Chapter GRAM-FED to GRASS-WIDOW of G by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

GRAM-FED to GRASS-WIDOW

GRAM-FED, adj. Properly the distinctive description of mutton and beef fattened upon gram, which used to be the pride of Bengal. But applied figuratively to any ‘pampered creature.’

c. 1849.—“By an old Indian I mean a man full of curry and of bad Hindustani, with a fat liver and no brains, but with a self-sufficient idea that no one can know India except through long experience of brandy, champagne, gram-fed mutton, cheroots and hookahs.”—Sir C. Napier, quoted in Bos. Smith’s Life of Ld. Lawrence, i. 338.

1880.—“I missed two persons at the Delhi assemblage in 1877. All the gram- fed secretaries and most of the alcoholic chiefs were there; but the famine-haunted villagers and the delirium-shattered opium-eating Chinaman, who had to pay the bill, were not present.”—Ali Baba, 127.

GRANDONIC. (See GRUNTHUM and SANSKRIT).

GRASS-CLOTH. s. This name is now generally applied to a kind of cambric from China made from the Chuma of the Chinese (Boehmaria nivea, Hooker, the Rhea, so much talked of now), and called by the Chinese sia-pu, or ‘summer-cloth.’ We find grass-cloths often spoken of by the 16th century travellers, and even later, as an export from Orissa and Bengal. They were probably made of Rhea or some kindred species, but we have not been able to determine this. Cloth and nets are made in the south from the Neilgherry nettle (Girardinia heterophylla, D. C.)

c. 1567.—“Cloth of herbes (panni d’erba), which is a kinde of silke, which groweth among the woodes without any labour of man.”—Caesar Frederike, in Hakl. ii. 358.

1585.—“Great store of the cloth which is made from Grasse, which they call yerua” (in Orissa).—R. Fitch, in Hakl. ii. 387.

[1598.—See under SAREE.

[c. 1610.—“Likewise is there plenty of silk, as well that of the silkworm as of the (silk) herb, which is of the brightest yellow colour, and brighter than silk itself.”—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 328.]

1627.—“Their manufactories (about Balasore) are of Cotton…Silk, and Silk and Cotton Romals…; and of Herba (a Sort of tough Grass) they make Ginghams, Pinascos, and several other Goods for Exportation.”—A. Hamilton, i. 397; [ed. 1744].

1813.—Milburn, in his List of Bengal Piece-Goods, has Herba Taffaties (ii. 221).

GRASS-CUTTER, s. This is probably a corruption representing the H. ghaskhoda or ghaskata, ‘the digger, or cutter, of grass’; the title of a servant employed to collect grass for horses, one such being usually attached to each horse besides the syce or horsekeeper. In the north the grasscutter is a man; in the south the office is filled by the horsekeeper’s wife. Ghaskat is the form commonly used by Englishmen in Upper India speaking Hindustani; but ghasiyara by those aspiring to purer language. The former term appears in Williamson’s V. M. (1810) as gauskot (i. 186), the latter in Jacquemont’s Correspondence as grassyara. No grasscutters are mentioned as attached to the stables of Akbar; only a money allowance for grass. The antiquity of the Madras arrangement is shown by a passage in Castanheda (1552): “…he gave him a horse, and a boy to attend to it, and a female slave to see to its fodder.”—(ii. 58.)

1789.—“…an Horsekeeper and Grass-cutter at two pagodas.”—Munro’s Narr. 28.

1793.—“Every horse…has two attendants, one who cleans and takes care of him, called the horse-keeper, and the other the grasscutter, who provides for his forage.”—Dirom’s Narr. 242.

1846.—“Every horse has a man and a maid to himself—the maid cuts grass for him; and every dog has a boy. I inquired whether the cat had any servants, but I found he was allowed to wait upon himself.”—Letters from Madras, 37.

[1850.—“Then there are our servants…four Saises and four Ghascuts…”—Mrs. Mackenzie, Life in the Mission, ii. 253.]

1875.—“I suppose if you were to pick up…a grasscutter’s pony to replace the one you lost, you wouldn’t feel that you had done the rest of the army out of their rights.”—The Dilemma, ch. xxxvii.

[GRASSHOPPER FALLS, n.p. An Anglo-Indian corruption of the name of the great waterfall on the Sheravati River in the Shimoga District of Mysore, where the river plunges down in a succession of cascades, of which the principal is 890 feet in height. The proper name of the place is Gersoppa, or Gerusappe, which takes its name from the adjoining village; geru, Can., ‘the marking nut plant’ (semecarpus anacardium, L.), soppu, ‘a leaf.’ See Mr. Grey’s note on P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 218.]