N (continued 2)

1337.—"When the sun was in Cancer, the King of the time (Mahommed Tughlak) took the stone fort of Nagarkot in the year 738.... It is placed between rivers like the pupil of an eye ... and is so impregnable that neither Sikandar nor Dara were able to take it."—Badr-i-chach, ibid. iii. 570.

c. 1370.—"Sultan Firoz ... marched with his army towards Nagarkot, and passing by the valleys of Nákhach-nuhgarhí, he arrived with his army at Nagarkot, which he found to be very strong and secure. The idol Jwálámukhi (see JOWAULLA MOOKHEE), much worshiped by the infidels, was situated in the road to Nagarkot...."—Shams-i-Siráj, ibid. iii. 317-318.

1398.—"When I entered the valley on that side of the Siwálik, information was brought to me about the town of Nagarkot, which is a large and important town of Hindustán, and situated in these mountains. The distance was 30 kos, but the road lay through jungles, and over lofty and rugged hills."—Autobiog. of Timur, ibid. 465.

1553.—"But the sources of these rivers (Indus and Ganges) though they burst forth separately in the mountains which Ptolemy calls Imaus, and which the natives call Dalanguer and Nangracot, yet are these mountains so closely joined that it seems as if they sought to hide these springs."—Barros, I. iv. 7.

c. 1590.—"Nagerkote is a city situated upon a mountain, with a fort called Kangerah. In the vicinity of this city, upon a lofty mountain, is a place called Mahamaey (Mahāmāyā), which they consider as one of the works of the Divinity, and come in pilgrimage to it from great distances, thereby obtaining the accomplishment of their wishes. It is most wonderful that in order to effect this, they cut out their tongues, which grow again in the course of two or three days...."—Ayeen, ed. Gladwin, ii. 119; [ed. Jarrett, ii. 312].

1609.—"Bordering to him is another great Raiaw called Tulluck Chand, whose chiefe City is Negercoat, 80 c. from Lahor, and as much from Syrinan, in which City is a famous Pagod, called Ie or Durga, vnto which worlds of People resort out of all parts of India.... Diuers Moores also resorte to this Peer...."—W. Finch, in Purchas, i. 438.

1616.—"27. Nagra Cutt, the chiefe Citie so called...."—Terry, in Purchas, ii.; [ed. 1777, p. 82].

[c. 1617.—"Nakarkutt."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 534.]

c. 1676.—"The caravan being arriv'd at the foot of the Mountains which are call'd at this day by the name of Naugrocot, abundance of people come from all parts of the Mountain, the greatest part whereof are women and maids, who agree with the Merchants to carry them, their Goods and provisions cross the Mountains...."—Tavernier, E.T. ii. 183; [ed. Ball, ii. 263].

1788.—"Kote Kangrah, the fortress belonging to the famous temple of Nagorcote, is given at 49 royal cosses, equal to 99 G. miles, from Sirhind (northward)."—Rennell, Memoir, ed. 1793, p. 107.

1809.—"At Patancote, where the Padshah (so the Sikhs call Runjeet) is at present engaged in preparations and negotiations for the purpose of obtaining possession of Cote Caungrah (or Nagar Cote), which place is besieged by the Raja of Nepaul...."—Elphinstone, in Life, i. 217.

NUJEEB, s. Hind. from Ar. najīb, 'noble.' A kind of half-disciplined infantry soldiers under some of the native Governments; also at one time a kind of militia under the British; receiving this honorary title as being gentlemen volunteers.

[c. 1790.—"There were 1000 men, nudjeeves, sword men...." Evidence of Sheikh Mohammed, quoted by Mr. Plumer, in Trial of W. Hastings, in Bond, iii. 393.

[1796.—"The Nezibs are Matchlock men."—W. A. Tone, A Letter on the Mahratta People, Bombay, 1798, p. 50.]

1813.—"There are some corps (Mahratta) styled Nujeeb or men of good family.... These are foot soldiers invariably armed with a sabre and matchlock, and having adopted some semblance of European discipline are much respected."—Forbes, Or. Mem. ii. 46; [2nd ed. i. 343].

[ " "A corps of Nujeebs, or infantry with matchlocks...."—Broughton, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, ed. 1892, p. 11.

[1817.—"In some instances they are called Nujeeb (literally, Noble) and would not deign to stand sentry or perform any fatiguing duty."—V. Blacker, Mem. of the Operations in India in 1817-19, p. 22.]

