Fyzabad - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

FYZABAD, or Faizabad, a city, district and division of British India in the United Provinces. The city stands on the left bank of the river Gogra, 78 m. by rail E. of Lucknow. Pop. (1901) 75,085. To the E. of Fyzabad, and now forming a suburb, is the ancient site of Ajodhya. Fyzabad was founded about 1730 by Sa`adat Ali Khan, the first nawab wazir of Oudh, who built a hunting-lodge here. It received its present name in the reign of his successor; and Shuja-ud-daula, the third nawab, laid out a large town and fortified it, and here he was buried. It was afterwards the residence of the Begums of Oudh, famous in connexion with the impeachment of Warren Hastings. When the court of Oudh was removed to Lucknow in 1775 all the leading merchants and bankers abandoned the place. At the census of 1869 Fyzabad contained only 37,804 inhabitants; but it is now again advancing in prosperity and population. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857, the cantonment contained two regiments of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a light field battery of artillery - all natives. Owing to their threatening demeanour after the Meerut massacre, many of the European women and children were sheltered by one of the great landholders of Oudh, and others were sent to less disturbed parts of the country. The troops rose, as was anticipated, and although they at first permitted their officers to take boats and proceed towards Dinapur, a message was afterwards sent to a rebel force lower down the river to intercept the fugitives. Of four boats, one, having passed the rebels unnoticed, succeeded in reaching Dinapur safely. Of those in the other three boats, one alone escaped. Fyzabad is now a station for European as well as for native troops. It is the headquarters of a brigade in the 8th division of the northern army. There is a government college. Sugar-refining and trade in agricultural produce are important.

The District Of Fyzabad, lying between the two great rivers Gogra and Gumti, has an area of 1740 sq. m. It is entirely alluvial and well wooded, and has a good climate. Pop. (1901) 1, 22 5,374, an increase of 7% in the decade. The district is traversed throughout its length by the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway from Lucknow to Benares, with a branch to Allahabad. Tanda, with a population in 1901 of 19,853, has the largest production of cotton goods in Oudh.

The Division Of Fyzabad has an area of 12,113 sq. m., and comprises the six districts of Fyzabad, Gonda, Bahraich, Sultanpur, Partabgarh and Bara Banki. Pop. (1901) 6,855,991, an increase of 2% in the decade.

G The form of this letter which is familiar to us is an invention of the Romans, who had previously converted the third symbol of the alphabet into a representative of a k-sound (see C). Throughout the whole of Roman history C remained as the symbol for G in the abbreviations C and Cn. for the proper names Gaius and Gnaeus. According to Plutarch (Roman Questions, 54, 59) the symbol for G was invented by Spurius Carvilius Ruga about 293 B.C. This probably means that he was the first person to spell his cognomen Rvga instead of Rvca. G came to occupy the seventh place in the Roman alphabet which had earlier been taken by Z, because between 450 B.C. and 350 B.C. the z-sounds of Latin passed into r, names like Papisius and Fusius in that period becoming Papirius and Furius (see Z), so that the letter z had become superfluous. According to the late writer Martianus Capella z was removed from the alphabet by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 31 2 B.C. To Claudius the insertion of G into the alphabet is also sometimes ascribed.

In the earliest form the difference from C is very slight, the lower lip of the crescent merely rising up in a straight line C, but Q and G are found also in republican times. In the earliest Roman inscription which was found in the Forum in 1899 the form is J written from right to left, but the hollow at the bottom lip of the crescent is an accidental pit in the stone and not a diacritical mark. The unvoiced sound in this inscription is represented by K. The use of the new form was not firmly established till after the middle of the 3rd century B.C.

In the Latin alphabet the sound was always the voiced stop (as in gig) in classical times. Later, before e, g passed into a sound like the English y, so that words begin indifferently with g or j; hence from the Lat. generum (accusative) and Ianuarium we have in Ital. genero and Gennajo, Fr. gendre and janvier. In the ancient Umbrian dialect g had made this change between vowels before the Christian era, the inhabitant of Iguvium (the modern Gubbio) being in the later form of his native speech Iuvins, Lat. Iguvinus. In most cases in Mid. Eng. also g passed into a y sound; hence the old prefix ge of the past participle appears only as y in yclept and the like. But ng and gg took a different course, the g becoming an affricate dz (dzh), as in singe, ridge, sedge, which in English before 1 soo were senge, ridge, sedge, and in Scotch are still pronounced sing, rig, seg. The affricate in words like gaol is of French origin (gale), from a Late Lat. gabiola, out of caveola, a diminutive of the Lat. cavea. The composite origin of English makes it impossible to lay down rules for the pronunciation of English g; thus there are in the language five words Gill, three of which have the g hard, while two have it soft: viz. (1) gill of a fish, (2) gill, a ravine, both of which are Norse, and (3) Gill, the surname, which is mostly Gaelic = White; and (4) gill a liquid measure, from O. Fr. Belle, Late Lat. gella in the same sense, and (5) Gill, a girl's name, shortened from Gillian, Juliana (see Skeat's Etymological Dictionary). No one of these words is of native origin; otherwise the initial g would have changed to y, as in Eng. yell from the O. Eng. gellan, giellan. (P. Gi.)