Henry Yule

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cactus fruit, yellow, purple, and red, which may be said to form an important article of diet in the Mediterranean, and which is now sometimes seen in London shops, is not, as far as we know, anywhere used in India, except in times of famine. No cactus is named in Drury's Useful Plants of India. And whether the Mediterranean plants form a different species, or varieties merely, as compared with the Indian Opuntia, is a matter for inquiry. The fruit of the Indian plant is smaller and less succulent. ”

“ PAWL, s. Hind. pāl, [Skt. paṭala, 'a roof'] . A small tent with two light poles, and steep sloping sides; no walls, or ridge-pole. I believe the statement 'no ridge-pole,' is erroneous. It is difficult to derive from memory an exact definition of tents, and especially of the difference between pawl and shooldarry. A reference to India failed in getting a reply. The shooldarry is not essentially different from the pawl, but is trimmer, tauter, better closed, and sometimes has two flies. ”

“ The word is a corruption of Tamil Puarassu, 'Flower-king'; [pu-varasu, from pu, 'flower,' arasu, 'peepul tree'] . In Ceylon it is called Suria gansuri, and also the Tulip-tree.
1742.—"Le bois sur lequel on les met (les toiles) , et celui qu'on employe pour les battre, sont ordinairement de tamarinier, ou d'un autre arbe nommé porchi."—Lett. Edif. xiv. 122. 1860.—"Another useful tree, very common in Ceylon, is the Suria, with flowers so like those of a tulip that Europeans know it as the tulip tree. It loves the sea air and saline soils. ”

“ It is like a bed of state ... with a pole of wood above ... this is curved, and made of the Indian cane, solid and compact. Eight men, divided into two relays, are employed in turn to carry one of these; four carry the palankin whilst four rest. These vehicles serve in India the same purpose as donkeys in Egypt; most people use them habitually in going and coming. If a man has his own slaves, he is carried by them; if not he hires men to carry him. ”

“ We may mention two possible origins for Panthé, as indicating lines for enquiry:— a. The title Pathí (or Passí, for the former is only the Burmese lisping utterance) is very old. In the remarkable Chinese Account of Camboja, dating from the year 1296, which has been translated by Abel-Rémusat, there is a notice of a sect in Camboja called Pa-sse. The author identifies them in a passing way, with the Tao-sse, but that is a term which Fah-hian also in India uses in a vague way, apparently quite inapplicable to the Chinese sect properly so called. ”

“ They were created by the sacrifice of the Indian manufactures. Had India been independent, she would have retaliated; would have imposed preventive duties upon British goods, and would thus have preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. ”

“ It has been carried, as the sacred language, to all the Indo-Chinese countries which have derived their religion from India through Ceylon. Pālī is "a sort of Tuscan among the Prākrits" from its inherent grace and strength (Childers) . But the analogy to Tuscan is closer still in the parallelism of the modification of Sanskrit words, used in Pālī, to that of Latin words used in Italian.
Robert Knox does not apparently know by that name the Pālī language in Ceylon. He only speaks of the Books of Religion as "being in an eloquent style which the Vulgar people do not understand" (p. 75) ”

“ The Pariahs "constitute a well-defined, distinct, ancient caste, which has 'subdivisions' of its own, its own peculiar usages, its own traditions, and its own jealousy of the encroachments of the castes which are above it and below it. They constitute, perhaps, the most numerous caste in the Tamil country. In the city of Madras they number 21 per cent. of the Hindu people."—Bp. Caldwell, u. i., p. 545. Sir Walter Elliot, however, in the paper referred to further on includes under the term Paraiya all the servile class not recognised by Hindus of caste as belonging to their community. ”

“ It is the same fruit as the shaddock of the West Indies; but to the larger varieties some form of the name Pommelo seems also to be applied in the West. A small variety, with a fine skin, is sold in London shops as "the Forbidden fruit." The fruit, though grown in gardens over a great part of India, really comes to perfection only near the Equator, and especially in Java, whence it was probably brought to the continent. ”