NULLAH, s. Hind. nālā. A watercourse; not necessarily a dry watercourse, though this is perhaps more frequently indicated in the Anglo-Indian use.

1776.—"When the water falls in all the nullahs...."—Halhed's Code, 52.

c. 1785.—"Major Adams had sent on the 11th Captain Hebbert ... to throw a bridge over Shinga nullah."—Carraccioli, Life of Clive, i. 93.

1789.—"The ground which the enemy had occupied was entirely composed of sandhills and deep nullahs...."—Munro, Narrative, 224.

1799.—"I think I can show you a situation where two embrasures might be opened in the bank of the nullah with advantage."—Wellington, Despatches, i. 26.

1817.—"On the same evening, as soon as dark, the party which was destined to open the trenches marched to the chosen spot, and before daylight formed a nullah ... into a large parallel."—Mill's Hist. v. 377.

1843.—"Our march tardy because of the nullahs. Watercourses is the right name, but we get here a slip-slop way of writing quite contemptible."—Life of Sir C. Napier, ii. 310.

1860.—"The real obstacle to movement is the depth of the nullahs hollowed out by the numerous rivulets, when swollen by the rains."—Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 574.

NUMDA, NUMNA, s. Hind. namda, namdā, from Pers. namad, [Skt. namata]. Felt; sometimes a woollen saddle-cloth, properly made of felt. The word is perhaps the same as Ar. namaṭ, 'a coverlet,' spread on the seat of a sovereign, &c.

[1774.—"The apartment was full of people seated on Næmets (felts of camel hair) spread round the sides of the room...."—Hanway, Hist. Account of British Trade, i. 226.]

1815.—"That chief (Temugin or Chingiz), we are informed, after addressing the Khans in an eloquent harangue, was seated upon a black felt or nummud, and reminded of the importance of the duties to which he was called."—Malcolm, H. of Persia, i. 410.

[1819.—"A Kattie throws a nunda on his mare."—Trans. Lit. Soc. Bo. i. 279.]

1828.—"In a two-poled tent of a great size, and lined with yellow woollen stuff of Europe, sat Nader Koolee Khan, upon a coarse numud...."—The Kuzzilbash, i. 254.

[1850.—"The natives use (for their tents) a sort of woollen stuff, about half an inch thick, called 'numbda.'... By the bye, this word 'numbda' is said to be the origin of the word nomade, because the nomade tribes used the same material for their tents" (!)—Letter in Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 342.]

NUMERICAL AFFIXES, CO-EFFICIENTS, or DETERMINATIVES.^[190] What is meant by these expressions can perhaps be best elucidated by an extract from the Malay Grammar of the late venerable John Crawfurd:

"In the enumeration of certain objects, the Malay has a peculiar idiom which, as far as I know, does not exist in any other language of the Archipelago. It is of the same nature as the word 'head,' as we use it in the tale of cattle, or 'sail' in the enumeration of ships; but in Malay it extends to many familiar objects. Alai, of which the original meaning has not been ascertained, is applied to such tenuous objects as leaves, grasses, &c.; Batang, meaning 'stem,' or 'trunk,' to trees, logs, spears, and javelins; Bantak, of which the meaning has not been ascertained, to such objects as rings; Bidang, which means 'spreading' or 'spacious,' to mats, carpets, thatch, sails, skins, and hides; Biji, 'seeds,' to corn, seeds, stones, pebbles, gems, eggs, the eyes of animals, lamps, and candlesticks," and so on. Crawfurd names 8 or 9 other terms, one or other of which is always used in company with the numeral, in ennumerating different classes of objects, as if, in English, idiom should compel us to say 'two stems of spears,' 'four spreads of carpets,' 'six corns of diamonds.' As a matter of fact we do speak of 20 head of cattle, 10 file of soldiers, 100 sail of ships, 20 pieces of cannon, a dozen stand of rifles. But still the practice is in none of these cases obligatory, it is technical and exceptional; insomuch that I remember, when a boy, in old Reform-Bill days, and when disturbances were expected in a provincial town, hearing it stated by a well-informed lady that a great proprietress in the neighbourhood was so alarmed that she had ordered from town a whole stand of muskets!

To some small extent the idiom occurs also in other European languages, including French and German. Of French I don't remember any example now except tête (de betail), nor of German except Stück, which is, however, almost as universal as the Chinese piecey. A quaint example dwells in my memory of a German courier, who, when asked whether he had any employer at the moment, replied: 'Ja freilich! dreizehn Stück Amerikaner!'

