From the far groves of Samarkand."
Moore, Lalla Rookh.
ALPEEN, s. H. alpīn, used in Bombay. A common pin, from Port. alfinete (Panjab N. & Q., ii. 117).
AMAH, s. A wet nurse; used in Madras, Bombay, China and Japan. It is Port. ama (comp. German and Swedish amme).
1839.—"... A sort of good-natured housekeeper-like bodies, who talk only of ayahs and amahs, and bad nights, and babies, and the advantages of Hodgson's ale while they are nursing: seeming in short devoted to 'suckling fools and chronicling small beer.'"—Letters from Madras, 294. See also p. 106.
AMBAREE, s. This is a P. word ('amārī) for a [Howdah], and the word occurs in Colebrooke's letters, but is quite unusual now. Gladwin defines Amaree as "an umbrella over the Howdeh" (Index to Ayeen, i.). The proper application is to a canopied howdah, such as is still used by native princes.
[c. 1661.—"Aurengzebe felt that he might venture to shut his brother up in a covered embary, a kind of closed litter in which women are carried on elephants."—Bernier (ed. Constable), 69.]
c. 1665.—"On the day that the King went up the Mountain of Pire-ponjale ... being followed by a long row of elephants, upon which sat the Women in Mikdembers and Embarys...."—Bernier, E.T. 130 [ed. Constable, 407].
1798.—"The Rajah's Sowarree was very grand and superb. He had twenty elephants, with richly embroidered ambarrehs, the whole of them mounted by his sirdars,—he himself riding upon the largest, put in the centre."—Skinner, Mem. i. 157.
1799.—"Many of the largest Ceylon and other Deccany Elephants bore ambáris on which all the chiefs and nobles rode, dressed with magnificence, and adorned with the richest jewels."—Life of Colebrooke, p. 164.