B (part 1)

BABA, s. This is the word usually applied in Anglo-Indian families, by both Europeans and natives, to the children—often in the plural form, bābā lōg (lōg = folk). The word is not used by the natives among themselves in the same way, at least not habitually: and it would seem as if our word baby had influenced the use. The word bābā is properly Turki = 'father'; sometimes used to a child as a term of endearment (or forming part of such a term, as in the P. Bābājān, 'Life of your Father'). Compare the Russian use of batushka. [Bābājī is a common form of address to a Faḳīr, usually a member of one of the Musulman sects. And hence it is used generally as a title of respect.]

[1685.—"A Letter from the Pettepolle Bobba."—Pringle, Diary, Fort St. Geo. iv. 92.]

1826.—"I reached the hut of a Gossein ... and reluctantly tapped at the wicket, calling, 'O Baba, O Maharaj.'"—Pandurang Hari [ed. 1873, i. 76].

[1880.—"While Sunny Baba is at large, and might at any time make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a novel on the spider chair near the mouth of the thermantidote, the Ayah and Bearer dare not leave their charge."—Aberigh-Mackay, Twenty-one Days, p. 94.]

BABAGOOREE, s. H. Bābāghūrī, the white agate (or chalcedony?) of Cambay. [For these stones see Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. i. 323: Tavernier, ed. Ball, i. 68.] It is apparently so called from the patron saint or martyr of the district containing the mines, under whose special protection the miners place themselves before descending into the shafts. Tradition alleges that he was a prince of the great Ghori dynasty, who was killed in a great battle in that region. But this prince will hardly be found in history.

1516.—"They also find in this town (Limadura in Guzerat) much chalcedony, which they call babagore. They make beads with it, and other things which they wear about them."—Barbosa, 67.

1554.—"In this country (Guzerat) is a profusion of Bābāghūrī and carnelians; but the best of these last are those coming from Yaman."—Sidi 'Ali Kapudān, in J.A.S.B. v. 463.

1590.—"By the command of his Majesty grain weights of bābāghūrī were made, which were used in weighing."—Āīn, i. 35, and note, p. 615 (Blochmann).

1818.—"On the summit stands the tomb ... of the titular saint of the country, Baba Ghor, to whom a devotion is paid more as a deity than as a saint...."—Copland, in Tr. Lit. Soc. Bo., i. 294.

1849.—Among ten kinds of carnelians specified in H. Briggs's Cities of Gujaráshtra we find "Bawa Gori Akik, a veined kind."—p. 183.

BABBS, n.p. This name is given to the I. of Perim, in the St. of Babelmandel, in the quotation from Ovington. It was probably English sea-slang only. [Mr Whiteway points out that this is clearly from albabo, the Port. form of the Ar. word. João de Castro in Roteiro (1541), p. 34, says: "This strait is called by the neighbouring people, as well as those who dwell on the shores of the Indian Ocean, Albabo, which in Arabic signifies 'gates.'"]

[1610.—"We attempting to work up to the Babe."—Danvers, Letters, i. 52.]

[1611.—"There is at the Babb a ship come from Swahell."—Ibid. i. 111.]

1690.—"The Babbs is a small island opening to the Red Sea.... Between this and the Main Land is a safe Passage...."—Ovington, 458.

[1769.—"Yet they made no estimation of the currents without the Babs"; (note), "This is the common sailors' phrase for the Straits of Babelmandel."—Bruce, Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, ed. 1790, Bk. i. cap. ii.]

BABER, BHABUR, s. H. bābar, bhābar. A name given to those districts of the N.W. Provinces which lie immediately under the Himālaya to the dry forest belt on the talus of the hills, at the lower edge of which the moisture comes to the surface and forms the wet forest belt called Tarāī. (See TERAI.) The following extract from the report of a lecture on Indian Forests is rather a happy example of the danger of "a little learning" to a reporter:

1877.—"Beyond that (the Tarāī) lay another district of about the same breadth, called in the native dialect the Bahadar. That in fact was a great filter-bed of sand and vegetation."—London Morning Paper of 26th May.

BABI-ROUSSA, s. Malay babi ('hog') rūsa ('stag'). The 'Stag-hog,' a remarkable animal of the swine genus (Sus babirussa, L.; Babirussa alfurus, F. Cuvier), found in the island of Bourou, and some others of the I. Archipelago, but nowhere on continental Asia. Yet it seems difficult to apply the description of Pliny below, or the name and drawing given by Cosmas, to any other animal. The 4-horned swine of Aelian is more probably the African Wart-hog, called accordingly by F. Cuvier Phacochoerus Aeliani.

c. A.D. 70.—"The wild bores of India have two bowing fangs or tuskes of a cubit length, growing out of their mouth, and as many out of their foreheads like calves hornes."—Pliny, viii. 52 (Holland's Tr. i. 231).

c. 250. "Λέγει δὲ Δίνων ἐν Αἰθιωπίᾳ γίνεσθαι ... ὕς τετράκερως."—Aelian, De Nat. Anim. xvii. 10.

c. 545.—"The Choirelaphus ('Hog-stag') I have both seen and eaten."—Cosmas Indicopleustes, in Cathay, &c., p. clxxv.

1555.—"There are hogs also with hornes, and parats which prattle much which they call noris (Lory)."—Galvano, Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc. 120.

1658.—"Quadrupes hoc inusitatatae figurae monstrosis bestiis ascribunt Indi quod adversae speciei animalibus, Porco scilicet et Cervo, pronatum putent ... ita ut primo intuitu quatuor cornibus juxta se positis videatur armatum hoc animal Baby-Roussa."—Piso, App. to Bontius, p. 61.

[1869.—"The wild pig seems to be of a species peculiar to the island (Celebes); but a much more curious animal of this family is the Babirusa or Pig-deer, so named by the Malays from its long and slender legs, and curved tusks resembling horns. This extraordinary creature resembles a pig in general appearance, but it does not dig with its snout, as it feeds on fallen fruits.... Here again we have a resemblance to the Wart-hogs of Africa, whose upper canines grow outwards and curve up so as to form a transition from the usual mode of growth to that of the Babirusa. In other respects there seems no affinity between these animals, and the Babirusa stands completely isolated, having no resemblance to the pigs of any other part of the world."—Wallace, Malay Archip. (ed. 1890), p. 211, seqq.]

BABOO, s. Beng. and H. Bābū [Skt. vapra, 'a father']. Properly a term of respect attached to a name, like Master or Mr., and formerly in some parts of Hindustan applied to certain persons of distinction. Its application as a term of respect is now almost or altogether confined to Lower Bengal (though C. P. Brown states that it is also used in S. India for 'Sir, My lord, your Honour'). In Bengal and elsewhere, among Anglo-Indians, it is often used with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali. And from the extensive employment of the class, to which the term was applied as a title, in the capacity of clerks in English offices, the word has come often to signify 'a native clerk who writes English.'

1781.—"I said.... From my youth to this day I am a servant to the English. I have never gone to any Rajahs or Bauboos nor will I go to them."—Depn. of Dooud Sing, Commandant. In Narr. of Insurn. at Banaras in 1781. Calc. 1782. Reprinted at Roorkee, 1853. App., p. 165.

1782.—"Cantoo Baboo" appears as a subscriber to a famine fund at Madras for 200 Sicca Rupees.—India Gazette, Oct. 12.

1791.

"Here Edmund was making a monstrous ado,

About some bloody Letter and Conta Bah-Booh."

Letters of Simkin the Second, 147.

1803.—"... Calling on Mr. Neave I found there Baboo Dheep Narrain, brother to Oodit Narrain, Rajah at Benares."—Lord Valentia's Travels, i. 112.

1824.—"... the immense convent-like mansion of some of the more wealthy Baboos...."—Heber, i. 31, ed. 1844.

1834.—"The Baboo and other Tales, descriptive of Society in India."—Smith & Elder, London. (By Augustus Prinsep.)

1850.—"If instruction were sought for from them (the Mohammedan historians) we should no longer hear bombastic Baboos, enjoying under our Government the highest degree of personal liberty ... rave about patriotism, and the degradation of their present position."—Sir H. M. Elliot, Orig. Preface to Mahom. Historians of India, in Dowson's ed., I. xxii.

c. 1866.

"But I'd sooner be robbed by a tall man who showed me a yard of steel,

Than be fleeced by a sneaking Baboo, with a peon and badge at his heel."

Sir A. C. Lyall, The Old Pindaree.

1873.—"The pliable, plastic, receptive Baboo of Bengal eagerly avails himself of this system (of English education) partly from a servile wish to please the Sahib logue, and partly from a desire to obtain a Government appointment."—Fraser's Mag., August, 209.

[1880.—"English officers who have become de-Europeanised from long residence among undomesticated natives.... Such officials are what Lord Lytton calls White Baboos."—Aberigh-Mackay, Twenty-one Days, p. 104.]

N.B.—In Java and the further East bābū means a nurse or female servant (Javanese word).

BABOOL, s. H. babūl, babūr (though often mispronounced bābul, as in two quotations below); also called kīkar. A thorny mimosa common in most parts of India except the Malabar Coast; the Acacia arabica, Willd. The Bhils use the gum as food.

1666.—"L'eau de Vie de ce Païs ... qu'on y boit ordinairement, est faicte de jagre ou sucre noir, qu'on met dans l'eau avec de l'écorce de l'arbre Baboul, pour y donner quelque force, et ensuite on les distile ensemble."—Thevenot, v. 50.

1780.—"Price Current. Country Produce: Bable Trees, large, 5 pc. each tree."—Hickey's Bengal Gazette, April 29. [This is bāblā, the Bengali form of the word.]

1824.—"Rampoor is ... chiefly remarkable for the sort of fortification which surrounds it. This is a high thick hedge ... of bamboos ... faced on the outside by a formidable underwood of cactus and bâbool."—Heber, ed. 1844, i. 290.

1849.—"Look at that great tract from Deesa to the Hāla mountains. It is all sand; sometimes it has a little ragged clothing of bābul or milk-bush."—Dry Leaves from Young Egypt, 1.

BABOON, s. This, no doubt, comes to us through the Ital. babuino; but it is probable that the latter word is a corruption of Pers. maimūn ['the auspicious one'], and then applied by way of euphemism or irony to the baboon or monkey. It also occurs in Ital. under the more direct form of maimone in gatto-maimone, 'cat-monkey,' or rather 'monkey-cat.' [The N.E.D. leaves the origin of the word doubtful, and does not discuss this among other suggested derivations.]

BACANORE and BARCELORE, nn.pp. Two ports of Canara often coupled together in old narratives, but which have entirely disappeared from modern maps and books of navigation, insomuch that it is not quite easy to indicate their precise position. But it would seem that Bacanore, Malayāl. Vakkanūr, is the place called in Canarese Bārkūr, the Barcoor-pettah of some maps, in lat. 13° 28½′. This was the site of a very old and important city, "the capital of the Jain kings of Tulava ... and subsequently a stronghold of the Vijiyanagar Rajas."—Imp. Gazet. [Also see Stuart, Man. S. Canara, ii. 264.]

Also that Barcelore is a Port. corruption of Basrūr [the Canarese Basarūru, 'the town of the waved-leaf fig tree.' (Mad. Adm. Man. Gloss., s.v.).] It must have stood immediately below the 'Barsilur Peak' of the Admiralty charts, and was apparently identical with, or near to, the place called Seroor in Scott's Map of the Madras Presidency, in about lat. 13° 55′. [See Stuart, ibid. ii. 242. Seroor is perhaps the Shirūr of Mr Stuart (ibid. p. 243).]

c. 1330.—"Thence (from Hannaur) the traveller came to Bāsarūr, a small city...."—Abulfeda, in Gildemeister, 184.

c. 1343.—"The first town of Mulaibār that we visited was Abu-Sarūr, which is small, situated on a great estuary, and abounding in coco-nut trees.... Two days after our departure from that town we arrived at Fākanūr, which is large and situated on an estuary. One sees there an abundance of sugar-cane, such as has no equal in that country."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 77-78.

c. 1420.—"Duas praeterea ad maritimas urbes, alteram Pachamuriam ... nomine, xx diebus transiit."—Conti, in Poggius de Var. Fort. iv.

1501.—"Bacanut," for Bacanur, is named in Amerigo Vespucci's letter, giving an account of Da Gama's discoveries, first published by Baldelli Boni, Il Milione, pp. liii. seqq.

1516.—"Passing further forward ... along the coast, there are two little rivers on which stand two places, the one called Bacanor, and the other Bracalor, belonging to the kingdom of Narsyngua and the province of Tolinate (Tulu-nāḍa, Tuluva or S. Canara). And in them is much good rice grown round about these places, and this is loaded in many foreign ships and in many of Malabar...."—Barbosa, in Lisbon Coll. 294.

1548.—"The Port of the River of Barcalor pays 500 loads (of rice as tribute)."—Botelho, Tombo, 246.

1552.—"Having dispatched this vessel, he (V. da Gama) turned to follow his voyage, desiring to erect the padrão (votive pillar) of which we have spoken; and not finding a place that pleased him better, he erected one on certain islets joined (as it were) to the land, giving it the name of Sancta Maria, whence these islands are now called Saint Mary's Isles, standing between Bacanor and Baticalá, two notable places on that coast."—De Barros, I. iv. 11.

" "... the city Onor, capital of the kingdom, Baticalá, Bendor, Bracelor, Bacanor."—Ibid. I. ix. 1.

1726.—"In Barseloor or Basseloor have we still a factory ... a little south of Basseloor lies Baquanoor and the little River Vier."—Valentijn, v. (Malabar) 6.

1727.—"The next town to the Southward of Batacola [Batcul] is Barceloar, standing on the Banks of a broad River about 4 Miles from the Sea.... The Dutch have a Factory here, only to bring up Rice for their Garrisons.... Baccanoar and Molkey lie between Barceloar and Mangalore, both having the benefit of Rivers to export the large quantities of Rice that the Fields produce."—A. Hamilton, i. 284-5. [Molkey is Mulki, see Stuart, op. cit. ii. 259.]

1780.—"St Mary's Islands lie along the coast N. and S. as far as off the river of Bacanor, or Callianpoor, being about 6 leagues.... In lat. 13° 50′ N., 5 leagues from Bacanor, runs the river Barsalor."—Dunn's N. Directory, 5th ed. 105.

1814.—"Barcelore, now frequently called Cundapore."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iv. 109, also see 113; [2nd ed. II. 464].

BACKDORE, s. H. bāg-ḍor ('bridle-cord'); a halter or leading rein.

BACKSEE. Sea H. bāksī: nautical 'aback,' from which it has been formed (Roebuck).

BADEGA, n.p. The Tamil Vaḍagar, i.e. 'Northerners.' The name has at least two specific applications:

a. To the Telegu people who invaded the Tamil country from the kingdom of Vijayanagara (the Bisnaga or Narsinga of the Portuguese and old travellers) during the later Middle Ages, but especially in the 16th century. This word first occurs in the letters of St. Francis Xavier (1544), whose Parava converts on the Tinnevelly Coast were much oppressed by these people. The Badega language of Lucena, and other writers regarding that time, is the Telegu. The Badagas of St. Fr. Xavier's time were in fact the emissaries of the Nāyaka rulers of Madura, using violence to exact tribute for those rulers, whilst the Portuguese had conferred on the Paravas "the somewhat dangerous privilege of being Portuguese subjects."—See Caldwell, H. of Tinnevelly, 69 seqq.

1544.—"Ego ad Comorinum Promontorium contendo eòque naviculas deduco xx. cibariis onustas, ut miseris illis subveniam Neophytis, qui Bagadarum (read Badagarum) acerrimorum Christiani nominis hostium terrore perculsi, relictis vicis, in desertas insulas se abdiderunt."—S. F. Xav. Epistt. I. vi., ed. 1677.

1572.—"Gens est in regno Bisnagae quos Badagas vocant."—E. Acosta, 4 b.

1737.—"In eâ parte missionis Carnatensis in quâ Telougou, ut aiunt, lingua viget, seu inter Badagos, quinque annos versatus sum; neque quamdiu viguerunt vires ab illâ dilectissimâ et sanctissimâ Missione Pudecherium veni."—In Norbert, iii. 230.

1875.—"Mr C. P. Brown informs me that the early French missionaries in the Guntur country wrote a vocabulary 'de la langue Talenga, dite vulgairement le Badega."—Bp. Caldwell, Dravidian Grammar, Intr. p. 33.

b. To one of the races occupying the Nilgiri Hills, speaking an old Canarese dialect, and being apparently a Canarese colony, long separated from the parent stock.—(See Bp. Caldwell's Grammar, 2nd ed., pp. 34, 125, &c.) [The best recent account of this people is that by Mr Thurston in Bulletin of the Madras Museum, vol. ii. No. 1.] The name of these people is usually in English corrupted to Burghers.

BADGEER, s. P. bād-gīr, 'wind-catch.' An arrangement acting as a windsail to bring the wind down into a house; it is common in Persia and in Sind. [It is the Bādhanj of Arabia, and the Malkaf of Egypt (Burton, Ar. Nights, i. 237; Lane, Mod. Egypt, i. 23.]

1298.—"The heat is tremendous (at Hormus), and on that account the houses are built with ventilators (ventiers) to catch the wind. These ventilators are placed on the side from which the wind comes, and they bring the wind down into the house to cool it."—Marco Polo, ii. 450.

