A. C. Burnell

“ BUGIS, n.p. Name given by the Malays to the dominant race of the island of Celébes, originating in the S.-Western limb of the island; the people calling themselves Wugi. But the name used to be applied in the Archipelago to native soldiers in European service, raised in any of the islands. Compare the analogous use of Telinga (q.v.) formerly in India.
[1615.—"All these in the kingdom of Macassar ... besides Bugies, Mander and Tollova."—Foster, Letters, iii. 152.] ”

“ ORMUS, ORMUZ, n.p. Properly Hurmuz or Hurmūz, a famous maritime city and minor kingdom near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The original place of the city was on the northern shore of the Gulf, some 30 miles east of the site of Bandar Abbās or Gombroon (q.v.) ; but about A.D. 1300, apparently to escape from Tartar raids, it was transferred to the small island of Gerūn or Jerūn, which may be identified with the Organa of Nearchus, about 12 m. westward, and five miles from the shore, and this was the seat of the kingdom when first visited and attacked by the Portuguese under Alboquerque in 1506. ”

“ BANKSHALL, s. a. A warehouse. b. The office of a Harbour Master or other Port Authority. In the former sense the word is still used in S. India; in Bengal the latter is the only sense recognised, at least among Anglo-Indians; in Northern India the word is not in use. As the Calcutta office stands on the banks of the Hoogly, the name is, we believe, often accepted as having some indefinite reference to this position. And in a late work we find a positive and plausible, but entirely unfounded, explanation of this kind, which we quote below. ”

“ MOGUL, THE GREAT, n.p. Sometimes 'The Mogul' simply. The name by which the Kings of Delhi of the House of Timur were popularly styled, first by the Portuguese (o grão Mogor) and after them by Europeans generally. It was analogous to the Sophy (q.v.) , as applied to the Kings of Persia, or to the 'Great Turk' applied to the Sultan of Turkey. Indeed the latter phrase was probably the model of the present one. As noticed under the preceding article, MOGOL, MOGOR, and also Mogolistan are applied among old writers to the dominions of the Great Mogul. ”

“ We thus have four separate applications of the word pacauta, or pagoda, picked up by foreigners on the shores of India from the 13th century downwards, viz. to a Hindu ejaculatory formula, to a place of Hindu worship, to a Hindu idol, to a Hindu coin with idols represented on it. Is it not possible that all are to be traced to bhagavat, 'sacred,' or to Bhagavat and Bhagavatī, used as names of divinities—of Buddha in Buddhist times or places, of Kṛishṇa and Durgā in Brahminical times and places? ”

“ CORGE, COORGE, &c., s. A mercantile term for 'a score.' The word is in use among the trading Arabs and others, as well as in India. It is established in Portuguese use apparently, but the Portuguese word is almost certainly of Indian origin, and this is expressly asserted in some Portuguese Dictionaries (e.g. Lacerda's, Lisbon, 1871) . Koṛī is used exactly in the same way by natives all over Upper India. ”

“ MOOR, MOORMAN, s. (and adj. MOORISH) . A Mahommedan; and so from the habitual use of the term (Mouro) , by the Portuguese in India, particularly a Mahommedan inhabitant of India.
In the Middle Ages, to Europe generally, the Mahommedans were known as the Saracens. This is the word always used by Joinville, and by Marco Polo. Ibn Batuta also mentions the fact in a curious passage (ii. 425-6) . ”

“ Their front hair looks all grown together, and any one ignorant of the truth would say that it was dressed artificially. The beard is like that of a satyr, and the tail strong like that of a lion. All the rest of the body is white, but the head and the tail are red. These creatures are tame and gentle in character, but by race and manner of life they are wild. They go about in crowds in the suburbs of Latagē (now Latagē is a city of the Indians) and eat the boiled rice that is put out for them by the King's order. Every day their dinner is elegantly set out. ”

“ COCO-DE-MER, or DOUBLE COCO-NUT, s. The curious twin fruit so called, the produce of the Lodoicea Sechellarum, a palm growing only in the Seychelles Islands, is cast up on the shores of the Indian Ocean, most frequently on the Maldive Islands, but occasionally also on Ceylon and S. India, and on the coasts of Zanzibar, of Sumatra, and some others of the Malay Islands. ”

