Hobson-Jobson

NUDDEEA RIVERS, n.p. See under HOOGLY RIVER, of which these are branches, intersecting the Nadiya District. In order to keep open navigation by the directest course from the Ganges to Calcutta, much labour is, or was, annually expended, under a special officer, in endeavouring during the dry season to maintain sufficient depth in these channels.

1008.—"The Sultan himself (Mahmūd) joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhím-nagar, which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters."—Al-'Utbi, in Elliot, i. 34.

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.

"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:

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.]

[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.

[1662.—"A thousand Oebans of gold, which amount to forty seven thousand Thayls, or Crowns."—Mandelslo, E.T. Bk. ii. 147 (Stanf. Dict.).

[1859.—"The largest gold coin known is the Obang, a most inconvenient circulating medium, as it is nearly six inches in length, and three inches and a half in breadth."—Oliphant, Narrative of Mission, ii. 232.]

OLD STRAIT, n.p. This is an old name of the narrow strait between the island of Singapore and the mainland, which was the old passage followed by ships passing towards China, but has long been abandoned for the wider strait south of Singapore and north of Bintang. It is called by the Malays Salāt Tambrau, from an edible fish called by the last name. It is the Strait of Singapura of some of the old navigators; whilst the wider southern strait was known as New Strait or Governor's Straits (q.v.).

1727.—"... Johore Lami, which is sometimes the Place of that King's Residence, and has the Benefit of a fine deep large River, which admits of two Entrances into it. The smallest is from the Westward, called by Europeans the Streights of Sincapore, but by the Natives Salleta de Brew" (i.e. Salāt Tambrau, as above).—A. Hamilton, ii. 92; [ed. 1744].

1860.—"The Old Straits, through which formerly our Indiamen passed on their way to China, are from 1 to 2 miles in width, and except where a few clearings have been made ... with the shores on both sides covered with dense jungle ... doubtless, in old times, an isolated vessel ... must have kept a good look out against attack from piratical prahus darting out from one of the numerous creeks."—Cavenagh, Rem. of an Indian Official, 285-6.

OLLAH, s. Tam. ōlai, Mal. ōla. A palm-leaf; but especially the leaf of the Palmyra (Borassus flabelliformis) as prepared for writing on, often, but incorrectly, termed cadjan (q.v.). In older books the term ola generally means a native letter; often, as in some cases below, a written order. A very good account of the royal scribes at Calicut, and their mode of writing, is given by Barbosa as follows:—

1516.—"The King of Calecut keeps many clerks constantly in his palace; they are all in one room, separate and far from the king, sitting on benches, and there they write all the affairs of the king's revenue, and his alms, and the pay which is given to all, and the complaints which are presented to the king, and, at the same time, the accounts of the collectors of taxes. All this is on broad stiff leaves of the palm-tree, without ink, with pens of iron; they write their letters in lines drawn like ours, and write in the same direction as we do. Each of these clerks has great bundles of these written leaves, and wherever they go they carry them under their arms, and the iron pen in their hands ... and amongst these are 7 or 8 who are great confidants of the king, and men held in great honour, who always stand before him with their pens in their hand and a bundle of paper under their arm; and each of them has always several of these leaves in blank but signed at the top by the king, and when he commands them to despatch any business they write it on these leaves."—Pp. 110-111, Hak. Soc., but translation modified.

1553.—"All the Gentiles of India ... when they wish to commit anything to written record, do it on certain palm-leaves which they call olla, of the breadth of two fingers."—Barros, I. ix. 3.

" "All the rest of the town was of wood, thatched with a kind of palm-leaf, which they call ola."—Ibid. I. iv. vii.

1561.—"All this was written by the king's writer, whose business it is to prepare his olas, which are palm-leaves, which they use for writing-paper, scratching it with an iron point."—Correa, i. 212-213. Correa uses the word in three applications: (a) for a palm-leaf as just quoted; (b) for a palm-leaf letter; and (c) for (Coco) palm-leaf thatch.

1563.—"... in the Maldiva Islands they make a kind of vessel which with its nails, its sails, and its cordage is all made of palm; with the fronds (which we call olla in Malavar) they cover houses and vessels."—Garcia, f. 67.

