E. abhi, and īra to send, ac affix; also abhīra.
Manu (X. 15.) the Abhīra is of mixed origin, the offspring
of a Brāhmaṇa father and a mother of the Ambashtha or
medical caste; but the Abhīras were a people, a pastoral
tribe, settled about the beginning of the Christian era, on
or near the lower course of the Indus on a tract known to
classical geographers, as the Abiria of Ptolemy, lying north
of the Sahyadri mountain and of Syrastrene. The Abhīras
of Saurāṣtra are mentioned in the Mahābhārata. From
their pastoral habits the name came to be generally applied
to the cowherds of Hindustan. In the spoken dialects of
upper India the word is corrupted to Ahīr, Uheer; in Ben-
gālī and Marāṭhī it is unchanged, occurring as Abhīr.’
(Wilson's Glossary of Indian Terms.) See Lassen's Ind. Alt.
vol. 1. pp. 106. 396. 539. 546. 705. 798. 799. 823; II. pp. 385.
547. 553. 592. 792. 855. 953. 956. &c.--The word as a
name of a people occurs in the Purāṇas ‘always conjoined
with the Śūdras, as if conterminous’ (Wilson's Viṣṇu-P.
p. 195 n. 154).--The Sāhityadarpaṇa mentions the Abhīras
as assistants appointed in, or belonging to, the harem
(together with dwarfs, eunuchs, Kirātas or mountaineers,
Mlechchhas or barbarians, the mock-brother-in-law of a
king, i. e. the brother of his concubine, hump-backs, mutes
&c.: vāmanaṣaṇḍakirātamlecchābhīrāḥ śakārakubjādyāḥ). The
same work, in defining the purposes for which Sanskṛt
and the Prākṛt-dialects are used in the dramatic dialogue,
appropriates the dialect of the Abhīras (which therefore is
not considered by the Sāh. as an Apabhranśa-dialect) to
cowherds and woodcutters; comp. ābhīrī s. v. ābhīra;
(ābhīreṣu tathābhīrī…. ābhīrī śāvarī cāpi kāṣṭha-
pattropajīviṣu); others hold the Abhīra-dialect as belonging
to the Apabhranśa, when it would be excluded from dra-
matic use. See apabhraṃśa and Lassen's Institutiones Linguae
Pracriticae.--(The word occurs usually in the form
ābhīra; the dialect spoken by the Abhīras is always called
ābhīrī, not abhīrī.)
2. n. (? -ram) The name of a Mātrāvṛtta or Prākṛt
metre, regulated by quantity; it consists of a stanza of
four lines with eleven mātrās in each line (the value of a
mātrā being a short syllable, and a long syllable equal to
two short), viz. each line being composed either of seven
mātrās and a Scolius (˘¯˘), or of a Dactylus (¯˘˘),
a Iambus (˘¯) and a Scolius, or of a Scolius, a Tri-
brachys (˘˘˘) and a Scolius. E. īr with abhi, kṛt aff.
ac (according to several comm. of the Amarak.); but the
word is probably not of Sanskṛ4tic origin.
m. (-raḥ) A cowherd.
E. abhi and īra to send, ac affix; also ābhīra.
1) Kuhhirt RAMĀN. zu AK. 2, 9, 57. im ŚKDR. BURN. Intr. 150.
— 2) N. eines Volkes; abhīrī f. die von ihm gesprochene Sprache COLEBR. Misc. Ess. II, 68.
— 3) N. eines Metrums COLEBR. Misc. Ess. II, 156. (30.).
— Vgl. die richtigere Form ābhīra .