[1696.—"Nabob Zulphecar Cawn is gone into the Mizore country after the Mahratta army...."—Letter in Wilks, Hist. Sketches, Madras reprint, i. 60.]

MYSORE THORN. The Caesalpinia sepiaria, Roxb. It is armed with short, sharp, recurved prickles; and is much used as a fence in the Deccan. Hyder Ali planted it round his strongholds in Mysore, and hence it is often called "Hyder's Thorn," Haidar kā jhār.

[1857.—"What may be termed the underwood consisted of [milk bushes], [prickly pears], mysore thorn, intermingled in wild confusion...."—Lady Falkland, Chow-chow, 2nd ed. i. 300.]

N

NABÓB, s. Port. Nabâbo, and Fr. Nabab, from Hind. Nawāb, which is the Ar. pl. of sing. Nāyab (see [NAIB]), 'a deputy,' and was applied in a singular sense[[184]] to a delegate of the supreme chief, viz. to a Viceroy or chief Governor under the Great Mogul, e.g. the Nawāb of Surat, the Nawāb of Oudh, the Nawāb of Arcot, the Nawāb Nāzim of Bengal. From this use it became a title of rank without necessarily having any office attached. It is now a title occasionally conferred, like a peerage, on Mahommedan gentlemen of distinction and good service, as Rāī and Rājā are upon Hindus.

Nabob is used in two ways: (a) simply as a corruption and representative of Nawāb. We get it direct from the Port. nabâbo, see quotation from Bluteau below. (b) It began to be applied in the 18th century, when the transactions of Clive made the epithet familiar in England, to Anglo-Indians who returned with fortunes from the East; and Foote's play of 'The Nabob' (Nábob) (1768) aided in giving general currency to the word in this sense.

a.—

1604.—"... delante del Nauabo que es justicia mayor."—Guerrero, Relacion, 70.

1615.—"There was as Nababo in Surat a certain Persian Mahommedan (Mouro Parsio) called Mocarre Bethião, who had come to Goa in the time of the Viceroy Ruy Lourenço de Tavora, and who being treated with much familiarity and kindness by the Portuguese ... came to confess that it could not but be that truth was with their Law...."—Bocarro, p. 354.

1616.—"Catechumeni ergo parentes viros aliquot inducunt honestos et assessores Nauabi, id est, judicis supremi, cui consiliarii erant, uti et Proregi, ut libellum famosum adversus Pinnerum spargerent."—Jarric, Thesaurus, iii. 378.