1586.—"I answered that I was from Venice, that my name was Gasparo Balbi ... and that I brought the emeralds from Venice expressly to present to his majesty, whose fame for goodness, courtesy, and greatness flew through all the world ... and all this was written down on an olla, and read by the aforesaid 'Master of the Word' to his Majesty."—G. Balbi, f. 104.

" "But to show that he did this as a matter of justice, he sent a further order that nothing should be done till they received an olla, or letter of his sign manual written in letters of gold; and so he (the King of Pegù) ordered all the families of those nobles to be kept prisoners, even to the women big with child, and the infants in bands, and so he caused the whole of them to be led upon the said scaffolding; and then the king sent the olla, ordering them to be burnt; and the Decagini executed the order, and burned the whole of them."—Ibid. f. 112-113.

[1598.—"Sayles which they make of the leaves, which leaves are called Olas."—Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 45.

[1611.—"Two Ollahs, one to Gimpa Raya...."—Danvers, Letters, i. 154.]

1626.—"The writing was on leaves of Palme, which they call Olla."—Purchas, Pilgrimage, 554.

1673.—"The houses are low, and thatched with ollas of the Cocoe-Trees."—Fryer, 66.

c. 1690.—"... Ola peculiariter Malabaris dicta, et inter alia Papyri loco adhibetur."—Rumphius, i. 2.

1718.—"... Damulian Leaves, commonly called Oles."—Prop. of the Gospel, &c., iii. 37.

1760.—"He (King Alompra) said he would give orders for Olios to be made out for delivering of what Englishmen were in his Kingdom to me."—Capt. Alves, in Dalrymple, Or. Rep. i. 377.

1806.—"Many persons had their Ollahs in their hands, writing the sermon in Tamil shorthand."—Buchanan, Christian Res. 2nd ed. 70.

1860.—"The books of the Singhalese are formed to-day, as they have been for ages past, of olas, or strips taken from the young leaves of the Talipot or the Palmyra palm."—Tennent, Ceylon, i. 512.

1870.—"... Un manuscrit sur olles...."—Revue Critique, June 11, 374.

OMEDWAUR, s. Hind. from Pers. ummedwār (ummed, umed, 'hope'); literally, therefore, 'a hopeful one'; i.e. "an expectant, a candidate for employment, one who awaits a favourable answer to some representation or request." (Wilson.)

1816.—"The thoughts of being three or four years an omeedwar, and of staying out here till fifty deterred me."—M. Elphinstone, in Life, i. 344.

c. 1778.—"I was at this place met by the Omlah or officers belonging to the establishment, who hailed my arrival in a variety of boats dressed out for the occasion."—Hon. R. Lindsay, in Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 167.

1866.—"At the worst we will hint to the Omlahs to discover a fast which it is necessary they shall keep with great solemnity."—Trevelyan, The Dawk Bungalow, in Fraser, lxxiii. 390.

The use of an English plural, omlahs, here is incorrect and unusual; though omrahs is used (see next word).

1878.—"... the subordinate managers, young, inexperienced, and altogether in the hands of the Omlah."—Life in the Mofussil, ii. 6.

OMRAH, s. This is properly, like the last word, an Ar. pl. (Umarā, pl. of Amīr—see AMEER), and should be applied collectively to the higher officials at a Mahommedan Court, especially that of the Great Mogul. But in old European narratives it is used as a singular for a lord or grandee of that Court; and indeed in Hindustani the word was similarly used, for we have a Hind. plural umarāyān, 'omrahs.' From the remarks and quotations of Blochmann, it would seem that Manṣabdārs (see MUNSUBDAR), from the commandant of 1000 upwards, were styled umarā-i-kabār, or umara-i-'izām, 'Great Amīrs'; and these would be the Omrahs properly. Certain very high officials were styled Amīr-ul-Umarā (Āīn, i. 239-240), a title used first at the Court of the Caliphs.

1616.—"Two Omrahs who are great Commanders."—Sir T. Roe.

