1.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
2.
Andhra Pradesh
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Andhra Pradesh is one of the 29 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of the country. The state is the eighth largest state in India covering an area of 162,968 km2, as per 2011 Census of India, the state is tenth largest by population with 49,386,799 inhabitants. On 2 June 2014, the portion of the state was bifurcated to form a new state of Telangana. In accordance with the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act,2014, Hyderabad will remain the de jure capital of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states for a period of not exceeding 10 years. The new riverfront proposed capital in Guntur district is Amaravati, which is under the jurisdiction of APCRDA, the Gross State Domestic Product of the state in the 2016–2017 financial year at current prices stood at ₹6,800.3 billion. The state has a coastline of 974 km with jurisdiction over nearly 15,000 km2 territorial waters, the second longest among all the states of India after Gujarat. It is bordered by Telangana in the north-west, Chhattisgarh in the north, Odisha in the north-east, Karnataka in the west, Tamil Nadu in the south and the water body of Bay of Bengal in the east. A small enclave of 30 km2 of Yanam, a district of Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh is composed of two regions, Coastal Andhra, located along the Bay of Bengal, and Rayalaseema, in the inland southwestern part of the state. These two regions comprise 13 districts, with 9 in Coastal Andhra and 4 in Rayalaseema, Andhra Pradesh hosted 121.8 million visitors in 2015, a 30% growth in tourist arrivals over the previous year. The Tirumala Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati is one of the worlds most visited religious sites, a tribe named Andhra has been mentioned in the Sanskrit texts such as Aitareya Brahmana. According to Aitareya Brahmana of the Rig Veda, the Andhras left north India, archaeological evidence from places such as Amaravati, Dharanikota and Vaddamanu suggests that the Andhra region was part of the Mauryan Empire. Amaravati might have been a centre for the Mauryan rule. After the death of emperor Ashoka, the Mauryan rule weakened around 200 BCE, the Satavahana dynasty dominated the Deccan region from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. The Satavahanas have been mentioned by the names Andhra, Andhrara-jatiya and Andhra-bhrtya in the Puranic literature, Dharanikota along with Amaravathi was the capital of the later Satavahanas. Amaravathi became a trade and pilgrimage centre during the Satavahana rule. According to the Buddhist tradition, Nagarjuna lived here, possibly in second, Andhra Ikshvakus were one of the earliest recorded ruling dynasties of the Guntur-Krishna regions of Andhra Pradesh. They ruled the eastern Andhra country along the Krishna river during the half of the second century CE. Puranas called Andhra Ikshvakus Shri Parvatiya Andhras, archaeological evidence has suggested that the Andhra Ikshvakus immediately succeeded the Satavahanas in the Krishna river valley
3.
Telangana
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Telangana is one of the 29 states in India, located in southern India. Formed in June 2014 as the newest state in India, from the part of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana has an area of 112,077 square kilometres. It is the twelfth largest state in India, and the twelfth most populated state in India and its major cities include Hyderabad, Warangal, Nizamabad, Khammam, Karimnagar and Ramagundam. Telangana is bordered by the states of Maharashtra to the north and north west, Chhattisgarh to the north, Karnataka to the west and Andhra Pradesh to the east and south. Telangana had a history as the Telugu-speaking region of the state of Hyderabad. It joined the Union of India in 1948, in 1956, the Hyderabad state was dissolved as part of the linguistic reorganisation of states and Telangana was merged with former Andhra State to form Andhra Pradesh. Following a movement for separation, Telangan was awarded separate statehood on 2 June 2014, Hyderabad will continue to serve as the joint capital city for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for a period of not more than ten years. After Asaf Jahis ceded the Seemandhra region to the British, the rest of the Telugu region retained the name Telingana and the other parts were called Madras Presidencys Circars and Ceded. One of the earliest uses of a similar to Telangana can also be seen in a name of Malik Maqbul, who was called the Tilangani. He was the commander of the Warangal Fort, the Satavahana dynasty became the dominant power in this region. It originated from the lands between the Godavari and Krishna rivers and was based at Amaravathi and Dharanikota, after the decline of the Satavahanas, various dynasties, such as the Vakataka, Vishnukundina, Chalukya, Rashtrakuta and Western Chalukya, ruled the area. The Telangana area experienced its golden age during the reign of the Kakatiya dynasty, rudrama Devi and Prataparudra II were prominent rulers from the Kakatiya dynasty. The dynasty weakened with the attack of Malik Kafur in 1309 and was dissolved after the defeat of Prataparudra by the forces of Muhammad bin Tughluq in 1323, the area came under the rule of the Delhi Sultanate in the 14th century, followed by the Bahmani Sultanate. Quli Qutb Mulk, a governor of Golkonda, revolted against the Bahmani Sultanate, on 21 September 1687, the Golkonda Sultanate came under the rule of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after a year-long siege of the Golkonda fort. In 1712, Qamar-ud-din Khan was appointed by emperor Farrukhsiyar as the viceroy of Deccan with the title Nizam-ul-Mulk and he was later recalled to Delhi, with Mubariz Khan appointed as the viceroy. In 1724, Qamar-ud-din Khan defeated Mubariz Khan to reclaim the Deccan suba and he took the name Asif Jah, starting what came to be known as the Asif Jahi dynasty. He named the area Hyderabad Deccan, subsequent rulers retained the title Nizam ul-Mulk and were called Asif Jahi nizams or nizams of Hyderabad. The Medak and Warangal divisions of Telangana were part of their realm, when Asif Jah I died in 1748, there was political unrest due to contention for the throne among his sons, who were aided by opportunistic neighbouring states and colonial foreign forces
4.
Yanam
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Yanam is a town in the Indian union territory of Puducherry, located in Yanam district, which forms a 30 km² enclave in the district of East Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. It has a population of 32,000, most of whom speak Telugu, for 200 years it was a French colony, and, though united with India in 1954, is still sometimes known as French Yanam. It possesses a blend of French and Telugu culture prevailing in Andhra Pradesh, also, after implementation of the Sarda Act in British India in 1929, Telugu people came to Yanam to conduct child marriages, which remained legal under the French administration. In 1936, Yanams population was 5,220, the district lies in the delta of the Godavari River, the town is situated where the river meets its tributary, the Koringa River, nine kilometres from the Bay of Bengal on the Coromandel coast. Yanams soil is alluvium consisting of clay and gravel. It is greyish black and clayey in composition, a few thin layers of sandy clay or sand, not exceeding 0. 3-metre in thickness, are intercalated with the clay soil. The river sands on the bank of Gauthami, Godavari consist of quartz, felspar, a few grains of monazite are also found in the black streaks. There are no minerals of value in the region. Yanam receives irrigation water via the Bank Canal, which begins at the Dowleswaram headworks and it provides irrigation and drinking water to the areas west of the Coringa River. After merger, irrigation was provided to about 5, the work was undertaken by the Andhra Pradesh Public Works Department in 1964, and was completed and commissioned in June 1966. Like the French Channel, it provides irrigation and drinking water, Yanams climate is characterised by high humidity, an oppressive summer season, and plentiful rainfall. It enjoys the benefits of both the Southwest and Northeast monsoons, average annual rainfall is 1226 mm. Temperatures in Yanam range from 27 °C to 45 °C in summer, from February, temperatures start rising rapidly until May, which is the hottest month, with the mean maximum around 37 °C and mean minimum around 28 °C. Humidity being high, the heat is exhausting, the maximum temperature on some days in May or early June, before the onset of the south-west monsoon, may touch 47 °C. The sea breeze affords some relief in the afternoons, similarly, pre-monsoon thunder-showers may also bring relief on some days. With the onset of the monsoon in June the temperature falls rapidly, at times the minimum temperature may drop to 14 °C. December and January are the coolest months, as of 2001 India census, Yanam had a population of 31,362. Males constitute 51% of the population and females 49%, in Yanam, 14% of the population is under 6 years of age
5.
