Henry Yule

“ The Chinese word is hang, meaning 'a row or rank'; a house of business; at Canton a warehouse, a factory, and particularly applied to the establishments of the European nations ("Foreign Hongs") , and to those of the so-called "Hong-Merchants." These were a body of merchants who had the monopoly of trade with foreigners, in return for which privilege they became security for the good behaviour of the foreigners, and for their payment of dues. ”

“ The Muharram is celebrated throughout the Dekhan and Malwa, with greater enthusiasm than in other parts of India. Grand preparations are made in every town on the occasion, as if for a festival of rejoicing, rather than of observing the rites of mourning, as they ought. The observance of this custom has so strong a hold on the mind of the commonalty of the Mussulmans that they believe Muhammadanism to depend merely on keeping the memory of the imáms in the above manner."—Mīr Shahāmat 'Ali, in J. R. As. Soc. xiii. 369. We find no literary quotation to exemplify the phrase as it stands. ”

“ Hindūstānī, properly an adjective, but used substantively in two senses, viz. (a) a native of Hindustān, and (b) (Hindūstānī zabān) 'the language of that country,' but in fact the language of the Mahommedans of Upper India, and eventually of the Mahommedans of the Deccan, developed out of the Hindi dialect of the Doab chiefly, and of the territory round Agra and Delhi, with a mixture of Persian vocables and phrases, and a readiness to adopt other foreign words. It is also called Oordoo, i.e. the language of the Urdū ('Horde') or Camp. ”

“ The word seems to have originated on the west side of India, where we find it in our earliest quotations. It is probably one of those numerous words which were long in use, and undergoing corruption by illiterate soldiers and sailors, before they appeared in any kind of literature. Wilson suggests a probable Portuguese origin, e.g. from acarretar, 'to convey in a cart.' It is possible that the mere Portuguese article and noun 'a carreta' might have produced the Anglo-Indian hackery. Thus in Correa, under 1513, we have a description of the Surat hackeries ”

“ But formerly in Bengal, as still in Western India and Ceylon, the word was applied to lighter carriages (drawn by bullocks) for personal transport. In Broughton's Letters from a Mahratta Camp (p. 156; [ed. 1892, p. 117] ) the word is used for what in Upper India is commonly called an ekka (q.v.) , or light native pony-carriage; but this is an exceptional application. Though the word is used by Englishmen almost universally in India, it is unknown to natives, or if known is regarded as an English term ”

“ A soldier (of the tribes) will say: 'I am going to the Hindu,' i.e. to the bunya of the company.
HINDOO KOOSH, n.p. Hindū-Kūsh; a term applied by our geographers to the whole of the Alpine range which separates the basins of the Kabul River and the Helmand from that of the Oxus. It is, as Rennell points out, properly that part of the range immediately north of Kabul, the Caucasus of the historians of Alexander, who crossed and recrossed it somewhere not far from the longitude of that city. ”

“ This language was for a long time a kind of Mahommedan lingua franca over all India, and still possesses that character over a large part of the country, and among certain classes. Even in Madras, where it least prevails, it is still recognised in native regiments as the language of intercourse between officers and men. Old-fashioned Anglo-Indians used to call it the Moors (q.v.) . a.—
1653.— (applied to a native.) "Indistanni est vn Mahometan noir des Indes, ce nom est composé de Indou, Indien, et stan, habitation."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. ”

“ Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back
That carry kings in castles, bow'd black knees
Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,
To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells."
⁠Merlin and Vivien.
c. 1526.—"As for the animals peculiar to Hindustân, one is the elephant, as the Hindustânis call it Hathì, which inhabits the district of Kalpi, the more do the wild elephants increase in number. That is the tract in which the elephant is chiefly taken."—Baber, 315. This notice of Baber's shows how remarkably times have changed. No elephants now exist anywhere near the region indicated. ”

“ Going back further some twelve or fifteen years it was not very uncommon to see the use of the hooka kept up by old Indians after their return to Europe; one such at least, in the recollection of the elder of the present writers in his childhood, being a lady who continued its use in Scotland for several years. When the second of the present writers landed first at Madras, in 1860, there were perhaps half-a-dozen Europeans at the Presidency who still used the hooka; there is not one now (c. 1878) . A few gentlemen at Hyderabad are said still to keep it up. ”

