Chapter WOOD-APPLE to WUG of W by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

WOON, s. Burm. wun, ‘a governor or officer of administration’; literally ‘a burden,’ hence presumably the ‘Bearer of the Burden.’ Of this there are various well-known compounds, e.g.:

Woon-gyee, i.e. ‘Wun-gyi’ or Great Minister, a member of the High Council of State or Cabinet, called the Hlot-dau (see LOTOO).

Woon-douk, i.e. Wun-dauk, lit. ‘the prop of the Wun’; a sort of Adlatus, or Minister of an inferior class. We have recently seen a Burmese envoy to the French Government designated as “M. Woondouk.”

Atwen-wun, Minister of the Interior (of the Court) or Household.

Myo- wun, Provincial Governor (Maywoon of Symes).

Ye-wun, ‘Water-Governor,’ formerly Deputy of the Myo- wun of the Pr. of Pegu (Ray-woon of Symes).

Akaok-wun, Collector of Customs (Akawoon of Symes).

WOORDY-MAJOR, s. The title of a native adjutant in regiments of Indian Irregular Cavalry. Both the rationale of the compound title, and the etymology of wardi, are obscure. Platts gives Hind. wardi, or urdi, ‘uniform of a soldier, badge or dress of office,’ as the first part of the compound, with a questionable Skt. etymology, viruda, ‘crying, proclaiming, a panegyric.’ But there is also Ar. wird, ‘a flight of birds,’ and then also ‘a troop or squadron,’ which is perhaps as probable. [Others, again, as many military titles have come from S. India, connect it with Can. varadi, ‘news, an order.’]

[1784.—“… We made the wurdee wollah acquainted with the circumstance. …”—Forrest, Bombay Letters, ii. 323.

[1861.—“The senior Ressaldar (native captain) and the Woordie Major (native adjutant) … reported that the sepoys were trying to tamper with his men.”—Cave-Browne, Punjab and Delhi, i. 120.]

WOOTZ, s. This is an odd name which has attached itself in books to the so-called ‘natural steel’ of S. India, made especially in Salem, and in some parts of Mysore. It is prepared from small bits of malleable iron (made from magnetic ore) which are packed in crucibles with pieces of a particular wood (Cassia auriculata), and covered with leaves and clay. The word first appears in a paper read before the Royal Society, June 11, 1795, called: “Experiments and observations to investigate the nature of a kind of Steel, manufactured at Bombay, and there called Wootz … by George Pearson, M.D.” This paper is quoted below.

The word has never since been recognised as the name of steel in any language, and it would seem to have originated in some clerical error, or misreading, very possibly for wook, representing the Canarese ukku (pron. wukku) ‘steel.’ Another suggestion has been made by Dr. Edward Balfour. He states that uchcha and nicha (Hind. uncha-nicha, in reality for ‘high’ and ‘low’) are used in Canarese speaking districts to denote superior and inferior descriptions of an article, and supposes that wootz may have been a misunderstanding of uchcha, ‘of superior quality.’ The former suggestion seems to us preferable. [The Madras Gloss. gives as local names of steel, Can. ukku, Tel. ukku, Tam. and Malayal. urukku, and derives wootz from Skt. ucca, whence comes H. uncha.]

The article was no doubt the famous ‘Indian Steel,’ the [Greek Text] sidhroV ’ [Greek Text] IndikoV kai stomwma of the Periplus, the material of the Indian swords celebrated in many an Arabic poem, the alhinde of old Spanish, the hundwani of the Persian traders, ondanique of Marco Polo, the iron exported by the Portuguese in the 16th century from Baticalà (see BATCUL) in Canara and other parts (see Correa passim). In a letter of the King to the Goa Government in 1591 he animadverts on the great amount of iron and steel permitted to be exported from Chaul, for sale on the African coast and to the Turks in the Red Sea (Archiv. Port. Orient., Fasc. 3, 318).

1795.—“Dr. Scott, of Bombay, in a letter to the President, acquainted him that he had sent over specimens of a substance known by the name of Wootz; which is considered to be a kind of steel, and is in high esteem among the Indians.”—Phil. Trans. for 1795, Pt. ii. p. 322.

[1814.—See an account of wootz, in Heyne’s Tracts, 362 seqq.]

1841.—“The cakes of steel are called Wootz; they differ materially in quality, according to the nature of the ore, but are generally very good steel, and are sent into Persia and Turkey. … It may be rendered self-evident that the figure or pattern (of Damascus steel) so long sought after exists in the cakes of Wootz, and only requires to be produced by the action of diluted acids … it is therefore highly probable that the ancient blades (of Damascus) were made of this steel.”—Wilkinson, Engines of War, pp. 203–206.

1864.—“Damascus was long celebrated for the manufacture of its sword blades, which it has been conjectured were made from the wootz of India.”—Percy’s Metallurgy, Iron and Steel, 860.