Cave paintings from the Stone Age are found across India. They show dances and rituals and suggest there was a prehistoric religion. During the Epic and Puranic periods, the earliest versions of the epic poems "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata" were written from about 500–100 BCE, although these were orally transmitted for centuries before this period. Other South Asian Stone Age sites apart from Pakistan are in modern India, such as the Bhimbetka rock shelters in central Madhya Pradesh and the Kupgal petroglyphs of eastern Karnataka, contain rock art showing religious rites and evidence of possible ritualised music.
Several modern religions are linked to India, namely modern Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. All of these religions have different "schools" (ways of thinking) and traditions that are related. As a group they are called the Eastern religions. The Indian religions are similar to one another in many ways: The basic beliefs, the way worship is done and several religious practices are very similar. These similarities mainly come from the fact that these religions have a common history and common origins. They also influenced each other.
The religion of Hinduism is the main faith followed by 79.80% of people in the Republic of India; Islam – 14.23%; Christianity – 2.30%; Sikhism – 1.72%; Buddhism – 0.70% and Jainism – 0.37%.
It's the first time ever since independence that Hindu population percentage fell below 80%.
India sent a spacecraft to Mars for the first time in 2014. That made it the third country and only Asian country to do so, successfully. India is the only country to be successful in its very first attempt to orbit Mars. It was called the Mars Orbiter Mission.
ISRO launched 104 satellites in a single mission to create world record. India became the first nation in the world to have launched over a hundred satellites in one mission. That was more than the 2014 Russian record of 37 satellites in a single launch.
India has the largest movie industry in the world. Indian Tamil movies are poular globally, especially movies of "Super Star" Rajinikanth. Based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the industry is also known as Bollywood. It makes 1,000 movies a year, about twice as many as Hollywood. It produces movies almost everyday.
Indians have excelled in Hockey. They have also won eight gold, one silver and two bronze medals at the Olympic games. However, cricket is the most popular sport in India. The Indian cricket team won the 1983 and 2011 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. They shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka and won the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy.Cricket in India is controlled by the Board of Control for Cricket in India or BCCI. Domestic tournaments are the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy, the Deodhar Trophy, the Irani Trophy and the Challenger Series. There is also the Indian cricket league and Indian premier league Twenty20 competitions.
Tennis has become popular due to the victories of the India Davis Cup team. Association football is also a popular sport in northeast India, West Bengal, Goa and Kerala. The Indian national football team has won the South Asian Football Federation Cup many times. Chess, which comes from India, is also becoming popular. This is with the increase in the number of Indian Grandmasters. Traditional sports include kabaddi, kho kho, and gilli-danda, which are played throughout India.
Insult
An insult is a description of someone that will offend them. It may or may not be true. It is called "derogatory" language. Terms like foolish, stupid, idiot and moron are insults, because they say that a person's mind is not quick or smart.
Insulting someone's mother directly is a serious insult in many cultures.
Ritual insults are part of many cultures. For example, they can be found in sports and military training. They are also very common in jargons. For example, the word "newbie" is a part of net jargon. Calling someone a newbie is usually insulting.
One should be very careful when using new words to describe others.
Usually, someone insults others because they want to feel like they are better or have more power (influence) than the people they insult. They may want this because they are actually afraid that they are worse or less powerful than the people they are insulting.
When someone is insulted, his or her pride is hurt. He or she may want to fight back by insulting the person who insulted him or her.
Immunology
Immunology is the study of the immune system. The immune system is the parts of the body which work against infection and parasitism by other living things. Immunology deals with the working of the immune system in health and diseases, and with malfunctions of the immune system.
An immune system is present in all plants and animals. We know this because biologists have found genes coding for toll-like receptors in many different metazoans. These toll-like receptors can recognise bacteria as 'foreign', and are the starting-point for immune reactions. The type of immunity which is triggered by the toll-like receptors is called innate immunity. This is because it is entirely inherited in our genome, and is fully working as soon as our tissues and organs are properly developed.
Vertebrates, "and only vertebrates", have a second type of immunity. This is called adaptive immunity, because it 'remembers' previous infections. Then, if the same infection occurs again, the reaction is much stronger and faster. This immunological memory "confers a tremendous survival advantage" and with it vertebrates "can survive over a long lifetime in a pathogen-filled environment".
The innate immune system is usually means all of the cells and systems that does not have to be exposed to a particular pathogen before they can work.
Innate immunity starts with the skin, which is an excellent barrier to infection.
The adaptive immune system includes cells and systems that do require previous exposure to a pathogen. It explains the unique ability of the mammalian immune system to remember previous infections and mount a rapid and robust reaction to secondary infections. This immunological memory is due to the biology of T-cells and B-cells.
Vaccines boost the acquired immune system by offering weak forms of infection that the body can fight off. The system remembers how to do it again when a stronger infection happens. If the vaccine works, the body can then fight off a serious infection.
The distribution of vaccines and other immune system affecting cures can be considered another level of acquired immune system, one governed by access to vaccination and medicine in general. The intersection of this with the spread of disease (as studied in epidemiology) is part of the field of public health.
Errors of the immune system may cause damage. In autoimmune diseases, the body attacks parts of itself because the system mistakes some parts of the body as 'foreign'. Some kinds of arthritis are caused this way.
Sometimes serious pathogens slip in because their surface is disguised as something the host cell walls can accept. That is how viruses work. Once inside a cell, their genetic material controls the cell. Infections like HIV get in this way, and then attack cells which are the basis of the immune system. Artificial means are often used to restore immune system function in an HIV-challenged body, and prevent the onset of AIDS. This is one of the most complex issues in immunology as it involves every level of that system. This research during the 1980s and 1990s radically changed the view of the human immune system and its functions and integration in the human body.