[1598.—A similar arrangement at the same place is described by Linschoten, i. 51, Hak. Soc.]

1682.—At Gamron (Gombroon) "most of the houses have a square tower which stands up far above the roof, and which in the upper part towards the four winds has ports and openings to admit air and catch the wind, which plays through these, and ventilates the whole house. In the heat of summer people lie at night at the bottom of these towers, so as to get good rest."—Nieuhof, Zee en Lant-Reize, ii. 79.

[1798.—"The air in it was continually refreshed and renewed by a cool-sail, made like a funnel, in the manner of M. du Hamel."—Stavorinus, Voyage, ii. 104.]

1817.

"The wind-tower on the Emir's dome

Can scarcely win a breath from heaven."

Moore, Fire-worshippers.

1872.—"... Badgirs or windcatchers. You see on every roof these diminutive screens of wattle and dab, forming acute angles with the hatches over which they project. Some are moveable, so as to be turned to the S.W. between March and the end of July, when the monsoon sets in from that quarter."—Burton's Sind Revisited, 254.

1881.—"A number of square turrets stick up all over the town; these are badgirs or ventilators, open sometimes to all the winds, sometimes only to one or two, and divided inside like the flues of a great chimney, either to catch the draught, or to carry it to the several rooms below."—Pioneer Mail, March 8th.

BADJOE, BAJOO, s. The Malay jacket (Mal. bājū) [of which many varieties are described by Dennys (Disc. Dict. p. 107)].

[c. 1610.—"The women (Portuguese) take their ease in their smocks or Bajus, which are more transparent and fine than the most delicate crape of those parts."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ii. 112.]

1784.—"Over this they wear the badjoo, which resembles a morning gown, open at the neck, but fastened close at the wrist, and half-way up the arm."—Marsden, H. of Sumatra, 2nd ed. 44.

1878.—"The general Malay costume ... consists of an inner vest, having a collar to button tight round the neck, and the baju, or jacket, often of light coloured dimity, for undress."—McNair, 147.

1883.—"They wear above it a short-sleeved jacket, the baju, beautifully made, and often very tastefully decorated in fine needlework."—Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 139.

BAEL, s. H. bel, Mahr. bail, from Skt. vilva, the Tree and Fruit of Aegle marmelos (Correa), or 'Bengal Quince,' as it is sometimes called, after the name (Marmelos de Benguala) given it by Garcia de Orta, who first described the virtues of this fruit in the treatment of dysentery, &c. These are noticed also by P. Vincenzo Maria and others, and have always been familiar in India. Yet they do not appear to have attracted serious attention in Europe till about the year 1850. It is a small tree, a native of various parts of India. The dried fruit is now imported into England.—(See Hanbury and Flückiger, 116); [Watt, Econ. Dict. i. 117 seqq.]. The shelly rind of the bel is in the Punjab made into carved snuff-boxes for sale to the Afghans.

1563.—"And as I knew that it was called beli in Baçaim, I enquired of those native physicians which was its proper name, cirifole or beli, and they told me that cirifole [śriphala] was the physician's name for it."—Garcia De O., ff. 221 v., 222.

[1614.—"One jar of Byle at ru. 5 per maund."—Foster, Letters, iii. 41.]

1631.—Jac. Bontius describes the bel as malum cydonium (i.e. a quince), and speaks of its pulp as good for dysentery and the cholerae immanem orgasmum.—Lib. vi. cap. viii.

1672.—"The Bili plant grows to no greater height than that of a man [this is incorrect], all thorny ... the fruit in size and hardness, and nature of rind, resembles a pomegranate, dotted over the surface with little dark spots equally distributed.... With the fruit they make a decoction, which is a most efficacious remedy for dysenteries or fluxes, proceeding from excessive heat...."—P. Vincenzo, 353.

1879.—"... On this plain you will see a large bél-tree, and on it one big bél-fruit."—Miss Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, 140.

BAFTA, s. A kind of calico, made especially at Baroch; from the Pers. bāfta, 'woven.' The old Baroch baftas seem to have been fine goods. Nothing is harder than to find intelligible explanations of the distinction between the numerous varieties of cotton stuffs formerly exported from India to Europe under a still greater variety of names; names and trade being generally alike obsolete. Baftas however survived in the Tariffs till recently. [Bafta is at present the name applied to a silk fabric. (See quotation from Yusuf Ali below.) In Bengal, Charpata and Noakhali in the Chittagong Division were also noted for their cotton baftas (Birdwood, Industr. Arts, 249).]

1598.—"There is made great store of Cotton Linnen of diuers sort ... Boffetas."—Linschoten, p. 18. [Hak. Soc. i. 60.]

[1605-6.—"Patta Kassa of the ffinest Totya, Baffa."—Birdwood, First Letter Book, 73. We have also "Black Baffatta."—Ibid. 74.]

[1610.—"Baffata, the corge Rs. 100."—Danvers, Letters, i. 72.]

1612.—"Baftas or white Callicos, from twentie to fortie Royals the corge."—Capt. Saris, in Purchas, i. 347.

1638.—"... tisserans qui y font cette sorte de toiles de cotton, que l'on appelle baftas, qui sont les plus fines de toutes celles qui se font dans la Prouince de Guzaratta."—Mandelslo, 128.

1653.—"Baftas est un nom Indien qui signifie des toiles fort serrées de cotton, lesquelles la pluspart viennent de Baroche, ville du Royaume de Guzerat, appartenant au Grand Mogol."—De la B. le Gouz, 515.

1665.—"The Baftas, or Calicuts painted red, blue, and black, are carried white to Agra and Amadabad, in regard those cities are nearest the places where the Indigo is made that is us'd in colouring."—Tavernier, (E. T.) p. 127; [ed. Ball, ii. 5].

1672.—"Broach Baftas, broad and narrow."—Fryer, 86.

1727.—"The Baroach Baftas are famous throughout all India, the country producing the best Cotton in the World."—A. Hamilton, i. 144.

1875.—In the Calcutta Tariff valuation of this year we find Piece Goods, Cotton:

Baftahs, score, Rs. 30.

[1900.—"Akin to the pot thāns is a fabric known as Bafta (literally woven), produced in Benares; body pure silk, with butis in kalabatun or cloth; ... used for angarkhas, kots, and women's paijamas (Musulmans)."—Yusuf Ali, Mon. on Silk Fabrics, 97.]

It is curious to find this word now current on Lake Nyanza. The burial of King Mtesa's mother is spoken of:

1883.—"The chiefs half filled the nicely-padded coffin with bufta (bleached calico) ... after that the corpse and then the coffin was filled up with more bufta...."—In Ch. Missy. Intelligencer, N.S., viii. p. 543.

BAHAR, s. Ar. bahār, Malayāl. bhāram, from Skt. bhāra, 'a load.' A weight used in large trading transactions; it varied much in different localities; and though the name is of Indian origin it was naturalised by the Arabs, and carried by them to the far East, being found in use, when the Portuguese arrived in those seas, at least as far as the Moluccas. In the Indian islands the bahār is generally reckoned as equal to 3 peculs (q.v.), or 400 avoirdupois. But there was a different bahār in use for different articles of merchandise; or, rather, each article had a special surplus allowance in weighing, which practically made a different bahār (see PICOTA). [Mr. Skeat says that it is now uniformly equal to 400 lbs. av. in the British dominions in the Malay Peninsula; but Klinkert gives it as the equivalent of 12 pikuls of Agar-agar; 6 of cinnamon; 3 of Tripang.]

1498.—"... and begged him to send to the King his Lord a bagar of cinnamon, and another of clove ... for sample" (a mostra).—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 78.

1506.—"In Cananor el suo Re si è zentil, e qui nasce zz. (i.e. zenzeri or 'ginger'); ma li zz. pochi e non cusi boni come quelli de Colcut, e suo peso si chiama baar, che sono K. (Cantari) 4 da Lisbona."—Relazione di Leonardo Ca' Masser, 26.

1510.—"If the merchandise about which they treat be spices, they deal by the bahar, which bahar weighs three of our cantari."—Varthema, p. 170.

1516.—"It (Malacca) has got such a quantity of gold, that the great merchants do not estimate their property, nor reckon otherwise than by bahars of gold, which are 4 quintals to each bahar."—Barbosa, 193.

1552.—"300 bahares of pepper."—Castanheda, ii. 301. Correa writes bares, as does also Couto.

1554.—"The baar of nuts (noz) contains 20 faraçolas, and 5 maunds more of picota; thus the baar, with its picota, contains 20½ faraçolas...."—A. Nunes, 6.

c. 1569.—"After this I saw one that would have given a barre of Pepper, which is two Quintals and a halfe, for a little Measure of water, and he could not have it."—C. Fredericke, in Hakl. ii. 358.

1598.—"Each Bhar of Sunda weigheth 330 catten of China."—Linschoten, 34: [Hak. Soc. i. 113].

1606.—"... their came in his company a Portugall Souldier, which brought a Warrant from the Capitaine to the Gouernor of Manillia, to trade with vs, and likewise to giue John Rogers, for his pains a Bahar of Cloues."—Middleton's Voyage, D. 2. b.

1613.—"Porque os naturaes na quelle tempo possuyão muytos bâres de ouro."—Godinho de Eredia, 4 v.

[1802.—"That at the proper season for gathering the pepper and for a Pallam weighing 13 rupees and 1½ Viessam 120 of which are equal to a Tulam or Maund weighing 1,732 rupees, calculating, at which standard for one barom or Candy the Sircar's price is Rs. 120."—Procl. at Malabar, in Logan, iii. 348. This makes the barom equal to 650 lbs.]

BAHAUDUR, s. H. Bahādur, 'a hero, or champion.' It is a title affixed commonly to the names of European officers in Indian documents, or when spoken of ceremoniously by natives (e.g. "Jones Ṣāhib Bahādur"), in which use it may be compared with "the gallant officer" of Parliamentary courtesy, or the Illustrissimo Signore of the Italians. It was conferred as a title of honour by the Great Mogul and by other native princes [while in Persia it was often applied to slaves (Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 114)]. Thus it was particularly affected to the end of his life by Hyder Ali, to whom it had been given by the Raja of Mysore (see quotation from John Lindsay below [and Wilks, Mysoor, Madras reprint, i. 280]). Bahādur and Sirdār Bahādur are also the official titles of members of the 2nd and 1st classes respectively of the Order of British India, established for native officers of the army in 1837. [The title of Rāē Bahādur is also conferred upon Hindu civil officers.]

As conferred by the Court of Delhi the usual gradation of titles was (ascending):—1. Bahādur; 2. Bahādur Jang; 3. Bahādur ud-Daulah; 4. Bahādur ul-mulk. At Hyderabad they had also Bahādur ul-Umrā (Kirkpatrick, in Tippoo's Letters, 354). [Many such titles of Europeans will be found in North Indian N. & Q., i. 35, 143, 179; iv. 17.]

In Anglo-Indian colloquial parlance the word denotes a haughty or pompous personage, exercising his brief authority with a strong sense of his own importance; a don rather than a swaggerer. Thackeray, who derived from his Indian birth and connections a humorous felicity in the use of Anglo-Indian expressions, has not omitted this serviceable word. In that brilliant burlesque, the Memoirs of Major Gahagan, we have the Mahratta traitor Bobachee Bahauder. It is said also that Mr Canning's malicious wit bestowed on Sir John Malcolm, who was not less great as a talker than as a soldier and statesman, the title, not included in the Great Mogul's repertory, of Bahauder Jaw.

Bahādur is one of the terms which the hosts of Chingiz Khan brought with them from the Mongol Steppes. In the Mongol genealogies we find Yesugai Bahādur, the father of Chingiz, and many more. Subutai Bahādur, one of the great soldiers of the Mongol host, twice led it to the conquest of Southern Russia, twice to that of Northern China. In Sanang Setzen's poetical annals of the Mongols, as rendered by I. J. Schmidt, the word is written Baghatur, whence in Russian Bogatir still survives as a memento probably of the Tartar domination, meaning 'a hero or champion.' It occurs often in the old Russian epic ballads in this sense; and is also applied to Samson of the Bible. It occurs in a Russian chronicler as early as 1240, but in application to Mongol leaders. In Polish it is found as Bohatyr, and in Hungarian as Bátor,—this last being in fact the popular Mongol pronunciation of Baghatur. In Turki also this elision of the guttural extends to the spelling, and the word becomes Bātur, as we find it in the Dicts. of Vambéry and Pavet de Courteille. In Manchu also the word takes the form of Baturu, expressed in Chinese characters as Pa-tu-lu; the Kirghiz has it as Batyr; the Altai-Tataric as Paattyr, and the other dialects even as Magathyr. But the singular history of the word is not yet entirely told. Benfey has suggested that the word originated in Skt. bhaga-dhara ('happiness-possessing'). But the late lamented Prof. A. Schiefner, who favoured us with a note on the subject, was strongly of opinion that the word was rather a corruption "through dissimulation of the consonant," of the Zend bagha-puthra 'Son of God,' and thus but another form of the famous term Faghfūr, by which the old Persians rendered the Chinese Tien-tsz ('Son of Heaven'), applying it to the Emperor of China.

1280-90.—In an eccentric Persian poem purposely stuffed with Mongol expressions, written by Purbahā Jāmī in praise of Arghūn Khān of Persia, of which Hammer has given a German translation, we have the following:—

"The Great Kaan names thee his Ulugh-Bitekchī [Great Secretary],

Seeing thou art bitekchi and Behādir to boot;

O Well-beloved, the yarlīgh [rescript] that thou dost issue is obeyed

By Turk and Mongol, by Persian, Greek, and Barbarian!"

Gesch. der Gold. Horde, 461.

c. 1400.—"I ordained that every Ameer who should reduce a Kingdom, or defeat an army, should be exalted by three things: by a title of honour, by the Tugh [Yak's tail standard], and by the Nakkára [great kettle drum]; and should be dignified by the title of Bahaudur."—Timour's Institutes, 283; see also 291-293.

1404.—"E elles le dixeron q̃ aquel era uno de los valiẽtes e Bahadures q'en el linage del Señor auia."—Clavijo, § lxxxix.

" "E el home q̃ este haze e mas vino beue dizen que es Bahadur, que dizen elles por homem rezio."—Do. § cxii.

1407.—"The Prince mounted, escorted by a troop of Bahadurs, who were always about his person."—Abdurrazāk's Hist. in Not. et Ext. xiv. 126.

1536.—(As a proper name.) "Itaq̃ ille potentissimus Rex Badur, Indiae universae terror, a quo nonulli regnũ Pori maximi quõdam regis teneri affirmant...."—Letter from John III. of Portugal to Pope Paul III.

Hardly any native name occurs more frequently in the Portuguese Hist. of India than this of Badur—viz. Bahādur Shāh, the warlike and powerful king of Guzerat (1526-37), killed in a fray which closed an interview with the Viceroy, Nuno da Cunha, at Diu.

1754.—"The Kirgeese Tartars ... are divided into three Hordas, under the Government of a Khan. That part which borders on the Russian dominions was under the authority of Jean Beek, whose name on all occasions was honoured with the title of Bater."—Hanway, i. 239. The name Jean Beek is probably Janibek, a name which one finds among the hordes as far back as the early part of the 14th century (see Ibn Batuta, ii. 397).

1759.—"From Shah Alum Bahadre, son of Alum Guire, the Great Mogul, and successor of the Empire, to Colonel Sabut Jung Bahadre" (i.e. Clive).—Letter in Long, p. 163.

We have said that the title Behauder (Bahādur) was one by which Hyder Ali of Mysore was commonly known in his day. Thus in the two next quotations:

1781.—"Sheikh Hussein upon the guard tells me that our army has beat the Behauder [i.e. Hyder Ali], and that peace was making. Another sepoy in the afternoon tells us that the Behauder had destroyed our army, and was besieging Madras."—Captivity of Hon. John Lindsay, in Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 296.

1800.—"One lac of Behaudry pagodas."—Wellington, i. 148.

1801.—"Thomas, who was much in liquor, now turned round to his sowars, and said—'Could any one have stopped Sahib Bahaudoor at this gate but one month ago?' 'No, no,' replied they; on which——"—Skinner, Mil. Mem. i. 236.

1872.—"... the word 'Bahádur' ... (at the Mogul's Court) ... was only used as an epithet. Ahmed Shah used it as a title and ordered his name to be read in the Friday prayer as 'Mujahid ud dín Muhammad Abú naçr Ahmad Sháh Bahádur. Hence also 'Kampaní Bahadur,' the name by which the E. I. Company is still known in India. The modern 'Khan Bahádur' is, in Bengal, by permission assumed by Muhammedan Deputy Magistrates, whilst Hindu Deputy Magistrates assume 'Rái Bahádur'; it stands, of course, for 'Khán-i-Bahádur,' 'the courageous Khán.' The compound, however, is a modern abnormal one; for 'Khán' was conferred by the Dihli Emperors, and so also 'Bahádur' and 'Bahádur Khán,' but not 'Khán Bahádur.'"—Prof. Blochmann, in Ind. Antiquary, i. 261.

1876.—"Reverencing at the same time bravery, dash, and boldness, and loving their freedom, they (the Kirghiz) were always ready to follow the standard of any batyr, or hero, ... who might appear on the stage."—Schuyler's Turkistan, i. 33.

