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  • Sacsahuamán (fortress, Peru)
    The cyclopean fortress of Sacsahuamán (Sacsayhuamán, or Saqsaywamán) overlooks the valley from a hill 755 feet (230 metres) above Cuzco. It is said that, in the Inca city plan, Cuzco was laid out in the shape of a puma (an animal sacred to the Inca), with Sacsahuamán forming its head and jaws. That image is reinforced by the zigzag outline of the fortress’s massi...
  • Sacsayhuamán (fortress, Peru)
    The cyclopean fortress of Sacsahuamán (Sacsayhuamán, or Saqsaywamán) overlooks the valley from a hill 755 feet (230 metres) above Cuzco. It is said that, in the Inca city plan, Cuzco was laid out in the shape of a puma (an animal sacred to the Inca), with Sacsahuamán forming its head and jaws. That image is reinforced by the zigzag outline of the fortress’s massi...
  • SACU (African organization)
    Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland are members of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which allows for the free exchange of goods between member countries. Payments were made to the member countries by South Africa beginning in 1969 as compensation for those countries’ lack of freedom to conduct economic policies that were completely independent of South Africa.....
  • SAD (Sikh political party, India)
    ...the mid-1980s by conflict between the central government and Sikh fundamentalists, who were demanding a separate Sikh nation-state. In an effort to reign in the principal Sikh political party, the Shiromani Akali Dal (“Leading Akali Party”; see Akali), the government unwisely enlisted the support of a young Sikh fundamentalist, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. In 1984 Bhindranwa...
  • Sʿad ad-Dawlah (Jewish vizier)
    In 1289 Arghūn appointed an anti-Islāmic Jew, Saʿd ad-Dawlah, first as his minister of finance and then (in June) as vizier of his entire empire. The predominantly Muslim population may have resented the rule of a Buddhist and a Jew, but their administration proved lawful and just and restored order and prosperity....
  • Saʿd ad-Din Ibrahim (Egyptian professor)
    On May 21, 2001, less than two hours after the defense lawyers had completed their summation, Egypt’s High Security Court found Saʿd ad-Din Ibrahim, a respected university professor, guilty of having accepted money from overseas without government approval, embezzled grant funds, and defamed Egypt abroad. Sentenced together with 27 co-defendants, Ibrahim received seven years’ ...
  • Saʿd ebn Zangī (Salghurid governor)
    ...Zangī (reigned 1231–60), whom he mentions by name in his Būstān (“The Orchard”), a book of ethics in verse. Abū Bakr’s father, Saʿd, for whom Saʿdī took his pen name, conferred great prosperity on Shīrāz....
  • Saʿd ibn Muʿādh (Medinese chieftain)
    ...complicit with the enemy during the Battle of the Ditch, Muhammad turned against them. The Qurayẓah men were separated from the tribe’s women and children and ordered by the Muslim general Saʿd ibn Muʿādh to be put to death; the women and children were to be enslaved. This tragic episode cast a shadow upon the relations between the two communities for many cen...
  • Saʿd Zaghlūl Pasha ibn Ibrāhīm (Egyptian statesman)
    Egyptian statesman and patriot, leader of the Wafd party and of the nationalist movement of 1918–19, which led Britain to give Egypt nominal independence in 1922. He was briefly prime minister in 1924....
  • sada topo tsen (Kashmiri folk dance)
    ...The yak dance is performed in the Ladākh section of Kashmir and in the southern fringes of the Himalayas near Assam. The dancer impersonating a yak dances with a man mounted on his back. In sada topo tsen men wear gorgeous silks, brocades, and long tunics with wide flapping sleeves. Skulls arranged as a diadem are a prominent feature of their grotesquely grinning wooden masks......
  • Saʿdābād Pact (Iraqi history)
    ...countries were settled, including one over the boundary with Syria, which was concluded in Iraq’s favour; Iraq thereafter possessed the Sinjār Mountains. A nonaggression pact, called the Saʿdābād Pact, between Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq was signed in 1937. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, King Ghāzī was killed in a c...
