THE CYCLOPEDIA OF INDIA AND OF EASTERN AND SOUTHERN ASIA, Commercial, Industrial, and Scientific; PRODUCTS OF THE MINERAL, VEGETABLE, AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS, USEFUL BY SURGEON GENERAL EDWARD BALFOUR, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL-ROYAL GEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, VIENNA; AUTHOR OF 'THE TIMBER TREES OF INDIA AND OF EASTERN AND SOUTHERN ASIA,' ETC.; FOUNDER OF THE MADRAS MUHAMMADAN LIBRARY; OF THE GOVERNMENT CENTRAL MUSEUM, IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. A-GYROCARPUS. THIRD EDITION. LONDON: BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY. PREFATORY NOTICE. THE HE first edition of this Cyclopædia was published in 1858 in India, the second, also in India, in 1873, and the years 1877 to 1884 inclusive have been occupied in revising it for publication in England. During this process, every likely source of further information has been examined, and many references made. I am under obligations to many learned men, to the Secretariat Officers of the Indian Governments, and to the Record and Library Officers of the India Office, Colonial Office, and British Museum, for their ready response to my applications for aid. This edition contains 35,000 articles, and 16,000 index headings, relating to an area of 30,360,571 square kilometers (11,722,708 square miles), peopled by 704,401,171 souls. In dealing with subjects in quantities of such magnitude, oversights and points needing correction cannot but have occurred; but it is believed that errata are not many, and will be of a kind that can be readily remedied. It is inevitable that difficulties in transliteration should be experienced owing to the variously accented forms which some words assume even among tribes of the same race, also to the different values accepted in many languages for the same letters, and especially to the want of correspondence in the letters of the several Eastern alphabets; but in this work traditional and historical spelling has not been deviated from, and the copious Indices will guide to words of less settled orthography. Men of the same race, habits, and customs, plants and animals of the same natural families, genera, and even species, are so widely distributed throughout the South and East of Asia, that local histories of them are fragmentary and incomplete. India in its ethnology, its flora and fauna, can therefore only be fairly dealt with by embracing a wider area. This is the reason why the Cyclopædia and my work on the Timber Trees include all Eastern and Southern Asia, the regions, the areas and populations of which may be thus indicated:- I am under obligations to Messrs. Morrison & Gibb for their careful presswork. All that their art could do has been done to aid me in keeping the work in a compact form. 2 OXFORD SQUARE, HYDE PARK, LONDON, 24th May 1885. EDWARD BALFOUR. THE CYCLOPEDIA OF INDIA AND OF EASTERN AND A A, ǎ.-In the English language, the ordinary sounds, long or short, are as a in many; a in all, and as ǎ in municipal. It has representative letters and sounds in all the languages of the south and east of Asia. In Arabic, Persian, and Urdoo or Hindustani, the letter alif and the vowel mark zabr have almost similar sounds to the long and short a of the English, as in that part of the azan or Mahomedan call to prayers, Allahō Akbar, Allāhō Akbar, retaining the long sound invariably when in the middle or end of a word. In Tamil, the English A and ǎ, long and short, are represented by two initial letters equal to a and ǎ; and all the consonants have the inherent sound of short a, thus kă, nă. In Telugu, the short ǎ is represented by the letter ǎ initial, and by a mark placed on the top of a consonant. The long a initial has the same sound as a in anger. AACH, Aal, or Atche. TAM. Morinda citrifolia; M. multiflora. See Dyes. AADAL. ARAB. Sacks for carrying provisions, on camels. AAKAL. ARAB. The fillet of the Arabs; a rope or woollen band, or of other material, which the Arab twists round his head covering. AALIN NAR. MALEAL. Fibre of the Ficus Indica, the banyan tree. AAT-ALARI. TAM. Polygonum barbatum. AB. PERS., HIND. Water. Hence Abi, watery. Also Ab-kari, the distillation of alcoholic fluids, the strong waters of Europeans; and in use as a revenue term in British India for the excise branch which superintends the licence to sell all kinds of intoxicating substances, as arrack, toddy, opium, etc. Do-ab, literally two waters, the territory or mesopotamia between two rivers. Panjab, five waters or five rivers; that territory in the north-west of British India through which several rivers flow. ABA or Abba, ARAB., in Egypt called Abayeh, is a cloak woven of camel or goat's hair, worn by all classes of the Arab races, known to Europeans in the Persian Gulf as a cameline. It is made in the Bedouin tents. It is of every degree as to quality and ornamentation, and varying in price from one or two dollars to a hundred dollars, the last a marvel of softness and beauty, considering the material used. To the common working Arab the aba is often the sole article of clothing. ABACA BRAVA, the wild or mountain abaca of the Philippines, a variety of the Manilla hemp plant, Musa textilis, the fibres of which serve for making ropes, called agotag and amoquid in the Bicol language.-Royle's Fib. Plants. ABAD. PERS. A postfix to districts of country and towns, as Arungabad, Dowlatabad, Allahabad, Farrakhabad, Hyderabad, and used by almost all the races of British India to indicate towns in which Mahomedans have ruled. Abadi is an inhabited or peopled place. Abadi-raqba, the area under tillage. ABAK. ARAB. Mercury. AB-AMBAR, in Persia, large underground reservoirs lined with brick, filled by kanats, or by collecting the rain of a wide area. They are covered in by vaulted roofs of masonry, and a flight of steps leads down to the water. ABAR-MURDAH. PERS. Sponge. ABA SIN. PUSHT. The river Indus; lit. father of rivers. ABASSA, sister of the khalif Harun ur Rashid, by whom she was married to Jafar, his vizir, under a condition which was not adhered to. There are extant some Arabic verses by her on the subject of her love for Jafar. ABBAS, a dynasty of khalifs, who reigned at Baghdad, from A.D. 749-50 to 1258-9 (A.H. 132 to 656), when Baghdad was besieged and taken by Hulaku, grandson of Chengiz Khan, and the khalif Mustasem put to death. are known to Europeans as the Abbassides. See Al Abbas; Khalifah. ABBASSI. scimitar. They PERS. A curved broad-bladed ABBAYE. BENG. The head man of a village. ABBOTTABAD, in lat. 34° 9′ N., and long. 73° 9' E., a small military and civil station, N.N.E. of |