H (continued 2)

[c. 1661.—"... on my way to Gonder, the capital of Habech, or Kingdom of Ethiopia."—Bernier, ed. Constable, 2.]

1673.—"Cowis Cawn, an Hobsy or Arabian Coffery (Caffer)."—Fryer, 147.

1681.—"Habessini ... nunc passim nominantur; vocabulo ab Arabibus indito, quibus Habesh colluviem vel mixturam gentium denotat."—Ludolphi, Hist. Aethiop. lib. i. c. i.

1750-60.—"The Moors are also fond of having Abyssinian slaves known in India by the name of Hobshy Coffrees."—Grose, i. 148.

1789.—"In India Negroes, Habissinians, Nobis (i.e. Nubians) &c. &c. are promiscuously called Habashies or Habissians, although the two latter are no negroes; and the Nobies and Habashes differ greatly from one another."—Note to Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 36.

[1813.—"... the master of a family adopts a slave, frequently a Haffshee Abyssinian, of the darkest hue, for his heir."—Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. ii. 473.]

1884.—"One of my Tibetan ponies had short curly brown hair, and was called both by my servants, and by Dr. Campbell, 'a Hubshee.'

"I understood that the name was specific for that description of pony amongst the traders."—Note by Sir Joseph Hooker.

HUCK. Properly Ar. haḳḳ. A just right; a lawful claim; a perquisite claimable by established usage.

[1866.—"The difference between the bazar price, and the amount price of the article sold, is the huq of the Dullal (Deloll)."—Confessions of an Orderly, 50.]

HUCKEEM, s. Ar.—H. ḥakīm; a physician. (See note under HAKIM.)

1622.—"I, who was thinking little or nothing about myself, was forthwith put by them into the hands of an excellent physician, a native of Shiraz, who then happened to be at Lar, and whose name was Hekim Abu'l fetab. The word hekim signifies 'wise'; it is a title which it is the custom to give to all those learned in medical matters."—P. della Valle, ii. 318.

1673.—"My Attendance is engaged, and a Million of Promises, could I restore him to his Health, laid down from his Wives, Children, and Relations, who all (with the Citizens, as I could hear going along) pray to God that the Hackin Fringi, the Frank Doctor, might kill him ..."—Fryer, 312.

1837.—"I had the native works on Materia Medica collated by competent Hakeems and Moonshees."—Royle, Hindoo Medicine, 25.

HULLIA, s. Canarese Holeya; the same as Polea (pulayan) (q.v.), equivalent to Pariah (q.v.). ["Holeyas field-labourers and agrestic serfs of S. Canara; Pulayan being the Malayālam and Paraiyan the Tamil form of the same word. Brahmans derive it from hole, 'pollution'; others from hola, 'land' or 'soil,' as being thought to be autochthones" (Sturrock, Man. of S. Canara, i. 173). The last derivation is accepted in the Madras Gloss. For an illustration of these people, see Richter, Man. of Coorg, 112.]

1817.—"... a Hulliá or Pariar King."—Wilks, Hist. Sketches, i. 151.

1874.—"At Melkotta, the chief seat of the followers of Râmanya [Rāmānuja] Achârya, and at the Brâhman temple at Bailur, the Hŏlĕyars or Pareyars have the right of entering the temple on three days in the year, specially set apart for them."—M. J. Walhouse, in Ind. Antiq. iii. 191.

HULWA, s. Ar. ḥalwā and ḥalāwa is generic for sweetmeat, and the word is in use from Constantinople to Calcutta. In H. the word represents a particular class, of which the ingredients are milk, sugar, almond paste, and ghee flavoured with cardamom. "The best at Bombay is imported from Muskat" (Birdwood).

1672.—"Ce qui estoit plus le plaisant, c'estoit un homme qui précédoit le corps des confituriers, lequel avoit une chemise qui luy descendoit aux talons, toute couverte d'alva, c'est à dire, de confiture."—Journ. d'Ant. Galland, i. 118.

1673.—"... the Widow once a Moon (to) go to the Grave with her Acquaintance to repeat the doleful Dirge, after which she bestows Holway, a kind of Sacramental Wafer; and entreats their Prayers for the Soul of the Departed."—Fryer, 94.

1836.—"A curious cry of the seller of a kind of sweetmeat ('haláweh'), composed of treacle fried with some other ingredients, is 'For a nail! O sweetmeat!...' children and servants often steal implements of iron, &c., from the house ... and give them to him in exchange...."—Lane, Mod. Egypt., ed. 1871, ii. 15.

