MOT. HIND. A leathern bucket open at both ends, used with the pe-cottah lever for raising water. MOTHER.
Am, Walidah, . ARAB. Ai, MAUR.
Mere, FR Madar, . . PERS. Mutter, . . . . GER. Amnia, . . SP., TAM. Mater, . . . GR., LAT. Tyer, TAM Ma, HIND. Tilli, TEL.
Madre, . . . . IT., SP. Ana, Nine, . TURK.
The ancients loved to personify nature, as dis tinct from the world, and Universal Mother was a term by which it was often styled. Eastern nations deem the term mother to be one of the most reverential that can be used towards a woman ; and the expressions big mother, little mother, are acceptable to all, aged women or spinsters. Genesis xxiv. relates how, in blessing Rebekah, they said unto her, 'Thou art our sister ; be thou the mother of thousands of millions,' etc. Similar addresses to a daughter, when she is going from her father's house to live with her husband, are very common among the Hindus ; such as, Be thou the mother of a son ; " Be thou the wife of a king,' etc. I remember,' says Colonel Tod, in my subaltern days and wanderings through countries then little known, one of my Rajput soldiers at the well, impatient for water, asked a woman for the rope and bucket by the uncivil term of Rand, meaning widow. "Myn
Rajputni che," " I am a Rajputni," she replied in the Hara dialect, to which tribe she belonged, " our Rajput ki ma cho," "and the mother of Rajputs.' At the indignant reply the bands of the brave Kulian were folded, and he asked her forgiveness by the endearing and respectful epithet of mother. It was soon granted, and, filling his brass vessel, she dismissed him with the epithet of son, and a gentle reproof. Kulian was himself a Rajput, and a bolder lived not.' This was in 1807, and in 1817 he gained his sergeant's knot as one of the thirty-two firelocks of Colonel Tod's guard, who led\ the attack, and defeated a camp of 1500 Pindaras.L-2'od's Rajas than, i. pp. 641, 642.