Chapter NASSICK to NAVAIT of N by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

NAUTCH-GIRL, s. (See BAYADÈRE, DANCING-GIRL.) The last quotation is a glorious jumble, after the manner of the compiler.

[1809.—“Nach Girls are exempted from all taxes, though they pay a kind of voluntary one monthly to a Fuqeer.…”— Broughton, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, ed. 1892, p. 113–4.]

1825.—“The Nâch women were, as usual, ugly, huddled up in huge bundles of red petticoats; and their exhibition as dull and insipid to an European taste, as could well be conceived.”—Heber, ii. 102.

1836.—“In India and the East dancing- girls are trained called Almeh, and they give a fascinating entertainment called a natch, for which they are well paid.”— In R. Phillips, A Million of Facts, 322.

NAVAIT, NAITEA, NEVOYAT, &c., n.p. A name given to Mahommedans of mixt race in the Konkan and S. Canara, corresponding more or less to Moplahs (q.v.) and Lubbyes of Malabar and the Coromandel coast. [The head-quarters of the Navayats are in N. Canara, and their traditions state that their ancestors fled from the Persian Gulf about the close of the 7th century, to escape the cruelty of a Governor of Iran. See Sturrock, Man. of S. Canara, i. 181.] It is apparently a Konkani word connected with Skt. nava, ‘new,’ and implying ‘new convert.’ [The Madras Gloss derives the word from Pers. naiti, from Nait, the name of an Arab clan.]

1552.—“Sons of Moors and of Gentile women, who are called Neiteas.…”— Castanheda, iii. 24.

1553.—“Naiteas que são mestiços: quanto aos padres de geração dos Arabios…e perparte das madres das Gentias.”—Barros, I. ix. 3.

„ And because of this fertility of soil, and of the trade of these ports, there was here a great number of Moors, natives of the country, whom they call Naiteas, who were accustomed to buy the horses and sell them to the Moors of the Decan.…”—Ibid. I. viii. 9.

c. 1612.—“From this period the Mahomedans extended their religion and their influence in Malabar, and many of the princes and inhabitants, becoming converts to the true faith, gave over the management of some of the seaports to the strangers, whom they called Nowayits (literally the New Race).…”—Firishta, by Briggs, iv. 533.

1615.—“…et passim infiniti Mahometani reperiebantur, tum indigenae quos naiteas vocabant, tum externi.…”—Jarric, i. 57.

1626.—“There are two sorts of Moors, one Mesticos of mixed seed of Moore-fathers and Ethnike-mothers, called Naiteani, Mungrels also in their religion, the other Forreiners…”—Purchas, Pilgrimage, 554.

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