Henry Yule

“ TANGA, s. Mahr. ṭānk, Turki tanga. A denomination of coin which has been in use over a vast extent of territory, and has varied greatly in application. It is now chiefly used in Turkestan, where it is applied to a silver coin worth about 71⁄2d. And Mr. W. Erskine has stated that the word tanga or tanka is of Chagatai Turki origin, being derived from tang, which in that language means 'white' (H. of Baber and Humayun, i. 546) . Though one must hesitate in differing from one usually so accurate, we must do so here. ”

“ The word always implies superiority on the part of him to whom tashrīf is attributed. It is constantly used by polite natives in addressing Europeans. But when the European in return says (as we have heard said, through ignorance of the real meaning of the phrase) , 'I will bring my tashrīf,' the effect is ludicrous in the extreme, though no native will betray his amusement. In S. India the word seems to be used for the dress of honour conferred, and in the old Madras records, rightly or wrongly, for any complimentary present, in fact a honorarium. ”

“ Ṭanka or Ṭanga seems to have continued to be the popular name of the chief silver coin of the Delhi sovereigns during the 13th and first part of the 14th centuries, a coin which was substantially the same with the rupee (q.v.) of later days. In fact this application of the word in the form ṭakā (see TUCKA) is usual in Bengal down to our own day. Ibn Batuta indeed, who was in India in the time of Mahommed Tughlak, 1333-1343 or thereabouts, always calls the gold coin then current a tanka or dīnār of gold. ”

“ He states that prior to the time of Alompra's conquest of Pegu (middle of 18th century) the name Talaing was entirely unknown as an appellation of the Muns, and that it nowhere occurs in either inscriptions or older palm-leaves, and that by all nations of Further India the people in question is known by names related to either Mun or Pegu. He goes on: "The word 'Talaing' is the term by which the Muns acknowledged their total defeat, their being vanquished and the slaves of their Burmese conqueror. ”

“ It is used in Indian trade in the same loose way that spelter is used, for either zinc or pewter (peh-yuen, or 'white lead' of the Chinese) . The base of the word is no doubt the Pers. tūtiya, Skt. tuttha, an oxide of zinc, generally in India applied to blue vitriol or sulphate of copper, but the formation of the word is obscure. Possibly the last syllable is merely an adjective affix, in which way nāk is used in Persian. Or it may be nāga in the sense of lead, which is one of the senses given by Shakespear. ”

“ Nothing like so far back in the history of the Indo-Europeans does the lion's dreadful rival for supremacy over the beasts, the tiger, go. In India the songs of the Rigveda have nothing to say about him; his name (vyághrá) first occurs in the Atharvaveda, i.e. at a time when the Indian immigration must have extended much farther towards the Ganges; for it is in the reeds and grasses of Bengal that we have to look for the tiger's proper home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the people were numerous they made quite a big town with a number of houses covered with upper stories of timber, and streets also where the people of the country set up their stalls in which they sold plenty of victuals, and cheap. Thus for a vinten of silver you got in change 20 silver coins that they called taras, something like the scale of a sardine, and for such coin they gave you 12 or 15 figs, or 4 or 5 eggs, and for a single vintem 3 or 4 fowls, and for one tara fish enough to fill two men's bellies, or rice enough for a day's victuals, dinner and supper too. ”

“ It is content with depriving man of his. It selects by preference the hours of the night as the time for its malign influence to assert its most potent sway. It reverberates its dull unmeaning monotones through the fitful dreams which sheer exhaustion brings. It inspires delusive hopes by a brief lull only to break forth with refreshed vigour into wilder ecstacies of maniacal fury—accompanied with nasal incantations and protracted howls...."—Overland Times of India, April 14.
TONGA, s. A kind of light and small two-wheeled vehicle, Hind, tāngā, [Skt. tamanga, 'a platform'] . ”

