The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c25.12

c25.12

Raunee, Rainee, Renny. Fitzclarence, 110, saw at Nāgpur “a fine piece of masoury” in front of and covering the bottom of the wall “which I suppose to be what is in this country called a rainee, similar to a fausse-braye” ¹. And again, *id.* 245: “though they do not understand the construction or advantages of a glacis, they saw the necessity of covering the foot of the wall from an enemy’s fire, and formed a defence, similar to our fausse-braye, which they call rainee”. Thorn, 400, speaking of Hāthras fort (now in the ‘Alīgaṛh district, N. W. P.) says “a renny wall, with a deep, dry, broad ditch behind it, surrounds the fort”. James Skinner, “Mil. Mem.”, i, 172, spells it *rounee*, and Fraser erroneously translates “counterscarp”, being as Yule says “nonsense as well as incorrect”. Blacker, “War”, 299, writes “Sholapur had a fausse-braye of substantial masonry”. I suppose this was a *rauni* or *rainee*. Such a wall is shown in his plan and sections of Malligām (Plate 31). This was about twenty feet high, and about fifty feet from the main wall. The word *raunee* is used by him on plate 38 (Asīr-gaṛh); and here the secondary wall stood at the foot of a slope, about eighty feet from the main wall. The derivation of the word *rounee* is a puzzle: Yule, 583, says it is the Hindi word *raonī*, but suggests no etymology and admits that it is not in either Shakespear or Wilson. Can it have any connection with a word in J. Shakespear, 1189, *rūndhnā*, to surround or enclose as with a hedge? Fallon evidently did not know it, and in his “Eng. Hind. Dictionary”, 264 renders “fausse-braye” by *Dhus*, *Mattī kā pushtah*, equivalents which also show fairly well that he had no clear idea of what a fausse-braye was.