1824.—"At length we ... entered what might be called a sea of reeds. It was, in fact, a vast jeel or marsh, whose tall rushes rise above the surface of the water, having depth enough for a very large vessel. We sailed briskly on, rustling like a greyhound in a field of corn."—Heber, i. 101.
1850.—"To the geologist the Jheels and Sunderbunds are a most instructive region, as whatever may be the mean elevation of their waters, a permanent depression of 10 to 15 feet would submerge an immense tract."—Hooker's Himalayan Journals, ed. 1855, ii. 265.
1885.—"You attribute to me an act, the credit of which was due to Lieut. George Hutchinson, of the late Bengal Engineers.[[146]] That able officer, in company with the late Colonel Berkley, H.M. 32nd Regt., laid out the defences of the Alum Bagh camp, remarkable for its bold plan, which was so well devised that, with an apparently dangerous extent, it was defensible at every point by the small but ever ready force under Sir James Outram. A long interval ... was defended by a post of support called 'Moir's Picket' ... covered by a wide expanse of jheel, or lake, resulting from the rainy season. Foreseeing the probable drying up of the water, Lieut. Hutchinson, by a clever inspiration, marched all the transport elephants through and through the lake, and when the water disappeared, the dried clay-bed, pierced into a honey-combed surface of circular holes a foot in diameter and two or more feet deep, became a better protection against either cavalry or infantry than the water had been...."—Letter to Lt.-Col. P. R. Innes from F. M. Lord Napier of Magdāla, dd. April 15.
Jeel and [bheel] are both applied to the artificial lakes in Central India and Bundelkhand.
JEETUL, s. Hind. jītal. A very old Indian denomination of copper coin, now entirely obsolete. It long survived on the western coast, and the name was used by the Portuguese for one of their small copper coins in the forms ceitils and zoitoles. It is doubtful, however, if ceitil is the same word. At least there is a medieval Portuguese coin called ceitil and ceptil (see Fernandes, in Memorias da Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 2da Classe, 1856); this may have got confounded with the Indian Jital. The jītal of the Delhi coinage of Alā-ud-dīn (c. 1300) was, according to Mr. E. Thomas's calculations, 1⁄64 of the silver tanga, the coin called in later days the rupee. It was therefore just the equivalent of our modern pice. But of course, like most modern denominations of coin, it has varied greatly.
c. 1193-4.—"According to Ḳuṭb-ud-Dīn's command, Nizam-ud-Dīn Mohammad, on his return, brought them [the two slaves] along with him to the capital, Dihli; and Malik Ḳuṭb-ud-Dīn purchased both the Turks for the sum of 100,000 jitals."—Raverty, Ṭabaḳāṭ-i-Nāṣiri, p. 603.
c. 1290.—"In the same year ... there was dearth in Dehli, and grain rose to a jital per sír (see [SEER])."—Ẓiáh-ud-dín Barní, in Elliot, iii. 146.
c. 1340.—"The dirhem sultānī is worth ⅓ of the dirhem shashtānī ... and is worth 3 fals, whilst the jītal is worth 4 fals; and the dirhem hashtkānī, which is exactly the silver dirhem of Egypt and Syria, is worth 32 fals."—Shihābuddīn, in Notices et Extraits, xiii. 212.
1554.—In Sunda. "The cash (caixas) here go 120 to the tanga of silver; the which caixas are a copper money larger than ceitils, and pierced in the middle, which they say have come from China for many years, and the whole place is full of them."—A. Nunes, 42.
c. 1590.—"For the purpose of calculation the dam is divided into 25 parts, each of which is called a jétal. This imaginary division is only used by accountants."—Āīn, ed. Blochmann, i. 31.