“ Yet the plant producing it has been described and drawn by Kaempfer, who saw the gum-resin collected in the Persian Province of Lāristān (near the eastern shore of the P. Gulf) ; and in recent years (1857) Surgeon-Major Bellew has described the collection of the drug near Kandahar. Asafoetida has been identified with the σίλφιον or laserpitium of the ancients. The substance is probably yielded not only by the species mentioned above, but by other allied plants, e.g. Ferula Jaeschkiana, Vatke, of Kashmīr and Turkistan. The hing of the Bombay market is the produce of F. alliacea, Boiss. ”

“ Who dwell beyond the everlasting snows
Of Hindoo Koosh, in stormy freedom bred."—Mokanna.
HINDOSTAN, n.p. Pers. Hindūstān. (a) 'The country of the Hindūs,' India. In modern native parlance this word indicates distinctively (b) India north of the Nerbudda, and exclusive of Bengal and Behar. The latter provinces are regarded as pūrb (see POORUB) , and all south of the Nerbudda as Dakhan (see DECCAN) . But the word is used in older Mahommedan authors just as it is used in English school-books and atlases, viz. as (a) the equivalent of India Proper. ”

“ In S. India the same plant is called the Drumstick-tree (q.v.) , from the shape of the long slender fruit, which is used as a vegetable, or in curry, or made into a native pickle "most nauseous to Europeans" (Punjab Plants) . It is a native of N.W. India, and also extensively cultivated in India and other tropical countries, and is used also for many purposes in the native pharmacopœia. [See MYROBALAN.] ”

“ These tribes are in no respect Afghan, but are in fact most or all of them Mongol in features, and some of them also in language. The term at one time appears to have been used more generally for a variety of the wilder clans in the higher hill countries of Afghanistan and the Oxus basin, much as in Scotland of a century and a half ago they spoke of "the clans." ”

“ Wilson gives Hāṛī as Beng. 'A servant of the lowest class, a sweeper.' [The word means 'a collector of bones,' Skt. haḍḍa, 'a bone'; for the caste, see Risley, Tribes of Bengal, i. 314 seqq.] M.-Gen. Keatinge remarks that they are the goldsmiths of Assam; they are village watchmen in Bengal. (See under PYKE.) In two of the quotations below, Harry is applied to a woman, in one case employed to carry water. A female servant of this description is not now known among English families in Bengal.
1706.—
List of Men's Names, &c., immediately in the Service of the Honble. ”

“ In the Bhagavadgītā, an episode of the Mahābhārata, Kṛishṇa says that he is 'the Himālaya among stable things,' and the word Himālaya is found in the Kumāra Sambhava of Kālidāsa, about the date of which opinions differ. ”

“ If he prefers to go and lodge with a merchant, they count all his money and confide it to the merchant of his choice; the latter then takes charge of all expenditure on account of the stranger's wants, but acts with perfect integrity...."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 265-6. 1727.—"When I arrived at Canton the Hapoa (see HOPPO) ordered me lodgings for myself, my Men, and Cargo, in (a) Haung or Inn belonging to one of his Merchants ... and when I went abroad, I had always some Servants belonging to the Haung to follow me at a Distance."—A. Hamilton, ii. 227; [ed. 1744] .
1782.—"... l'Opeou (see HOPPO) ... ”

“ It is used in curries, pickles, and tarts. It is a native of various parts of India, and is cultivated in many tropical climates.
1852.—"The Karens have a tradition that in those golden days when God dwelt with men, all nations came before him on a certain day, each with an offering from the fruits of their lands, and the Karens selected the hog's plum for this oblation; which gave such offence that God cursed the Karen nation and placed it lowest...."—Mason's Burmah, ed. ”

“ I have only ... to seize my booty, which has just enough of life left to allow Peer Khan to make it halal, by cutting its throat in the name of Allah, and dividing the webs of its feet."—Tribes on My Frontier, 167.
HALF-CASTE, s. A person of mixt European and Indian blood. ”

“ As Hindostanee to an Ind-born man
Accustomed many years to English speech."
⁠E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh.
HING, s. Asafoetida. Skt. hingu, Hind. hīng, Dakh. hīngu. A repulsively smelling gum-resin which forms a favourite Hindu condiment, and is used also by Europeans in Western and Southern India as an ingredient in certain cakes eaten with curry. (See POPPER-CAKE) . This product affords a curious example of the uncertainty which sometimes besets the origin of drugs which are the objects even of a large traffic. ”

