YANTRA. Geometrical diagrams known as yantras form a very special class of religious symbols in Hinduism. Their forms and functions within the tradition vary according to their uses. The most important ones are those that serve as supports...

YAO AND SHUN were legendary sage-rulers of antiquity in China. According to traditional Chinese historiography, Tang Yao (Yao of the Tang clan or state; personal name, Fang Xun) or Tang Dao ruled from 2356 to 2256 BCE. A ruler of great vir...

Abu Yusuf Yakub al-Mansur (reigned 1184-1199) was the third caliph of the Almohad dynasty and the victor against the Spanish Christians at the battle of Alarcos. Abu Yusuf served as vizier of the Almohad empire during the reign of his fath...

1179-1229 Syrian Geographer, Historian, and Ethnographer Yaqut is known primarily for two works, Kitab mu'jam al-budan and Mu'jam al-udaba'. The former is a summation of historical, geographical, and ethnographic infor...

Mary Alexander Yard (born ca. 1912) was a feminist, a political organizer, and a social activist. She served as president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), 1987-1991. Mary Alexander Yard, who preferred to be called Molly, was b...

Yasser Arafat (born 1929) was elected chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1969. Though originally an advocate of all-out guerrilla war, from 1974 on he and the PLO sometimes seemed to be seeking a negotiated resolu...

Minoru Yasui (1917-1987) was a lawyer who fought for the civil rights of Japanese Americans during World War II, most notably he argued about the unconstitutionality of the internment camps. During the early 1900s, many Japanese people mov...

Yasukuni Shrine is a major Shinto shrine in Japan honoring the dead of the Imperial Japanese Army from the Sino-Japanese War (1899) to World War II. Established in 1869 in Kudanshita in Tokyo, the shrine encompasses gardens, a shrine, and ...

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) was a distinguished Japanese novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature for exemplifying in his writings the Japanese mind. Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka on June 11, 1899, into a cultured family, his...

As a cosmopolitan man of letters, Inoue Yasushi established a reputation as a poet, journalist, and fiction writer, although he is best known as a novelist. He was a major introducer and interpreter of the Silk Road phenomenon in Japan, an...

J. Michael Yates is one of Canada's most prolific and most determinedly experimental writers. He has written in many forms and has been active in publishing, broadcasting, editing, photography, reviewing, and translation. He has traveled w...

Peyo Yavorov is generally considered one of the finest poetic talents of the turn of the century in Bulgaria. Although a prominent member of the Misul group, an intellectual circle of writers and thinkers gathered about Krustyo Krustev's j...

You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out....

Contagious tropical disease, caused by a variant of the spirochete that causes syphilis. Yaws spreads mainly by discharge from skin sores, not sexual activity. It is common in children, who usually become immune. In the first stage, a skin...

YAZATAS. The term yazata occurs in the Avesta, the collection of sacred books of Zoroastrianism, as an attribute or designation of divine beings. From this term is derived the Middle Persian yazd ("god"; pl., yazdān). ...

Potential problem in computers and computer networks at the beginning of the year 2000. Until the 1990s, most computer programs used only the last two digits to designate the year, the first two digits being fixed at 19. As the year 2000 a...

Year of the Griffin is a 2000 novel by British children's author Diana Wynne Jones. It is the sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm and is more centered around Wizard Derk's daughter, the griffin Elda, and her time at the University of Magic....

Set of symbols or characters that represent language's sounds in writing. Each character usually represents a simple vowel, a diphthong (two vowels), or one or two consonants. A writing system in which one character represents a whole syll...

Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm. It may be distinguished from prose by its compressio...

Prior to learning mathematics, preschoolers and kindergarten students learn pre-math skills. They include learning to count numbers, learning the proper sequencing of numbers (1 comes before 2 and so on), learning to determine which shapes ...

Jody, in The Yearling, learns that maturity means accepting difficult choices and facing reality through losing his best friend, his pet fawn, and running away from home. The first challenge Jody Baxter faced was the death of his best fri...