Chapter BUXERRY to BYLEE of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Ferishta’s Hist. (J. R. A. Soc. xiii.). Besides Bedar, Bednor (or Nagar) in Mysore seems to take its name from this tribe. [See Rice, Mysore, i. 255.]

1758.—“… The Cavalry of the Rao … received such a defeat from Hydur’s Bedes or Kuzzaks that they fled and never looked behind them until they arrived at Goori Bundar.”—Hist. of Hydur Naik, p. 120.

1785.—“Byde Horse, out of employ, have committed great excesses and depredations in the Sircar’s dominions.”—Letters of Tippoo Sultan, 6.

1802.—“The Kakur and Chapao horse … (Although these are included in the Bede tribe, they carry off the palm even from them in the arts of robbery) …”— H. of Tipú, by Hussein ’Ali Khan Kirmani, tr. by Miles, p. 76.

[BYLEE, s. A small two-wheeled vehicle drawn by two oxen. H. bahal, bahli, baili, which has no connection, as is generally supposed, with bail, ‘an ox’; but is derived from the Skt. vah, ‘to carry.’ The bylee is used only for passengers, and a larger and more imposing vehicle of the same class is the Rut. There is a good drawing of a Panjab bylee in Kipling’s Beast and Man (p. 117); also see the note on the quotation from Forbes under HACKERY.

[1841.—“A native bylee will usually produce, in gold and silver of great purity, ten times the weight of precious metals to be obtained from a general officer’s equipage.” —Society in India, i. 162.

[1854.—“Most of the party … were in a barouch, but the rich man himself [one of the Muttra Seths] still adheres to the primitive conveyance of a bylis, a thing like a footboard on two wheels, generally drawn by two oxen, but in which he drives a splendid pair of white horses, sitting cross-legged the while!”—Mrs Mackenzie, Life in the Mission, &c., ii. 205.]