VAIKHĀNASAS. The chief "priests" (arcakas) in more than half the Viṣṇu temples in the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Karnataka—including the renowned Hindu pilgrimage center,...

‘inner controller’, an expression for brahman immanent to all beings as ātman. The expression is later used also in monistic religious teachings to indicate the presence of God within (in the hearts of men). It became the basis for the...

VIṢṆU. In the age of the Ṛgveda, India's oldest religious document (c. 1200–1000 BCE), Viṣṇu must already have been a more important divine figure than it would appear from his comparatively infrequent...

Vishnu (IAST viṣṇu, Devanagari विष्णु), (honorific: Sri Vishnu) also known as Narayana is the Supreme Being (i.e., God ) or Ultimate Reality for Vaishnavas and a manifestation of Brahman in the Advaita or Smarta traditions of Hinduism....

The Death of Vishnu by Manli Suri (Bloomsbury, ISBN 0 7475 5270 3) Beneath the garish and unpromising Bollywood poster on the cover of this novel is a debut of real ambition and accomplishment. Manil Suri, a Mumbai-born mathematics professor, has...

Manil Suri. The Death of Vishnu New York. Norton. 2001. 295 pages $24.95. ISBN 0-393-05042-4 EVEN BEFORE ITS publication, Mahil Suri's novel The Death of Vishnu was considered a literary feat. It is for this reason that Time and Newsweek called it...

A Bangladeshi anti-crime agency arrested eight suspects Thursday following the theft of two rare 1,500-year-old statues that were headed to France for an exhibition, an official said.Col. Gulzar Uddin Ahmed of the Rapid Action Battalion said authorities were using information given by the suspects to...

A Hindu religious activist has filed a complaint in a western Indian court saying that Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar's Hindu wedding made a "mockery of Hindu customs," a news report said Wednesday.The 41-year-old British actress-model and Nayar, a 42-year-old Indian businessman, were married in...