The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel"

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel"This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel"Author: VariousRelease date: December 24, 2011 [eBook #38401]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "GYANTSE" TO "HALLEL" ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel"Author: VariousRelease date: December 24, 2011 [eBook #38401]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel"

Author: Various

Release date: December 24, 2011 [eBook #38401]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "GYANTSE" TO "HALLEL" ***

Articles in This Slice

GYANTSE,one of the large towns of Tibet. It lies S.E. of Shigatse, 130 m. from the Indian frontier and 145 m. from Lhasa. Its central position at the junction of the roads from India and Bhutan with those from Ladakh and Central Asia leading to Lhasa makes it a considerable distributing trade centre. Its market is the third largest in Tibet, coming after Lhasa and Shigatse, and is especially celebrated for its woollen cloth and carpet manufactures. Here caravans come from Ladakh, Nepal and upper Tibet, bringing gold, borax, salt, wool, musk and furs, to exchange for tea, tobacco, sugar, cotton goods,broadcloth and hardware. The town is compactly built of stone houses, with wooden balconies facing the main street, whence narrow lanes strike off into uninviting slums, and contains a fort and monastery. In the British expedition of 1904 Gyantse formed the first objective of the advance, and the force was besieged here in the mission post of Changlo for some time. The Tibetans made a night attack on the post, and were beaten off with some difficulty, but subsequently the British attacked and stormed the fort or jong. Under the treaty of 1904 a British trade agent is stationed at Gyantse.

GYGES,founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings, he reigned 687-652B.C.according to H. Geizer, 690-657B.C.according to H. Winckler. The chronology of the Lydian kings given by Herodotus has been shown by the Assyrian inscriptions to be about twenty years in excess. Gyges was the son of Dascylus, who, when recalled from banishment in Cappadocia by the Lydian king Sadyattes—called Candaules “the Dog-strangler” (a title of the Lydian Hermes) by the Greeks—sent his son back to Lydia instead of himself. Gyges soon became a favourite of Sadyattes and was despatched by him to fetch Tudo, the daughter of Arnossus of Mysia, whom the Lydian king wished to make his queen. On the way Gyges fell in love with Tudo, who complained to Sadyattes of his conduct. Forewarned that the king intended to punish him with death, Gyges assassinated Sadyattes in the night and seized the throne with the help of Arselis of Mylasa, the captain of the Carian bodyguard, whom he had won over to his cause. Civil war ensued, which was finally ended by an appeal to the oracle of Delphi and the confirmation of the right of Gyges to the crown by the Delphian god. Further to secure his title he married Tudo. Many legends were told among the Greeks about his rise to power. That found in Herodotus, which may be traced to the poet Archilochus of Paros, described how “Candaules” insisted upon showing Gyges his wife when unrobed, which so enraged her that she gave Gyges the choice of murdering her husband and making himself king, or of being put to death himself. Plato made Gyges a shepherd, who discovered a magic ring by means of which he murdered his master and won the affection of his wife (Hdt. i. 8-14; Plato,Rep.359; Justin i. 7; Cicero,De off.iii. 9). Once established on the throne Gyges devoted himself to consolidating his kingdom and making it a military power. The Troad was conquered, Colophon captured from the Greeks, Smyrna besieged and alliances entered into with Ephesus and Miletus. The Cimmerii, who had ravaged Asia Minor, were beaten back, and an embassy was sent to Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh (about 650B.C.) in the hope of obtaining his help against the barbarians. The Assyrians, however, were otherwise engaged, and Gyges turned to Egypt, sending his faithful Carian troops along with Ionian mercenaries to assist Psammetichus in shaking off the Assyrian yoke (660B.C.). A few years later he fell in battle against the Cimmerii under Dugdammē (called Lygdamis by Strabo i. 3. 21), who took the lower town of Sardis. Gyges was succeeded by his son Ardys.

See Nicolaus Damascenus, quoting from the Lydian historian Xanthus, in C. Müller,Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, iii.; R. Schubert,Geschichte der Könige von Lydien(1884); M. G. Radet,La Lydie et le monde grec au temps de Mermnades(1892-1893): H. Gelzer, “Das Zeitalter des Gyges” (Rhein. Mus., 1875); H. Winckler,Altorientalische Forschungen, i. (1893); Macan’s edition of Herodotus.

(A. H. S.)

