Henry Yule

“ HUBBLE-BUBBLE, s. An onomatopoeia applied to the hooka in its rudimentary form, as used by the masses in India. Tobacco, or a mixture containing tobacco amongst other things, is placed with embers in a terra-cotta chillum (q.v.) , from which a reed carries the smoke into a coconut shell half full of water, and the smoke is drawn through a hole in the side, generally without any kind of mouth-piece, making a bubbling or gurgling sound. ”

“ PARDAO, s. This was the popular name among the Portuguese of a gold coin from the native mints of Western India, which entered largely into the early currency of Goa, and the name of which afterwards attached to a silver money of their own coinage, of constantly degenerating value. ”

“ ROOM, n.p. 'Turkey' (Rūm) ; ROOMEE, n.p. (Rūmī) ; 'an Ottoman Turk.' Properly 'a Roman.' In older Oriental books it is used for an European, and was probably the word which Marco Polo renders as 'a Latin'—represented in later times by firinghee (e.g. see quotation from Ibn Batuta under RAJA) . But Rūm, for the Roman Empire, continued to be applied to what had been part of the Roman Empire after it had fallen into the hands of the Turks, first to the Seljukian Kingdom in Anatolia, and afterwards to the Ottoman Empire seated at Constantinople. ”

“ COIR, s. The fibre of the coco-nut husk, from which rope is made. But properly the word, which is Tam. kayiru, Malayāl. kāyar, from v. kāyāṛu, 'to be twisted,' means 'cord' itself (see the accurate Al-Birūnī below) . The former use among Europeans is very early. And both the fibre and the rope made from it appear to have been exported to Europe in the middle of the 16th century. The word appears in early Arabic writers in the forms ḳānbar and ḳanbār, arising probably from some misreading of the diacritical points (for ḳāiyar, and ḳaiyār) . The Portuguese adopted the word in the form cairo. ”

“ A thousand pilgrims strain
Arm, shoulder, breast, and thigh, with might and main,
To drag that sacred wain,
And scarce can draw along the enormous load.
Prone fall the frantic votaries on the road,
And calling on the God
Their self-devoted bodies there they lay
To pave his chariot way.
On Jaga-Naut they call,
The ponderous car rolls on, and crushes all,
Through flesh and bones it ploughs its dreadful path.
Groans rise unheard; the dying cry.
And death, and agony
Are trodden under foot by yon mad throng,
Who follow close and thrust the deadly wheels along. ”

“ BHEESTY, s. The universal word in the Anglo-Indian households of N. India for the domestic (corresponding to the saḳḳā of Egypt) who supplies the family with water, carrying it in a mussuck, (q.v.) , or goatskin, slung on his back. The word is P. bihishtī, a person of bihisht or paradise, though the application appears to be peculiar to Hindustan. We have not been able to trace the history of this term, which does not apparently occur in the Āīn, even in the curious account of the way in which water was cooled and supplied in the Court of Akbar (Blochmann, tr. i. 55 seqq.) ”

“ His historical locus was a happy one, for, whilst he was the first of his race to rise above the innate barbarism of the Mongols, he retained the force and warlike character of his ancestors, which vanished utterly in the effeminacy of those who came after him. He had great intelligence and a keen desire for knowledge, with apparently a good deal of natural benevolence and magnanimity. But his love of splendour, and his fruitless expeditions beyond sea, created enormous demands for money, and he shut his eyes to the character and methods of those whom he employed to raise it. ”

“ His empire extended over the three Indies, including that Farther India, where lay the body of St Thomas, to the sun-rising, and back again down the slope to the ruins of Babylon and the tower of Babel. All the wild beasts and monstrous creatures commemorated in current legend were to be found in his dominions, as well as all the wild and eccentric races of men of whom strange stories were told, including those unclean nations whom Alexander Magnus walled up among the mountains of the north, and who were to come forth at the latter day—and so were the Amazons and the Bragmans. ”

