[1833.—"Of the eatable fruited kinds above referred to, the most remarkable are the sweetsop, sour sop, and cherimoyer...."—Penny Cycl. ii. 54.]
SOWAR, SUWAR, s. Pers. sawār, 'a horseman.' A native cavalry soldier; a mounted orderly. In the Greek provinces in Turkey, the word is familiar in the form σουβάρις, pl. σουβαρίδες, for a mounted gendarme. [The regulations for suwārs in the Mogul armies are given by Blochmann, Āīn, i. 244 seq.]
1824-5.—"... The sowars who accompanied him."—Heber, Orig. i. 404.
1827.—"Hartley had therefore no resource save to keep his eye steadily fixed on the lighted match of the sowar ... who rode before him."—Sir W. Scott, The Surgeon's Daughter, ch. xiii.
[1830.—"... Meerza, an Asswar well known on the Collector's establishment."—Or. Sport. Mag. reprint 1873, i. 390.]
SOWAR, SHOOTER-, s. Hind. from Pers. shutur-sawār, the rider of a dromedary or swift camel. Such riders are attached to the establishment of the Viceroy on the march, and of other high officials in Upper India. The word sowar is quite misused by the Great Duke in the passage below, for a camel-driver, a sense it never has. The word written, or intended, may however have been [surwaun] (q.v.)
[1815.—"As we approached the camp his oont-surwars (camel-riders) went ahead of us."—Journal, Marquess of Hastings, i. 337.]
1834.—"I ... found a fresh horse at Sufter Jung's tomb, and at the Kutub ([cootub]) a couple of riding camels and an attendant Shutur Suwar."—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 129.
[1837.—"There are twenty Shooter Suwars (I have not an idea how I ought to spell those words), but they are native soldiers mounted on swift camels, very much trapped, and two of them always ride before our carriage."—Miss Eden, Up the Country, i. 31.]
1840.—"Sent a Shuta Sarwar (camel driver) off with an express to Simla."—Osborne, Court and Camp of Runj. Singh, 179.