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Sea Of Poppies
''Sea of Poppies'' (2008) is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh which was Short list, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 in literature, 2008. It is the first volume of the Ibis trilogy. In the words of Rajnish Mishra, "the Ibis trilogy is Ghosh's most vehement indictment of the source of imperialism and colonialism". The second volume is ''River of Smoke''. The main characters include Deeti, an ordinary village woman, an "octoroon" American sailor named Zachary Reid, an Indian rajah / zamindar called Neel Rattan Halder, and Benjamin Burnham, an evangelist opium trader. The story is set prior to the First Opium War, on the banks of the holy river Ganges and in Kolkata, Calcutta. The author compares the Ganges to the Nile, the lifeline of the Egyptian civilization, attributing the provenance and growth of these civilizations to these selfless, ever-flowing bodies. He portrays the characters as poppy seeds emanating in large numbers from the field to form a sea, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)Ghosh, Amitav , ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' is an Indian people, Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honor. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and also written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change. Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the The Indian Express, ''Indian Express'' newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel The Circle of Reason (novel), ''The Circle of Reason'' was published in 1986, which he followed wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ganges
The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is a trans-boundary river of Asia which flows through India and Bangladesh. The river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It flows south and east through the Gangetic plain of North India, receiving the right-bank tributary, the Yamuna, which also rises in the western Indian Himalayas, and several left-bank tributaries from Nepal that account for the bulk of its flow. In West Bengal state, India, a feeder canal taking off from its right bank diverts 50% of its flow southwards, artificially connecting it to the Hooghly river. The Ganges continues into Bangladesh, its name changing to the Padma. It is then joined by the Jamuna, the lower stream of the Brahmaputra, and eventually the Meghna, forming the major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeanne Barret
Jeanne Baret (; 27 July 1740 – 5 August 1807) was a member of Louis Antoine de Bougainville's expedition on the ships '' La Boudeuse'' and '' Étoile'' in 1766–1769. Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe, which she did via maritime transport. Jeanne Baret joined the expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerçon (anglicized as Commerson), shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed from France. According to Bougainville's account, Baret was herself an expert botanist. Early life Jeanne Baret was born on 27 July 1740, in the village of La Comelle in the Burgundy region of France. Her record of baptism survives and identifies her as the legitimate issue of Jean Baret and Jeanne Pochard. Her father is identified as a day laborer and seems likely to have been illiterate, as he did not sign the parish register. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amah(occupation) , a rock on a hilltop in Sha Tin, Hong Kong
{{Disambiguation ...
Amah may refer to: *Amah, a unit of measurement described in the Bible; see Biblical and Talmudic units of measurement *Amah (mother), a term for "mother" in several contexts *Amah (occupation), East Asian or South Asian term for a girl or woman employed as a domestic servant *''Amah'', an informal and poetic title for the Taoist goddess, the Queen Mother of the West, during the T'ang dynasty in China *Amah Rock Amah Rock (, ''Mong Fu Shek'', "husband-watching stone") is a naturally shaped rock located on a hilltop in southwest Sha Tin District, Hong Kong. Description The rock is approximately 15 meters in height, and is shaped much like a woman car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parsi
Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim conquests) in order to preserve their Zoroastrian identity. The Parsi people comprise the older of the Indian subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities vis-à-vis the Iranis, whose ancestors migrated to British-ruled India from Qajar-era Iran. According to a 16th-century Parsi epic, ''Qissa-i Sanjan'', Zoroastrian Persians continued to migrate to the Indian subcontinent from Greater Iran in between the 8th and 10th centuries, and ultimately settled in present-day Gujarat after being granted refuge by a local Hindu king. Prior to the 7th-century fall of the Sassanid Empire to the Rashidun Caliphate, the Iranian mainland (historically known as 'Persia') had a Zoroastrian majority, and Zoroastrianism had served as the Iranian state religion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penal Transportation
Penal transportation or transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home. Origin and implementation Banishment or forced exile from a polity or society has been used as a punishment since at least the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. The practice of penal transportation reached its height in the British Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Transportation removed the offender from society, mostly permanently, but was seen as more merciful than capital punishment. This method was used for criminals, debtors, military prisoners, and political prisoners. Penal transportation was also used as a method of colonization. For example, from the earliest days of English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lascar
A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the middle of the 20th century. Etymology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that the word has two possible derivations: :Either an erroneous European use of Urdu ''lashkar'' army, camp .. or a shortened form of its derivative ''lashkarī'' ..In Portuguese ''c''1600 ''laschar'' occurs in the same sense as ''lasquarim'' , i.e. Indian soldier; this use, from which the current applications are derived, is not recorded in English. The Portuguese adapted this term to "lascarins", meaning Asian militiamen or seamen, from any area east of the Cape of Good Hope, including Indian, Malay, Chinese and Japanese crewmen. The English word "lascarins", now obsolete, referred to Sri Lankans who fought in the colonial army of the Portuguese until the 1930s. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quadroon
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African/ Aboriginal and three quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black (Latin root ''octo-'', means "eight") and quintroon for one-sixteenth black. Governments of the time sometimes incorporated the terms in law, defining rights and restrictions. The use of such terminology is a characteristic of hypodescent, which is the practice within a society of assigning children of mixed unions to the ethnic group which the dominant group perceives as being subordinate. The racial designations refer specifically to the number of full-blooded African ancestors or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry. Etymology The word ''quadroon'' was borrowed from the French ''quarteron'' and the Spanish ''cuarterón'', both of which have their root in the Latin ''quartus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sati (practice)
Sati or suttee is a Hindu practice, now largely historical, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre. Quote: Between 1943 and 1987, some thirty women in Rajasthan (twenty-eight, according to official statistics) immolated themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. This figure probably falls short of the actual number. (p. 182) Although it is debated whether it received scriptural mention in early Hinduism, it has been linked to related Hindu practices in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions of India which diminished the rights of women, especially those to the inheritance of property. A cold form of sati, or the neglect and casting out of Hindu widows has been prevalent in India from ancient times. Quote: Sati is a particularly relevant social practice because it is often used as a means to prevent inheritance of property by widows. In parallel, widows are also sometimes branded as witches – and subjected to violent expulsion fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opium And Alkaloid Works
The Government Opium and Alkaloid Factories (GOAF) is an Indian government-owned organisation. Its headquarter is located in New Delhi. The overall supervision of the organisation comes under the purview of Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance. There are two factories under this organisation - Government Opium and Alkaloid Works, Ghazipur (U.P.) and Government Opium and Alkaloid Works, Neemuch (M.P.). Products The enterprise's two factories specialize in the production of opium and the extraction of related alkaloids (such as Codeine phosphates, Morphine salts, Dionine, Morphine Hydrochloride, Thebaine, and more). It is the country's largest producer of opium-related products. (Government of India) Cultivation of poppy for factory The input for factory is derived from licensed poppy cultivators in India from states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The entire produce is brought by government and which in turn is supplied to GOAF. GOAF delivers the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schooner
A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schooner also has a square topsail on the foremast, to which may be added a topgallant. Differing definitions leave uncertain whether the addition of a fore course would make such a vessel a brigantine. Many schooners are gaff-rigged, but other examples include Bermuda rig and the staysail schooner. The origins of schooner rigged vessels is obscure, but there is good evidence of them from the early 17th century in paintings by Dutch marine artists. The name "schooner" first appeared in eastern North America in the early 1700s. The name may be related to a Scots word meaning to skip over water, or to skip stones. The schooner rig was used in vessels with a wide range of purposes. On a fast hull, good ability to windward was useful for priv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