GYLIPPUS,a Spartan general of the 5th centuryB.C.; he was the son of Cleandridas, who had been expelled from Sparta for accepting Athenian bribes (446B.C.) and had settled at Thurii. His mother was probably a helot, for Gylippus is said to have been, like Lysander and Callicratidas, amothax(seeHelot). When Alcibiades urged the Spartans to send a general to lead the Syracusan resistance against the Athenian expedition, Gylippus was appointed, and his arrival was undoubtedly the turning point of the struggle (414-413). Though at first his long hair, his threadbare cloak and his staff furnished the subject of many a jest, and his harsh and overbearing manner caused grave discontent, yet the rapidity and decisiveness of his movements, won the sympathy and respect of the Syracusans. Diodorus (xiii. 28-32), probably following Timaeus, represents him as inducing the Syracusans to pass sentence of death on the captive Athenian generals, but we need have no hesitation in accepting the statement of Philistus (Plutarch,Nicias, 28), a Syracusan who himself took part in the defence, and Thucydides (vii. 86), that he tried, though without success, to save their lives, wishing to take them to Sparta as a signal proof of his success. Gylippus fell, as his father had done, through avarice; entrusted by Lysander with an immense sum which he was to deliver to the ephors at Sparta, he could not resist the temptation to enrich himself and, on the discovery of his guilt, went into exile.

Thucydides vi. 93. 104, vii.; Plutarch,Nicias, 19, 21, 27, 28,Lysander, 16, 17; Diodorus xiii. 7, 8, 28-32; Polyaenus i. 39. 42. SeeSyracuse(for the siege operations), commentaries on Thucydides and the Greek histories.

GYLLEMBOURG-EHRENSVÄRD, THOMASINE CHRISTINE,Baroness (1773-1856), Danish author, was born on the 9th of November 1773, at Copenhagen. Her maiden name was Buntzen. Her great beauty early attracted notice, and before she was seventeen she married the famous writer Peter Andreas Heiberg. To him she bore in the following year a son, afterwards illustrious as the poet and critic Johan Ludvig Heiberg. In 1800 her husband was exiled, and she obtained a divorce, marrying in December 1801 the Swedish Baron K. F. Ehrensvärd, himself a political fugitive. Her second husband, who presently adopted the name of Gyllembourg, died in 1815. In 1822 she followed her son to Kiel, where he was appointed professor, and in 1825 she returned with him to Copenhagen. In 1827 she first appeared as an author by publishing her romance ofThe Polonius Familyin her son’s newspaperFlyvende Post. In 1828 the same journal containedThe Magic Ring, which was immediately followed byEn Hverdags historie(An Everyday Story). The success of this anonymous work was so great that the author adopted until the end of her career the name of “The Author ofAn Everyday Story.” In 1833-1834 she published three volumes ofOld and New Novels.New Storiesfollowed in 1835 and 1836. In 1839 appeared two novels,Montanus the YoungerandRicida; in 1840,One in All; in 1841,Near and Far; in 1843,A Correspondence; in 1844,The Cross Ways; in 1845,Two Generations. From 1849 to 1851 the Baroness Ehrensvärd-Gyllembourg was engaged in bringing out a library edition of her collected works in twelve volumes. On the 2nd of July 1856 she died in her son’s house at Copenhagen. Not until then did the secret of her authorship transpire; for throughout her life she had preserved the closest reticence on the subject even with her nearest friends. The style of Madame Ehrensvärd-Gyllembourg is clear and sparkling; for English readers no closer analogy can be found than between her and Mrs Gaskell, andCranfordmight well have been written by the witty Danish authoress.

See J. L. Heiberg,Peter Andreas Heiberg og Thomasine Gyllembourg(Copenhagen, 1882), and L. Kornelius-Hybel,Nogle Bemaerkninger om P. A. Heiberg og Fru Gyllembourg(Copenhagen, 1883).

