DURJUN, s. H. darjan, a corr. of the English dozen.

DURWAUN, s. H. from P. darwān, darbān. A doorkeeper. A domestic servant so called is usual in the larger houses of Calcutta. He is porter at the gate of the compound (q.v.).

DURWAUZA-BUND. The formula by which a native servant in an Anglo-Indian household intimates that his master or mistress cannot receive a visitor—'Not at home'—without the untruth. It is elliptical for darwāza band hai, 'the door is closed.'

DUSSERA, DASSORA, DASEHRA, s. Skt. daśaharā, H. dasharā, Mahr. dasrā; the nine-nights' (or ten days') festival in October, also called Durgā-pūjā (see DOORGA-P.). In the west and south of India this holiday, taking place after the close of the wet season, became a great military festival, and the period when military expeditions were entered upon. The Mahrattas were alleged to celebrate the occasion in a way characteristic of them, by destroying a village! The popular etymology of the word and that accepted by the best authorities, is daś, 'ten (sins)' and har, 'that which takes away (or expiates).' It is, perhaps, rather connected with the ten days' duration of the feast, or with its chief day being the 10th of the month (Aśvina); but the origin is decidedly obscure.

DUSTOOR, DUSTOORY, s. P.—H. dastūr, 'custom' [see DESTOOR,] dastūrī, 'that which is customary.' That commission or percentage on the money passing in any cash transaction which, with or without acknowledgment or permission, sticks to the fingers of the agent of payment. Such 'customary' appropriations are, we believe, very nearly as common in England as in India; a fact of which newspaper correspondence from time to time makes us aware, though Europeans in India, in condemning the natives, often forget, or are ignorant of this. In India the practice is perhaps more distinctly recognised, as the word denotes. Ibn Batuta tells us that at the Court of Delhi, in his time (c. 1340), the custom was for the officials to deduct 1⁄10 of every sum which the Sultan ordered to be paid from the treasury (see I. B. pp. 408, 426, &c.).

DUSTUCK, s. P. dastak, ['a little hand, hand-clapping to attract attention, a notice']. A pass or permit. The dustucks granted by the Company's covenanted servants in the early half of the 18th century seems to have been a constant instrument of abuse, or bone of contention, with the native authorities in Bengal. [The modern sense of the word in N. India is a notice of the revenue demand served on a defaulter.]

DWARKA, n.p. More properly Dvārakā or Dvārikā, quasi ἐκατόμπυλος, 'the City with many gates,' a very sacred Hindu place of pilgrimage, on the extreme N.W. point of peninsular Guzerat; the alleged royal city of Krishna. It is in the small State called Okha, which Gen. Legrand Jacob pronounces to be "barren of aught save superstition and piracy" (Tr. Bo. Geog. Soc. vii. 161). Dvārikā is, we apprehend, the βαράκη of Ptolemy. Indeed, in an old Persian map, published in Indian Antiq. i. 370, the place appears, transcribed as Bharraky.

E

EAGLE-WOOD, s. The name of an aromatic wood from Camboja and some other Indian regions, chiefly trans-gangetic. It is the "odorous wood" referred to by Camões in the quotation under CHAMPA. We have somewhere read an explanation of the name as applied to the substance in question, because this is flecked and mottled, and so supposed to resemble the plumage of an eagle! [Burton, Ar. Nights, iv. 395; Linschoten, Hak. Soc. i. 120, 150.] The word is in fact due to a corrupt form of the Skt. name of the wood, agaru, aguru. A form, probably, of this is aγil, akil, which Gundert gives as the Malayāl. word.^[114] From this the Portuguese must have taken their aguila, as we find it in Barbosa (below), or pao (wood) d'aguila, made into aquila, whence French bois d'aigle, and Eng. eagle-wood. The Malays call it Kayū (wood)-gahru, evidently the same word, though which way the etymology flowed it is difficult to say. [Mr. Skeat writes: "the question is a difficult one. Klinkert gives garu (garoe) and gaharu (gaharoe), whence the trade names 'Garrow' and 'Garroo'; and the modern standard Malay certainly corresponds to Klinkert's forms, though I think gaharu should rather be written gharu, i.e. with an aspirated g, which is the way the Malays pronounce it. On the other hand, it seems perfectly clear that there must have been an alternative modern form agaru, or perhaps even aguru, since otherwise such trade names as 'ugger' and (?) 'tugger' could not have arisen. They can scarcely have come from the Skt. In Ridley's Plant List we have gaharu and gagaheu, which is the regular abbreviation of the reduplicated form gahru-gahru identified as Aquilaria Malaccensis, Lam."] [See CAMBULAC.]

