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

act of grace and benevolence of the great emperor Chandragupta.”—Inscription on Gateway at Sanchi (Prinsep’s Essays, i. 246).

A.D. (?) “Quelque temps après, à Pataliputra, un autre homme devoué aux Brahmanes renversa une statue de Bouddha aux pieds d’un mendiant, qui la mit en pièces. Le roi (Açoka)…fit proclamer cet ordre: Celui qui m’apportera la tête d’un mendiant brahmanique, recevra de moi un Dînâra.”—Tr. of Divya avadâna, in Burnouf, Int. à l’Hist. du Bouddhisme Indien, p. 422.

c. 1333.—“The lak is a sum of 100,000 dinars (i.e. of silver); this sum is equivalent to 10,000 dinars of gold, Indian money; and the Indian (gold) dinar is worth 2½ dinars in money of the West (Maghrab).”—Ibn Batuta, iii. 106.

1859.—“Cosmas Indicopleustes remarked that the Roman denarius was received all over the world;¹ and how the denarius came to mean in India a gold ornament we may learn from a passage in the ‘Life of Mahâvîra.’ There it is said that a lady had around her neck a string of grains and golden dinars, and Stevenson adds that the custom of stringing coins together, and adorning with them children especially, is still very common in India.”—Max Müller, Hist. of Sanskrit Literature, 247.

DINGY, DINGHY, s. Beng. dingi; [H. dingi, dengi, another form of dongi, Skt. drona, ‘a trough.’] A small boat or skiff; sometimes also ‘a canoe,’ i.e. dug out of a single trunk. This word is not merely Anglo-Indian; it has become legitimately incorporated in the vocabulary of the British navy, as the name of the smallest ship’s boat; [in this sense, according to the N.E.D., first in Midshipman Easy (1836)]. Dinga occurs as the name of some kind of war-boat used by the Portuguese in the defence of Hugli in 1631 (“Sixty-four large díngas”; Elliot, vii. 34). The word dinga is also used for vessels of size in the quotation from Tippoo. Sir J. Campbell, in the Bombay Gazetteer, says that dhangi is a large vessel belonging to the Mekran coast; the word is said to mean ‘a log’ in Biluchi. In Guzerat the larger vessel seems to be called danga; and besides this there is dhangi, like a canoe, but built, not dug out.

[1610.—“I have brought with me the pinnace and her ginge for better performance.”—Danvers, Letters, i. 61.]

1705.—“…pour aller à terre on est obligé de se servir d’un petit Bateau dont les bords sont très hauts, qu’on appelle Dingues….”—Luiller, 39.

1785.—“Propose to the merchants of Muscat…to bring hither, on the Dingies, such horses as they may have for sale; which, being sold to us, the owner can carry back the produce in rice.”—Letters of Tippoo, 6.

1810.—“On these larger pieces of water there are usually canoes, or dingies.”—Williamson, V.M. ii. 59.

[1813.—“The Indian pomegranates…are by no means equal to those brought from Arabia by the Muscat dingeys.”—Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. i. 468.]

1878.—“I observed among a crowd of dinghies, one contained a number of native commercial agents.”—Life in the Mofussil, i. 18.

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