[ " "The King lately sent out two Vmbras with horse to fetch him in."—Ibid. Hak. Soc. ii. 417; in the same page he writes Vmreis, and in ii. 445, Vmraes.]

c. 1630.—"Howbeit, out of this prodigious rent, goes yearely many great payments: to his Leiftenants of Provinces, and Vmbrayes of Townes and Forts."—Sir T. Herbert, p. 55.

1638.—"Et sous le commandement de plusieurs autres seigneurs de ceux qu'ils appellent Ommeraudes."—Mandelslo, Paris, 1659, p. 174.

1653.—"Il y a quantité d'elephans dans les Indes ... les Omaras s'en seruent par grandeur."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. 1657, p. 250.

c. 1664.—"It is not to be thought that the Omrahs, or Lords of the Mogul's Court, are sons of great Families, as in France ... these Omrahs then are commonly but Adventurers and Strangers of all sorts of Nations, some of them slaves; most of them without instruction, which the Mogul thus raiseth to Dignities as he thinks good, and degrades them again, as he pleaseth."—Bernier, E.T. 66; [ed. Constable, 211].

c. 1666.—"Les Omras sont les grand seigneurs du Roiaume, qui sont pour la plupart Persans ou fils de Persans."—Thevenot, v. 307.

1673.—"The President ... has a Noise of Trumpets ... an Horse of State led before him, a Mirchal (see MORCHAL) (a Fan of Ostrich Feathers) to keep off the Sun, as the Ombrahs or Great Men have."—Fryer, 86.

1676.—

"Their standard, planted on the battlement,

Despair and death among the soldiers sent;

You the bold Omrah tumbled from the wall,

And shouts of victory pursued the fall."

Dryden, Aurengzebe, ii. 1.

1710.—"Donna Juliana ... let the Heer Ambassador know ... that the Emperor had ordered the Ammaraws Enay Ullah Chan (&c.) to take care of our interests."—Valentijn, iv. Suratte, 284.

1727.—"You made several complaints against former Governors, all of which I have here from several of my Umbras."—Firmān of Aurangzīb, in A. Hamilton, ii. 227; [ed. 1744, i. 231].

1791.—"... les Omrahs ou grands seigneurs Indiens...."—B. de St. Pierre, La Chaumière Indienne, 32.

OMUM WATER, s. A common domestic medicine in S. India, made from the strong-smelling carminative seeds of an umbelliferous plant, Carum copticum, Benth. (Ptychotis coptica, and Ptych. Ajowan of Decand.), called in Tamil omam, [which comes from the Skt. yamāni, yavāni, in Hind. ajwān.] See Hanbury and Flückiger, 269.

OOJYNE, n.p. Ujjayanī, or, in the modern vernacular, Ujjain, one of the most ancient of Indian cities, and one of their seven sacred cities. It was the capital of King Vikramaditya, and was the first meridian of Hindu astronomers, from which they calculated their longitudes.

The name of Ujjain long led to a curious imbroglio in the interpretation of the Arabian geographers. Its meridian, as we have just mentioned, was the zero of longitude among the Hindus. The Arab writers borrowing from the Hindus wrote the name apparently Azīn, but this by the mere omission of a diacritical point became Arīn, and from the Arabs passed to medieval Christian geographers as the name of an imaginary point on the equator, the intersection of the central meridian with that circle. Further, this point, or transposed city, had probably been represented on maps, as we often see cities on medieval maps, by a cupola or the like. And hence the "Cupola of Arin or Arym," or the "Cupola of the Earth" (Al-ḳubba al-arḍh) became an established commonplace for centuries in geographical tables or statements. The idea was that just 180° of the earth's circumference was habitable, or at any rate cognizable as such, and this meridian of Arin bisected this habitable hemisphere. But as the western limit extended to the Fortunate Isles, it became manifest to the Arabs that the central meridian could not be so far east as the Hindu meridian of Arin (or of Lanka, i.e. Ceylon). (See quotation from the Aryabhatta, under JAVA.) They therefore shifted it westward, but shifted the mystic Arin along the equator westward also. We find also among medieval European students (as with Roger Bacon, below), a confusion between Arin and Syene. This Reinaud supposes to have arisen from the Ἐσσινὰ ἐμπόριον of Ptolemy, a place which he locates on the Zanzibar coast, and approximating to the shifted position of Arin. But it is perhaps more likely that the confusion arose from some survival of the real name Azīn. Many conjectures were vainly made as to the origin of Arym, and M. Sedillot was very positive that nothing more could be learned of it than he had been able to learn. But the late M. Reinaud completely solved the mystery by pointing out that Arin was simply a corruption of Ujjain. Even in Arabic the mistake had been thoroughly ingrained, insomuch that the word Arīn had been adopted as a generic name for a place of medium temperature or qualities (see Jorjānī, quoted below).