1878.—"Peacock feathers for some of the subordinate officers, a yellow jacket for the successful general, and the bestowal of the Manchoo title of Baturu, or 'Brave,' on some of the most distinguished brigadiers, are probably all the honours which await the return of a triumphal army. The reward which fell to the share of 'Chinese Gordon' for the part he took in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion was a yellow jacket, and the title of Baturu has lately been bestowed on Mr Mesny for years of faithful service against the rebels in the province of Kweichow."—Saturday Rev., Aug. 10, p. 182.

" "There is nothing of the great bahawder about him."—Athenaeum, No. 2670, p. 851.

1879.—"This strictly prohibitive Proclamation is issued by the Provincial Administrative Board of Likim ... and Chang, Brevet-Provincial Judge, chief of the Foochow Likim Central Office, Taot'ai for special service, and Bat'uru with the title of 'Awe-inspiring Brave'"—Transl. of Proclamation against the cultivation of the Poppy in Foochow, July 1879.

BAHIRWUTTEEA, s. Guj. bāhirwatū. A species of outlawry in Guzerat; bāhirwatīā, the individual practising the offence. It consists "in the Rajpoots or Grassias making their ryots and dependants quit their native village, which is suffered to remain waste; the Grassia with his brethren then retires to some asylum, whence he may carry on his depredations with impunity. Being well acquainted with the country, and the redress of injuries being common cause with the members of every family, the Bahirwutteea has little to fear from those who are not in the immediate interest of his enemy, and he is in consequence enabled to commit very extensive mischief."—Col. Walker, quoted in Forbes, Rās Māla, 2nd ed., p. 254-5. Col. Walker derives the name from bāhir, 'out,' and wāt, 'a road.' [Tod, in a note to the passage quoted below, says "this term is a compound of bār (bāhir) and wuttan (wat̤an), literally ex patriâ."]

[1829.—"This petty chieftain, who enjoyed the distinctive epithet of outlaw (barwattia), was of the Sonigurra clan."...—Pers. Narr., in Annals of Raj. (Calcutta reprint), i. 724.]

The origin of most of the brigandage in Sicily is almost what is here described in Kattiwār.

BAIKREE, s. The Bombay name for the Barking-deer. It is Guzarātī bekṛī; and acc. to Jerdon and [Blandford, Mammalia, 533] Mahr. bekra or bekar, but this is not in Molesworth's Dict. [Forsyth (Highlands of C. I., p. 470) gives the Gond and Korku names as Bherki, which may be the original].

1879.—"Any one who has shot baikri on the spurs of the Ghats can tell how it is possible unerringly to mark down these little beasts, taking up their position for the day in the early dawn."—Overl. Times of India, Suppt. May 12, 7b.

BAJRA, s. H. bājrā and bājrī (Penicillaria spicata, Willden.). One of the tall millets forming a dry crop in many parts of India. Forbes calls it bahjeree (Or. Mem. ii. 406; [2nd ed. i. 167), and bajeree (i. 23)].

1844.—"The ground (at Maharajpore) was generally covered with bajree, full 5 or 6 feet high."—Lord Ellenborough, in Ind. Admin. 414.

BĀKIR-KHĀNĪ, s. P.—H. bāqir-khānī; a kind of cake almost exactly resembling pie-crust, said to owe its name to its inventor, Bākir Khān.

[1871.—"The best kind (of native cakes) are baka kanah and 'sheer mahl' (Sheer-maul)."—Riddell, Ind. Domest. Econ. 386.]

BALÁCHONG, BLACHONG, s. Malay balāchān; [acc. to Mr Skeat the standard Malay is blachan, in full belachan.] The characteristic condiment of the Indo-Chinese and Malayan races, composed of prawns, sardines, and other small fish, allowed to ferment in a heap, and then mashed up with salt. [Mr Skeat says that it is often, if not always, trodden out like grapes.] Marsden calls it 'a species of caviare,' which is hardly fair to caviare. It is the ngāpi (Ngapee) of the Burmese, and trāsi of the Javanese, and is probably, as Crawfurd says, the Roman garum. One of us, who has witnessed the process of preparing ngāpi on the island of Negrais, is almost disposed to agree with the Venetian Gasparo Balbi (1583), who says "he would rather smell a dead dog, to say nothing of eating it" (f. 125v). But when this experience is absent it may be more tolerable.

1688.—Dampier writes it Balachaun, ii. 28.

1727.—"Bankasay is famous for making Ballichang, a Sauce made of dried Shrimps, Cod-pepper, Salt, and a Sea-weed or Grass, all well mixed and beaten up to the Consistency of thick Mustard."—A. Hamilton, ii. 194. The same author, in speaking of Pegu, calls the like sauce Prock (44), which was probably the Talain name. It appears also in Sonnerat under the form Prox (ii. 305).

1784.—"Blachang ... is esteemed a great delicacy among the Malays, and is by them exported to the west of India.... It is a species of caviare, and is extremely offensive and disgusting to persons who are not accustomed to it."—Marsden's H. of Sumatra, 2nd ed. 57.

[1871.—Riddell (Ind. Domest. Econ. p. 227) gives a receipt for Ballachong, of which the basis is prawns, to which are added chillies, salt, garlic, tamarind juice, &c.]

1883.—"... blachang—a Malay preparation much relished by European lovers of decomposed cheese...."—Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 96.

BALAGHAUT, used as n.p.; P. bālā, 'above,' H. Mahr., &c., ghāt, 'a pass,'—the country 'above the passes,' i.e. above the passes over the range of mountains which we call the "Western Ghauts." The mistaken idea that ghāt means 'mountains' causes Forbes to give a nonsensical explanation, cited below. The expression may be illustrated by the old Scotch phrases regarding "below and above the Pass" of so and so, implying Lowlands and Highlands.

c. 1562.—"All these things were brought by the Moors, who traded in pepper which they brought from the hills where it grew, by land in Bisnega, and Balagate, and Cambay."—Correa, ed. Ld. Stanley, Hak. Soc. p. 344.

1563.—"R. Let us get on horseback and go for a ride; and as we go you shall tell me what is the meaning of Nizamosha (Nizamaluco), for you often speak to me of such a person.

"O. I will tell you now that he is King in the Bagalate (misprint for Balagate), whose father I have often attended medically, and the son himself sometimes. From him I have received from time to time more than 12,000 pardaos; and he offered me a salary of 40,000 pardaos if I would visit him for so many months every year, but I would not accept."—Garcia de Orta, f. 33v.

1598.—"This high land on the toppe is very flatte and good to build upon, called Balagatte."—Linschoten, 20; [Hak. Soc. i. 65; cf. i. 235].

" "Ballagate, that is to say, above the hill, for Balla is above, and Gate is a hill...."—Ibid. 49; [Hak. Soc. i. 169].

1614.—"The coast of Coromandel, Balagatt or Telingana."—Sainsbury, i. 301.

1666.—"Balagate est une des riches Provinces du Grand Mogol.... Elle est au midi de celle de Candich."—Thevenot, v. 216.

1673.—"... opening the ways to Baligaot, that Merchants might with safety bring down their Goods to Port."—Fryer, 78.

c. 1760.—"The Ball-a-gat Mountains, which are extremely high, and so called from Bal, mountain, and gatt, flat [!], because one part of them affords large and delicious plains on their summit, little known to Europeans."—Grose, i. 231.

This is nonsense, but the following are also absurd misdescriptions:—

1805.—"Bala Ghaut, the higher or upper Gaut or Ghaut, a range of mountains so called to distinguish them from the Payen Ghauts, the lower Ghauts or Passes."—Dict. of Words used in E. Indies, 28.

1813.—"In some parts this tract is called the Balla-Gaut, or high mountains; to distinguish them from the lower Gaut, nearer the sea."—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 206; [2nd ed. i. 119].

BALASORE, n.p. A town and district of Orissa; the site of one of the earliest English factories in the "Bay," established in 1642, and then an important seaport; supposed to be properly Bāleśvara, Skt. bāla, 'strong,' īśvara, 'lord,' perhaps with reference to Krishna. Another place of the same name in Madras, an isolated peak, 6762′ high, lat. 11° 41′ 43″, is said to take its name from the Asura Bana.

1676.—

"When in the vale of Balaser I fought,

And from Bengal the captive Monarch brought."

Dryden, Aurungzebe, ii. 1.

1727.—"The Sea-shore of Balasore being very low, and the Depths of Water very gradual from the Strand, make Ships in Ballasore Road keep a good Distance from the Shore; for in 4 or 5 Fathoms, they ride 3 Leagues off."—A. Hamilton, i. 397.

BALASS, s. A kind of ruby, or rather a rose-red spinelle. This is not an Anglo-Indian word, but it is a word of Asiatic origin, occurring frequently in old travellers. It is a corruption of Balakhshī, a popular form of Badakhshī, because these rubies came from the famous mines on the Upper Oxus, in one of the districts subject to Badakhshān. [See Vambéry, Sketches, 255; Ball, Tavernier, i. 382 n.]

c. 1350.—"The mountains of Badakhshān have given their name to the Badakhshi ruby, vulgarly called al-Balakhsh."—Ibn Batuta, iii. 59, 394.

1404.—"Tenia (Tamerlan) vestido vna ropa et vn paño de seda raso sin lavores e ẽ la cabeça tenia vn sombrero blãco alto con un Balax en cima e con aljofar e piedras."—Clavijo, § cx.

1516.—"These balasses are found in Balaxayo, which is a kingdom of the mainland near Pegu and Bengal."—Barbosa, 213. This is very bad geography for Barbosa, who is usually accurate and judicious, but it is surpassed in much later days.

1581.—"I could never understand from whence those that be called Balassi come."—Caesar Fredericke, in Hakl. ii. 372.

[1598.—"The Ballayeses are likewise sold by weight."—Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 156.]

1611.—"Of Ballace Rubies little and great, good and bad, there are single two thousand pieces" (in Akbar's treasury).—Hawkins, in Purchas, i. 217.

[1616.—"Fair pearls, Ballast rubies."—Foster, Letters, iv. 243.]

1653.—"Les Royaumes de Pegou, d'où viennent les rubis balets."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, 126.

1673.—"The last sort is called a Ballace Ruby, which is not in so much esteem as the Spinell, because it is not so well coloured."—Fryer, 215.

1681.—"... ay ciertos balaxes, que llmana candidos, que son como los diamantes."—Martinez de la Puente, 12.

1689.—"... The Balace Ruby is supposed by some to have taken its name from Palatium, or Palace; ... the most probable Conjecture is that of Marcus Paulus Venetus, that it is borrow'd from the Country, where they are found in greatest Plentie...."—Ovington, 588.

BALCONY, s. Not an Anglo-Indian word, but sometimes regarded as of Oriental origin; a thing more than doubtful. The etymology alluded to by Mr. Schuyler and by the lamented William Gill in the quotations below, is not new, though we do not know who first suggested it. Neither do we know whether the word balagani, which Erman (Tr. in Siberia, E. T. i. 115) tells us is the name given to the wooden booths at the Nijnei Fair, be the same P. word or no. Wedgwood, Littré, [and the N.E.D.] connect balcony with the word which appears in English as balk, and with the Italian balco, 'a scaffolding' and the like, also used for 'a box' at the play. Balco, as well as palco, is a form occurring in early Italian. Thus Franc. da Buti, commenting on Dante (1385-87), says: "Balco è luogo alto doue si monta e scende." Hence naturally would be formed balcone, which we have in Giov. Villani, in Boccaccio and in Petrarch. Manuzzi (Vocabolario It.) defines balcone as = finestra (?).

It may be noted as to the modern pronunciation that whilst ordinary mortals (including among verse-writers Scott and Lockhart, Tennyson and Hood) accent the word as a dactyl (bālcŏny̆), the crême de la crême, if we are not mistaken, makes it, or did in the last generation make it, as Cowper does below, an amphibrach (bălcōny̆): "Xanthus his name with those of heavenly birth, But called Scamander by the sons of earth!" [According to the N.E.D. the present pronunciation, "which," said Sam. Rogers, "makes me sick," was established about 1825.]

c. 1348.—"E al continuo v'era pieno di belle donne a' balconi."—Giov. Villani, x. 132-4.

c. 1340-50.—

"Il figliuol di Latona avea già nove

Volte guardato dal balcon sovrano,

Per quella, ch'alcun tempo mosse

I suoi sospir, ed or gli altrui commove in vano."

Petrarca, Rime, Pte. i. Sonn. 35,

ed. Pisa, 1805.

c. 1340-50.—

"Ma si com' uom talor che piange, a parte

Vede cosa che gli occhi, e 'l cor alletta,

Così colei per ch'io son in prigione

Standosi ad un balcone,

Che fù sola a' suoi di cosa perfetta

Cominciai a mirar con tale desío

Che me stesso, e 'l mio mal pose in oblío:

I'era in terra, e 'l cor mio in Paradiso."

Petrarca, Rime, Pte. ii. Canzone 4.

1645-52.—"When the King sits to do Justice, I observe that he comes into the Balcone that looks into the Piazza."—Tavernier, E. T. ii. 64; [ed. Ball, i. 152].

1667.—"And be it further enacted, That in the Front of all Houses, hereafter to be erected in any such Streets as by Act of Common Council shall be declared to be High Streets, Balconies Four Foot broad with Rails and Bars of Iron ... shall be placed...."—Act 19 Car. II., cap. 3, sect. 13. (Act for Rebuilding the City of London.)

1783.

"At Edmonton his loving wife

From the balcōny spied

Her tender husband, wond'ring much

To see how he did ride."

John Gilpin.

1805.—

"For from the lofty balcŏny,

Rung trumpet, shalm and psaltery."

Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1833.—

"Under tower and balcŏny,

By garden-wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

Dead pale between the houses high."

Tennyson's Lady of Shalott.

1876.—"The houses (in Turkistan) are generally of but one story, though sometimes there is a small upper room called bala-khana (P. bala, upper, and khana, room) whence we get our balcony."—Schuyler's Turkistan, i. 120.

1880.—"Bālā khānă means 'upper house,' or 'upper place,' and is applied to the room built over the archway by which the chăppă khānă is entered, and from it, by the way, we got our word 'Balcony.'"—MS. Journal in Persia of Captain W. J. Gill, R.E.

BALOON, BALLOON, &c., s. A rowing vessel formerly used in various parts of the Indies, the basis of which was a large canoe, or 'dug-out.' There is a Mahr. word balyānw, a kind of barge, which is probably the original. [See Bombay Gazetteer, xiv. 26.]

1539.—"E embarcando-se ... partio, eo forão accompanhando dez ou doze balões ate a Ilha de Upe...."—Pinto, ch. xiv.

1634.—

"Neste tempo da terra para a armada

Balões, e cal' luzes cruzar vimos...."

Malaca Conquistada, iii. 44.

1673.—"The President commanded his own Baloon (a Barge of State, of Two and Twenty Oars) to attend me."—Fryer, 70.

1755.—"The Burmas has now Eighty Ballongs, none of which as [sic] great Guns."—Letter from Capt. R. Jackson, in Dalrymple Or. Repert. i. 195.

1811.—"This is the simplest of all boats, and consists merely of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, to the extremities of which pieces of wood are applied, to represent a stern and prow; the two sides are boards joined by rottins or small bambous without nails; no iron whatsoever enters into their construction.... The Balaums are used in the district of Chittagong."—Solvyns, iii.

BALSORA, BUSSORA, &c., n.p. These old forms used to be familiar from their use in the popular version of the Arabian Nights after Galland. The place is the sea-port city of Basra at the mouth of the Shat-al-'Arab, or United Euphrates and Tigris. [Burton (Ar. Nights, x. 1) writes Bassorah.]

1298.—"There is also on the river as you go from Baudas to Kisi, a great city called Bastra surrounded by woods in which grow the best dates in the world."—Marco Polo, Bk. i. ch. 6.

c. 1580.—"Balsara, altrimente detta Bassora, è una città posta nell' Arabia, la quale al presente e signoreggiata dal Turco ... è città di gran negocio di spetiarie, di droghe, e altre merci che uengono di Ormus; è abondante di dattoli, risi, e grani."—Balbi, f. 32f.

[1598.—"The town of Balsora; also Bassora."—Linschoten, Hak. Soc. i. 45.]

1671.—

"From Atropatia and the neighbouring plains

Of Adiabene, Media, and the south

Of Susiana to Balsara's Haven...."

Paradise Regained, iii.

1747.—"He (the Prest. of Bombay) further advises us that they have wrote our Honble. Masters of the Loss of Madrass by way of Bussero, the 7th of November."—Ft. St. David Consn., 8th January 1746-7. MS. in India Office.

[Also see CONGO.]

BALTY, s. H. bāltī, 'a bucket,' [which Platts very improbably connects with Skt. vări, 'water'], is the Port. balde.

BÁLWAR, s. This is the native servant's form of 'barber,' shaped by the 'striving after meaning' as bālwār, for bālwālā, i.e. 'capillarius,' 'hair-man.' It often takes the further form bāl-būr, another factitious hybrid, shaped by P. būrīdan, 'to cut,' quasi 'hair-cutter.' But though now obsolete, there was also (see both Meninski and Vullers s.v.) a Persian word bărbăr, for a barber or surgeon, from which came this Turkish term "Le Berber-bachi, qui fait la barbe au Pacha," which we find (c. 1674) in the Appendix to the journal of Antoine Galland, pubd. at Paris, 1881 (ii. 190). It looks as if this must have been an early loan from Europe.

