Definition
In old English law, a bundle or sheaf, particularly of grain. The term appears in medieval legal records most commonly in the phrase *blada in garbis* — corn or grain in sheaves — describing agricultural produce in its bundled, harvested form. The word carried legal significance in the context of tithes, rents in kind, and the description of agricultural property in writs and pleadings.
A secondary usage, noted in Skene and recorded in Black's 2nd edition, is *garba sagittarum* (also *schaffa sagittarum*): a sheaf of arrows, conventionally containing twenty-four. This usage appears in military supply and armory records.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A form of circle dance originating in the state of Gujarat, India, traditionally performed around a lamp or other central object.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded. The term did not enter general English usage in Webster's era.
The legal and modern common meanings share only etymology and imagery — the notion of something gathered or bundled in a circular or collected form. A researcher encountering *garba* in a legal document has no reason to import the dance meaning; context and date of document will always resolve any ambiguity immediately, but researchers unfamiliar with the medieval agricultural term may initially misread the reference.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Garba* is a term of historical English law with no living legal force. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in three contexts within the Law Mind corpus:
1. **Tithe disputes and ecclesiastical records.** The measurement and description of agricultural produce in sheaf form was directly relevant to the calculation of tithes. Records asserting rights to tithes *in garbis* — as opposed to loose grain, threshed grain, or money equivalents — turned on exactly what form the produce took at the time of collection.
2. **Medieval writs and pleading.** The Registrum Brevium (*Reg. Orig.*) citation common to all three source dictionaries points to writs that described property in agricultural terms. Understanding that *garbis* or *garbae* identifies bundled grain (not merely grain in the field or grain already processed) matters for interpreting the scope of a claimed right or obligation in such writs.
3. **Military supply records (garba sagittarum).** The sheaf-of-arrows usage, found in Scottish legal sources via Skene, surfaces in records concerning armory, purveyance, and military levies. The conventional count of twenty-four arrows per sheaf was a standard administrative unit.
Researchers should note that the Latin plural *garbae* and the Law French form *garbe* are more common in actual documents than the nominative *garba*. Running corpus searches for only the base form will miss most instances.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree precisely on the core definition and share the same two citations: *Reg. Orig.* 96 and Bracton fol. 209. The consistency across editions of Black's and through Burrill confirms that the term was well-settled and uncontroversial in the historical lexicographical tradition — there was no competing definition to argue about.
Burrill adds the Law French form *garbe* and a cross-reference to *garderobarius*, suggesting the term appeared in a cluster of agricultural and household property vocabulary. Black's 2nd edition is the most useful of the three for researchers because it adds the *garba sagittarum* subentry with the Skene attribution, which the 1st edition omits. Neither edition of Black's nor Burrill attempts any synthesis of how the term functioned in litigation or how courts interpreted disputes over what counted as *blada in garbis* — the dictionaries here serve as lexical records only, not doctrinal guides.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Garba* is an artifact of medieval English and Scottish law. The *garba sagittarum* usage documented by Skene is specifically rooted in Scottish legal and administrative practice. No modern jurisdiction uses the term as a live legal category.
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