Volume 2

The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia : commercial, industrial and scientific, products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / by Edward Balfour.

  • Balfour, Edward, 1813-1889.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia : commercial, industrial and scientific, products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / by Edward Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or comb them out, being freed at the same time from remaining extraneous matter. The wire pins are arranged on different frames, in progres- sive degrees of fineness. The process is now performed by special machinery. HADA. Hind. A blight, drying up of leaves. HADAYK-ul-BALAGHAT. Arab. Literally, the Gardens of Eloquence, an Arabic treatise on eloquence by Mir Shams-ud-Din of Dehli, who lived at the end of the 18th century. HADI, a helot race, spread over all Bengal, who take their name from the original Santali word for man, Had, and who have supplied such terms as Hadd, base, low-born; Hadduk, a sweeper; Hunda, hog, blockhead, imp; Hudduka, a drunken sot, etc. Also, Hadi, in low Bengali Hadikath, is the name of a rude fetter or stock, by which landholders used to confine their serfs until they agreed to their terms. It means literally the helot’s log. It was also used for fastening the head of the victim in the bloody oblations which the Aryan religion adopted from the aboriginal races, especially in the human sacrifices to Kali, to which the low castes even now resort in tunes of special need. In an account of such a human offering to Kali, during the famine of 1866, it was mentioned that the bleeding head was found fixed on the ‘ harcat,’ i.e. helot’s log.—Dr. W. W. Hunter, p. 80. HADIAH. Arab. A maiden of good family and courage, who precedes in battle the Bedouin Arab, mounted on a camel, in the fore ranks. She has to shame the timid and excite the brave by taunts or praise.—Palgrave. HADIS. Arab. (PI. Ahadis.) The traditions of the sayings and practice of Mahomed. They are 5266 in number, and are considered a supple- ment to the Koran. They are also called Sunna or customs, also Ahadis Nabaweya, the Apostolic Acts. The Sunni, the Shiah, and the Wahabi sects all acknowledge traditions as binding on them ; but the Shiah sect do not acknowledge the same collection as binding on them which the Sunni adopt, and the Wahabi recognise six Sunni books as correct. HADIWICKE, a moderately hard, fine, close- grained, rather heavy Ceylon wood. HADRAMAUT, a province of Arabia Felix, on the sea-coast between Yemen and Oman. The chief products are frankincense, gum-arabic, dragon’s blood, myrrh, and aloes. HADROSPHERUM, Mesospherum, and Micro- spherum are terms applied by Pliny to varieties of nard; perhaps a mistake of his, as Dioscorides observes that some people made the mistake of regarding malabathrum as the leaf of Indian nard. —Yule, Cathay, i. p. cxlv. H2EMADIPSA CEYLANICA. Main. The land-leech of Ceylon. Another is the Hsemadipsa Boscii, and another is Haemopsis paludum. H-iEMATIN, a colouring substance obtained from the Csesalpinia sappan tree. HiEMATITE. Tai-che-shih, Chin. Yu-yu-liang, . . Chin. I Red haematite, , Eng. Brown haematite,. Eng. | Hydrated oxide of iron, ,, A name given to certain forms of native peroxide of iron. When of a red colour it is called red haematite; and when brown, brown haematite. According to Hanbury, it resembles the old lapis aetiles. It occurs in British India and China in many places; and the Chinese regard it as crumbs from the table of the great emperor Yu, and use it medicinally in powder and in tincture.—Smith. HiEMATORNIS CAFER is one of the bulbuls of Southern India. It is not a song bird, and is called the bulbul-i-gul-dum, or bulbul with the rose tail. Like quails and cocks, it is trained to fight, and when pitted against an antagonist it will sink from exhaustion rather than release its hold. H^MATOXYLON CAMPECHIANUM, the logwood tree; has been introduced into India, where it grows readily and seeds abundantly. It is used only as a dye, and the bark is astringent. It is a low spreading tree, seldom thicker than a man’s thigh.—Cleghorn in Madras E. J. R. HiENKE. The Reliquiae Haenkianae of Presl is a folio volume, with plates, devoted to the materials collected by Haenke, who was employed in the Spanish service, and collected in America and Manilla. The Indian plants described are few, and the descriptions and identifications far from satisfactory.—Hooker f. et Thomson. HAE-NUN, called by Europeans Amoy, an island on the S.E. of China about 22 miles in circumference. The town of Amoy is situated on the S.W. part of the island, opposite the small island of Ko-lan-soo, which affords protection to the town anchorage or inner harbour. On the western side of the island is that of Woo-seu- shan, also that of Woo-an. Amoy was delivered over to the British, after the first Chinese war of 1841-2, and forms one of the consulates thereof, Shang-hai and Hong-Kong being others. HAE-TAN, a large and irregularly-shaped island on the E. coast of China, near the mainland, between lat. 25° 24' and 25° 40' N. Its northern part, Hae-tan peak, is in lat. 25° 36' N., and rises to an elevation of 1420 feet; but its eastern and western shores are low, and indented with deep sandy bays.—Horsburgh. H2ETUMAT, a land mentioned in the Yendidad of the Zoroastrians, as the eleventh of which the Aryans took possession. It is the valley of the Helmand to the west of Arachosia.—Bunsen. HAFIZ, Arab., from the Arabic Hifz, he did remember, is a literary title given to a Mahomedan who can recite the whole of the Koran from memory, it is generally earned by lads, some- times of very tender years, and in large towns there are always several of the Hafiz. Where so many are actual Hafiz, multitudes have almost attained thereto, and remember vast portions of their religious book; and every Mahomedan with any education can indicate almost any passage under discussion. The Koran is not, perhaps, a third the size of the Old and New Testaments, and the feat of committing it to memory is compara- tively easy, which may explain why we so seldom hear of a Bible Hafiz. Recently, however, in 1860, a religious gentleman in Massachusetts having offered several prizes of Bibles to those, old or young, who should commit to memory and repeat the largest portion of the Bible, Mrs. Betsy Conant, who had been residing in Melrose, a lady sixty- eight years of age, committed to memory the entire Bible, Old and New Testament, reciting each day in the week. This was certified by her daughter, and also by the superintendent of the Sabbath school. An Irish servant girl repeated nearly 10,000 verses; three other women repeated