“ CONCAN, n.p. Skt. konkaṇa, [Tam. konkaṇam] , the former in the Pauranic lists the name of a people; Hind. Konkan and Kokan. The low country of Western India between the Ghauts and the sea, extending, roughly speaking, from Goa northward to Guzerat. But the modern Commissionership, or Civil Division, embraces also North Canara (south of Goa) . In medieval writings we find frequently, by a common Asiatic fashion of coupling names, Kokan- or Konkan-Tana; Tana having been a chief place and port of Konkan. ”

“ DABUL, n.p. Dābhol. In the later Middle Ages a famous port of the Konkan, often coupled with Choul (q.v.) , carrying on extensive trade with the West of Asia. It lies in the modern dist. of Ratnagiri, in lat. 17° 34′, on the north bank of the Anjanwel or Vashishti R. In some maps (e.g. A. Arrowsmith's of 1816, long the standard map of India) , and in W. Hamilton's Gazetteer, it is confounded with Dāpoli, 12 m. north, and not a seaport. ”

“ The dorian in Sumatra often forms a staple article of food, as the jack (q.v.) does in Malabar. By natives and old European residents in the Malay regions in which it is produced the dorian is regarded as incomparable, but novices have a difficulty in getting over the peculiar, strong, and offensive odour of the fruit, on account of which it is usual to open it away from the house, and which procured for it the inelegant Dutch nickname of stancker. "When that aversion, however, is conquered, many fall into the taste of the natives, and become passionately fond of it." ”

“ GUANA, IGUANA, s. This is not properly an Indian term, nor the name of an Indian species, but, as in many other cases, it has been applied by transfer from superficially resembling genera in the new Indies, to the old. The great lizards, sometimes called guanas in India, are apparently monitors. It must be observed, however, that approximating Indian names of lizards have helped the confusion. ”

“ There could hardly be a better word with which to associate some connected account of the coinage of Portuguese India, as the pardao runs through its whole history, and I give some space to the subject, not with any idea of weaving such a history, but in order to furnish a few connected notes on the subject, and to correct some flagrant errors of writers to whose works I naturally turned for help in such a special matter, with little result except that of being puzzled and misled, and having time occupied in satisfying myself regarding the errors alluded to. ”

“ The word batty, for what is more generally called paddy, is or was commonly used by the English also in S. and W. India (see Linschoten, Lucena and Fryer quoted s.v. Paddy, and Wilson's Glossary, s.v. Bhatta) .
The practice of giving a special allowance for mantimento began from a very early date in the Indian history of the Portuguese, and it evidently became a recognised augmentation of pay, corresponding closely to our batta, whilst the quotation from Botelho below shows also that bata and mantimento were used, more or less interchangeably, for this allowance. ”

“ But the natives of Guzarat stood in such fear of Sultan Badur that they would not consent to the terms. And so, like people determined on death, all that night they shaved their heads (this is a superstitious practice of those who despise life, people whom they call in India Amaucos) and betook themselves to their mosque, and there devoted their persons to death ... ”

“ In the city of Madras this caste forms one fifth of the whole population, and from it come (unfortunately) most of the domestics in European service in that part of India. As with other castes low in caste-rank they are also low in habits, frequently eating carrion and other objectionable food, and addicted to drink. From their coming into contact with and under observation of Europeans, more habitually than any similar caste, the name Pariah has come to be regarded as applicable to the whole body of the lowest castes, or even to denote out-castes or people without any caste. ”

“ Whiteway points out, the word is used in both senses, a temple and an idol:
"In Goa I have seen this festival in a pagoda, that stands in the island of Divar, which is called Çapatu, where people collect from a long distance; they bathe in the arm of the sea between the two islands, and they believe ... that on that day the idol (pagode) comes to that water, and they cast in for him much betel and many plantains and sugar-canes; and they believe that the idol (pagode) eats those things."—Castanheda, ii. ”