The same peculiar idiom that has been described in the extract from Crawfurd as existing in Malay, is found also in Burmese. The Burmese affixes seem to be more numerous, and their classification to be somewhat more arbitrary and sophisticated. Thus oos, a root implying 'chief' or 'first,' is applied to kings, divinities, priests, &c.; Yauk, 'a male,' to rational beings not divine; Gaung, 'a brute beast,' to irrational beings; Pya implying superficial extent, to dollars, countries, dishes, blankets, &c.; Lun, implying rotundity, to eggs, loaves, bottles, cups, toes, fingers, candles, bamboos, hands, feet, &c.; Tseng and Gyaung, 'extension in a straight line,' to rods, lines, spears, roads, &c.

The same idiom exists in Siamese, and traces of it appear in some of the vocabularies that have been collected of tribes on the frontier of China and Tibet, indicated by the fact that the numerals in such vocabularies in various instances show identity of origin in the essential part of the numeral, whilst a different aspect is given to the whole word by a variation in what appears to be the numeral-affix^[191] (or what Mr. Brian Hodgson calls the 'servile affix'). The idiom exists in the principal vernaculars of China itself, and it is a transfer of this idiom from Chinese dialects to Pigeon-English which has produced the piecey, which in that quaint jargon seems to be used as the universal numerical affix ("Two piecey cooly," "three piecey dollar," &c.).

This one pigeon phrase represents scores that are used in the vernaculars. For in some languages the system has taken what seems an extravagant development, which must form a great difficulty in the acquisition of colloquial use by foreigners. Some approximate statistics on this subject will be given below.

The idiom is found in Japanese and Corean, but it is in these cases possibly not indigenous, but an adoption from the Chinese.

It is found in several languages of C. America, i.e. the Quiché of Guatemala, the Nahault of Mexico Proper; and in at least two other languages (Tep and Pirinda) of the same region. The following are given as the co-efficients or determinatives chiefly used in the (Nahualt or) Mexican. Compare them with the examples of Malay and Burmese usage already given:

Tetl (a stone) used for roundish or cylindrical objects; e.g. eggs, beans, cacao beans, cherries, prickly-pears, Spanish loaves, &c., also for books, and fowls:

Pantli (?) for long rows of persons and things; also for walls and furrows:

Tlamantli (from mana, to spread on the ground), for shoes, dishes, basins, paper, &c., also for speeches and sermons:

Olotl (maize-grains) for ears of maize, cacao-pods, bananas: also for flint arrow-heads (see W. v. Humboldt, Kawi-Sprache, ii. 265).

I have, by the kind aid of my friend Professor Terrien de la Couperie, compiled a list of nearly fifty languages in which this curious idiom exists. But it takes up too much space to be inserted here. I may, however, give his statistics of the number of such determinatives, as assigned in the grammars of some of these languages. In Chinese vernaculars, from 33 in the Shanghai vernacular to 110 in that of Fuchau. In Corean, 12; in Japanese, 16; in Annamite, 106; in Siamese, 24; in Shan, 42; in Burmese, 40; in Malay and Javanese, 19.

If I am not mistaken, the propensity to give certain technical and appropriated titles to couples of certain beasts and birds, which had such an extensive development in old English sporting phraseology, and still partly survives, had its root in the same state of mind, viz. difficulty in grasping the idea of abstract numbers, and a dislike to their use. Some light to me was, many years ago, thrown upon this feeling, and on the origin of the idiom of which we have been speaking, by a passage in a modern book, which is the more noteworthy as the author does not make any reference to the existence of this idiom in any language, and possibly was not aware of it:

"On entering into conversation with the (Red) Indian, it becomes speedily apparent that he is unable to comprehend the idea of abstract numbers. They exist in his mind only as associated ideas. He has a distinct conception of five dogs or five deer, but he is so unaccustomed to the idea of number as a thing apart from specific objects, that I have tried in vain to get an Indian to admit that the idea of the number five, as associated in his mind with five dogs, is identical, as far as number is concerned, with that of five fingers."—(Wilson's Prehistoric Man, 1st ed. ii. 470.) [Also see Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2nd ed. i. 252 seqq.].

Thus it seems probable that the use of the numeral co-efficient, whether in the Malay idiom or in our old sporting phraseology, is a kind of survival of the effort to bridge the difficulty felt, in identifying abstract numbers as applied to different objects, by the introduction of a common concrete term.

