  A GLOSSARY OF ANGLO-INDIAN COLLOQUIAL WORDS AND PHRASES AND OF KINDRED TERMS ["Wee have forbidden the severall Factoryes from wrighting words in this languadge and refrayned itt our selves, though in bookes of coppies we feare there are many which by wante of tyme for perusall we cannot rectefie or expresse."—Surat Factors to Court, Feb. 26, 1617: I. O. Records: O. C. No. 450. (Evidently the Court had complained of a growing use of "Hobson-Jobsons.")] "Οὐδὲ γὰρ πάντως τὴν αὐτήν διασώζει διάνοιαν μεθερμηνευόμενα τὰ ὀνόματα ἀλλ' ἔστι τινὰ, καὶ καθ' ἕκαστον ἔθνος ἰδιώματα ἀδύνατα εἰς ἄλλο ἔθνος διὰ φωνῆς σημαίνεσθαι"—Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, vii. cap. v. i.e. "For it is by no means always the case that translated terms preserve the original conception; indeed every nation has some idiomatic expressions which it is impossible to render perfectly in the language of another." "As well may we fetch words from the Ethiopians, or East or West Indians, and thrust them into our Language, and baptize all by the name of English, as those which we daily take from the Latine or Languages thereon depending; and hence it cometh, (as by often experience is found) that some English-men discoursing together, others being present of our own Nation ... are not able to understand what the others say, notwithstanding they call it English that they speak."—R. V(erstegan), Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, ed. 1673, p. 223. "Utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris, Nec manet ut fuerat, nec formas servat easdem, Sed tamen ipsa eadem est; VOCEM sic semper eandem Esse, sed in varias doceo migrare figuras." Ovid. Metamorph. xv. 169-172 (adapt.). "... Take this as a good fare-well draught of English-Indian liquor."—Purchas, To the Reader (before Terry's Relation of East India), ii. 1463 (misprinted 1464). "Nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint. Homines enim sumus, et occupati officiis; subsicivisque temporibus ista curamus."—C. Plinii Secundi, Hist. Nat. Praefatio, ad Vespasianum. "Haec, si displicui, fuerint solatia nobis: Haec fuerint nobis praemia, si placui." Martialis, Epigr. II. xci. HOBSON-JOBSON A GLOSSARY OF COLLOQUIAL BY COL. HENRY YULE, R.E., C.B. NEW EDITION EDITED BY WILLIAM CROOKE, B.A. LONDON [Dedication to Sir George Udny Yule, C.B., K.C.S.I.] G. U. Y. PREFACE.The objects and scope of this work are explained in the Introductory Remarks which follow the Preface. Here it is desired to say a few words as to its history. The book originated in a correspondence between the present writer, who was living at Palermo, and the late lamented Arthur Burnell, of the Madras Civil Service, one of the most eminent of modern Indian scholars, who during the course of our communications was filling judicial offices in Southern and Western India, chiefly at Tanjore. We had then met only once—at the India Library; but he took a kindly interest in work that engaged me, and this led to an exchange of letters, which went on after his return to India. About 1872—I cannot find his earliest reference to the subject—he mentioned that he was contemplating a vocabulary of Anglo-Indian words, and had made some collections with that view. In reply it was stated that I likewise had long been taking note of such words, and that a notion similar to his own had also been at various times floating in my mind. And I proposed that we should combine our labours. I had not, in fact, the linguistic acquirements needful for carrying through such an undertaking alone; but I had gone through an amount of reading that would largely help in instances and illustrations, and had also a strong natural taste for the kind of work. This was the beginning of the portly double-columned edifice which now presents itself, the completion of which my friend has not lived to see. It was built up from our joint contributions till his untimely death in 1882, and since then almost daily additions have continued to be made to the material and to the structure. The subject, indeed, had taken so comprehensive a shape, that it was becoming difficult to say where its limits lay, or why it should ever end, except for the old reason which had received such poignant illustration: Ars longa, vita brevis. And so it has been wound up at last. The work has been so long the companion of my horae subsicivae, a thread running through the joys and sorrows of so many years, in the search for material first, and then in their handling and adjustment to the edifice—for their careful building up has been part of my duty from the beginning, and the whole of the matter has, I suppose, been written and re-written with my own hand at least four times—and the work has been one of so much interest to dear