“ Fr. Paolino, on the other hand, says the word tanque used by the Portuguese in India was Portoghesa corrotta, which is vague. But in fact tanque is a word which appears in all Portuguese dictionaries, and which is used by authors so early after the opening of communication with India (we do not know if there is an instance actually earlier) that we can hardly conceive it to have been borrowed from an Indian language, nor indeed could it have been borrowed from Guzerat and Rajpūtāna, to which the quotations above ascribe the vernacular word. ”

“ Tea does not appear to be mentioned by the medieval Arab writers upon Materia Medica, nor (strange to say) do any of the European travellers to Cathay in the 13th and 14th centuries make mention of it. Nor is there any mention of it in the curious and interesting narrative of the Embassy sent by Shāh Rukh, the son of the great Timur, to China (1419-21) . [3] The first European work, so far as we are aware, in which tea is named, is Ramusio's (posthumous) Introduction to Marco Polo, in the second volume of his great collection of Navigationi e Viaggi. ”

“ The word is Malayāl. tekka, Tam. tekku. No doubt this name was adopted owing to the fact that Europeans first became acquainted with the wood in Malabar, which is still one of the two great sources of supply; Pegu being the other. The Skt. name of the tree is śāka, whence the modern Hind. name sāgwān or sāgūn and the Mahr. śāg. From this last probably was taken sāj, the name of teak in Arabic and Persian. And we have doubtless the same word in the σαγαλίνα of the Periplus, one of the exports from Western India, a form which may be illustrated by the Mahr. adj. ”

“ Observe that the Port. tufão distinctly represents ṭūfān and not t'ai-fung, and the oldest English form 'tuffon' does the same, whilst it is not by any means unquestionable that these Portuguese and English forms were first applied in the China Sea, and not in the Indian Ocean. Observe also Lord Bacon's use of the word typhones in his Latin below; also that ṭūfān is an Arabic word, at least as old as the Koran, and closely allied in sound and meaning to τυφών, whilst it is habitually used for a storm in Hindustani. ”

“ Of all the followers of Mahomet ... none are so rigidly Abstemious as the Arabians of Muscatt.... For Tea and Coffee, which are judg'd the privileg'd Liquors of all the Mahometans, as well as Turks, as those of Persia, India, and other parts of Arabia, are condemned by them as unlawful...."—Ovington, 427. ”

“ TEA, s. Crawfurd alleges that we got this word in its various European forms from the Malay Te, the Chinese name being Chhâ. The latter is indeed the pronunciation attached, when reading in the 'mandarin dialect,' to the character representing the tea-plant, and is the form which has accompanied the knowledge of tea to India, Persia, Portugal, Greece (τσάι) and Russia. ”

“ The great-leaved fan-palm of S. India and Ceylon, Corypha umbraculifera, L. The name, from Skt. tāla-pattra, Hind. tālpāt, 'leaf of the tāla tree,' properly applies to the leaf of such a tree, or to the smaller leaf of the palmyra (Borassus flabelliformis) , used for many purposes, e.g. for slips to write on, to make fans and umbrellas, &c. See OLLAH, PALMYRA, TALAPOIN. Sometimes we find the word used for an umbrella, but this is not common. The quotation from Jordanus, though using no name, refers to this tree. ”

“ This word is often in England imagined to have some connection with tea, and hence, in London shops for japanned ware and the like, a teapoy means a tea-chest fixed on legs. But this is quite erroneous. Tipāī is a Hindustāni, or perhaps rather an Anglo-Hindustāni word for a tripod, from Hind. tīn, 3, and Pers. pāē, 'foot.' The legitimate word from the Persian is sipāī (properly sihpāya) , and the legitimate Hindi word tirpad or tripad, but tipāī or tepoy was probably originated by some European in analogy with the familiar charpoy (q.v.) ”

“ TEMBOOL, Betel-leaf. Skt. tāmbūla, adopted in Pers. as tāmbūl, and in Ar. al-tambūl. [It gives its name to the Tambolis or Tamolis, sellers of betel in the N. Indian bazars.]
1298.—"All the people of this city, as well as the rest of India, have a custom of perpetually keeping in the mouth a certain leaf called Tembul...."—Marco Polo, ii. 358. 1498.—"And he held in his left hand a very great cup of gold as high as a half almude pot ... into which he spat a certain herb which the men of this country chew for solace, and which herb they call atambor."—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 59. ”

