Chapter DIAMOND HARBOUR to DINGY of D by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

DIAMOND HARBOUR to DINGY

DIAMOND HARBOUR, n.p. An anchorage in the Hoogly below Calcutta, 30 m. by road, and 41 by river. It was the usual anchorage of the old Indiamen in the mercantile days of the E. I. Company. In the oldest charts we find the “Diamond Sand,” on the western side of what is now called Diamond Harbour, and on some later charts, Diamond Point.

1683.—“We anchored this night on ye head of ye Diamond Sand.

“Jan. 26. This morning early we weighed anchor…but got no further than the Point of Kegaria Island” (see KEDGEREE).—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. i. 64. (See also ROGUE’S RIVER.)

DIDWAN, s. P. didban, didwan, ‘a look-out,’ ‘watchman,’ ‘guard,’ ‘messenger.’

[1679.—See under AUMILDAR, TRIPLICANE.

[1680.—See under JUNCAMEER.

[1683–4.—“…three yards of Ordinary Broadcloth and five Pagodas to the Dithwan that brought the Phirmaund….”—Pringle, Diary of Ft. St. Geo., 1st ser. iii. 4.]

DIGGORY, DIGRI, DEGREE, s. Anglo-Hindustani of law-court jargon for ‘decree.’

[1866.—“This is grand, thought bold Bhuwanee Singh, diggree to pah, lekin roopyea to morpass bah, ‘He has got his decree, but I have the money.’ ”—Confessions of an Orderly, 138.]

DIKK, s. Worry, trouble, botheration; what the Italians call seccatura. This is the Anglo-Indian use. But the word is more properly adjective, Ar.-P.-H. dik, dikk, ‘vexed, worried,’ and so dikk hona, ‘to be worried.’ [The noun dikk-dari, ‘worry,’ in vulgar usage, has become an adjective.] 1873.—

“And Beaufort learned in the law,
And Atkinson the Sage,
And if his locks are white as snow,
‘Tis more from dikk than age!”

Wilfrid Heeley, A Lay of Modern Darjeeling.

[1889.—“Were the Company’s pumps to be beaten by the vagaries of that dikhdari, Tarachunda nuddee?”—R. Kipling, In Black and White, 52.]

DINAPORE, n.p. A well-known cantonment on the right bank of the Ganges, being the station of the great city of Patna. The name is properly Danapur. Ives (1755) writes Dunapoor (p. 167). The cantonment was established under the government of Warren Hastings about 1772, but we have failed to ascertain the exact date. [Cruso, writing in 1785, speaks of the cantonments having cost the Company 25 lakhs of rupees. (Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. ii. 445). There were troops there in 1773 (Gleig, Life of Warren Hastings, i. 297.]

DINAR, s. This word is not now in any Indian use. But it is remarkable as a word introduced into Skt. at a comparatively early date. “The names of the Arabic pieces of money…are all taken from the coins of the Lower Roman Empire. Thus, the copper piece was called fals from follis; the silver dirham from drachma, and the gold dinar, from denarius, which, though properly a silver coin, was used generally to denote coins of other metals, as the denarius aeris, and the denarius auri, or aureus” (James Prinsep, in Essays, &c., ed. by Thomas, i. 19). But it was long before the rise of Islam that the knowledge and name of the denarius as applied to a gold coin had reached India. The inscription on the east gate of the great tope at Sanchi is probably the oldest instance preserved, though the date of that is a matter greatly disputed. But in the Amarakosha (c. A.D. 500) we have ‘dinare ’pi cha nishkah,’ i.e. ‘a nishkah (or gold coin) is the same as dinara.’ And in the Kalpasutra of Bhadrabahu (of about the same age) § 36, we have ‘dinara malaya,’ ‘a necklace of dinars,’ mentioned (see Max Müller below). The dinar in modern Persia is a very small imaginary coin, of which 10,000 make a tomaun (q.v.). In the Middle Ages we find Arabic writers applying the term dinar both to the staple gold coin (corresponding to the gold mohr of more modern times) and to the staple silver coin (corresponding to what has been called since the 16th century the rupee). [Also see Yule, Cathay, ii. 439 seqq. See DEANER.]

A.D. (?) “The son of Amuka…having made salutation to the eternal gods and goddesses, has given a piece of ground purchased at the legal rate; also five temples, and twenty-five (thousand ?) dínárs…as an