1800.—"It is diffused in immense masses, without any appearance of stratification, and is placed over the granite that forms the basis of Malayala.... It very soon becomes as hard as brick, and resists the air and water much better than any brick I have seen in India.... As it is usually cut into the form of bricks for building, in several of the native dialects it is called the brick-stone (Iticacullee) [Malayāl. vettukal].... The most proper English name would be Laterite, from Lateritis, the appellation that may be given it in science."—Buchanan, Mysore, &c., ii. 440-441.
1860.—"Natives resident in these localities (Galle and Colombo) are easily recognisable elsewhere by the general hue of their dress. This is occasioned by the prevalence along the western coast of laterite, or, as the Singhalese call it, [cabook], a product of disintegrated gneiss, which being subjected to detrition communicates its hue to the soil."—Tennent's Ceylon, i. 17.
LATTEE, s. A stick; a bludgeon, often made of the male bamboo (Dendrocalamus strictus), and sometimes bound at short intervals with iron rings, forming a formidable weapon. The word is Hind. lāṭhī and laṭhī, Mahr. laṭhṭha. This is from Prakrit laṭṭhī, for Skt. yashṭi, 'a stick,' according to the Prakrit grammar of Vavaruchi (ed. Cowell, ii. 32); see also Lassen, Institutiones, Ling. Prakrit, 195. Jiskī lāṭhī, us kī bhaiṇs, is a Hind. proverb (cujus baculum ejus bubalus), equivalent to the "good old rule, the simple plan."
1830.—"The natives use a very dangerous weapon, which they have been forbidden by Government to carry. I took one as a curiosity, which had been seized on a man in a fight in a village. It is a very heavy lāthi, a solid male bamboo, 5 feet 5 inches long, headed with iron in a most formidable manner. There are 6 jagged semicircular irons at the top, each 2 inches in length, 1 in height, and it is shod with iron bands 16 inches deep from the top."—Wanderings of a Pilgrim, i. 133.
1878.—"After driving some 6 miles, we came upon about 100 men seated in rows on the roadside, all with latties."—Life in the Mofussil, i. 114.
LATTEEAL, s. Hind. lāṭhīyāl, or, more cumbrously, lāṭhīwālā, 'a club-man,' a hired ruffian. Such gentry were not many years ago entertained in scores by planters in some parts of Bengal, to maintain by force their claims to lands for sowing indigo on.
1878.—"Doubtless there were hired lattials ... on both sides."—Life in the Mofussil, ii. 6.
LAW-OFFICER. This was the official designation of a Mahommedan officer learned in the (Mahommedan) law, who was for many years of our Indian administration an essential functionary of the judges' Courts in the districts, as well as of the Sudder or Courts of Review at the Presidency.
It is to be remembered that the law administered in Courts under the Company's government, from the assumption of the Dewanny of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, was the Mahommedan law; at first by the hands of native [Cazees] and [Mufties], with some superintendence from the higher European servants of the Company; a superintendence which, while undergoing sundry vicissitudes of system during the next 30 years, developed gradually into a European judiciary, which again was set on an extended and quasi-permanent footing by Lord Cornwallis's Government, in Regulation IX. of 1793 (see [ADAWLUT]). The Mahommedan law continued, however, to be the professed basis of criminal jurisprudence, though modified more and more, as years went on, by new [Regulations], and by the recorded constructions and circular orders of the superior Courts, until the accomplishment of the great changes which followed the Mutiny, and the assumption of the direct government of India by the Crown (1858). The landmarks of change were (a) the enactment of the Penal Code (Act XLV. of 1860), and (b) that of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Act XXV. of 1861), followed by (c) the establishment of the High Court (July 1, 1862), in which became merged both the [Supreme Court] with its peculiar jurisdiction, and the (quondam-Company's) Sudder Courts of Review and Appeal, civil and criminal (Dewanny Adawlvt, and Nizamat Adawlut).
The authoritative exposition of the Mahommedan Law, in aid and guidance of the English judges, was the function of the Mahommedan Law-officer. He sat with the judge on the bench at Sessions, i.e. in the hearing of criminal cases committed by the magistrate for trial; and at the end of the trial he gave in his written record of the proceedings with his [Futwa] (q.v.) (see Regn. IX. 1793, sect. 47), which was his judgment as to the guilt of the accused, as to the definition of the crime, and as to its appropriate punishment according to Mahommedan Law. The judge was bound attentively to consider the futwa, and if it seemed to him to be consonant with natural justice, and also in conformity with the Mahommedan Law, he passed sentence (save in certain excepted cases) in its terms, and issued his warrant to the magistrate for execution of the sentence, unless it were one of death, in which case the proceedings had to be referred to the Sudder Nizamut for confirmation. In cases also where there was disagreement between the civilian judge and the Law-officer, either as to finding or sentence, the matter was referred to the Sudder Court for ultimate decision.