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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nana Farnavis

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​NANA FARNAVIS (1741–1800), the great Mahratta minister at Poona at the end of the 18th century. His real name was Balaji Janardhan Bhanu; but, like many other Mahrattas, he was always known by a kind of nickname. Nana properly means a maternal grandfather; Farnavis is the official title of the finance minister, derived from fard＝an account and navis＝a writer. He was born at Satara on the 4th of May 1741, and was the son of a Chitpavan Brahman, of the same class as the Peshwa, who held the hereditary office of Farnavis. He escaped from the fatal battle of Panipat in 1761; and from about 1774 was the leading personage in directing the affairs of the Mahratta confederacy, though never a soldier. This was the period when Peshwas rapidly succeeded one another, and there was more than one disputed succession. It was the policy of Nana Farnavis to hold together the confederacy against both internal dissensions and the growing power of the British. He died at Poona on the 13th of March 1800, just before the Peshwa placed himself in the hands of the British and thus broke up the Mahratta confederacy. In an extant letter to the Peshwa, the Marquess Wellesley thus describes him: “The able minister of your state, whose upright principles and honourable views and whose zeal for the welfare and prosperity both of the dominions of his own immediate superiors and of other powers were so justly celebrated.”
See Captain A. Macdonald, Memoir of Nana Furnuwees (Bombay, 1851).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pekin

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​PEKIN, a city and the county-seat of Tazewell county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Illinois river, in the central part of the state, about 11 m. S. of Peoria, and about 56 m. N. of Springfield. Pop (1910), 9897. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, Peoria & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Peoria Railway Terminal Company, the Peoria ​& Pekin Union and (for freight between Peoria and Pekin) the Illinois Valley Belt railways. Situated in a rich agricultural region and in the Illinois coalfields, Pekin is a shipping point and grain market of considerable importance, and has various manufactures. The value of the factory products in 1905 was $1,121,130. Pekin was first settled about 1830, was incorporated in 1839, and re-incorporated in 1874.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pelagia, St

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​PELAGIA, ST. An Antiochene saint of this name, a virgin of fifteen years, who chose death by a leap from the housetop rather than dishonour, is mentioned by Ambrose (De virg. iii. 7, 33, Ep. xxxvii. ad Simplic.), and is the subject of two sermons by Chrysostom. Her festival was celebrated on the 8th of October (Wright’s Syriac Martyrology). In the Greek synaxaria the same day is assigned to two other saints of the name of Pelagia—one, also of Antioch, and sometimes called Margarito and also “the sinner”; the other, known as Pelagia of Tarsus, in Cilicia. The legend of the former of these two is famous. She was a celebrated dancer and courtesan, who, in the full flower of her beauty and guilty sovereignty over the youth of Antioch, was suddenly converted by the influence of the holy bishop Nonnus, whom she had heard preaching in front of a church which she was passing with her gay train of attendants and admirers. Seeking out Nonnus, she overcame his canonical scruples by her tears of genuine penitence, was baptized, and, disguising herself in the garb of a male penitent, retired to a grotto on the Mount of Olives, where she died after three years of strict penance. This story seems to combine with the name of the older Pelagia some traits from an actual history referred to by Chrysostom (Hom. in Matth. lxvii. 3). In associating St Pelagia with St Marina, St Margaret (q.v.), and others, of whom either the name or the legend recalls Pelagia, Hermann Usener has endeavoured to show by a series of subtle deductions that this saint is only a Christian travesty of Aphrodite. But there is no doubt of the existence of the first Pelagia of Antioch, the Pelagia of Ambrose and Chrysostom. The legends which have subsequently become connected with her name are the result of a very common development in literary history.
See Acta sanctorum, October, iv. 248 seq.; H. Usener. Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (Bonn, 1879); H. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints (London, 1907), pp. 197–205. (H. De.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peleus

