Chapter UPPER ROGER to UZBEG of U by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

UPPER ROGER to UZBEG

UPPER ROGER, s. This happy example of the Hobson-Jobson dialect occurs in a letter dated 1755, from Capt. Jackson at Syrian in Burma, which is given in Dalrymple’s Oriental Repertory, i. 192. It is a corruption of the Skt. yuva-raja, ‘young King,’ the Caesar or Heir-Apparent, a title borrowed from ancient India by most of the Indo-Chinese monarchies, and which we generally render in Siam as the ‘Second King.’

URZ, URZEE and vulgarly URJEE, s. P.—H. ’arz and ’arzi, from Ar. ’arz, the latter a word having an extraordinary variety of uses even for Arabic. A petition or humble representation either oral or in writing; the technical term for a request from an inferior to a superior; ‘a sifflication’ as one of Sir Walter Scott’s characters calls it. A more elaborate form is ’arz-dasht, ‘memorializing.’ This is used in a very barbarous from of Hobson-Jobson below.

1606.—“Every day I went to the Court, and in every eighteen or twentie dayes I put up Ars or Petitions, and still he put mee off with good words.…”—John Milden-hall, in Purchas, i. (Bk. iii.) 115.

[1614.—“Until Mocrob Chan’s erzedach or letter came to that purpose it would not be granted.”—Foster, Letters, ii.178. In p. 179 “By whom I erzed unto the King again.”

[1687.—“The arzdest with the Estimauze (Iltimas, ‘humble representation’) concerning your twelve articles.…—In Yule, Hedges’ Diary, Hak. Soc. II. lxx.

[1688.—“Capt. Haddock desiered the Agent would write his arzdost in answer to the Nabob’s Perwanna (Purwanna).”—Ibid. II. lxxxiii.]

1690.—“We think you should Urzdaast the Nabob to writt purposely for y^e releasm^t of Charles King, it may Induce him to put a great Value on him.”—Letter from Factory at Chuttanutte to Mr. Charles Eyre at Ballasore, d. November 5 (MS. in India Office).

1782.—“Monsr. de Chemant refuses to write to Hyder by arzoasht (read arzdasht), and wants to correspond with him in the same manner as Mons. Duplex did with Chanda Sahib; but the Nabob refuses to receive any letter that is not in the stile of an arzee or petition.”—India Gazette, June 22.

c. 1785.—“… they (the troops) constantly applied to our colonel, who for presenting an arzee to the King, and getting him to sign it for the passing of an account of 50 lacks, is said to have received six lacks as a reward. …”—Carraccioli, Life of Clive, iii. 155.

1809.—“In the morning … I was met by a minister of the Rajah of Benares, bearing an arjee from his master to me. …” —Ld. Valentia, i. 104.

1817.—“The Governor said the Nabob’s Vakeel in the Arzee already quoted, directed me to forward to the presence that it was his wish, that your Highness would write a letter to him.”—Mill’s Hist. iv. 436.

USHRUFEE. See ASHRAFEE.

USPUK, s. Hind. aspak. ‘A hand-spike,’ corr. of the English. This was the form in use in the Canal Department, N.W.P. Roebuck gives the Sea form as hanspeek.

[UZBEG, n.p. One of the modern tribes of the Turkish race. “Uzbeg is a political not an ethnological denomination, originating from Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde (1312–1340). It was used to distinguish the followers of Shaibani Khan (16th century) from his antagonists, and became finally the name of the ruling Turks in the khanates as opposed to the Sarts, Tajiks, and such Turks as entered those regions at a later date. …” (Encycl. Brit. 9th ed. xxiii. 661). Others give the derivation from uz, ‘self,’ bek, ‘a ruler,’ in the sense of independent. (Schuyler, Turkistan, i. 106, Vambéry, Sketches of C. Asia, 301).

[c. 1330.—“But other two empires of the Tartars … that which was formerly of Cathay, but now is Csbet, which is called Gatzaria. …”—Friar Jordanus, 54.

[1616.—“He … intendeth the conquest of the Vzbiques, a nation between Samarchand and here.”—Sir T. Roe, i. 113, Hak. Soc.

[c. 1660.—“There are probably no people more narrow-minded, sordid or uncleanly, than the Usbec Tartars.”—Bernier, ed. Constable, 120.

[1727.—“The Uspecks entred the Provinces Muschet and Yesd. …”—A. Hamilton, ed. 1744, i. 108.

[1900.—“Uz-beg cavalry (‘them House-bugs.’ as the British soldiers at Rawal Pindi called them).”—Sir R. Warburton, Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 135.]