Telugu people
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The Telugu people or Telugu Prajalu are the people who natively speak Telugu. The majority of Telugus reside in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and they also have a significant population in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The Telugu language is the most spoken language in South India, the third-most spoken language in India, Andhra in Indian epic literature first appears at the time of the death of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in 232 BC. This date has been considered to be the beginning of the Andhra historical record, the term Kalinga has been historically relevant to this region, incorporating northeast Andhra Pradesh and modern day Odisha. Buddhist references to Andhras are also found, the first great Andhra empire was that of the Satavahanas, who came to power when the last Kanva emperor Sisuman, was assassinated by his prime minister Sipraca, of the Andhra tribe. Because of this king, India was called Poulomeun-koue, the country of Puliman by the Chinese, while in the west the inhabitants of the Gangetic provinces were denominated Andhra Hindus. Andhra, Karnataka and Maharashtra states observe the new year day. This calendar reckons dates based on the Shalivahana era, which begins its count from the date of the founding of the Empire by the legendary hero Shalivahana. The Satavahana king Shalivahana is credited with the initiation of this era known as Shalivahana, the Salivahana era begins its count of years from the year corresponding to 78 AD of the Gregorian calendar. Thus, the year 2000 AD corresponds to the year 1922 of the Salivahana Era, Telugu is a South-Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India, where it is an official language. Early inscriptions date from 575 AD and literary texts from the 11th century, kuchipudi is a famous Classical Indian dance from Andhra Pradesh, India. Ugadi or the Telugu New Year in March/April, sri Rama Navami celebrated in March/April,9 days after Ugadi. Bathukamma celebrated for nine days during Durga Navratri, atla Tadde 3rd day in bright half of Ashviyuja month. However, the date may vary according to the Hindu calendar. Telugu is the third most spoken language after Hindi and Bengali in India, Andhra Pradesh, the principle state of Telugu people is the fifth most populous State in India and the most populous state in South India with a population of 84.6 million. Telugu people form the majority speakers in South India with over 71 million speakers in Andhra Pradesh and this is followed by 3.7 million in Karnataka and 3.5 million in Tamil Nadu making them the second largest language groups in those neighboring states. In Karnataka, Telugu people are found in the border districts with majority in Bangalore city. In Tamil Nadu, Telugu people who migrated during the Vijayanagara period have spread across mostly in Western districts and Northern Districts, in Maharashtra Telugu population is over 1.4 million, followed by 0.7 million in Orissa
6.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
7.
Dravidian languages
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The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. There are also groups of Dravidian-speaking scheduled tribes, who live beyond the mainstream communities, such as the Kurukh. Epigraphically the Dravidian languages have been attested since the 2nd century BCE, only two Dravidian languages are exclusively spoken outside India, Brahui in Pakistan and Dhangar, a dialect of Kurukh, in Nepal. Caldwell coined the term Dravidian for this family of languages, based on the usage of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa. In his own words, Caldwell says, The word I have chosen is Dravidian, from Drāviḍa, I have, therefore, no doubt of the propriety of adopting it. The 1961 publication of the Dravidian etymological dictionary by T, emeneau proved a notable event in the study of Dravidian linguistics. As for the origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa itself, researchers have proposed various theories, basically the theories deal with the direction of derivation between tamiẓ and drāviḍa. There is no definite philological and linguistic basis for asserting unilaterally that the name Dravida also forms the origin of the word Tamil, Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such as dramila damiḷa and then goes on to say, The forms damiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection of drviḍa and. Tamiḷ < tamiẓ. whereby the further development might have been *tamiẓ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, hypercorrect -r-, an analogical case of DED1033 Ta. kamuku, Tu. kangu areca nut, Skt. kramu. Sinhala BCE inscriptions cite dameḍa-, damela- denoting Tamil merchants and it appears that damiḷa- was older than draviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization. Based on what Krishnamurti states, the Sanskrit word draviḍa itself is later than damiḷa since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r-. The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary lists for the Sanskrit word draviḍa a meaning of collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the Āndhras, Karṇāṭakas, Gurjaras, Tailaṅgas, the Dravidian languages form a close-knit family. They are descended from the Proto-Dravidian language, there is reasonable agreement on how they are related to each other. Most scholars agree on four groups, North, Central, South-Central, earlier classifications grouped Central and South-Central Dravidian in a single branch. The classification below follows Krishnamurti in grouping South-Central and South Dravidian, languages recognized as official languages of India appear here in boldface. Some authors deny that North Dravidian forms a subgroup, splitting it into Northeast and Northwest. In some words, *c is retracted to /k/ and this development is however also found in several other Dravidian languages, including Kannada, Kodagu and Tulu. A few morphological parallels between Brahui and Kurukh-Malto are also known, but according to McAlpin they are analyzable as shared archaisms rather than shared innovations, approximately 29% of Indias population spoke Dravidian languages in 1981
8.
Writing system
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A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
9.
Telugu script
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The Telugu script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts and to some extent the Gondi language. It gained prominence during the Vengi Chalukyas era and it shares many similarities with its sibling Kannada script. The Brahmi script used by Mauryan kings eventually reached the Krishna River delta, buddhism spread to east Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam. The Bhattiprolu Brahmi script evolved into the Telugu script by 5th century C. E, the Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni referred to both the Telugu language as well as its script as Andhri. Telugu uses eighteen vowels, each of which has both an independent form and a form used with consonants to create syllables. The language makes a distinction between short and long vowels, the independent form is used when the vowel occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable, or is a complete syllable in itself. The diacritic form is added to consonants to form a consonant-vowel syllable, అ does not have a diacritic form, because this vowel is already inherent in all of the consonants. The other diacritic vowels are added to consonants to change their pronunciation to that of the vowel, examples, There are also several other diacritics used in the Telugu script. ్ mutes the vowel of a consonant, so only the consonant is pronounced. ం and ఁ nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached, ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to. Examples, The places of articulation are classified as five, kaṇṭhya, Velar Tālavya, Palatal Mūrdhanya, Retroflex Dantya, Dental Ōshtya, Labial Apart from that, other places are combinations of the above five places. The below table gives a view upon articulation of consonants, the Telugu script has generally regular conjuncts, with trailing consonants taking a subjoined form, often losing the v-shaped headstroke. The following table shows all two-consonant and one three-consonant conjunct, but individual conjuncts may differ between fonts. NOTE, ౹, ౺, and ౻ are used also for 1⁄64, 2⁄64, 3⁄64, 1⁄1024, etc. and ౼, ౽, Telugu script was added to the Unicode Standard in October,1991 with the release of version 1.0. Telugu Braille Ethnologue Languages of the World - Telugu Microsoft - Telugu Input tool OLAC resources in, celebration of Telugu Culture in Sydney Telugu Association of Australia Inc. Celebration of Telugu Language, Literature and Culture in Victoria Telugu to English Dictionary Useful and authenticated information about Telugu
10.
