Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Bharat Ratna
2nd President of India
In office 14 May 1962 – 13 May 1967
Prime Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting) Lal Bahadur Shastri Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting) Indira Gandhi
Vice President	Zakir Hussain
Preceded by	Rajendra Prasad
Succeeded by	Zakir Hussain
Vice-President of India
In office 13 May 1952 – 12 May 1962
President	Rajendra Prasad
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Zakir Hussain
Personal details
Born	5 September 1888 Thiruttani, Madras Presidency,British India (now in Tamil Nadu, India)
Died	17 April 1975 (aged 86) Madras, Tamil Nadu, India (now Chennai)
Nationality	Indian
Political party	Independent
Spouse(s)	Sivakamu, Lady Radhakrishnan
Children	Five daughters One son
Alma mater	Voorhees College University of Madras
Profession	Philosopher professor
Religion	Hinduism

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Telugu: సర్వేపల్లి రాధాకృష్ణయ్య Sarvēpalli Rādhākr̥ṣṇayya  listen (help·info), 5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman^[1] who was the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.^{[web 1]}

One of India's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy,^{[2][web 2]} his academic appointments included the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921–1932) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford (1936–1952).

His philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding.^{[web 2]} He defended Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism",^[3] contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity.^[4] He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.^[5]

Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday is celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September.^{[web 3]}

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early life and education
  • 1.2 Education
  • 1.3 Marriage
  • 1.4 Academic career
  • 1.5 Political career
  • 1.6 Teachers' Day
  • 1.7 Charity
• 2 Philosophy
  • 2.1 Advaita Vedanta
  • 2.2 Intuition and religious experience
  • 2.3 Classification of religions
• 3 Influence
  • 3.1 Appraisal
  • 3.2 Criticism and context
    • 3.2.1 Perennialism
    • 3.2.2 Universalism, communalism and Hindu nationalism
    • 3.2.3 Post-colonialism
• 4 Awards and honours
• 5 Quotes
• 6 Bibliography
  • 6.1 Works by Radhakrishnan
  • 6.2 Biographies and monographs on Radhakrishnan
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 References
• 10 Sources
  • 10.1 Published sources
  • 10.2 Web-sources
• 11 External links

Biography[edit]

Early life and education[edit]

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was born in a Telugu Brahmin family in a village near Thiruttani India, in Tamil Nadu near the border of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu states. His father's name was Sarvepalli Veeraswami^{[web 4]} and his mother's was Sitamma.^{[web 4]} His early years were spent in Thiruttani and Tirupati. His father was a subordinate revenue official in the service of a local zamindar (landlord). His primary education was at Primary Board High School at Thiruttani. In 1896 he moved to the Hermansburg Evangelical Lutheran Mission School in Tirupati.^[6]

Wikipedia article is at the bottom

One of the commonest questions which the readers of this archive ask is: Who discovered zero? Why then have we not written an article on zero as one of the first in the archive? The reason is basically because of the difficulty of answering the question in a satisfactory form. If someone had come up with the concept of zero which everyone then saw as a brilliant innovation to enter mathematics from that time on, the question would have a satisfactory answer even if we did not know which genius invented it. The historical record, however, shows quite a different path towards the concept. Zero makes shadowy appearances only to vanish again almost as if mathematicians were searching for it yet did not recognise its fundamental significance even when they saw it.

The first thing to say about zero is that there are two uses of zero which are both extremely important but are somewhat different. One use is as an empty place indicator in our place-value number system. Hence in a number like 2106 the zero is used so that the positions of the 2 and 1 are correct. Clearly 216 means something quite different. The second use of zero is as a number itself in the form we use it as 0. There are also different aspects of zero within these two uses, namely the concept, the notation, and the name. (Our name "zero" derives ultimately from the Arabic sifr which also gives us the word "cipher".)

Neither of the above uses has an easily described history. It just did not happen that someone invented the ideas, and then everyone started to use them. Also it is fair to say that the number zero is far from an intuitive concept. Mathematical problems started as 'real' problems rather than abstract problems. Numbers in early historical times were thought of much more concretely than the abstract concepts which are our numbers today. There are giant mental leaps from 5 horses to 5 "things" and then to the abstract idea of "five". If ancient peoples solved a problem about how many horses a farmer needed then the problem was not going to have 0 or -23 as an answer.

One might think that once a place-value number system came into existence then the 0 as an empty place indicator is a necessary idea, yet the Babylonians had a place-value number system without this feature for over 1000 years. Moreover there is absolutely no evidence that the Babylonians felt that there was any problem with the ambiguity which existed. Remarkably, original texts survive from the era of Babylonian mathematics. The Babylonians wrote on tablets of unbaked clay, using cuneiform writing. The symbols were pressed into soft clay tablets with the slanted edge of a stylus and so had a wedge-shaped appearance (and hence the name cuneiform). Many tablets from around 1700 BC survive and we can read the original texts. Of course their notation for numbers was quite different from ours (and not based on 10 but on 60) but to translate into our notation they would not distinguish between 2106 and 216 (the context would have to show which was intended). It was not until around 400 BC that the Babylonians put two wedge symbols into the place where we would put zero to indicate which was meant, 216 or 21 '' 6.

The two wedges were not the only notation used, however, and on a tablet found at Kish, an ancient Mesopotamian city located east of Babylon in what is today south-central Iraq, a different notation is used. This tablet, thought to date from around 700 BC, uses three hooks to denote an empty place in the positional notation. Other tablets dated from around the same time use a single hook for an empty place. There is one common feature to this use of different marks to denote an empty position. This is the fact that it never occured at the end of the digits but always between two digits. So although we find 21 '' 6 we never find 216 ''. One has to assume that the older feeling that the context was sufficient to indicate which was intended still applied in these cases.

