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
