Chapter DHOOLY to DHOW of D by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

The best known of these valleys is the Dun of Dehra, below Mussooree, often known as “the Dhoon”; a form of expression which we see by the second quotation to be old.

1526.—“In the language of Hindustân they call a Jûlga (or dale) Dûn. The finest running water in Hindustân is that in this Dûn.”—Baber, 299.

1654–55.—“Khalilu-lla Khan…having reached the Dún, which is a strip of country lying outside of Srínagar, 20 kos long and 5 broad, one extremity of its length being bounded by the river Jumna, and the other by the Ganges.”—Sháh-Jahán-Náma, in Elliot, vii. 106.

1814.—“Me voici in the far-famed Dhoon, the Tempe of Asia…. The fort stands on the summit of an almost inaccessible mountain…it will be a tough job to take it; but by the 1st proximo I think I shall have it, auspice Deo.”—In Asiatic Journal, ii. 151; ext. of letter from Sir Rollo Gillespie before Kalanga, dated 29th Oct. He fell next day.

1879.—“The Sub-Himalayan Hills…as a general rule…consist of two ranges, separated by a broad flat valley, for which the name ‘dun’ (Doon) has been adopted.…When the outer of these ranges is wanting, as is the case below Naini Tal and Darjiling, the whole geographical feature might escape notice, the inner range being confounded with the spurs of the mountains.”—Manual of the Geology of India, 521.

DHOTY, s. Hind. dhoti. The loin-cloth worn by all the respectable Hindu castes of Upper India, wrapt round the body, the end being then passed between the legs and tucked in at the waist, so that a festoon of calico hangs down to either knee. [It is mentioned, not by name, by Arrian (Indika, 16) as “an under garment of cotton which reaches below the knee, half way to the ankle”; and the Orissa dhoti of 1200 years ago, as shown on the monuments, does not differ from the mode of the present time, save that men of rank wore a jewelled girdle with a pendant in front. (Rajendralala Mitra, Indo-Aryans, i. 187).] The word duttee in old trade lists of cotton goods is possibly the same; [but at the present time a coarse cotton cloth woven by Dhers in Surat is known as Doti.]

[1609.—“Here is also a strong sort of cloth called Dhootie.”—Danvers, Letters, i. 29.

[1614.—“20 corge of strong Dutties, such as may be fit for making and mending sails.”—Forster, Letters, ii. 219.

[1615.—“200 peeces Dutts.”—Cocks’s Diary, i. 83.]

1622.—“Price of calicoes, duttees fixed.”

“List of goods sold, including diamonds, pepper, bastas, (read baftas), duttees, and silks from Persia.”—Court Minutes, &c., in Sainsbury, iii. 24.

1810.—“…a dotee or waist-cloth.”—Williamson, V. M. i. 247.

1872.—“The human figure which was moving with rapid strides had no other clothing than a dhuti wrapped round the waist, and descending to the knee-joints.”—Govinda Samanta, i. 8.

DHOW, DOW, s. The last seems the more correct, though not perhaps the more common. The term is common in Western India, and on various shores of the Arabian sea, and is used on the E. African coast for craft in general (see Burton, in J.R.G.S. xxix. 239); but in the mouths of Englishmen on the western seas of India it is applied specially to the old-fashioned vessel of Arab build, with a long grab stem, i.e. rising at a long slope from the water, and about as long as the keel, usually with one mast and lateen-rig. There are the lines of a dow, and a technical description, by Mr. Edie, in J. R. As. Soc., vol. i. p. 11. The slaving dow is described and illustrated in Capt. Colomb’s Slave-catching in the Indian Ocean; see also Capt. W. F. Owen’s Narrative (1833), p. 385, [i. 384 seq.]. Most people suppose the word to be Arabic, and it is in (Johnson’s) Richardson (dao) as an Arabic word. But no Arabic scholar whom we have consulted admits it to be genuine Arabic. Can it possibly have been taken from Pers. dav, ‘running’? [The N.E.D. remarks that if Tava (in Ath. Nikitin, below) be the same, it would tend to localise the word at Ormus in the Persian Gulf.] Capt. Burton identifies it with the word zabra applied in the Roteiro of Vasco’s Voyage (p. 37) to a native vessel at Mombasa. But zabra or zavra was apparently a Basque name for a kind of craft in Biscay (see s.v. Bluteau, and the Dicc. de la Lingua Castel., vol. vi. 1739). Dao or Dava is indeed in Molesworth’s Mahr. Dict. as a word in that language, but this gives no assurance of origin. Anglo-Indians on the west coast usually employ dhow and buggalow interchangeably. The word is used on Lake V. Nyanza.

c. 1470.—“I shipped my horses in a Tava, and sailed across the Indian Sea in ten days to Moshkat.”—Ath. Nikitin, p. 8, in India in XVth Cent.

c. 1470.—“So I imbarked in a tava, and settled to pay for my passage to Hormuz two pieces of gold.”—Ibid. 30.

1785.—“A Dow, the property of Rutn Jee and Jeewun Doss, merchants of Muscat, having in these days been dismasted in a storm, came into Byte Koal (see