Varna

Varna (vär`nä), city (1993 pop. 307,200), E Bulgaria, on the Black Sea. It is a major port and an industrial center. Manufactures include ships and boats, chemicals, electrical equipment, and textiles. Varna is also an international summer resort. Significant artifacts discovered near Varna have been dated to second half of the 5th millennium B.C., but the city itself was founded in 580 B.C. as the Greek colony of Odessus and passed to the Roman Empire in the 1st cent. A.D. The Bulgarians defeated Byzantine emperor Constantine IV at Varna in 679. The city passed to the second Bulgarian kingdom in 1201, was captured by the Turks in 1391, and became an active seaport under their rule. In 1444 the Turks under Murad II won a decisive victory over Crusader forces led by Ladislaus III of Poland and Hungary, who was killed. The battle of Varna was the last major attempt by Christian Europe to stem the Ottoman tide. Varna was (1854) the chief naval base of the British and French forces in the Crimean War. The city was liberated from Turkish rule in 1878 and ceded to newly independent Bulgaria. It now has a university (founded 1920), a polytechnic institute, a naval academy, a medical college, and an archaeological museum as well as the ruins of a 5th-century basilica and a 6th-century Byzantine fortress. From 1949 to 1956 the city was named Stalin.

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varna

Any of the four traditional social classes of Hindu India. One of the hymns of the Rigveda declares that the Brahman, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Shudra issued forth at creation from the mouth, arms, thighs, and feet of Prajapati. Traditional lawmakers specified a set of obligations, observed mainly in theory only, to each varna: the Brahman, to study and advise; the Kshatriya, to protect; the Vaishya, to cultivate; and the Shudra, to serve. An unofficial fifth class, the pancama, was created to include certain untouchables and tribal groups falling outside this system. The relationship of the caste system to the class system is complex; individual castes, of which there are dozens, have sought to raise their social rank by identifying with a particular varna, demanding the associated privileges of rank and honour.

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Varna

Seaport city (pop., 2001: 314,539), Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast. Founded as Odessus by Milesian Greeks in the 6th century BC, it later was Thracian, Macedonian, and Roman. In AD 681 it became part of the first Bulgarian empire (c. 679–1018) and was named Varna. It came under Ottoman domination in 1391. In 1444 it was the scene of a battle between Turkish and Hungarian armies in which Wladyslaw III, king of Poland and Hungary, was killed. Varna was ceded to Bulgaria by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin (see Congress of Berlin). It is an important administrative, economic, cultural, and resort centre. Shipbuilding and manufacturing are important industries.

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Varna

a port in NE Bulgaria, on the Black Sea: founded by Greeks in the 6th century bc; under the Ottoman Turks (1391--1878). Pop.: 340 000 (2005 est.)