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Padumuttara Buddha
According to the Buddhavaṃsa of the Pali Canon, Padumuttara or Padumuttara Buddha is the thirteenth of the twenty-nine buddhas who preceded the historical Gautama Buddha. In the Buddhavamsa, he is described as: One hundred thousand aeons ago, Padumuttara Buddha, who knows everything and deserves every donations, was born alone in that aeon. Biography He was born in Hamsavatī. He lived for ten thousand years in three palaces: Naravāhana, Yassa (or Yasavatī) and Vasavatti. His wife was Vasudattā, by whom he had a son, Uttara. His body was fifty-eight cubits (between 26.51 meters, or 87 feet) high. He practiced asceticism for seven days. He died in Nandārāma at the age of one hundred thousand, and a stūpa twelve leagues in height was erected over his relics. His life parallels that of Gautama Buddha except that he was assisted by different people and his bodhi tree was a ''sarala'' (''Dipterocarpus zeylanicus'') in Theravada buddhism. Many of Gautama Buddha's disciples ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanization system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students in mainland China and Singapore. Pinyin is also used by various Chinese input method, input methods on computers and to lexicographic ordering, categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial (linguistics), initial and a final (linguistics), final, each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stupa
In Buddhism, a stupa (, ) is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics, including images, statues, metals, and '' śarīra''—the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. It is used as a place of pilgrimage and meditation. Walking around a stupa in a clockwise direction, known as '' pradakhshina'', has been an important ritual and devotional practice in Buddhism since the earliest times, and stupas always have a ''pradakhshina'' path around them. The original South Asian form is a large solid dome above a tholobate, or drum, with vertical sides, which usually sits on a square base. There is no access to the inside of the structure. In large stupas, there may be walkways for circumambulation on top of the base as well as on the ground below it. Large stupas have, or had, ''vedikā'' railings outside the path around the base, often highly decorated with sculpture, especially at the torana gateways, of which there are usually four. At the top of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quarts
The quart (symbol: qt) is a unit of volume equal to a quarter of a gallon. Three kinds of quarts are currently used: the liquid quart and dry quart of the US customary system and the of the British imperial system. All are roughly equal to one liter. It is divided into two pints or (in the US) four cups. Historically, the size of a quart has varied with the different values of gallons over time, and in the case of the dry quart, in reference to different commodities. Name The term comes from the Latin (meaning one-quarter) via the French . However, although the French word has the same root, it frequently means something entirely different. In Canadian French in particular, the quart is called , while the pint is called . History Since gallons of various sizes have historically been in use, the corresponding quarts have also existed with various sizes. Definitions and equivalencies Imperial quart The imperial quart is equal to one-quarter of an imperial gallo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacred Lotus
Sacred lotus may refer to: *''Nelumbo nucifera'', also known as "Indian lotus" ** Padma (attribute), ''Nelumbo nucifera'' in Indian religions **Lotus throne in Buddhist and Hindu art *''Nymphaea caerulea ''Nymphaea nouchali'' var. ''caerulea'', is a water lily in the genus '' Nymphaea'', a botanical variety of '' Nymphaea nouchali''. It is an aquatic plant of freshwater lakes, pools and rivers, naturally found throughout most of the eastern h ...'', the "blue lotus" in Ancient Egyptian religion ** Utpala in Buddhist art *'' Nymphaea lotus'', the "white lotus" in Ancient Egyptian religion See also * Lotus (other) * Lotus Flower (other) * Blue lotus (other) * White lotus (other) {{plant common name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yojanas
A yojana (Devanagari: योजन; Khmer language: យោជន៍; ; ) is a measure of distance that was used in ancient India, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Various textual sources from ancient India define Yojana as ranging from 3.5 to 15 km. Edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) Ashoka, in his Major Rock Edicts, Major Rock Edict No.13, gives a distance of 600 yojanas between the Maurya empire, and "where the Yona king named Antiochus II Theos, Antiyoga (is ruling)", identified as King Antiochus II Theos, whose capital was Babylon. A range of estimates, for the length of a yojana, based on the ~2,000 km from Baghdad to Kandahar, on the eastern border of the empire, to the ~4,000 km to the Capital at Patna, have been offered by historians. Yojana in geodesy Hindu units of length Units In Hindu scriptures, Paramanu, Paramāṇu is the fundamental particle and smallest unit of length. Variations in length The length of the yojana varied over time and locale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tathāgata