States and union territories of India
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India is a federal union comprising twenty-nine states and seven union territories. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and further into smaller administrative divisions, the Constitution of India distributes the sovereign executive and legislative powers exercisable with respect to the territory of any State between the Union and that State. The Indian subcontinent has been ruled by different ethnic groups throughout its history. Between 1947 and 1950, the territories of the states were politically integrated into the Indian Union. The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, the new republic was also declared to be a Union of States. The nine Part A states were Assam, Bihar, Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Orissa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. The eight Part B states were former princely states or groups of states, governed by a rajpramukh, who was usually the ruler of a constituent state. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India, the Part B states were Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Bharat, Mysore, Patiala and East Punjab States Union, Rajasthan, Saurashtra, and Travancore-Cochin. The ten Part C states included both the former chief commissioners provinces and some states, and each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India. The Part C states were Ajmer, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Coorg, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Cutch, Manipur, Tripura, the only Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government. The Union Territory of Puducherry was created in 1954 comprising the previous French enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal, Yanam, Andhra State was created on 1 October 1953 from the Telugu-speaking northern districts of Madras State. The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 reorganised the states based on linguistic lines resulting in the creation of the new states, as a result of this act, Madras State retained its name with Kanyakumari district added to from Travancore-Cochin. Andhra Pradesh was created with the merger of Andhra State with the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State in 1956, kerala was created with the merger of Malabar district and the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara districts of Madras State with Travancore-Cochin. The Laccadive Islands which were divided between South Canara and Malabar districts of Madras State were united and organised into the territory of Lakshadweep. Bombay State was enlarged by the addition of Saurashtra State and Kutch State, Rajasthan and Punjab gained territories from Ajmer and Patiala and East Punjab States Union respectively and certain territories of Bihar was transferred to West Bengal. Bombay State was split into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 by the Bombay Reorganisation Act. Nagaland was formed on 1 December 1963, the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966 resulted in the creation of Haryana on 1 November and the transfer of the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh. The act also designated Chandigarh as a territory and the shared capital of Punjab
11.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
12.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
13.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
14.
Dravidian language
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The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. There are also groups of Dravidian-speaking scheduled tribes, who live beyond the mainstream communities, such as the Kurukh. Epigraphically the Dravidian languages have been attested since the 2nd century BCE, only two Dravidian languages are exclusively spoken outside India, Brahui in Pakistan and Dhangar, a dialect of Kurukh, in Nepal. Caldwell coined the term Dravidian for this family of languages, based on the usage of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa. In his own words, Caldwell says, The word I have chosen is Dravidian, from Drāviḍa, I have, therefore, no doubt of the propriety of adopting it. The 1961 publication of the Dravidian etymological dictionary by T, emeneau proved a notable event in the study of Dravidian linguistics. As for the origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa itself, researchers have proposed various theories, basically the theories deal with the direction of derivation between tamiẓ and drāviḍa. There is no definite philological and linguistic basis for asserting unilaterally that the name Dravida also forms the origin of the word Tamil, Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such as dramila damiḷa and then goes on to say, The forms damiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection of drviḍa and. Tamiḷ < tamiẓ. whereby the further development might have been *tamiẓ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, hypercorrect -r-, an analogical case of DED1033 Ta. kamuku, Tu. kangu areca nut, Skt. kramu. Sinhala BCE inscriptions cite dameḍa-, damela- denoting Tamil merchants and it appears that damiḷa- was older than draviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization. Based on what Krishnamurti states, the Sanskrit word draviḍa itself is later than damiḷa since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r-. The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary lists for the Sanskrit word draviḍa a meaning of collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the Āndhras, Karṇāṭakas, Gurjaras, Tailaṅgas, the Dravidian languages form a close-knit family. They are descended from the Proto-Dravidian language, there is reasonable agreement on how they are related to each other. Most scholars agree on four groups, North, Central, South-Central, earlier classifications grouped Central and South-Central Dravidian in a single branch. The classification below follows Krishnamurti in grouping South-Central and South Dravidian, languages recognized as official languages of India appear here in boldface. Some authors deny that North Dravidian forms a subgroup, splitting it into Northeast and Northwest. In some words, *c is retracted to /k/ and this development is however also found in several other Dravidian languages, including Kannada, Kodagu and Tulu. A few morphological parallels between Brahui and Kurukh-Malto are also known, but according to McAlpin they are analyzable as shared archaisms rather than shared innovations, approximately 29% of Indias population spoke Dravidian languages in 1981
15.
Hindi
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Hindi, or Modern Standard Hindi is a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language. Along with the English language, Hindi written in the Devanagari script, is the language of the Government of India. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India, Hindi is the lingua franca of the so-called Hindi belt of India. Outside India, it is a language which is known as Fiji Hindi in Fiji, and is a recognised regional language in Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana. Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, apart from specialized vocabulary, Hindi is mutually intelligible with Standard Urdu, another recognized register of Hindustani. Part XVII of the Indian Constitution deals with Official Language, under Article 343, official language of the Union has been prescribed, which includes Hindi in Devanagari script and English. Gujarat High Court, in 2010, has observed that there was nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a language of India. Article 343 of the Indian constitution states The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, the form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals. It was envisioned that Hindi would become the working language of the Union Government by 1965. Each may also designate a co-official language, in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, depending on the formation in power. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of language in the following Union Territories, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu. National-language status for Hindi is a long-debated theme, an Indian court clarified that Hindi is not the national language of India because the constitution does not mention it as such. Outside Asia, Hindi is a language in Fiji as per the 1997 Constitution of Fiji. It is spoken by 380,000 people in Fiji, Hindi is also spoken by a large population of Madheshis of Nepal. Hindi is quite easy to understand for some Pakistanis, who speak Urdu, apart from this, Hindi is spoken by the large Indian diaspora which hails from, or has its origin from the Hindi Belt of India. Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi is considered to be a descendant of an early form of Sanskrit, through Sauraseni Prakrit. It has been influenced by Dravidian languages, Turkic languages, Persian, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi emerged as Apabhramsha, a degenerated form of Prakrit, in the 7th century A. D. By the 10th century A. D. it became stable, Braj Bhasha, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Khari Boli etc. are the dialects of Hindi
16.
