Chapter ROWANNAH to RUBBEE of R by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

ROZA, s. Ar. rauda, Hind. rauza. Properly a garden; among the Arabs especially the rauda of the great mosque at Medina. In India it is applied to such mausolea as the Taj (generally called by the natives the Taj-rauza); and the mausoleum built by Aurungzib near Aurungabad

1813.—“…the roza, a name for the mausoleum, but implying something saintly or sanctified.”—Forbes, Or. Mem. iv. 41; [2nd ed. ii. 413].

ROZYE, s. Hind. razai and rajai; a coverlet quilted with cotton. The etymology is very obscure. It is spelt in Hind. with the Ar. letter zwad; and F. Johnson gives a Persian word so spelt as meaning ‘a cover for the head in winter.’ The kindred meaning of mirzai is apt to suggest a connection between the two, but this may be accidental, or the latter word factitious. We can see no likelihood in Shakespear’s suggestion that it is a corruption of an alleged Skt. ranjika, ‘cloth.’ [Platts gives the same explanation, adding “probably through Pers. raza’i, from razidan, ‘to dye.’ ”] The most probable suggestion perhaps is that razai was a word taken from the name of some person called Raza, who may have invented some variety of the article; as in the case of Spencer, Wellingtons, &c. A somewhat obscure quotation from the Pers. Dict. called Bahar-i-Ajam, extracted by Vüllers (s.v.), seems to corroborate the suggestion of a personal origin of the word. 1784.—“I have this morning…received a letter from the Prince addressed to you, with a present of a rezy and a shawl handkerchief.”—Warren Hastings to his Wife, in Busteed, Echoes of Old Calcutta, 195.

1834.—“I arrived in a small open pavilion at the top of the building, in which there was a small Brahminy cow, clothed in a wadded resai, and lying upon a carpet.”—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 135.

1857.—(Imports into Kandahar, from Mashad and Khorasan) “Razaies from Yezd….”—Punjab Trade Report, App. p. lxviii.

1867.—“I had brought with me a soft quilted rezai to sleep on, and with a rug wrapped round me, and sword and pistol under my head, I lay and thought long and deeply upon my line of action on the morrow.”—Lieut.-Col. Lewin, A Fly on the Wheel, 301.

RUBBEE, s. Ar. rabi, ‘the Spring.’ In India applied to the crops, or harvest of the crops, which are sown after the rains and reaped in the following spring or early summer. Such crops are wheat, barley, gram, linseed, tobacco, onions, carrots and turnips, &c. (See KHURREEF.)

[1765.—“…we have granted them the Dewannee (see DEWAUNY) of the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, from the beginning of the Fussul Rubby of the Bengal year 1172….”—Firmaun of Shah Aaalum, in Verelst, View of Bengal, App. 167.

[1866.—“It was in the month of November, when, if the rains closed early, irrigation is resorted to for producing the young rubbee crops.”—Confessions of an Orderly, 179.]