BAMBOO, s. Applied to many gigantic grasses, of which Bambusa arundinacea and B. vulgaris are the most commonly cultivated; but there are many other species of the same and allied genera in use; natives of tropical Asia, Africa, and America. This word, one of the commonest in Anglo-Indian daily use, and thoroughly naturalised in English, is of exceedingly obscure origin. According to Wilson it is Canarese bănbŭ [or as the Madras Admin. Man. (Gloss. s.v.) writes it, bombu, which is said to be "onomatopaeic from the crackling and explosions when they burn"]. Marsden inserts it in his dictionary as good Malay. Crawfurd says it is certainly used on the west coast of Sumatra as a native word, but that it is elsewhere unknown to the Malay languages. The usual Malay word is buluh. He thinks it more likely to have found its way into English from Sumatra than from Canara. But there is evidence enough of its familiarity among the Portuguese before the end of the 16th century to indicate the probability that we adopted the word, like so many others, through them. We believe that the correct Canarese word is baṇwu. In the 16th century the form in the Concan appears to have been mambu, or at least it was so represented by the Portuguese. Rumphius seems to suggest a quaint onomatopoeia: "vehementissimos edunt ictus et sonitus, quum incendio comburuntur, quando notum ejus nomen Bambu, Bambu, facile exauditur."—(Herb. Amb. iv. 17.) [Mr. Skeat writes: "Although buluh is the standard Malay, and bambu apparently introduced, I think bambu is the form used in the low Javanese vernacular, which is quite a different language from high Javanese. Even in low Javanese, however, it may be a borrowed word. It looks curiously like a trade corruption of the common Malay word samambu, which means the well-known 'Malacca cane,' both the bamboo and the Malacca cane being articles of export. Klinkert says that the samambu is a kind of rattan, which was used as a walking-stick, and which was called the Malacca cane by the English. This Malacca cane and the rattan 'bamboo cane' referred to by Sir H. Yule must surely be identical. The fuller Malay name is actually rotan samambu, which is given as the equivalent of Calamus Scipionum, Lour. by Mr. Ridley in his Plant List (J.R.A.S., July 1897).]

The term applied to ṭābāshīr (Tabasheer), a siliceous concretion in the bamboo, in our first quotation seems to show that bambu or mambu was one of the words which the Portuguese inherited from an earlier use by Persian or Arab traders. But we have not been successful in finding other proof of this. With reference to sakkar-mambu Ritter says: "That this drug (Tabashir), as a product of the bamboo-cane, is to this day known in India by the name of Sacar Mambu is a thing which no one needs to be told" (ix. 334). But in fact the name seems now entirely unknown.

It is possible that the Canarese word is a vernacular corruption, or development, of the Skt. vaṇśa [or vambha], from the former of which comes the H. bāṇs. Bamboo does not occur, so far as we can find, in any of the earlier 16th-century books, which employ canna or the like.

In England the term bamboo-cane is habitually applied to a kind of walking-stick, which is formed not from any bamboo but from a species of rattan. It may be noted that some 30 to 35 years ago there existed along the high road between Putney Station and West Hill a garden fence of bamboos of considerable extent; it often attracted the attention of one of the present writers.

1563.—"The people from whom it (tabashir) is got call it sacar-mambum ... because the canes of that plant are called by the Indians mambu."—Garcia, f. 194.

1578.—"Some of these (canes), especially in Malabar, are found so large that the people make use of them as boats (embarcaciones) not opening them out, but cutting one of the canes right across and using the natural knots to stop the ends, and so a couple of naked blacks go upon it ... each of them at his own end of the mambu [in orig. mãbu] (so they call it), being provided with two paddles, one in each hand ... and so upon a cane of this kind the folk pass across, and sitting with their legs clinging naked."—C. Acosta, Tractado, 296.

Again:

"... and many people on that river (of Cranganor) make use of these canes in place of boats, to be safe from the numerous Crocodiles or Caymoins (as they call them) which are in the river (which are in fact great and ferocious lizards)" [lagartos].—Ibid. 297.

These passages are curious as explaining, if they hardly justify, Ctesias, in what we have regarded as one of his greatest bounces, viz. his story of Indian canes big enough to be used as boats.

1586.—"All the houses are made of canes, which they call Bambos, and bee covered with Strawe."—Fitch, in Hakl. ii. 391.

1598.—"... a thicke reede as big as a man's legge, which is called Bambus."—Linschoten, 56; [Hak. Soc. i. 195].

1608.—"Iava multas producit arundines grossas, quas Manbu vocant."—Prima Pars Desc. Itin. Navalis in Indiam (Houtman's Voyage), p. 36.

c. 1610.—"Les Portugais et les Indiens ne se seruent point d'autres bastons pour porter leurs palanquins ou litieres. Ils l'appellent partout Bambou."—Pyrard, i. 237; [Hak. Soc. i. 329].

1615.—"These two kings (of Camboja and Siam) have neyther Horses, nor any fiery Instruments: but make use only of bowes, and a certaine kind of pike, made of a knottie wood like Canes, called Bambuc, which is exceeding strong, though pliant and supple for vse."—De Monfart, 33.

1621.—"These Forts will better appeare by the Draught thereof, herewith sent to your Worships, inclosed in a Bamboo."—Letter in Purchas, i. 699.

1623.—"Among the other trees there was an immense quantity of bambù, or very large Indian canes, and all clothed and covered with pretty green foliage that went creeping up them."—P. della Valle, ii. 640; [Hak. Soc. ii. 220].

c. 1666.—"Cette machine est suspendue à une longue barre que l'on appelle Pambou."—Thevenot, v. 162. (This spelling recurs throughout a chapter describing palankins, though elsewhere the traveller writes bambou.)

1673.—"A Bambo, which is a long hollow cane."—Fryer, 34.

1727.—"The City (Ava) tho' great and populous, is only built of Bambou canes."—A. Hamilton, ii. 47.

1855.—"When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that post and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a Bamboo. Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation-wheels and scoops, oars, masts and yards, spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bow-string and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks, conduits, clothes-boxes, pan-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper, these are but a few of the articles that are made from the bamboo."—Yule, Mission to Ava, p. 153. To these may be added, from a cursory inspection of a collection in one of the museums at Kew, combs, mugs, sun-blinds, cages, grotesque carvings, brushes, fans, shirts, sails, teapots, pipes and harps.

Bamboos are sometimes popularly distinguished (after a native idiom) as male and female; the latter embracing all the common species with hollow stems, the former title being applied to a certain kind (in fact, a sp. of a distinct genus, Dendrocalamus strictus), which has a solid or nearly solid core, and is much used for bludgeons (see LATTEE) and spear-shafts. It is remarkable that this popular distinction by sex was known to Ctesias (c. B.C. 400) who says that the Indian reeds were divided into male and female, the male having no ἐντερώνην.

One of the present writers has seen (and partaken of) rice cooked in a joint of bamboo, among the Khyens, a hill-people of Arakan. And Mr Markham mentions the same practice as prevalent among the Chunchos and savage aborigines on the eastern slopes of the Andes (J. R. Geog. Soc. xxv. 155). An endeavour was made in Pegu in 1855 to procure the largest obtainable bamboo. It was a little over 10 inches in diameter. But Clusius states that he had seen two great specimens in the University at Leyden, 30 feet long and from 14 to 16 inches in diameter. And E. Haeckel, in his Visit to Ceylon (1882), speaks of bamboo-stems at Peridenia, "each from a foot to two feet thick." We can obtain no corroboration of anything approaching 2 feet.—[See Gray's note on Pyrard, Hak. Soc. i. 330.]

BAMÓ, n.p. Burm. Bha-maw, Shan Manmaw; in Chinese Sin-Kai, 'New-market.' A town on the upper Irawadi, where one of the chief routes from China abuts on that river; regarded as the early home of the Karens. [(McMahon, Karens of the Golden Cher., 103.)] The old Shan town of Bamó was on the Tapeng R., about 20 m. east of the Irawadi, and it is supposed that the English factory alluded to in the quotations was there.

[1684.—"A Settlement at Bammoo upon the confines of China."—Pringle, Madras Cons., iii. 102.]

1759.—"This branch seems formerly to have been driven from the Establishment at Prammoo."—Dalrymple, Or. Rep., i. 111.

BANANA, s. The fruit of Musa paradisaica, and M. sapientum of Linnaeus, but now reduced to one species under the latter name by R. Brown. This word is not used in India, though one hears it in the Straits Settlements. The word itself is said by De Orta to have come from Guinea; so also Pigafetta (see below). The matter will be more conveniently treated under PLANTAIN. Prof. Robertson Smith points out that the coincidence of this name with the Ar. banān, 'fingers or toes,' and banāna, 'a single finger or toe,' can hardly be accidental. The fruit, as we learn from Muḳaddasī, grew in Palestine before the Crusades; and that it is known in literature only as mauz would not prove that the fruit was not somewhere popularly known as 'fingers.' It is possible that the Arabs, through whom probably the fruit found its way to W. Africa, may have transmitted with it a name like this; though historical evidence is still to seek. [Mr. Skeat writes: "It is curious that in Norwegian and Danish (and I believe in Swedish), the exact Malay word pisang, which is unknown in England, is used. Prof. Skeat thinks this may be because we had adopted the word banana before the word pisang was brought to Europe at all."]

1563.—"The Arab calls these musa or amusa; there are chapters on the subject in Avicenna and Serapion, and they call them by this name, as does Rasis also. Moreover, in Guinea they have these figs, and call them bananas."—Garcia, 93v.

1598.—"Other fruits there are termed Banana, which we think to be the Muses of Egypt and Soria ... but here they cut them yearly, to the end they may bear the better."—Tr. of Pigafetta's Congo, in Harleian Coll. ii. 553 (also in Purchas, ii. 1008.)

c. 1610.—"Des bannes (marginal rubric Bannanes) que les Portugais appellent figues d'Inde, et aux Maldives Quella."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 85; [Hak. Soc. i. 113]. The Maldive word is here the same as H. kelā (Skt. kadala).

1673.—"Bonanoes, which are a sort of Plantain, though less, yet much more grateful."—Fryer, 40.

1686.—"The Bonano tree is exactly like the Plantain for shape and bigness, not easily distinguishable from it but by the Fruit, which is a great deal smaller."—Dampier, i. 316.

BANCHOOT, BETEECHOOT, ss. Terms of abuse, which we should hesitate to print if their odious meaning were not obscure "to the general." If it were known to the Englishmen who sometimes use the words, we believe there are few who would not shrink from such brutality. Somewhat similar in character seem the words which Saul in his rage flings at his noble son (1 Sam. xx. 30).

1638.—"L'on nous monstra à vne demy lieue de la ville vn sepulchre, qu'ils appellent Bety-chuit, c'est à dire la vergogne de la fille decouverte."—Mandelslo, Paris, 1659, 142. See also Valentijn, iv. 157.

There is a handsome tomb and mosque to the N. of Ahmedabad, erected by Hajji Malik Bahā-ud-dīn, a wazīr of Sultan Mohammed Bigara, in memory of his wife Bībī Achut or Achhūt; and probably the vile story to which the 17th-century travellers refer is founded only on a vulgar misrepresentation of this name.

1648.—"Bety-chuit; dat is (onder eerbredinge gesproocken) in onse tale te seggen, u Dochters Schaemelheyt."—Van Twist, 16.

1792.—"The officer (of Tippoo's troops) who led, on being challenged in Moors answered (Agari que logue), 'We belong to the advance'—the title of Lally's brigade, supposing the people he saw to be their own Europeans, whose uniform also is red; but soon discovering his mistake the commandant called out (Feringhy Banchoot!—chelow) 'they are the rascally English! Make off'; in which he set the corps a ready example."—Dirom's Narrative, 147.

BANCOCK, n.p. The modern capital of Siam, properly Bang-kok; see explanation by Bp. Pallegoix in quotation. It had been the site of forts erected on the ascent of the Menam to the old capital Ayuthia, by Constantine Phaulcon in 1675; here the modern city was established as the seat of government in 1767, after the capture of Ayuthia (see JUDEA) by the Burmese in that year. It is uncertain if the first quotation refer to Bancock.

1552.—"... and Bamplacot, which stands at the mouth of the Menam."—Barros, I. ix. 1.

1611.—"They had arrived in the Road of Syam the fifteenth of August, and cast Anchor at three fathome high water.... The Towne lyeth some thirtie leagues vp along the Riuer, whither they sent newes of their arrivall. The Sabander (see SHAHBUNDER) and the Governor of Mancock (a place scituated by the Riuer), came backe with the Messengers to receiue his Majesties Letters, but chiefly for the presents expected."—P. Williamson Floris, in Purchas, i. 321.

1727.—The Ship arrived at Bencock, a Castle about half-way up, where it is customary for all Ships to put their Guns ashore."—A. Hamilton, i. 363.

1850.—"Civitas regia tria habet nomina: ... ban măkōk, per contractionem Bangkōk, pagus oleastrorum, est nomen primitivum quod hodie etiam vulgo usurpatur."—Pallegoix, Gram. Linguae Thai., Bangkok, 1850, p. 167.

BANDANNA, s. This term is properly applied to the rich yellow or red silk handkerchief, with diamond spots left white by pressure applied to prevent their receiving the dye. The etymology may be gathered from Shakespear's Dict., which gives "Bāndhnū: 1. A mode of dyeing in which the cloth is tied in different places, to prevent the parts tied from receiving the dye;... 3. A kind of silk cloth." A class or caste in Guzerat who do this kind of preparation for dyeing are called Bandhārā (Drummond). [Such handkerchiefs are known in S. India as Pulicat handkerchiefs. Cloth dyed in this way is in Upper India known as Chūnrī. A full account of the process will be found in Journ. Ind. Art, ii. 63, and S. M. Hadi's Mon. on Dyes and Dyeing, p. 35.]

c. 1590.—"His Majesty improved this department in four ways.... Thirdly, in stuffs as ... Bándhnún, Chhínt, Alchah."—Āīn, i. 91.

1752.—"The Cossembazar merchants having fallen short in gurrahs, plain taffaties, ordinary bandannoes, and chappas."—In Long, 31.

1813.—"Bandannoes ... 800."—Milburn (List of Bengal Piece-goods, and no. to the ton), ii. 221.

1848.—"Mr Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman ... taking Fake's place, who retired to a princely Park in Sussex (the Fogles have long been out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna), ... two years before it failed for a million, and plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin."—Vanity Fair, ii. ch. 25.

1866.—"'Of course,' said Toogood, wiping his eyes with a large red bandana handkerchief. 'By all means, come along, Major.' The major had turned his face away, and he also was weeping."—Last Chronicle of Barset, ii. 362.

1875.—"In Calcutta Tariff Valuations: 'Piece goods silk: Bandanah Choppahs, per piece of 7 handkerchiefs ... score ... 115 Rs."

BANDAREE, s. Mahr. Bhanḍārī, the name of the caste or occupation. It is applied at Bombay to the class of people (of a low caste) who tend the coco-palm gardens in the island, and draw toddy, and who at one time formed a local militia. [It has no connection with the more common Bhândârî, 'a treasurer or storekeeper.']

1548.—"... certain duties collected from the bandarys who draw the toddy (sura) from the aldeas...."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 203.

1644.—"The people ... are all Christians, or at least the greater part of them consisting of artizans, carpenters, chaudaris (this word is manifestly a mistranscription of bandaris), whose business is to gather nuts from the coco-palms, and corumbis (see KOONBEE) who till the ground...."—Bocarro, MS.

1673.—"The President ... if he go abroad, the Bandarines and Moors under two Standards march before him."—Fryer, 68.

" "... besides 60 Field-pieces ready in their Carriages upon occasion to attend the Militia and Bandarines."—Ibid. 66.

c. 1760.—"There is also on the island kept up a sort of militia, composed of the land-tillers, and bandarees, whose living depends chiefly on the cultivation of the coco-nut trees."—Grose, i. 46.

1808.—"... whilst on the Brab trees the cast of Bhundarees paid a due for extracting the liquor."—Bombay Regulation, i. of 1808, sect. vi. para. 2.

1810.—"Her husband came home, laden with toddy for distilling. He is a bandari or toddy-gatherer."—Maria Graham, 26.

c. 1836.—"Of the Bhundarees the most remarkable usage is their fondness for a peculiar species of long trumpet, called Bhongalee, which, ever since the dominion of the Portuguese, they have had the privilege of carrying and blowing on certain State occasions."—R. Murphy, in Tr. Bo. Geog. Soc. i. 131.

1883.—"We have received a letter from one of the large Bhundarries in the city, pointing out that the tax on toddy trees is now Rs. 18 (? Rs. 1, 8 as.) per tapped toddy tree per annum, whereas in 1872 it was only Re. 1 per tree; ... he urges that the Bombay toddy-drawers are entitled to the privilege of practising their trade free of license, in consideration of the military services rendered by their ancestors in garrisoning Bombay town and island, when the Dutch fleet advanced towards it in 1670."—Times of India (Mail), July 17th.

BANDEJAH, s. Port. bandeja, 'a salver,' 'a tray to put presents on.' We have seen the word used only in the following passages:—

1621.—"We and the Hollanders went to vizet Semi Dono, and we carid hym a bottell of strong water, and an other of Spanish wine, with a great box (or bandeja) of sweet bread."—Cocks's Diary, ii. 143.

