Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Magritte, Rene ... Mahe Island

Magritte, Rene: Belgian artist, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy, and mystery. His works were characterized by particular symbols-the female torso, the bourgeois "little man," the bowler hat, the castle, the rock, ...
Magsaysay, Ramon: president of the Philippines (1953-57), best known for successfully defeating the communist-led Hukbalahap (Huk) movement.
maguey: fibre obtained from the leaf of the plant Agave lurida, a member of the Amaryllidaccae family and native to Mexico. It is shorter and stiffer than henequen (q.v.), with physical properties similar to the hard leaf fibre cantala (q.v.), and ...
magus: member of an ancient Persian clan specializing in cultic activities. The name is the Latinized form of magoi (e.g., in Herodotus 1:101), the ancient Greek transliteration of the Iranian original. From it the word magic is derived.
Magwe: town, west-central Myanmar (Burma). The town is on the Irrawaddy River opposite Minbu. It is the site of Magwe College, affiliated to the Arts and Science University at Mandalay, and has an airfield.
mah-jongg: a game of Chinese origin, played with tiles, or p'ais, similar in physical description to those used in dominoes but engraved with Chinese symbols and characters and divided into suits and honours. A fad in England, the United States, and ...
Maha Bodhi Society: an organization that was established to encourage Buddhist studies in India and abroad. The society was founded in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1891 by Anagarika Dharmapala; one of its original goals was the restoration of the Mahabodhi temple at ...
Maha Maya: the mother of Gautama Buddha; she was the wife of Raja Shuddhodana.
Maha Sarakham: town, northeastern Thailand. Maha Sarakham is located at a road junction on a bend of the Chi River. Rice is widely grown in the surrounding region, particularly in shallow river valleys, and freshwater fishing is also important. Pop. (1993 est.) ...
Maha-sivaratri: (Sanskrit: "Great Night of Siva"), the most important sectarian festival of the year for devotees of the Hindu god Siva. The 14th day of the dark half of each lunar month is specially sacred to Siva, but when it occurs ...
Mahabad: city, northwestern Iran. The city lies south of Lake Urmia in a fertile, narrow valley at an elevation of 4,272 feet (1,302 m). There are a number of unexcavated tells, or mounds, on the plain of Mahabad in this part ...
Mahabaleshwar: resort town, southwestern Maharashtra state, western India. It lies about 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Bombay and northwest of the town of Satara at an elevation of 4,718 feet (1,438 m), in the Sahyadri Hills of the Western Ghats. ...
Mahabalipuram: historic town, northeast Tamil Nadu state, southeastern India. The town lies along the Bay of Bengal 37 miles (60 km) south of Madras. The town's religious centre was founded by a 7th-century-AD Hindu Pallava king, Narasimhavarman, also known as Mamalla, ...
Mahabharata: one of the two major Sanskrit epics of India, valued for its high literary merit and its religious inspiration. The Mahabharata consists of a mass of legendary and didactic material surrounding a central heroic narrative that tells of the struggle ...
Mahadeo Hills: sandstone hills located in the northern part of the Satpura Range, in southern Madhya Pradesh state, central India. The hills have small plateaus and steep scarps that were formed during the Carboniferous Period (360 to 286 million years ago). The ...
Mahajanga: town and major port, northwestern Madagascar. It lies on the island's northwest coast, at the mouth of the Betsiboka River, whose estuary widens there into Bombetoka Bay. The town was the capital of the 18th-century kingdom of Boina. The French ...
Mahakala: in Tibetan Buddhism, one of the eight fierce protective deities. See dharmapala.
Mahakam River: river rising in the mountains of central Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) and flowing about 400 miles (650 km) east-southeast to Makassar Strait, in a wide delta. The chief town along its course is Samarinda, capital of Kalimantan Timur (East Borneo) province, ...
mahakavya: a particular form of the Sanskrit literary style known as kavya. It is a short epic similar to the epyllion and is characterized by elaborate figures of speech.
Mahal, Taj: American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and one of the pioneers of what came to be called world music. He combined blues and other African-American music with Caribbean and West African music and other genres to create a distinctive sound.
Mahalapye: village, eastern Botswana. It lies midway along the Mafikeng-Bulawayo railway and is 125 miles (200 km) northeast of Gaborone, the national capital. The name Mahalapye refers to an impala. The village is situated on a plateau with good pasturage, and ...
Mahallah al-Kubra, Al-: city, in the central Nile River delta of Lower Egypt, eastern Al-Gharbiyah muhafazah (governorate). It lies just west of the Damietta Branch of the Nile. Because the names of a large number of Egyptian places were compounded with mahallah (Arabic: ...
mahalwari system: one of the three main revenue systems of land tenure in British India, the other two being the zamindar (landlord) and the ryotwari (individual cultivator). The word mahalwari is derived from the Hindi mahal, meaning a house or, by extension, ...
mahamudra: (Sanskrit: "the great seal"), in Tantric Buddhism, the final goal, the union of all apparent dualities. Mudra, in addition to its more usual meaning, has in Tantric Buddhism the esoteric meaning of "female partner," which in turn symbolizes prajna ("wisdom"). ...
Mahan, Alfred Thayer: American naval officer and historian who was a highly influential exponent of sea power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mahan, Larry E.: professional American rodeo wrangler, the first to win five consecutive Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA; later Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, PRCA) all-around cowboy championships, from 1966 through 1970. His record was later surpassed by Tom R. Ferguson.
