Ramanuja, bronze sculpture, 12th cen¬ tury; from a Visnu temple in Tanjore district, India
COURTESY OF THE INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'INDOLOGIE, PONDICHERRY
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religious life. In 1901 he left his wife and children and went into seclu¬ sion in the Himalayas, and he later traveled to Japan and the U.S. He became known for his poetic manner of interpreting Vedanta and for his joyful approach to religious learning as a means to the liberation of the individual. He died by drowning in the Ganges.
Ramayana Vra-'ma-yo-noV Indian epic poem, composed in Sanskrit c. 300 bce. With the Mahabharata, it is one of the two great epic poems of India. Consisting of 24,000 couplets in seven books, it describes the royal birth of Rama and the loss of his throne. Banished to the forest with his wife, SlTA, and his half brother, Laksmana, he spends 14 years in exile. When a demon king carries off Sita, Rama enters into an alliance with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, and Hanuman, the monkey general, who help him rescue her. Rama regains his kingdom, but Sita is banished when her chastity is questioned, and she is swallowed by the earth after proving her innocence.
Rambert \ram-'ber\, Dame Marie orig. Cyvia Rambam (b. Feb. 20, 1888, Warsaw, Pol., Russian Empire—d. June 12, 1982, London, Eng.) Polish-born English ballet producer and director. She studied with the musician Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and taught his technique, eurythmics, to the Paris-based Ballets Russes, influencing Vaslav Nijinsky’s avant-garde choreography. At the outbreak of World War I, she moved to London, where she studied ballet with Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928); in 1920 she founded a ballet school that used his methods. In 1930 she helped found the Camargo Society and established the Ballet Club (later Ballet Ram¬ bert). As director of Ballet Rambert, she favoured experimentation, encouraging young choreographers such as Frederick Ashton and support¬ ing new dancers and stage designers. Her troupe, renamed the Rambert Dance Company in 1987, has continued to perform.
Rameau \ra-'mo\, Jean-Philippe (baptized Sept. 25, 1683, Dijon, France—d. Sept. 12,1764, Paris) French composer and music theorist. Son of an organist, he held organist posts until he was 49. His Treatise on Har¬ mony (1722) established him as a major music theorist. In it he asserted that harmony is the basis of music, and that chords, which had been understood principally as collections of intervals above a bass, should instead be seen as representing inversions of more fundamental harmonic entities. From 1733 he wrote a series of highly successful operas, including Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and The Gallant Indies (1735), assuring his place as the most important French opera composer since Jean-Baptiste Lully. In the querelles des bouffons (“war of the buffoons,” 1752-53), a famous artistic contro¬ versy about the relative merits of French and Italian opera, Rameau’s music exemplified the French style. He also won renown for his many keyboard pieces, mostly composed for harpsichord.
ramjet Air-breathing jet engine that operates with no major moving parts. It relies on the craft’s forward motion to draw in air and on a specially shaped intake passage to compress the air for combustion. After fuel sprayed into the engine has been ignited, combustion is self-sustaining. As in other jet engines, forward thrust is obtained as a reaction to the rearward rush of hot exhaust gases. Ramjets work best at speeds of Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) and higher. See also turbojet.
Ramkhamhaeng X.ram-kam-'haqX (b. 1239? —d. 1298) Third king of Sukhothai (in modern north-central Thailand) who created the first major Tai state in Southeast Asia. He united a region that shared a common reli¬ gion (Theravada Buddhism). Under him, the arts developed distinctively Tai expressions, and accomplished bronze sculptures were created. He is also credited with inventing the Thai alphabet, a modification of Khmer script. He was remembered only in legend until 1834 when King Mong- kut of Siam (then a Buddhist monk) rediscovered an inscription Ramkhamhaeng had made in 1292. As a result, he came to be regarded as a national hero, a just and liberal ruler who imparted a sense of cul¬ tural unity to the region.
rammed earth or pise de terre Vpe-.za-do-'terX Building material made by compacting and drying a stiff mixture of clay, sand or other aggregate, and water. It has been used by many civilizations. The most durable of the earth-building forms, it is formed into building blocks (see adobe) or rammed within removable wooden forms in layers or lifts to construct walls. China’s Erligang (c. 1600 bc) is an example of a rammed- earth fortification; it covers an area of 1.2 sq mi (3.2 sq km) and may have taken 10,000 people more than 12 years to build.
Rampal \ram-'pal\, Jean-Pierre (-Louis) (b. Jan. 7, 1922, Marseille, France—d. May 20, 2000, Paris) French flutist. From 1947 he appeared widely in chamber music and solo recitals. In the 1950s he founded his
own chamber groups, while also playing in the pit at the Paris Opera (1956-62). Works were written for him by Francis Poulenc and others. His sweetness of tone and virtuosity in a largely Baroque repertoire, as evidenced on many admired recordings, made him the first flutist to attain international stardom.
Ramses \Tam-,sez\ II known as Ramses the Great (fl. 13th century bc) King of ancient Egypt, 1279-13 bc. His family came to power some decades after the reign of Akhenaton.
Ramses set about restoring Egypt’s power by quelling rebellions in southern Syria and fighting the Hit- tites inconclusively at the Battle of Kadesh. He captured towns in Gali¬ lee and Amor, but, unable to defeat the Hittites, he assented to a peace treaty in 1258 bc. He married one and perhaps two of the Hittite king’s daughters, and the later part of his reign was free from war. Its prosper¬ ity may be measured by the amount of construction he undertook. Early on he built himself a residence city in the Nile delta as a base for mili¬ tary campaigns and resumed con¬ struction of the temple of Osiris, begun by his father. He added to the temple at Karnak and completed a funerary temple for his father at Luxor. In Nubia he built six temples, most famously those at Abu Simbel.
Ramses III (d. 1156 bc) King of ancient Egypt, 1187-56 bc. Son of Set- nakht, the founder of Egypt’s 20th dynasty, he fought off Libyan invad¬ ers in the fifth year of his reign and the Sea Peoples (a conglomeration of migrating peoples from Anatolia and the Mediterranean Sea region) two years later. After another conflict with the Libyans, he achieved a last¬ ing peace. He then reorganized soci¬ ety into classes grouped by occupation and resumed temple building. He encouraged trade and industry, and the country prospered.
A delay in sending monthly rations to temple builders in Thebes c. 1158 bc resulted in the world’s first recorded labour dispute.
Ramu River \'ra-mu\ River, Papua New Guinea. One of the country’s longest rivers, it is about 400 mi (645 km) long. It rises in the southeast and flows northwest through the great Central Depression, where it receives numerous streams draining the mountainous region. During World War II its valley was taken from the Japanese by Allied forces (1943). It was the scene of an earthquake in 1993.
Rana era (1846-1951) In Nepal, the period during which control of the government lay in the hands of the Rana family. Jung Bahadur (1817-77) seized power in 1846 and made himself permanent prime minister. He was given the hereditary title of Rana. Under the Ranas, Nepal maintained rela¬ tions with the British, who provided it with support. When the British with¬ drew from India in 1947, the Rana family was exposed to new dangers. They faced a revolution in 1950, and in 1951, under pressure from India, Nepal’s King Tribhuvan took the throne with restored sovereignty.