Tathāgata () is a Pali and Sanskrit word used in ancient India for a person who has attained the highest religious goal. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, used it when referring to himself or other past Buddhas in the Pāli Canon. Likewise, in the Mahayana corpus, it is an epithet of Shakyamuni Buddha and the other celestial buddhas. The term is often thought to mean either "one who has thus gone" (''tathā-gata''), "one who has thus come" (''tathā-āgata''), or sometimes "one who has thus not gone" (''tathā-agata''). This is interpreted as signifying that the Tathāgata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena. There are, however, other interpretations and the precise original meaning of the word is not certain.Chalmers, RobertThe Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898. pp.103-115/ref> The Buddha is quoted on numerous occasions in the Pali Canon as referring to himself as ''the Tathāgata'' instead of using the pronouns ''me'', ''I'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apadāna
The ''Apadāna'' is a collection of biographical stories found in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pāli Canon, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. G.P. Malalasekera describes it as 'a Buddhist Vitae Sanctorum' of Buddhist monks and nuns who lived during the lifetime of the Buddha. It is thought to be one of the latest additions to the canon.Oskar von Hinüber, ''Handbook of Pali Literature'', New Delhi 1996: 61. The exact meaning of the title ''Apadāna'' is not known. Perhaps it means 'life history' or 'legend'. In Pāli it has the additional, older meaning of advice or moral instruction. Dr Sally Cutler has suggested the word originally meant 'reapings', i.e. of the results of karma.Cutler, Sally Mellick (1994)The Pali Apadana Collection Journal of the Pali Text Society, volume XX The title is sometimes translated as the ''Biographical Stories'', or simply as ''The Stories''. The ''Apadāna'' consists of about 600 poems (between 589 and 603 in different editions), mostly biograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dipterocarpus Zeylanicus
''Dipterocarpus zeylanicus'', commonly known as හොර - Hora in Sinhalese and සරල - Sarala or කිරිපලු - Kiripalu, is a species of ''Dipterocarpus'' that is endemic to Sri Lanka. A closely related Indian species is '' Dipterocarpus turbinatus''. The Sri Lankan tree is a large tree that grows up to tall and in circumference. The bark is light pinkish brown or light yellowish brown. Leaves are big and oval, long. The sharp-edged leaves are covered with silver hairs. Flowers bloom in April and seeds have two wings to spread from wind. The bark contains considerable amounts of gray colour oleoresin. ''D. zeylanicus'' can be found in moist low country like Ratnapura, Kaluthara, Galle and Matara Districts and also in the Sinharaja rain forest. The tallest (nearly ) trees of Hora in Sri Lanka are found in Udakiruwa village in Lunugala and under great threat of legal/illegal felling. There are many place names which begin with the name of the Hora tree. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but Great Renunciation, renounced his Householder (Buddhism), home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained Nirvana (Buddhism), nirvana at Bodh Gaya, Bodh Gayā in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a Sangha, monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached ''parinirvana'' ("final release from conditioned existence"). According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to Vimutti, freedom from Avidyā (Buddhism), ignora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length. It was common in Europe and Latin America, but due to its highly inconsistent definition, it is no longer an official unit in any nation. Derived from an ancient Celtic unit and adopted by the Romans as the , the league became a common unit of measurement throughout western Europe. Since the Middle Ages, many values have been specified in several countries, ranging from 2.2 km (1.4 mi) to 7.9 km (4.9 mi). It may have originally represented, roughly, the distance a Preferred walking speed, person could walk in an hour. Definitions Ancient Rome The league was used in Ancient Rome, defined as 1½ mile#Roman, Roman miles (7,500 Foot (unit)#Historical origin, Roman feet, modern 2.2 km or 1.4 miles). The origin is the ''(also:'' '')'', the league of Gaul. Argentina The Argentine league () is or 6,666 : 1 is . England On land, the league is most commonly defined as three miles (4.83 km), although the length of a mile could vary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
