Chapter JAVA-RADISH to JEMADAR of J by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

JAVA-RADISH to JEMADAR

JAVA-RADISH, s. A singular variety (Raphanus caudatus, L.) of the common radish (R. sativus, L.), of which the pods, which attain a foot in length, are eaten and not the root. It is much cultivated in Western India, under the name of mugra [see Baden-Powell, Punjab Products, i. 260]. It is curious that the Hind. name of the common radish is muli, from mul, ‘root,’ exactly analogous to radish from radix.

[JAVA-WIND, s. In the Straits Settlements an unhealthy south wind blowing from the direction of Java is so called. (Compare SUMATRA, b.)]

JAWAUB, s. Hind. from Ar. jawab, ‘an answer.’ In India it has, besides this ordinary meaning, that of ‘dismissal.’ And in Anglo-Indian colloquial it is especially used for a lady’s refusal of an offer; whence the verb passive ‘to be jawaub’d.’ [The Jawaub Club consisted of men who had been at least half a dozen times ‘jawaub’d.’

1830.—“ ‘The Juwawb’d Club,’ asked Elsmere, with surprise, ‘what is that?’

“ ‘’Tis a fanciful association of those melancholy candidates for wedlock who have fallen in their pursuit, and are smarting under the sting of rejection.’ ”—Orient. Sport. Mag., reprint 1873, i. 424.]

Jawab among the natives is often applied to anything erected or planted for a symmetrical double, where

“Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,

“In the houses of many chiefs every picture on the walls has its jawab (or duplicate). The portrait of Scindiah now in my dining-room was the jawab (copy in fact) of Mr. C. Landseer’s picture, and hung opposite to the original in the Darbar room” (M.-Gen. Keatinge). [“The masjid with three domes of white marble occupies the left wing and has a counterpart (jawab) in a precisely similar building on the right hand side of the Taj. This last is sometimes called the false masjid; but it is in no sense dedicated to religious purposes.”—Führer, Monumental Antiquities, N.W.P., p. 64.]

JAY, s. The name usually given by Europeans to the Coracias Indica, Linn., the Nilkanth, or ‘blue- throat’ of the Hindus, found all over India.

[1878.—“They are the commonality of birddom, who furnish forth the mobs which bewilder the drunken- flighted jay when he jerks, shrieking in a series of blue hyphen-flashes through the air.…”—Ph. Robinson, In My Indian Garden, 3.]

JEEL, s. Hind. jhil. A stagnant sheet of inundation; a mere or lagoon. Especially applied to the great sheets of remanent inundation in Bengal. In Eastern Bengal they are also called bheel (q.v). [1757.—“Towards five the guard waked me with notice that the Nawab would presently pass by to his palace of Mootee jeel.”—Holwell’s Letter of Feb. 28, in Wheeler, Early Records, 250.]

The Jhils of Silhet are vividly and most accurately described (though the word is not used) in the following passage:—

c. 1778.—“I shall not therefore be disbelieved when I say that in pointing my boat towards Sylhet I had recourse to my compass, the same as at sea, and steered a straight course through a lake not less than 100 miles in extent, occasionally passing through villages built on artificial mounds: but so scanty was the ground that each house had a canoe attached to it.”—Hon. Robert Lindsay, in Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 166.

1824.—“At length we … entered what might be called a sea of reeds. It was, in fact, a vast jeel or marsh, whose tall rushes rise above the surface of the water, having depth enough for a very large vessel. We sailed briskly on, rustling like a greyhound in a field of corn.”—Heber, i. 101.

1850.—“To the geologist the Jheels and Sunderbunds are a most instructive region, as whatever may be the mean elevation of their waters, a permanent depression of 10 to 15 feet would submerge an immense tract.”—Hooker’s Himalayan Journals, ed. 1855, ii. 265.

1885.—“You attribute to me an act, the credit of which was due to Lieut. George Hutchinson, of the late Bengal Engineers.¹ That able officer, in company with the late Colonel Berkley, H.M. 32nd Regt., laid out the defences of the Alum Bagh camp, remarkable for its bold plan, which was so well devised that, with an apparently dangerous extent, it was defensible at every point by the small but ever ready force under Sir James Outram. A long interval…was defended