“ I have understood that the soil in which the trees affording the poison grow, for a great space round about produces no grass nor any other vegetable growth, and that the poison is properly a water or liquid, flowing from a bruise or cut made in the bark of those trees, oozing out as sap does from plants that afford milky juices.... When the liquid is being drawn from the wounded tree, no one should carelessly approach it so as to let the liquid touch his hands, for by such contact all the joints become stiffened and contracted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ PANDARĀNI, n.p. The name of a port of Malabar of great reputation in the Middle Ages, a name which has gone through many curious corruptions. Its position is clear enough from Varthema's statement that an uninhabited island stood opposite at three leagues distance, which must be the "Sacrifice Rock" of our charts. [The Madras Gloss. identifies it with Collam.] ”

“ 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. Great virtues as medicine and antidote were supposed to reside in these fruits, and extravagant prices were paid for them. ”

“ Nobles and Beggars, Pious and Wicked, Devotees and Free-thinkers, poets, historians, rhetoricians, doctors and patients, high and low, rich and poor, all! all seemed intoxicated with a decided preference over every other luxury, nay even often over the necessaries of life. To a stranger no offering was so acceptable as a Whiff, and to a friend one could produce nothing half so grateful as a Chillum. ”

“ The Dutch call them Sundanese (Soendanezen) . The Sunda country is considered to extend from the extreme western point of the island to Cheribon, i.e. embracing about one-third of the whole island of Java. Hinduism appears to have prevailed in the Sunda country, and held its ground longer than in "Java," a name which the proper Javanese restrict to their own part of the island. From this country the sea between Sumatra and Java got from Europeans the name of the Straits of Sunda. Geographers have also called the great chain of islands from Sumatra to Timor "the Sunda Islands." ”

“ DIUL-SIND, n.p. A name by which Sind is often called in early European narratives, taken up by the authors, no doubt, like so many other prevalent names, from the Arab traders who had preceded them. Dewal or Daibul was a once celebrated city and seaport of Sind, mentioned by all the old Arabian geographers, and believed to have stood at or near the site of modern Karāchī. It had the name from a famous temple (devālya) , probably a Buddhist shrine, which existed there, and which was destroyed by the Mahommedans in 711. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ GRASS-WIDOW, s. This slang phrase is applied in India, with a shade of malignity, to ladies living apart from their husbands, especially as recreating at the Hill stations, whilst the husbands are at their duties in the plains. ”

“ ROHILLA, n.p. A name by which Afghāns, or more particularly Afghāns settled in Hindustan, are sometimes known, and which gave a title to the province Rohilkand, and now, through that, to a Division of the N.W. Provinces embracing a large part of the old province. The word appears to be Pushtu, rōhēlah or rōhēlai, adj., formed from rōhu, 'mountain,' thus signifying 'mountaineer of Afghānistān.' But a large part of E. Afghānistān specifically bore the name of Roh. ”

“ NAIK, NAIQUE, &c. s. Hind. nāyak. A term which occurs in nearly all the vernacular languages; from Skt. nāyaka, 'a leader, chief, general.' The word is used in several applications among older writers (Portuguese) referring to the south and west of India, as meaning a native captain or headman of some sort (a) . It is also a title of honour among Hindus in the Deccan (b) . ”

“ This year of famine the Portuguese of the town of St. Thomé did much good to the people, helping them with quantities of rice and millet, and coco-nuts and jagra (see JAGGERY) , which they imported in their vessels from other parts, and sold in retail to the people at far lower prices than they could have got if they wished it; and some rich people caused quantities of rice to be boiled in their houses, and gave it boiled down in the water to the people to drink, all for the love of God.... This famine lasted a whole year, and it spread to other parts, but was not so bad as in Choromandel. ”

“ EUROPE, adj. Commonly used in India for "European," in contradistinction to country (q.v.) as qualifying goods, viz. those imported from Europe. The phrase is probably obsolescent, but still in common use. "Europe shop" is a shop where European goods of sorts are sold in an up-country station. The first quotation applies the word to a man. [A "Europe morning" is lying late in bed, as opposed to the Anglo-Indian's habit of early rising.] ”

