Chapter MANGROVE to MARAMUT of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

use, see Long’s Selections, p. 561.

[1864.—“The Khond chiefs of villages and Mootas are termed Maji instead of Mulliko as in Goomsur, or Khonro as in Boad.…”—Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, 120.]

MANNICKJORE, s. Hind. manikjor; the white-necked stork (Ciconia leucocephala, Gmelin); sometimes, according to Jerdon, called in Bengal the ‘Beef-steak bird,’ because palatable when cooked in that fashion. “The name of Manikjor means the companion of Manik, a Saint, and some Mussulmans in consequence abstain from eating it” (Jerdon). [Platts derives it from manik, ‘a ruby.’]

[1840.—“I reached the jheel, and found it to contain many manickchors, ibis, paddy birds, &c.…”—Davidson, Travels in Upper India, ii. 165.]

MANUCODIATA. (See BIRD OF PARADISE.)

MARAMUT, MURRUMUT, s. Hind. from Ar. maramma(t), ‘repair.’ In this sense the use is general in Hindustani (in which the terminal t is always pronounced, though not by the Arabs), whether as applied to a stocking, a fortress, or a ship. But in Madras Presidency the word had formerly a very specialised sense as the recognised title of that branch of the Executive which included the conservation of irrigation tanks and the like, and which was worked under the District Civil Officers, there being then no separate department of the State in charge of Civil Public Works. It is a curious illustration of the wide spread at one time of Musulman power that the same Arabic word, in the form Marama, is still applied in Sicily to a standing committee charged with repairs to the Duomo or Cathedral of Palermo. An analogous instance of the wide grasp of the Saracenic power is mentioned by one of the Musulman authors whom Amari quotes in his History of the Mahommedan rule in Sicily. It is that the Caliph Al-Mamun, under whom conquest was advancing in India and in Sicily simultaneously, ordered that the idols taken from the infidels in India should be sent for sale to the infidels in Sicily!

[1757.—“On the 6th the Major (Eyre Coote) left Muxadabad with … 10 Marmutty men, or pioneers to clear the road.” —Ives, 156.

[1873.—“For the actual execution of works there was a Maramat Department constituted under the Collector.”—Boswell, Man. of Nellore, 642.]