"And Beaufort learned in the law,
And Atkinson the Sage,
And if his locks are white as snow,
'Tis more from dikk than age!"
Wilfrid Heeley, A Lay of Modern Darjeeling.
[1889.—"Were the Company's pumps to be beaten by the vagaries of that dikhdari, Tarachunda nuddee?"—R. Kipling, In Black and White, 52.]
DINAPORE, n.p. A well-known cantonment on the right bank of the Ganges, being the station of the great city of Patna. The name is properly Dānāpur. Ives (1755) writes Dunapoor (p. 167). The cantonment was established under the government of Warren Hastings about 1772, but we have failed to ascertain the exact date. [Cruso, writing in 1785, speaks of the cantonments having cost the Company 25 lakhs of rupees. (Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. ii. 445). There were troops there in 1773 (Gleig, Life of Warren Hastings, i. 297).]
DĪNĀR, s. This word is not now in any Indian use. But it is remarkable as a word introduced into Skt. at a comparatively early date. "The names of the Arabic pieces of money ... are all taken from the coins of the Lower Roman Empire. Thus, the copper piece was called fals from follis; the silver dirham from drachma, and the gold dīnār, from denarius, which, though properly a silver coin, was used generally to denote coins of other metals, as the denarius aeris, and the denarius auri, or aureus" (James Prinsep, in Essays, &c., ed. by Thomas, i. 19). But it was long before the rise of Islām that the knowledge and name of the denarius as applied to a gold coin had reached India. The inscription on the east gate of the great tope at Sanchi is probably the oldest instance preserved, though the date of that is a matter greatly disputed. But in the Amarakosha (c. A.D. 500) we have 'dīnāre 'pi cha nishkah,' i.e. 'a nishkah (or gold coin) is the same as dīnāra.' And in the Kalpasūtra of Bhadrabāhu (of about the same age) § 36, we have 'dīnāra mālaya,' 'a necklace of dīnārs,' mentioned (see Max Müller below). The dīnār in modern Persia is a very small imaginary coin, of which 10,000 make a [tomaun] (q.v.). In the Middle Ages we find Arabic writers applying the term dīnār both to the staple gold coin (corresponding to the gold mohr of more modern times) and to the staple silver coin (corresponding to what has been called since the 16th century the rupee). [Also see Yule, Cathay, ii. 439 seqq. See [DEANER].]
A.D. (?) "The son of Amuka ... having made salutation to the eternal gods and goddesses, has given a piece of ground purchased at the legal rate; also five temples, and twenty-five (thousand?) dínárs ... as an act of grace and benevolence of the great emperor Chandragupta."—Inscription on Gateway at Sanchi (Prinsep's Essays, i. 246).
A.D. (?) "Quelque temps après, à Pataliputra, un autre homme devoué aux Brahmanes renversa une statue de Bouddha aux pieds d'un mendiant, qui la mit en pièces. Le roi (Açoka) ... fit proclamer cet ordre: Celui qui m'apportera la tête d'un mendiant brahmanique, recevra de moi un Dînâra."—Tr. of Divya avadâna, in Burnouf, Int. à l'Hist. du Bouddhisme Indien, p. 422.