Chapter OOOLOOBALLONG to OPIUM of O by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

OOOLOOBALLONG to OPIUM

OOOLOOBALLONG, s. Malay, Ulubalang, a chosen warrior, a champion. [Mr. Skeat notes : “hulu or ulu certainly means ‘head,’ especially the head of a Raja, and balang probably means ‘people’ ; hence ulubalang, ‘men of the head,’ or ‘body-guard.’]

c. 1546.—“Four of twelve gates that were in the Town were opened, thorough each of the which sallied forth one of the four Captaines with his company, having first sent out for Spies into the Camp six Orobalons of the most valiant that were about the King.…”—Pinto (in Cogan), p. 260.

1688.—“The 500 gentlemen Orobalang were either slain or drowned, with all the Janizaries.”—Dryden, Life of Xavier, 211.

1784.—(At Acheen) “there are five great officers of state who are named Maha Rajah, Laxamana (see LAXIMANA), Raja Oolah, Ooloo Ballang, and Parkah Rajah.”—Forrest, V. to Mergui, 41.

1811.—“The ulu balang are military officers, forming the body-guard of the Sultan, and prepared on all occasions to execute his orders.”—Marsden, H. of Sumatra, 3rd ed. 351.

OOPLAH, s. Cow dung patted into cakes, and dried and stacked for fuel. Hind. upla. It is in S. India called bratty (q.v.).

1672.—“The allowance of cowdunge and wood was—for every basket of cowdunge, 2 cakes for the Gentu Pagoda ; for Peddinagg the watchman, of every baskett of cowdunge, 5 cakes.”—Orders at Ft. St. Geo., Notes and Exts. i. 56.


[Another name for the fuel is kanda. [1809.—“…small flat cakes of cow- dung, mixed with a little chopped straw and water, and dried in the sun, are used for fuel ; they are called kundhas.…”—Broughton, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, ed. 1892, p. 158.]

This fuel which is also common in Egypt and Western Asia, appears to have been not unknown even in England a century ago, thus :—

1789.—“We rode about 20 miles that day (near Woburn), the country…is very open, with little or no wood. They have even less fuel than we (i.e. in Scotland), and the poor burn cow-dung, which they scrape off the ground, and set up to burn as we do divots (i.e. turf).”—Lord Minto, in Life, i. 301.

1863.—A passage in Mr. Marsh’s Man and Nature, p. 242, contains a similar fact in reference to the practice, in consequence of the absence of wood, in France between Grenoble and Briançon.

[For the use of this fuel, in Tartary under the name of argols, see Huc, Travels, 2nd ed. i. 23. Numerous examples of its use are collected in 8 ser. Notes and Queries, iv. 226, 277, 377, 417.

[c. 1590.—“The plates (in refining gold) having been washed in clean water, are…covered with cowdung, which in Hindi is called uplah.”—Ain, ed. Blochmann, i. 21.

1828.—“We next proceeded to the Ooplee Wallee’s Bastion, as it is most erroneously termed by the Mussulmans. being literally in English a ‘Brattee,’ or ‘dried cowdung—Woman’s Tower.’…”(This is the Upri Burj, or ‘Lofty Tower of Bijapur, for which see Bombay Gazetteer, xxiii. 638).—Welsh, Military Reminiscences, ii. 318 seq.]

[OORD, OORUD, s. Hind. urad. A variety of dal (see DHALL) or pulse, the produce of Phaseolus radiatus. “Urd is the most highly prized of all the pulses of the genus Phaseolus, and is largely cultivated in all parts of India”(Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. i. 102, seqq.).

[1792.—“The stalks of the oord are hispid in a lesser degree than those of moong.”—Asiat. Res. vi. 47.

[1814.—“Oordh See under POPPER.

[1857.—“The Oordh Dal is in more common use than any other throughout the country.”—Chevers, Man. of Medical Jurisprudence, 309.]

OORDOO, s. The Hindustani language. The (Turki) word urdu means properly the camp of a Tartar Khan, and is, in another direction, the original of our word horde (Russian orda), [which, according to Schuyler (Turkistan, i. 30, note), “is now commonly used by the Russian soldiers and Cossacks in a very amusing manner as a contemptuous term for an Asiatic”]. The ‘Golden Horde’ upon the Volga was not properly (pace Littré) the name of a tribe of Tartars, as is often supposed, but was the style of the Royal Camp, eventually Palace, of the Khans of the House of Batu at Sarai. Horde is said by Pihan, quoted by Dozy (Oosterl. 43) to have been introduced into French by Voltaire in his Orphelin de la Chine. But Littré quotes it as used in the 16th century. Urda is now used in Turkistan, e.g. at Tashkend, Khokhand, &c., for a ‘citadel’ (Schuyler, loc. cit. i. 30). The word urdu, in the sense of a royal camp, came into India probably with Baber, and the royal residence at Delhi was styled urdu-i-mu’alla, ‘the