“ The people are of genuinely Indo-Chinese and Mongoloid aspect, and the State, small and secluded as it is, has had its turn in temporary conquest and domination, like almost all the States of Indo-China from the borders of Assam to the mouth of the Mekong. Like the other Indo-Chinese States, too, Manipūr has its royal chronicle, but little seems to have been gathered from it. The Rājas and people have, for a period which seems uncertain, professed Hindu religion. ”

“ MOONSHEE, s. Ar. munshi, but written in Hind. munshī. The verb insha, of which the Ar. word is the participle, means 'to educate' a youth, as well as 'to compose' a written document. Hence 'a secretary, a reader, an interpreter, a writer.' It is commonly applied by Europeans specifically to a native teacher of languages, especially of Arabic, Persian, and Urdū, though the application to a native amanuensis in those tongues, and to any respectable, well-educated native gentleman is also common. ”

“ This abuse no doubt has led to our hesitation in applying the term to a native of India itself. We use the adjective Indian, but no modern Englishman who has had to do with India ever speaks of a man of that country as 'an Indian.' Forrest, in his Voyage to Mergui, uses the inelegant word Indostaners; but in India itself a Hindustani means, as has been indicated under that word, a native of the upper Gangetic valley and adjoining districts. Among the Greeks 'an Indian' (Ἰνδὸς) acquired a notable specific application, viz. to an elephant driver or mahout (q.v.) ”

“ In modern Portuguese e is not sounded, but verses show that it was in the 16th century. Now, if there is a final vowel in Pagoda, it must come from Bhagavati; but though the goddess is and was worshipped to a certain extent in S. India, it is by other names (Amma, &c.) . Gundert and Kittel give 'Pogodi' as a name of a Durga temple, but assuredly this is no corruption of Bhagavati, but Pagoda! Malayālam and Tamil are full of such adopted words. Bhagavati is little used, and the goddess is too insignificant to give rise to pagoda as a general name for a temple. ”

“ Skeat writes: "Puchok is the Malay word for a young sprout, or the growing shoot of a plant. Puchok in the special sense here used is also a Malay word, but it may be separate from the other. Klinkert gives puchok as a sprout or shoot and also as a radish-like root (indigenous in China (sic) , used in medicine for fumigation, &c.) . Apparently it is always the root and not the leaves of the plant that are used, in which case Marsden may have confused the two senses of the word." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name Kling, applied to settlers of Indian origin, makes its appearance in the Portuguese narratives immediately after the conquest of Malacca (1511) . At the present day most, if not all of the Klings of Singapore come, not from the "Northern Circars," but from Tanjore, a purely Tamil district. And thus it is that so good an authority as Roorda van Eijsinga translates Kalīng by 'Coromandel people.' They are either Hindūs or Labbais (see LUBBYE) . The latter class in British India never take domestic service with Europeans, whilst they seem to succeed well in that capacity in Singapore. ”

“ BANYAN, s. a. A Hindu trader, and especially of the Province of Guzerat, many of which class have for ages been settled in Arabian ports and known by this name; but the term is often applied by early travellers in Western India to persons of the Hindu religion generally. b. In Calcutta also it is (or perhaps rather was) specifically applied to the native brokers attached to houses of business, or to persons in the employment of a private gentleman doing analogous duties (now usually called sircar) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ The compromise between the vaguer and the more precise use of the term is seen in Ptolemy, where the boundaries of the true India are defined, on the whole, with surprising exactness, as 'India within the Ganges,' whilst the darker regions beyond appear as 'India beyond the Ganges.' And this double conception of India, as 'India Proper' (as we may call it) , and India in the vaguer sense, has descended to our own time. ”

“ Thus, 'country harness' is opposed to 'Europe harness'; 'country-born' people are persons of European descent, but born in India; 'country horses' are Indian-bred in distinction from Arabs, Walers (q.v.) , English horses, and even from 'stud-breds,' which are horses reared in India, but from foreign sires; 'country ships' are those which are owned in Indian ports, though often officered by Europeans; country bottled beer is beer imported from England in cask and bottled in India; ['country-wound' silk is that reeled in the crude native fashion] . ”