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Nobili, Roberto de

(Encyclopedia)Nobili, Roberto de rōbĕrˈtō dā nōˈbēlē [key], 1577–1656, Italian Jesuit missionary. He was ordained in Rome in 1603 after seven years of training in Naples and sailed the following year for...

More, Paul Elmer

(Encyclopedia)More, Paul Elmer, 1864–1937, American critic, educator, and philosopher, b. St. Louis. More taught Sanskrit and classical literature and then was a newspaper editor until 1914, after which he wrote ...

Panini

(Encyclopedia)Panini päˈnēnē [key], fl. c.400 b.c., Indian grammarian. His Ashtādhyāyī [eight books] (tr. 1891) is one of the earliest works of descriptive linguistics and is also the first individually auth...

Avestan

(Encyclopedia)Avestan əvĕsˈtən [key], language belonging to the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. One of the earliest forms of the Iranian languages to surviv...

Brahmagupta

(Encyclopedia)Brahmagupta bräˌməgo͝opˈtə [key], c.598–c.660, Indian mathematician and astronomer. He was among the first to meaningfully discuss the concepts of zero and of negative numbers. He wrote in ver...

Jones, Sir William

(Encyclopedia)Jones, Sir William, 1746–94, English philologist and jurist. Jones was celebrated for his understanding of jurisprudence and of Oriental languages. He published an Essay on the Law of Bailments (178...

Vijayanagar

(Encyclopedia)Vijayanagar vēˈjəyənŭˈgər [key] [Sanskrit,=city of victory], ruined city, SE India. It was the capital (14th–16th cent.) of the Hindu Vijayanagar empire, which embraced all India S of the Kis...

Guwahati

(Encyclopedia)Guwahati gouhäˈtē [key], city, Assam state, NE India, on the Brahmaputra River. It is a ra...

mantra

(Encyclopedia)mantra mănˈtrə, mŭn– [key], in Hinduism and Buddhism, mystic words used in ritual and meditation. A mantra is believed to be the sound form of reality, having the power to bring into being the r...

Vindhya Range

(Encyclopedia)Vindhya Range vĭnˈdyə [key], chain of hills, c.600 mi (970 km) long, rising to c.3,000 ft (910 m), Madhya Pradesh state, central India. The Vindhya Range has been the historic dividing line between...

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