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Śivadāsa
Śivadāsa was the author of one of the best-known versions of stories from the Vetālapañćavinśati or "Vetāla Tales"; a series of nīti-śāstras (tales of political ethics) involving the semi-legendary Indian king Vikramāditya. The author Nothing is known about him for certain. The name is probably a pen name. Based on what may be inferred from his writing, he was a very well-educated courtier whose audience consisted of young men in the lower nobility with plenty of leisure time and a fondness for amusing stories involving warriors and courtesans. He may also have been an orator/actor who developed his stories through performance and only later wrote them down. He is believed to have lived somewhere between the twelfth to fourteenth centuries AD. The tales Though often attributed to Bhavabhuti, the true origin of these tales is lost in antiquity. They appear to have been part of a large corpus of Kathā (narrative tales) about Vikramāditya that were first written down i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vetala Panchvimshati
The ''Vetala Panchavimshati'' (, IAST: ), or ''Betal Pachisi'' ("''Twenty-five (tales) of Betal''"), is a collection of tales and legends within a frame story, from India. Internationally, it is also known as Vikram-Vetala. It was originally written in Sanskrit. One of its oldest recensions is found in the 12th book of the ''Kathasaritsagara'' ("Ocean of the Streams of Story"), a work in Sanskrit compiled in the 11th century by Somadeva, but based on yet older materials, now lost. This recension comprises in fact twenty-four tales, the frame narrative itself being the twenty-fifth. The two other major recensions in Sanskrit are those by Śivadāsa and Jambhaladatta. The Vetala stories are popular in India and have been translated into many Indian vernaculars. Several English translations exist, based on Sanskrit recensions and on Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and Marathi versions. Probably the best-known English version is that of Sir Richard Francis Burton which is, however, not a tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vikramāditya
Vikramaditya (Sanskrit: विक्रमादित्य IAST: ') was a legendary king as mentioned in ancient Indian literature, featuring in traditional stories including those in '' Vetala Panchavimshati'' and '' Singhasan Battisi''. Many describe him as ruler with his capital at Ujjain (Pataliputra or Pratishthana in a few stories). "''Vikramaditya''" was also a common title adopted by several monarchs in ancient and medieval India, and the Vikramaditya legends may be embellished accounts of different kings (particularly Chandragupta II). According to popular tradition, Vikramaditya began the Vikram Samvat era in 57 BCE after defeating the Shakas, and those who believe that he is based on a historical figure place him around the first century BCE. However, this era is identified as "''Vikrama Samvat''" after the ninth century CE. Nepal uses Bikram Sambat named after him, 57 years ahead of Gregorian calendar, as state's official calendar and for legal matters. Name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanskrit Writers
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Champu
Champu or Chapu-Kavya (Devanagari: चम्पू-काव्य) is a genre of literary composition in Indian literature. The word 'Champu' means a combination of poetry and prose. A ''champu-kavya'' consists of a mixture of prose (Gadya-Kavya) and poetry passages (Padya-Kavya), with verses interspersed among prose sections. There is evidence of chapu-kavya right from the Vedic period. Ithareya Brahmans Harishchandropakyana is the main example of its origin from the Vedic period. Champu-kavya is seen in 2nd century AD, on rock inscription of Rudradaman, at Junagadh. It is also seen in Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, and the other Mahakavyas and was a later development in the style of writing. Works in Champu style Kannada Adikavi Pampa, the ''Adikavi'', one of the greatest Kannada poets of all time and one among the ''ratnatrayaru'', pioneered this style when he wrote his classical works, '' Vikramarjuna Vijaya'' (Pampa Bharata) and '' Adipurana'' in it, around 940 CE, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genie
GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange) was an online service provider, online service created by a General Electric business, GEIS (now GXS Inc., GXS), that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users. It was one of the pioneering services in the field, though eventually replaced by the World Wide Web and graphics-based services, most notably AOL. Early history GEnie was founded by Bill Louden on October 1, 1985 and was launched as an ASCII text-based service by GE's Information Services division in October 1985, and received attention as the first serious commercial competition to CompuServe. Louden was originally CompuServe's product manager for Computing, Community (forums), Games, eCommerce, and email product lines. Louden purchased DECWAR source code and had ''MegaWars'' developed, one of the earliest multi-player online games (or MMOG), in 1985. The service was ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vetala
A vetala () is a class of beings in Hindu mythology. They are usually defined as a knowledgeable (fortune telling) paranormal entity said to be dwelling at charnel grounds. Reanimated corpses are used as vehicles by these spirits for movement. A vetala may possess and leave a dead body at will. Description In Hindu folklore, the vetala is an evil spirit who haunts cemeteries and takes demonic possession of corpses. They make their displeasure known by troubling humans. They can drive people mad, kill children, and cause miscarriages, but also guard villages. They are hostile spirits of the dead trapped in the 'twilight zone' between life and afterlife. These creatures can be repelled by the chanting of mantras. One can free them from their ghostly existence by performing their funerary rites. Being unaffected by the laws of space and time, they have an uncanny knowledge about the past, present, and future and a deep insight into human nature. Therefore many sorcerers seek to cap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Necromancer
Necromancy () is the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination; imparting the means to foretell future events and discover hidden knowledge. Sometimes categorized under ''death magic'', the term is occasionally also used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft as a whole. Etymology The word ''necromancy'' is adapted from Late Latin : a loan word from the post-Classical Greek (, or 'divination through a dead body'), a compound of Ancient Greek (, or 'dead body') and (, or 'divination'). The Koine Greek compound form was first documented in the writings of Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century AD. The Classical Greek term was (), from the episode of the ''Odyssey'' in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead souls, and in Hellenistic Greek; in Latin, and ''necromancy'' in 17th-century English. Antiquity Early necromancy was related to – ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Barnson Emeneau
Murray Barnson Emeneau (February 28, 1904 – August 29, 2005) was the founder of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Emeneau was born in Lunenburg, a fishing town on the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Having distinguished himself in classical languages in high school, he obtained a four-year scholarship to Dalhousie University in Halifax to further his classical studies. On obtaining his B.A. degree from Dalhousie, Emeneau was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College at Oxford University. From Oxford he arrived at Yale University in 1926, where he took a teaching appointment in Latin. While at Yale, Emeneau began Sanskrit and Indo-European studies with the Sanskritist Franklin Edgerton and Indo-Europeanist Edgar Sturtevant. In 1931 Emeneau was awarded his Ph.D. with a dissertation on the '' Vetālapañcaviṃśatī''. Given the dire employment situation in the early 1930s, Emeneau stayed on at Yale afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. The term has since also come to encompass a larger area that includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. Quote: "Kashmir, region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent. It is bounded by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to the northeast and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the east (both parts of China), by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south, by Pakistan to the west, and by Afghanistan to the northwest. The northern and western portions are administered by Pakistan a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanskrit Literature
Sanskrit literature is a broad term for all literature composed in Sanskrit. This includes texts composed in the earliest attested descendant of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language known as Vedic Sanskrit, texts in Classical Sanskrit as well as some mixed and non-standard forms of Sanskrit. Literature in the older language begins during the Vedic period with the composition of the Ṛg·veda between about 1500 and 1000 BCE, followed by other Vedic works right up to the time of the grammarian Pāṇini around 6th or 4th century BCE (after which Classical Sanskrit texts gradually became the norm). Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the extensive liturgical works of the Vedic religion, while Classical Sanskrit is the language of many of the prominent texts associated with the major Indian religions, especially Hinduism and the Hindu texts, but also Buddhism, and Jainism. Some Sanskrit Buddhist texts are also composed in a version of Sanskrit often called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
