Henry Yule

“ Mr. Arnold makes too many!
MYROBALAN, s. A name applied to certain dried fruits and kernels of astringent flavour, but of several species, and not even all belonging to the same Natural Order, which were from an early date exported from India, and had a high reputation in the medieval pharmacopoeia. This they appear (some of them) to retain in native Indian medicine; though they seem to have disappeared from English use and have no place in Hanbury and Flückiger's great work, the Pharmacographia. ”

“ It is, however, true that a kind of aromatic bark was known in the Arab pharmacopœia of the Middle Ages under the name of ḳirfat-al-ḳaranful or 'bark of clove,' which may have been either a cause of the mistake or a part of it. The mistake in question, in one form or another, prevailed for centuries. One of the authors of this book was asked many years ago by a respectable Mahommedan of Delhi if it were not the case that cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg were the produce of one tree. ”

“ MAHOUT, s. The driver and tender of an elephant. Hind. mahā-wat, from Skt. mahā-mātra, 'great in measure,' a high officer, &c., so applied. The Skt. term occurs in this sense in the Mahābhārata (e.g. iv. 1761, &c.) . The Mahout is mentioned in the 1st Book of Maccabees as 'the Indian.' It is remarkable that we find what is apparently mahā-mātra, in the sense of a high officer in Hesychius:
"Μαμάτραι, οἱ στρατηγοὶ παρ' Ἰνδοῖς."—Hesych. s.v. c. 1590.—"Mast elephants (see MUST) . ”

“ Properly Manipūr; a quasi-independent State lying between the British district of Cachar on the extreme east of Bengal, and the upper part of the late kingdom of Burma, and in fact including a part of the watershed between the tributaries of the Brahmaputra and those of the Irawadi. 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. ”

“ The word is certainly not obsolete in Upper India: "The 'martaban' (Plate ii. fig. 10) is a small deep jar with an elongated body, which is used by Hindus and Muhammadans to keep pickles and acid articles" (Hallifax, Mono. of Punjab Pottery, p. 9) . In the endeavour to supply a Hindi derivation it has been derived from imrita-bān, 'the holder of the water of immortality.' In the Arabian Nights the word appears in the form bartaman, and is used for a crock in which gold is buried. ”

“ The Portugals in Goa make use of the same Weights in Goa; but a Mangelin there is not above 5 grains."—Tavernier, E.T. ii. 141; [ed. Ball, ii. 87, and see ii. 433.]
MANGO, s. The royal fruit of the Mangifera indica, when of good quality is one of the richest and best fruits in the world. The original of the word is Tamil mān-kāy or mān-gāy, i.e. mān fruit (the tree being māmarum, 'mān-tree') . The Portuguese formed from this manga, which we have adopted as mango. The tree is wild in the forests of various parts of India; but the fruit of the wild tree is uneatable. ”

“ Dictionaries (except Dr. Badger's) do not apparently give the Arabic word mausim the technical sense of monsoon. But there can be no doubt that it had that sense among the Arab pilots from whom the Portuguese adopted the word. This is shown by the quotations from the Turkish Admiral Sidi 'Ali. "The rationale of the term is well put in the Beirūt Moḥīt, which says: 'Mausim is used of anything that comes round but once a year, like the festivals. In Lebanon the mausim is the season of working with the silk,'—which is the important season there, as the season of navigation is in Yemen." ”

“ Among many greater services to India the late Sir Proby Cautley diffused largely in Upper India the delicious fruit of the Bombay mango, previously rare there, by creating and encouraging groves of grafts on the banks of the Ganges and Jumna canals. It is especially true of this fruit (as Sultan Baber indicates) that excellence depends on the variety. The common mango is coarse and strong of turpentine. ”

“ The word is Spanish and Port. (dim. of mosca, 'a fly') , and probably came into familiar English use from the East Indies, though the earlier quotations show that it was first brought from S. America. A friend annotates here: "Arctic mosquitoes are worst of all; and the Norfolk ones (in the Broads) beat Calcutta!"
It is related of a young Scotch lady of a former generation who on her voyage to India had heard formidable, but vague accounts of this terror of the night, that on seeing an elephant for the first time, she asked: "Will yon be what's called a musqueetae?" ”

“ MADURA, n.p., properly Madurei, Tam. Mathurai. This is still the name of a district in S. India, and of a city which appears in the Tables of Ptolemy as "Μόδουρα βασίλειον Πανδιόνος." The name is generally supposed to be the same as that of Mathurā, the holy and much more ancient city of Northern India, from which the name was adopted (see MUTTRA) , but modified after Tamil pronunciation. [5] [On the other hand, a writer in J. R. As. Soc. (xiv. 578, n. 3) derives Madura from the Dravidian Madur in the sense of 'Old Town,' and suggests that the northern Mathura may be an offshoot from it.] ”

“ MANGELIN, s. A small weight, corresponding in a general way to a carat (q.v.) , used in the S. of India and in Ceylon for weighing precious stones. The word is Telegu maṇjāḷi; in Tamil maṇjāḍi, [from Skt. manju, 'beautiful'] ; the seed of the Adenanthera pavonina (Compare RUTTEE) . On the origin of this weight see Sir W. Elliot's Coins of S. India. The maṇjāḍi seed was used as a measure of weight from very early times. A parcel of 50 taken at random gave an average weight of 4.13 grs. ”