The best quality of this wood, once much valued in Europe as incense, is the result of disease in a tree of the N. O. Leguminosae, the Aloexylon agallochum, Loureiro, growing in Camboja and S. Cochin China, whilst an inferior kind, of like aromatic qualities, is produced by a tree of an entirely different order, Aquilaria agallocha, Roxb. (N. O. Aquilariaceae), which is found as far north as Silhet.^[115]

Eagle-wood is another name for aloes-wood, or aloes (q.v.) as it is termed in the English Bible. [See Encycl. Bibl. i. 120 seq.] It is curious that Bluteau, in his great Portuguese Vocabulario, under Pao d'Aguila, jumbles up this aloes-wood with Socotrine Aloes. Αγάλλοχον was known to the ancients, and is described by Dioscorides (c. A.D. 65). In Liddell and Scott the word is rendered "the bitter aloe"; which seems to involve the same confusion as that made by Bluteau.

Other trade-names of the article given by Forbes Watson are Garrow- and Garroo-wood, agla-wood, ugger-, and tugger- (?) wood.

EARTH-OIL, s. Petroleum, such as that exported from Burma.... The term is a literal translation of that used in nearly all the Indian vernaculars. The chief sources are at Ye-nan-gyoung on the Irawadi, lat. c. 20° 22′.

ECKA, s. A small one-horse carriage used by natives. It is Hind. ekkā, from ek, 'one.' But we have seen it written acre, and punned upon as quasi-acher, by those who have travelled by it! [Something of the kind was perhaps known in very early times, for Arrian (Indika, xvii.) says: "To be drawn by a single horse is considered no distinction." For a good description with drawing of the ekka, see Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 190 seq.]

EED, s. Arab. 'Īd. A Mahommedan holy festival, but in common application in India restricted to two such, called there the baṛī and chhoṭī (or Great and Little) 'Id. The former is the commemoration of Abraham's sacrifice, the victim of which was, according to the Mahommedans, Ishmael. [See Hughes, Dict. of Islam, 192 seqq.] This is called among other names, Baḳr-'Īd, the 'Bull 'Īd,' Baḳarah 'Īd, 'the cow festival,' but this is usually corrupted by ignorant natives as well as Europeans into Bakrī-'Id (Hind. bakrā, f. bakrī, 'a goat'). The other is the 'Īd of the Ramazān, viz. the termination of the annual fast; the festival called in Turkey Bairam, and by old travellers sometimes the "Mahommedan Easter."

EEDGAH, s. Ar.—P. 'Īdgāh, 'Place of 'Īd.' (See EED.) A place of assembly and prayer on occasion of Musulman festivals. It is in India usually a platform of white plastered brickwork, enclosed by a low wall on three sides, and situated outside of a town or village. It is a marked characteristic of landscape in Upper India. [It is also known as Namāzgāh, or 'place of prayer,' and a drawing of one is given by Herklots, Qanoon-e-Islam, Pl. iii. fig. 2.]

EKTENG, adj. The native representation of the official designation 'acting' applied to a substitute, especially in the Civil Service. The manner in which the natives used to explain the expression to themselves is shown in the quotation.

ELCHEE, s. An ambassador. Turk. īlchī, from īl, a (nomad) tribe, hence the representative of the īl. It is a title that has attached itself particularly to Sir John Malcolm, and to Sir Stratford Canning, probably because they were personally more familiar to the Orientals among whom they served than diplomatists usually are.

ELEPHANT, s. This article will be confined to notes connected with the various suggestions which have been put forward as to the origin of the word—a sufficiently ample subject.