GYLLENSTJERNA, JOHAN,Count(1635-1680), Swedish statesman, completed his studies at Upsala and then visited most of the European states and laid the foundations of that deep insight into international politics which afterwards distinguished him. On his return home he met King Charles X. in the Danish islands and was in close attendance upon him till the monarch’s death in 1660. He began his political career at the diet which assembled in the autumn of the same year. An aristocrat by birth and inclination, he was nevertheless a true patriot and demanded the greatest sacrifices from his own order in the national interests. He was therefore one of those who laboured most zealously for the recovery of the crown lands. In the Upper House he was the spokesman of the gentry against the magnates, whose inordinate privileges he would have curtailed or abolished. His adversaries vainly endeavoured to gain him by favour, for as court-marshal and senator he was still more hostile to the dominant patricians who followed the adventurous policy of Magnus de la Gardie. Thus he opposed the French alliance which de la Gardie carried through in 1672, and consistently advocated economy in domestic and neutrality in foreign affairs. On the outbreak of the war in 1675 he was themost loyal and energetic supporter of the young Charles XI., and finally his indispensable counsellor. Indeed, it may be said, that the political principles which he instilled into the youthful monarch were faithfully followed by Charles during the whole of his reign. In 1679 Gyllenstjerna was appointed the Swedish plenipotentiary at the peace congress of Lund. The alliance which he then concluded with Denmark bound the two northern realms together in a common foreign policy, and he sought besides to facilitate their harmonious co-operation by every means in his power. In 1680, after bringing home Charles XI.’s Danish bride from Copenhagen, he was appointed governor-general of Scania (Skåne), but expired a few weeks later.

See M. Höjer,Öfversigt af Sveriges yttre politik under åren 1676-1680(Upsala, 1875).

(R. N. B.)

GYMKHANA,a display of miscellaneous sports, originally at the military stations of India. The word would seem to be a colloquial remodelling of the Hindustanigend-khana, ball-house or racquet-court, by substituting forgendthe first syllable of the English word “gymnastics.” The definition given in Yule’sGlossaryis as follows: “A place of public resort at a station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games ... are provided.” The name of the place was afterwards applied to the games themselves, and the word is now used almost exclusively in this sense. According to Yule the first use of it that can be traced was, on the authority of Major John Trotter, at Rurki in the year 1861, when a gymkhana was instituted there. Gymkhana sports were invented to relieve the monotony of Indian station life, and both officers and men from the ranks took part in them. The first meetings consisted of promiscuous horse and pony races at catch weights. To these were soon added a second variety, originally called thepāgŏl(funny races), the one generally known outside India, which consisted of miscellaneous races and competitions of all kinds, some serious and some amusing, on horseback, on foot and on bicycles. Among these may be mentioned the usual military sports; such as tent-pegging, lemon-cutting and obstacle racing; rickshaw racing; tilting at the ring sack, pillion, hurdle, egg-and-spoon, blindfold, threading-the-needle and many other kinds of races depending upon the inventive powers of the committees in charge.

GYMNASTICS AND GYMNASIUM,terms signifying respectively a system of physical exercises practised either for recreation or for the purpose of promoting the health and development of the body, and the building where such exercises are carried on. The gymnasium of the Greeks was originally the school where competitors in the public games received their training, and was so named from the circumstance that these competitors exercised naked (γυμνός). The gymnasium was a public institution as distinguished from the palaestra, which was a private school where boys were trained in physical exercises, though the term palaestra is also often used for the part of a gymnasium specially devoted to wrestling and boxing. The athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means of training and practice formed part of the social life of the Greeks from the earliest times. They were held in honour of heroes and gods; sometimes forming part of a periodic festival, sometimes of the funeral rites of a deceased chief. In course of time the Greeks grew more attached to such sports; their free active life, spent to a great extent in the open air, fostered the liking almost into a passion. The victor in any athletic contest, though he gained no money prize, was rewarded with the honour and respect of his fellow citizens; and a victory in the great religious festivals was counted an honour for the whole state. In these circumstances the training of competitors for the greater contests became a matter of public concern; and accordingly special buildings were provided by the state, and their management entrusted to public officials. The regulation of the gymnasium at Athens is attributed by Pausanias (i. 39. 3) to Theseus. Solon made several laws on the subject; but according to Galen it was reduced to a system in the time of Cleisthenes. Tengymnasiarchs, one from each tribe, were appointed annually. These performed in rotation the duties of their office, which were to maintain and pay the persons who were training for public contests, to conduct the games at the great Athenian festivals, to exercise general supervision over the morals of the youths, and to adorn and keep up the gymnasium. This office was one of the ordinaryλειτουργίαι(public services), and great expense was entailed on the holders. Under them were tensophronistae, whose duty was to watch the conduct of the youths at all times, and especially to be present at all their games. The practical teaching and selecting of the suitable exercises for each youth were in the hands of thepaedotribaeandgymnastae, the latter of whom also superintended the effect on the constitution of the pupils, and prescribed for them when they were unwell. Thealeiptaeoiled and rubbed dust on the bodies of the youths, acted as surgeons, and administered the drugs prescribed. According to Galen there was also a teacher of the various games of ball. The gymnasia built to suit these various purposes were large buildings, which contained not merely places for each kind of exercise, but also a stadium, baths, covered porticos for practice in bad weather, and outer porticos where the philosophers and men of letters read public lectures and held disputations.

