Henry Yule

“ Wallace could find no natives in Sumatra who 'had ever heard of such an animal,' and no 'Dutch officials who knew anything about it.' Then the name came to European knowledge more than 260 years ago; in which time probably more than one Malay name has faded out of general use or wholly disappeared, and many other things have happened." Mr. Skeat writes: "I believe Crawfurd is absolutely right in saying that it is never called ōrang-ūtan by the natives. It is much more likely to have been a sailor's mistake or joke than an error on the part of the Malays who know better. ”

“ The native country of the orange is believed to be somewhere on the northern border of India. A wild orange, the supposed parent of the cultivated species, both sweet and bitter, occurs in Garhwāl and Sikkim, as well as in the Kāsia (see COSSYA) country, the valleys of which last are still abundantly productive of excellent oranges. [See Watt, Econ. Dict. ii. 336 seqq.] It is believed that the orange first known and cultivated in Europe was the bitter or Seville orange (see Hanbury and Flückiger, 111-112) . ”

“ But as the western limit extended to the Fortunate Isles, it became manifest to the Arabs that the central meridian could not be so far east as the Hindu meridian of Arin (or of Lanka, i.e. Ceylon) . (See quotation from the Aryabhatta, under JAVA.) They therefore shifted it westward, but shifted the mystic Arin along the equator westward also. We find also among medieval European students (as with Roger Bacon, below) , a confusion between Arin and Syene. ”

“ And hence the "Cupola of Arin or Arym," or the "Cupola of the Earth" (Al-ḳubba al-arḍh) became an established commonplace for centuries in geographical tables or statements. The idea was that just 180° of the earth's circumference was habitable, or at any rate cognizable as such, and this meridian of Arin bisected this habitable hemisphere. ”

“ But as early as the beginning of the 14th century we find Abulfeda extolling the fruit of Cintra. His words, as rendered by M. Reinaud, run: "Au nombre des dependances de Lisbonne est la ville de Schintara; à Schintara on recueille des pommes admirables pour la grosseur et le gout" (244 [2] ) . That these pommes were the famous Cintra oranges can hardly be doubted. For Baber (Autobiog. 328) describes an orange under the name of Sangtarah, which is, indeed, a recognised Persian and Hind. word for a species of the fruit. ”

“ Beveridge is inclined to think that Santra is the Indian hill name of the fruit, of which Sangtarah is a corruption, and refers to a village at the foot of the Bhutan Hills called Santrabārī, because it had orange groves. ”

“ All this is on broad stiff leaves of the palm-tree, without ink, with pens of iron; they write their letters in lines drawn like ours, and write in the same direction as we do. Each of these clerks has great bundles of these written leaves, and wherever they go they carry them under their arms, and the iron pen in their hands ... and amongst these are 7 or 8 who are great confidants of the king, and men held in great honour, who always stand before him with their pens in their hand and a bundle of paper under their arm ”

“ OOPLAH, s. Cow dung patted into cakes, and dried and stacked for fuel. Hind. uplā. It is in S. India called bratty (q.v.) .
1672.—"The allowance of cowdunge and wood was—for every basket of cowdunge, 2 cakes for the Gentu Pagoda; for Peddinagg the watchman, of every baskett of cowdunge, 5 cakes."—Orders at Ft. St. Geo., Notes and Exts. i. 56. [Another name for the fuel is kaṇḍā.
[1809.—"... small flat cakes of cow-dung, mixed with a little chopped straw and water, and dried in the sun, are used for fuel; they are called kundhas...."—Broughton, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, ed. 1892, p. 158.] ”

“ Malay Orang kāya. In the Archipelago, a person of distinction, a chief or noble, corresponding to the Indian omrah; literally 'a rich man,' analogous therefore to the use of riche-homme by Joinville and other old French authors. [Mr. Skeat notes that the terminal o in arangkaio represents a dialectical form used in Sumatra and Java. The Malay leader of the Pahang rising in 1891-2, who was supposed to bear a charmed life, was called by the title of Orang Kāya Pahlawan (see PULWAUN) .] ”

“ From the Arabic, Byzantine Greek got νεράντζιον, the Spaniards naranja, old Italian narancia, the Portuguese laranja, from which last, or some similar form, by the easy detachment of the l (taken probably, as in many other instances, for an article) , we have the Ital. arancio, L. Latin aurantium, French orange, the modification of these two being shaped by aurum and or. Indeed, the quotation from Jacques de Vitry possibly indicates that some form like al-arangi may have been current in Syria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The word is peculiar to Western India, and is a corruption of Port. orta (now more usually horta) . "Any man's particular allotment of coco-nut trees in the groves at Mahim or Girgaum is spoken of as his oart." ”

“ But to show that he did this as a matter of justice, he sent a further order that nothing should be done till they received an olla, or letter of his sign manual written in letters of gold; and so he (the King of Pegù) ordered all the families of those nobles to be kept prisoners, even to the women big with child, and the infants in bands, and so he caused the whole of them to be led upon the said scaffolding; and then the king sent the olla, ordering them to be burnt ”

“ The testimony of Maṣ'ūdī as to the introduction of the orange into Syria before his time (c. A.D. 930) , even if that were (as it would seem) the Seville orange, renders it quite possible that better qualities should have reached Lisbon or been developed there during the Saracenic occupation. It was indeed suggested in our hearing by the late Sir Henry M. Elliot that sangtarah might be interpreted as sang-tar, 'green stones' (or in fact 'moist pips') ”