[1717.—"Received the Phirmaund (see FIRMAUN) from Captain Boddam in a bandaye couered with a rich piece of Atlass (see ATLAS)."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. ccclx.]

1747.—"Making a small Cott (see COT) and a rattan Bandijas for the Nabob.... (Pagodas) 4: 32: 21."—Acct. Expenses at Fort St. David, Jany., MS. Records in India Office.

c. 1760.—"(Betel) in large companies is brought in ready made up on Japan chargers, which they call from the Portuguese name, Bandejahs, something like our tea-boards."—Grose, i. 237.

1766.—"To Monurbad Dowla Nabob—

R. A. P.

1 Pair Pistols 216 0 0

2 China Bandazes 172 12 9 "

—Lord Clive's Durbar Charges, in Long, 433.

Bandeja appears in the Manilla Vocabular of Blumentritt as used there for the present of cakes and sweetmeats, tastefully packed in an elegant basket, and sent to the priest, from the wedding feast. It corresponds therefore to the Indian ḍāli (see DOLLY).

BANDEL, n.p. The name of the old Portuguese settlement in Bengal about a mile above Hoogly, where there still exists a monastery, said to be the oldest church in Bengal (see Imp. Gazeteer). The name is a Port. corruption of bandar, 'the wharf'; and in this shape the word was applied among the Portuguese to a variety of places. Thus in Correa, under 1541-42, we find mention of a port in the Red Sea, near the mouth, called Bandel dos Malemos ('of the Pilots'). Chittagong is called Bandel de Chatigão (e.g. in Bocarro, p. 444), corresponding to Bandar Chātgām in the Autobiog. of Jahāngīr (Elliot, vi. 326). [In the Diary of Sir T. Roe (see below) it is applied to Gombroon], and in the following passage the original no doubt runs Bandar-i-Hūghlī or Hūglī-Bandar.

[1616.—"To this Purpose took Bandell theyr foort on the Mayne."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. i. 129.]

1631.—"... these Europeans increased in number, and erected large substantial buildings, which they fortified with cannons, muskets, and other implements of war. In due course a considerable place grew up, which was known by the name of Port of Hūglī."—'Abdul Hamīd, in Elliot, vii. 32.

1753.—"... les établissements formés pour assurer leur commerce sont situés sur les bords de cette rivière. Celui des Portugais, qu'ils ont appelé Bandel, en adoptant le terme Persan de Bender, qui signifie port, est aujourd'hui reduit à peu de chose ... et il est presque contigu à Ugli en remontant."—D'Anville, Éclaircissemens, p. 64.

1782.—"There are five European factories within the space of 20 miles, on the opposite banks of the river Ganges in Bengal; Houghly, or Bandell, the Portuguese Presidency; Chinsura, the Dutch; Chandernagore, the French; Sirampore, the Danish; and Calcutta, the English."—Price's Observations, &c., p. 51. In Price's Tracts, i.

BANDICOOT, s. Corr. from the Telegu pandi-kokku, lit. 'pig-rat.' The name has spread all over India, as applied to the great rat called by naturalists Mus malabaricus (Shaw), Mus giganteus (Hardwicke), Mus bandicota (Bechstein), [Nesocia bandicota (Blanford, p. 425)]. The word is now used also in Queensland, [and is the origin of the name of the famous Bendigo gold-field (3 ser. N. & Q. ix. 97)].

c. 1330.—"In Lesser India there be some rats as big as foxes, and venomous exceedingly."—Friar Jordanus, Hak. Soc. 29.

c. 1343.—"They imprison in the dungeons (of Dwaigīr, i.e. Daulatābād) those who have been guilty of great crimes. There are in those dungeons enormous rats, bigger than cats. In fact, these latter animals run away from them, and can't stand against them, for they would get the worst of it. So they are only caught by stratagem. I have seen these rats at Dwaigīr, and much amazed I was!"—Ibn Batuta, iv. 47.

Fryer seems to exaggerate worse than the Moor:

1673.—"For Vermin, the strongest huge Rats as big as our Pigs, which burrow under the Houses, and are bold enough to venture on Poultry."—Fryer, 116.

The following surprisingly confounds two entirely different animals:

1789.—"The Bandicoot, or musk rat, is another troublesome animal, more indeed from its offensive smell than anything else."—Munro, Narrative, 32. See MUSK-RAT.

[1828.—"They be called Brandy-cutes."—Or. Sporting Mag. i. 128.]

1879.—"I shall never forget my first night here (on the Cocos Islands). As soon as the Sun had gone down, and the moon risen, thousands upon thousands of rats, in size equal to a bandicoot, appeared."—Pollok, Sport in B. Burmah, &c., ii. 14.

1880.—"They (wild dogs in Queensland) hunted Kangaroo when in numbers ... but usually preferred smaller and more easily obtained prey, as rats, bandicoots, and 'possums.'"—Blackwood's Mag., Jan., p. 65.

[1880.—"In England the Collector is to be found riding at anchor in the Bandicoot Club."—Aberigh-Mackay, Twenty-one Days, 87.]

BANDICOY, s. The colloquial name in S. India of the fruit of Hibiscus esculentus; Tamil veṇḍai-khāi, i.e. unripe fruit of the veṇḍai, called in H. bhenḍi. See BENDY.

BANDO! H. imperative bāndho, 'tie or make fast.' "This and probably other Indian words have been naturalised in the docks on the Thames frequented by Lascar crews. I have heard a London lighter-man, in the Victoria Docks, throw a rope ashore to another Londoner, calling out, Bando!"—(M.-Gen. Keatinge.)

BANDY, s. A carriage, bullock-carriage, buggy, or cart. This word is usual in both the S. and W. Presidencies, but is unknown in Bengal, and in the N.W.P. It is the Tamil vaṇḍi, Telug. baṇḍi, 'a cart or vehicle.' The word, as bendi, is also used in Java. [Mr Skeat writes—"Klinkert has Mal. bendi, 'a chaise or caleche,' but I have not heard the word in standard Malay, though Clifford and Swett. have bendu, 'a kind of sedan-chair carried by men,' and the commoner word tandu 'a sedan-chair or litter,' which I have heard in Selangor. Wilkinson says that kereta (i.e. kreta bendi) is used to signify any two-wheeled vehicle in Johor."]

1791.—"To be sold, an elegant new and fashionable Bandy, with copper panels, lined with Morocco leather."—Madras Courier, 29th Sept.

1800.—"No wheel-carriages can be used in Canara, not even a buffalo-bandy."—Letter of Sir T. Munro, in Life, i. 243.

1810.—"None but open carriages are used in Ceylon; we therefore went in bandies, or, in plain English, gigs."—Maria Graham, 88.

1826.—"Those persons who have not European coachmen have the horses of their ... 'bandies' or gigs, led by these men.... Gigs and hackeries all go here (in Ceylon) by the name of bandy."—Heber (ed. 1844), ii. 152.

1829.—"A mighty solemn old man, seated in an open bundy (read bandy) (as a gig with a head that has an opening behind is called) at Madras."—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 2nd ed. 84.

1860.—"Bullock bandies, covered with cajans met us."—Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 146.

1862.—"At Coimbatore I bought a bandy or country cart of the simplest construction."—Markham's Peru and India, 393.

BANG, BHANG, s. H. bhāng, the dried leaves and small stalks of hemp (i.e. Cannabis indica), used to cause intoxication, either by smoking, or when eaten mixed up into a sweetmeat (see MAJOON). Ḥashīsh of the Arabs is substantially the same; Birdwood says it "consists of the tender tops of the plants after flowering." [Bhang is usually derived from Skt. bhaṇga, 'breaking,' but Burton derives both it and the Ar. banj from the old Coptic Nibanj, "meaning a preparation of hemp; and here it is easy to recognise the Homeric Nepenthe."

"On the other hand, not a few apply the word to the henbane (hyoscyamus niger) so much used in mediæval Europe. The Kámús evidently means henbane, distinguishing it from Hashísh al haráfísh, 'rascal's grass,' i.e. the herb Pantagruelion.... The use of Bhang doubtless dates from the dawn of civilisation, whose earliest social pleasures would be inebriants. Herodotus (iv. c. 75) shows the Scythians burning the seeds (leaves and capsules) in worship and becoming drunk upon the fumes, as do the S. African Bushmen of the present day."—(Arab. Nights, i. 65.)]

1563.—"The great Sultan Badur told Martim Affonzo de Souza, for whom he had a great liking, and to whom he told all his secrets, that when in the night he had a desire to visit Portugal, and the Brazil, and Turkey, and Arabia, and Persia, all he had to do was to eat a little bangue...."—Garcia, f. 26.

1578.—"Bangue is a plant resembling hemp, or the Cannabis of the Latins ... the Arabs call this Bangue 'Axis'" (i.e. Ḥashīsh).—C. Acosta, 360-61.

1598.—"They have ... also many kinds of Drogues, as Amfion, or Opium, Camfora, Bangue and Sandall Wood."—Linschoten, 19; [Hak. Soc. i. 61; also see ii. 115].

1606.—"O mais de tẽpo estava cheo de bangue."—Gouvea, 93.

1638.—"Il se fit apporter vn petit cabinet d'or ... dont il tira deux layettes, et prit dans l'vne de l'offion, ou opium, et dans l'autre du bengi, qui est vne certaine drogue ou poudre, dont ils se seruent pour s'exciter à la luxure."—Mandelslo, Paris, 1659, 150.

1685.—"I have two sorts of the Bangue, which were sent from two several places of the East Indies; they both differ much from our Hemp, although they seem to differ most as to their magnitude."—Dr. Hans Sloane to Mr. Ray, in Ray's Correspondence, 1848, p. 160.

1673.—"Bang (a pleasant intoxicating Seed mixed with Milk)...."—Fryer, 91.

1711.—"Bang has likewise its Vertues attributed to it; for being used as Tea, it inebriates, or exhilarates them according to the Quantity they take."—Lockyer, 61.

1727.—"Before they engage in a Fight, they drink Bang, which is made of a Seed like Hemp-seed, that has an intoxicating Quality."—A. Hamilton, i. 131.

1763.—"Most of the troops, as is customary during the agitations of this festival, had eaten plentifully of bang...."—Orme, i. 194.

1784.—"... it does not appear that the use of bank, an intoxicating weed which resembles the hemp of Europe, ... is considered even by the most rigid (Hindoo) a breach of the law."—G. Forster, Journey, ed. 1808, ii. 291.

1789.—"A shop of Bang may be kept with a capital of no more than two shillings, or one rupee. It is only some mats stretched under some tree, where the Bangeras of the town, that is, the vilest of mankind, assemble to drink Bang."—Note on Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 308.

1868.—

"The Hemp—with which we used to hang

Our prison pets, yon felon gang,—

In Eastern climes produces Bang,

Esteemed a drug divine.

As Hashish dressed, its magic powers

Can lap us in Elysian bowers;

But sweeter far our social hours,

O'er a flask of rosy wine."

Lord Neaves.

BANGED—is also used as a participle, for 'stimulated by bang,' e.g. "banged up to the eyes."

BANGLE, s. H. bangṛī or bangrī. The original word properly means a ring of coloured glass worn on the wrist by women; [the chūrī of N. India;] but bangle is applied to any native ring-bracelet, and also to an anklet or ring of any kind worn on the ankle or leg. Indian silver bangles on the wrist have recently come into common use among English girls.

1803.—"To the cutwahl he gave a heavy pair of gold bangles, of which he considerably enhanced the value by putting them on his wrists with his own hands."—Journal of Sir J. Nicholls, in note to Wellington Despatches, ed. 1837, ii. 373.

1809.—"Bangles, or bracelets."—Maria Graham, 13.

1810.—"Some wear ... a stout silver ornament of the ring kind, called a bangle, or karrah [kaṛā] on either wrist."—Williamson, V. M. i. 305.

1826.—"I am paid with the silver bangles of my enemy, and his cash to boot."—Pandurang Hari, 27; [ed. 1873, i. 36].

1873.—"Year after year he found some excuse for coming up to Sirmoori—now a proposal for a tax on bangles, now a scheme for a new mode of Hindustani pronunciation."—The True Reformer, i. 24.

BANGUN, s.—See BRINJAUL.

BANGUR, s. Hind. bāngar. In Upper India this name is given to the higher parts of the plain country on which the towns stand—the older alluvium—in contradistinction to the khāḍar [Khādir] or lower alluvium immediately bordering the great rivers, and forming the limit of their inundation and modern divagations; the khāḍar having been cut out from the bāngar by the river. Medlicott spells bhāngar (Man. of Geol. of India, i. 404).

BANGY, BANGHY, &c. s. H. bahaṅgī, Mahr. baṅgī; Skt. vihaṅgamā, and vihaṅgikā.

a. A shoulder-yoke for carrying loads, the yoke or bangy resting on the shoulder, while the load is apportioned at either end in two equal weights, and generally hung by cords. The milkmaid's yoke is the nearest approach to a survival of the bangy-staff in England. Also such a yoke with its pair of baskets or boxes.—(See PITARRAH).

b. Hence a parcel post, carried originally in this way, was called bangy or dawk-bangy, even when the primitive mode of transport had long become obsolete. "A bangy parcel" is a parcel received or sent by such post.

a.—

1789.—

"But I'll give them 2000, with Bhanges and Coolies,

With elephants, camels, with hackeries and doolies."

Letters of Simpkin the Second, p. 57.

1803.—"We take with us indeed, in six banghys, sufficient changes of linen."—Ld. Valentia, i. 67.

1810.—"The bangy-wollah, that is the bearer who carries the bangy, supports the bamboo on his shoulder, so as to equipoise the baskets suspended at each end."—Williamson, V. M. i. 323.

[1843.—"I engaged eight bearers to carry my palankeen. Besides these I had four banghy-burdars, men who are each obliged to carry forty pound weight, in small wooden or tin boxes, called petarrahs."—Traveller's account, Carey, Good Old Days, ii. 91.]

b.—

c. 1844.—"I will forward with this by bhangy dâk a copy of Capt. Moresby's Survey of the Red Sea."—Sir G. Arthur, in Ind. Admin. of Lord Ellenborough, p. 221.

1873.—"The officers of his regiment ... subscribed to buy the young people a set of crockery, and a plated tea and coffee service (got up by dawk banghee ... at not much more than 200 per cent. in advance of the English price."—The True Reformer, i. 57.

BANJO, s. Though this is a West- and not East-Indian term, it may be worth while to introduce the following older form of the word:

1764.—

"Permit thy slaves to lead the choral dance

To the wild banshaw's melancholy sound."—Grainger, iv.

See also Davies, for example of banjore, [and N.E.D for banjer].

BANKSHALL, s. a. A warehouse. b. The office of a Harbour Master or other Port Authority. In the former sense the word is still used in S. India; in Bengal the latter is the only sense recognised, at least among Anglo-Indians; in Northern India the word is not in use. As the Calcutta office stands on the banks of the Hoogly, the name is, we believe, often accepted as having some indefinite reference to this position. And in a late work we find a positive and plausible, but entirely unfounded, explanation of this kind, which we quote below. In Java the word has a specific application to the open hall of audience, supported by wooden pillars without walls, which forms part of every princely residence. The word is used in Sea Hindustani, in the forms bansār, and bangsāl for a 'store-room' (Roebuck).

Bankshall is in fact one of the oldest of the words taken up by foreign traders in India. And its use not only by Correa (c. 1561) but by King John (1524), with the regularly-formed Portuguese plural of words in -al, shows how early it was adopted by the Portuguese. Indeed, Correa does not even explain it, as is his usual practice with Indian terms.

More than one serious etymology has been suggested:—(1). Crawfurd takes it to be the Malay word bangsal, defined by him in his Malay Dict. thus: "(J.) A shed; a storehouse; a workshop; a porch; a covered passage" (see J. Ind. Archip. iv. 182). [Mr Skeat adds that it also means in Malay 'half-husked paddy,' and 'fallen timber, of which the outer layer has rotted and only the core remains.'] But it is probable that the Malay word, though marked by Crawfurd ("J.") as Javanese in origin, is a corruption of one of the two following:

(2) Beng. baṇkaśāla, from Skt. baṇik or vaṇik, 'trade,' and śāla, 'a hall.' This is Wilson's etymology.

(3). Skt. bhāṇḍaśāla, Canar. bhaṇdaśāle, Malayāl. pāṇḍiśāla, Tam. paṇḍaśālai or paṇḍakaśālai, 'a storehouse or magazine.'

It is difficult to decide which of the two last is the original word; the prevalence of the second in S. India is an argument in its favour; and the substitution of g for ḍ would be in accordance with a phonetic practice of not uncommon occurrence.

a.—

c. 1345.—"For the bandar there is in every island (of the Maldives) a wooden building, which they call bajanṣār [evidently for banjaṣār, i.e. Arabic spelling for bangaṣār] where the Governor ... collects all the goods, and there sells or barters them."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 120.

[1520.—"Collected in his bamgasal" (in the Maldives).—Doc. da Torre do Tombo, p. 452.]