friends, of whom not a few are no longer here to welcome its appearance in print,[1] that I can hardly speak of the work except as mine. Indeed, in bulk, nearly seven-eighths of it is so. But Burnell contributed so much of value, so much of the essential; buying, in the search for illustration, numerous rare and costly books which were not otherwise accessible to him in India; setting me, by his example, on lines of research with which I should have else possibly remained unacquainted; writing letters with such fulness, frequency, and interest on the details of the work up to the summer of his death; that the measure of bulk in contribution is no gauge of his share in the result. In the Life of Frank Buckland occur some words in relation to the church-bells of Ross, in Herefordshire, which may with some aptness illustrate our mutual relation to the book: "It is said that the Man of Ross" (John Kyrle) "was present at the casting of the tenor, or great bell, and that he took with him an old silver tankard, which, after drinking claret and sherry, he threw in, and had cast with the bell." John Kyrle's was the most precious part of the metal run into the mould, but the shaping of the mould and the larger part of the material came from the labour of another hand. At an early period of our joint work Burnell sent me a fragment of an essay on the words which formed our subject, intended as the basis of an introduction. As it stands, this is too incomplete to print, but I have made use of it to some extent, and given some extracts from it in the Introduction now put forward.[2] The alternative title (Hobson-Jobson) which has been given to this book (not without the expressed assent of my collaborator), doubtless requires explanation. A valued friend of the present writer many years ago published a book, of great acumen and considerable originality, which he called Three Essays, with no Author's name; and the resulting amount of circulation was such as might have been expected. It was remarked at the time by another friend that if the volume had been entitled A Book, by a Chap, it would have found a much larger body of readers. It seemed to me that A Glossary or A Vocabulary would be equally unattractive, and that it ought to have an alternative title at least a little more characteristic. If the reader will turn to Hobson-Jobson in the Glossary itself, he will find that phrase, though now rare and moribund, to be a typical and delightful example of that class of Anglo-Indian argot which consists of Oriental words highly assimilated, perhaps by vulgar lips, to the English vernacular; whilst it is the more fitted to our book, conveying, as it may, a veiled intimation of dual authorship. At any rate, there it is; and at this period my feeling has come to be that such is the book's name, nor could it well have been anything else. In carrying through the work I have sought to supplement my own deficiencies from the most competent sources to which friendship afforded access. Sir Joseph Hooker has most kindly examined almost every one of the proof-sheets for articles dealing with plants, correcting their errors, and enriching them with notes of his own. Another friend, Professor Robertson Smith, has done the like for words of Semitic origin, and to him I owe a variety of interesting references to the words treated of, in regard to their occurrence, under some cognate form, in the Scriptures. In the early part of the book the Rev. George Moule (now Bishop of Ningpo), then in England, was good enough to revise those articles which bore on expressions used in China (not the first time that his generous aid had been given to work of mine). Among other friends who have been ever ready with assistance I may mention Dr. Reinhold Rost, of the India Library; General Robert Maclagan, R.E.; Sir George Birdwood, C.S.I.; Major-General R. H. Keatinge, V.C., C.S.I.; Professor Terrien de la Couperie; and Mr. E. Colborne Baber, at present Consul-General in Corea. Dr. J. A. H. Murray, editor of the great English Dictionary, has also been most kind and courteous in the interchange of communications, a circumstance which will account for a few cases in which the passages cited in both works are the same. My first endeavour in preparing this work has been to make it accurate; my next to make it—even though a Glossary—interesting. In a work intersecting so many fields, only a fool could imagine that he had not fallen into many mistakes; but these when pointed out, may be amended. If I have missed the other object of endeavour, I fear there is little to be hoped for from a second edition. H. YULE. 5th January 1886. