Chapter DATURA to DAYE of D by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

DAWK, To lay a, v. To cause relays of bearers, or horses, to be posted on a road. As regards palankin bearers this used to be done either through the post-office, or through local chowdries (q.v.) of bearers. During the mutiny of 1857–58, when several young surgeons had arrived in India, whose services were urgently wanted at the front, it is said that the Head of the Department to which they had reported themselves, directed them immediately to ‘lay a dawk.’ One of them turned back from the door, saying: ‘Would you explain, Sir; for you might just as well tell me to lay an egg!’

DAWK BUNGALOW. See under BUNGALOW.

DAYE, DHYE, s. A wet-nurse; used in Bengal and N. India, where this is the sense now attached to the word. Hind. dai, Skt. datrika; conf. Pers. dayah, a nurse, a midwife. The word also in the earlier English Regulations is applied, Wilson states, to “a female commissioner employed to interrogate and swear native women of condition, who could not appear to give evidence in a Court.”

[1568.—“No Christian shall call an infidel Daya at the time of her labour.”—Archiv. Port. Orient. fasc. iv. p. 25.]

1578.—“The whole plant is commonly known and used by the Dayas, or as we call them comadres” (“gossips,” midwives).—Acosta, Tractado, 282.

1613.—“The medicines of the Malays … ordinarily are roots of plants … horns and claws and stones, which are used by their leeches, and for the most part by Dayas, which are women physicians, excellent herbalists, apprentices of the schools of Java Major.”—Godinho de Eredia, f. 37.

1782.—In a Table of monthly Wages at Calcutta, we have:—

“Dy (Wet-nurse) 10 Rs.”

India Gazette, Oct. 12.

1808.—“If the bearer hath not strength what can the Daee (midwife) do?”—Guzerati Proverb, in Drummond’s Illustrations, 1803.

1810.—“The Dhye is more generally an attendant upon native ladies.”—Williamson, V.M. i. 341.

1883.—“… the ‘dyah’ or wet-nurse is looked on as a second mother, and usually provided for for life.”—Wills, Modern Persia, 326.

[1887.—“I was much interested in the Dhais (‘midwives’) class.”—Lady Dufferin, Viceregal Life in India, 337.]