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Pandurang Shastri Athavale
Rev. Pandurang Shastri Athavale (19 October 1920 – 25 October 2003), also known as Dada /Dadaji, which literally translates as "elder brother" in Marathi, was an Indian activist, philosopher, spiritual leader, social revolutionary, and religion reformist, who founded the Swadhyaya Parivar (Swadhyaya family) in 1954. Swadhyaya is a self-study process based on the Bhagavad Gita which has spread across nearly 100,000 villages in India, Americas, Europe, Middle East, Oceania and other Asian countries with five million adherents. Noted for his discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads, Dadaji is also known for his selfless work and brilliant knowledge in scriptures. Early life Pandurang Vaijnath Athavale was born on 19 of October 1920 in Chitpavan Brahmin Family in the village of Roha in Maharashtra (Konkan), India. He was one of five children born to the Sanskrit teacher Vaijanath Shastri Athavale and his wife Parvati Athavale. When Athavale was twelve years ...
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Roha
Roha () is a town and taluka in the Raigad district of the Maharashtra state of India. It is located 120 km southeast of Mumbai. It is the starting point of Konkan railways and end point of central railways (Mumbai). Many chemical industries have opened up their manufacturing bases in Roha. Roha is located between the banks of the Kundalika River and the hills of Kalasgiri. It has a population of over 20,849. Roha is connected to Mumbai by Panvel-Roha railway line. Roha is also the northern end of the Konkan Railway. Roha is off of the Mumbai Goa Highway, via the Kolad road. Tourism Roha is very well known for its Dhavir Temple. Dhavir Maharaj is the prime deity of Roha. Every year the town celebrates Navaratri by holding a ten-day festival called ''Dasra'' at the Dhavir Temple. On the day following ''Dasra'', a '' palkhi'' (sedan chair) carrying the statute of Dhavir Maharaj is taken through the town where it visits each house for the '' aarti''. It is presumably, ...
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Vedas
upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda. Each Veda has four subdivisions – the Samhitas ( mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices), the Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).Gavin Flood (1996), ''An Introduction to Hinduism'', Cambridge University Press, , pp. 35–39A Bhattacharya (2006), ''Hindu Dharma: Introduction to Scriptures and Theology'', , pp. 8–14; George M. Williams (2003), Handbook of Hindu Mythology, Oxford University Pres ...
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Kurukshetra
Kurukshetra (, ) is a city and administrative headquarter of Kurukshetra district in the Indian state of Haryana. It is also known as Dharmakshetra ("Realm of duty ") and as the "Land of the Bhagavad Gita". Legends According to the Puranas, Kurukshetra is a region named after King Kuru, the ancestor of Kauravas and Pandavas in the Kuru kingdom, as depicted in epic '' Mahabharata''. The Kurukshetra War of the ''Mahabharata'' is believed to have taken place here. Thaneswar whose urban area is merged with Kurukshetra is a pilgrimage site with many locations attributed to ''Mahabharata''. In the Vedas Kurukshetra is described not as a city but as a region (" kshetra" means "region" in Sanskrit). The boundaries of Kurukshetra correspond roughly to the central and western parts of the state of Haryana and southern Punjab. According to the Taittiriya Aranyaka 5.1.1., the Kurukshetra region is south of Turghna (Srughna/Sugh in Sirhind, Punjab), north of Khandava (Delhi an ...
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Haridwar
Haridwar (; ) is a city and municipal corporation in the Haridwar district of Uttarakhand, India. With a population of 228,832 in 2011, it is the second-largest city in the state and the largest in the district. The city is situated on the right bank of the Ganges river, at the foothills of the Shivalik ranges. Haridwar is regarded as a holy place for Hindus, hosting important religious events and serving as a gateway to several prominent places of worship. Most significant of the events is the Kumbha Mela, which is celebrated every 12 years in Haridwar. During the Haridwar Kumbh Mela, millions of pilgrims, devotees, and tourists congregate in Haridwar to perform ritualistic bathing on the banks of the Ganges to wash away their sins to attain '' moksha''. According to Puranic legend, Haridwar, along with Ujjain, Nashik, and Prayag, is one of four sites where drops of '' amrita'', the elixir of immortality, accidentally spilled over from a '' kumbha'' (pitcher) while bein ...
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Pushkar
Pushkar is a city and headquarters of Pushkar tehsil in the Ajmer district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is situated about northwest of Ajmer and about southwest of Jaipur.Pushkar
Encyclopaedia Britannica
It is a pilgrimage site for Hindus and s. Pushkar has many temples. Most of the temples and ghats in Pushkar are from the 18th century and later, because many temples were destroyed during Muslim conquests in the area. Subsequently, the destroyed temples were rebuilt. The most famous among Pushkar temples is the red spired
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Ujjain
Ujjain (, Hindustani pronunciation: �d͡ːʒɛːn is a city in Ujjain district of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the fifth-largest city in Madhya Pradesh by population and is the administrative centre of Ujjain district and Ujjain division. It is one of the Hindu pilgrimage centres of Sapta Puri famous for the ''Kumbh Mela'' held there every 12 years. The famous temple of Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga is located in the center of the city. An ancient city situated on the eastern bank of the Shipra River, Ujjain was the most prominent city on the Malwa plateau of central India for much of its history. It emerged as the political centre of central India around 600 BCE. It was the capital of the ancient Avanti kingdom, one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas. During the 18th century, the city briefly became the capital of Scindia state of the Maratha Empire, when Ranoji Scindia established his capital at Ujjain in 1731. It remained an important political, commercial and cultural ...