  • Sʿadad-Dīn (sultan of Ifat)
    ...dominion extended eastward to the port of Zeila.) Thereafter Ifat was continually in revolt against Ethiopia. It was finally destroyed in 1415, when its last attempt at independence under Sultan Sʿadad-Dīn was foiled by Yeshaq I of Ethiopia, who subsequently annexed Ifat to his kingdom....
  • sadaebu (Korean official)
    Through the civil service examination, the central government recruited a new bureaucratic force consisting of scholar-officials (sadaebu), who generally had small farms under their own management in their native districts. These men held Buddhism in disdain and were not satisfied with superficial interpretations of the Chinese Classics. They adopted Neo-Confucianism, which introduced a......
  • Ṣaʿdah (Yemen)
    town, northwestern Yemen, in the mountainous Yemen Highlands. It was the original capital of the Zaydī dynasty of imams (religious-political leaders) of Yemen (ad 860–1962). The effective founder of Ṣaʿdah as a base of Zaydī power was Imam Yaḥyā al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥāqq I (reigned 893...
  • Sadaharu Oh (Japanese baseball player)
    professional baseball player who played for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants in the Japanese Central League for 22 seasons between 1959 and 1980 who holds the record for the most home runs ever hit. (See also Japanese baseball leagues). He is among the most revered of Japan’s sporting figures. Oh led the league in hitting 5 times, led ...
  • Sadahito (emperor of Japan)
    72nd emperor of Japan who abdicated the throne and then established a cloister government (insei) through which he could maintain his power unburdened by the exacting ceremonial and family duty required of the legitimate Japanese sovereign. He thus established a precedent that allowed the Japanese emperor to abdicate and, once away from the court, to assume the real power...
  • Sadakichi (American art critic)
    American art critic, novelist, poet, and man of letters....
  • Sadalmelik (star)
    American art critic, novelist, poet, and man of letters.......
  • Sadalsuud (star)
    American art critic, novelist, poet, and man of letters..........
  • Sadami (emperor of Japan)
    59th emperor of Japan, from 887 to 897....
  • ṣadaqah (Islam)
    The Qurʾān and Ḥadīth (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muḥammad) also stress ṣadaqah, or voluntary almsgiving, which, like zakat, is intended for the needy. Twelver Shīʿites, moreover, require payment of an additional one-fifth tax, the khums, to the Hidden Imam....
  • Ṣadaqah I (Iraqi ruler)
    ...by a period of heightened Mazyadid activity. Having allied himself first with the Seljuq ruler Berk-yaruq, then from about 1101 with Berk-yaruq’s brother Muḥammad, the Mazyadid ruler Ṣadaqah I (reigned 1086–1108) gradually assumed control of most of Iraq, seizing Hīt, Wāsiṭ, Basra, and Takrīt. In 1102 he expanded and fortified his capital....
  • sadashe (South American mythology)
    ...is a supernatural being. The Makiritare believe that the sacred songs (ademi) were taught to shamans at the beginning of time by sadashe (masters of animals and prototypes of the contemporary animal species), who cut down the tree of life, survived the subsequent flood, cleared the first garden, and celebrated the.....
  • Sadashiva (Vijayanagar ruler)
    ...brought himself to the undisputed pinnacle of power in 1542–43, when he defeated his rival in the succession struggle following Achyuta’s death and crowned his own candidate, Achyuta’s nephew Sadashiva (reigned 1542–76). After seven or eight years, Rama Raya also assumed royal titles, but from the first Sadashiva was kept under guard, and Rama Raya, together with his...
  • Sadāśiva Rāo (Afghan general)
    ...had invaded and plundered repeatedly the northern plains down to Delhi and Mathura. The peshwa then dispatched a strong army under his cousin Sadashiva Rao to drive away the invader and establish the Maratha supremacy in northern India on a firm footing. The final battle, in which the forces of Aḥmad Shah Durrānī routed......