Indian English
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Indian English is any of the forms of English characteristic of India. English is a lingua franca of India, though English is one of the two official languages of the Union Government of India, only a few hundred thousand Indians have English as their first language. Among women, the percentages were 83 percent speaking no English,17 percent speaking at least some English. The number of English-medium school students in India increased from over 15 million in 2008–09 to 29 million by 2013–14, in December 2015, the Supreme Court of India ruled that English is the only court language. India ranks 22 out of 72 countries in the 2016 EF English Proficiency Index published by the EF Education First, the index gives the country a score of 57.30 indicating moderate proficiency. India ranks 4th out of 19 Asian countries included in the index, among Asian countries, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines received higher scores than India. Indian English generally uses the Indian numbering system, idiomatic forms derived from Indian literary languages and vernaculars have been absorbed into Indian English. Nevertheless, there remains general homogeneity in phonetics, vocabulary, English language public instruction began in India in the 1830s during the rule of the East India Company. In 1835, English replaced Persian as the language of the Company. Lord Macaulay played a role in introducing English and western concepts to education in India. He supported the replacement of Persian by English as the language, the use of English as the medium of instruction in all schools. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, primary-, middle-, and high-schools were opened in districts of British India. In 1857, just before the end of Company rule, universities modelled on the University of London and using English as the medium of instruction were established in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. During subsequent Crown Rule in India, or the British Raj, lasting from 1858 to 1947 and this was driven in part by the gradually increasing hiring of Indians in the civil services. At the time of Indias independence in 1947, English was the only lingua franca in the country. After Indian Independence in 1947, Hindi was declared the first official language, due to protests from Tamil Nadu and other non-Hindi-speaking states, it was decided to temporarily retain English for official purposes until at least 1965. By the end of period, however, opposition from non-Hindi states was still too strong to have Hindi declared the sole language. With this in mind, the English Language Amendment Bill declared English to be an associate language until such time as all non-Hindi States had agreed to its being dropped and this hasnt yet occurred, and it is still widely used
17.
Bengali language
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Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms, more recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Today, Bengali is the language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India. Both the national anthems of Bangladesh and India were composed in Bengali, in 1952, the Bengali Language Movement successfully pushed for the languages official status in the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the movement in East Pakistan. Language is an important element of Bengali identity and binds together a diverse region. Sanskrit was spoken in Bengal since the first millennium BCE, during the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were spoken in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm and these dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit. They eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi, Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa languages at the end of the first millennium. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from Sanskrit, for example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty, during the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was a court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the development of Bengali as part of efforts to Islamize. Bengali became the most spoken language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary, major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas Shreekrishna Kirtana. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a case of diglossia, with the literary
18.
Primary language
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A first language is a language that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. If there are multiple L1, the designation first language is used for the L1 spoken the best or the one that is the basis for sociolinguistic identity. In some countries, the native language or mother tongue refers to the language of ones ethnic group rather than ones first language. Children brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, by contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than ones first language. Native speakers are considered to be an authority on their language because of their natural acquisition process regarding the language. That is achieved by interaction with the language and speakers of the language. Native speakers will not necessarily be knowledgeable about every rule of the language. Sometimes, the mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learned as a child at home. Children growing up in homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language. It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a dominant language. According to Ivan Illich, the mother tongue was first used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin. That is, the mother the Church introduced this term. J. R. R. Tolkien, in his 1955 lecture English and Welsh, on 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. The first language of a child is part of the personal, social and cultural identity, another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. It is basically responsible for differentiating the linguistic competence of acting and that has implications on the education of non-native speakers. The topic of native speaker also gives way to discussion about what exactly bilingualism is, one definition is that a person is bilingual by being equally proficient in both languages. A person who grows up speaking English and begins learning Spanish for four years is not necessarily bilingual unless he speaks the two languages with equal fluency, one can have two or more native languages, thus being a native bilingual or indeed multilingual. The order in which languages are learned is not necessarily the order of proficiency
19.
Puducherry
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Puducherry, formerly known as Pondicherry, is a union territory of India. It was formed out of four exclaves of former French India, namely Pondichéry, Karikal, Mahé and it is named after the largest district, Puducherry. Historically known as Pondicherry, the changed its official name to Puducherry on 20 September 2006. Puducherry lies in the part of the Indian Peninsula. Puducherry is the 29th most populous and the third most densely populated territory in India. It has a GDP of ₹0.21 lakh crore and ranks 27th in India, the earliest recorded history of Puducherry can be traced to the 2nd century CE. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions a marketplace named Poduke, huntingford suggested this might be a site about 2 miles from the modern Puducherry, which was possibly the location of Arikamedu. Huntingford noted that Roman pottery was found at Arikamedu in 1937, in addition, archaeological excavations between 1944 and 1949 showed that it was a trading station to which goods of Roman manufacture were imported during the first half of the 1st century CE. In 1674, Pondicherry became a French colony of the French colonial empire, the union territory of Puducherry consists of four small unconnected districts, Puducherry district, Karaikal district and Yanam district on the Bay of Bengal and Mahé district on the Arabian Sea. Puducherry and Karaikal have the largest areas and population, and are both enclaves of Tamil Nadu, Yanam and Mahé are enclaves of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala respectively. Some of Puducherrys districts are themselves amalgamations of non-contiguous enclaves, often called pockets in India, the Puducherry district is made of 11 such pockets, some of which are very small and entirely surrounded by the territory of Tamil Nadu. Mahé district is made up of three pockets and this unusual geography is a legacy of the colonial period with Puducherry retaining the borders of former French India. All four districts of Puducherry are located in the coastal region, five rivers in Puducherry district, seven in Karaikal district, two in Mahé district and one in Yanam district drain into the sea, but none originates within the territory. Other religions include Christianity and Islam, Puducherry is a Union Territory of India rather than a state, which implies that governance and administration falls directly under federal authority. The Centre is represented by the Lieutenant Governor, who resides at the Raj Nivas at the Park, the central government is more directly involved in the territorys financial well-being unlike states, which have a central grant that they administer. Consequently, Puducherry has at times, enjoyed lower taxes. According to the Treaty of Cession of 1956, the four territories of former French India territorial administration are permitted to make laws with respect to specific matters, in many cases, such legislation may require ratification from the federal government or the assent of the President of India. Article II of the Treaty states, The Establishments will keep the benefit of the administrative status which was in force prior to 1 November 1954
20.
Ethnologue
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Ethnologue, Languages of the World is a web-based publication that contains information about the 7,099 living languages in its 20th edition, which was released in 2017. The publication is well respected and widely used by linguists, Ethnologue is published by SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas, Texas. Ethnologue follows general linguistic criteria, which are based primarily on mutual intelligibility, shared language intelligibility features are complex, and usually include etymological and grammatical evidence that is agreed upon by experts. These lists of names are not necessarily complete, in 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an SIL code, to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded the scope of other standards, e. g. ISO 639-1, the 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization to integrate its codes into an international standard. The 15th edition of Ethnologue was the first edition to use this standard and this standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue according to rules established by ISO, and since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. e. A language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity, in December 2015, Ethnologue launched a soft paywall, users in high-income countries who want to refer to more than seven pages of data per month must buy a paid subscription. Ethnologues 18th edition describes 228 language families and six typological categories, in 1986, William Bright, then editor of the journal Language, wrote of Ethnologue that it is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world. In 2008 in the journal, Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona said, Ethnologue. has become the standard reference. However, he concluded that, on balance, Ethnologue is a comprehensive catalogue of world languages. Starting with the 17th edition, new editions of Ethnologue are to be published every year, linguasphere Observatory Register Glottolog Lists of languages List of language families Martin Everaert, Simon Musgrave, Alexis Dimitriadis, eds. The Use of Databases in Cross-Linguistic Studies, linguistic Genocide in Education-or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights. Evaluating language statistics, the Ethnologue and beyond
21.