Mahanadi River: river in central India, rising in the hills of southeastern Madhya Pradesh state. Its upper course runs north as an insignificant stream, draining the eastern Chhattisgarh Plain. After receiving the Seonath River, below Baloda Bazar, it turns east and enters ...
Mahananda River: river in northern India and Bangladesh. It rises in the Darjeeling Hills in extreme northern West Bengal state. The river flows south through a rich agricultural area in Bihar state, enters West Bengal state, flows past Ingraj Bazar, and then ...
mahapurusa: in Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist belief, an individual of extraordinary destiny, distinguished by certain physical traits or marks (laksanas). Such men are born to become either universal rulers (cakravartins) or great spiritual leaders (such as buddhas or the Jaina spiritual ...
Mahar: a caste-cluster, or group of many endogamous castes, living chiefly in Maharashtra state, India, and in adjoining states. They mostly speak Marathi, the official language of Maharashtra. In the early 1980s the Mahar community was believed to constitute about 9 ...
maharaja: (from mahat, "great," and rajan, "king"), an administrative rank in India; generally speaking, a Hindu prince ranking above a raja. Used historically, maharaja refers specifically to a ruler of one of the principal native states of India. The feminine form ...
Maharashtra: state of India that occupies a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau in the western peninsular part of the subcontinent. Its shape roughly resembles a triangle, with the 450-mile (725-kilometre) western coastline forming the base and the interior narrowing to ...
Mahasanghika: (from Sanskrit mahasangha, "great order of monks"), early Buddhist school in India that, in its views of the nature of the Buddha, was a precursor of the Mahayana tradition.
mahasiddha: in the Tantric, or esoteric, traditions of India and Tibet, a person who, by the practice of meditative disciplines, has attained siddha (miraculous powers); a great magician.
Mahathir bin Mohamad: Malaysian politician, who served as prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, overseeing his country's transition to an industrialized nation.
Mahavairocana-sutra: text of late Tantric Buddhism and a principal scripture of the large Japanese Buddhist sect known as Shingon ("True Word"). The text received a Chinese translation, under the title Ta-jih Ching, about AD 725, and its esoteric teachings were propagated ...
Mahavamsa: (Pali: "Great Chronicle"), historical chronology of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), written in the 5th or 6th century, probably by the Buddhist monk Mahanama. It deals more with the history of Buddhism and with dynastic succession in Ceylon than with the ...
Mahavastu: (Sanskrit: "Great Story"), important legendary life of the Buddha, produced as a late canonical work by the Mahasanghika school of early Buddhism and presented as a historical introduction to the vinaya, the section of the canon dealing with monastic discipline. ...
Mahavihara: Buddhist monastery founded in the late 3rd century BCE in Anuradhapura, the ancient capital of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). The monastery was built by the Sinhalese king Devanampiya Tissa not long after his conversion to Buddhism by the Indian monk ...
Mahavira: Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to the development of algebra.
Mahavira: Epithet of Vardhamana, the last of the 24 Tirthankaras ("Ford-makers," i.e., saviours who promulgated Jainism), and the reformer of the Jain monastic community. According to the traditions of the two main Jain sects, the Shvetambara ("White-robed") and the Digambara ("Sky-clad," ...
Mahaweli Ganga: (Sinhalese: "Great Sandy River"), river, central and eastern Sri Lanka. At 208 mi (335 km) in length, it is Sri Lanka's longest river. It rises on the Hatton Plateau on the western side of the island's hill country, flows north ...
Mahayana: (Sanskrit: Greater Vehicle), one of the two major Buddhist traditions and the form most widely adhered to in China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet. Mahayana Buddhism emerged in about the 1st century AD from the ancient Buddhist schools as a more ...
Mahayana-sraddhotpada-sastra: (Sanskrit: "Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana"), relatively brief but influential exposition of the fundamentals of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy and faith. Though the work is said to be that of the Sanskrit poet Asvaghosa, there are no ...
Mahbubnagar: town, administrative headquarters of Mahbubnagar district, west central Andhra Pradesh state, southern India. Located on the Central Railway route southwest of Hyderabad, Mahbubnagar is also a road centre. Cotton ginning and cotton pressing, as well as oilseed and rice milling, ...
mahdi: (Arabic: "divinely guided one"), in Islamic eschatology, a messianic deliverer who will fill the Earth with justice and equity, restore true religion, and usher in a short golden age lasting seven, eight, or nine years before the end of the ...
Mahdi, al-: creator of a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa and founder of a movement that remained influential in The Sudan a century later. As a youth he moved from orthodox religious study to a mystical ...
Mahdist: (Arabic: "Helper"), follower of al-Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad ibn as-Sayyid 'Abd Allah) or of his successor or descendants. Ansar is an old term applied to some of the companions of the prophet Muhammad; it was revived for the followers and descendants ...
Mahdiyah, al-: town and fishing port on as-Sahil (coastal strip), eastern Tunisia. It lies on the narrow rocky peninsula of Cape Ifriqiya. The town owes its name to the mahdi (Arabic: mahdi, "the rightly guided one") 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, founder of the ...
Mahe: town in Pondicherry union territory, which is an enclave in northern Kerala state, southwestern India. Mahe lies on the left bank of the Naluthara River, northwest of Kozhikode (Calicut). The scene of much fighting between British and French troops in ...
Mahe Island: largest island of the Seychelles archipelago, Republic of Seychelles, in the western Indian Ocean. The island is 4 miles (6 km) wide and 16 miles (26 km) long and has an area of 57 square miles (148 square km). The ...