Chapter TABASHEER to TAHSEELDAR of T by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

TABASHEER to TAHSEELDAR

TABASHEER, s. ‘Sugar of Bamboo.’ A siliceous substance sometimes found in the joints of the bamboo, formerly prized as medicine, [also known in India as Banslochan or Banskapur]. The word is Pers. tabashir, but that is from the Skt. name of the article, tvakkshira, and tavakkshira. The substance is often confounded, in name at least, by the old Materia Medica writers, with spodium and is sometimes called ispodio di canna. See Ces. Federici below. Garcia De Orta goes at length into this subject (f. 193 seqq.). [See SUGAR.]

c. 1150.—“Tanah (miswritten Banah) est une jolie ville située sur un grand golfe.… Dans les montagnes environnantes croissent le … kana et le … tabashir … Quant au tébachir, on le falsifie en le mélangeant avec de la cendre d’ivoire; mais le veritable est celui qu’on extrait des racines du roseau dit … al Sharkí.”— Edrisi, i. 179.

1563.—“And much less are the roots of the cane tabaxer; so that according to both the translations A vicena is wrong; and Averrois says that it is charcoal from burning the canes of India, whence it appears that he never saw it, since he calls such a white substance charcoal.”—Garcia, f. 195v.

c. 1570.—“Il Spodio si congela d’acqua in alcune canne, e io n’ho trouato assai nel Pegù quando faceuo fabricar la mia casa.”—Ces. Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 397.

1578.—“The Spodium or Tabaxir of the Persians … was not known to the Greeks.”—A costa, 295.

c. 1580.—“Spodium Tabaxir vocant, quo nomine vulgus pharmacopoeorum Spodium factitium, quippe metallicum, intelligunt. At eruditiores viri eo nomine lacrymam quandam, ex caudice arboris procerae in India nascentis, albicantem, odoratam, facultatis refrigeratoriae, et cor maxime roborantis itidem intelligunt.”—Prosper Alpinus, Rerum Ægyptiarum, Lib. III. vii.

1598.—“… these Mambus have a certain Matter within them, which is (as it were) the pith of it … the Indians call it Sacar Mambu, which is as much as to say, as Sugar of Mambu, and is a very deep Medicinable thing much esteemed, and much sought for by the Arabians, Persians, and Moores, that call it Tabaxiir.”—Linschoten, p. 104; [Hak. Soc. ii. 56].

1837.—“Allied to these in a botanical point of view is Saccharum officinarum, which has needlessly been supposed not to have yielded saccharum, or the substance known by this name to the ancients; the same authors conjecturing this to be Tabasheer.… Considering that this substance is pure silex, it is not likely to have been arranged with the honeys and described under the head of [Greek Text] pert Sakcaron meliton.”—Royle on the Ant. of Hindoo Medicine, p. 83. This confirms the views expressed in the article SUGAR.

1854.—“In the cavity of these cylinders water is sometimes secreted, or, less commonly, an opaque white substance, becoming opaline when wetted, consisting of a flinty secretion, of which the plant divests itself, called Tabasheer, concerning the optical properties of which Sir David Brewster has made some curious discoveries.”—Engl. Cycl. Nat. Hist. Section, article Bamboo.

TABBY, s. Not Anglo-Indian. A kind of watered silk stuff; Sp. and Port. tabi, Ital. tabino, Fr. tabis, from Ar. ’attabi, the name said to have been given to such stuffs from their being manufactured in early times in a quarter of Baghdad called al-’attabiya; and this derived its name from a prince of the ’Omaiyad family called ’Attab. [See Burton, Ar. Nights, ii. 371.]

12th cent.—“The ’Attabiya … here are made the stuffs, called ’Attabiya, which are silks and cottons of divers colours.”—Ibn Jubair, p. 227.

[c. 1220.—“’Attabi.” See under SUCLAT.]

TABOOT, s. The name applied in India to a kind of shrine, or model of a Mahommedan mausoleum, of flimsy material, intended to represent the tomb of Husain at Kerbela, which is carried in procession during the Moharram (see Herklots, 2nd ed. 119 seqq., and Garcin de Tassy, Rel. Musulm. dans l’Inde, 36). [The word is Ar. tabut, ‘a wooden box, coffin.’ The term used in N. India is ta’ziya (see TAZEEA).]

[1856.—“There is generally over the vaul in which the corpse is deposited an oblong monument of stone or brick (called ‘tarkeebeh’) or wood (in which case it is called ‘taboot’).”—Lane, Mod. Egypt., 5th ed. i. 299.]

[TACK-RAVAN, s. A litter carried on men’s shoulders, used only by royal personages. It is Pers. takht- ravan, ‘travelling-throne.’ In the Hindi of Behar the word is corrupted into tartarwan. [c. 1660.—“… several articles of Chinese and Japan workmanship; among which were a paleky and a tack-ravan, or travelling