanese people, Sang Hyang Kersa, the supreme divine being in ancient Sundanese belief created seven bataras in Sasaka Pusaka Buana. The oldest of these bataras is called Batara Cikal and is considered the ancestor of the Kanekes people, other six bataras ruled various locations in Sunda lands in Western Java. This legend suggested the Parahyangan highland as the playland or the abode of gods, the earliest historical polity appeared in Sundanese realm in Western part of Java was the kingdom of Tarumanagara, flourished between 4th to 7th century. Hindu influences have reached Sundanese people as early as the 4th century CE as evident in Tarumanagara inscriptions, the adoption of these dharmic faith in Sundanese way of life however, was never as intense as their Javanese counterpart. It seems that despite the court began to adopt Hindu-Buddhist culture and institution. By the 4th century, the megalithic culture probably still alive. Court cultures flourished in ancient times, for example, during the era of Sunda Kingdom, however, the Sundanese appear not to have had the resources nor desire to construct large religious monuments similar to those built by Javanese in Central and East Java. Geographic constrains that isolate each regions, also led Sundanese village to enjoy their simple way of life and that was probably the factors that would contribute to the carefree nature, egalitarian, conservative, independent and somewhat individualistic social outlook of Sundanese people. The Sundanese seems to love and revere their nature in spiritual ways, the conservative tendency and somewhat their opposition of foreign influences, is demonstrated in extreme isolationist measures adopted keenly by Kanekes or Baduy people. They have these rules against interacting to outsiders and adopting foreign ideas, technology and they also has set some taboos, such as not to cut the trees nor harm the forest creatures, in order to conserve their natural ecosystem. One of the earliest historical record that mention the name Sunda appear in Sanghyang Tapak inscription dated 952 saka discovered in Cibadak, near Sukabumi
Sundanese people
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Jaipongan Mojang Priangan, a Sundanese traditional dance performance.
Sundanese people
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Batutulis inscription in
Bogor, describes the deeds of Sunda King,
Sri Baduga Maharaja, popularly known as Prabu Siliwangi.
Sundanese people
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Traditional Sundanese house with Julang Ngapak roof, Papandak, Garut
Sundanese people
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Map showing the location of the Sundanese in Java