Languages with official status in India
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The Constitution of India designates the official language of the Government of India as Hindi written in the Devanagari script, as well as English. There is no national language as declared by the Constitution of India, Hindi and English are used for official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own language through legislation. Other Indian languages are spoken by around 10% or less of the population. States specify their own language through legislation. During the British Raj, English was used for purposes at the federal level, plans to make Hindi the sole official language of the Republic met with resistance in some parts of the country. Hindi continues to be used today, in combination with other State official languages at the state level, the Indian constitution, in 1950, declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the union. Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15 years after the constitution came into effect, i. e. on 26 January 1965. The prospect of the changeover, however, led to much alarm in the non Hindi-speaking areas of India, as a result, Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act,1963, which provided for the continued use of English for official purposes along with Hindi, even after 1965. Some of these protests turned violent. The Indian constitution draws a distinction between the language to be used in Parliamentary proceedings, and the language in which laws are to be made, Parliamentary business, according to the Constitution, may be conducted in either Hindi or English. In contrast, the constitution requires the text of all laws, including Parliamentary enactments and statutory instruments, to be in English. The constitution provides that all proceedings in the Supreme Court of India, the countrys highest court, Parliament has the power to alter this by law, but has not done so. However, in many courts, there is, with consent from the president. Such proposals have been successful in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, the Union government is required by law to progressively increase the use of Hindi in its official work, which it has sought to do through persuasion, incentive and goodwill. The Official Language Act provides that the Union government shall use both Hindi and English in most administrative documents that are intended for the public, the Official Languages Rules, in contrast, provide for a higher degree of use of Hindi in communications between offices of the central government. Communications between different departments within the government may be in either Hindi or English, although a translation into the other language must be provided if required. Notes and memos in files may be in either Hindi or English, in addition, every person submitting a petition for the redress of a grievance to a government officer or authority has a constitutional right to submit it in any language used in India
22.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
23.
Prakrit
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A Prakrit is any of several Middle Indo-Aryan languages. The Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, which was used extensively to write the scriptures of Jainism, is considered to be the definitive form of Prakrit. Prakrit grammarians would give the full grammar of Ardhamagadhi first, for this reason, courses teaching Prakrit are often regarded as teaching Ardhamagadhi. Other Prakrits are reported in old sources but are not attested. Alternatively, Prakrit can be taken to mean derived from an original, Prakrit is foremost a native term, designating vernaculars as opposed to Sanskrit. The Prakrits became literary languages, generally patronized by ancient Indian kings identified with the Kshatriya Varna of Hinduism, the earliest extant usage of Prakrit is the corpus of inscriptions of Emperor Aśoka. Besides this, Prakrit appears in literature in the form of Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhists, Prakrit canon of the Jains, Prakrit grammars and in lyrics, plays and epics of the times. The various Prakrit languages are associated with different patron dynasties, with different religions and different literary traditions, each Prakrit represents a distinct tradition of literature within the history of Pakistan, India and Nepal. In linguistic terms, this is used in contrast with saṃskṛta, Dramatic Prakrits were those that were devised specifically for use in dramas and other literature. Whenever dialogue was written in a Prakrit, the reader would also be provided with a Sanskrit translation, none of these Prakrits came into being as vernaculars, but some ended up being used as such when Sanskrit fell out of favor. The phrase Dramatic Prakrits often refers to three most prominent of them, Shauraseni, Magadhi Prakrit, and Maharashtri Prakrit, however, there were a slew of other less commonly used Prakrits that also fall into this category. These include Pracya, Bahliki, Daksinatya, Sakari, Candali, Sabari, Abhiri, Dramili, there was an astoundingly strict structure to the use of these different Prakrits in dramas. Maharashtri Prakrit, the ancestor of modern Marathi, is an interesting case. Maharashtri was often used for poetry and as such, diverged from proper Sanskrit grammar mainly to fit the language to the meter of different styles of poetry, the new grammar stuck, which led to the unique flexibility of vowels lengths – amongst other anomalies – in Marathi. Ardhamagadhi Dramili Elu Gandhari Magadhi Maharashtri Paisaci Shauraseni Jain Maharashtri Jain Shauraseni Apabransh National Institute of Prakrit Study, shravanabelagola, Karnataka, India Banerjee, Satya Ranjan. The Eastern School of Prakrit Grammarians, a linguistic study, deshpande, Madhav, Sanskrit & Prakrit, sociolinguistic issues. Pischel, R. Grammar of the Prakrit Languages
24.
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
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He was Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University from 1986 to 1993. He founded the Department of Linguistics at Osmania University, where he then would serve as professor from 1962 to 1986 and his magnum opus The Dravidian Languages is considered a landmark volume in the study of Dravidian linguistics. He was a student and close associate of Murray Barnson Emeneau and he got his A. M. and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 and 1957 respectively. His grandson Ravi Bhadriraju was the rhythm guitarist in metal band Job for a Cowboy. Krishnamurti is considered to be among the first to apply the rigour of modern comparative linguistic theory to further the study of Dravidian languages. His thesis Telugu Verbal Bases is the first comprehensive account of comparative Dravidian phonology and his comprehensive grammar on koṃḍa or Kūbi is a monumental work in the area of non-literary Dravidian languages. His recent work The Dravidian Languages published by Cambridge University Press is a culmination of the research carried out by him in the last fifty years. This series is first of its kind in India, Krishnamurti worked as a Lecturer in Telugu at Andhra University, Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Reader in Telugu, S. V. U. Krishnamurti was also associated with the study of South Indian languages in many western institutions, prof. Krishnamurti was an elected Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America in 1985. He was elected Corresponding Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Edinburgh, UK and he had been an executive member of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1990-2002. He was conferred a doctorate in literature by Sri Venkateswara University in 1998. He was elected Fellow of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, in 2004 and he received the Gidugu Ramamurti Award at the 15th TANA, Detroit, July 2005. He was the first recipient of the Telugu Bhaarati Award instituted by C. P. Brown Academy and he also received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 10th ATA, New Jersey, for significant contributions to Telugu and Dravidian linguistics, 3–5 July 2008. He was presented Indian Linguistics, Vol.70, as Festschrift by the Linguistic Society of India and he died after a brief illness in 2012. Telugu Verbal Bases, A Comparative and Descriptive Study, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. A Basic Course in Modern Telugu, Hyderabad, Department of Linguistics, Osmania University. Koṃḍa or Kūbi, A Dravidian Language, Tribal Cultural Research and Training Institute. Hyderabad, Tribal Cultural Research and Training Institute, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju, Djordje Kostic, Alokananda Mitter
25.
Proto-language
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In the strict sense, a proto-language is the latest common ancestor of a language family, immediately before the start of the familys divergence into the attested daughter languages. It is therefore equivalent with the language or parental language of a language family. Moreover, a group of idioms which are not considered separate languages can also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language, occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead. Typically, the proto-language is not known directly and it is by definition a linguistic reconstruction formulated by applying the comparative method to a group of languages featuring similar characteristics. The tree is a statement of similarity and a hypothesis that the similarity results from descent from a common language, the comparative method, a process of deduction, begins from a set of characteristics, or characters, found in the attested languages. More recently such a tree has been termed perfect and the characters labelled compatible, no trees but the smallest branches are ever found to be perfect, in part because languages also evolve through horizontal transfer with their neighbours. Typically, credibility is given to the hypotheses of highest compatibility, the differences in compatibility must be explained by various applications of the wave model. Not all characters are suitable for the comparative method, for example, lexical items that are loans from a different language do not reflect the phylogeny to be tested, and if used will detract from the compatibility. Getting the right dataset for the method is a major task in historical linguistics. Some universally accepted proto-languages are Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and Proto-Dravidian, in a few fortuitous instances, which have been used to verify the method and the model, a literary history exists from as early as a few millennia ago, allowing the descent to be traced in detail. The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts, for example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, the first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language was August Schleicher, he did so for Proto-Indo-European in 1861. Normally, the term Proto-X refers to the last common ancestor of a group of languages, occasionally attested, an earlier stage of the same language, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction, is termed Pre-X. This terminology is used, for example, in the case of Proto-Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European, when multiple historical stages of a single language exist, the oldest attested stage is normally termed Old X. For an earlier, hypothetical stage, reconstructed through the method of reconstruction, terminology differs, with some authors using Proto-X. This is similar to the situation of Old Norse and Proto-Norse, there are no objective criteria for the evaluation of different reconstruction systems yielding different proto-languages. Many researchers concerned with linguistic reconstruction agree that the comparative method is an intuitive undertaking. The bias of the researchers regarding the implicit knowledge can also lead to erroneous assumptions
26.