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.The twofold hope expressed in the closing sentence of Sir Henry Yule's Preface to the original Edition of this book has been amply justified. More recent research and discoveries have, of course, brought to light a good deal of information which was not accessible to him, but the general accuracy of what he wrote has never been seriously impugned—while those who have studied the pages of Hobson-Jobson have agreed in classing it as unique among similar works of reference, a volume which combines interest and amusement with instruction, in a manner which few other Dictionaries, if any, have done. In this edition of the Anglo-Indian Glossary the original text has been reprinted, any additions made by the Editor being marked by square brackets. No attempt has been made to extend the vocabulary, the new articles being either such as were accidentally omitted in the first edition, or a few relating to words which seemed to correspond with the general scope of the work. Some new quotations have been added, and some of those included in the original edition have been verified and new references given. An index to words occurring in the quotations has been prepared. I have to acknowledge valuable assistance from many friends. Mr. W. W. Skeat has read the articles on Malay words, and has supplied many notes. Col. Sir R. Temple has permitted me to use several of his papers on Anglo-Indian words, and has kindly sent me advance sheets of that portion of the Analytical Index to the first edition by Mr. C. Partridge, which is being published in the Indian Antiquary. Mr. R. S. Whiteway has given me numerous extracts from Portuguese writers; Mr. W. Foster, quotations from unpublished records in the India Office; Mr. W. Irvine, notes on the later Moghul period. For valuable suggestions and information on disputed points I am indebted to Mr. H. Beveridge, Sir G. Birdwood, Mr. J. Brandt, Prof. E. G. Browne, Mr. M. Longworth Dames, Mr. G. R. Dampier, Mr. Donald Ferguson, Mr. C. T. Gardner, the late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, Prof. H. A. Giles, Dr. G. A. Grierson, Mr. T. M. Horsfall, Mr. L. W. King, Mr. J. L. Myres, Mr. J. Platt, jun., Prof. G. U. Pope, Mr. V. A. Smith, Mr. C. H. Tawney, and Mr. J. Weir. W. CROOKE. 14th November 1902. CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.Words of Indian origin have been insinuating themselves into English ever since the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of that of King James, when such terms as calico, chintz, and gingham had already effected a lodgment in English warehouses and shops, and were lying in wait for entrance into English literature. Such outlandish guests grew more frequent 120 years ago, when, soon after the middle of last century, the numbers of Englishmen in the Indian services, civil and military, expanded with the great acquisition of dominion then made by the Company; and we meet them in vastly greater abundance now. Vocabularies of Indian and other foreign words, in use among Europeans in the East, have not unfrequently been printed. Several of the old travellers have attached the like to their narratives; whilst the prolonged excitement created in England, a hundred years since, by the impeachment of Hastings and kindred matters, led to the publication of several glossaries as independent works; and a good many others have been published in later days. At the end of this Introduction will be found a list of those which have come under my notice, and this might no doubt be largely added to.[3] Of modern Glossaries, such as have been the result of serious labour, all, or nearly all, have been of a kind purely technical, intended to facilitate the comprehension of official documents by the explanation of terms used in the Revenue department, or in other branches of Indian administration. The most notable examples are (of brief and occasional character), the Glossary appended to the famous Fifth Report of the Select Committee of 1812, which was compiled by Sir Charles Wilkins; and (of a far more vast and comprehensive sort), the late Professor Horace Hayman Wilson's Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms (4to, 1855) which leaves far behind every other attempt in that kind.