“ The Pariahs have a sacerdotal order amongst themselves.' [The view taken in the Madras Gloss. is that "they are distinctly Dravidian without fusion, as the Hinduized castes are Dravidian with fusion."]
The mistaken use of pariah, as synonymous with out-caste, has spread in English parlance over all India. Thus the lamented Prof. Blochmann, in his School Geography of India: "Outcasts are called pariahs." The name first became generally known in Europe through Sonnerat's Travels (pub. in 1782, and soon after translated into English) . In this work the Parias figure as the lowest of castes. ”

“ On the other hand, it is a very singular coincidence that men known as Pindhāris should have been newly settled about 1794 in a country which had been known as Pandhār at least ninety years before they thus occupied it. Such a mere fortuitous connection between Pandhār and the Pindhāris is so extraordinary that we may call it an impossibility. A fair inference is that the region Pandhār was the original home of the Pindhāris, that they took their name from it, and that grants of land between Burhānpur and Handiya were made to them in what had always been their home-country, namely Pandhār. ”

“ It is a curious example of the way in which different accidental mouldings of the same word come to denote entirely different ideas, that Persian, in this form, in Western India, means a Zoroastrian fire-worshipper, whilst Pathi (see PANTHAY) , a Burmese corruption of the same word, in Burma means a Mahommedan.
c. 1328.—"There be also other pagan-folk in this India who worship fire; they bury not their dead, neither do they burn them, but cast them into the midst of a certain roofless tower, and there expose them totally uncovered to the fowls of heaven. ”

“ The Portuguese themselves do not seem ever to have struck gold pardaos or pagodas. The gold coin of Alboquerque's coinage (1510) was, we have seen, a cruzado (or manuel) , and the next coinage in gold was by Garcia de Sá in 1548-9, who issued coins called San Thomé, worth 1000 reis, say about £1, 2s. 4d.; with halves and quarters of the same. Neither, according to D'Acunha, was there silver money of any importance coined at Goa from 1510 to 1550, and the coins then issued were silver San Thomés, called also patacões (see PATACA) . ”

“ The word Sepoy was used within our recollection, and perhaps is still, in the same sense in the city of Bombay. The transition of meaning comes out plainly in the quotation from Ives. In the sense of 'orderly,' peon is the word usual in S. India, whilst chuprassy (q.v.) is more common in N. India, though peon is also used there. The word is likewise very generally employed for men on police service (see BURKUNDAUZE) . [Mr. Skeat notes that Piyun is used in the Malay States, and Tambi or Tanby at Singapore] . ”

“ De Candolle seems to have no doubt that the water-melon was cultivated in ancient Egypt, and believes it to have been introduced into the Graeco-Roman world about the beginning of our era; whilst Hehn carries it to Persia from India, 'whether at the time of the Arabian or of the Mongol domination, (and then) to Greece, through the medium of the Turks, and to Russia, through that of the Tartar States of Astrakan and Kazan.'
The name pateca, looking to the existence of the same word in Spanish, we should have supposed to have been Portuguese long before the Portuguese establishment in India ”

“ The original of this word, Skt. pippali, means not the ordinary pepper of commerce ('black pepper') but long pepper, and the Sanskrit name is still so applied in Bengal, where one of the long-pepper plants, which have been classed sometimes in a different genus (Chavica) from the black pepper, was at one time much cultivated. There is still indeed a considerable export of long pepper from Calcutta; and a kindred species grows in the Archipelago. Long pepper is mentioned by Pliny, as well as white and black pepper ”

“ But, strictly speaking, the medieval Persian language is called Pahlavi when it is written in one of the characters used before the invention of the modern Persian alphabet, and in the peculiarly enigmatical mode adopted in Pahlavi writings.... Like the Assyrians of old, the Persians of Parthian times appear to have borrowed their writing from a foreign race. But, whereas the Semitic Assyrians adopted a Turanian syllabary, these later Aryan Persians accepted a Semitic alphabet. ”

“ The name plantain is no more originally Indian than is banana. It, or rather platano, appears to have been the name under which the fruit was first carried to the W. Indies, according to Oviedo, in 1516; the first edition of his book was published in 1526. That author is careful to explain that the plant was improperly so called, as it was quite another thing from the platanus described by Pliny. Bluteau says the word is Spanish. ”

