Chapter JADOO to JAGHEER of J by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

JADOO to JAGHEER

JADOO, s. Hind. from Pers. jadu, Skt. yatu; conjuring, magic, hocuspocus.

[1826.—“‘Pray, sir,’ said the barber, ‘is that Sanscrit, or what language?’ ‘May be it is jadoo,’ I replied, in a solemn and deep voice.”—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, i. 127.]

JADOOGUR, s. Properly Hind. jadughar, ‘conjuring-house’ (see the last). The term commonly applied by natives to a Freemasons’ Lodge, when there is one, at an English station. On the Bombay side it is also called Shaitan khana (see Burton’s Sind Revisited), a name consonant to the ideas of an Italian priest who intimated to one of the present writers that he had heard the raising of the devil was practised at Masonic meetings, and asked his friend’s opinion as to the fact. In S. India the Lodge is called Talai- vetta-Kovil, ‘Cut-head Temple,’ because part of the rite of initiation is supposed to consist in the candidate’s head being cut off and put on again.

JAFNA, JAFNAPATÁM, n.p. The very ancient Tamil settlement, and capital of the Tamil kings on the singular peninsula which forms the northernmost part of Ceylon. The real name is, according to Emerson Tennent, Yalpannan, and it is on the whole probable that this name is identical with the Galiba (Prom.) of Ptolemy. [The Madras Gloss. gives the Tamil name as Yazhppanam, from yazh-panan, ‘a lute- player’; “called after a blind minstrel of that name from the Chola country, who by permission of the Singhalese king obtained possession of Jaffna, then uninhabited, and introduced there a colony of the Tamul people.”]

1553.—“… the Kingdom Triquinamalé, which at the upper end of its coast adjoins another called Jafanapatam, which stands at the northern part of the island.”—Barros, III. ii. cap. i.

c. 1566.—In Cesare de’ Federici it is written Gianifanpatan.—Ramusio, iii. 390v.

[JAFFRY, s. A screen or lattice-work, made generally of bamboo, used for various purposes, such as a fence, a support for climbing plants, &c. The ordinary Pers. ja’fari is derived from a person of the name of Ja’far; but Mr. Platts suggests that in the sense under consideration it may be a corr. of Ar. zafirat, zafir, ‘a braided lock.’

[1832.—“Of vines, the branches must also be equally spread over the jaffry, so that light and heat may have access to the whole.”—Trans. Agri. Hort. Soc. Ind. ii. 202.]

JAGGERY, s. Coarse brown (or almost black) sugar, made from the sap of various palms. The wild date tree (Phoenix sylvestris, Roxb.), Hind. khajur, is that which chiefly supplies palm-sugar in Guzerat and Coromandel, and almost alone in Bengal. But the palmyra, the caryota, and the cocopalm all give it; the first as the staple of Tinnevelly and northern Ceylon; the second chiefly in southern Ceylon, where it is known to Europeans as the Jaggery Palm (kitul of natives); the third is much drawn for toddy (q.v.) in the coast districts of Western India, and this is occasionally boiled for sugar. Jaggery is usually made in the form of small round cakes. Great quantities are produced in Tinnevelly, where the cakes used to pass as a kind of currency (as cakes of salt used to pass in parts of Africa, and in Western China), and do even yet to some small extent. In Bombay all rough unrefined sugar-stuff is known by this name; and it is the title under which all kinds of half-prepared sugar is classified in the tariff of the Railways there. The word jaggery is only another form of sugar (q.v.), being like it a corr. of the Skt. sarkara, Konkani sakkara, [Malayal. chakkara, whence it passed into Port. jagara, jagra]. 1516.—“Sugar of palms, which they call xagara.”—Barbosa, 59.

1553.—Exports from the Maldives “also of fish- oil, coco-nuts, and jágara, which is made from these after the manner of sugar.”—Barros, Dec. III. liv. iii. cap. 7.

1561.—“Jagre, which is sugar of palm-trees.”—Correa, Lendas, i. 2, 592.

1563.—“And after they have drawn this pot of çura, if the tree gives much they draw another, of which they make sugar, prepared either by sun or fire, and this they call jagra.”—Garcia, f. 67.

c. 1567.—“There come every yeere from Cochin and from Cananor tenne or fifteene great Shippes (to Chaul) laden with great nuts … and with sugar made of the selfe same nuts called Giagra.”—Caesar Frederike, in Hakl. ii. 344.

1598.—“Of the aforesaid sura they likewise make sugar, which is called lagra; they seeth the water, and set it in the sun, whereof it becometh sugar, but it is little esteemed, because it is of a browne colour.”—Linschoten, 102; [Hak. Soc. ii. 49].

1616.—“Some small quantity of wine, but not common, is made among