Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Ninhursag ... Niteroi

Ninhursag: in Mesopotamian religion, city goddess of Adab and of Kish in the northern herding regions; she was the goddess of the stony, rocky ground, the hursag. In particular, she had the power in the foothills and desert to produce wildlife. ...
Ninian, Saint: bishop generally credited as the first Christian missionary to Scotland, responsible for widespread conversions among the Celts.
Ninigi: Japanese deity, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Ninigi's supposed descent to earth established the divine origin of the Yamato clan, the Imperial house of Japan. He is said to have been the great-grandfather of the first emperor, Jimmu.
Ninlil: Mesopotamian goddess, the consort of the god Enlil and a deity of destiny. She was worshiped especially at Nippur and Shuruppak and was the mother of the moon god, Sin (Sumerian: Nanna). In Assyrian documents Belit is sometimes identified with ...
Ninomiya Sontoku: Japanese agrarian reformer who helped improve agricultural techniques and whose writings exalting rural life earned him the affectionate title of the "Peasant Sage of Japan."
Ninsei: Japanese potter active in Kyoto during the Edo period between the Meireki (1655-57) and the Genroku (1688-1703) eras. He learned the art of ceramics by working at the Awata-guchi kiln in Kyoto and the Seto kiln in Mino. His patron, ...
Ninsun: in Mesopotamian religion, Sumerian deity, city goddess of Kullab in the southern herding region. As Ninsun's name, Lady Wild Cow, indicates, she was originally represented in bovine form and was considered the divine power behind, as well as the embodiment ...
Ninurta: in Mesopotamian religion, city god of Girsu (Tal'ah, or Telloh) in the Lagash region. Ninurta was the farmer's version of the god of the thunder and rainstorms of the spring. He was also the power in the floods of spring ...
Ninus: in Greek mythology, king of Assyria and the eponymous founder of the city of Nineveh, which itself is sometimes called Ninus. He was said to have been the son of Belos, or Bel, and to have conquered in 17 years ...
Niobe: in Greek mythology, the daughter of Tantalus (king of Sipylus in Lydia) and wife of King Amphion of Thebes. She was the prototype of the bereaved mother, weeping for the loss of her children. According to Homer's Iliad, she had ...
Niobid Painter: painter of flower-shaped Greek vases, named for a calyx krater (mixing bowl) with a representation of the death of the children of Niobe, now at the Louvre Museum, Paris. The vessel is thought to reflect the innovative technique of the ...
niobium: (Nb), chemical element, refractory metal of Group Vb of the periodic table, used in alloys, tools and dies, and superconductive magnets. Niobium is closely associated with tantalum in ores and in properties.
niobium processing: preparation of the ore for use in various products.
Niobrara Limestone: geologic division of rocks in the United States during the Late Cretaceous Period (97.5 to 66.4 million years ago). Named for exposures studied along the Missouri River near the mouth of the Niobrara River, Knox county, Neb., the Niobrara occurs ...
Niobrara River: river rising near Lusk, Wyo., U.S., and flowing east across the High Plains, the northern edge of the sandhills, and the low eastern plains of Nebraska to join the Missouri at the village of Niobrara, Neb., at the South Dakota ...
Niort: town, capital of Deux-Sevres departement, Poitou-Charentes region, western France. The town lies on the slopes of two hills facing one another on the left bank of the Sevre Niortaise River, above its silted estuary. It grew up in the shelter ...
Nipigon, Lake: lake, Thunder Bay district, west-central Ontario, Canada. Lake Nipigon lies 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Thunder Bay. It is about 70 miles (110 km) long and 50 miles (80 km) wide and has an area of 1,872 square miles ...
Nipissing, Lake: lake, southeastern Ontario, Canada. Lake Nipissing lies midway between the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay. It is 321 square miles (832 square km) in area and has a maximum length of 50 miles (80 km) and a maximum width of ...
Nipkow, Paul Gottlieb: German engineer who discovered television's scanning principle, in which the light intensities of small portions of an image are successively analyzed and transmitted. Nipkow's invention in 1884 of a rotating disk (Nipkow disk) with one or more spirals of apertures ...
Nipmuc: Algonquian-speaking Indian tribes who occupied the central plateau of what is now Massachusetts, especially the southern part of Worcester county, and extended into what are now northern Rhode Island and Connecticut. Their subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, and the ...
nippapanca: (Pali), in the Madhyamika and Vijnanavada schools of Buddhist philosophy, ultimate reality. See prajnapti.
Nippon Hoso Kyokai: public radio and television system of Japan. It operates two television and three radio networks and is notable for its innovations in high-definition television.
Nippon Steel Corporation: Japanese corporation created by the 1970 merger of Yawata Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., and Fuji Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. It ranks among the world's largest steel corporations. Its headquarters are in Tokyo, and it has several offices overseas.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation: Japanese telecommunications company that almost monopolizes Japan's domestic electronic communications industry. It is Japan's largest company and one of the largest companies in the world.
Nippur: ancient city of Mesopotamia, now in southeastern Iraq. It lies northeast of the town of Ad-Diwaniyah. Although never a political capital, Nippur played a dominant role in the religious life of Mesopotamia.
Nirankari: religious reform movement within Sikhism. The Nirankari movement was founded by Dayal Das (died 1855), who belonged to a half-Sikh, half-Hindu community in Peshawar. He believed that God is formless, or nirankar (hence the name Nirankari).
