[c. 1590.—"The plates (in refining gold) having been washed in clean water, are ... covered with cowdung, which in Hindi is called uplah."—Āīn, ed. Blochmann, i. 21.
1828.—"We next proceeded to the Ooplee Wallee's Bastion, as it is most erroneously termed by the Mussulmans, being literally in English a '[Brattee],' or 'dried cowdung—Woman's Tower.'..." (This is the Upri Burj, or 'Lofty Tower' of Bijapur, for which see Bombay Gazetteer, xxiii. 638).—Welsh, Military Reminiscences, ii. 318 seq.]
[OORD, OORUD, s. Hind. uṛad. A variety of dāl (see [DHALL]) or pulse, the produce of Phaseolus radiatus. "Urd is the most highly prized of all the pulses of the genus Phaseolus, and is largely cultivated in all parts of India" (Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. i. 102, seqq.).
[1792.—"The stalks of the oord are hispid in a lesser degree than those of [moong]."—Asiat. Res. vi. 47.
[1814.—"Oord." See under [POPPER].
[1857.—"The Oordh Dal is in more common use than any other throughout the country."—Chevers, Man. of Medical Jurisprudence, 309.]
OORDOO, s. The Hindustani language. The (Turki) word urdū means properly the camp of a Tartar Khān, and is, in another direction, the original of our word horde (Russian orda), [which, according to Schuyler (Turkistan, i. 30, note), "is now commonly used by the Russian soldiers and Cossacks in a very amusing manner as a contemptuous term for an Asiatic">[. The 'Golden Horde' upon the Volga was not properly (pace Littré) the name of a tribe of Tartars, as is often supposed, but was the style of the Royal Camp, eventually Palace, of the Khāns of the House of Batu at Sarai. Horde is said by Pihan, quoted by Dozy (Oosterl. 43) to have been introduced into French by Voltaire in his Orphelin de la Chine. But Littré quotes it as used in the 16th century. Urda is now used in Turkistan, e.g. at Tashkend, Khokhand, &c., for a 'citadel' (Schuyler, loc. cit. i. 30). The word urdū, in the sense of a royal camp, came into India probably with Baber, and the royal residence at Delhi was styled urdū-i-mu'allā, 'the Sublime Camp.' The mixt language which grew up in the court and camp was called zabān-i-urdū, 'the Camp Language,' and hence we have elliptically Urdū. On the Peshawar frontier the word urdū is still in frequent use as applied to the camp of a field-force.
1247.—"Post haec venimus ad primam ordam Imperatoris, in quâ erat una de uxoribus suis; et quia nondum videramus Imperatorem, noluerint nos vocare nec intromittere ad ordam ipsius."—Plano Carpini, p. 752.
1254.—"Et sicut populus Israel sciebat, unusquisque ad quam regionem tabernaculi deberet figere tentoria, ita ipsi sciunt ad quod latus curie debeant se collocare.... Unde dicitur curia Orda lingua eorum, quod sonat medium, quia semper est in medio hominum suorum...."—William of Rubruk, p. 267.
1404.—"And the Lord (Timour) was very wroth with his Mirassaes (Mirzas), because he did not see the Ambassador at this feast, and because the Truximan (Interpreter) had not been with them ... and he sent for the Truximan and said to him: 'How is it that you have enraged and vexed the Lord? Now since you were not with the Frank ambassadors, and to punish you, and ensure your always being ready, we order your nostrils to be bored, and a cord put through them, and that you be led through the whole Ordo as a punishment.'"—Clavijo, § cxi.