HUMMAUL, s. Ar. ḥammāl, a porter. The use of the word in India is confined to the west, and there now commonly indicates a palankin-bearer. The word still survives in parts of Sicily in the form camallu = It. 'facchino,' a relic of the Saracenic occupation. In Andalusia alhamel now means a man who lets out a baggage horse; and the word is also used in Morocco in the same way (Dozy).

c. 1350.—"Those rustics whom they call camalls (camallos), whose business it is to carry burdens, and also to carry men and women on their shoulders in litters, such as are mentioned in Canticles: 'Ferculum fecit sibi Solomon de lignis Libani,' whereby is meant a portable litter such as I used to be carried in at Zayton, and in India."—John de' Marignolli, in Cathay, &c., 366.

1554.—"To the Xabandar (see SHABUNDER) (at Ormuz) for the vessels employed in discharging stores, and for the amals who serve in the custom-house."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 103.

1691.—"His honour was carried by the Amaals, i.e. the Palankyn bearers 12 in number, sitting in his Palankyn."—Valentijn, v. 266.

1711.—"Hamalage, or Cooley-hire, at 1 coz (see GOSBECK) for every maund Tabrees."—Tariff in Lockyer, 243.

1750-60.—"The Hamauls or porters, who make a livelihood of carrying goods to and from the warehouses."—Grose, i. 120.

1809.—"The palankeen-bearers are here called hamauls (a word signifying carrier) ... these people come chiefly from the Mahratta country, and are of the coombie or agricultural caste."—Maria Graham, 2.

1813.—For Hamauls at Bussora, see Milburn, i. 126.

1840.—"The hamals groaned under the weight of their precious load, the Apostle of the Ganges" (Dr. Duff to wit).—Smith's Life of Dr. John Wilson, 1878, p. 282.

1877.—"The stately iron gate enclosing the front garden of the Russian Embassy was beset by a motley crowd.... Hamals, or street porters, bent double under the burden of heavy trunks and boxes, would come now and then up one or other of the two semicircular avenues."—Letter from Constantinople, in Times, May 7.

HUMMING-BIRD, s. This name is popularly applied in some parts of India to the sun-birds (sub-fam. Nectarininae).

HUMP, s. 'Calcutta humps' are the salted humps of Indian oxen exported from that city. (See under BUFFALO.)

HURCARRA, HIRCARA, &c., s. Hind. harkārā, 'a messenger, a courier; an emissary, a spy' (Wilson). The etymology, according to the same authority, is har, 'every,' kār, 'business.' The word became very familiar in the Gilchristian spelling Hurkaru, from the existence of a Calcutta newspaper bearing that title (Bengal Hurkaru, generally enunciated by non-Indians as Hurkĕroó), for the first 60 years of last century, or thereabouts.

1747.—"Given to the Ircaras for bringing news of the Engagement. (Pag.) 4 3 0."—Fort St David, Expenses of the Paymaster, under January. MS. Records in India Office.

1748.—"The city of Dacca is in the utmost confusion on account of ... advices of a large force of Mahrattas coming by way of the Sunderbunds, and that they were advanced as far as Sundra Col, when first descried by their Hurcurrahs."—In Long, 4.

1757.—"I beg you to send me a good alcara who understands the Portuguese language."—Letter in Ives, 159.

" "Hircars or Spies."—Ibid. 161; [and comp. 67].

1761.—"The head Harcar returned, and told me this as well as several other secrets very useful to me, which I got from him by dint of money and some rum."—Letter of Capt. Martin White, in Long, 260.

[1772.—"Hercarras." (See under DALOYET.)]

1780.—"One day upon the march a Hircarrah came up and delivered him a letter from Colonel Baillie."—Letter of T. Munro, in Life, i. 26.

1803.—"The hircarras reported the enemy to be at Bokerdun."—Letter of A. Wellesley, ibid. 348.

c. 1810.—"We were met at the entrance of Tippoo's dominions by four hircarrahs, or soldiers, whom the Sultan sent as a guard to conduct us safely."—Miss Edgeworth, Lame Jervas. Miss Edgeworth has oddly misused the word here.

1813.—"The contrivances of the native halcarrahs and spies to conceal a letter are extremely clever, and the measures they frequently adopt to elude the vigilance of an enemy are equally extraordinary."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iv. 129; [compare 2nd ed. i. 64; ii. 201].