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​PELEUS, in Greek legend, king of the Myrmidones of Phthia in Thessaly, son of Aeacus, king of Aegina, and brother (or ​intimate friend) of Telamon. The two brothers, jealous of the athletic prowess of their step-brother Phocus, slew him; but the crime was discovered, and Peleus and Telamon were banished. Peleus took refuge in Phthia with his uncle Eurytion, who purified him from the guilt of murder, and gave him his daughter Antigone to wife, and a third of the kingdom as her dowry. Having accidentally killed his father-in-law at the Calydonian boar-hunt, Peleus was again obliged to flee, this time to Iolcus, where he was purified by Acastus. The most famous event in the life of Peleus was his marriage with the sea-goddess Thetis, by whom he became the father of Achilles. The story ran that both Zeus and Poseidon had sought her hand, but, Themis (or Prometheus or Proteus) having warned the former that a son of Thetis by Zeus would prove mightier than his father, the gods decided to marry her to Peleus. Thetis, to escape a distasteful union, changed herself into various forms, but at last Peleus, by the instructions of Chiron, seized and held her fast till she resumed her original shape, and was unable to offer further resistance. The wedding (described in the fine Epithalamium of Catullus) took place in Chiron’s cave on Mt Pelion. Peleus survived both his son Achilles and his grandson Neoptolemus, and was carried away by Thetis to dwell for ever among the Nereids.
See Apollodorus iii. 12, 13; Ovid, Metam. xi; Pindar, Isthmia, viii 70, Nemea, iv. 101; Catullus, lxiv.; schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 816; Euripides, Andromache, 1242–1260.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pelew Islands

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​PELEW ISLANDS (Ger. Palauinseln, also Palao), a group of twenty-six islands in the western Pacific Ocean, between 2° 35′ and 9° N., and 130° 4′ and 134° 40′ E., belonging to Germany. They lie within a coral barrier reef, and in the south the islands are of coral, but in the north of volcanic rocks. They are well wooded, the climate is healthy, and the water-supply good. A few rats and bats represent the indigenous mammals, but the sea is rich in fish and molluscs; and Dr Otto Finsch (Journ. des Museum Godeffroy, 1875) enumerated 56 species of birds, of which 12 are peculiar to the group. The total area is 175 sq. m., the largest islands being Babeltop (Babelthuap, Baobeltaob and other variants), Uruktapi (Urukthopel), Korror, Nyaur, Peleliu and Eilmalk (Irakong). The population is about 3100. The natives are Micronesians, and are darker and shorter than their kinsmen, the Caroline Islanders. They usually have the frizzly hair of the Melanesians, and paint their bodies in brilliant colours, especially yellow. The men vary in height from 5 ft. to 5 ft. 5 in., the women from 4 ft. 9 to 5 ft. 2 in. The skull shows a strong tendency to brachycephalism. Two curious customs may be noted—the institution of an honourable order bestowed by the king, called klilt; and a species of mutual aid society, sometimes confined to women, and possessing considerable political influence There are five kinds of currency in the islands, consisting of beads of glass and enamel, to which a supernatural origin is ascribed.
The islands were sighted in 1543 by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, who named them the Arrecifos. The origin of the name Islas Palaos is doubtful. The islands were bought by Germany from Spain in 1899, and are administered together with the western Carolines, Yap being the administrative centre.
See K. Semper, Die Palau-Inseln (Leipzig, 1873); J. S. Kubary, Die sozialen Einrichtungen der Palauer (Berlin, 1885); A. A. Marche, Luçon et Palouan (Paris, 1887).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peisander