“ Mandarin, pagoda, chop, cooly, tutenague;—none of these are Chinese. And the probability is that Vasco and his followers got the tufão, which our sailors made into touffon and then into typhoon, as they got the monção which our sailors made into monsoon, direct from the Arab pilots.
The Arabic word is ṭūfān, which is used habitually in India for a sudden and violent storm. Lane defines it as meaning 'an overpowering rain, ... Noah's flood,' etc. And there can be little doubt of its identity with the Greek τυφῶν or τυφών. ”

“ This word, Ar. ta'alluḳ, from root 'alaḳ, 'to hang or depend,' has various shades of meaning in different parts of India. In S. and W. India it is the subdivision of a district, presided over as regards revenue matters by a tahseeldar. In Bengal it is applied to tracts of proprietary land, sometimes not easily distinguished from Zemindaries, and sometimes subordinate to or dependent on Zemindars. In the N.W. Prov. and Oudh the ta'alluḳ is an estate the profits of which are divided between different proprietors, one being superior, the other inferior (see TALOOKDAR) . ”

“ And native scholars, instead of admitting the anachronism, have boldly maintained that the turkey had always been found in India (Dravidian Gramm. 2nd ed. p. 137) . Padre Paolino was apparently of the same opinion, for whilst explaining that the etymology of Calicut is "Castle of the Fowls," he asserts that Turkeys (Galli d'India) came originally from India; being herein, as he often is, positive and wrong. ”

“ This weight is by the Burmese themselves called kyat, and is the hundredth part of the viss (q.v.) , being thus equivalent to about 11⁄4 rupee in value. The origin of the word tikāl is doubtful. Sir A. Phayre suggests that possibly it is a corruption of the Burmese words ta-kyat, "one kyat." On the other hand perhaps it is more probable that the word may have represented the Indian ṭakā (see TUCKA) . The word is also used by traders to Siam. But there likewise it is a foreign term; the Siamese word being bat. ”

“ The prejudice against encamping or sleeping under a tamarind tree is general in India. But, curiously, Bp. Pallegoix speaks of it as the practice of the Siamese "to rest and play under the beneficent shade of the Tamarind."— (Desc. du Royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 136) . ”

“ A city and territory on the coast of the Peninsula of Further India. It belonged to the ancient kingdom of Pegu, and fell with that to Ava. When we took from the latter the provinces east and south of the Delta of the Irawadi, after the war of 1824-26, these were officially known as "the Martaban and Tenasserim Province," or often as "the Tenasserim Provinces." We have the name probably from the Malay form Tanasari. We do not know to what language the name originally belongs. The Burmese call it Ta-nen-thā-ri. ”

“ But there is also a simpler Hind. word ṭop, for a helmet or hat, and the quotation from the Roteiro Vocabulary seems to show that the word existed in India when the Portuguese first arrived. With the usual tendency to specialize foreign words, we find this word becomes specialized in application to the sola hat.
1498.—In the vocabulary ("Este he a linguajem de Calicut") we have: "barrete (i.e. a cap) : tupy."—Roteiro, 118. ”

“ Nearchus says he saw the skin of a tiger, but did not see the beast itself, and that the Indians assert the tiger to be as big as the biggest horse; whilst in swiftness and strength there is no creature to be compared to him. And when he engages the elephant he springs on its head, and easily throttles it. ”

“ At a later period under Sikandar Buhlol (1488-1517) , we find black (or copper) tankas, of which 20 went to the old silver tanka.
We cannot say when the coin, or its name rather, first appeared in Turkestan.
But the name was also prevalent on the western coast of India as that of a low denomination of coin, as may be seen in the quotations from Linschoten and Grose. Indeed the name still survives in Goa as that of a copper coin equivalent to 60 reis or about 2d. ”