[4] That kind is, however, not ours, as a momentary comparison of a page or two in each Glossary would suffice to show. Our work indeed, in the long course of its compilation, has gone through some modification and enlargement of scope; but hardly such as in any degree to affect its distinctive character, in which something has been aimed at differing in form from any work known to us. In its original conception it was intended to deal with all that class of words which, not in general pertaining to the technicalities of administration, recur constantly in the daily intercourse of the English in India, either as expressing ideas really not provided for by our mother-tongue, or supposed by the speakers (often quite erroneously) to express something not capable of just denotation by any English term. A certain percentage of such words have been carried to England by the constant reflux to their native shore of Anglo-Indians, who in some degree imbue with their notions and phraseology the circles from which they had gone forth. This effect has been still more promoted by the currency of a vast mass of literature, of all qualities and for all ages, dealing with Indian subjects; as well as by the regular appearance, for many years past, of Indian correspondence in English newspapers, insomuch that a considerable number of the expressions in question have not only become familiar in sound to English ears, but have become naturalised in the English language, and are meeting with ample recognition in the great Dictionary edited by Dr. Murray at Oxford. Of words that seem to have been admitted to full franchise, we may give examples in curry, toddy, veranda, cheroot, loot, nabob, teapoy, sepoy, cowry; and of others familiar enough to the English ear, though hardly yet received into citizenship, compound, batta, pucka, chowry, baboo, mahout, aya, nautch,[5] first-chop, competition-wallah, griffin, &c. But beyond these two classes of words, received within the last century or so, and gradually, into half or whole recognition, there are a good many others, long since fully assimilated, which really originated in the adoption of an Indian word, or the modification of an Indian proper name. Such words are the three quoted at the beginning of these remarks, chintz, calico, gingham, also shawl, bamboo, pagoda, typhoon, monsoon, mandarin, palanquin,[6] &c., and I may mention among further examples which may perhaps surprise my readers, the names of three of the boats of a man-of-war, viz. the cutter, the jolly-boat, and the dingy, as all (probably) of Indian origin.[7] Even phrases of a different character—slang indeed, but slang generally supposed to be vernacular as well as vulgar—e.g. 'that is the cheese';[7] or supposed to be vernacular and profane—e.g. 'I don't care a dam'[7]—are in reality, however vulgar they may be, neither vernacular nor profane, but phrases turning upon innocent Hindustani vocables. We proposed also, in our Glossary, to deal with a selection of those administrative terms, which are in such familiar and quotidian use as to form part of the common Anglo-Indian stock, and to trace all (so far as possible) to their true origin—a matter on which, in regard to many of the words, those who hourly use them are profoundly ignorant—and to follow them down by quotation from their earliest occurrence in literature. A particular class of words are those indigenous terms which have been adopted in scientific nomenclature, botanical and zoological. On these Mr. Burnell remarks:— "The first Indian botanical names were chiefly introduced by Garcia de Orta (Colloquios, printed at Goa in 1563), C. d'Acosta (Tractado, Burgos, 1578), and Rhede van Drakenstein (Hortus Malabaricus, Amsterdam, 1682). The Malay names were chiefly introduced by Rumphius (Herbarium Amboinense, completed before 1700, but not published till 1741). The Indian zoological terms were chiefly due to Dr. F. Buchanan, at the beginning of this century. Most of the N. Indian botanical words were introduced by Roxburgh." It has been already intimated that, as the work proceeded, its scope expanded somewhat, and its authors found it expedient to introduce and trace many words of Asiatic origin which have disappeared from colloquial use, or perhaps never entered it, but which occur in old writers on the East. We also judged that it would add to the interest of the work, were we to investigate and make out the pedigree of a variety of geographical names which are or have been in familiar use in books on the Indies; take as examples Bombay, Madras, Guardafui, Malabar, Moluccas, Zanzibar, Pegu, Sumatra, Quilon, Seychelles, Ceylon, Java, Ava, Japan, Doab, Punjab, &c., illustrating these, like every other class of word, by quotations given in chronological series. Other divagations still from the original project will probably present themselves to those who turn over the pages of the work, in which we have been tempted to introduce sundry subjects which may seem hardly to come within the scope of such a glossary. The words with which we have to do, taking the most extensive view of the field, are in fact organic remains deposited under the various currents of external influence that have washed the shores of India during twenty centuries and more. Rejecting that derivation of elephant[8] which would connect it with