“ An excessive fondness for opium prevails in all the countries to the east of India. The Chinese emperors have suppressed it in their dominions, by condemning to the flames every vessel that imports this species of poison."—Raynal (tr. 1777) , i. 424.
ORANGE, s. A good example of plausible but entirely incorrect etymology is that of orange from Lat. aurantium. The latter word is in fact an ingenious medieval fabrication. The word doubtless came from the Arab. nāranj, which is again a form of Pers. nārang, or nārangī, the latter being still a common term for the orange in Hindustan. ”

“ Soc., but translation modified. 1553.—"All the Gentiles of India ... when they wish to commit anything to written record, do it on certain palm-leaves which they call olla, of the breadth of two fingers."—Barros, I. ix. 3.
" "All the rest of the town was of wood, thatched with a kind of palm-leaf, which they call ola."—Ibid. I. iv. vii.
1561.—"All this was written by the king's writer, whose business it is to prepare his olas, which are palm-leaves, which they use for writing-paper, scratching it with an iron point."—Correa, i. 212-213. ”

“ Sumatra and Malabar pepper, of which they use a great deal in China, and drugs of Cambay, much anfiam, which we call opium...."—Barbosa, 206.
1563.—"R. I desire to know for certain about amfiao, what it is, which is used by the people of this country; if it is what we call opium, and whence comes such a quantity as is expended, and how much may be eaten every day? ”

“ Otho Cremonensis.
1511.—"Next day the General (Alboquerque) sent to call me to go ashore to speak to the King; and that I should say on his part ... that he had got 8 Guzzarate ships that he had taken on the way because they were enemies of the King of Portugal; and that these had many rich stuffs and much merchandize, and arfiun (for so they call opio tebaico) which they eat to cool themselves ”

“ Suratte, 284.
1727.—"You made several complaints against former Governors, all of which I have here from several of my Umbras."—Firmān of Aurangzīb, in A. Hamilton, ii. 227; [ed. 1744, i. 231] .
1791.—"... les Omrahs ou grands seigneurs Indiens...."—B. de St. Pierre, La Chaumière Indienne, 32.
OMUM WATER, s. A common domestic medicine in S. India, made from the strong-smelling carminative seeds of an umbelliferous plant, Carum copticum, Benth. (Ptychotis coptica, and Ptych. Ajowan of Decand.) , called in Tamil omam, [which comes from the Skt. yamāni, yavāni, in Hind. ajwān.] ”

“ But the late M. Reinaud completely solved the mystery by pointing out that Arin was simply a corruption of Ujjain. Even in Arabic the mistake had been thoroughly ingrained, insomuch that the word Arīn had been adopted as a generic name for a place of medium temperature or qualities (see Jorjānī, quoted below) .
c. A.D. 150.—"Ὀζηνὴ Βασίλειον Τιαστανοῦ."—Ptol. VII. i. 63. c. 930.—"The Equator passes between east and west through an island situated between Hind and Habash (Abyssinia) , and a little south of these two countries. ”

“ In the Āīn (ed. Gladwin, 1800, ii. 20) we read: "Sircar Silhet.... Here grows a delicious fruit called Soontara, in colour like an orange, but of an oblong form." This passage reads in Col. Jarrett's translation (ii. 124) : "There is a fruit called Súntarah in colour like an orange but large and very sweet." Col. Jarrett disputes the derivation of Sangtarah from Cintra, and he is followed by Mr. H. Beveridge, who remarks that Humayun calls the fruit Sanat̤ra. Mr. ”

“ Skeat remarks that the form of the word shows that it came from the Malay under Portuguese influence.]
1711.—At Madras ... "refreshments for the Men, which they are presently supply'ed with from Country Boats and Cattamarans, who make a good Peny at the first coming of Orombarros, as they call those who have not been there before."—Lockyer, 28.
ORTOLAN, s. This name is applied by Europeans in India to a small lark, Calandrella brachydactyla, Temm., in Hind. bargel and bageri, [Skt. varga, 'a troop'] . Also sometimes in S. India to the finch-lark, Pyrrhalauda grisea, Scopoli. ”

“ The name of the ancient kingdom and modern province which lies between Bengal and the Coromandel Coast.
1516.—"Kingdom of Orisa. Further on towards the interior there is another kingdom which is conterminous with that of Narsynga, and on another side with Bengala, and on another with the great Kingdom of Dely...."—Barbosa, in Lisbon ed. 306. c. 1568.—"Orisa fu già vn Regno molto bello e securo ... sina che regnò il suo Rè legitimo, qual era Gentile."—Ces. Federici, Ramusio, iii. 392.
[c. 1616.—"Vdeza, the Chiefe Citty called Iekanat (Juggurnaut) ."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 538.] ”

“ Nikitin, ibid. p. 8. 1503.—"Habitant autem ex eorum (Francorum) gente homines fere viginti in urbe Cananoro: ad quos profecti, postquam ex Hormizda urbe ad eam Indorum civitatem Cananorum venimus, significavimus illis nos esse Christianos, nostramque conditionem et gradum indicavimus; et ab illis magno cum gaudio suscepti sumus.... Eorundem autem Francorum regio Portugallus vocatur, una ex Francorum regionibus; eorumque Rex Emanuel appellatur; Emmanuelem oramus ut illum custodiat."—Letter from Nestorian Bishops on Mission to India, in Assemani, iii. ”

“ Soc. i. 155] .
c. 1686.—"Those Gentlemen's Friends in the Committee of the Company in England, acquainted them by Letters over Land, of the Danger they were in, and gave them Warning to be on their guard."—A. Hamilton, i. 196; [ed. 1744, i. 195] .
1737.—"Though so far apart that we can only receive letters from Europe once a year, while it takes 18 months to get an answer, we Europeans get news almost every year over land by Constantinople, through Arabia or Persia.... A few days ago we received the news of the Peace in Europe; of the death of Prince Eugene ”