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....

Yaws is a chronic illness that first affects the skin, and later the bones. Yaws tends to strike children, particularly between the ages of two and five. It is common in areas where poverty and overcrowding interfere with good hygiene. It ...

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). ...

The millennium bug refers to the existence in many computer software packages of a six-digit date rather than an eight-digit date. Computers speak the language of mathematics. Every question posed to a computer program is answered either &...

The narrative structure of the book parallels the mental re-living of a tragic event that is common to many experiences of grief. The outline of the story remains constant: Didion and her husband were returning home after a visit to their d...

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a 2001 international bestselling historical fiction novel by Geraldine Brooks. It was chosen as both a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book....

But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man. There is a need to find and sing our own song...

Year-Round School Refers to a reorganization of the traditional 180-day school calendar so that children attend school in every season of the year. In year-round schools, children attend all year with more frequent, shorter breaks taking t...

Of all the plebeian female poets of the eighteenth century, Ann Yearsley, the "milkwoman of Bristol," most repays detailed historical study. Her sizable oeuvre, competence across genres, and varied contemporary critical reception give her ...

Yeast artificial chromosomes (YAC) are cloning vectors. Regular cloning vectors have size limits for their DNA inserts. Plasmids can take up to 10 kilobases of DNA. Bacteriophages take 15 kilobases of DNA. Cosmids can take up to 50 kilobas...