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​PEISANDER, of Camirus in Rhodes, Greek epic poet, supposed to have flourished about 640 B.C. He was the author of a Heracleia, in which he introduced a new conception of the hero, the lion’s skin and club taking the place of the older Homeric equipment. He is also said to have fixed the number of the “labours of Hercules” at twelve. The work, which according to Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, vi. ch. 2) was simply a plagiarism from an unknown Pisinus of Lindus, enjoyed so high a reputation that the Alexandrian critics admitted the author to the epic canon. From an epigram (20) of Theocritus we learn that a statue was erected in honour of Peisander by his countrymen. He is to be distinguished from Peisander of Laranda in Lycia, who lived during the reign of Alexander Severus (A.D. 222–235), and wrote a poem on the mixed marriages of gods and mortals, after the manner of the Eoiai of Hesiod.
See fragments in G. Kinkel, Epicorum graecorum fragmenta (1878); also F. G. Welcker, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. (1844), on the twelve labours of Hercules in Peisander.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lady

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​LADY (O. Eng. hlaéfdige, Mid. Eng. láfdi, lāvedi; the first part of the word is hláf, loaf, bread, as in the corresponding hláford, lord; the second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, to knead, seen also in “dough”; the sense development from bread-kneader, bread-maker, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically, may be illustrated by that of “lord”), a term of which the main applications are two, (1) as the correlative of “lord” (q.v.) in certain of the usages of that word, (2) as the correlative of “gentleman” (q.v.). The primary meaning of mistress of a household is, if not obsolete, in present usage only a vulgarism. The special use of the word as a title of the Virgin Mary, usually “Our Lady,” represents the Lat. Domina Nostra. In Lady Day and Lady Chapel the word is properly a genitive, representing the O. Eng. hlaéfdigan. As a title of nobility the uses of “lady” are mainly paralleled by those of “lord.” It is thus a less formal alternative to the full title giving the specific rank, of marchioness, countess, viscountess or baroness, whether as the title of the husband’s rank by right or courtesy, or as the lady’s title in her own right. In the case of the younger sons of a duke or marquess, who by courtesy have lord prefixed to their Christian and family name, the wife is known by the husband’s Christian and family name with Lady prefixed, e.g. Lady John B.; the daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls are by courtesy Ladies; here that title is prefixed to the Christian and family name of the lady, e.g. Lady Mary B., and this is preserved if the lady marry a commoner, e.g. Mr and Lady Mary C. “Lady” is also the customary title of the wife of a baronet or knight; the proper title, now only used in legal documents or on sepulchral monuments, is “dame” (q.v.); in the latter case the usage is to prefix Dame to the Christian name of the wife followed by the surname of the husband, thus Dame Eleanor B., but in the former, Lady with the surname of the husband only, Sir A. and Lady B. During the 15th and 16th centuries “princesses” or daughters of the blood royal were usually known by their Christian names with “the Lady” prefixed, e.g. the Lady Elizabeth.
​While “lord” has retained its original application as a title of nobility or rank without extension, an example which has been followed in Spanish usage by “don,” “lady” has been extended in meaning to be the feminine correlative of “gentleman” throughout its sense developments, and in this is paralleled by Dame in German, madame in French, donna in Spanish, &c. It is the general word for any woman of a certain social position (see Gentleman).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lady-Chapel

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​LADY-CHAPEL, the chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and attached to churches of large size. Generally the chapel was built eastward of the high altar and formed a projection from the main building, as in Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, St Albans, Chichester, Peterborough and Norwich cathedrals,—in the two latter cases now destroyed. The earliest Lady-chapel built was that in the Saxon cathedral of Canterbury; this was transfered in the rebuilding by Archbishop Lanfranc to the west end of the nave, and again shifted in 1450 to the chapel on the east side of the north transept. The Lady-chapel at Ely cathedral is a distinct building attached to the north transept; at Rochester the Lady-chapel is west of the south transept. Probably the largest Lady-chapel was that built by Henry III. in 1220 at Westminster Abbey, which was 30 ft. wide, much in excess of any foreign example, and extended to the end of the site now occupied by Henry VII.’s chapel. Among other notable English examples of Lady-chapels are those at Ottery-St-Mary, Thetford, Bury St Edmund’s, Wimborne, Christchurch, Hampshire; in Compton Church, Surrey, and Compton Martin, Somersetshire, and Darenth, Kent, it was built over the chancel. At Croyland Abbey there were two Lady-chapels. Lady-chapels exist in most of the French cathedrals and churches, where they form part of the chevet; in Belgium they were not introduced before the 14th century; in some cases they are of the same size as the other chapels of the chevet, but in others, probably rebuilt at a later period, they became much more important features, and in Italy and Spain during the Renaissance period constitute some of its best examples.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ladislaus V.

