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Chaturanga Chess Set
Chaturanga ( sa, चतुरङ्ग; ') is an ancient Indian strategy game. While there is some uncertainty, the prevailing view among chess historians is that it is the common ancestor of the board games chess (European), xiangqi (Chinese), janggi (Korean), shogi (Japanese), sittuyin (Burmese), makruk (Thai), and modern Indian chess. Chaturanga is first known from the Gupta Empire in India around the 6th century CE. In the 7th century, it was adopted as ''chatrang'' (''shatranj'') in Sassanid Persia, which in turn was the form of chess brought to late-medieval Europe. Archeological remains from 2000 to 3000 BC have been found from the city of Lothal (of the Indus Valley civilisation) of pieces on a board that resemble chess. According to Stewart Culin, chaturanga was first described in the Hindu text ''Bhavishya Purana''. The ''Bhavishya Purana'' is known to include modern additions and interpolations, however, even mentioning British rule of India. The exact rules of cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Museum Of Ethnology, Osaka - Catur-aṅga - Rajasthan In India
National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, census-designated place * National, Nevada, ghost town * National, Utah, ghost town * National, West Virginia, unincorporated community Commerce * National (brand), a brand name of electronic goods from Panasonic * National Benzole (or simply known as National), former petrol station chain in the UK, merged with BP * National Car Rental, an American rental car company * National Energy Systems, a former name of Eco Marine Power * National Entertainment Commission, a former name of the Media Rating Council * National Motor Vehicle Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 1900-1924 * National Supermarkets, a defunct American grocery store chain * National String Instrument Corporation, a guitar company formed to manufacture the first resonator gui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Culin
Stewart Culin (July 13, 1858 – April 8, 1929) was an American ethnographer and author interested in games, art and dress. Culin played a major role in the development of ethnography, first concentrating his efforts on studying the Asian-Americans workers in Philadelphia. His first published works were "The Practice of Medicine by the Chinese in America" and "China in America: A study in the social life of the Chinese in the eastern cities of the United States", both dated 1887. He believed that similarity in gaming demonstrated similarity and contact among cultures across the world. Early life Born Robert Stewart Culin, a son of Mina Barrett Daniel Culin and John Culin, in Philadelphia, Culin was schooled at Nazareth Hall. While he had no formal education in anthropology, Culin played a role in the development of the field. His interest began with the Asian-American population of Philadelphia, then composed chiefly of Chinese-American laborers. His first published works we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashtāpada
Ashtāpada ( sa, अष्टापद) or Ashtapadi is an Indian board game which predates chess and was mentioned on the list of games that Gautama Buddha would not play. Chaturanga, which could be played on the same , appeared sometime around the 6th century in India; it could be played by two to four participants. Variants played on different boards include ''Daśapada'' ( sa, दशपद). and, in Gujarat, ''Chomal Ishto'' or ''Chomal Eshto''. Similar traditional games can be found in China and Korea. Etymology The word ''Ashtāada'' is a Sanskrit term describing the 8×8 board that the game is played on. This meaning was first recorded by Patanjali in a Mahābhāshya book written in the 2nd century. The game was even condemned in an early Brahman text, the Sutrakrilānga. Rules Like a chessboard, the ''Ashtāpada'' board is divided into an 8×8 grid of squares, although they are all the same color. The board has special markings known as "castles", where pieces are sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akshauhini
An ''akshauhini'' ( sa, अक्षौहिणी ''akṣauhiṇī'') is described in the Mahabharata ( Adi Parva 2.15-23) as a battle formation consisting of 21,870 chariots (Sanskrit ''ratha''); 21,870 elephants (Sanskrit ''gaja''); 65,610 horses (Sanskrit ''turaga'') and 109,350 infantry (Sanskrit ''pada sainyam''). Thus one akshauhini consisted of 218,700 warriors (not including the charioteers, who didn't fight). The ratio is 1 chariot : 1 elephant : 3 cavalry : 5 infantry soldiers. In each of these large number groups (65,610, etc.), the digits add up to 18. It is mentioned in the ''Mahabharata'' that in the Kurukshetra War the Pandava army consisted of seven ''akshauhinis'' (1,530,900 warriors), and the Kaurava army had eleven ''akshauhinis'' (2,405,700 warriors). Composition :Patti (company) : 1 Elephant (Gaja) + 1 Chariot (Ratha) + 3 Horse (Ashwa) + 5 Foot Soldiers (Padati)=10 Warriors :Senamukha = (3 x Patti) : 3 Eleph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infantry
Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and marine infantry. Although disused in modern times, heavy infantry also commonly made up the bulk of many historic armies. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery have traditionally made up the core of the combat arms professions of various armies, with the infantry almost always comprising the largest portion of these forces. Etymology and terminology In English, use of the term ''infantry'' began about the 1570s, describing soldiers who march and fight on foot. The word derives from Middle French ''infanterie'', from older Italian (also Spanish) ''infanteria'' (foot soldiers too inexperienced for cavalry), from Latin '' īnfāns'' (without speech, newborn, foolish), from which English also gets ''infant''. The individual-soldier te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who Horses in warfare, fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, Screening (tactical), screening, and skirmisher, skirmishing in many armies, or as heavy cavalry for decisive shock attacks in other armies. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as cavalryman, Equestrianism, horseman, trooper (rank), trooper, cataphract, knight, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, or horse archer. The designation of ''cavalry'' was not usually given to any Military animal, military forces that used other animals for mounts, such as Camel cavalry, camels or War elephant, elephants. Infantry who moved on horseback, but dismounted to fight on foot, were known in the early 17th to the early 18t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Elephant
A war elephant was an elephant that was trained and guided by humans for combat. The war elephant's main use was to charge the enemy, break their ranks and instill terror and fear. Elephantry is a term for specific military units using elephant-mounted troops. Description War elephants played a critical role in several key battles in antiquity, especially in Ancient India. While seeing limited and periodic use in Ancient China, they became a permanent fixture in armies of historical kingdoms in Southeast Asia. During classical antiquity they were also used in ancient Persia and in the Mediterranean world within armies of Macedon, Hellenistic Greek states, the Roman Republic and later Empire, and Carthage in North Africa. In some regions they maintained a firm presence on the battlefield throughout the Middle Ages. However, their use declined with the spread of firearms and other gunpowder weaponry in early modern warfare. After this, war elephants became restric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or ''puruṣārtha'' (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the ''Mahābhārata'' are the ''Bhagavad Gita'', the story of Damayanti, the story of Shakuntala, the story of Pururava and Urvashi, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Kacha and Devayani, the story of Rishyasringa and an abbreviated version of the '' Rāmāyaṇa'', often considered as works in their own right. Traditionally, the authorship of the ''Mahābhārata'' is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Poetry
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. Etymology The English word ''epic'' comes from Latin ''epicus'', which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adjective (''epikos''), from (''epos''), "word, story, poem." In ancient Greek, 'epic' could refer to all poetry in dactylic hexameter (''epea''), which included not only Homer but also the wisdom poetry of Hesiod, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, and the strange theological verses attributed to Orpheus. Later tradition, however, has restricted the term 'epic' to ''heroic epic'', as described in this article. Overview Originating before the invention of writing, primary epics, such as those of Homer, were composed by bards who used complex rhetorical and metrical schemes by which they could memorize the epic as receive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bahuvrihi
A ''bahuvrihi'' compound (from sa, बहुव्रीहि, tr=bahuvrīhi, lit=much rice/having much rice, originally referring to fertile land but later denoting the quality of being wealthy or rich) is a type of compound word that denotes a referent by specifying a certain characteristic or quality the referent possesses. A bahuvrihi is exocentric, so that the compound is not a hyponym of its head. For instance, a sabretooth ('' smil-odon'') is neither a sabre nor a tooth, but a feline with sabre-like teeth. In Sanskrit bahuvrihis, the last constituent is a noun—more strictly, a nominal stem—while the whole compound is an adjective. In Vedic Sanskrit the accent is regularly on the first member ( ' "a king's son", but bahuvrihi ' "having kings as sons" ( lit. king-sons), viz. ', m., "father of kings", ', f., "mother of kings"), with the exception of a number of non-nominal prefixes such as the privative a; the word ' is itself likewise an exception to this rule. Bah ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion, diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age#South Asia, 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 lingua franca, 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 impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Indo-Aryan lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radha-Krishna Chess
Radha-Krishna ( IAST , sa, राधा कृष्ण) are collectively known within Hinduism as the combined forms of feminine as well as the masculine realities of God. Krishna and Radha are the primeval forms of God and his pleasure potency (Hladini Shakti), respectively, in several Vaishnavite schools of thought. In Krishnaite traditions of Vaishnavism, Krishna is referred to as '' Svayam Bhagavan'' and Radha is illustrated as the primeval potency of the three main potencies of God, ''Hladini (immense spiritual bliss), Sandhini (eternality) and Samvit (existential consciousness)'' of which Radha is an embodiment of the feeling of love towards the almighty Lord Krishna (''Hladini''). With Krishna, Radha is acknowledged as the Supreme Goddess. It is said that Krishna is only satiated by devotional service in loving servitude and Radha is the personification of devotional service to the supreme lord. Various devotees worship her with the understanding of her merciful natu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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