1524.—A grant from K. John to the City of Goa, says: "that henceforward even if no market rent in the city is collected from the bacacés, viz. those at which are sold honey, oil, butter, betre (i.e. betel), spices, and cloths, for permission to sell such things in the said bacacés, it is our pleasure that they shall sell them freely." A note says: "Apparently the word should be bacaçaes, or bancacaes, or bangaçaes, which then signified any place to sell things, but now particularly a wooden house."—Archiv. Portug. Or., Fasc. ii. 43.

1561.—"... in the bengaçaes, in which stand the goods ready for shipment."—Correa, Lendas, i. 2, 260.

1610.—The form and use of the word have led P. Teixeira into a curious confusion (as it would seem) when, speaking of foreigners at Ormus, he says: "hay muchos gentiles, Baneanes [see BANYAN], Bangasalys, y Cambayatys"—where the word in italics probably represents Bangalys, i.e. Bengālis (Rel. de Harmuz, 18).

c. 1610.—"Le facteur du Roy chrestien des Maldiues tenoit sa banquesalle ou plustost cellier, sur le bord de la mer en l'isle de Malé."—Pyrard de Laval, ed. 1679, i. 65; [Hak. Soc. i. 85; also see i. 267].

1613.—"The other settlement of Yler ... with houses of wood thatched extends ... to the fields of Tanjonpacer, where there is a bangasal or sentry's house without other defense."—Godinho de Eredia, 6.

1623.—"Bangsal, a shed (or barn), or often also a roof without walls to sit under, sheltered from the rain or sun."—Gaspar Willens, Vocabularium, &c., ins' Gravenhaage; repr. Batavia, 1706.

1734-5.—"Paid the Bankshall Merchants for the house poles, country reapers, &c., necessary for housebuilding."—In Wheeler, iii. 148.

1748.—"A little below the town of Wampo.... These people (compradores) build a house for each ship.... They are called by us banksalls. In these we deposit the rigging and yards of the vessel, chests, water-casks, and every thing that incommodes us aboard."—A Voyage to the E. Indies in 1747 and 1748 (1762), p. 294. It appears from this book (p. 118) that the place in Canton River was known as Banksall Island.

1750-52.—"One of the first things on arriving here (Canton River) is to procure a bancshall, that is, a great house, constructed of bamboo and mats ... in which the stores of the ship are laid up."—A Voyage, &c., by Olof Toreen ... in a series of letters to Dr Linnæus, Transl. by J. R. Forster (with Osbeck's Voyage), 1771.

1783.—"These people (Chulias, &c., from India, at Achin) ... on their arrival immediately build, by contract with the natives, houses of bamboo, like what in China at Wampo is called bankshall, very regular, on a convenient spot close to the river."—Forrest, V. to Mergui, 41.

1788.—"Banksauls—Storehouses for depositing ships' stores in, while the ships are unlading and refitting."—Indian Vocab. (Stockdale).

1813.—"The East India Company for seventy years had a large banksaul, or warehouse, at Mirzee, for the reception of the pepper and sandalwood purchased in the dominions of the Mysore Rajah."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iv. 109.

1817.—"The bāngsal or mendōpo is a large open hall, supported by a double row of pillars, and covered with shingles, the interior being richly decorated with paint and gilding."—Raffles, Java (2nd ed.), i. 93. The Javanese use, as in this passage, corresponds to the meaning given in Jansz, Javanese Dict.: "Bangsal, Vorstelijke Zitplaats" (Prince's Sitting-place).

b.—

[1614.—"The custom house or banksall at Masulpatam."—Foster, Letters, ii. 86.]

1623.—"And on the Place by the sea there was the Custom-house, which the Persians in their language call Benksal, a building of no great size, with some open outer porticoes."—P. della Valle, ii. 465.

1673.—"... Their Bank Solls, or Custom House Keys, where they land, are Two; but mean, and shut only with ordinary Gates at Night."—Fryer, 27.

1683.—"I came ashore in Capt. Goyer's Pinnace to ye Bankshall, about 7 miles from Ballasore."—Hedges, Diary, Feb. 2; [Hak. Soc. i. 65].

1687.—"The Mayor and Aldermen, etc., do humbly request the Honourable President and Council would please to grant and assign over to the Corporation the petty dues of Banksall Tolls."—In Wheeler, i. 207.

1727.—"Above it is the Dutch Bankshall, a Place where their Ships ride when they cannot get further up for the too swift Currents."—A. Hamilton, ii. 6.

1789.—"And that no one may plead ignorance of this order, it is hereby directed that it be placed constantly in view at the Bankshall in the English and country languages."—Procl. against Slave-Trading in Seton-Karr, ii. 5.

1878.—"The term 'Banksoll' has always been a puzzle to the English in India. It is borrowed from the Dutch. The 'Soll' is the Dutch or Danish 'Zoll,' the English 'Toll.' The Banksoll was then the place on the 'bank' where all tolls or duties were levied on landing goods."—Talboys Wheeler, Early Records of B. India, 196. (Quite erroneous, as already said; and Zoll is not Dutch.)

BANTAM, n.p. The province which forms the western extremity of Java, properly Bāntan. [Mr Skeat gives Bantan, Crawfurd, Bantân.] It formed an independent kingdom at the beginning of the 17th century, and then produced much pepper (no longer grown), which caused it to be greatly frequented by European traders. An English factory was established here in 1603, and continued till 1682, when the Dutch succeeded in expelling us as interlopers.

[1615.—"They were all valued in my invoice at Bantan."—Foster, Letters, iv. 93.]

1727.—"The only Product of Bantam is Pepper, wherein it abounds so much, that they can export 10,000 Tuns per annum."—A. Hamilton, ii. 127.

BANTAM FOWLS, s. According to Crawfurd, the dwarf poultry which we call by this name were imported from Japan, and received the name "not from the place that produced them, but from that where our voyagers first found them."—(Desc. Dict. s.v. Bantam). The following evidently in Pegu describes Bantams:

1586.—"They also eat certain cocks and hens called lorine, which are the size of a turtle-dove, and have feathered feet; but so pretty, that I never saw so pretty a bird. I brought a cock and hen with me as far as Chaul, and then, suspecting they might be taken from me, I gave them to the Capuchin fathers belonging to the Madre de Dios."—Balbi, f. 125v, 126.

1673.—"From Siam are brought hither little Champore Cocks with ruffled Feet, well armed with Spurs, which have a strutting Gate with them, the truest mettled in the World."—Fryer, 116.

[1703.—"Wilde cocks and hens ... much like the small sort called Champores, severall of which we have had brought us from Camboja."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. cccxxxiii.

This looks as if they came from Champa (q.v.).

(1) BANYAN, s. a. A Hindu trader, and especially of the Province of Guzerat, many of which class have for ages been settled in Arabian ports and known by this name; but the term is often applied by early travellers in Western India to persons of the Hindu religion generally. b. In Calcutta also it is (or perhaps rather was) specifically applied to the native brokers attached to houses of business, or to persons in the employment of a private gentleman doing analogous duties (now usually called sircar).

The word was adopted from Vāṇiya, a man of the trading caste (in Gujarāti vāṇiyo), and that comes from Skt. vaṇij, 'a merchant.' The terminal nasal may be a Portuguese addition (as in palanquin, mandarin, Bassein), or it may be taken from the plural form vāṇiyān. It is probable, however, that the Portuguese found the word already in use by the Arab traders. Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish Admiral, uses it in precisely the same form, applying it to the Hindus generally; and in the poem of Sassui and Panhu, the Sindian Romeo and Juliet, as given by Burton in his Sindh (p. 101), we have the form Wāniyān. P. F. Vincenzo Maria, who is quoted below absurdly alleges that the Portuguese called these Hindus of Guzerat Bagnani, because they were always washing themselves "... chiamati da Portughesi Bagnani, per la frequenza e superstitione, con quale si lauano piu volte il giorno" (251). See also Luillier below. The men of this class profess an extravagant respect for animal life; but after Stanley brought home Dr. Livingstone's letters they became notorious as chief promoters of slave-trade in Eastern Africa. A. K. Forbes speaks of the mediæval Wānias at the Court of Anhilwāra as "equally gallant in the field (with Rajputs), and wiser in council ... already in profession puritans of peace, but not yet drained enough of their fiery Kshatri blood."—(Rās Māla, i. 240; [ed. 1878, 184].)

Bunya is the form in which vāṇiya appears in the Anglo-Indian use of Bengal, with a different shade of meaning, and generally indicating a grain-dealer.

1516.—"There are three qualities of these Gentiles, that is to say, some are called Razbuts ... others are called Banians, and are merchants and traders."—Barbosa, 51.

1552.—"... Among whom came certain men who are called Baneanes of the same heathen of the Kingdom of Cambaia ... coming on board the ship of Vasco da Gama, and seeing in his cabin a pictorial image of Our Lady, to which our people did reverence, they also made adoration with much more fervency...."—Barros, Dec., I. liv. iv. cap. 6.

1555.—"We may mention that the inhabitants of Guzerat call the unbelievers Banyāns, whilst the inhabitants of Hindustan call them Hindū."—Sidi 'Ali Kapudān, in J. As., 1ère S. ix. 197-8.

1563.—"R. If the fruits were all as good as this (mango) it would be no such great matter in the Baneanes, as you tell me, not to eat flesh. And since I touch on this matter, tell me, prithee, who are these Baneanes ... who do not eat flesh?..."—Garcia, f. 136.

1608.—"The Gouernour of the Towne of Gandeuee is a Bannyan, and one of those kind of people that obserue the Law of Pythagoras."—Jones, in Purchas, i. 231.

[1610.—"Baneanes." See quotation under BANKSHALL, a.]

1623.—"One of these races of Indians is that of those which call themselves Vanià, but who are called, somewhat corruptly by the Portuguese, and by all our other Franks, Banians; they are all, for the most part, traders and brokers."—P. della Valle, i. 486-7; [and see i. 78 Hak. Soc.].

1630.—"A people presented themselves to mine eyes, cloathed in linnen garments, somewhat low descending, of a gesture and garbe, as I may say, maidenly and well nigh effeminate; of a countenance shy, and somewhat estranged; yet smiling out a glosed and bashful familiarity.... I asked what manner of people these were, so strangely notable, and notably strange. Reply was made that they were Banians."—Lord, Preface.

1665.—"In trade these Banians are a thousand times worse than the Jews; more expert in all sorts of cunning tricks, and more maliciously mischievous in their revenge."—Tavernier, E. T. ii. 58; [ed. Ball, i. 136, and see i. 91].

c. 1666.—"Aussi chacun a son Banian dans les Indes, et il y a des personnes de qualité qui leur confient tout ce qu'ils ont...."—Thevenot, v. 166. This passage shows in anticipation the transition to the Calcutta use (b., below).

1672.—"The inhabitants are called Guizeratts and Benyans."—Baldaeus, 2.

" "It is the custom to say that to make one Bagnan (so they call the Gentile Merchants) you need three Chinese, and to make one Chinese three Hebrews."—P. F. Vincenzo di Maria, 114.

1673.—"The Banyan follows the Soldier, though as contrary in Humour as the Antipodes in the same Meridian are opposite to one another.... In Cases of Trade they are not so hide-bound, giving their Consciences more Scope, and boggle at no Villainy for an Emolument."—Fryer, 193.

1677.—"In their letter to Ft. St. George, 15th March, the Court offer £20 reward to any of our servants or soldiers as shall be able to speak, write, and translate the Banian language, and to learn their arithmetic."—In Madras Notes and Exts., No. I. p. 18.

1705.—"... ceux des premieres castes, comme les Baignans."—Luillier, 106.

1813.—"... it will, I believe, be generally allowed by those who have dealt much with Banians and merchants in the larger trading towns of India, that their moral character cannot be held in high estimation."—Forbes, Or. Mem. ii. 456.

1877.—"Of the Wani, Banyan, or trader-caste there are five great families in this country."—Burton, Sind Revisited, ii. 281.

b.—

1761.—"We expect and positively direct that if our servants employ Banians or black people under them, they shall be accountable for their conduct."—The Court of Directors, in Long, 254.

1764.—"Resolutions and Orders. That no Moonshee, Linguist, Banian, or Writer, be allowed to any officer, excepting the Commander-in-Chief."—Ft. William Proc., in Long, 382.

1775.—"We have reason to suspect that the intention was to make him (Nundcomar) Banyan to General Clavering, to surround the General and us with the Governor's creatures, and to keep us totally unacquainted with the real state of the Government."—Minute by Clavering, Monson, and Francis, Ft. William, 11th April. In Price's Tracts, ii. 138.

1780.—"We are informed that the Juty Wallahs or Makers and Vendors of Bengal Shoes in and about Calcutta ... intend sending a Joint Petition to the Supreme Council ... on account of the great decay of their Trade, entirely owing to the Luxury of the Bengalies, chiefly the Bangans (sic) and Sarcars, as there are scarce any of them to be found who does not keep a Chariot, Phaeton, Buggy or Pallanquin, and some all four...."—In Hicky's Bengal Gazette, June 24th.

1783.—"Mr. Hastings' bannian was, after this auction, found possessed of territories yielding a rent of £140,000 a year."—Burke, Speech on E. I. Bill, in Writings, &c., iii. 490.

1786.—"The said Warren Hastings did permit and suffer his own banyan or principal black steward, named Canto Baboo, to hold farms ... to the amount of 13 lacs of rupees per annum."—Art. agst. Hastings, Burke, vii. 111.

" "A practice has gradually crept in among the Banians and other rich men of Calcutta, of dressing some of their servants ... nearly in the uniform of the Honourable Company's Sepoys and Lascars...."—Notification, in Seton Karr, i. 122.

1788.—"Banyan—A Gentoo servant employed in the management of commercial affairs. Every English gentleman at Bengal has a Banyan who either acts of himself, or as the substitute of some great man or black merchant."—Indian Vocabulary (Stockdale).

1810.—"The same person frequently was banian to several European gentlemen; all of whose concerns were of course accurately known to him, and thus became the subject of conversation at those meetings the banians of Calcutta invariably held...."—Williamson, V. M. i. 189.

1817.—"The European functionary ... has first his banyan or native secretary."—Mill, Hist. (ed. 1840), iii. 14. Mr. Mill does not here accurately interpret the word.

(2). BANYAN, s. An undershirt, originally of muslin, and so called as resembling the body garment of the Hindus; but now commonly applied to under body-clothing of elastic cotton, woollen, or silk web. The following quotations illustrate the stages by which the word reached its present application. And they show that our predecessors in India used to adopt the native or Banyan costume in their hours of ease. C. P. Brown defines Banyan as "a loose dressing-gown, such as Hindu tradesmen wear." Probably this may have been the original use; but it is never so employed in Northern India.

1672.—"It is likewise ordered that both Officers and Souldiers in the Fort shall, both on every Sabbath Day, and on every day when they exercise, weare English apparel; in respect the garbe is most becoming as Souldiers, and correspondent to their profession."—Sir W. Langhorne's Standing Order, in Wheeler, iii. 426.

1731.—"The Ensign (as it proved, for his first appearance, being undressed and in his banyon coat, I did not know him) came off from his cot, and in a very haughty manner cried out, 'None of your disturbance, Gentlemen.'"—In Wheeler, iii. 109.

1781.—"I am an Old Stager in this Country, having arrived in Calcutta in the Year 1736.... Those were the days, when Gentlemen studied Ease instead of Fashion; when even the Hon. Members of the Council met in Banyan Shirts, Long Drawers (q.v.), and Conjee (Congee) caps; with a Case Bottle of good old Arrack, and a Gouglet of Water placed on the Table, which the Secretary (a Skilful Hand) frequently converted into Punch...."—Letter from An Old Country Captain, in India Gazette, Feb. 24th.

[1773.—In a letter from Horace Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossory, dated April 30th, 1773 (Cunningham's ed., v. 459) he describes a ball at Lord Stanley's, at which two of the dancers, Mr. Storer and Miss Wrottesley, were dressed "in banians with furs, for winter, cock and hen." It would be interesting to have further details of these garments, which were, it may be hoped, different from the modern Banyan.]

1810.—"... an undershirt, commonly called a banian."—Williamson, V.M. i. 19.

(3) BANYAN, s. See BANYAN-TREE.

BANYAN-DAY, s. This is sea-slang for a jour maigre, or a day on which no ration of meat was allowed; when (as one of our quotations above expresses it) the crew had "to observe the Law of Pythagoras."

1690.—"Of this (Kitchery or Kedgeree, q.v.) the European Sailors feed in these parts once or twice a Week, and are forc'd at those times to a Pagan Abstinence from Flesh, which creates in them a perfect Dislike and utter Detestation to those Bannian Days, as they commonly call them."—Ovington, 310, 311.

BANYAN-FIGHT, s. Thus:

1690.—"This Tongue Tempest is termed there a Bannian-Fight, for it never rises to blows or bloodshed."—Ovington, 275. Sir G. Birdwood tells us that this is a phrase still current in Bombay.