  • Sādāt ʿAlī Khān (governor of Oudh)
    city, eastern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It lies east of Lucknow, on the Ghāghara River. Faizābād was founded in 1730 by Sādāt ʿAlī Khān, the first nawab of Oudh, who made it his capital but spent little time there. The third nawab, Shujāʿ-ud-Dawlah, resided there and built a fort over the river in 1764; the mausoleums...
  • Sādāt, Anwar el- (president of Egypt)
    Egyptian army officer and politician who was president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. He initiated serious peace negotiations with Israel, an achievement for which he shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Under their leadership, Egypt and Israel made peace with each other in 1979....
  • Sādāt, As- (Egypt)
    industrial city, in al-Buḥayrah muḥāfaẓah (governorate), between Wadi an-Naṭrūn and the western edge of the Nile delta, Lower Egypt. Construction on Madīnat as-Sādāt (named for President Anwar el-Sādāt) began in the early 1980s, as part of the Egyptian government’s program to shift population and industry aw...
  • Sādāt, Madīnat as- (Egypt)
    industrial city, in al-Buḥayrah muḥāfaẓah (governorate), between Wadi an-Naṭrūn and the western edge of the Nile delta, Lower Egypt. Construction on Madīnat as-Sādāt (named for President Anwar el-Sādāt) began in the early 1980s, as part of the Egyptian government’s program to shift population and industry aw...
  • Sādāt, Muḥammad Anwar as- (president of Egypt)
    Egyptian army officer and politician who was president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. He initiated serious peace negotiations with Israel, an achievement for which he shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Under their leadership, Egypt and Israel made peace with each other in 1979....
  • Sādāt, Muḥammad Anwar el- (president of Egypt)
    Egyptian army officer and politician who was president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. He initiated serious peace negotiations with Israel, an achievement for which he shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Under their leadership, Egypt and Israel made peace with each other in 1979....
  • Sadatoki (emperor of Japan)
    When Sadatoki (1270–1311) became regent in 1284, he found himself so embroiled in a succession dispute between two powerful factions of the Imperial family—a struggle beginning to split all Japan—that he secluded himself in a temple, from where he continued to administer Japan during the last 10 years of his life. His successor, the ninth and last Hōjō regent,......
  • SADC (African organization)
    regional organization of southern African countries that works to promote economic cooperation and integration among the member states and to preserve their economic independence. The member states are Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malaŵi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The first conference was held in 1979, on the eve of Zimbabwe...
  • Sadd Maʾrib (ancient dam, Yemen)
    The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built dams between 700 and 250 bc for water supply and irrigation. Contemporary with these was the earthen Maʾrib Dam in the southern Arabian Peninsula, which was more than 15 metres (50 feet) high and nearly 600 metres (1,970 feet) long. Flanked by spillways, this dam delivered water to a system of irrigation canals for more than 1,000...
  • Sadd-el-Kafara (ancient dam, Egypt)
    ...bc to hold back the waters of a small stream and allow increased irrigation production on arable land downstream. Evidence exists of another masonry-faced earthen dam built about 2700 bc at Sadd el-Kafara, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt. The Sadd el-Kafara failed shortly after completion when, in the absence of a spillway that could resist erosion, it w...
  • Ṣaddām City (district, Baghdad, Iraq)
    ...of the city, is a sprawling low-income district of some two million rural Shīʿite migrants known alternately as Al-Thawrah (“Revolution”) quarter or, between 1982 and 2003, as Ṣaddām City....
  • Ṣaddām Ḥussein (president of Iraq)
    president of Iraq (1979–2003), whose brutal rule was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars against neighbouring countries....
  • Ṣaddām’s Fedayeen (militia organization, Iraq)
    ...effort to reestablish Arab hegemony in historic Palestine. In the mid-1990s the name was adopted by a militia organization attached to Iraq’s leader Ṣaddām Ḥussein; members of Fedayeen Ṣaddām (Fidāʾī Ṣaddām) engaged in guerrilla operations against U.S. and British forces during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 20...