Nirenberg, Marshall Warren: American biochemist and corecipient, with Robert William Holley and Har Gobind Khorana, of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He was noted for his role in deciphering the genetic code. He demonstrated that, with the exception of "nonsense ...
Nirgal Vallis: sinuous, branching valley located on the planet Mars north of the Argyre impact basin, at about 28° S, 42° W. It is about 400 km (250 miles) long and about 5 km (3 miles) wide. Its name derives from the ...
nirguna: (Sanskrit: "distinctionless"), concept of primary importance in the orthodox Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, raising the question of whether the supreme being, Brahman, is to be characterized as without qualities (nirguna) or as possessing qualities (saguna).
nirjara: in Jainism, a religion of India, the destruction of karman (a physical substance that binds itself to individual souls and determines their fate).
Nirmala: an ascetic order of the Sikhs, a religious group of India. Nirmalas ("those without blemish") at first wore only white garments but later adopted the ochre robes worn by Hindu ascetics and shared some other practices, such as birth and ...
Nirvana: in Indian religious thought, the supreme goal of the meditation disciplines. The concept is most characteristic of Buddhism, in which it signifies the transcendent state of freedom achieved by the extinction of desire and of individual consciousness. According to the ...
Nirvana: American alternative rock group whose breakthrough album, Nevermind (1991), announced a new musical style (grunge) and gave voice to the post-baby boom young adults known as Generation X. The members were Kurt Cobain (b. February 20, 1967, ...
Nis: town in Serbia, Serbia and Montenegro, on the Nisava River. The town is important for its command of the Morava-Vardar and the Nisava River corridors, the two principal routes from central Europe to the Aegean. The main rail line from ...
Nisa: first capital of the Parthians, located near modern Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. Nisa was traditionally founded by Arsaces I (reigned c. 250-c. 211 BC), and it was reputedly the royal necropolis of the Parthian kings. Excavations at Nisa have revealed substantial ...
nise-e: (Japanese: "likeness painting"), form of sketchy portraiture that became fashionable in the court circles of 12th- and 13th-century Japan. Realistic art was originally outside the tradition of Japanese portraiture, which, until the 12th century, was purely religious in character. Alongside ...
Nisei: (Japanese: "second-born"), second-generation Japanese in the United States. During World War II all persons of Japanese ancestry on the U.S. West Coast were forcibly evacuated from their homes and relocated in inland detention centres as a result of mass hysteria ...
Nishapur pottery: Islamic ceramics produced at Nishapur (modern Neyshabur, Iran) that were of bold style and showed links with Sassanian and Central Asian work. The style originated in Transoxania, an ancient district of Iran, during the 9th century AD and showed such ...
Nishi Amane: philosopher, writer, and publisher who helped introduce Western philosophy, especially British empiricism, to Japan.
Nishida Kitaro: Japanese philosopher who exemplified the attempt by the Japanese to assimilate Western philosophy into the Oriental spiritual tradition.
Nishikawa Sukenobu: Japanese painter of the Ukiyo-e school of popular, colourful paintings and prints, who also was a book designer of the Kyoto-Osaka area. Nishikawa studied painting with masters of two schools, the Kano (stressing Chinese subjects and techniques) and the Japanese-oriented ...
nishiki-e: Japanese polychrome woodblock prints of the Ukiyo-e (q.v.) school that were first made in 1765. The invention of the technique is attributed to Kinroku, and its greatest early master was Suzuki Harunobu.
Nishinomiya: city, Hyogo Prefecture (ken), Honshu, Japan, at the mouth of the Mukogawa (Muko River) on the Inland Sea. It is part of the Hanshin Industrial Region. The city occupies a narrow lowland between Osaka-wan (Osaka Bay) and interior Rokko-zan (Mt. ...
Nishio: city, Aichi Prefecture (ken), Honshu, Japan, on the lower reaches of the Yahagi-gawa (Yahagi River). Nishio was a castle town and commercial centre during the Tokugawa era (1603-1867). The opening of two railways through the city in 1911 and 1928 ...
Nishiyama Soin: renga ("linked-verse") poet of the early Tokugawa period (1603-1867) who founded the Danrin school of haikai poetry. Soin's haikai (comical renga) became the transition between the light and clever haikai of Matsunaga Teitoku and the more serious and aesthetic haiku ...
Nisibis, School of: intellectual centre of East Syrian Christianity (the Nestorian Church) from the 5th to the 7th century. The School of Nisibis (now Nusaybin, Tur.) originated soon after 471, when Narsai, a renowned teacher and administrator at the School of Edessa, and ...
nisprapanca: (Sanskrit), in the Madhyamika and Vijnanavada schools of Buddhist philosophy, ultimate reality. See prajnapti.
Nissaba: in Mesopotamian religion, Sumerian deity, city goddess of Eresh on the ancient Euphrates River near Uruk in the farming regions; she was goddess of the grasses in general, including the reeds and the cereals. As goddess of the reeds and ...
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.: Japanese industrial corporation that manufactures automobiles, trucks, and buses under the names Nissan and Datsun. The company also designs and manufactures such products as communications satellites, pleasure boats, and machinery. Headquarters are in Tokyo.
Nisus: in Greek mythology, a son of King Pandion of Megara. His name was given to the Megarian port of Nisaea. Nisus had a purple lock of hair with magic power: if preserved, it would guarantee him life and continued possession ...
Niteroi: city, Rio de Janeiro estado ("state"), eastern Brazil. It lies on the eastern side of the entrance to Guanabara Bay. The city of Rio de Janeiro on the opposite side is connected to Niteroi by ferry, railroad, ...