Enlightenment: Did you mean...?

Kukai or Kobo Daishi (774-835 CE) was a scholar, poet, and monk who founded Shingon Buddhism in Japan. The monk became the country's most important Buddhist saint and has been credited with all manner of minor...

The Declaration of Independence is the foundational document of the United States of America. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, it explains why the Thirteen Colonies decided to separate from Great Britain during...

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen) is a human rights document adopted in the early stages of the French Revolution (1789-1799...

The dates of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, have been a concern of, primarily, Western scholars for well over 100 years now owing to the particularly Western need for precise dating of historical persons and events. The...

Throughout ancient Korea's history Buddhist monks were a particularly important element of state and religious affairs. From the 4th century CE onwards, in the Three Kingdoms period, they were members of a select...

Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world. The name comes from jiva (soul or life force but, capitalized, is also given as Spiritual Conqueror) as it maintains that all living things possess an immortal soul which has always...

Maria Theresa (1717-1780) was the ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy, a sprawling empire that included Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and other territories spread out across Italy, the Netherlands, and Central Europe...

The Monroe Doctrine, a significant piece of United States foreign policy, was first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, and it essentially warns the powers of Europe from meddling...

A stupa (literally “heap” or “pile”) is a reliquary, a shrine containing the remains of a holy or sainted person and/or artifacts (relics) associated with them, originating in India prior to the 5th century BCE as tombs of holy men and...

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (l. 1757-1834), more commonly known in the United States as simply Lafayette, was a French aristocrat, military officer, and politician. He...