The oldest occurrence of the word (ἐλέφας—φαντος) is in Homer. With him, and so with Hesiod and Pindar, the word means 'ivory.' Herodotus first uses it as the name of the animal (iv. 191). Hence an occasional, probably an erroneous, assumption that the word ἐλέφας originally meant only the material, and not the beast that bears it.

In Persian the usual term for the beast is pīl, with which agree the Aramaic pīl (already found in the Chaldee and Syriac versions of the O. T.), and the Arabic fīl. Old etymologists tried to develop elephant out of fīl; and it is natural to connect with it the Spanish for 'ivory' (marfil, Port. marfim), but no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the first syllable of that word. More certain is the fact that in early Swedish and Danish the word for 'elephant' is fil, in Icelandic fill; a term supposed to have been introduced by old traders from the East viâ Russia. The old Swedish for 'ivory' is filsben.^[117]

The oldest Hebrew mention of ivory is in the notice of the products brought to Solomon from Ophir, or India. Among these are ivory tusks—shen-habbim, i.e. 'teeth of habbīm,' a word which has been interpreted as from Skt. ibha, elephant.^[118] But it is entirely doubtful what this habbīm, occurring here only, really means.^[119] We know from other evidence that ivory was known in Egypt and Western Asia for ages before Solomon. And in other cases the Hebrew word for ivory is simply shen, corresponding to dens Indus in Ovid and other Latin writers. In Ezekiel (xxvii. 15) we find karnoth shen = 'cornua dentis.' The use of the word 'horns' does not necessarily imply a confusion of these great curved tusks with horns; it has many parallels, as in Pliny's, "cum arbore exacuant limentque cornua elephanti" (xviii. 7); in Martial's "Indicoque cornu" (i. 73); in Aelian's story, as alleged by the Mauritanians, that the elephants there shed their horns every ten years ("δεκάτῳ ἔτει πάντως τὰ κέρατα ἐκπεσεῖν"—xiv. 5); whilst Cleasby quotes from an Icelandic saga 'olifant-horni' for 'ivory.'

We have mentioned Skt. ibha, from which Lassen assumes a compound ibhadantā for ivory, suggesting that this, combined by early traders with the Arabic article, formed al-ibhadantā, and so originated ἐλέφαντος. Pott, besides other doubts, objects that ibhadantā, though the name of a plant (Tiaridium indicum, Lehm.), is never actually a name of ivory.

Pott's own etymology is alaf-hindi, 'Indian ox,' from a word existing in sundry resembling forms, in Hebrew and in Assyrian (alif, alap).^[120] This has met with favour; though it is a little hard to accept any form like Hindī as earlier than Homer.

Other suggested origins are Pictet's from airāvata (lit. 'proceeding from water'), the proper name of the elephant of Indra, or Elephant of the Eastern Quarter in the Hindu Cosmology.^[121] This is felt to be only too ingenious, but as improbable. It is, however, suggested, it would seem independently, by Mr. Kittel (Indian Antiquary, i. 128), who supposes the first part of the word to be Dravidian, a transformation from āne, 'elephant.'

Pictet, finding his first suggestion not accepted, has called up a Singhalese word aliya, used for 'elephant,' which he takes to be from āla, 'great'; thence aliya, 'great creature'; and proceeding further, presents a combination of āla, 'great,' with Skt. phaṭa, sometimes signifying 'a tooth,' thus ali-phaṭa, 'great tooth' = elephantus.^[122]

Hodgson, in Notes on Northern Africa (p. 19, quoted by Pott), gives elef ameqran ('Great Boar,' elef being 'boar') as the name of the animal among the Kabyles of that region, and appears to present it as the origin of the Greek and Latin words.

Again we have the Gothic ulbandus, 'a camel,' which has been regarded by some as the same word with elephantus. To this we shall recur.

Pott, in his elaborate paper already quoted, comes to the conclusion that the choice of etymologies must lie between his own alaf-hindī and Lassen's al-ibha-dantā. His paper is 50 years old, but he repeats this conclusion in his Wurzel-Wörterbüch der Indo-Germanische Sprachen, published in 1871,^[123] nor can I ascertain that there has been any later advance towards a true etymology. Yet it can hardly be said that either of the alternatives carries conviction.