  • Ṣaḍḍarśana (Hindu philosophy)
    in Indian philosophy, any orthodox school of thought, defined as one that accepts the authority of the Vedas (sacred scriptures of ancient India); the superiority of the Brahmans (the class of priests), who are the expositors of the law (dharma); and a society made up of the four traditional classes (varna). The six orthodox philosophic systems are those of Sāṃkhya and Yoga, Ny...
  • Ṣaḍdarśanasmuccaya (work by Haribhadra)
    ...received a thorough education in the Sanskrit classics. On adopting the Jain faith, he entered a Shvetambara (“White-robed”) order of monks. Haribhadra is best known for his Shaddarshanasamuccaya, which deals with six philosophical systems of India, and his various summaries of Jain thought and practice. He also wrote on logic and yoga and contributed to Prakrit......
  • saddhā (Buddhism)
    in Buddhism, the initial acceptance of the Buddha’s teachings, prior to the acquisition of right understanding and right thought. Buddhism does not rely on supernatural authority or the word of the Buddha but claims rather that its teachings can all be experientially verified. The act of entering onto the Eightfold Path (the Buddhist system of spiritual progress) involves, however, a provi...
  • saddharma (Buddhism)
    ...the death of the Buddha is divisible into three ages: the age of the “true law” (Sanskrit saddharma, Japanese shōbō); the age of the “copied law” (Sanskrit pratirupadharma, Japanese ......
  • “Saddharma-Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra” (Buddhist text)
    (Sanskrit: “Sūtra of the Appearance of the Good Doctrine in Laṅkā”), distinctive and influential philosophical discourse in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition that is said to have been preached by the Buddha in the mythical city Laṅkā. Dating from perhaps the 4th century, although parts of it may be earlier, it is the chief canonical exp...
  • Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (Buddhist school)
    rationalist school of Buddhist thought that takes its name from the mountain in southeastern China where its founder and greatest exponent, Chih-i, lived and taught in the 6th century. The school was introduced into Japan in 806 by Saichō, known posthumously as Dengyō Daishi....
  • “Saddharmapundarika-sutra” (Buddhist text)
    (“Lotus of the Good Law [or True Doctrine] Sutra”), one of the earlier Mahāyāna Buddhist texts venerated as the quintessence of truth by the Japanese Tendai (Chinese T’ien-t’ai) and Nichiren sects. The Lotus Sutra is regarded by many others as a religious classic of great beauty and power and one of the most important and most popular works in the ...
  • saddhu (Hindu ascetic)
    in India, a religious ascetic or holy person. The class of sadhus includes renunciants of many types and faiths. They are sometimes designated by the term swami (Sanskrit svami, “master”), which refers especially to an ascetic who has been initiated into a specific religious order, such as the Ramakrishna Mission...
  • saddle (horsemanship)
    seat for a rider on the back of an animal, most commonly a horse or pony. Horses were long ridden bareback or with simple cloths or blankets, but the development of the leather saddle in the period from the 3rd century bc to the 1st century ad greatly improved the horse’s potential, especially for war, by making it easier for a rider to keep his seat on the movi...
  • saddle (violin family)
    ...to keep the strings pulling radially inward on its top edge. The lower end of the tailpiece is anchored by a loop of gut to an ebony button (the tailpin) set in a hole in the lower end block. The saddle takes the pull of the tailgut off the edge of the belly....
  • saddle block (pathology)
    Spinal anesthesia (sometimes called spinal block) is produced when a local anesthetic agent, such as lidocaine or bivucaine, sometimes mixed with a narcotic, is injected into the cerebrospinal fluid in the lumbar region of the spine. This technique allows the woman to be awake, while producing extensive numbing of the abdomen, legs, and feet. Because it is a single injection, its duration is......