“ An assistant under a head servant; in which sense or something near it, but also sometimes in the sense of a 'head-man,' the word is in use almost all over India. In the Bengal Presidency we have a mate-bearer for the assistant body-servant (see BEARER) ; the mate attendant on an elephant under the mahout; a mate (head) of coolies or jomponnies (qq.v.) (see JOMPON) , &c. And in Madras the maty is an under-servant, whose business it is to clean crockery, knives, &c., to attend to lamps, and so forth. ”

“ The introduction of the word into India may have occurred during the extensive commerce of the Arabs with that country during the 8th and 9th centuries; possibly at an earlier date. Through the Arabs also we find an old Spanish word almena, and in old French almène, for a weight of about 20 lbs. (Marcel Devic) .
The quotations will show how the Portuguese converted man into mão, of which the English made maune, and so (probably by the influence of the old English word maund) [11] our present form, which occurs as early as 1611. ”

“ 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. A disastrous invasion of Manipūr by Alompra, founder of the present Burmese dynasty, in 1755, led a few years afterwards to negotiations with the Bengal Government, and the conclusion of a treaty, in consequence of which a body of British sepoys was actually despatched in 1763, but eventually returned without reaching Manipūr. ”

“ At a later day, when the fear of the Ottoman had made itself felt in Europe, the word Turk was that which identified itself with the Moslem, and thus we have in the Collect for Good Friday,—"Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics." But to the Spaniards and Portuguese, whose contact was with the Musulmans of Mauritania who had passed over and conquered the Peninsula, all Mahommedans were Moors. So the Mahommedans whom the Portuguese met with on their voyages to India, on what coast soever, were alike styled Mouros ”

“ The values of the man as weight, even in modern times, have varied immensely, i.e. from little more than 2 lbs. to upwards of 160. The 'Indian Maund,' which is the standard of weight in British India, is of 40 sers, each ser being divided into 16 chhiṭāks; and this is the general scale of sub-division in the local weights of Bengal, and Upper and Central India, though the value of the ser varies. That of the standard ser is 80 tolas (q.v.) or rupee-weights, and thus the maund = 822⁄7 lbs. avoirdupois. The Bombay maund (or man) of 48 sers = 28 lbs.; the Madras one of 40 sers = 25 lbs. ”

“ Beg is the characteristic affix of the Mughal's name, as Khān is of the Pathān's. Among the Mahommedans of S. India the Moguls or Mughals constitute a strongly marked caste. [They are also clearly distinguished in the Punjab and N.W.P.] In the quotation from Baber below, the name still retains its original application. The passage illustrates the tone in which Baber always speaks of his kindred of the Steppe, much as Lord Clyde used sometimes to speak of "confounded Scotchmen."
In Port. writers Mogol or Mogor is often used for "Hindostān," or the territory of the Great Mogul. ”

“ These people, the descendants of unfortunates who were carried off in droves from their country by the Burmans in the time of King Mentaragyi and his predecessors, form a very great proportion ... of the metropolitan population, and they are largely diffused in nearly all the districts of Central Burma.... Whatever work is in hand for the King or for any of the chief men near the capital, these people supply the labouring hands; if boats have to be manned they furnish the rowers ”

“ MARTABAN, s. This name was given to vessels of a peculiar pottery, of very large size, and glazed, which were famous all over the East for many centuries, and were exported from Martaban. They were sometimes called Pegu jars, and under that name specimens were shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. We have not been able to obtain recent information on the subject of this manufacture. The word appears to be now obsolete in India, except as a colloquial term in Telegu. ”

“ These quotations show that cholera, whether as an epidemic or as sporadic disease, is no new thing in India. Almost in the beginning of the Portuguese expeditions to the East we find apparent examples of the visitations of this terrible scourge, though no precise name is given in the narratives. ”

“ The reading and use of Hindu books.
With regard to No. 11 it may be observed that in South India the distinction of castes still subsists, and the only Christian Mission in that quarter which has really succeeded in abolishing caste is that of the Basel Society.
MALABATHRUM, s. There can be very little doubt that this classical export from India was the dried leaf of various species of Cinnamomum, which leaf was known in Skt. as tamāla-pattra. Some who wrote soon after the Portuguese discoveries took, perhaps not unnaturally, the pān or betel-leaf for the malabathrum of the ancients ”

“ The mangrove abounds on nearly all the coasts of further India, and also on the sea margin of the Ganges Delta, in the backwaters of S. Malabar, and less luxuriantly on the Indus mouths.
1535.—"Of the Tree called Mangle.... These trees grow in places of mire, and on the shores of the sea, and of the rivers, and streams, and torrents that run into the sea. They are trees very strange to see ... they grow together in vast numbers, and many of their branches seem to turn down and change into roots ... ”

“ Phayre, that the Arakanese disclaim the title, and restrict it to a class held in contempt, viz. the descendants of Arakanese settlers on the frontier of Bengal by Bengali mothers. The proper names of foreign nations in any language do not require the sanction of the nation to whom they are applied, and are often not recognised by the latter. German is not the German name for the Germans, nor Welsh the Welsh name for the Welsh, nor Hindu (originally) a Hindu word, nor China a Chinese word. ”