Both, let it be observed, apart from other difficulties, rest on the assumption that the knowledge of ἐλέφας, whether as fine material or as monstrous animal, came from India, whilst nearly all the other or less-favoured suggestions point to the same assumption.

But knowledge acquired, or at least taken cognizance of, since Pott's latest reference to the subject, puts us in possession of the new and surprising fact that, even in times which we are entitled to call historic, the elephant existed wild, far to the westward of India, and not very far from the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean. Though the fact was indicated from the wall-paintings by Wilkinson some 65 years ago,^[124] and has more recently been amply displayed in historical works which have circulated by scores in popular libraries, it is singular how little attention or interest it seems to have elicited.^[125]

The document which gives precise Egyptian testimony to this fact is an inscription (first interpreted by Ebers in 1873)^[126] from the tomb of Amenemhib, a captain under the great conqueror Thotmes III. [Thūtmosis], who reigned B.C. c. 1600. This warrior, speaking from his tomb of the great deeds of his master, and of his own right arm, tells how the king, in the neighbourhood of Ni, hunted 120 elephants for the sake of their tusks; and how he himself (Amenemhib) encountered the biggest of them, which had attacked the sacred person of the king, and cut through its trunk. The elephant chased him into the water, where he saved himself between two rocks; and the king bestowed on him rich rewards.

The position of Ni is uncertain, though some have identified it with Nineveh.^[127] [Maspero writes: "Nīi, long confounded with Nineveh, after Champolion (Gram. égyptienne, p. 150), was identified by Lenormant (Les Origines, vol. iii. p. 316 et seq.) with Ninus Vetus, Membidj, and by Max Müller (Asien und Europa, p. 267) with Balis on the Euphrates: I am inclined to make it Kefer-Naya, between Aleppo and Turmanīn" (Struggle of the Nations, 144, note).] It is named in another inscription between Arinath and Akerith, as, all three, cities of Naharain or Northern Mesopotamia, captured by Amenhotep II., the son of Thotmes III. Might not Ni be Nisibis? We shall find that Assyrian inscriptions of later date have been interpreted as placing elephant-hunts in the land of Harran and in the vicinity of the Chaboras.

If then these elephant-hunts may be located on the southern skirts of Taurus, we shall more easily understand how a tribute of elephant-tusks should have been offered at the court of Egypt by the people of Rutennu or Northern Syria, and also by the people of the adjacent Asebi or Cyprus, as we find repeatedly recorded on the Egyptian monuments, both in hieroglyphic writing and pictorially.^[128]

What the stones of Egypt allege in the 17th cent. B.C., the stones of Assyria 500 years afterwards have been alleged to corroborate. The great inscription of Tighlath-Pileser I., who is calculated to have reigned about B.C. 1120-1100, as rendered by Lotz, relates:

The same facts are recorded in a later inscription, on the broken obelisk of Assurnazirpal from Kouyunjik, now in the Br. Museum, which commemorates the deeds of the king's ancestor, Tighlath Pileser.^[130]

In the case of these Assyrian inscriptions, however, elephant is by no means an undisputed interpretation. In the famous quadruple test exercise on this inscription in 1857, which gave the death-blow to the doubts which some sceptics had emitted as to the genuine character of the Assyrian interpretations, Sir H. Rawlinson, in this passage, rendered the animals slain and taken alive as wild buffaloes. The ideogram given as teeth he had not interpreted. The question is argued at length by Lotz in the work already quoted, but it is a question for cuneiform experts, dealing, as it does, with the interpretation of more than one ideogram, and enveloped as yet in uncertainties. It is to be observed, that in 1857 Dr. Hincks, one of the four test-translators,^[131] had rendered the passage almost exactly as Lotz has done 23 years later, though I cannot see that Lotz makes any allusion to this fact. [See Encycl. Bibl. ii. 1262.] Apart from arguments as to decipherment and ideograms, it is certain that probabilities are much affected by the publication of the Egyptian inscription of Amenhoteb, which gives a greater plausibility to the rendering 'elephant' than could be ascribed to it in 1857. And should it eventually be upheld, it will be all the more remarkable that the sagacity of Dr. Hincks should then have ventured on that rendering.

