Sankaracharya   Adi Sankaracharya was born in 507 B.C. in a Nambudri Brahmin family at Kalady, a village situated on the banks of the river Periyar in Kerala, in Suklapanchami of the month Baisakha. His father’s name was Sivaguru, a Sanskrit teacher and mother’s name was Aryamba, a pious woman. Soon after Sankara’s birth, his father died and he was brought up by his mother Aryamba. He had mastered the Vedic...

Tirthankar Mahavir     Tirthankar Mahavir was born in April, 599 B.C. at Vaishali (Bihar). His nick name was Vardhaman, as just after his birth there was increase in the crops production. His father’s name was Siddhartha and mother’s name was Trisala Devi. He was their second son. In Jain religion from Rishabhadeva to Parshanath — there were 23 Tirthankars and Mahavir was 24th Tirthankar. As per Jain religion, Non-violence (ahimsa),...

Gautam Buddha Essay No. 01   Gautam Buddha was born on a Baisakhi Purnima in 607 B.C. at the foot of the Himalayas, on the borders of Nepal at Kapilavastu. His father’s name was Suddhodana and mother’s name was Mayadevi. On the seventh day after his birth, he was named Siddhartha. At his early age his mother died. As he grew up, he was often found to seek solitude and sit...

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973)   H. Auden, Anglo-American poet was educated at Oxford. Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, North Yorkshire, as the son of George Augustus Auden, a distinguished physician, and Rosalie (Bicknell) Auden. Solihull in the West Midlands, where Auden was brought up, remained important to him as a poet. Auden was educated at St. Edmund’s Hindhood and then at Gresham’s School, Holt, Norfolk. In 1925...

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) William Wordsworth was the British poet, credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther’s attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature. He...

William Somerset Maugham  (1874 – 1965) William Somerset Maugham was an English author noted as an expert storyteller and a master of fiction technique. He was born in Paris as the sixth and youngest son of the solicitor to the British embassy. He learned French as his native tongue. An introvert child afflicted with a stammer, Maugham was orphaned at 10 and went to live with his uncle, a vicar. Although...

William Makepeace Thackeray  ( 1811 – 1863) Thackeray was an English journalist, novelist, famous for his novel Vanity Fair (1847-48), a tale of two middle-class London families. Most of Thackeray’s major novels were published as monthly serials. Thackeray studied in a satirical and moralistic upper-middle-class English life – he was at one time considered the equal of his contemporary Dickens, or even as his superior. William Makepeace Thackeray was born in...