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Paher
Pahar (Bengali পহর, Hindi/ Nepali: पहर, ), which is more commonly pronounced peher, is a traditional unit of time used in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. One ''pahar'' nominally equals three hours, and there are eight ''pahars'' in a day. In India, the measure is primarily used in North India and hindi speaking communities throughout the Deccan in Southern India. Etymology ''Pahar''/''pehar''/''peher'' is derived from Sanskrit word prahar which is an ancient unit of time in India. The word ''pahar''/''peher'' has the same root as the Hindustani word ''pehra'' (meaning ''to stand guard'') and ''pehredar'' (literally ''guard''/watchman). It literally means a "watch" (i.e. period of guard-duty). Timing Traditionally, night and day were each allocated four ''pahars'', or "watches." The first ''pahar'' of the day (or ''din pahar'') was timed to begin at sunrise, and the first ''pahar'' of the night (''raat pahar'') was timed to begin at sunset. This meant that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prahar
Prahar or Prahara is a Sanskrit term for a unit of time, or subdivision of the day, approximately three hours long. Definition The day is divided into eight parts: four ''prahara''s for the day, and four for the night. The first ''prahara'' of the day begins at sunrise, and the fourth ''prahara'' of the day ends at sunset. A second round of four ''prahara''s unfolds during the night, between sunset and sunrise. The traditional system of ''prahara''s overlaps with the traditional system of muhurtas also, which is based on precise astronomical calculations. Thus, the day can be regarded as divided into eight ''prahara''s (of three hours each) or thirty ''muhurta''s (of 48 minutes each). In both systems, the day commences with sunrise. The timing of the two systems coincides only at sunrise and sunset (four ''prahara''s coincide with fifteen ''muhurta''s at the twelve-hour, or 720-minute, point). History In the ancient Puranas, the day is divided into eight ''praharas'': four for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bengali Language
Bengali ( ), generally known by its endonym Bangla (, ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. It is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and the second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India. With approximately 300 million native speakers and another 37 million as second language speakers, Bengali is the List of languages by number of native speakers, fifth most-spoken native language and the List of languages by total number of speakers, seventh most spoken language by total number of speakers in the world. Bengali is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language. Bengali is the official language, official and national language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. Within India, Bengali is the official language of the states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also a second official lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South India
South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry, comprising 19.31% of India's area () and 20% of India's population. Covering the southern part of the peninsular Deccan Plateau, South India is bounded by the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Arabian Sea in the west and the Indian Ocean in the south. The geography of the region is diverse with two mountain ranges – the Western and Eastern Ghats – bordering the plateau heartland. The Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri, Tungabhadra, Periyar, Bharathappuzha, Pamba, Thamirabarani, Palar, and Vaigai rivers are important perennial rivers. The majority of the people in South India speak at least one of the four major Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada (all 4 of which are among the 6 Classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Culture
Indian culture is the heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies that originated in or are associated with the ethno-linguistically diverse India. The term also applies beyond India to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to India by immigration, colonisation, or influence, particularly in South Asia and Southeast Asia. India's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food and customs differ from place to place within the country. Indian culture, often labelled as a combination of several cultures, has been influenced by a history that is several millennia old, beginning with the Indus Valley civilization and other early cultural areas.John Keay (2012), ''India: A History'', 2nd Ed – Revised and Updated, Grove Press / Harper Collins, , see Introduction and Chapters 3 through 11Mohammada, Malika (2007), ''The foundations of the composite culture in India' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kabir
Kabir Das (1398–1518) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. His writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib, the Satguru Granth Sahib of Saint Garib Das, and Kabir Sagar. Born in the city of Varanasi in what is now Uttar Pradesh, he is known for being critical of both organized religion and religions. He questioned what he regarded to be the meaningless and unethical practices of all religions, primarily what he considered to be the wrong practices in the Hindu and Muslim religions. During his lifetime, he was threatened by both Hindus and Muslims for his views. When he died, several Hindus and the Muslims he had inspired claimed him as theirs. Kabir suggested that "Truth" is with the person who is on the path of righteousness, considered everything, living and non living, as divine, and who is passively detached from the affairs of the world. To know the Truth, suggested Kabir, drop the " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964) and Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a der ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-Gangetic Plains
The Indo-Gangetic Plain, also known as the North Indian River Plain, is a fertile plain encompassing northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, including most of northern and eastern India, around half of Pakistan, virtually all of Bangladesh and southern plains of Nepal. The region is named after the Indus and the Ganges rivers and encompasses a number of large urban areas. The plain is bound on the north by the Himalayas, which feed its numerous rivers and are the source of the fertile alluvium deposited across the region by the two river systems. The southern edge of the plain is marked by the Deccan Plateau. On the west rises the Iranian Plateau. Many developed cities like Delhi, Dhaka, Kolkata, Lahore and Karachi are located in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. History The region is known for the Indus Valley civilization, which was responsible for the birth of ancient culture of the Indian subcontinent. The flat and fertile terrain has facilitated the repeated rise and expa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equinoxes
A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and set "due west". This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth's rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times, since the Moon (and to a lesser extent the planets) causes Earth's orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun's more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° and 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hindustani Language
Hindustani (; Devanagari: , * * * * ; Perso-Arabic: , , ) is the '' lingua franca'' of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, the language is sometimes called Hindi–Urdu. Despite these standard registers, colloquial speech in Hindustani often exists on a spectrum between these standards. Ancestors of the language were known as ''Hindui'', ''Hindavi'', ''Zabān-e Hind'' (), ''Zabān-e Hindustan'' (), ''Hindustan ki boli'' (), Rekhta, and Hindi. Its regional dialects became known as ''Zabān-e Dakhani'' in southern India, ''Zabān-e Gujari'' () in Gujarat, and as ''Zabān-e Dehlavi'' or Urdu around Delhi. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving its base primarily from the Western Hindi dialect of Delhi, also known as Khariboli. Hindustani is a pluricentric language, best characterised as a continuum between two standardised registers: Modern Standard Hindi and Modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amir Khusro
Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253–1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived under the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent. He was a mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, India. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. A vocabulary in verse, the ''Ḳhāliq Bārī'', containing Arabic, Persian and Hindavi terms is often attributed to him. Khusrau is sometimes referred to as the "voice of India" or "Parrot of India" (''Tuti-e-Hind''), and has been called the "father of Urdu literature." Khusrau is regarded as the "father of qawwali" (a devotional form of singing of the Sufis in the Indian subcontinent), and introduced the ghazal style of song into India, both of which still exist widely in India and Pakistan. Khusrau was an expert in many styles of Persian poetry which were developed in medieval Persia, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dakhini Muslims
The Deccanis ( ur, ) or Deccani People are an ethnoreligious community of Urdu-speaking Muslims who inhabit, or trace their ancestry from, the Deccan region of Southern and Central India, and speak the Deccani dialect. The community traces its origins to the shifting of the Delhi Sultanate's capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in 1327 during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughluq. The migration of Hindavi-speaking people to the Deccan, and the conversion of local Hindus to Islam, led to the creation of a new community of Urdu-speaking Muslims, known as the Deccani, who would come to play an important role in the politics of the Deccan. Their language, Deccani Urdu, emerged as a language of linguistic prestige and culture during the Bahmani Sultanate, further evolving in the Deccan Sultanates. Following the demise of the Bahmanis, the Deccan Sultanate period marked a golden age for Deccani culture, notably in the arts, language, and architecture. The Deccani people form the second la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Hindi is the '' lingua franca'' of the Hindi Belt. It is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several ot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