If this reference to context appears silly then it is worth noting that we still use context to interpret numbers today. If I take a bus to a nearby town and ask what the fare is then I know that the answer "It's three fifty" means three pounds fifty pence. Yet if the same answer is given to the question about the cost of a flight from Edinburgh to New York then I know that three hundred and fifty pounds is what is intended.

Yājñavalkya (Devanagari: याज्ञवल्क्य) of Videha (fl. c. 7th century BCE^[3]) was a sage and philosopher of Vedic India. He was one of the first philosophers in recorded history, alongside Uddalaka Aruni.^[4] In the court of King Janaka of Mithila, he was renowned for his expertise in Vedic ritual and his unrivaled talent in theological debate. He expounded a doctrine of neti neti to describe theuniversal Self or Ātman. He later became a wandering ascetic. His teachings are recorded in the Shatapatha Brahmana and theBrihadaranyaka Upanishad.^[5]

He is traditionally credited with the authorship of the Shatapatha Brahmana (including the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad), besides the Yoga Yajnavalkya and the Yājñavalkya Smṛti.^[6] He is also a major figure in the Upanishads.

Traditional accountsEdit

"Goddess Sarasvati appears before Yajnavalkya" (early 20th-century devotional illustration)

According to traditional accounts, Yājñavalkya was the son of Devarāta and was the pupil of sage Vaisampayana .^[6] Once, Vaisampayana got angry with Yājñavalkya as the latter argued too much to separate some latter additions to Yajurveda in being abler than other students. The angry teacher asked his pupil Yājñavalkya to give back all the knowledge of Yajurveda that he had taught him.^[6]

As per the demands of his Guru, Yājñavalkya vomited all the knowledge that he acquired from his teacher in form of digested food. Other disciples of Vaisampayana took the form ofpartridge birds and consumed the digested knowledge (a metaphor for knowledge in its simplified form without the complexities of the whole but the simplicity of parts) because it was knowledge and they were very eager to receive the same.

Aruni or Uddalaka or Uddalaka Aruni (fl. c. 7th century BCE^[1]) was a philosopher of Vedic India, whose teachings are recorded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishadand Chandogya Upanishad. One of the first philosophers in recorded history, he taught that everything in the universe (including all living things) is made of three elements: heat (or light), water, and food (or plants), and furthermore that all of these were manifestations of the universal Self or Ātman.^[2] It has been suggested that his teachings contain the seeds of Indian atomism, because of his belief that "particles too small to be seen mass together into the substances and objects of experience".^[3]

Aruni hailed from the country of Panchala and was known as Aruni of Panchala.^{[citation needed]} His son was Svetaketu.^[4]

Literary Accounts[edit]

Several other scriptures have references to the sage Uddalaka Aruni.Aruni was one among the disciples of sage Ayodha Dhaumya, along with Upamanyu and another named 'Veda' (Mbh 1.3). As per Mahabharata (MBh 1.3), on one rainy night Aruni's preceptor Dhaumya Muni asked him to supervise water flowing through a certain field. Aruni went there and found that water had breached the field and was moving away from its designated path. Aruni tried to stop water by all means but was unsuccessful. Left with no other way, Aruni lay down on the breach and prevented the water flow using his body. Due to this Aruni did not return to the hermitage in the night. Later in the morning, Dhaumya Muni came to the spot in search of Aruni with other disciples. Upon seeing the dedication and sincerity of Aruni, Dhaumya was very pleased upon Aruni and gave him the title Uddalaka. Later Aruni became very famous under the name Uddalaka Aruni.

A wide-ranging list of philosophers from the Western traditions of philosophy. Included are not only philosophers (Socrates, Plato), but also those who have had a marked importance upon the philosophy of the day.

Western and Middle Eastern philosophers[edit]

600-500 BCE[edit]

• Thales of Miletus (c. 624 – 546 BCE). Of the Milesian school. Believed that all was made of water.
• Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BCE). Of the Milesian school. Famous for the concept of Apeiron, or "the boundless".
• Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 585 – 525 BCE). Of the Milesian school. Believed that all was made of air.
• Pythagoras of Samos (c. 580 – c. 500 BCE). Of the Ionian School. Believed the deepest reality to be composed of numbers, also believed that souls are immortal.
• Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570 – 480 BCE). Sometimes associated with the Eleatic school. Politically anti-militant, and epistemically skeptical.

500-400 BCE[edit]

• Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE). Of the Ionians. Emphasized the mutability of the world, which he understood to be analogous to fire.
• Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 – 450 BCE). Of the Eleatics. Believed that change is impossible.
• Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c. 500 – 428 BCE). Of the Ionians. Atomist.
• Empedocles (492-432 BCE). Eclectic cosmogonist.
• Protagoras of Abdera (c. 481 – 420 BCE). Sophist. Early advocate of relativism.
• Hippias (middle of the 5th century BCE). Sophist.
• Gorgias. (c. 483 – 375 BCE). Sophist.
• Socrates of Athens (c. 470 – 399 BCE). Emphasized virtue ethics. In epistemology, understood dialectic to be central to the pursuit of truth.
• Leucippus of Miletus (First half of 5th century BCE). Atomist, Determinist.
• Democritus of Abdera (c. 450 – 370 BCE). Atomist.
• Archelaus. A pupil of Anaxagoras.
• Melissus of Samos. Eleatic.
• Cratylus.
• Ion of Chios.
• Echecrates.
• Timaeus of Locri.