Chapter GHAUT to GHILZAI of G by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

which ly 25 or 30 leagues up in the Country.”—A. Hamilton, i. 282; [ed. 1744, ii. 285].

1762.—“All the South part of India save the Mountains of Gate (a string of Hills in ye country) is level Land the Mould scarce so deep as in England.…As you make use of every expedient to drain the water from your tilled ground, so the Indians take care to keep it in theirs, and for this reason sow only in the level grounds.”—MS. Letter of James Rennell, March 21.

1826.—“The mountains are nearly the same height…with the average of Welsh mountains.…In one respect, and only one, the Ghâts have the advantage,—their precipices are higher, and the outlines of the hills consequently bolder.”—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 136.

GHEE, s. Boiled butter; the universal medium of cookery throughout India, supplying the place occupied by oil in Southern Europe, and more; [the samn of Arabia, the raughan of Persia]. The word is Hind. ghi, Skt. ghrita. A short but explicit account of the mode of preparation will be found in the English Cyclopaedia (Arts and Sciences), s.v.; [and in fuller detail in Watt, Econ. Dict. iii. 491 seqq.].

c. 1590.—“Most of them (Akbar’s elephants) get 5 s. (ers) of sugar, 4 s. of ghí, and half a man of rice mixed with chillies, cloves, &c.”—Ai-i-Akbari, i. 130.

1673.—“They will drink milk, and boil’d butter, which they call Ghe.”—Fryer, 33.

1783.—“In most of the prisons [of Hyder ’Ali] it was the custom to celebrate particular days, when the funds admitted, with the luxury of plantain fritters, a draught of sherbet, and a convivial song. On one occasion the old Scotch ballad, ‘My wife has ta’en the gee,’ was admirably sung, and loudly encored.…It was reported to the Kelledar (see KILLADAR) that the prisoners said and sung throughout the night of nothing but ghee.…The Kelledar, certain that discoveries had been made regarding his malversations in that article of garrison store, determined to conciliate their secrecy by causing an abundant supply of this unaccustomed luxury to be thenceforth placed within the reach of their farthing purchases.”—Wilks, Hist. Sketches, ii. 154.

1785.—“The revenues of the city of Decca…amount annually to two kherore (see CRORE), proceeding from the customs and duties levied on ghee.”—Carraccioli L. of Clive, i. 172.

1817.—“The great luxury of the Hindu is butter, prepared in a manner peculiar to himself, and called by him ghee.”—Mill, Hist. i. 410.

GHILZAI, n.p. One of the most famous of the tribes of Afghanistan, and probably the strong est, occupying the high plateau north of Kandahar, and extending (roundly speaking) eastward to the Sulimani mountains, and north to the Kabul River. They were supreme in Afghanistan at the beginning of the 18th century, and for a time possessed the throne of Ispahan. The following paragraph occurs in the article AFGHANISTAN, in the 9th ed. of the Encyc. Britan., 1874 (i. 235), written by one of the authors of this book:—

“It is remarkable that the old Arab geographers of the 10th and 11th centuries place in the Ghilzai country” (i.e. the country now occupied by the Ghilzais, or nearly so) “a people called Khilijis, whom they call a tribe of Turks, to whom belonged a famous family of Delhi Kings. The probability of the identity of the Khilijis and Ghilzais is obvious, and the question touches others regarding the origin of the Afghans; but it does not seem to have been gone into.”


Nor has the writer since ever been able to go into it. But whilst he has never regarded the suggestion as more than a probable one, he has seen no reason to reject it. He may add that on starting the idea to Sir Henry Rawlinson (to whom it seemed new), a high authority on such a question, though he would not accept it, he made a candid remark to the effect that the Ghilzais had undoubtedly a very Turk-like aspect. A belief in this identity was, as we have recently noticed, entertained by the traveller Charles Masson, as is shown in a passage quoted below. And it has also been maintained by Surgeon-Major Bellew, in his Races of Afghanistan (1880), [who (p. 100) refers the name to Khilichi, a swordsman. The folk etymology of De Guignes and D’Herbelot is Kall, ‘repose,’ atz, ‘hungry,’ given to an officer by Ogouz Khan, who delayed on the road to kill game for his sick wife].

All the accounts of the Ghilzais indicate great differences between them and the other tribes of Afghanistan; whilst there seems nothing impossible, or even unlikely, in the partial assimilation of a Turki tribe in the course of centuries to the Afghans who surround them, and the consequent assumption of a quasi-Afghan genealogy. We do not find that Mr. Elphinstone makes any explicit reference to the question now before us. But two of the notes to his History (5th ed. p. 322 and 384) seem to indicate that it was in his mind. In the latter of these he says: “The Khiljis…though Turks by descent…had been so long settled among the Af ghans that they had almost become identified with that people; but they probably mixed more with other nations, or at least with their Turki brethren, and would be more civilized than the generality of Afghan mountaineers.”