(Nahuatl: "Our Lord the Flayed One"), pre-Columbian Mexican god of spring (the beginning of the rainy season) and of new vegetation; he was also the patron of goldsmiths.
("Old God"), Aztec god of fire, thought to be the creator of all life. "Old God" is a reflection of his relative age in the Aztec pantheon. In association with Chantico, his feminine counterpart, Xiuhtecuhtli was believed to be a ...
foremost Chinese comic novel, written by Wu Cheng'en, a novelist and poet of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The novel is based on the actual 7th-century pilgrimage of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang (602-664) to India in search of sacred texts. The ...
fortified ancient city known for its impressive ruins. It is located on the top of a large hill and parts of surrounding hills near Cuernavaca, in Morelos state, Mexico.
district of Mexico City and delegacion (legation), central Distrito Federal (Federal District), central Mexico. It lies at 7,461 feet (2,274 metres) above sea level in the Valley of Mexico, on Lake Xochimilco. The name Xochimilco is a ...
(Nahuatl: "Precious Feather Flower"), Aztec goddess of beauty, sexual love, and household arts. She is also associated with flowers and plants and, in myth, came from Tamoanchan, the verdant paradise of the west. Originally wife of Tlaloc, the rain god, ...
influential Chinese artist and art educator who, in the first half of the 20th century, argued for the reformation of Chinese art through the incorporation of lessons from the West.
Chinese poet who strove to loosen Chinese poetry from its traditional forms and to reshape it under the influences of Western poetry and the vernacular Chinese language.
Chinese jade form found in the Shang (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou (1046-256 BC) dynasties. It is a flat disk similar in shape to the bi, except that the outer edge is broken into an irregular serration ...
Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in China the Buddhist Consciousness Only school. His fame rests mainly on the volume and diversity of his translations of ...
in botany, part of the vascular system that conveys water and dissolved minerals from the roots to the rest of the plant and may also furnish mechanical support. Xylem consists of specialized water-conducting tissues made up mostly of narrow, elongated, ...
any of three isomeric dimethylbenzenes [which have the same chemical formula, C6H4(CH3)2, but different molecular structure], used as solvents, as components of aviation fuel, and as raw materials for the manufacture of dyes, fibres, and films. The three isomers, designated ...
(from Greek xylon and phone: "wood" and "sound"), percussion instrument consisting of a set of graduated, tuned wooden bars supported at nodal (nonvibrating) points and struck with padded mallets. The xylophone possibly originated in Southeast Asia or Oceania and today ...
relatively common human sex chromosome anomaly in which a male has two Y chromosomes rather than one. It occurs in 1 in 500-1,000 live male births, and individuals with the anomaly are often characterized by tallness and severe acne and ...
diplomatic incident that, when made public in 1798, nearly involved the United States and France in war. Pres. John Adams dispatched three ministers to France in 1797 to negotiate a commercial agreement to protect U.S. shipping. In Paris the ministers ...