  • saddle bronc-riding (rodeo event)
    rodeo event in which a cowboy tries to ride a bucking horse (bronco) for a specified time (usually 8 or 10 seconds). The horse is equipped with saddle, stirrups, and a rein that may be held with one hand only. The cowboy is disqualified if he falls, loses his stirrup or rein, winds the rein around his hand, or touches the horse or rein with his free hand. The cowboy is scored b...
  • saddle cheek chair (furniture)
    a tall-backed, heavily upholstered easy chair with armrests and wings, or lugs, projecting between the back and arms to protect against drafts. They first appeared in the late 17th century—when the wings were sometimes known as “cheeks”—and they have maintained their popularity through a series of revivals ever since. Often they form part of a set, or suite....
  • saddle fungus
    ...snow mushroom (Helvella gigas) is found at the edge of melting snow in some localities. Caution is advised for all Helvella species. H. infula has a dull yellow to bay-brown, saddle-shaped cap. It grows on rotten wood and rich soil from late summer to early fall and is poisonous to some people....
  • saddle oyster (bivalve)
    any of several marine invertebrates of the class Bivalvia belonging to the family Anomiidae. In most species of these oysterlike bivalves, one shell valve (i.e., half) is closely appressed to a rock surface and has a large hole in its wall through which a calcified byssus (tuft of horny threads) attaches to the rock and thus anchors the animal. The upper shell valve, though it is more conve...
  • Saddle Peak (mountain, India)
    The islands are a succession of dome-shaped hill ranges running parallel to each other from north to south. The highest peak is Saddle, rising 2,418 feet (737 metres) on North Andaman. Flat land is scarce and confined to a few valleys, such as the Bitampur and Diglipur. The islands are formed of Tertiary sandstone, limestone, and shale and are highly dissected. Their surface is covered with......
  • saddle point (mathematics)
    A “saddlepoint” in a two-person constant-sum game is the outcome that rational players would choose. (Its name derives from its being the minimum of a row that is also the maximum of a column in a payoff matrix—to be illustrated shortly—which corresponds to the shape of a saddle.) A saddlepoint always exists in games of perfect information but may or may not exist in......
  • saddle quern (tool)
    ancient device for grinding grain. The saddle quern, consisting simply of a flat stone bed and a rounded stone to be operated manually against it, dates from Neolithic times (before 5600 bc). The true quern, a heavy device worked by slave or animal power, appeared by Roman times. Cato the Elder describes a 2nd-century-bc rotary quern consisting of a concave lower stone...
  • saddle-billed stork (bird)
    The saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis), or saddlebill, is a colourful stork of tropical Africa. More than 120 cm (four feet) tall, it has exceptionally long, thin legs and neck. The slightly upturned bill is red, crossed by a broad black band surmounted in front of the eyes by a small yellow plate....
  • saddleback (bird)
    (Creadion, sometimes Philesturnus, carunculatus), rare songbird of the family Callaeidae (order Passeriformes), which survives on a few small islands off New Zealand. Its 25-centimetre (10-inch) body is black except for the reddish brown back (“saddle”), and it has yellow or orange wattles at the corners of the mouth....
  • saddleback (mammal)
    medium-sized, grayish earless seal possessing a black harp-shaped or saddle-shaped marking on its back. Harp seals are found on or near ice floes from the Kara Sea of Russia west to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. The harp seal is both the best-known and among the most abundant of all seal species. Worldwide, the total...
  • saddlebill (bird)
    The saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis), or saddlebill, is a colourful stork of tropical Africa. More than 120 cm (four feet) tall, it has exceptionally long, thin legs and neck. The slightly upturned bill is red, crossed by a broad black band surmounted in front of the eyes by a small yellow plate....
  • saddlepoint (mathematics)
    A “saddlepoint” in a two-person constant-sum game is the outcome that rational players would choose. (Its name derives from its being the minimum of a row that is also the maximum of a column in a payoff matrix—to be illustrated shortly—which corresponds to the shape of a saddle.) A saddlepoint always exists in games of perfect information but may or may not exist in......