“ The spirits of the dead, and particularly of those who have met with violent deaths, are especially so entitled. They are called in Tamil pey. Sir Walter Elliot considers that the Piśāchīs were (as in the case of Rākshasas) a branch of the aboriginal inhabitants. In a note he says: 'The Piśāchī dialect appears to have been a distinct Dravidian dialect, still to be recognised in the speech of the Paraiya, who cannot pronounce distinctly some of the pure Tamil letters.' There is, however, in the Hindu drama a Piśāchā bhāshā, a gibberish or corruption of Sanskrit, introduced. ”

“ Within the last 30 or 35 years the term has acquired in India a peculiar application to the natives trained in the use of instruments, who have been employed beyond the British Indian frontier in surveying regions inaccessible to Europeans. ”

“ The national game of Hockey, which is played by every male of the country capable of sitting a horse, renders them all expert equestrians; and it was by men and horses so trained, that the princes of Muneepoor were able for many years not only to repel the aggressions of the Burmahs, but to save the whole country ... and plant their banners on the banks of the Irrawattee."—Pemberton's Report on the E. Frontier of Br. India, 31-32. ”

“ If a subject of these misbelievers dies, leaving young children, and no grown-up son, the children are considered wards of the State. They take them to their places of worship, their churches ... and the padris, that is to say the priests, instruct the children in the Christian religion, and bring them up in their own faith, whether the child be a Mussulman saiyid or a Hindú bráhman."—Kháfi Khán, in Elliot, vii. ”

“ The surname Pāṇḍē [Skt. Paṇḍita] was a very common one among the high-caste Sepoys of the Bengal army, being the title of a Jōt [got, gotra] or subdivisional branch of the Brahmins of the Upper Provinces, which furnished many men to the ranks. "The first two men hung" (for mutiny) "at Barrackpore were Pandies by caste, hence all sepoys were Pandies, and ever will be so called" (Bourchier, as below) . "In the Bengal army before the Mutiny, there was a person employed in the quarter-guard to strike the gong, who was known as the gunta Pandy" (M.-G. Keatinge) . ”

“ It is unfortunate that our Burmese scholars have never (I believe) been Sanskrit scholars, nor vice versâ, so that the Palee terms used in Burma have had little elucidation. On the word in question, Professor H. H. Wilson has kindly favoured me with a note: 'Phrá is no doubt a corruption of the Sanskrit Prabhu, a Lord or Master; the h of the aspirate bh is often retained alone, leaving Prahu which becomes Práh or Phra.'"—Sir H. Yule, Mission to Ava, 61. ”

“ Both name and thing are represented as novelties to Ruano. Garcia tells him also that the Arabs and Persians call it batiec indi, i.e. melon of India (F. Johnson gives 'biṭṭīkh-i-hindī, the citrul'; whilst in Persian hinduwāna is also a word for water-melon) but that the real Indian country name was (calangari Mahr. kālingaṛ, [perhaps that known in the N.W.P. as kalindā, 'a water-melon'] ) . Ruano then refers to the budiecas of Castille of which he had heard, and queries if these were not the same as these Indian patecas, but Garcia says they are quite different. ”

“ Such a garment is used by various persons in India, e.g. by women of various classes, by Sikh men, and by most Mahommedans of both sexes. It was adopted from the Mahommedans by Europeans as an article of dishabille and of night attire, and is synonymous with Long Drawers, Shulwáurs, and Mogul-breeches. [For some distinctions between these various articles of dress see Forbes-Watson, (Textile Manufactures, 57) .] It is probable that we English took the habit like a good many others from the Portuguese. ”

“ But in Malay pādī [according to Mr. Skeat, usually pronounced pădi] Javan. pārī, is 'rice in the straw.' And the direct parentage of the word in India is thus apparently due to the Archipelago; arising probably out of the old importance of the export trade of rice from Java (see Raffles, Java, i. 239-240, and Crawfurd's Hist. iii. 345, and Descript. Dict., 368) . Crawfurd, (Journ. Ind. Arch., iv. 187) seems to think that the Malayo-Javanese word may have come from India with the Portuguese. But this is impossible, for as he himself has shown (Desc. Dict., u.s.) ”