the Ophir trade of Solomon, we find no existing Western term traceable to that episode of communication; but the Greek and Roman commerce of the later centuries has left its fossils on both sides, testifying to the intercourse that once subsisted. Agallochum, carbasus, camphor, sandal, musk, nard, pepper (πέπερι, from Skt. pippali, 'long pepper'), ginger (ζιγγίβερις, see under Ginger), lac, costus, opal, malabathrum or folium indicum, beryl, sugar (σάκχαρ, from Skt. sarkara, Prak. sakkara), rice (ὄρυζα, but see s.v.), were products or names, introduced from India to the Greek and Roman world, to which may be added a few terms of a different character, such as Βραχμᾶνες, Σάρμανες (śramaṇas, or Buddhist ascetics), ζύλα σαγαλίνα καὶ σασαμίνα (logs of teak and shīsham), the σάγγαρα (rafts) of the Periplus (see Jangar in Gloss.); whilst dīnāra, dramma, perhaps kastīra ('tin,' κασσίτερος), kastūrī ('musk,' καστόριον, properly a different, though analogous animal product), and a very few more, have remained in Indian literature as testimony to the same intercourse.[9] The trade and conquests of the Arabs both brought foreign words to India and picked up and carried westward, in form more or less corrupted, words of Indian origin, some of which have in one way or other become part of the heritage of all succeeding foreigners in the East. Among terms which are familiar items in the Anglo-Indian colloquial, but which had, in some shape or other, found their way at an early date into use on the shores of the Mediterranean, we may instance bazaar, cazee, hummaul, brinjaul, gingely, safflower, grab, maramut, dewaun (dogana, douane, &c.). Of others which are found in medieval literature, either West-Asiatic or European, and which still have a place in Anglo-Indian or English vocabulary, we may mention amber-gris, chank, junk, jogy, kincob, kedgeree, fanam, calay, bankshall, mudiliar, tindal, cranny. The conquests and long occupation of the Portuguese, who by the year 1540 had established themselves in all the chief ports of India and the East, have, as might have been expected, bequeathed a large number of expressions to the European nations who have followed, and in great part superseded them. We find instances of missionaries and others at an early date who had acquired a knowledge of Indian languages, but these were exceptional.[10] The natives in contact with the Portuguese learned a bastard variety of the language of the latter, which became the lingua franca of intercourse, not only between European and native, but occasionally between Europeans of different nationalities. This Indo-Portuguese dialect continued to serve such purposes down to a late period in the last century, and has in some localities survived down nearly to our own day.[11] The number of people in India claiming to be of Portuguese descent was, in the 17th century, very large. Bernier, about 1660, says:— "For he (Sultan Shujā', Aurangzeb's brother) much courted all those Portugal Fathers, Missionaries, that are in that Province.... And they were indeed capable to serve him, it being certain that in the kingdom of Bengale there are to be found not less than eight or nine thousand families of Franguis, Portugals, and these either Natives or Mesticks." (Bernier, E.T. of 1684, p. 27.) A. Hamilton, whose experience belonged chiefly to the end of the same century, though his book was not published till 1727, states:— "Along the Sea-coasts the Portuguese have left a Vestige of their Language, tho' much corrupted, yet it is the Language that most Europeans learn first to qualify them for a general Converse with one another, as well as with the different inhabitants of India." (Preface, p. xii.) Lockyer, who published 16 years before Hamilton, also says:— "This they (the Portugueze) may justly boast, they have established a kind of Lingua Franca in all the Sea Ports in India, of great use to other Europeans, who would find it difficult in many places to be well understood without it." (An Account of the Trade in India, 1711, p. 286.) The early Lutheran Missionaries in the South, who went out for the S.P.C.K., all seem to have begun by learning Portuguese, and in their diaries speak of preaching occasionally in Portuguese.[12] The foundation of this lingua franca was the Portuguese of the beginning of the 16th century; but it must have soon degenerated, for by the beginning of the last century it had lost nearly all trace of inflexion.