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​LADISLAUS V. (1440–1457), king of Hungary and Bohemia, the only son of Albert, king of Hungary, and Elizabeth, daughter of the emperor Sigismund, was born at Komárom on the 22nd of February 1440, four months after his father’s death, and was hence called Ladislaus Posthumus. The estates of Hungary had already elected Wladislaus III. of Poland their king, but Ladislaus’s mother caused the holy crown to be stolen from its guardians at Visegrad, and compelled the primate to crown the infant king at Székesfejérvár on the 15th of May 1440; whereupon, for safety’s sake, she placed the child beneath the guardianship of his uncle the emperor Frederick III. On the death of Wladislaus III. (Nov. 10th, 1444), Ladislaus V. was elected king by the Hungarian estates, though not without considerable opposition, and a deputation was sent to Vienna to induce the emperor to surrender the child and the holy crown; but it was not till 1452 that Frederick was compelled to relinquish both. The child was then transferred to the pernicious guardianship of his maternal grandfather Ulrich Cillei, who corrupted him soul and body and inspired him with a jealous hatred of the Hunyadis. On the 28th of October 1453 he was crowned king of Bohemia, and henceforth spent most of his time at Prague and Vienna. He remained supinely indifferent to the Turkish peril; at the instigation of Cillei did his best to hinder the defensive preparations of the great Hunyadi, and fled from the country on the tidings of the siege of Belgrade. On the death of Hunyadi he made Cillei governor of Hungary at the diet of Futtak (October 1456), and when that traitor paid with his life for his murderous attempt on Laszló Hunyadi at Belgrade, Ladislaus procured the decapitation of young Hunyadi (16th of March 1457), after a mock trial which raised such a storm in Hungary that the king fled to Prague, where he died suddenly (Nov. 23rd, 1457), while making preparations for his marriage with Magdalena, daughter of Charles VII. of France. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his political opponents in Bohemia.
See F. Palacky, Zeugenverhör über den Tod König Ladislaus von Ungarn u. Böhmen (Prague, 1856); Ignacz Acsády, History of the Hungarian State (Hung.), vol. i. (Budapest, 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lading, Bill of

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​LADING (from “to lade,” O. Eng. hladan, to put cargo on board; cf. “load”), BILL OF, the document given as receipt by the master of a merchant vessel to the consignor of goods, as a guarantee for their safe delivery to the consignee. (See Affreightment.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ladislaus, Saint

