Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/165

Rh a considerable trade in native iron. The most influential classes of the community are Brahmans and Lingayats. The Lingayats number 380,919, or 44 per cent, of the Hindu population ; they worship the symbol of Siva, and males and females both carry this emblem about their person in a silver case. The manufactures of the district are not numerous; they consist of cotton and silk cloth, glass bracelets, and articles of ironware. In four towns of the district cotton and mixed silk and cotton fabrics, for male and female attire, are delicately and tastefully woven, Agriculture is the chief industry of the district, the princi pal products being cotton, exotic and native jawdri, molasses, and oil of various kinds. Of a total of 1,662,040 acres of Government arable and assessed land, 1,530,235 acres were in 1874 under cultivation as follows : Rice, 90,896 acres; cotton, 283,810 ; jawdri, 497,312; bdjri, 6126; wheat, 112,169; sugar-cane, 2909; tobacco, 790; til seed, 29,647 ; linseed, 7966 ; gram, 23,411 ; miscella neous products, 294,491 ; fallow land, 182,869 acres. The cotton trade of Dharwar has great commercial import ance. The land revenue realized in 1875 amounted to XI 96, 064. The district contains six municipalities. The territory comprised within the district appears at the earliest recorded period to ha?e formed part of the Brahmanical realm of Vijayanagar. On the overthrow of its king at Talikot in 1565, the lands of Dharwar became part of the Mussulman kingdom of Bijapur. In 1675 the district seems to have been overrun and partially conquered by Sivaji, -becoming thereby subject to the king of Satara, and subsequently to the Peshwa. In 1776 the province was overrun by Hyder AH, the usurping sultan of Mysore. In 1778 Dharwar was taken from the Marhattaa by Hyder Ali, and in 1791 retaken by a British force. On the final overthrow of thu Peshvva in 1818, Dharwar was incorporated with the territory of the East India Company.

 DHOLPUR, a native state of Rajputana, in Upper India, under the political superintendence of the British Government, is situated between 26 30 and 26 57 1ST. lat., and 77 32 and 78 20 E. long. The state is bounded on the N. and N.E. by the British district of Agra, on the E, and S. by the Gwalior state, from which it is separated by the Chambal river, and on the W. by the state of Karauli. It contains an area of about 1600 square miles, and an estimated population of upwards of 500,000 souls. It is a crop-producing country, without any special manufactures. All along the bank of the Chambal the country is deeply intersected by ravines ; low ranges of hills in the western portion of the state supply inexhaust ible quarries of fine-grained and easily-worked red sand stone. The chief, who has the titls of Rana, belongs, like most of his subjects, to the tribe of Deswali Jats, who are believed to have formed a portion of the Indo-Scythian wave of invasion which swept over Northern India about 100 A.D. The earliest recorded ancestor of the family is one Jeyt Sinh, who in 1068 held certain territories south of Alwar. His descendant in 1505, Singan Deo, having distinguished himself in an expedition against the freebooters of the Deccan, was rewarded by the sovereignty of the small territory of Gohad, with the title of Rana. The family gradually extended their possessions until they included 56 estates, yielding an annual revenue said to amount to 66 lakhs of rupees (660,000). Upon the defeat of the Marhattas at Panipat in 1761, Rana Bhim Sinh, the tenth in descent from Rana Singan Deo, seized upon the fortress of Gwalior. Political relations between the Rana and the East India Company commenced in 1779 during the Marhatta war, when an offensive and defensive alliance was entered into. The Rand joined the British forces against Sindhia, on receiving a promise that, at the conclusion of peace between the English and the Marhattas, all the territories then in his possession should be guaranteed to him, and protected from invasion by Sindhia. This protection was subsequently withdrawn, the Rana having been guilty of treachery. In 1783, Madhoji Sindhi succeeded in recapturing the fortress of Gwalior, and crushed his Jdt opponent by seizing the whole of Gohad. In 1803, however, the family were restored to their ancestral possessions of Oohad by the British Government ; but, owing to the opposition of Sindhia, the Rana agreed to relinquish possession of Gohad, in exchange for his present territory of Dholpur. By the treaty of 1804, the state was taken under the protection of the British Government, the chief becoming bound to act in subordi nate co-operation with the paramount power, and to refer all disputes with neighbouring princes to the British Govern ment. The annual revenue of Dholpur, including jag its, amounts to about 110,000. The military force consists of 2000 men. The town of Dholpur is situated on the Agra and Gwalior road.

 DIABETES (from [Greek], through, and /?aiW, to pass), a disease characterized by a habitually excessive discharge of urine. Two forms of this complaint are described, viz. Diabetes Mellitus, or Glycosuria, where the urine is not only increased in quantity, but also contains a greater or less amount of sugar, and Diabetes Insipidus, or Polyuria, where the urine is simply increased in quantity, and con tains no abnormal ingredient. The former of these is the disease to which the term diabetes is most commonly applied, and is by far the more serious and important ailment. Although sometimes classed by medical writers among diseases of the kidneys, diabetes mellitus is rather to be regarded as a constitutional disorder. Its cause is still a matter of uncertainty, but there is sufficient evidence to connect it with a defect in the process of the assimilation of food, more especially that stage in which the function of the liver is concerned. The important researches of Claude Bernard, and subsequently those of Schiff, Harley, Pavy, M Donell, and others, have shown that this organ, besides the secretion of bile, has the additional function of forming in large quantity a substance to which the names of glycogen, dextrin, or amyloid substance have been given. This matter is capable of being converted by the action of ferments into glucose, or grape sugar, and such a change is supposed by some to take place normally in the blood where the sugar thus formed is consumed by oxidation in the course of the circulation, while by other authorities it is held that the glycogen is not directly converted into sugar, but is transformed into other compounds. The theories of diabetes founded on these views ascribe its production either to an excessive formation of glycogen or to some defect in its transformation, the result being that grape sugar passes out of the body by the kidneys. It has long been known, both by experiment and by observa tion in disease, that injuries to certain parts of the nervous system, particularly the floor of the fourth ventricle in the brain, and that portion of the sympathetic nerve which sends branches to the liver and regulates its blood supply, are followed by the appearance of sugar in the urine. Hence certain pathologists seek an explanation for the disease in a morbid state of the parts of the nervous system whereby these particular nerves are either irritated or paralyzed and the flow of blood through the liver tem porarily or permanently increased. It must, however, be remarked that, although in some instances the portions of the nervous system above mentioned are found after death to be involved in disease, this is by no means constant, and that in many cases of diabetes the post mortem appearances are entirely negative. While, therefore, considerable light 