Godavari River
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The Godavari is the second longest river in India after the river Ganges having its source at Tryambakeshwar, Maharashtra. Measuring up to 312,812 km2, it one of the largest river basins in the Indian subcontinent, with only the Ganges. However, in the past few decades, the river has been abused with relentless construction of barrages and dams. The river delta, supporting 729 persons/km2 – nearly twice the density average for the nation, has been categorized as having substantial risk to greater risk of flooding with rising sea levels. The Godavari originates 80 km from the Arabian Sea in the Western Ghats of central India near Nasik in Maharashtra. The Godavari River has an area of 312,812 km2. The river basin is considered to be divided into 3 sections, Upper, Middle and these put together account for 24. 2% of the total basin area. The rivers annual average water inflows are nearly 110 billion cubic metres, nearly 50% of the water availability is being harnessed. The water allocation from the river among the states are governed by the Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal. The river has highest flood flows in India and experienced recorded flood of 3.6 million cusecs in the year 1986, within Nashik District the river assumes a north-easterly course till it flows into the Gangapur Reservoir created by a dam of the same name. The reservoir along with the Kashypi Dam provides potable water to Nashik, about 25 km below Nasik is the confluence of the Godavari and one of its tributaries, the Darna river. The stream occupies, for nine months in the year, a space in a wide and gravelly bed. A few kilometres after its meeting with the Darna, the Godavari swerves to the north-east, till the Banganga, from the north-west, the course of the main stream then tends more decidedly south. At Nandur-Madhmeshwar, the Kadva, a large affluent, brings considerable increase to the waters of the Godavari. The river begins its southeasterly course characteristic of rivers of the Deccan Plateau, the river beyond exits the Niphad Taluka of Nashik and enter the Kopargaon taluka, Ahmednagar District. Within Ahmednagar the river completes its short course, flowing alongside the town of Kopargaon. By virtue of a sub-tributary of Pravara – Mandohol, which originates in Pune District – the basin impinges the Pune District, the river at Paithan has been impounded by the Jayakwadi Dam forming the NathSagar Reservoir. Kalsubai located in Godavari basin, is the highest peak in Maharashtra, Beed and Jalna Beed and Parbhani, Located along here is its merger with Sindphana, an important tributary which drains a considerably large area within Beed
27.
Lepakshi
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Lepakshi is a small village in Mandal in the Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is located 15 km east of Hindupur and approximately 120 km north of Bangalore, Lepakshi is culturally and archaeologically significant as it is the location of shrines dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Veerabhadra which were built during the Vijayanagara Kings period. The temples are the location of paintings of the Vijayanagara kings. Near the temple complex is a large granite Nandi bull, on a hillock known as Kurma Saila, tortoise shaped hill, are other temples to Papanatheswara, Raghunatha, Srirama, and Durga. The Veerabhadra temple of Lepakshi, which was built by the brothers Viranna and Virupanna, is dedicated to Veerabhadra and it is an example of the Vijayanagara architectural style. Points of interest in the include a rock chain, Vastu Purusha, the Padmini race lady, the hanging pillar, Durga Paadam. The paintings on the roof are made with natural pigments, another interesting aspect of this temple is that it is North facing. The Shivas bull Nandi is a monolithic sculpture on the main road of Lepashki approximately 200 m from the temple. It is 4. 5m high and 8. 23m long making one of the largest nandi in India, the sculpture has been positioned so that it faces the Shivalinga which is shielded by a large serpent inside the temple. The nandi wears a kaasu malai, a chain, earrings. Legend has it that the Naga of the Nagalinga was carved out of a stone by sculptors while they waited for their mothers to prepare lunch. The Nagalinga is approximately 12 feet in height, Hindupur railway station is a major railway station. The hanging pillar and other wonders of Lepakshi
28.
Ramayana
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The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic poem which narrates the struggle of the divine prince Rama to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Along with the Mahabharata, it forms the Sanskrit Itihasa, the Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature. It consists of nearly 24,000 verses, divided into seven Kandas, in Hindu tradition, it is considered to be the adi-kavya. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying characters like the ideal father, the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife. The Ramayana was an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu life, like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just a story, it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and ethical elements. The name Ramayana is a compound of the name Rāma and ayana. According to Hindu tradition—and according to the Ramayana itself—the epic belongs to the genre of itihasa like Mahabharata, the definition of itihāsa is a narrative of past events which includes teachings on the goals of human life. According to Hindu tradition, Ramayana takes place during a period of known as Treta Yuga. In its extant form, Valmikis Ramayana is a poem of some 24,000 verses. The text survives in several thousand partial and complete manuscripts, the oldest of which is a manuscript found in Nepal. A Times of India report dated 18 December 2015 informs about discovery of a 6th-century manuscript of the Ramayana at the Asiatic Society library, the Ramayana text has several regional renderings, recensions and subrecensions. Goldman differentiates two major regional recensions, the northern and the southern, scholar Romesh Chunder Dutt writes that the Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, is a growth of centuries, but the main story is more distinctly the creation of one mind. There has been discussion as to whether the first and the last chapters of Valmikis Ramayana were composed by the original author. Most Hindus still believe they are parts of the book, in spite of some style differences. Some cultural evidence, such as the presence of sati in Mahabharata but not in the body of Ramayana. By tradition, the text belongs to the Treta Yuga, second of the four eons of Hindu chronology, Rama is said to have been born in the Treta yuga to king Dasharatha in the Ikshvaku dynasty. The names of the characters are all known in late Vedic literature, however, nowhere in the surviving Vedic poetry is there a story similar to the Ramayana of Valmiki. Also, in the epic Mahabharata, there is a version of Ramayana known as Ramopakhyana and this version is depicted as a narration to Yudhishthira
29.