Traces of a like tendency, though probably grown into a mere fashion and artificially developed, are common in Hindustani and Persian, especially in the official written style of munshīs, who delight in what seemed to me, before my attention was called to the Indo-Chinese idiom, the wilful surplusage (e.g.) of two 'sheets' (fard) of letters, also used with quilts, carpets, &c.; three 'persons' (nafar) of barḳandāzes; five 'rope' (rās) of buffaloes; ten 'chains' (zanjīr) of elephants; twenty 'grips' (ḳabẓa) of swords, &c. But I was not aware of the extent of the idiom in the munshī's repertory till I found it displayed in Mr. Carnegy's Kachahri Technicalities, under the head of Muḥāwara (Idioms or Phrases). Besides those just quoted, we there find 'adad ('number') used with coins, utensils, and sleeveless garments; dāna ('grain') with pearls and coral beads; dast ('hand') with falcons, &c., shields, and robes of honour; jild (volume, lit. 'skin') with books; muhār ('nose-bit') with camels; ḳiṭa ('portion,' piecey!) with precious stones, gardens, tanks, fields, letters; manzil ('a stage on a journey, an alighting place') with tents, boats, houses, carriages, beds, howdas, &c.; sāz ('an instrument') with guitars, &c.; silk ('thread') with necklaces of all sorts, &c. Several of these, with others purely Turkish, are used also in Osmanli Turkish.^[192]

NUNCATIES, s. Rich cakes made by the Mahommedans in W. India chiefly imported into Bombay from Surat. [There is a Pers. word, nānḵhat̤āi, 'bread of Cathay or China,' with which this word has been connected. But Mr. Weir, Collector of Surat, writes that it is really nankhaṭāī, Pers. nān, 'bread,' and Mahr. khaṭ, shaṭ, 'six'; meaning a special kind of cake composed of six ingredients—wheat-flour, eggs, sugar, butter or ghee, leaven produced from toddy or grain, and almonds.]

[NUT, s. Hind. nath, Skt. nastā, 'the nose.' The nose-ring worn by Indian women.

[1819.—"An old fashioned nuth or nose-ring, stuck full of precious or false stones."—Trans. Lit. Soc. Bo. i. 284.

[1832.—"The nut (nose-ring) of gold wire, on which is strung a ruby between two pearls, worn only by married women."—Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Obsns. i. 45.]

NUT PROMOTION, s. From its supposed indigestible character, the kernel of the cashew-nut is so called in S. India, where, roasted and hot, it is a favourite dessert dish. [See Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 28.]

NUZZER, s. Hind. from Ar. naẓr or nazar (prop. nadhr), primarily 'a vow or votive offering'; but, in ordinary use, a ceremonial present, properly an offering from an inferior to a superior, the converse of in'ām. The root is the same as that of Nazarite (Numbers, vi. 2).

[1765.—"The congratulatory nazirs, &c., shall be set opposite my ordinary expenses; and if ought remains, it shall go to Poplar, or some other hospital."—Letter of Ld. Clive, Sept. 30, in Verelst, View of Bengal, 127.

[c. 1775.—"The Governor lays before the board two bags ... which were presented to him in nizzers...."—Progs. of Council, quoted by Fox in speech against W. Hastings, in Bond, iv. 201.]

1782.—"Col. Monson was a man of high and hospitable household expenses; and so determined against receiving of presents, that he would not only not touch a nazier (a few silver rupees, or perhaps a gold mohor) always presented by country gentlemen, according to their rank...."—Price's Tracts, ii. 61.

1785.—"Presents of ceremony, called nuzzers, were to many a great portion of their subsistence...."—Letter in Life of Colebrooke, 16.

1786.—Tippoo, even in writing to the French Governor of Pondichery, whom it was his interest to conciliate, and in acknowledging a present of 500 muskets, cannot restrain his insolence, but calls them "sent by way of nuzr."—Select Letters of Tippoo, 377.

1809.—"The Aumil himself offered the nazur of fruit."—Ld. Valentia, i. 453.

[1832.—"I ... looked to the Meer for explanation; he told me to accept Muckabeg's 'nuzza.'"—Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Observns. i. 193.]

1876.—"The Standard has the following curious piece of news in its Court Circular of a few days ago:—

'Sir Salar Jung was presented to the Queen by the Marquis of Salisbury, and offered his Muggur as a token of allegiance, which her Majesty touched and returned.'"—Punch, July 15.

For the true sense of the word so deliciously introduced instead of Nuzzer, see MUGGUR.