BANYAN-TREE, also elliptically Banyan, s. The Indian Fig-Tree (Ficus Indica, or Ficus bengalensis, L.), called in H. baṛ [or baṛgat, the latter the "Bourgade" of Bernier (ed. Constable, p. 309).] The name appears to have been first bestowed popularly on a famous tree of this species growing near Gombroon (q.v.), under which the Banyans or Hindu traders settled at that port, had built a little pagoda. So says Tavernier below. This original Banyan-tree is described by P. della Valle (ii. 453), and by Valentijn (v. 202). P. della Valle's account (1622) is extremely interesting, but too long for quotation. He calls it by the Persian name, lūl. The tree still stood, within half a mile of the English factory, in 1758, when it was visited by Ives, who quotes Tickell's verses given below. [Also see CUBEER BURR.]

c. A.D. 70.—"First and foremost, there is a Fig-tree there (in India) which beareth very small and slender figges. The propertie of this Tree, is to plant and set it selfe without mans helpe. For it spreadeth out with mightie armes, and the lowest water-boughes underneath, do bend so downeward to the very earth, that they touch it againe, and lie upon it: whereby, within one years space they will take fast root in the ground, and put foorth a new Spring round about the Mother-tree: so as these braunches, thus growing, seeme like a traile or border of arbours most curiously and artificially made," &c.—Plinies Nat. Historie, by Philemon Holland, i. 360.

1624.—

"... The goodly bole being got

To certain cubits' height, from every side

The boughs decline, which, taking root afresh,

Spring up new boles, and these spring new, and newer,

Till the whole tree become a porticus,

Or arched arbour, able to receive

A numerous troop."

Ben Jonson, Neptune's Triumph.

c. 1650.—"Cet Arbre estoit de même espece que celuy qui est a une lieue du Bander, et qui passe pour une merveille; mais dans les Indes il y en a quantité. Les Persans l'appellent Lul, les Portugais Arber de Reys, et les Français l'Arbre des Banianes; parce que les Banianes ont fait bâtir dessous une Pagode avec un carvansera accompagné de plusieurs petits étangs pour se laver."—Tavernier, V. de Perse, liv. v. ch. 23. [Also see ed. Ball, ii. 198.]

c. 1650.—"Near to the City of Ormus was a Bannians tree, being the only tree that grew in the Island."—Tavernier, Eng. Tr. i. 255.

c. 1666.—"Nous vimes à cent ou cent cinquante pas de ce jardin, l'arbre War dans toute son etenduë. On l'appelle aussi Ber, et arbre des Banians, et arbre des racines...."—Thevenot, v. 76.

1667.—

"The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renown'd;

But such as at this day, to Indians known,

In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms

Branching so broad and long, that in the ground

The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow

About the mother-tree, a pillar'd shade

High over-arch'd, and echoing walks between."

Paradise Lost, ix. 1101.

[Warton points out that Milton must have had in view a description of the Banyan-tree in Gerard's Herbal under the heading "of the arched Indian fig-tree."]

1672.—"Eastward of Surat two Courses, i.e. a League, we pitched our Tent under a Tree that besides its Leafs, the Branches bear its own Roots, therefore called by the Portugals, Arbor de Raiz; For the Adoration the Banyans pay it, the Banyan-Tree."—Fryer, 105.

1691.—"About a (Dutch) mile from Gamron ... stands a tree, heretofore described by Mandelslo and others.... Beside this tree is an idol temple where the Banyans do their worship."—Valentijn, v. 267-8.

1717.—

"The fair descendants of thy sacred bed

Wide-branching o'er the Western World shall spread,

Like the fam'd Banian Tree, whose pliant shoot

To earthward bending of itself takes root,

Till like their mother plant ten thousand stand

In verdant arches on the fertile land;

Beneath her shade the tawny Indians rove,

Or hunt at large through the wide-echoing grove."

Tickell, Epistle from a Lady in

England to a Lady in Avignon.

1726.—"On the north side of the city (Surat) is there an uncommonly great Pichar or Waringin tree.... The Portuguese call this tree Albero de laiz, i.e. Root-tree.... Under it is a small chapel built by a Benyan.... Day and night lamps are alight there, and Benyans constantly come in pilgrimage, to offer their prayers to this saint."—Valentijn, iv. 145.

1771.—"... being employed to construct a military work at the fort of Triplasore (afterwards called Marsden's Bastion) it was necessary to cut down a banyan-tree which so incensed the brahmans of that place, that they found means to poison him" (i.e. Thomas Marsden of the Madras Engineers).—Mem. of W. Marsden, 7-8.

1809.—"Their greatest enemy (i.e. of the buildings) is the Banyan-Tree."—Ld. Valentia, i. 396.

1810.—

"In the midst an aged Banian grew.

It was a goodly sight to see

That venerable tree,

For o'er the lawn, irregularly spread,

Fifty straight columns propt its lofty head;

And many a long depending shoot,

Seeking to strike its root,

Straight like a plummet grew towards the ground,

Some on the lower boughs which crost their way,

Fixing their bearded fibres, round and round,

With many a ring and wild contortion wound;

Some to the passing wind at times, with sway

Of gentle motion swung;

Others of younger growth, unmoved, were hung

Like stone-drops from the cavern's fretted height."

Southey, Curse of Kehama, xiii. 51.

[Southey takes his account from

Williamson, Orient. Field Sports, ii. 113.]

1821.—

"Des banians touffus, par les brames adorés,

Depuis longtemps la langueur nous implore,

Courbés par le midi, dont l'ardeur les dévore,

Ils étendent vers nous leurs rameaux altérés."

Casimir Delavigne, Le Paria, iii. 6.

A note of the publishers on the preceding passage, in the edition of 1855, is diverting:

"Un journaliste allemand a accusé M. Casimir Delavigne d'avoir pris pour un arbre une secte religieuse de l'Inde...." The German journalist was wrong here, but he might have found plenty of matter for ridicule in the play. Thus the Brahmins (men) are Akebar (!), Idamore (!!), and Empsael (!!!); their women Néala (?), Zaide (!), and Mirza (!!).

1825.—"Near this village was the finest banyan-tree which I had ever seen, literally a grove rising from a single primary stem, whose massive secondary trunks, with their straightness, orderly arrangement, and evident connexion with the parent stock, gave the general effect of a vast vegetable organ. The first impression which I felt on coming under its shade was, 'What a noble place of worship!'"—Heber, ii. 93 (ed. 1844).

1834.—"Cast forth thy word into the everliving, everworking universe; it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove—(perhaps alas! as a hemlock forest) after a thousand years."—Sartor Resartus.

1856.—

"... its pendant branches, rooting in the air,

Yearn to the parent earth and grappling fast,

Grow up huge stems again, which shooting forth

In massy branches, these again despatch

Their drooping heralds, till a labyrinth

Of root and stem and branch commingling, forms

A great cathedral, aisled and choired in wood."

The Banyan Tree, a Poem.

1865.—"A family tends to multiply families around it, till it becomes the centre of a tribe, just as the banyan tends to surround itself with a forest of its own offspring."—Maclennan, Primitive Marriage, 269.

1878.—"... des banyans soutenus par des racines aëriennes et dont les branches tombantes engendrent en touchant terre des sujets nouveaux."—Rev. des Deux Mondes, Oct. 15, p. 832.

BĀRASINHĀ, s. The H. name of the widely-spread Cervus Wallichii, Cuvier. This H. name ('12-horn') is no doubt taken from the number of tines being approximately twelve. The name is also applied by sportsmen in Bengal to the Rucervus Duvaucellii, or Swamp-Deer. [See Blanford, Mamm. 538 seqq.].

[1875.—"I know of no flesh equal to that of the ibex; and the navo, a species of gigantic antelope of Chinese Tibet, with the barra-singh, a red deer of Kashmir, are nearly equally good."—Wilson, Abode of Snow, 91.]

[BARBER'S BRIDGE, n.p. This is a curious native corruption of an English name. The bridge in Madras, known as Barber's Bridge, was built by an engineer named Hamilton. This was turned by the natives into Ambuton, and in course of time the name Ambuton was identified with the Tamil ambattan, 'barber,' and so it came to be called Barber's Bridge.—See Le Fanu, Man. of the Salem Dist. ii. 169, note.]

BARBICAN, s. This term of mediæval fortification is derived by Littré, and by Marcel Devic, from Ar. barbakh, which means a sewer-pipe or water-pipe. And one of the meanings given by Littré is, "une ouverture longue et étroite pour l'écoulement des eaux." Apart from the possible, but untraced, history which this alleged meaning may involve, it seems probable, considering the usual meaning of the word as 'an outwork before a gate,' that it is from Ar. P. bāb-khāna, 'gate-house.' This etymology was suggested in print about 50 years ago by one of the present writers, and confirmed to his mind some years later, when in going through the native town of Cawnpore, not long before the Mutiny, he saw a brand-new double-towered gateway, or gate-house, on the face of which was the inscription in Persian characters: "Bāb-Khāna-i-Mahommed Bakhsh," or whatever was his name, i.e. "The Barbican of Mahommed Bakhsh." [The N.E.D. suggests P. barbar-khānah, 'house on the wall,' it being difficult to derive the Romanic forms in bar- from bāb-khāna.]

The editor of the Chron. of K. James of Aragon (1833, p. 423) says that barbacana in Spain means a second, outermost and lower wall; i.e. a fausse-braye. And this agrees with facts in that work, and with the definition in Cobarruvias; but not at all with Joinville's use, nor with V.-le-Duc's explanation.

c. 1250.—"Tuit le baron ... s'acorderent que en un tertre ... féist l'en une forteresse qui fust bien garnie de gent, si qui se li Tur fesoient saillies ... cell tore fust einsi come barbacane (orig. 'quasi antemurale') de l'oste."—The Med. Fr. tr. of William of Tyre, ed. Paul Paris, i. 158.

c. 1270.—"... on condition of his at once putting me in possession of the albarrana tower ... and should besides make his Saracens construct a barbacana round the tower."—James of Aragon, as above.

1309.—"Pour requerre sa gent plus sauvement, fist le roys faire une barbaquane devant le pont qui estoit entre nos dous os, en tel maniere que l'on pooit entrer de dous pars en la barbaquane à cheval."—Joinville, p. 162.

1552.—"Lourenço de Brito ordered an intrenchment of great strength to be dug, in the fashion of a barbican (barbacã) outside the wall of the fort ... on account of a well, a stone-cast distant...."—Barros, II. i. 5.

c. 1870.—"Barbacane. Défense extérieure protégeant une entrée, et permettant de réunir un assez grand nombre d'hommes pour disposer des sorties ou protéger une retraite."—Viollet-le-Duc, H. d'une Forteresse, 361.

BARBIERS, s. This is a term which was formerly very current in the East, as the name of a kind of paralysis, often occasioned by exposure to chills. It began with numbness and imperfect command of the power of movement, sometimes also affecting the muscles of the neck and power of articulation, and often followed by loss of appetite, emaciation, and death. It has often been identified with Beriberi, and medical opinion seems to have come back to the view that the two are forms of one disorder, though this was not admitted by some older authors of the last century. The allegation of Lind and others, that the most frequent subjects of barbiers were Europeans of the lower class who, when in drink, went to sleep in the open air, must be contrasted with the general experience that beriberi rarely attacks Europeans. The name now seems obsolete.

1673.—"Whence follows Fluxes, Dropsy, Scurvy, Barbiers (which is an enervating (sic) the whole Body, being neither able to use hands or Feet), Gout, Stone, Malignant and Putrid Fevers."—Fryer, 68.

1690.—"Another Distemper with which the Europeans are sometimes afflicted, is the Barbeers, or a deprivation of the Vse and Activity of their Limbs, whereby they are rendered unable to move either Hand or Foot."—Ovington, 350.

1755.—(If the land wind blow on a person sleeping) "the consequence of this is always dangerous, as it seldom fails to bring on a fit of the Barbiers (as it is called in this country), that is, a total deprivation of the use of the limbs."—Ives, 77.

[c. 1757.—"There was a disease common to the lower class of Europeans, called the Barbers, a species of palsy, owing to exposure to the land winds after a fit of intoxication."—In Carey, Good Old Days, ii. 266.]

1768.—"The barbiers, a species of palsy, is a disease most frequent in India. It distresses chiefly the lower class of Europeans, who when intoxicated with liquors frequently sleep in the open air, exposed to the land winds."—Lind on Diseases of Hot Climates, 260. (See BERIBERI.)

BARGANY, BRAGANY, H. bārakānī. The name of a small silver coin current in W. India at the time of the Portuguese occupation of Goa, and afterwards valued at 40 reis (then about 5¼d.). The name of the coin was apparently a survival of a very old system of coinage-nomenclature. Kānī is an old Indian word, perhaps Dravidian in origin, indicating ¼ of ¼ of ¼, or 1-64th part. It was applied to the jital (see JEETUL) or 64th part of the mediæval Delhi silver tanka—this latter coin being the prototype in weight and position of the Rupee, as the kānī therefore was of the modern Anglo-Indian pice (= 1-64th of a Rupee). There were in the currency of Mohammed Tughlak (1324-1351) of Delhi, aliquot parts of the tanka, Dokānīs, Shash-kānīs, Hasht-kānīs, Dwāzda-kānīs, and Shānzda-kānīs, representing, as the Persian numerals indicate, pieces of 2, 6, 8, 12, and 16 kānīs or jitals. (See E. Thomas, Pathan Kings of Delhi, pp. 218-219.) Other fractional pieces were added by Fīroz Shāh, Mohammed's son and successor (see Id. 276 seqq. and quotation under c. 1360, below). Some of these terms long survived, e.g. do-kānī in localities of Western and Southern India, and in Western India in the present case the bārakānī or 12 kānī, a vernacular form of the dwāzda-kānī of Mohammed Tughlak.

1330.—"Thousands of men from various quarters, who possessed thousands of these copper coins ... now brought them to the treasury, and received in exchange gold tankas and silver tankas (Tanga), shash-gānīs and du-gānīs, which they carried to their homes."—Táríkh-i-Fíroz-Sháhi, in Elliot, iii. 240-241.

c. 1350—"Sultan Fíroz issued several varieties of coins. There was the gold tanka and the silver tanka. There were also distinct coins of the respective value of 48, 25, 24, 12, 10, 8 and 6, and one jītal, known as chihal-o-hasht-gānī, bist-o-panjgānī, bist-o-chahār-gānī, dwāzdah-gānī, dah-gānī, hasht-gānī, shāsh-gānī, and yak jītal."—Ibid. 357-358.

1510.—Barganym, in quotation from Correa under Pardao.

1554.—"E as tamgas brancas que se recebem dos foros, são de 4 barganis a tamga, e de 24 leaes o bargany ..." i.e. "And the white tangas that are received in payment of land revenues are at the rate of 4 barganis to the tanga, and of 24 leals to the bargany."—A. Nunez, in Subsidios, p. 31.

" "Statement of the Revenues which the King our Lord holds in the Island and City of Guoa.

"Item—The Islands of Tiçoary, and Divar, and that of Chorão, and Johão, all of them, pay in land revenue (de foro) according to ancient custom 36,474 white tanguas, 3 barguanis, and 21 leals, at the tale of 3 barguanis to the tangua and 24 leals to the barguanim, the same thing as 24 bazarucos, amounting to 14,006 pardaos, 1 tangua and 47 leals, making 4,201,9162⁄5 reis. The Isle of Tiçoary (Salsette) is the largest, and on it stands the city of Guoa; the others are much smaller and are annexed to it, they being all contiguous, only separated by rivers."—Botelho, Tombo, ibid. pp. 46-7.

1584.—"They vse also in Goa amongst the common sort to bargain for coals, wood, lime and such like, at so many braganines, accounting 24 basaruchies for one braganine, albeit there is no such money stamped."—Barret, in Hakl. ii. 411; (but it is copied from G. Balbi's Italian, f. 71v).

BARGEER, s. H. from P. bārgīr. A trooper of irregular cavalry who is not the owner of his troop horse and arms (as is the normal practice (see SILLADAR)), but is either put in by another person, perhaps a native officer in the regiment, who supplies horses and arms and receives the man's full pay, allowing him a reduced rate, or has his horse from the State in whose service he is. The P. word properly means 'a load-taker,' 'a baggage horse.' The transfer of use is not quite clear. ["According to a man's reputation or connections, or the number of his followers, would be the rank (mansab) assigned to him. As a rule, his followers brought their own horses and other equipment; but sometimes a man with a little money would buy extra horses, and mount relations or dependants upon them. When this was the case, the man riding his own horse was called, in later parlance, a silaḥdār (literally, 'equipment-holder'), and one riding somebody else's horse was a bārgīr ('burden-taker')."—W. Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, J.R.A.S. July 1896, p. 539.]

1844.—"If the man again has not the cash to purchase a horse, he rides one belonging to a native officer, or to some privileged person, and becomes what is called his bargeer...."—Calcutta Rev., vol ii. p. 57.

BARKING-DEER, s. The popular name of a small species of deer (Cervulus aureus, Jerdon) called in H. kākar, and in Nepal ratwā; also called Ribfaced-Deer, and in Bombay Baikree. Its common name is from its call, which is a kind of short bark, like that of a fox but louder, and may be heard in the jungles which it frequents, both by day and by night.—(Jerdon).

[1873.—"I caught the cry of a little barking-deer."—Cooper, Mishmee Hills, 177.]

BARODA, n.p. Usually called by the Dutch and older English writers Brodera; proper name according to the Imp. Gazetteer, Wadodra; a large city of Guzerat, which has been since 1732 the capital of the Mahratta dynasty of Guzerat, the Gaikwārs. (See GUICOWAR).

1552.—In Barros, "Cidade de Barodar," IV. vi. 8.

1555.—"In a few days we arrived at Barūj; some days after at Baloudra, and then took the road towards Champaïz (read Champanīr?)."—Sidī 'Alī, p. 91.

