Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) avatara ăvˌətârə [key] [Skt.,=descent], incarnations of Hindu gods, especially Vishnu. The doctrine of avatara first occurs in the Bhagavad-Gita, where Krishna declares: “For the preservation o...

(Encyclopedia) Chassériau, Théodore tāōdôrˈ shäsārēōˈ [key], 1819–56, French painter, b. Santo Domingo. He entered Ingres's studio at the age of 12; five years later he gained immediate recognition with...

(Encyclopedia) Villanovan culture, the culture of a people of N Italy in the early Iron Age (c.1100–700 b.c.). The term is derived from the town of Villanova, near Bologna, where the first excavations of a Villano...

(Encyclopedia) Riggs, Bobby (Robert Larimore Riggs), 1918–95, U.S. tennis player, b. Los Angeles. Playing tennis from the age of 11, Riggs won several tournaments in the 1930s and helped the U.S. team win the Davi...

(Encyclopedia) Mílos mēˈlō, mīˈ– [key], mountainous island (1991 pop. 4,390), 58 sq mi (150 sq km), SE Greece, in the Aegean Sea; one of the Cyclades. The main town is Mílos, formerly known as Plaka. The is...

(Encyclopedia) Aryan ârˈēən [key], [Sanskrit,=noble], term formerly used to designate the Indo-European race or language family or its Indo-Iranian subgroup. Originally a group of nomadic tribes, the Aryans were...

(Encyclopedia) hoe, usually a flat blade, variously shaped, set in a long wooden handle and used primarily for weeding and for loosening the soil. It was the first distinctly agricultural implement. The earliest hoe...

(Encyclopedia) Nono, Luigi lo͞oēˈjē nôˈnō [key], 1924–90, Italian composer, b. Venice. Nono studied with Hermann Scherchen and Bruno Maderna. He adopted the twelve-tone method of composition (see serial mus...

(Encyclopedia) Pevsner, Antoine äNtwänˈ pyĕvzˈnər [key], 1886–1962, Russian sculptor and painter. He was influenced by cubism while in Paris in 1911 and 1913. During World War I he was in Norway with his bro...

(Encyclopedia) Moore, Henry, 1898–1986, English sculptor. Moore's early sculpture was angular and rough, strongly influenced by pre-Columbian art. About 1928 he evolved a more personal style which has gained him a...