propagator of Buddhism in Ceylon. Generally believed to be the son of the Indian emperor Asoka, he is honoured in Sri Lanka as a founding missionary of that country's majority religion.
town, western Madhya Pradesh state, central India. It lies just north of the Narmada River. It is located on the ancient site of Mahesvari, the capital (c. 200 BC) of Arjuna Kartavirya, a Haihaya king mentioned in the Sanskrit epics ...
stream in western India, rising in the western Vindhya Range, just south of Sardarpur, and flowing northward through Madhya Pradesh state. Turning northwest, it enters Rajasthan state and then turns southwest to flow through Gujarat state and enter the sea ...
Algonquian-speaking Indians of what is now the upper Hudson Valley above the Catskill Mountains in New York state, U.S. Their name means "wolf," but they were also known to the Dutch and the English as the River Indians. The Mahican ...
oblast (province), east-central Belarus, occupying an area of 11,200 square miles (29,000 square km) in the middle Dnieper River lowland, astride the Dnieper, which bisects it north-south. It consists of a level plain of loesslike deposits, sloping gently southward from ...
city and administrative centre of Mahilyow oblast (province), east-central Belarus, on the Dnieper River. It was founded in 1267 as a fortress and became a town in 1526, when it was under Lithuanian rule. Later passing to Poland, it became ...
Austrian-Jewish composer and conductor noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later regarded as an ...
sultan of the kingdom of Ghazna (998-1030), originally comprising modern Afghanistan and northeastern modern Iran but, through his conquests, eventually including northwestern India and most of Iran. He transformed his capital, Ghazna, into a cultural centre rivalling Baghdad.
Ottoman sultan who on succeeding to the throne in 1730 restored order after the Patrona Halil uprising in Constantinople; during his reign the Ottomans fought a successful war against Austria and Russia, culminating in the Treaty of Belgrade (1739).
Ottoman diplomat and grand vizier (served 1871-72 and 1875-76) whose conservative policies and hostility to reforms permitted Sultan Abdulaziz to become an absolute monarch and thereby destroyed the westernizing reforms introduced by his predecessors.
any of several tropical hardwood timber trees, especially certain species in the family Meliaceae. One such is Swietenia mahagoni, from tropical America. It is a tall evergreen tree with hard wood that turns reddish brown at maturity. The leaflets of ...
chief city of Minorca, Balearic Islands, Baleares province and autonomous community (region), Spain. It originated as the Mediterranean Portus Magonis, bearing the name of the Carthaginian general Mago. Under the Romans it was a municipium (privileged town). The Arab pirate ...
former semi-independent state in the southern Arabian Peninsula, including the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean, in what is now eastern Yemen. The mainland portion of the sultanate, on the Arabian Sea coast, had its capital in Qishn, although ...
any of several species of edible game fishes of the genus Barbus, in the carp family, Cyprinidae, found in clear rivers and lakes of India and southeastern Asia. Mahseer have large, thick scales, powerful jaws, and protrusible, sometimes very fleshy, ...
originally a Jewish prayer book arranged according to liturgical chronology and used throughout the entire year. Though cantors (hazzanim) still use such a book, mahzor has come to mean the festival prayer book, as distinguished from the siddur, the prayer ...
one of three major sites in northern China's Kansu sheng (province) where rock-cut Buddhist caves and sculpture are found. The more than 190 sculptures now visible are carved in nearly 1,000 caves and recesses on the cliff faces that are ...
lake in western Congo (Kinshasa), east of the Congo River and south-southeast of Lake Tumba. It covers approximately 890 square miles (2,300 square km) and is about 80 miles (130 km) long and up to 25 miles (40 km) wide. ...
duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) found as fossils from the Late Cretaceous Period (99 million to 65 million years old) of North America and whose discovery led to the theory that these bipedal herbivores cared for their young.
town, Windsor and Maidenhead unitary authority, historic county of Berkshire, England, on the River Thames. A stone bridge (1772-77) carries the London-Bath road across the river, and the Brunel railway bridge (1837-38) has two of the widest brick spans in ...
town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Kent, southeastern England, astride the River Medway, 38 miles (61 km) southeast of London. The largely rural borough surrounding the town covers a large area of central Kent.
group of California Indians speaking a language of Penutian stock and originally living in a territory extending eastward from the Sacramento River to the crest of the Sierra Nevada and centring chiefly in the drainage of the Feather and American ...
capital and largest city of Borno state, northeastern Nigeria. It is located on the north bank of the seasonal Ngadda (Alo) River, the waters of which disappear in the firki ("black cotton") swamps just southwest of Lake Chad, about 70 ...
mountain range in Madhya Pradesh state, central India, running in a north-south direction and forming the eastern base of the triangular Satpura Range. The Maikala Range consists of laterite-capped, flat-topped plateaus (pats) with an elevation of from 2,000 feet (600 ...
reserve in eastern Congo (Kinshasa), about equidistant from Bukavu, in the great Western Rift Valley just south of Lake Kivu, at the Rwandan border, and Kisangani, about 320 miles (515 km) to the northwest, at the great westward bend of ...
method of merchandising in which the seller's offer is made through mass mailing of a circular or catalog or through an advertisement placed in a newspaper or magazine and in which the buyer places his order by mail. Delivery of ...
American novelist and journalist, best known for using a form of journalism-called New Journalism-that combines the imaginative subjectivity of literature with the more objective qualities of journalism. Both Mailer's fiction and his nonfiction made a radical critique of the totalitarianism ...
American physicist who constructed the first laser, a device that produces monochromatic coherent light, or light in which the rays are all of the same wavelength and phase. The laser has found numerous practical uses, ranging from delicate surgery to ...
French Jesuit and historian who wrote critical works on Calvinism and Lutheranism and a defense of Gallican liberties-the belief that the Roman Catholic church in France should maintain some independence from papal control.
Jewish philosopher whose acute Skepticism caused him to be acknowledged by the major German philosopher Immanuel Kant as his most perceptive critic. He combined an early and extensive familiarity with rabbinic learning with a proficiency in Hebrew, and, after acquiring ...
Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician, the foremost intellectual figure of medieval Judaism. His first major work, begun at age 23 and completed 10 years later, was a commentary on the Mishna, the collected Jewish oral laws. A monumental code of ...
one of the world's largest botanical gardens. Founded in 1945, it occupies a 360-hectare (889-acre) site in Moscow, Russia. About 21,000 varieties of plants are cultivated, many of which are native to Russia. One of its unique features is a ...
mountain range in West Malaysia, the most prominent mountain group on the Malay Peninsula. Composed of granite with some patches of altered stratified rocks, the range extends southward for 300 miles (480 km) from the Thai border, with elevations rarely ...
river, an important right- (east-) bank tributary of the Rhine in Germany. It is formed, near Kulmbach, by the confluence of the Weisser (White) Main, which rises in the Fichtel Mountains, and the Roter (Red) Main, which rises on the ...
commercial waterway in Bavaria Land (state), southern Germany, completed in 1992. The canal, 106 miles (171 km) long, runs from Bamberg on the Main River (a tributary of the Rhine) to Kelheim on the Danube River, permitting traffic to flow ...