“ The Musalmáns, who were Hindís (country born) , had their lives spared."—Amīr Khosrū, in Elliot, iii. 539. 1563.—"... moreover if people of Arabia or Persia would ask of the men of this country whether they are Moors or Gentoos, they ask in these words: 'Art thou Mosalman or Indu?'"—Garcia, f. 137b.
1653.—"Les Indous gardent soigneusement dans leurs Pagodes les Reliques de Ram, Schita (Sita) , et les autres personnes illustres de l'antiquité."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. 1657, 191. Hindu is often used on the Peshawar frontier as synonymous with bunya (see under BANYAN) . ”

“ Soc. ii. 202; Comm. Dalboquerque, Hak. Soc. i. 148.]
HOOGLY, HOOGHLEY, n.p. Properly Hūglī, [and said to take its name from Beng. hoglā, 'the elephant grass' (Typha angustifolia) ] : a town on the right bank of the Western Delta Branch of the Ganges, that which has long been known from this place as the Hoogly River, and on which Calcutta also stands, on the other bank, and 25 miles nearer the sea. Hoogly was one of the first places occupied by Europeans in the interior of Bengal; first by the Portuguese in the first half of the 16th century. An English factory was established here in 1640 ”

“ Exotic. 537.
1726.—"Hing or Assa Foetida, otherwise called Devil's-dung (Duivelsdrek) ."—Valentijn, iv. 146.
1857.—"Whilst riding in the plain to the N.E. of the city (Candahar) we noticed several assafœtida plants. The assafœtida, called hang or hing by the natives, grows wild in the sandy or gravelly plains that form the western part of Afghanistan. It is never cultivated, but its peculiar gum-resin is collected from the plants on the deserts where they grow. The produce is for the most part exported to Hindustan."—Bellew, Journal of a Pol. ”

“ Huzooriahs are personal attendants of the chief, generally of his own tribe, and are usually of respectable parentage; a great proportion are hereditary followers of the family of the prince they serve.... ”

“ This mountainous tract is at present occupied and inhabited by the Hazâra and Nukderi tribes."—Baber, p. 136.
1508.—"Mirza Ababeker, the ruler and tyrant of Káshghar, had seized all the Upper Hazáras of Badakhshán."—Erskine's Baber and Humáyun, i. 287. "Hazáraját báládest. The upper districts in Badakhshán were called Hazáras." Erskine's note. He is using the Tarīkh Rashīdī. But is not the word Hazáras here, 'the clans,' used elliptically for the highland districts occupied by them? ”

“ Thus Baber says of Hindustān: "On the East, the South, and the West it is bounded by the Ocean" (310) .
a.—
1553.—"... and so the Persian nation adjacent to it give it as at present its proper name that of Indostān."—Barros, I. iv. 7. 1563.—"... and common usage in Persia, and Coraçone, and Arabia, and Turkey, calls this country Industam ... for istām is as much as to say 'region,' and indu 'India.'"—Garcia, f. 137b.
1663.—"And thus it came to pass that the Persians called it Indostan."—Faria y Sousa, i. 33. ”

“ The word ḥalālkhūr is still in use among educated Muhammadans; but it is doubtful whether (as stated in the Āīn) it was Akbar's invention." (Āīn, i. 139 note.) ]
1623.—"Schiah Selim nel principio ... si sdegnò tanto, che poco mancò che per dispetto non la desse per forza in matrimonio ad uno della razza che chiamano halal chor, quasi dica 'mangia lecito,' cioè che ha per lecito di mangiare ogni cosa...." (See other quotation under HAREM) .—P. della Valle, ii. 525; [Hak. Soc. i. 54] . ”

“ HOPPO, s. The Chinese Superintendent of Customs at Canton. Giles says: "The term is said to be a corruption of Hoo poo, the Board of Revenue, with which office the Hoppo, or Collector of duties, is in direct communication." Dr. Williams gives a different account (see below) . Neither affords much satisfaction. [The N.E.D. accepts the account given in the quotation from Williams.] ”

“ They possess horses, sheep and goats. They are divided into factions, each covetous of what they can obtain, deceptive in their common intercourse and their conventions of amity savour of the wolf."—Āīn, ed. ”