Jatayu
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In the Indian epic Ramayana, Jatayu is the youngest son of Aruna. His brother, Sampaati, is a demi-god who has the form of a Vulture and was an old friend of Dasharatha, in the Epic Ramayana when Jatayu sees Ravana abducting Sita, he tries to rescue Sita from Ravana. Jatayu fought valiantly with Ravana, but as he was very old Ravana soon got the better of him. As Rama and Lakshmana chanced upon the stricken and dying Jatayu in their search for Sita, Jatayu and his brother Sampaati, when young, used to compete as to who could fly higher. On one such instance, Jatayu flew so high that he was about to get seared by the suns flames, Sampati saved his brother by spreading his own wings and thus shielding Jatayu from the hot flames. In the process, Sampati himself got injured and lost his wings, as a result, Sampati lived wingless for the rest of his life. While Jatayu was wounded and lying on the ground when Lord Rama arrived, Lord Rama sensed the end result, Lord Rama then slammed an arrow into the ground so as to call all seven sacred rivers, called teertha. Six rivers waters arrived, one river water failing to obey Lord Ramas call, since Lord Rama was himself an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, He forced the Gaya teertha to arrive at the spot. According to the legend, it is believed that Jatayu fell on the rocks in Chadayamangalam,38 km from Kollam district of Kerala, formerly, the place was called Jatayumangalam. This is the place which is credited to the falling place of Jatayu since rocks there holds stricking carvings of Jatayus beak mark during his last breath. Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh, India is also attributed to the place where Jatayu fell after being wounded by Ravana, Rama is said to have commanded the bird to rise Le Pakshi, hence the name for that town. Jatayu Earth’s Center or Jatayu Nature Park is a park and tourism centre under construction at Chadayamangalam in Kollam district of Kerala, designed by Rajiv Anchal, This rock-theme nature park is about 38 km away from Kollam and 46 km away from the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram. It is the first PPP tourism initiative in the state of Kerala under the BOT model, when open, Jatayu Nature Park will hold the distinction of having the world’s largest bird sculpture of the great mythical bird Jatayu. Garuda Sampati Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend by Anna Dhallapiccola Ramayana by C
30.
Ravana
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Ravana is the primary antagonist in the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana where he is depicted as Rakshasa king of Lanka. Ramayana is considered by the Indian traditions to be the itihasa or the history along with Mahabharata, Ravana is the son of Vishrava and Kaikesi and grandson of Pulastya. Ravana, a devotee of Lord Shiva, is depicted and described as a scholar, a capable ruler. He is also described as powerful and has ten heads. His paramount ambition was to overpower and dominate the devas and his ten heads represent his knowledge of the six shastras and the four Vedas. In the Ramayana, Ravana kidnaps Ramas wife Sita to exact vengeance on Rama and his brother Lakshmana for having cut off the ears and nose of his sister Shurpanakha. Ravana, as a practitioner of Buddhism, is a character in Buddhist texts such as the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Gathering of Intentions. Ravana is worshipped by Hindus in some parts of India, Sri Lanka, images of Ravana are seen associated with Shiva at some places. The word Rāvaṇa means roaring opposite of Vaiśravaṇa meaning hear distinctly, both Ravana and Vaiśravaṇa, who is popularly known as Kubera, are considered to be patronymics derived as sons of Vishrava. According to F. E. Pargiter, the word may originally have been a Sanskritisation of Iraivan, Ravana has many other popular names such as Dasis Ravana, Dasis Sakvithi Maha Ravana, Dashaanan, Ravula, Lankeshwar, Lankeshwaran, Ravanaeshwaran, Eela Vendhar. However, in stories in Java told that every year, Ravana cuts one of his heads every year. Each head was reflecting his desire, by cutting it and presenting it, he was sacrificing one of his many desires to appease Shiva. He kept doing it every year until the last one, turned out the last head was considered as the true head of Ravana and Shiva considered his devoutness is a worthy one and his sacrifices were accepted. He is described as a follower of Shiva, a great scholar, a capable ruler. Ravana is also depicted as the author of the Ravana Samhita, a book on Hindu astrology, and of the Arka Prakasham, Ravana possessed a thorough knowledge of Siddha and political science. He is said to have possessed the nectar of immortality, which was stored inside his belly, Ravana was born to a great sage, Vishrava and his wife, the daitya princess Kaikesi. People of Bisrakh village in Uttar Pradesh claim that their village was named after Vishrava, Ravana, as a practitioner of Buddhism, is a major character in Buddhist texts such as the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Gathering of Intentions, a text of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. According to Uttara Kanda section of Ramayana, the Rakshasa clan were the inhabitants of Lanka who were said to have lived among the Naga, Yaksha
31.
Sita
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Sita, also known as Siya, Vaidehi, Janaki, Maithili, or Bhoomija, is the central female character of the Hindu epic Ramayana and daughter of King Janaka of Videha and his wife queen Sunaina. She was the sister of Urmila and cousins Mandavi and Shrutakirti. She is consort of Hindu god Rama and is an avatar of Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and she is esteemed as a paragon of spousal and feminine virtues for all Hindu women. Sita is known for her dedication, self-sacrifice, courage and purity, Sita is described as the daughter of the earth goddess Bhūmi and the adopted daughter of King Janaka of Mithila and Queen Sunaina. In her youth, she marries Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, after marriage, she goes to exile with her husband and brother-in-law Lakshmana. While in exile, the settle in the Dandaka forest, from where she is abducted by Ravana. She is imprisoned in the Ashoka Vatika of Lanka by Ravana, until she is rescued by Rama, who slays her captor. After the war, Rama asks Sita to undergo Agni Pariksha by which she proves her purity before she is accepted by Rama, which for the first time made his brother Lakshmana get angry at him. In some versions of the epic, the fire-god Agni creates Maya Sita, at Agni Pariksha, Maya Sita and the real Sita exchange places again. While some texts mention that Maya Sita is destroyed in the flames of Agni Pariksha, others narrate how she is blessed, Some scriptures also mention her previous birth being Vedavati, a woman Ravana tries to molest. After proving her purity, Rama and Sita return to Ayodhya, after few months, Sita becomes pregnant which brought doubt to the Kingdom. Rama then sends Sita away on exile, Lakshmana is the one who leaves Sita in the forests near sage Valmikis ashrama after Rama banishes her from the kingdom. Years later, Sita returns to her mother, the Earths womb, the goddess is best known by the name Sita, derived from the Sanskrit word sīta, furrow. According to Ramayana, Janaka found her while ploughing as a part of a yagna, the word Sīta was a poetic term, its imagery redolent of fecundity and the many blessings coming from settled agriculture. The Sita of the Ramayana may have named after a more ancient Vedic goddess Sita. In the Vedic period, she was one of the associated with fertility. A Vedic hymn recites, In Harivamsa, Sita has been invoked as one of the names of goddess Arya, The Kausik-sutra, Sita is known by many epithets. She is called Jānaki as the daughter of Janaka and Maithili as the princess of Mithila, as the wife of Rama, she is called Ramā
32.