  • Saddler (missile)
    ...the largest being the nine-megaton Titan II, in service from 1963 through 1987. The Soviet warheads often exceeded five megatons, with the largest being a 20- to 25-megaton warhead deployed on the SS-7 Saddler from 1961 to 1980 and a 25-megaton warhead on the SS-9 Scarp, deployed from 1967 to 1982. (For the development of nuclear weapons, see nuclear weapon.)...
  • Saddler, Joseph (American boxer)
    American professional boxer, world featherweight (126 pounds) champion in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Saddler’s rivalry with Willie Pep is considered one of the greatest of American pugilism. In style, the fighters were a study in contrast: Saddler was a powerful slugger, while Pep was a superb defensive boxer....
  • Saddler, Joseph (American performer)
    American group that was instrumental in the development of hip-hop music. The members were Grandmaster Flash (original name Joseph Saddler; b. Jan. 1, 1958), Cowboy (original name Keith Wiggins; b. Sept. 20,......
  • Saddler, Sandy (American boxer)
    American professional boxer, world featherweight (126 pounds) champion in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Saddler’s rivalry with Willie Pep is considered one of the greatest of American pugilism. In style, the fighters were a study in contrast: Saddler was a powerful slugger, while Pep was a superb defensive boxer....
  • Saddlers Company (British company)
    Among the earliest surviving examples of this art is the ballot box of the Saddlers Company. Information on the lacquer process seems first to have been published by the Italian Jesuit Martin Martinius (Novus Atlas Sinensis, 1655). John Stalker and George Parker’s Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing (London, 1688) was the first text with pattern......
  • Sadducee (Jewish sect)
    member of a Jewish priestly sect that flourished for about two centuries before the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in ad 70. Not much is known with certainty of the Sadducees’ origin and early history, but their name may be derived from that of Zadok, who was high priest in the time of kings David and Solomon. Ezekiel later selected this family as worthy of bein...
  • Sade (British singer)
    The year 2001 witnessed the reunion of a beloved pop icon and an adoring fan base as Nigerian-born British singer Sade emerged from an almost decade-long hiatus to embark on a world tour with new material from her latest album, Lovers Rock (2000). The singer renowned for her sensual voice and exotic looks had lapsed into silence after the release in 1992 of the wildly successful Love Del...
  • Sade, Donatien-Alphonse-François, Count de (French author)
    French nobleman whose perverse sexual preferences and erotic writings gave rise to the term sadism. His best-known work is the novel Justine (1791)....
  • Sade, Marquis de (French author)
    French nobleman whose perverse sexual preferences and erotic writings gave rise to the term sadism. His best-known work is the novel Justine (1791)....
  • Sadeddin, Hoca (Turkish historian)
    Turkish historian, the author of the renowned Tac üt-tevarih (“Crown of Histories”), which covers the period from the origins of the Ottoman Empire to the end of the reign of Selim I (1520)....
  • Sadeh, Pinḥas (Israeli author)
    Personal frustration and religious vision are the subjects of the novelist Pinḥas Sadeh. Yitzḥak Orpaz’s novels tend toward psychological exploration, particularly in the series beginning with Bayit le-adam eḥad (1975; “One Man’s House”). Yoram Kaniuk’s work examines the alienated Israeli, but Ha-Yehudi ha-aḥaron (1981; ...
  • Sadeler, Egidius II (Flemish engraver and painter)
    Flemish engraver, print dealer, and painter, most noted for his reproduction engravings of Renaissance and Mannerist paintings....
  • Sadeler, Gillis (Flemish engraver and painter)
    Flemish engraver, print dealer, and painter, most noted for his reproduction engravings of Renaissance and Mannerist paintings....
  • sadhaka (Hindu religious figure)
    Tantrists take for granted that all factors in the macrocosm and the microcosm are closely connected. The adept (sadhaka) has to perform the relevant rites on his own body, transforming its normal, chaotic state into a “cosmos.” The macrocosm is conceived as a complex system of powers that by means of ritual-psychological techniques can be......