[13] It may from these remarks be easily understood how a large number of our Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, even if eventually traceable to native sources (and especially to Mahratti, or Dravidian originals) have come to us through a Portuguese medium, and often bear traces of having passed through that alembic. Not a few of these are familiar all over India, but the number current in the South is larger still. Some other Portuguese words also, though they can hardly be said to be recognized elements in the Anglo-Indian colloquial, have been introduced either into Hindustani generally, or into that shade of it which is in use among natives in habitual contact with Europeans. Of words which are essentially Portuguese, among Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, persistent or obsolete, we may quote goglet, gram, plantain, muster, caste, peon, padre, mistry or maistry, almyra, aya, cobra, mosquito, pomfret, cameez, palmyra, still in general use; picotta, rolong, pial, fogass, margosa, preserved in the South; batel, brab, foras, oart, vellard in Bombay; joss, compradore, linguist in the ports of China; and among more or less obsolete terms, Moor, for a Mahommedan, still surviving under the modified form Moorman, in Madras and Ceylon; Gentoo, still partially kept up, I believe, at Madras in application to the Telugu language, mustees, castees, bandeja ('a tray'), Kittysol ('an umbrella,' and this survived ten years ago in the Calcutta customs tariff), cuspadore ('a spittoon'), and covid ('a cubit or ell'). Words of native origin which bear the mark of having come to us through the Portuguese may be illustrated by such as palanquin, mandarin, mangelin (a small weight for pearls, &c.), monsoon, typhoon, mango, mangosteen, jack-fruit, batta, curry, chop, congee, coir, cutch, catamaran, cassanar, nabob, avadavat, betel, areca, benzoin, corge, copra.[14] A few examples of Hindustani words borrowed from the Portuguese are chābī ('a key'), bāola ('a portmanteau'), bāltī ('a bucket'), martol ('a hammer'), tauliya ('a towel,' Port. toalha), sābūn ('soap'), bāsan ('plate' from Port. bacia), līlām and nīlām ('an auction'), besides a number of terms used by Lascars on board ship. The Dutch language has not contributed much to our store. The Dutch and the English arrived in the Indies contemporaneously, and though both inherited from the Portuguese, we have not been the heirs of the Dutch to any great extent, except in Ceylon, and even there Portuguese vocables had already occupied the colloquial ground. Petersilly, the word in general use in English families for 'parsley,' appears to be Dutch. An example from Ceylon that occurs to memory is burgher. The Dutch admitted people of mixt descent to a kind of citizenship, and these were distinguished from the pure natives by this term, which survives. Burgher in Bengal means 'a rafter,' properly bargā. A word spelt and pronounced in the same way had again a curiously different application in Madras, where it was a corruption of Vaḍagar, the name given to a tribe in the Nilgherry hills;—to say nothing of Scotland, where Burghers and Antiburghers were Northern tribes (veluti Gog et Magog!) which have long been condensed into elements of the United Presbyterian Church——! Southern India has contributed to the Anglo-Indian stock words that are in hourly use also from Calcutta to Peshawur (some of them already noted under another cleavage), e.g. betel, mango, jack, cheroot, mungoose, pariah, bandicoot, teak, patcharee, chatty, catechu, tope ('a grove'), curry, mulligatawny, congee. Mamooty (a digging tool) is familiar in certain branches of the service, owing to its having long had a place in the nomenclature of the Ordnance department. It is Tamil, manvĕtti, 'earth-cutter.' Of some very familiar words the origin remains either dubious, or matter only for conjecture. Examples are hackery (which arose apparently in Bombay), florican, topaz. As to Hindustani words adopted into the Anglo-Indian colloquial the subject is almost too wide and loose for much remark. The habit of introducing these in English conversation and writing seems to prevail more largely in the Bengal Presidency than in any other, and especially more than in Madras, where the variety of different vernaculars in use has tended to make their acquisition by the English less universal than is in the north that of Hindustani, which is so much easier to learn, and also to make the use in former days of Portuguese, and now of English, by natives in contact with foreigners, and of French about the French settlements, very much more common than it is elsewhere. It is this bad habit of interlarding English with Hindustani phrases which has so often excited the just wrath of high English officials, not accustomed to it from their youth, and which (e.g.) drew forth in orders the humorous indignation of Sir Charles Napier. One peculiarity in this use we may notice, which doubtless exemplifies some obscure linguistic law. Hindustani verbs which are thus used are habitually adopted into the quasi-English by converting the imperative into an infinitive. Thus to bunow, to lugow, to foozilow, to puckarow, to dumbcow, to sumjow, and so on, almost ad libitum, are formed as we have indicated.