Chapter ATAP to AVA of A by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

AUMIL, s. Ar. and thence H ’amil (noun of agency from ’amal, ‘he performed a task or office,’ therefore ‘an agent’). Under the native governments a collector of Revenue; also a farmer of the Revenue invested with chief authority in his District. Also

AUMILDAR. Properly ’amaldar, ‘one holding office’; (Ar. ’amal, ‘work,’ with P. term of agency). A factor or manager. Among the Mahrattas the ’Amaldar was a collector of revenue under varying conditions—(See details in Wilson). The term is now limited to Mysore and a few other parts of India, and does not belong to the standard system of any Presidency. The word in the following passage looks as if intended for ’amaldar, though there is a term Maldar, ‘the holder of property.’

1680.—“The Mauldar or Didwan [Dewan] that came with the Ruccas [Roocka] from Golcondah sent forward to Lingappa at Conjiveram.”—Ft. St. Geo. Cons., 9th Novr. No. III., 38.

c. 1780.—“.… having detected various frauds in the management of the Amuldar or renter. … (M. Lally) paid him 40,000 rupees.”—Orme, iii. 496 (ed. 1803).

1793.—“The aumildars, or managers of the districts.”—Dirom, p. 56.

1799.—“I wish that you would desire one of your people to communicate with the Amildar of Soondah respecting this road.” —A. Wellesley to T. Munro, in Munro’s Life, i. 335.

1804.—“I know the character of the Peshwah, and his ministers, and of every Mahratta amildar sufficiently well. …” —Wellington, iii. 38.

1809.—“Of the aumil I saw nothing.”— Ld. Valentia, i. 412.

AURUNG, s. H. from P. aurang, ‘a place where goods are manufactured, a depôt for such goods.’ During the Company’s trading days this term was applied to their factories for the purchase, on advances, of native piece-goods, &c.

1778.—“.… Gentoo-factors in their own pay to provide the investments at the different Aurungs or cloth markets in the province.”—Orme, ii. 51.

1789.—“I doubt, however, very much whether he has had sufficient experience in the commercial line to enable him to manage so difficult and so Important an aurung as Luckipore, which is almost the only one of any magnitude which supplies the species of coarse cloths which do not interfere with the British manufacture.”—Cornwallis. i. 435.

AVA, n.p. The name of the city which was for several centuries the capital of the Burmese Empire, and was applied often to that State itself. This name is borrowed, according to Crawfurd, from the form Awa or Awak used by the Malays. The proper Burmese form was Eng-wa, or ‘the Lake-Mouth,’ because the city was built near the opening of a lagoon into the Irawadi; but this was called, even by the Burmese, more popularly A-wa, ‘The Mouth.’ The city was founded a.d. 1364. The first European occurrence of the name, so far as we know, is (c. 1440) in the narrative of Nicolo Conti, and it appears again (no doubt from Conti’s information) in the great World-Map of Fra Mauro at Venice (1459).

c. 1430.—“Having sailed up this river for the space of a month he arrived at a city more noble than all the others, called Ava, and the circumference of which is 15 miles.”—Conti, in India in the XVth Cent. 11.

c. 1490.—“The country (Pegu) is distant 15 days’ journey by land from another called Ava in which grow rubies and many other precious stones.”—Hier. di Sto. Stefano, u. s. p. 6.

1516.—“Inland beyond this Kingdom of Pegu. … there is another Kingdom of Gentiles which has a King who resides in a very great and opulent city called Ava, 8 days’ journey from the sea: a place of rich merchants, in which there is a great trade of jewels, rubies, and spinel-rubies, which are gathered in this Kingdom.”—Barbosa, 186.

c. 1610.—“. …The King of Ová having already sent much people, with cavalry, to relieve Porão (Prome), which marches with the Pozão (?) and city of Ová or Anvá, (which means ‘surrounded on all sides with streams’) …”—Antonio Bocarro, Decada, 150.

1726.—“The city Ava is surpassing great. … One may not travel by land to Ava, both because this is permitted by the Emperor to none but envoys, on account of the Rubies on the way, and also because it is a very perilous journey on account of the tigers.”—Valentijn, V. (Chorom.) 127.