The gymnasium of the Greeks did not long remain an institution exclusively devoted to athletic exercises. It soon began to be applied to other uses even more important. The development arose naturally through the recognition by the Greeks of the important place in education occupied by physical culture, and of the relation between exercise and health. The gymnasium accordingly became connected with education on the one hand and with medicine on the other. Due training of the body and maintenance of the health and strength of children were the chief part of earlier Greek education. Except the time devoted to letters and music, the education of boys was conducted in the gymnasia, where provision was made, as already mentioned, for their moral as well as their physical training. As they grew older, conversation and social intercourse took the place of the more systematic discipline. Philosophers and sophists assembled to talk and to lecture in the gymnasia, which thus became places of general resort for the purpose of all less systematic intellectual pursuits, as well as for physical exercises. In Athens there were three great public gymnasia—Academy, Lyceum and Cynosarges—each of which was consecrated to a special deity with whose statue it was adorned; and each was rendered famous by association with a celebrated school of philosophy. Plato’s teaching in the Academy has given immortality to that gymnasium; Aristotle conferred lustre on the Lyceum; and the Cynosarges was the resort of the Cynics. Plato when treating of education devotes much consideration to gymnastics (see especiallyRep.iii. and various parts ofLaws); and according to Plato it was the sophist Prodicus who first pointed out the connexion between gymnastics and health. Having found such exercises beneficial to his own weak health, he formulated a method which was adopted generally, and which was improved by Hippocrates. Galen lays the greatest stress on the proper use of gymnastics, and throughout ancient medical writers we find that special exercises are prescribed as the cure for special diseases.

The Greek institution of the gymnasium never became popular with the Romans, who regarded the training of boys in gymnastics with contempt as conducive to idleness and immorality, and of little use from a military point of view; though at Sparta gymnastic training had been chiefly valued as encouraging warlike tastes and promoting the bodily strength needed for the use of weapons and the endurance of hardship. Among the Romans of the republic, the games in the Campus Martius, the duties of camp life, and the enforced marches and other hardships of actual warfare, served to take the place of the gymnastic exercises required by the Greeks. The first public gymnasium at Rome was built by Nero and another by Commodus. In the middle ages, though jousts and feats of horsemanship and field sports of various kinds were popular, the more systematic training of the body which the Greeks had associated with the gymnasium fell into neglect; while the therapeutic value of special exercises as understood by Hippocrates and Galen appears to have been lost sight of. Rousseau, in hisÉmile, was the first in modern times to call attention to the injurious consequences of suchindifference, and he insisted on the importance of physical culture as an essential part of education. It was probably due in some measure to his influence that F. L. Jahn and his followers in Germany, encouraged by the Prussian minister Stein, established theTurnplätze, or gymnastic schools, which played an important part during the War of Liberation, and in the political agitations which followed the establishment of the German confederation by the Congress of Vienna. The educational reformers Pestalozzi and Froebel emphasized the need for systematic physical training in any complete scheme of education.

The later development of the classical gymnasium (when it had become the school of Intellectual culture rather than of exclusively physical exercise), and not the original idea, has been perpetuated in the modern use of the word in Germany, where the name “gymnasium” is given to the highest grade of secondary school, and the association of the word with athleticism has been entirely abandoned. On the other hand, in England, France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in America, the history of the word has been precisely the reverse; the connexion of the gymnasium with philosophy and mental culture has been dropped, and it indicates a building exclusively intended for the practice of physical exercises. But whereas the Greeks received training in the gymnasium for contests which are now designated asathletic sports(q.v.), gymnastics in the modern sense is a term restricted to such exercises as are usually practised indoors, with or without the aid of mechanical appliances, as distinguished from sports or games practised in the open air.