“ For a stranger in India, on asking the question, 'What on earth is that?' as he well might on his first sight of a jack-tree with its fruit, would at the present day almost certainly receive for answer: 'Phal hai khudāwand!'—'It is a fruit, my lord!' Ariena looks like hiraṇya, 'golden,' which might be an epithet of the jack, but we find no such specific application of the word. ”

“ The vague extension of the term India to which we have referred, survives in another form besides that in the use of 'Indies.' India, to each European nation which has possessions in the East, may be said, without much inaccuracy, to mean in colloquial use that part of the East in which their own possessions lie. Thus to the Portuguese, India was, and probably still is, the West Coast only. ”

“ TYPHOON, s. A tornado or cyclone-wind; a sudden storm, a 'nor-wester' (q.v.) . Sir John Barrow (see Autobiog. 57) ridicules "learned antiquarians" for fancying that the Chinese took typhoon from the Egyptian Typhon, the word being, according to him, simply the Chinese syllables, ta-fung, 'Great Wind.' His ridicule is misplaced. With a monosyllabic language like the Chinese (as we have remarked elsewhere) you may construct a plausible etymology, to meet the requirements of the sound alone, from anything and for anything. ”

“ PEEPUL, s. Hind. pīpal, Skt. pippala, Ficus religiosa, L.; one of the great fig-trees of India, which often occupies a prominent place in a village, or near a temple. The Pīpal has a strong resemblance, in wood and foliage, to some common species of poplar, especially the aspen, and its leaves with their long footstalks quaver like those of that tree. This trembling is popularly attributed to spirits agitating each leaf. And hence probably the name of 'Devil's tree' given to it, according to Rheede (Hort. Mal. i. 48) , by Christians in Malabar. ”

“ PRESTER JOHN, a fabulous medieval Christian monarch of Asia. The history of Prester John no doubt originally gathered round some nucleus of fact, though what that was is extremely difficult to determine. But the name and the figure which it suggested occupied so prominent a place in the mind of Europe for two or three centuries that a real history could hardly have a stronger claim to exposition. Before Prester John appears upon the scene we find the way prepared for his appearance by a kindred fable, which entwined itself with the legends about him. ”

“ 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." ”

“ SUTTEE, s. The rite of widow-burning; i.e. the burning of the living widow along with the corpse of her husband, as practised by people of certain castes among the Hindus, and eminently by the Rājpūts. The word is properly Skt. satī, 'a good woman,' 'a true wife,' and thence specially applied, in modern vernaculars of Sanskrit parentage, to the wife who was considered to accomplish the supreme act of fidelity by sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her husband. The application of this substantive to the suicidal act, instead of the person, is European. The proper Skt. ”

“ Debtors are made over to their creditors as slaves; and some of these, preferring death to slavery, will with drawn swords rush on, stabbing all whom they fall in with of less strength than themselves, until they meet death at the hands of some one more than a match for them. This man, the creditors then sue in Court for the dead man's debt."—In India in the XVth C. 45. ”

“ And within half an hour of death this putrescent poison so corrupts the flesh that it can be plucked from the bones like so much mucus. And what seems still more marvellous, if a man (e.g.) be scratched in the thigh, or higher in the body, by another point which is not poisoned, and the still warm blood as it flows down to the feet be merely touched by one of these poisoned little arrows, swift as wind the pestilent influence ascends to the wound, and with the same swiftness and other effects snatches the man from among the living. ”

“ RESPONDENTIA, s. An old trade technicality, thus explained: "Money which is borrowed, not upon the vessel as in bottomry, but upon the goods and merchandise contained in it, which must necessarily be sold or exchanged in the course of the voyage, in which case the borrower personally is bound to answer the contract" (Wharton's Law Lexicon, 6th ed., 1876; [and see N.E.D. under Bottomry] ) . What is now a part of the Calcutta Course, along the bank of the Hoogly, was known down to the first quarter of the last century, as Respondentia Walk. ”