A lightweight stretcher or covered platform used in India to transport people or goods, similar to a sedan chair.
From Hindi 'ḍholī,' brought into English through colonial India in the 1600s-1800s, with various English spellings including dooley, dooli, and doolee.
If you look at British literature from India—Kipling, for example—you'll see 'doolie' mentioned as a common way to travel through cities, and it's a window into how British colonists adopted local technologies they found superior to their own methods.
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