HURTAUL, s. Hind. from Skt. haritalaka, hartāl, haritāl, yellow arsenic, orpiment.

c. 1347.—Ibn Batuta seems oddly to confound it with camphor. "The best (camphor) called in the country itself al-ḥardāla, is that which attains the highest degree of cold."—iv. 241.

c. 1759.—"... hartal and Cotch, Earth-Oil and Wood-Oil...."—List of Burmese Products, in Dalrymple's Or. Reper. i. 109.

HUZĀRA, n.p. This name has two quite distinct uses.

(a.) Pers. Hazāra. It is used as a generic name for a number of tribes occupying some of the wildest parts of Afghanistan, chiefly N.W. and S.W. of Kabul. These tribes are in no respect Afghan, but are in fact most or all of them Mongol in features, and some of them also in language. The term at one time appears to have been used more generally for a variety of the wilder clans in the higher hill countries of Afghanistan and the Oxus basin, much as in Scotland of a century and a half ago they spoke of "the clans." It appears to be merely from the Pers. hazār, 1000. The regiments, so to speak, of the Mongol hosts of Chinghiz and his immediate successors were called hazāras, and if we accept the belief that the Hazāras of Afghanistan were predatory bands of those hosts who settled in that region (in favour of which there is a good deal to be said), this name is intelligible. If so, its application to the non-Mongol people of Wakhān, &c., must have been a later transfer. [See the discussion by Bellew, who points out that "amongst themselves this people never use the term Hazārah as their national appellation, and yet they have no name for their people as a nation. They are only known amongst themselves by the names of their principal tribes and the clans subordinate to them respectively." (Races of Afghanistan, 114.)]

c. 1480.—"The Hazāra, Takdari, and all the other tribes having seen this, quietly submitted to his authority."—Tarkhán-Náma, in Elliot, i. 303. For Takdari we should probably read Nakudari; and see Marco Polo, Bk. I. ch. 18, note on Nigudaris.

c. 1505.—Kabul "on the west has the mountain districts, in which are situated Karnûd and Ghûr. This mountainous tract is at present occupied and inhabited by the Hazâra and Nukderi tribes."—Baber, p. 136.

1508.—"Mirza Ababeker, the ruler and tyrant of Káshghar, had seized all the Upper Hazáras of Badakhshán."—Erskine's Baber and Humáyun, i. 287. "Hazáraját báládest. The upper districts in Badakhshán were called Hazáras." Erskine's note. He is using the Tarīkh Rashīdī. But is not the word Hazáras here, 'the clans,' used elliptically for the highland districts occupied by them?

[c. 1590.—"The Hazárahs are the descendants of the Chaghatai army, sent by Manku Ḳáán to the assistance of Huláku Khán.... They possess horses, sheep and goats. They are divided into factions, each covetous of what they can obtain, deceptive in their common intercourse and their conventions of amity savour of the wolf."—Āīn, ed. Jarrett, ii. 402.]

(b.) A mountain district in the extreme N.W. of the Punjab, of which Abbottābād, called after its founder, General James Abbott, is the British head-quarter. The name of this region apparently has nothing to do with Hazāras in the tribal sense, but is probably a survival of the ancient name of a territory in this quarter, called in Sanskrit Abhisāra, and figuring in Ptolemy, Arrian and Curtius as the kingdom of King Abisarēs. [See M‘Crindle, Invasion of India, 69.]

HUZOOR, s. Ar. ḥuẓūr, 'the presence'; used by natives as a respectful way of talking of or to exalted personages, to or of their master, or occasionally of any European gentleman in presence of another European. [The allied words ḥaẓrat and ḥuẓūrī are used in kindred senses as in the examples.]

[1787.—"You will send to the Huzzoor an account particular of the assessment payable by each ryot."—Parwana of Tippoo, in Logan, Malabar, iii. 125.

[1813.—"The Mahratta cavalry are divided into several classes: the Husserat, or household troops called the kassey-pagah, are reckoned very superior to the ordinary horse...."—Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. i. 344.

[1824.—"The employment of that singular description of officers called Huzooriah, or servants of the presence, by the Mahratta princes of Central India, has been borrowed from the usages of the Poona court. Huzooriahs are personal attendants of the chief, generally of his own tribe, and are usually of respectable parentage; a great proportion are hereditary followers of the family of the prince they serve.... They are the usual envoys to subjects on occasions of importance.... Their appearance supersedes all other authority, and disobedience to the orders they convey is termed an act of rebellion."—Malcolm, Central India, 2nd ed. i. 536 seq.

[1826.—"These men of authority being aware that I was a Hoogorie, or one attached to the suite of a great man, received me with due respect."—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, i. 40.]

HYSON. (See under TEA.)