Jain folk tales.

WINNER OF THE MARCO POLO OUTSTANDING GENERAL TRAVEL THEMED BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE 2018 EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS The story begins in a public square in New Delhi. On a cold December evening a young European woman of noble descent appears before an Indian street artist known locally as PK and asks him to paint her portrait – it is an encounter that will change their lives irrevocably. PK was not born in the city. He grew up in a small remote village on the edge of the jungle in East India, and his childhood as an untouchable was one of crushing hardship. He was forced to sit outside the classroom during school, would watch classmates wash themselves if they came into contact with him, and had stones thrown at him when he approached the village temple. According to the priests, PK dirtied everything that was pure and holy. But had PK not been an untouchable, his life would have turned out very differently. This is the remarkable true story of how love and courage led PK to overcome extreme poverty, caste prejudice and adversity – as well as a 7,000-mile, adventure-filled journey across continents and cultures – to be with the woman he loved.

This book provides the first full-scale English-language study of Pradyumna, the son of the Hindu god Krsna. Often represented as a young man in mid-adolescence, Pradyumna is both a handsome double of his demon-slaying father and the rebirth of Kamadeva, the God of Love. Sanskrit epic, puranic, and kavya narratives of the 300-1300 CE period celebrate Pradyumna's sexual potency, mastery of illusory subterfuges, and military prowess in supporting the work of his avatara father. These materials reflect the values of an evolving Brahminical and Vaisnava tradition that was deeply invested in the imperatives of family, patrilines, the violent but necessary defense of the social and cosmic order, and the celebration of beauty and desire as a means to the divine. Pradyumna's evolving narratives, almost completely absent from existing studies of Hindu mythology, provide a point of access to the development of Krsna bhakti and Vaisnava theism more broadly. Conversely, Jain sources cast Pradyumna as an exemplary figure through whom a pointed rejection of these values can be articulated, even while sharing certain of their elementary premises. Pradyumna: Lover, Magician, and Scion of the Avatara assembles these narratives, presents key Sanskrit materials in translation and summary form, and articulates the social, gender, and religious values encoded in them. Most importantly, the study argues that Pradyumna's signature two-handed maneuver--the audacious appropriation of a feminine partner, enabled by the emasculating destruction of her demonic male protector--communicates a persistent fantasy of male power expressed in the language of a mutually implicating sex and violence.

This book includes high-quality papers presented at the Second International Conference on Data Science and Management (ICDSM 2021), organized by the Gandhi Institute for Education and Technology, Bhubaneswar, from 19 to 20 February 2021. It features research in which data science is used to facilitate the decision-making process in various application areas, and also covers a wide range of learning methods and their applications in a number of learning problems. The empirical studies, theoretical analyses and comparisons to psychological phenomena described contribute to the development of products to meet market demands.

With the rapid penetration of technology in varied application domains, the existing cities are getting connected more seamlessly. Cities becomes smart by inducing ICT in the classical city infrastructure for its management. According to McKenzie Report, about 68% of the world population will migrate towards urban settlements in near future. This migration is largely because of the improved Quality of Life (QoL) and livelihood in urban settlements. In the light of urbanization, climate change, democratic flaws, and rising urban welfare expenditures, smart cities have emerged as an important approach for society’s future development. Smart cities have achieved enhanced QoL by giving smart information to people regarding healthcare, transportation, smart parking, smart traffic structure, smart home, smart agronomy, community security etc. Typically, in smart cities data is sensed by the sensor devices and provided to end users for further use. The sensitive data is transferred with the help of internet creating higher chances for the adversaries to breach the data. Considering the privacy and security as the area of prime focus, this book covers the most prominent security vulnerabilities associated with varied application areas like healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, education and agriculture etc. Furthermore, the massive amount of data being generated through ubiquitous sensors placed across the smart cities needs to be handled in an effective, efficient, secured and privacy preserved manner. Since a typical smart city ecosystem is data driven, it is imperative to manage this data in an optimal manner. Enabling technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Blockchain Technology, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Computer vision, Big Data Analytics, Next Generation Networks and Software Defined Networks (SDN) provide exemplary benefits if they are integrated in the classical city ecosystem in an effective manner. The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expanding across many domains in the smart city, such as infrastructure, transportation, environmental protection, power and energy, privacy and security, governance, data management, healthcare, and more. AI has the potential to improve human health, prosperity, and happiness by reducing our reliance on manual labor and accelerating our progress in the sciences and technologies. NLP is an extensive domain of AI and is used in collaboration with machine learning and deep learning algorithms for clinical informatics and data processing. In modern smart cities, blockchain provides a complete framework that controls the city operations and ensures that they are managed as effectively as possible. Besides having an impact on our daily lives, it also facilitates many areas of city management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, ISAI 2022, held in Haldia, India, during February 17-22, 2022. The 30 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: information systems, mathematics and data analyses; and applied artificial intelligence. .