  • sādhana (Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism)
    (“realization”), in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, spiritual exercise by which the practitioner evokes a divinity, identifying and absorbing it into himself—the primary form of meditation in the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet. Sadhana involves the body in mudras (sacred gestures), the voice in mantras (sacred utterances), and the mind in the vivid inner visualization of sacred desig...
  • sadhana (Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism)
    (“realization”), in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, spiritual exercise by which the practitioner evokes a divinity, identifying and absorbing it into himself—the primary form of meditation in the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet. Sadhana involves the body in mudras (sacred gestures), the voice in mantras (sacred utterances), and the mind in the vivid inner visualization of sacred desig...
  • Sādhanamālā (Tantric Buddhist text)
    ...of divinities. Detailed instructions on how the images are to be visualized and the appropriate mantra for each are contained in written sadhanas of most divinities. One such collection is the Sādhanamālā (Sanskrit: “Garland of Realization”), composed perhaps between the 5th and the 11th century. This collection of some 300 sadhanas includes those desig...
  • Sadharan Brahmo Samaj (Hinduism)
    ...both parties were well under age. He was thus violating his own reformist principles, and many of his followers rebelled, forming a third samāj, or “association,” the Sadharan (i.e., common) Brahmo Samaj, in 1878. The Sadharan Samaj gradually reverted to the teaching of the Upaniṣads and carried on the work of social reform. Although the......
  • Sadhji: An African Ballet (play by Nugent)
    “Shadows,” Nugent’s first published poem, was anthologized in Countee Cullen’s 1927 work Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets. A one-act musical, “Sadhji: An African Ballet” (based on his earlier short story of the same name), was published in Plays of Negro Life: A Source-book of Native American Drama (1927) and produced in 19...
  • sadhu (Hindu ascetic)
    in India, a religious ascetic or holy person. The class of sadhus includes renunciants of many types and faiths. They are sometimes designated by the term swami (Sanskrit svami, “master”), which refers especially to an ascetic who has been initiated into a specific religious order, such as the Ramakrishna Mission...
  • sadhu bhasa (language)
    eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Two Bengali dialects are significant: Sādhu-Bhāsā, the literary language, which has a vocabulary with many Sanskrit words and is unintelligible to the uneducated; and Calit-Bhāsā, the colloquial speech, which has many contracted forms. Calit-Bhāsā is spoken by the....
  • sādhumatī (Buddhism)
    ...(“turning toward” both transmigration and nirvana), (7) dūraṅgamā (“far-going”), (8) acalā (“immovable”), (9) sādhumatī (“good-minded”), and (10) dharmameghā (showered with “clouds of dharma,” or universal truth)....
  • Saʿdī (Persian poet)
    Persian poet, one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature....
  • Saʿdī dynasty (Moroccan dynasty)
    ...to the Moroccan borders. This upset the balance of trans-Saharan trade, as Ghana’s attempt to control the Ṣanhājah had done, and in 1591 finally provoked effective retaliation from the Saʿdī dynasty of Morocco. An expeditionary force of some 4,000 soldiers was sent across the Sahara and took the important cities of Gao, Timbuktu, and Jenne. The Moroccans had f...
  • Sadie, Stanley (British musicologist)
    British musicologist (b. Oct. 30, 1930, London, Eng.—d. March 21, 2005, Cossington, Somerset, Eng.), was the editor of the 20-volume The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) and of a second, expanded edition published in 2001. He also edited several spinoffs, including The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992). After receiving his education at the University of Ca...
  • Ṣadiq, Muḥammad aṣ- (ruler of Tunisia)
    The final collapse of the Tunisian beylik came during the reign of Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq (1859–82). Though sympathetic to the need for reforms, Muḥammad was too weak either to control his own government or to keep the European powers at bay. He did, in 1861, proclaim the first constitution (......