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​LADISLAUS [I.], Saint (1040–1095), king of Hungary, the son of Béla I., king of Hungary, and the Polish princess Richeza, was born in Poland, whither his father had sought refuge, but was recalled by his elder brother Andrew I. to Hungary (1047) and brought up there. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his uncle Geza in 1077, as the eldest member of the royal family, and speedily won for himself a reputation scarcely inferior to that of Stephen I., by nationalizing Christianity and laying the foundations of Hungary’s political greatness. Instinctively recognizing that Germany was the natural enemy of the Magyars, Ladislaus formed a close alliance with the pope and all the other enemies of the emperor Henry IV., including the anti-emperor Rudolph of Swabia and his chief supporter Welf, duke of Bavaria, whose daughter Adelaide he married. She bore him one son and three daughters, one of whom, Piriska, married the Byzantine emperor John Comnenus. The collapse of the German emperor in his struggle with the pope left Ladislaus free to extend his dominions towards the south, and colonize and Christianize the wildernesses of Transylvania and the lower Danube. Hungary was still semi-savage, and her native barbarians were being perpetually recruited from the hordes of Pechenegs, Kumanians and other races which swept over her during the 11th century. Ladislaus himself had fought valiantly in his youth against the Pechenegs, and to defend the land against the Kumanians, who now occupied Moldavia and Wallachia as far as the Alt, he built the fortresses of Turnu-Severin and Gyula Féhervár. He also planted in Transylvania the Szeklers, the supposed remnant of the ancient Magyars from beyond the Dnieper, and founded the bishoprics of Nagy-Várad, or Gross-Wardein, and of Agram, as fresh foci of Catholicism in south Hungary and the hitherto uncultivated districts between the Drave and the Save. He subsequently conquered Croatia, though here his authority was questioned by the pope, the Venetian republic and the Greek emperor. Ladislaus died suddenly in 1095 when about to take part in the first Crusade. No other Hungarian king was so generally beloved. The whole nation mourned for him for three years, and regarded him as a saint long before his canonization. A whole cycle of legends is associated with his name.
See J. Babik, Life of St Ladislaus (Hung.) (Eger, 1892); György Pray, Dissertatio de St Ladislao (Pressburg, 1774); Antál Gánóczy, Diss. hist. crit. de St Ladislao (Vienna, 1775).  (R. N. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ladder

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​LADDER, (O. Eng. hlaeder; of Teutonic origin, cf. Dutch leer, Ger. Leiter; the ultimate origin is in the root seen in “lean,” Gr. κλῖμαξ), a set of steps or “rungs” between two supports to enable one to get up and down; usually made of wood and sometimes of metal or rope. Ladders are generally movable, and differ from a staircase also in having only treads and no “risers.” The term “Jacob’s ladder,” taken from the dream of Jacob in the Bible, is applied to a rope ladder with wooden steps used at sea to go aloft, and to a common garden plant of the genus Polemonium on account of the ladder-like formation of the leaves. The flower known in England as Solomon’s seal is in some countries called the “ladder of heaven.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lady Day

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​LADY DAY, originally the name for all the days in the church calendar marking any event in the Virgin Mary’s life, but now restricted to the feast of the Annunciation, held on the 25th of March in each year. Lady Day was in medieval and later times the beginning of the legal year in England. In 1752 this was altered to the 1st of January, but the 25th of March remains one of the Quarter Days; though in some parts old Lady Day, on the 6th of April, is still the date for rent paying. See Annunciation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Object and Subject

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​OBJECT and SUBJECT, in philosophy, the terms used to denote respectively the external world and consciousness. The term “object” (from Lat. ob, over against, and jacere, to throw) is used generally in philosophy for that in which an activity of the mind ends, or towards which it is directed. With these may be compared the ordinary uses of the term for “thing” simply, or for that after which one strives, or at which one aims. “Subject,” literally that which is “thrown under” (sub), is originally the material or content of a discussion or thought, but in philosophy is used for the thought or the thinking person. The relation between the thinking subject and the object thought is analogous to the grammatical antithesis of the same terms: the “subject” of a verb is the person or thing from which the action proceeds, while the “object,” direct or indirect, is the person or thing affected. The true relation between mind or thought (subject) and matter or extension (object) is the chief problem of philosophy, and may be investigated from various standpoints (see Psychology and Metaphysics). It should be observed that the philosophical use of “subject” is precisely the opposite of the common use. In ordinary language the “subject” of discussion, of a poem, of a work of art, is that which the speaker, author or artist treats.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Obra

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​OBRA, a river of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, a left-bank tributary of the Warthe. It rises near Obra, N.W. from Koschmin, and forms in its course marshes, lakes and the so-called Great Obrabruch (fen). The latter, 50 m. long and about 5 m. broad, is a deep depression in the undulating country of south-west Posen. The river is here dammed in and canalized and affords excellent water transit for the agricultural produce of the district.