[15] It is curious to note that several of our most common adoptions are due to what may be most especially called the Oordoo (Urdū) or 'Camp' language, being terms which the hosts of Chinghiz brought from the steppes of North Eastern Asia—e.g. "The old Bukshee is an awful bahadur, but he keeps a first-rate bobachee." That is a sentence which might easily have passed without remark at an Anglo-Indian mess-table thirty years ago—perhaps might be heard still. Each of the outlandish terms embraced in it came from the depths of Mongolia in the thirteenth century. Chick (in the sense of a cane-blind), daroga, oordoo itself, are other examples. With the gradual assumption of administration after the middle of last century, we adopted into partial colloquial use an immense number of terms, very many of them Persian or Arabic, belonging to technicalities of revenue and other departments, and largely borrowed from our Mahommedan predecessors. Malay has contributed some of our most familiar expressions, owing partly to the ceaseless rovings among the Eastern coasts of the Portuguese, through whom a part of these reached us, and partly doubtless to the fact that our early dealings and the sites of our early factories lay much more on the shores of the Eastern Archipelago than on those of Continental India. Paddy, godown, compound, bankshall, rattan, durian, a-muck, prow, and cadjan, junk, crease, are some of these. It is true that several of them may be traced eventually to Indian originals, but it seems not the less certain that we got them through the Malay, just as we got words already indicated through the Portuguese. We used to have a very few words in French form, such as boutique and mort-de-chien. But these two are really distortions of Portuguese words. A few words from China have settled on the Indian shores and been adopted by Anglo-India, but most of them are, I think, names of fruits or other products which have been imported, such as loquot, leechee, chow-chow, cumquat, ginseng, &c. and (recently) jinrickshaw. For it must be noted that a considerable proportion of words much used in Chinese ports, and often ascribed to a Chinese origin, such as mandarin, junk, chop, pagoda, and (as I believe) typhoon (though this is a word much debated) are not Chinese at all, but words of Indian languages, or of Malay, which have been precipitated in Chinese waters during the flux and reflux of foreign trade. Within my own earliest memory Spanish dollars were current in England at a specified value if they bore a stamp from the English mint. And similarly there are certain English words, often obsolete in Europe, which have received in India currency with a special stamp of meaning; whilst in other cases our language has formed in India new compounds applicable to new objects or shades of meaning. To one or other of these classes belong outcry, buggy, home, interloper, rogue (-elephant), tiffin, furlough, elk, roundel ('an umbrella,' obsolete), pish-pash, earth-oil, hog-deer, flying-fox, garden-house, musk-rat, nor-wester, iron-wood, long-drawers, barking-deer, custard-apple, grass-cutter, &c. Other terms again are corruptions, more or less violent, of Oriental words and phrases which have put on an English mask. Such are maund, fool's rack, bearer, cot, boy, belly-band, Penang-lawyer, buckshaw, goddess (in the Malay region, representing Malay gādīs, 'a maiden'), compound, college-pheasant, chopper, summer-head,[16] eagle-wood, jackass-copal, bobbery, Upper Roger (used in a correspondence given by Dalrymple, for Yuva Raja, the 'Young King,' or Caesar, of Indo-Chinese monarchies), Isle-o'-Bats (for Allahābād or Ilahābāz as the natives often call it), hobson-jobson (see Preface), St. John's. The last proper name has at least three applications. There is "St. John's" in Guzerat, viz. Sanjān, the landing-place of the Parsee immigration in the 8th century; there is another "St. John's" which is a corruption of Shang-Chuang, the name of that island off the southern coast of China whence the pure and ardent spirit of Francis Xavier fled to a better world: there is the group of "St. John's Islands" near Singapore, the chief of which is properly Pulo-Sikajang. Yet again we have hybrids and corruptions of English fully accepted and adopted as Hindustani by the natives with whom we have to do, such as simkin, port-shrāb, brandy-pānī, apīl, rasīd, tumlet (a tumbler), gilās ('glass,' for drinking vessels of sorts), rail-ghārī, lumber-dār, jail-khāna, bottle-khāna, buggy-khāna, 'et omne quod exit in' khāna, including