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Thane District
Thane district (Pronunciation: �ʰaːɳe previously named Taana or Thana) is a district in the Konkan Division of Maharashtra, India. At the 2011 Census it was the most populated district in the country, with 11,060,148 inhabitants; however, in August 2014 the district was split into two with the creation of a new Palghar district, leaving the reduced Thane district with a 2011 Census population of 8,070,032. The headquarters of the district is the city of Thane. Other major cities in the district are Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayander, Bhiwandi, Ulhasnagar, Ambarnath, Badlapur, Murbad and Shahapur. The district is situated between 18°42' and 20°20' north latitudes and 72°45' and 73°48' east longitudes. The revised area of the district is 4,214 km2. The district is bounded by Nashik district to the north east, Pune and Ahmednagar districts to the east, and by Palghar district to the north. The Arabian Sea forms the western boundary, while it i ...
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Rediff
Rediff.com (stylized as ''rediff.com'') is an Indian news, information, entertainment and shopping web portal. It was founded in 1996. It is headquartered in Mumbai, with offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and New York City. , it had more than 300 employees. It is one of the earliest web portals and email providers in India. When its founder Ajit Balakrishnan launched Rediff on the NeT, the internet was barely five months old in the country, and had a total of about 18,000 users. History The Rediff.com domain was registered in India in 1996. Early products included the email service Rediffmail and Rediff Shopping, an online marketplace selling electronics and peripherals. In 2001, Rediff.com was alleged to be in violation of the Securities Act of 1933 for filing a materially false prospectus in relation to an IPO of its American depositary shares. The case was resolved by settlement in 2009. In April 2001, Rediff.com acquired the '' India Abroad'' newspaper. In 2007, Redif ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the p ...
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Antigonish Movement
The Antigonish Movement blended adult education, co-operatives, microfinance and rural community development to help small, resource-based communities around Canada's Maritimes to improve their economic and social circumstances. A group of priests and educators, including Father Jimmy Tompkins, Father Moses Coady, Rev. Hugh MacPherson and A.B. MacDonald led this movement from a base at the ''Extension Department'' at St. Francis Xavier University (St. F.X.) in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The credit union systems of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI owe their origins to the Antigonish Movement, which also had an important influence on other provincial systems across Canada. The Coady International Institute at St. F.X. has been instrumental in developing credit unions and in asset-based community development initiatives in developing countries ever since. Goals As educators and priests, the leaders of the Antigonish Movement were primarily concerned with human and spiritu ...
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Pandurang Shastri Athavale-Templeton Prize 1997
Vithoba, also known as Vi(t)thal(a) and Panduranga, is a Hindu deity predominantly worshipped in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Karnataka. He is generally considered as a manifestation of the god Vishnu, or his avatar Krishna. Vithoba is often depicted as a dark young boy, standing arms akimbo on a brick, sometimes accompanied by his consort Rakhumai. Vithoba is the focus of an essentially monotheistic, non-ritualistic bhakti-driven Varkari faith of Maharashtra and the Haridasa faith of Karnataka. Vithoba Temple, Pandharpur is his main temple. Vithoba legends revolve around his devotee Pundalik who is credited for bringing the deity to Pandharpur, and around Vithoba's role as a saviour to the poet-saints of the Varkari faith. The Varkari poet-saints are known for their unique genre of devotional lyric, the abhang, dedicated to Vithoba and composed in Marathi. Other devotional literature dedicated to Vithoba includes the Kannada hymns of the Haridasa and the Marathi versio ...
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Tapovan
(Sanskrit) comes from the two root words , meaning 'penance' and by extension 'religious mortification' and 'austerity', and more generally 'spiritual practice', and '','' meaning 'forest' or 'thicket'. then translates as 'forest of austerities or spiritual practice'. Traditionally in India, any place where someone has engaged in serious spiritual retreat may become known as a , even if there is no forest. As well as particular caves and other hermitages where sages and sadhus have dwelt, there are some places, such as the western bank of the northern Ganges river around Rishikesh, that have been so used by hermits that the whole area has become known as a . Tapovan (places) The most well known in India is the area above the Gangotri Glacier at one of the primary sources of the Ganges, in Uttarakhand, India. At the foot of Shivling peak, a barren area at about 4,463m (14640 feet) elevation, is a seasonal home to several sadhus living in caves, huts, etc. and it has become a ...
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