Chapter TUCKEED to TURA of T by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

out copies of the Sacred Books.…He then shipped himself on board a great merchant vessel.…”—Beal, Travels of Fah Hian, &c. (1869), pp. 147–148.

[c. 1070.—“… a merchant named Harshagupta, who had arrived from Tamralipti, having heard of that event, came there full of curiosity.”—Tawney, Katha Sarit Sagara, i. 329.]

1679.—In going down the Hoogly:

“Before daybreak overtook the Ganges at Barnagur, met the Arrival 7 days out from Ballasore, and at night passed the Lilly at Tumbalee.”—Ft. St. Geo. (Council on Tour). In Notes & Exts. No. II. p. 69.

1685.—“January 2.—We fell downe below Tumbolee River.

“January 3.—We anchored at the Channel Trees, and lay here y^e 4^th and 5^th for want of a gale to carry us over to Kedgeria.”—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. i. 175.

[1694.—“The Royal James and Mary … fell on a sand on this side Tumbolee point.…”—Birdwood, Report on Old Records, 90.]

1726.—“Tamboli and Banzia are two Portuguese villages, where they have their churches, and salt business.”—Valentijn, v. 159.

[1753.—“Tombali.” See under KEDGEREE.]

TUMTUM, s. A dog-cart. We do not know the origin. [It is almost certainly a corr. of English tandem, the slang use of which in the sense of a conveyance (according to the Stanf. Dict.) dates from 1807. Even now English-speaking natives often speak of a dog-cart with a single horse as a tandem.]

1866.—“We had only 3 coss to go, and we should have met a pair of tumtums which would have taken us on.”—Trevelyan, The Dawk Bungalow, 384.

[1889.—“A G.B.T. cart once married a bathing-machine, and they called the child Tum-tum.”—R. Kipling, The City of Dreadful Night, 74.]

TUNCA, TUNCAW, &c., s. P.—H. tankhwah, pron. tankha. Properly an assignment on the revenue of a particular locality in favour of an individual; but in its most ordinary modern sense it is merely a word for the wages of a monthly servant. For a full account of the special older uses of the word see Wilson. In the second quotation the use is obscure; perhaps it means the villages on which assignments had been granted.

1758.—“Roydoolub … has taken the discharge of the tuncaws and the arrears of the Nabob’s army upon himself.”—Orme, iii.; [ii. 361].

1760.—“You have been under the necessity of writing to Mr. Holwell (who was sent to collect in the tuncars).… The low men that are employed in the tuncars are not to be depended on.”—The Nawab to the Prest. and Council of Ft. Wm., in Long, 233.

1778.—“These rescripts are called tuncaws, and entitle the holder to receive to the amount from the treasuries … as the revenues come in.”—Orme, ii. 276.

[1823.—“The Grassiah or Rajpoot chiefs … were satisfied with a fixed and known tanka, or tribute from certain territories, on which they had a real or pretended claim.”—Malcolm, Cent. India, 2nd. ed. i. 385.

[1851.—“The Sikh detachments … used to be paid by tunkhwáhs, or assignments of the provincial collectors of revenue.”—Edwardes, A Year on the Punjab Frontier, i. 19.]

TURA, s. Or. Turk. tura. This word is used in the Autobiography of Baber, and in other Mahommedan military narratives of the 16th century. It is admitted by the translators of Baber that it is rendered by them quite conjecturally, and we cannot but think that they have missed the truth. The explanation of tur which they quote from Meninski is “reticulatus,” and combining this with the manner in which the quotations show these tura to have been employed, we cannot but think that the meaning which best suits is ‘a gabion.’ Sir H. Elliot, in referring to the first passage from Baber, adopts the reading tubra, and says: “Túbras are nose-bags, but … Badáúni makes the meaning plain, by saying that they were filled with earth (Táríkh-i-Badáúni, f. 136).… The sacks used by Sher Sháh as temporary fortifications on his march towards Rájpútána were túbras” (Elliot, iv. 469). It is evident, however, that Baber’s turas were no tobras, whilst a reference to the passage (Elliot, iv. 405) regarding Sher Shah shows that the use of bags filled with sand on that occasion was regarded as a new contrivance. The tubra of Badáúni may therefore probably be a misreading; whilst the use of gabions implies necessarily that they would be filled with earth.

1526.—(At the Battle of Panipat) “I directed that, according to the custom of Rûm, the gun-carriages should be connected together with twisted bull-hides as with chains. Between every two gun-carriages were 6 or 7 tûras (or breastworks). The matchlockmen stood behind these guns and tûras, and discharged their matchlocks.… It was settled, that as Pânipat was a considerable city, it would cover one of our flanks by its buildings and houses while we might fortify our front by tûras.…”—Baber, p. 304.

1528.—(At the siege