In various suggestions, including Pott's, besides others that we have omitted, the etymology has been based on a transfer of the name of the ox, or some other familiar quadruped. There would be nothing extraordinary in such a transfer of meaning. The reference to the bos Luca^[132] is trite; the Tibetan word for ox (glan) is also the word for 'elephant'; we have seen how the name 'Great Boar' is alleged to be given to the elephant among the Kabyles; we have heard of an elephant in a menagerie being described by a Scotch rustic as 'a muckle sow'; Pausanias, according to Bochart, calls rhinoceroses 'Aethiopic bulls' [Bk. ix. 21, 2]. And let me finally illustrate the matter by a circumstance related to me by a brother officer who accompanied Sir Neville Chamberlain on an expedition among the turbulent Pathan tribes c. 1860. The women of the villages gathered to gaze on the elephants that accompanied the force, a stranger sight to them than it would have been to the women of the most secluded village in Scotland. 'Do you see these?' said a soldier of the Frontier Horse; 'do you know what they are? These are the Queen of England's buffaloes that give 5 maunds (about 160 quarts) of milk a day!'

Now it is an obvious suggestion, that if there were elephants on the skirts of Taurus down to B.C. 1100, or even (taking the less questionable evidence) down only to B.C. 1600, it is highly improbable that the Greeks would have had to seek a name for the animal, or its tusk, from Indian trade. And if the Greeks had a vernacular name for the elephant, there is also a probability, if not a presumption, that some tradition of this name would be found, mutatis mutandis, among other Aryan nations of Europe.

Now may it not be that ἐλέφας—φαντος in Greek, and ulbandus in Moeso-Gothic, represent this vernacular name? The latter form is exactly the modification of the former which Grimm's law demands. Nor is the word confined to Gothic. It is found in the Old H. German (olpentâ); in Anglo-Saxon (olfend, oluend, &c.); in Old Swedish (aelpand, alwandyr, ulfwald); in Icelandic (ulfaldi). All these Northern words, it is true, are used in the sense of camel, not of elephant. But instances already given may illustrate that there is nothing surprising in this transfer, all the less where the animal originally indicated had long been lost sight of. Further, Jülg, who has published a paper on the Gothic word, points out its resemblance to the Slav forms welbond, welblond, or wielblad, also meaning 'camel' (compare also Russian verbliud). This, in the last form (wielblad), may, he says, be regarded as resolvable into 'Great beast.' Herr Jülg ends his paper with a hint that in this meaning may perhaps be found a solution of the origin of elephant (an idea at which Pictet also transiently pointed in a paper referred to above), and half promises to follow up this hint; but in thirty years he has not done so, so far as I can discover. Nevertheless it is one which may yet be pregnant.

Nor is it inconsistent with this suggestion that we find also in some of the Northern languages a second series of names designating the elephant—not, as we suppose ulbandus and its kin to be, common vocables descending from a remote age in parallel development—but adoptions from Latin at a much more recent period. Thus, we have in Old and Middle German Elefant and Helfant, with elfenbein and helfenbein for ivory; in Anglo-Saxon, ylpend, elpend, with shortened forms ylp and elp, and ylpenban for ivory; whilst the Scandinavian tongues adopt and retain fil. [The N.E.D. regards the derivation as doubtful, but considers the theory of Indian origin improbable.

[A curious instance of misapprehension is the use of the term 'Chain elephants.' This is a misunderstanding of the ordinary locution zanjīr-i-fīl when speaking of elephants. Zanjīr is literally a 'chain,' but is here akin to our expressions, a 'pair,' 'couple,' 'brace' of anything. It was used, no doubt, with reference to the iron chain by which an elephant is hobbled. In an account 100 elephants would be entered thus: Fīl, Zanjīr, 100. (See NUMERICAL AFFIXES.)]