gymkhāna, a very modern concoction (q.v.), and many more. Taking our subject as a whole, however considerable the philological interest attaching to it, there is no disputing the truth of a remark with which Burnell's fragments of intended introduction concludes, and the application of which goes beyond the limit of those words which can be considered to have 'accrued as additions to the English language': "Considering the long intercourse with India, it is noteworthy that the additions which have thus accrued to the English language are, from the intellectual standpoint, of no intrinsic value. Nearly all the borrowed words refer to material facts, or to peculiar customs and stages of society, and, though a few of them furnish allusions to the penny-a-liner, they do not represent new ideas." It is singular how often, in tracing to their origin words that come within the field of our research, we light upon an absolute dilemma, or bifurcation, i.e. on two or more sources of almost equal probability, and in themselves entirely diverse. In such cases it may be that, though the use of the word originated from one of the sources, the existence of the other has invigorated that use, and contributed to its eventual diffusion. An example of this is boy, in its application to a native servant. To this application have contributed both the old English use of boy (analogous to that of puer, garÇon, Knabe) for a camp-servant, or for a slave, and the Hindī-Marāṭhī bhoi, the name of a caste which has furnished palanquin and umbrella-bearers to many generations of Europeans in India. The habitual use of the word by the Portuguese, for many years before any English influence had touched the shores of India (e.g. bÓy de sombrero, bÓy d'aguoa, bÓy de palanquy), shows that the earliest source was the Indian one. Cooly, in its application to a carrier of burdens, or performer of inferior labour, is another example. The most probable origin of this is from a nomen gentile, that of the Kolīs, a hill-people of Guzerat and the Western Ghats (compare the origin of slave). But the matter is perplexed by other facts which it is difficult to connect with this. Thus, in S. India, there is a Tamil word kūli, in common use, signifying 'daily hire or wages,' which H. H. Wilson regards as the true origin of the word which we call cooly. Again, both in Oriental and Osmali Turkish, kol is a word for a slave, and in the latter also there is kūleh, 'a male slave, a bondsman.' Khol is, in Tibetan also, a word for a slave or servant. Tank, for a reservoir of water, we are apt to derive without hesitation, from stagnum, whence Sp. estanc, old Fr. estang, old Eng. and Lowland Scotch stank, Port. tanque, till we find that the word is regarded by the Portuguese themselves as Indian, and that there is excellent testimony to the existence of tānkā in Guzerat and Rajputana as an indigenous word, and with a plausible Sanskrit etymology. Veranda has been confidently derived by some etymologists (among others by M. DefrÉmÉry, a distinguished scholar) from the Pers. barāmada, 'a projection,' a balcony; an etymology which is indeed hardly a possible one, but has been treated by Mr. Beames (who was evidently unacquainted with the facts that do make it hardly possible) with inappropriate derison, he giving as the unquestionable original a Sanskrit word baraṇḍa, 'a portico.' On this Burnell has observed that the word does not belong to the older Sanskrit, but is only found in comparatively modern works. Be that as it may, it need not be doubted that the word veranda, as used in England and France, was imported from India, i.e. from the usage of Europeans in India; but it is still more certain that either in the same sense, or in one closely allied, the word existed, quite independent of either Sanskrit or Persian, in Portuguese and Spanish, and the manner in which it occurs in the very earliest narrative of the Portuguese adventure to India (Roteiro do Viagem de Vasco da Gama, written by one of the expedition of 1497), confirmed by the Hispano-Arabic vocabulary of Pedro de AlcalÀ, printed in 1505, preclude the possibility of its having been adopted by the Portuguese from intercourse with India. Mangrove, John Crawfurd tells us, has been adopted from the Malay manggi-manggi, applied to trees of the genus Rhizophora. But we learn from Oviedo, writing early in the sixteenth century, that the name mangle was applied by the natives of the Spanish Main to trees of the same, or a kindred genus, on the coast of S. America, which same mangle is undoubtedly the parent of the French manglier, and not improbably therefore of the English form mangrove.[17] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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