Rama
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Ram or Srī Rāmachandra is the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu. He is the figure of the Hindu epic Ramayana, which is the principal narration of the events connected to his incarnation on Earth, his ideals. Rama is one of the deities in Hinduism and especially of the various sects of Vaishnavism. Religious texts and scriptures based on his life have been a component in numerous cultures of South Asia. Along with Krishna, Rama is considered to be one of the most important avatars of Vishnu, in Rama-centric sects, he is considered the Supreme Being, rather than an avatar. His wife Sita is considered by Hindus to be an avatar of Lakshmi, Rama and his brothers Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna were the chaturvyuha expansions of Vishnu. Ramas life and journey is one of adherence to dharma despite harsh tests and obstacles and many pains of life, for the sake of his fathers honour, Rama abandons his claim to Ayodhyas throne to serve an exile of fourteen years in the forest. His wife Sita and brother Lakshmana decide to join him and all three spend the fourteen years in exile together, while in exile, Sita is kidnapped by Ravana, the king of Lanka. After a long and arduous search, Rama fights a colossal war against Ravanas armies, in a war of powerful and magical beings, greatly destructive weaponry, and huge battles, Rama slays Ravana in battle and liberates his wife. Having completed his exile, Rama returns to be crowned king in Ayodhya and eventually becomes emperor, He rules with happiness, peace, duty, prosperity, and justice, a period known as Rama Rajya. The legend of Rama is deeply influential and popular in the societies of the Indian subcontinent, Rama is revered for his unending compassion, courage, and devotion to religious values and duty. The deity Hanuman declared Rama to be a supreme being, and said that, by constant remembrance of Lord Rama, the name Rama appears repeatedly in Hindu scriptures. Besides the name of the protagonist of the Ramayana, the name is given to other heroes including Parashurama and Balarama. In the Vishnu sahasranama, Rama is the 394th name of Vishnu, in Sanskrit, the word Rama means charming. It is commonly given as a name to male children in India, additionally, the tales of Rama are reverently spoken of in the Mahabharata. The earliest documentation of Rama in Buddhism is in the Buddhist text of Dasharatha Jataka, the epic had many versions across Indias regions. However, other scriptures in Sanskrit also reflect the life of Ramayana, the followers of Madhvacharya believe that an older version of the Ramayana, the mula-Ramayana, previously existed. They consider it to have been more authoritative than the version by Valmiki, another important shortened version of the epic in Sanskrit is the Adhyatma Ramayana
33.
Mesopotamia
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In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The Sumerians and Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of history to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD226, eastern part of it fell to the Sassanid Persians, division of Mesopotamia between Roman and Sassanid Empires lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and Muslim conquest of the Levant from Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The regional toponym Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος middle and ποταμός river and it is used throughout the Greek Septuagint to translate the Hebrew equivalent Naharaim. In the Anabasis, Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria, the Aramaic term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazira, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation and it is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jazirah, and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments, Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the Armenian Highlands. Both rivers are fed by tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000 square kilometres region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, in the extreme south, the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times, periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and these trends have continued to the present day in Iraq
34.
Bhattiprolu
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Bhattiprolu is a village in Guntur district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is the headquarters of Bhattiprolu mandal in Tenali revenue division and it also forms a part of Andhra Pradesh Capital Region. The original name of Bhattiprolu was Pratipalapura, a flourishing Buddhist town in the ancient Sala kingdom that predated Andhra Satavahanas, from available inscriptional evidence, King Kuberaka was ruling over Bhattiprolu around 230 BC. Bhattiprolu is well known for its Buddha stupa built about 3rd-2nd century BC, three mounds were discovered in Bhattiprolu in 1870. In 1892 when excavations were undertaken by Alexander Rea, three inscribed stone relic caskets containing crystal caskets, relics of Buddha and jewels were found, the stupa was found to be 40 meters in diameter with an additional basement of 2.4 meters wide running all around. The most significant discovery is the relic casket of sarira dhatu of the Buddha from the central mass of the stupas. One of the earliest evidence of Brahmi script in South India comes from Bhattiprolu, the script was written on an urn containing Buddhas relics. The script has been named the bhattiprolu alphabet, historians surmise that this script gave rise to the Telugu Script and kannada script. 1026°N80. 7807°E /16.1026,80.7807 and at an elevation of 6 m. Bhattiprolu gram panchayat is the local self-government of the village, the panchayat has a total of 16 wards and each ward is represented by an elected ward member. The ward members are headed by a sarpanch and the present sarpanch is Kambam Mariyamma, the village has connectivity with National Highway 214A which passes through the village. APSRTC operates buses from Tenali and Repalle via Bhattiprolu, Bhattiprolu railway station is located on Tenali–Repalle branch line and administered under Guntur railway division of South Central Railway zone. Villages in Bhattiprolu mandal Bhattiprolu alphabet
35.
Guntur district
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Guntur district is an administrative district in the Coastal Andhra region of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The administrative seat of the district is located at Guntur, the largest city of the district in terms of area and population. It has a coastline of approximately 100 km and is situated on the bank of Krishna River. It is bounded on the south by Prakasam district and on the west by the state of Telangana. It has an area of 11,391 km2 and is the 2nd most populous district in the state a population of 4,889,230 as per 2011 census of India, the district is a major centre for agriculture, education and learning. It exports large quantities of chillies and tobacco, Amaravati, the proposed capital of Andhra Pradesh is situated in Guntur district, on the banks of River Krishna. There are several opinions on the meaning and origin of the word Guntur, in Sanskrit, Guntur was called Garthapuri. The original Sanskrit name for Guntur was Garthapuri, the Agasthyeswara Sivalayam in the old city of Guntur is an ancient temple for Siva. It has inscriptions on two stones in Naga Lipi and it is said that Agastya built the temple in the last Treta-Yuga around the Swayambhu Linga and hence the name. The Nagas were said to have ruled the region, the place of Sitanagaram and the Guthikonda Caves can be traced back to the last Treta-Yuga and Dwapara-Yuga. Guntur District is home to the second oldest evidence of habitation in India. Ancient history can be traced from the time of Sala kings who ruled during the 5th century BCE, the earliest reference to Guntur, a variant of Guntur, comes from the Idern plates of Ammaraja I, the Vengi Chalukyan King. Guntur also appears in two inscriptions dated 1147 and 1158 CE, since the beginning of Buddhist time, Guntur stood in the forefront in matters of culture, education and civilisation. Gautama Buddha preached at Dharanikota/Dhanyakatakam near Guntur and conducted Kalachakra ceremony, buddhists established universities in ancient times at Dhanyakataka and Amaravathi. Scores of Buddhist stupas were excavated in the villages of Guntur district, Acharya Nagarjuna, an influential Buddhist philosopher taught at Nagarjunakonda and is said to have discovered Mica in 200 BCE. Chinese traveller and Buddhist monk Hiuen Tsang visited Amaravati in 640 C. E. stayed for sometime and he observed that there were many Viharas and some of them were deserted, which points out that Hinduism was gaining ground at that time. Xuanzang wrote an account of the place, Viharas and monasteries that existed. The famous battle of Palnadu which is enshrined in legend and literature as Palnati Yuddham was fought in Guntur district in 1180 CE
36.
Tamil language
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Tamil is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka, and also by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is a language of two countries, Singapore and Sri Lanka. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it is also used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. Tamil is one of the classical languages in the world. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur and 2 and it has been described as the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past. The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to it being described as one of the classical traditions. A recorded Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years, the earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca.300 BC – AD300. It has the oldest extant literature among other Dravidian languages, the earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and hero stones date from around the 3rd century BC. More than 55% of the inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India are in the Tamil language. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka, the two earliest manuscripts from India, acknowledged and registered by the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiraan Vanakkam, the Tamil Lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in the Indian languages. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family, the closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam, the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. According to linguists like Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Tamil, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India. The next phase in the reconstructed proto-history of Tamil is Proto-South Dravidian, the linguistic evidence suggests that Proto-South Dravidian was spoken around the middle of the second millennium BC, and that proto-Tamil emerged around the 3rd century BC. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamil are generally taken to have been shortly thereafter
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