c. A.D. 150.—"Ὀζηνὴ Βασίλειον Τιαστανοῦ."—Ptol. VII. i. 63.

c. 930.—"The Equator passes between east and west through an island situated between Hind and Habash (Abyssinia), and a little south of these two countries. This point, half way between north and south is cut by the point (meridian?) half way between the Eternal Islands and the extremity of China; it is what is called The Cupola of the Earth."—Maṣ'ūdī, i. 180-181.

c. 1020.—"Les Astronomes ... ont fait correspondre la ville d'Odjein avec le lieu qui dans le tableau des villes inséré dans les tables astronomiques a reçu le nom d'Arin, et qui est supposé situé sur les bords de la mer. Mais entre Odjein et la mer, il y a près de cent yodjanas."—Al-Birūnī, quoted by Reinaud, Intro. to Abulfeda, p. ccxlv.

c. 1267.—"Meridianum vero latus Indiae descendit a tropico Capricorni, et secat aequinoctialem circulum apud Montem Maleum et regiones ei conterminos et transit per Syenem, quae nunc Arym vocatur. Nam in libro cursuum planetarum dicitur quod duplex est Syene; una sub solstitio ... alia sub aequinoctiali circulo, de quâ nunc est sermo, distans per xc gradus ab occidente, sed magis ab oriente elongatur propter hoc, quod longitudo habitabilis major est quam medietas coeli vel terrae, et hoc versus orientem."—Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, ed. London, 1633, p. 195.

c. 1300.—"Sous la ligne équinoxiale, au milieu du monde, là où il n'y a pas de latitude, se trouve le point de la corrélation servant de centre aux parties que se coupent entre elles.... Dans cet endroit et sur ce point se trouve le lieu nommé Coupole de Azin ou Coupole de Arin. Là est un château grand, élevé et d'un accès difficile. Suivant Ibn-Alaraby, c'est le séjour des démons et la trône d'Eblis.... Les Indiens parlent également de ce lieu, et débitent des fables à son sujet."—Arabic Cosmography, quoted by Reinaud, p. ccxliii.

c. 1400.—"Arin (al-arīn). Le lieu d'une proportion moyenne dans les choses ... un point sur la terre à une hauteur égale des deux poles, en sorte que la nuit n'y empiète point sur la durée du jour, ni le jour sur la durée de la nuit. Ce mot a passé dans l'usage ordinaire, pour signifier d'une manière générale un lieu d'une temperature moyenne."—Livre de Definitions du Seïd Scherif Zeineddin ... fils de Mohammed Djordjani, trad. de Silv. de Sacy, Not. et Extr. x. 39.

1498.—"Ptolemy and the other philosophers, who have written upon the globe, thought that it was spherical, believing that this hemisphere was round as well as that in which they themselves dwelt, the centre of which was in the island of Arin, which is under the equinoctial line, between the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Persia."—Letter of Columbus, on his Third Voyage, to the King and Queen. Major's Transl., Hak. Soc. 2nd ed. 135.

[c. 1583.—"From thence we went to Vgini and Serringe...."—R. Fitch, in Hakl. ii. 385.

[1616.—"Vgen, the Cheefe Citty of Malwa."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 379.]

c. 1659.—"Dara having understood what had passed at Eugenes, fell into that choler against Kasem Kan, that it was thought he would have cut off his head."—Bernier, E.T. p. 13; [ed. Constable, 41].

1785.—"The City of Ugen is very ancient, and said to have been the Residence of the Prince Bicker Majit, whose Æra is now Current among the Hindus."—Sir C. Malet, in Dalrymple, Or. Rep. i. 268.