Chapter GUZZY to GYNEE of G by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

14].

c. 1670.—“Since the Mahometan Kings became Masters of this Countrey, this Fortress of Goualeor is the place where they secure Princes and great Noblemen. Chaiehan coming to the Empire by foul- play, caus’d all the Princes and Lords whom he mistrusted, to be seiz’d one after another, and sent them to the Fortress of Goualeor; but he suffer’d them all to live and enjoy their estates. Aureng-zeb his Son acts quite otherwise; for when he sends any great Lord to this place, at the end of nine or ten days he orders him to be poison’d; and this he does that the people may not exclaim against him for a bloody Prince.”—Tavernier, E.T. ii. 35; [ed. Ball, i. 63].

GYAUL (properly GAYAL), [Skt. go, ‘an ox’], s. A large animal (Gavaeus frontalis, Jerd., Bos f. Blanford, Mammalia, 487) of the ox tribe, found wild in various forest tracts to the east of India. It is domesticated by the Mishmis of the Assam valley, and other tribes as far south as Chittagong. In Assam it is called Mithan.

[c. 1590.—In Arakan, “cows and buffaloes there are none, but there is an animal which has somewhat of the characteristics of both, piebald and particoloured whose milk the people drink.”—Ain, ed. Jarrett, ii. 119.]

1824.—“In the park several uncommon animals are kept. Among them the Ghyal, an animal of which I had not, to my recollection, read any account, though the name was not unknown to me. It is a very noble creature, of the ox or buffalo kind, with immensely large horns.…”—Heber, i. 34.

1866–67.—“I was awakened by an extraordinary noise, something between a bull’s bellow and a railway whistle. What was it? We started to our feet, and Fuzlah and I were looking to our arms when Adupah said, ‘It is only the guyal calling; Sahib! Look, the dawn is just breaking, and they are opening the village gates for the beasts to go out to pasture.’

“These guyal were beautiful creatures, with broad fronts, sharp wide- spreading horns, and mild melancholy eyes. They were the indigenous cattle of the hills domesticated by these equally wild Lushais.…”—Lt.-Col. T. Lewin, A Fly on the Wheel, &c., p. 303.

GYELONG, s. A Buddhist priest in Tibet. Tib. dGe-sLong, i.e. ‘beggar of virtue,’ i.e. a bhikshu or mendicant friar (see under BUXEE); but latterly a priest who has received the highest orders. See Jaeschke, p. 86.

1784.—“He was dressed in the festival habit of a gylong or priest, being covered with a scarlet satin cloak, and a gilded mitre on his head.”—Bogle, in Markham’s Tibet, 25.

GYM-KHANA, s. This word is quite modern, and was unknown 40 years ago. The first use that we can trace is (on the authority of Major John Trotter) at Rurki in 1861, when a gymkhana was instituted there. It is a factitious word, invented, we believe, in the Bombay Presidency, and probably based upon gend-khana (‘ball-house’), the name usually given in Hind. to an English racket-court. It is applied to a place of public resort at a station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games of sorts are provided, including (when that was in fashion) a skating-rink, a lawn-tennis ground, and so forth. The gym may have been simply a corruption of gend shaped by gymnastics, [of which the English public school short form gym passed into Anglo-Indian jargon]. The word is also applied to a meeting for such sports; and in this sense it has travelled already as far as Malta, and has since become common among Englishmen abroad. [The suggestion that the word originated in the P.—H. jama’ at-khana, ‘a place of assemblage,’ is not probable.] 1877.—“Their proposals are that the Cricket Club should include in their programme the games, &c., proposed by the promoters of a gymkhana Club, so far as not to interfere with cricket, and should join in making a rink and lawn-tennis, and badminton courts, within the cricket-ground enclosure.”—Pioneer Mail, Nov. 3.

1879.—“Mr. A—F—can always be depended on for epigram, but not for accuracy. In his letters from Burma he talks of the Gymkhana at Rangoon as a sort of establissement [sic] where people have pleasant little dinners. In the ‘Oriental Arcadia,’ which Mr. F—tells us is flavoured with naughtiness, people may do strange things, but they do not dine at Gymkhanas.”—Ibid. July 2.

1881.—“R. E. Gymkhana at Malta, for Polo and other Ponies, 20th June, 1881.”—Heading in Royal Engineer Journal, Aug. 1, p. 159.

1883.—“I am not speaking of Bombay people with their clubs and gymkhanas and other devices for oiling the wheels of existence.…”—Tribes on My Frontier, 9.