  • sadism (psychosexual disorder)
    psychosexual disorder in which sexual urges are gratified by the infliction of pain on another person. The term was coined by the late 19th-century German psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in reference to the Marquis de Sade, an 18th-century French nobleman who chronicled his own such practices. Sadism is often linked to masoch...
  • Sadist, The (work by Berg)
    ...trial became a national event, attracting many academic observers as well as the merely curious. He candidly recounted details of his crimes to the celebrated psychologist Karl Berg, whose The Sadist (1932) became a classic of criminological literature. According to Berg, Kürten was a sexual psychopath and his crimes represented a perfect example of ......
  • Saʿdīyah (Ṣūfī order)
    The Syrian branch of the order, the Saʿdīyah (or Jibāwīyah), was given its form by Saʿd ad-Dīn al-Jibāwī in Damascus sometime in the 14th century. Among the Saʿdīyah, ecstasy was induced by physical motion—whirling around on the right heel—and the sheikh, or head of the order, rode on horseback over the prone bodie...
  • ṣaḍjagrāma (Indian music)
    The nonconsonance arises from variances of one śruti from the fundamental consonances of the fourth and the fifth—a variance of about a quarter tone. In the ṣaḍjagrāma scale the interval ṛi-pa (E- to A) contains 10 śrutis; i.e., one more than the nine of the consonant fourth. Comparably, in the......
  • Sadji, Abdoulaye (Senegalese author)
    Senegalese writer and teacher who was one of the founders of African prose fiction in French. Sadji was the son of a marabout (Muslim holy man) and attended Qurʾānic school before entering the colonial school system. He was graduated from the William Ponty teacher training college in 1929 and took a bachelor’s degree three years later....
  • Sadki Na grades (Thai tenure rules)
    (1454), rules of land tenure established in Thailand by King Trailok of Ayutthaya (1448–88) to regulate the amount of land a man could own....
  • Sadko (work by Rimsky-Korsakov)
    ...usually fall into groups of 3 + 2, as in “Mars” from Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets and in the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Rimsky-Korsakov, in Sadko, and Stravinsky, in Le Sacre du printemps, use 11 as a unit. Ravel’s piano trio opens with a signature of 88 with the internal ...
  • Sadko (Soviet ship)
    ...Zemlya. It gave a further stimulus to developing the sea route, and icebreaker operations to study sea and ice became annual. Particularly worth noting are three cruises of the Sadko, which went farther north than most; in 1935 and 1936 the last unexplored areas in the northern Kara Sea were examined and the little Ushakova Island discovered, and in 1937 the ship....
  • Sadler Commission (India)
    In 1917 the government appointed the Sadler Commission to inquire into the “conditions and prospects of the University of Calcutta,” an inquiry that was in reality nationwide in scope. Covering a wide field, the commission recommended the formation of a board with full powers to control secondary and intermediate education, the institution of intermediate colleges with two-year......
  • Sadler, Michael Thomas (British politician)
    radical politician, philanthropic businessman, and leader of the factory reform movement in England, who was a forerunner of the reformers from the working class whose activities (from the late 1830s) became known as Chartism....
  • Sadler, Sir James (British colonial commissioner)
    Early in the 20th century Sir James Hayes Sadler, who succeeded Johnston as commissioner, concluded that the country was unlikely to prove attractive to European settlers. Sadler’s own successor, Sir Hesketh Bell, announced that he wished to develop Uganda as an African state. In this he was opposed by a number of his more senior officials and in particular by the chief justice, William Mor...
  • Sadler, Sir Michael Ernest (English educator)
    world-renowned authority on secondary education and a champion of the English public school system....
  • Sadler’s Birthday (novel by Tremain)
    ...English from the University of East Anglia in 1967, Tremain worked for the British Printing Corporation and wrote several nonfiction works about woman suffrage before publishing her first novel, Sadler’s Birthday (1976). This book, which presents the reminiscences of an elderly butler who lives alone in the house he has inherited from his former employers, established Tremain...
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