It was not until near the end of the 19th century that gymnastics were recognized in England as anything more than a recreation; their value as a specifically therapeutic agent, or as an article in the curriculum of elementary schools, was not realized. More recently, however, educationists have urged with increasing insistence the need for systematic physical training, and their views received greater attention when evidence of deterioration in the physique of the people began to accumulate. During the first decade of the 20th century more than one commission reported to parliament in England in favour of more systematic and general physical training being encouraged or even made compulsory by public authority. Voluntary associations were formed for encouraging such training and providing facilities for it. Gymnastics had already for several years been an essential part of the training of army recruits with exceedingly beneficial results, and gymnasia had been established at Aldershot and other military centres. Physical exercises, although not compulsory, obtained a permanent place in the code for elementary schools in Great Britain; and much care has been taken to provide a syllabus of exercises adapted for the improvement of the physique of the children. These exercises are partly gymnastic and partly of the nature of drill; they do not in most cases require the use of appliances, and are on that account known as “free movements,” which numbers of children go through together, accompanied whenever possible by music. On the other hand at the larger public schools and universities there are elaborate gymnasia equipped with a great variety of apparatus, the skilful use of which demands assiduous practice; and this is encouraged by annual contests between teams of gymnasts representing rival institutions.

The appliances vary to some extent in different gymnasia, some of the more complicated requiring a greater amount of space and involving a larger cost than is often practicable. But where these considerations are negligible, substantial uniformity is to be found in the equipmentGymnastic apparatus.of gymnasia not designed for specifically medical purposes. The simplest, and in many respects the most generally useful, of all gymnastic apparatus is the dumb-bell. It was in use in England as early as the time of Elizabeth, and it has the advantage that it admits of being exactly proportioned to the individual strength of each learner, and can be adjusted in weight as his strength increases. The exercises that may be performed with the dumb-bell, combined with a few simple drill-like movements, give employment to all parts of the body and to both sides equally. Dumb-bell exercises, therefore, when arranged judiciously and with knowledge, are admirably suited for developing the physique, and are extensively employed in schools both for boys and girls. The bar-bell is merely a two-handed dumb-bell, and its use is similar in principle. The Indian club is also in use in most gymnasia; but the risk of overstraining the body by its unskilful handling makes it less generally popular than the dumb-bell. All these appliances may be, and often are, used either in ordinary schoolrooms or elsewhere outside the gymnasium. The usual fixed sorts of apparatus, the presence of which (or of some of them) in a building may be said to constitute it a gymnasium, are the following: a leaping-rope; a leaping-pole; a vaulting-horse; a horizontal bar, so mounted between two upright posts that its height from the ground may be adjusted as desired; parallel bars, used for exercises to develop the muscles of the trunk and arms; the trapeze consisting of a horizontal bar suspended by ropes at a height of 4 to 5 ft. from the ground; the bridge ladder; the plank; the inclined plane; the mast; swinging rings; the prepared wall; the horizontal beam.

Before the end of the 19th century the therapeutic value of gymnastics was fully realized by the medical profession; and a number of medical or surgical gymnasia came into existence, provided with specially devised apparatus for the treatment of different physical defects or weaknesses. The exercises practised in them are arranged upon scientific principles based on anatomical and physiological knowledge; and these principles have spread thence to influence largely the practice of gymnastics in schools and in the army. A French medical writer enumerates seven distinct groups of maladies, each including a number of different complaints, for which gymnastic exercises are a recognized form of treatment; and there are many malformations of the human body, formerly believed to be incurable, which are capable of being greatly remedied if not entirely corrected by regular gymnastic exercises practised under medical direction.

The value of gymnastics both for curing defects, and still more for promoting health and the development of normal physique, is recognized even more clearly on the continent of Europe than in Great Britain. In Germany the government not only controls the practice of gymnastics but makes it compulsory for every child and adult to undergo a prescribed amount of such physical training. In France also, physical training by gymnastics is under state control; in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, systems more or less distinct enjoy a wide popularity; and in Finland gymnastics are practised on lines that exhibit national peculiarities. The Finns introduce an exceptional degree of variety into their exercises as well as into the appliances devised to assist them; women are scarcely less expert than men in the performance of them; and the enthusiasm with which the system is supported produces the most beneficial results in the physique of the people. International gymnastic contests have become a feature of the revived Olympic Games (seeAthletic Sports), and in those held at Athens in 1906 a team of Danish ladies took part in the competition and proved by their skilful performance that gymnastics may be practised with as much success by women as by men.

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