[1871.—"A sungha bridge is formed as follows: on either side the river piers of rubble masonry, laced with cross-beams of timber, are built up; and into these are inserted stout poles, one above the other in successively projecting tiers, the interstices between the latter being filled up with cross-beams," &c.—Harcourt, Himalayan Districts of Kooloo, p. 67 seq.]
SUNGTARA, s. Pers. sangtara. The name of a kind of orange, probably from Cintra. See under [ORANGE] a quotation regarding the fruit of Cintra, from Abulfeda.
c. 1526.—"The Sengtereh ... is another fruit.... In colour and appearance it is like the citron (Tāranj), but the skin of the fruit is smooth."—Baber, 328.
c. 1590.—"Sirkar Silhet is very mountainous.... Here grows a delicious fruit called Soontara (sūntara) in colour like an orange, but of an oblong form."—Ayeen, by Gladwin, ii. 10; [Jarrett (ii. 124) writes Súntarah].
1793.—"The people of this country have infinitely more reason to be proud of their oranges, which appear to me to be very superior to those of Silhet, and probably indeed are not surpassed by any in the world. They are here called Santôla, which I take to be a corruption of Sengterrah, the name by which a similar species of orange is known in the Upper Provinces of India."—Kirkpatrick's Nepaul, 129.
1835.—"The most delicious oranges have been procured here. The rind is fine and thin, the flavour excellent; the natives call them 'cintra.'"—Wanderings of a Pilgrim, ii. 99.
SUNN, s. Beng. and Hind. san, from Skt. śaṇa; the fibre of the Crotalaria juncea, L. (N.O. Leguminosae); often called Bengal, or Country, hemp. It is of course in no way kindred to true hemp, except in its economic use. In the following passage from the Āīn the reference is to the Hibiscus canabinus (see Watt, Econ. Dict. ii. 597).
[c. 1590.—"Hemp grows in clusters like a nosegay.... One species bears a flower like the cotton-shrub, and this is called in Hindostan, sun-paut. It makes a very soft rope."—Ayeen, by Gladwin, ii. 89; in Blochmann (i. 87) Patsan.]
1838.—"Sunn ... a plant the bark of which is used as hemp, and is usually sown around cotton fields."—Playfair, Taleef-i-Shereef, 96.
[SUNNEE, SOONNEE, s. Ar. sunnī, which is really a Pers. form and stands for that which is expressed by the Ar. Ahlu's-Sunnah, 'the people of the Path,' a 'Traditionist.' The term applied to the large Mahommedan sect who acknowledge the first four Khalīfahs to have been the rightful descendants of the Prophet, and are thus opposed to the [Sheeahs]. The latter are much less numerous than the former, the proportion being, according to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's estimate, 15 millions Shiahs to 145 millions of Sunnis.