1606.—"That city (Champanel) may be a day's journey from Deberadora or Barodar, which we commonly call Verdora."—Couto, IV. ix. 5.

[1614.—"We are to go to Amadavar, Cambaia and Brothera."—Foster, Letters, ii. 213; also see iv. 197.]

1638.—-"La ville de Brodra est située dans une plaine sablonneuse, sur la petite riviere de Wasset, a trente Cos, ou quinze lieües de Broitschea."—Mandelslo, 130.

1813.—Brodera, in Forbes, Or. Mem., iii. 268; [2nd ed. ii. 282, 389].

1857.—"The town of Baroda, originally Barpatra (or a bar leaf, i.e. leaf of the Ficus indica, in shape), was the first large city I had seen."—Autob. of Lutfullah, 39.

BAROS, n.p. A fort on the West Coast of Sumatra, from which the chief export of Sumatra camphor, so highly valued in China, long took place. [The name in standard Malay is, according to Mr Skeat, Barus.] It is perhaps identical with the Panṣūr or Fanṣūr of the Middle Ages, which gave its name to the Fanṣūrī camphor, famous among Oriental writers, and which by the perpetuation of a misreading is often styled Ḳaiṣūrī camphor, &c. (See CAMPHOR, and Marco Polo, 2nd ed. ii. 282, 285 seqq.) The place is called Barrowse in the E. I. Colonial Papers, ii. 52, 153.

1727.—"Baros is the next place that abounds in Gold, Camphire, and Benzoin, but admits of no foreign Commerce."—A. Hamilton, ii. 113.

BARRACKPORE, n.p. The auxiliary Cantonment of Calcutta, from which it is 15 m. distant, established in 1772. Here also is the country residence of the Governor-General, built by Lord Minto, and much frequented in former days before the annual migration to Simla was established. The name is a hybrid. (See ACHANOCK).

BARRAMUHUL, n.p. H. Bāramaḥall, 'Twelve estates'; an old designation of a large part of what is now the district of Salem in the Madras Presidency. The identification of the Twelve Estates is not free from difficulty; [see a full note in Le Fanu's Man. of Salem, i. 83, seqq.].

1881.—"The Baramahal and Dindigal was placed under the Government of Madras; but owing to the deficiency in that Presidency of civil servants possessing a competent knowledge of the native languages, and to the unsatisfactory manner in which the revenue administration of the older possessions of the Company under the Madras Presidency had been conducted, Lord Cornwallis resolved to employ military officers for a time in the management of the Baramahl."—Arbuthnot, Mem. of Sir T. Munro, xxxviii.

BASHAW, s. The old form of what we now call pasha, the former being taken from bāshā, the Ar. form of the word, which is itself generally believed to be a corruption of the P. pādishāh. Of this the first part is Skt. patis, Zend. paitis, Old P. pati, 'a lord or master' (comp. Gr. δεσπότης). Pechah, indeed, for 'Governor' (but with the ch guttural) occurs in I. Kings x. 15, II. Chron. ix. 14, and in Daniel iii. 2, 3, 27. Prof. Max Müller notices this, but it would seem merely as a curious coincidence.—(See Pusey on Daniel, 567.)

1554.—"Hujusmodi Bassarum sermonibus reliquorum Turcarum sermones congruebant."—Busbeq. Epist. ii. (p. 124).

1584.—

"Great kings of Barbary and my portly bassas."

Marlowe, Tamburlane the Great,

1st Part, iii. 1.

c. 1590.—"Filius alter Osmanis, Vrchanis frater, alium non habet in Annalibus titulum, quam Alis bassa: quod bassae vocabulum Turcis caput significat."—Lennclavius, Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum, ed. 1650, p. 402. This etymology connecting bāshā with the Turkish bāsh, 'head,' must be rejected.

c. 1610.—"Un Bascha estoit venu en sa Cour pour luy rendre compte du tribut qu'il luy apportoit; mais il fut neuf mois entiers à attendre que celuy qui a la charge ... eut le temps et le loisir de le compter...."—Pyrard de Laval (of the Great Mogul), ii. 161.

1702.—"... The most notorious injustice we have suffered from the Arabs of Muscat, and the Bashaw of Judda."—In Wheeler, ii. 7.

1727.—"It (Bagdad) is now a prodigious large City, and the Seat of a Beglerbeg.... The Bashaws of Bassora, Comera, and Musol (the ancient Nineveh) are subordinate to him."—A. Hamilton, i. 78.

BASIN, s. H. besan. Pease-meal, generally made of Gram (q.v.) and used, sometimes mixed with ground orange-peel or other aromatic substance, to cleanse the hair, or for other toilette purposes.

[1832.—"The attendants present first the powdered peas, called basun, which answers the purpose of soap."—Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Observations, i. 328.]

BASSADORE, n.p. A town upon the island of Kishm in the Persian Gulf, which belonged in the 16th century to the Portuguese. The place was ceded to the British Crown in 1817, though the claim now seems dormant. The permission for the English to occupy the place as a naval station was granted by Saiyyid Sultan bin Aḥmad of 'Omān, about the end of the 18th century; but it was not actually occupied by us till 1821, from which time it was the depôt of our Naval Squadron in the Gulf till 1882. The real form of the name is, according to Dr. Badger's transliterated map (in H. of Imâns, &c. of Omân), Bāsīdū.

1673.—"At noon we came to Bassatu, an old ruined town of the Portugals, fronting Congo."—Fryer, 320.

BASSAN, s. H. bāsan, 'a dinner-plate'; from Port. bacia (Panjab N. & Q. ii. 117).

BASSEIN, n.p. This is a corruption of three entirely different names, and is applied to various places remote from each other.

(1) Wasāi, an old port on the coast, 26 m. north of Bombay, called by the Portuguese, to whom it long pertained, Baçaim (e.g. Barros, I. ix. 1).

c. 1565.—"Dopo Daman si troua Basain con molte ville ... ne di questa altro si caua che risi, frumenti, e molto ligname."—Cesare de' Federici in Ramusio, iii. 387v.

1756.—"Bandar Bassai."—Mirat-i-Ahmadi, Bird's tr., 129.

1781.—"General Goddard after having taken the fortress of Bessi, which is one of the strongest and most important fortresses under the Mahratta power...."—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 327.

(2) A town and port on the river which forms the westernmost delta-arm of the Irawadi in the Province of Pegu. The Burmese name Bathein, was, according to Prof. Forchammer, a change, made by the Burmese conqueror Alompra, from the former name Kuthein (i.e. Kusein), which was a native corruption of the old name Kusima (see COSMIN). We cannot explain the old European corruption Persaim. [It has been supposed that the name represents the Besynga of Ptolemy (Geog. ii. 4; see M‘Crindle in Ind. Ant. xiii. 372); but (ibid. xxii. 20) Col. Temple denies this on the ground that the name Bassein does not date earlier than about 1780. According to the same authority (ibid. xxii. 19), the modern Burmese name is Patheng, by ordinary phonetics used for Putheng, and spelt Pusin or Pusim. He disputes the statement that the change of name was made by Alaungp'aya or Alompra. The Talaing pronunciation of the name is Pasem or Pasim, according to dialect.]

[1781.—"Intanto piaciutto era alla Congregazione di Propagando che il Regno di Ava fosse allora coltivato nella fede da' Sacerdoti secolari di essa Congregazione, e a' nostri destino li Regni di Battiam, Martaban, e Pegu."—Quirini, Percoto, 93.

[1801.—"An ineffectual attempt was made to repossess and defend Bassien by the late Chekey or Lieutenant."—Symes, Mission, 16.]

The form Persaim occurs in Dalrymple, (1759) (Or. Repert., i. 127 and passim).

(3) Basim, or properly Wāsim; an old town in Berar, the chief place of the district so-called. [See Berar Gazett. 176.]

BATÁRA, s. This is a term applied to divinities in old Javanese inscriptions, &c., the use of which was spread over the Archipelago. It was regarded by W. von Humboldt as taken from the Skt. avatāra (see AVATAR); but this derivation is now rejected. The word is used among R. C. Christians in the Philippines now as synonymous with 'God'; and is applied to the infant Jesus (Blumentritt, Vocabular). [Mr. Skeat (Malay Magic, 86 seqq.) discusses the origin of the word, and prefers the derivation given by Favre and Wilkin, Skt. bhaṭṭāra, 'lord.' A full account of the "Petara, or Sea Dyak gods," by Archdeacon J. Perham, will be found in Roth, Natives of Sarawak, I. 168 seqq.]

BATAVIA, n.p. The famous capital of the Dutch possessions in the Indies; occupying the site of the old city of Jakatra, the seat of a Javanese kingdom which combined the present Dutch Provinces of Bantam, Buitenzorg, Krawang, and the Preanger Regencies.

1619.—"On the day of the capture of Jakatra, 30th May 1619, it was certainly time and place to speak of the Governor-General's dissatisfaction that the name of Batavia had been given to the Castle."—Valentijn, iv. 489.

The Governor-General, Jan Pietersen Coen, who had taken Jakatra, desired to have called the new fortress New Hoorn, from his own birth-place, Hoorn, on the Zuider Zee.

c. 1649.—"While I stay'd at Batavia, my Brother dy'd; and it was pretty to consider what the Dutch made me pay for his Funeral."—Tavernier (E.T.), i. 203.

BATCUL, BATCOLE, BATECALA, &c., n.p. Bhatkal. A place often named in the older narratives. It is on the coast of Canara, just S. of Pigeon Island and Hog Island, in lat. 13° 59′, and is not to be confounded (as it has been) with BEITCUL.

1328.—"... there is also the King of Batigala, but he is of the Saracens."—Friar Jordanus, p. 41.

1510.—The "Bathecala, a very noble city of India," of Varthema (119), though misplaced, must we think be this place and not Beitcul.

1548.—"Trelado (i.e. 'Copy') do Contrato que o Gouernador Gracia de Saa fez com a Raynha de Batecalaa por não aver Reey e ela reger o Reeyno."—In S. Botelho, Tombo, 242.

1599.—"... part is subject to the Queene of Baticola, who selleth great store of pepper to the Portugals, at a towne called Onor...."—Sir Fulke Greville to Sir Fr. Walsingham, in Bruce's Annals, i. 125.

1618.—"The fift of March we anchored at Batachala, shooting three Peeces to give notice of our arriuall...."—Wm. Hore, in Purchas, i. 657. See also Sainsbury, ii. p. 374.

[1624.—"We had the wind still contrary, and having sail'd three other leagues, at the usual hour we cast anchor near the Rocks of Baticala."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 390.]

1727.—"The next Sea-port, to the Southward of Onoar, is Batacola, which has the vestigia of a very large city...."—A. Hamilton, i. 282.

[1785.—"Byte Koal." See quotation under DHOW.]

BATEL, BATELO, BOTELLA, s. A sort of boat used in Western India, Sind, and Bengal. Port. batell, a word which occurs in the Roteiro de V. da Gama, 91 [cf. PATTELLO].

[1686.—"About four or five hundred houses burnt down with a great number of their Bettilos, Boras and boats."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. 55.]

1838.—"The Botella may be described as a Dow in miniature.... It has invariably a square flat stern, and a long grab-like head."—Vaupell, in Trans. Bo. Geog. Soc. vii. 98.

1857.—"A Sindhi battéla, called Rahmatí, under the Tindal Kasim, laden with dry fish, was about to proceed to Bombay."—Lutfullah, 347. See also Burton, Sind Revisited (1877), 32, 33.

[1900.—"The Sheikh has some fine war-vessels, called batils."—Bent, Southern Arabia, 8.]

BATTA, s. Two different words are thus expressed in Anglo-Indian colloquial, and in a manner confounded.

a. H. bhata or bhātā: an extra allowance made to officers, soldiers, or other public servants, when in the field, or on other special grounds; also subsistence money to witnesses, prisoners, and the like. Military Batta, originally an occasional allowance, as defined, grew to be a constant addition to the pay of officers in India, and constituted the chief part of the excess of Indian over English military emoluments. The question of the right to batta on several occasions created great agitation among the officers of the Indian army, and the measure of economy carried out by Lord William Bentinck when Governor-General (G. O. of the Gov.-Gen. in Council, 29th November 1828) in the reduction of full batta to half batta, in the allowances received by all regimental officers serving at stations within a certain distance of the Presidency in Bengal (viz. Barrackpore, Dumdum, Berhampore, and Dinapore) caused an enduring bitterness against that upright ruler.

It is difficult to arrive at the origin of this word. There are, however, several Hindi words in rural use, such as bhāt, bhantā, 'advances made to ploughmen without interest,' and bhaṭṭa, bhaṇṭā, 'ploughmen's wages in kind,' with which it is possibly connected. It has also been suggested, without much probability, that it may be allied to bahut, 'much, excess,' an idea entering into the meaning of both a and b. It is just possible that the familiar military use of the term in India may have been influenced by the existence of the European military term bât or bât-money. The latter is from bât, 'a pack-saddle,' [Late Lat. bastum], and implies an allowance for carrying baggage in the field. It will be seen that one writer below seems to confound the two words.

b. H. baṭṭā and bāṭṭā: agio, or difference in exchange, discount on coins not current, or of short weight. We may notice that Sir H. Elliot does not recognize an absolute separation between the two senses of Batta. His definition runs thus: "Difference of exchange; anything extra; an extra allowance; discount on uncurrent, or short-weight coins; usually called Batta. The word has been supposed to be a corruption of Bharta, increase, but it is a pure Hindi vocable, and is more usually applied to discount than to premium."—(Supp. Gloss. ii. 41.) [Platts, on the other hand, distinguishes the two words—Baṭṭa, Skt. vṛitta, 'turned,' or varta, 'livelihood'—"Exchange, discount, difference of exchange, deduction, &c.," and Bhaṭṭa, Skt. bhakta 'allotted,'—"advances to ploughmen without interest; ploughman's wages in kind."] It will be seen that we have early Portuguese instances of the word apparently in both senses.

The most probable explanation is that the word (and I may add, the thing) originated in the Portuguese practice, and in the use of the Canarese word bhatta, Mahr. bhāt, 'rice' in 'the husk,' called by the Portuguese bate and bata, for a maintenance allowance.

The word batty, for what is more generally called paddy, is or was commonly used by the English also in S. and W. India (see Linschoten, Lucena and Fryer quoted s.v. Paddy, and Wilson's Glossary, s.v. Bhatta).

The practice of giving a special allowance for mantimento began from a very early date in the Indian history of the Portuguese, and it evidently became a recognised augmentation of pay, corresponding closely to our batta, whilst the quotation from Botelho below shows also that bata and mantimento were used, more or less interchangeably, for this allowance. The correspondence with our Anglo-Indian batta went very far, and a case singularly parallel to the discontent raised in the Indian army by the reduction of full-batta to half-batta is spoken of by Correa (iv. 256). The mantimento had been paid all the year round, but the Governor, Martin Afonso de Sousa, in 1542, "desiring," says the historian, "a way to curry favour for himself, whilst going against the people and sending his soul to hell," ordered that in future the mantimento should be paid only during the 6 months of Winter (i.e. of the rainy season), when the force was on shore, and not for the other 6 months when they were on board the cruisers, and received rations. This created great bitterness, perfectly analogous in depth and in expression to that entertained with regard to Lord W. Bentinck and Sir John Malcolm, in 1829. Correa's utterance, just quoted, illustrates this, and a little lower down he adds: "And thus he took away from the troops the half of their mantimento (half their batta, in fact), and whether he did well or ill in that, he'll find in the next world."—(See also ibid. p. 430).

The following quotations illustrate the Portuguese practice from an early date:

1502.—"The Captain-major ... between officers and men-at-arms, left 60 men (at Cochin), to whom the factor was to give their pay, and every month a cruzado of mantimento, and to the officers when on service 2 cruzados...."—Correa, i. 328.

1507.—(In establishing the settlement at Mozambique) "And the Captains took counsel among themselves, and from the money in the chest, paid the force each a cruzado a month for mantimento, with which the men greatly refreshed themselves...."—Ibid. 786.

1511.—"All the people who served in Malaca, whether by sea or by land, were paid their pay for six months in advance, and also received monthly two cruzados of mantimento, cash in hand" (i.e. they had double batta).—Ibid. ii. 267.

a.

1548.—"And for 2 ffarazes (see FARASH) 2 pardaos a month for the two and 4 tangas for bata."...—S. Botelho, Tombo, 233. The editor thinks this is for bate, i.e. paddy. But even if so it is used exactly like batta or maintenance money. A following entry has: "To the constable 38,920 reis a year, in which is comprised maintenance (mantimento)."

1554.—An example of batee for rice will be found s.v. MOORAH.

The following quotation shows battee (or batty) used at Madras in a way that also indicates the original identity of batty, 'rice,' and batta, 'extra allowance':—

1680.—"The Peons and Tarryars (see TALIAR) sent in quest of two soldiers who had deserted from the garrison returned with answer that they could not light of them, whereupon the Peons were turned out of service, but upon Verona's intercession were taken in again, and fined each one month's pay, and to repay the money paid them for Battee...."—Ft. St. Geo. Consn., Feb. 10. In Notes and Exts. No. iii. p. 3.

1707.—"... that they would allow Batta or subsistence money to all that should desert us."—In Wheeler, ii. 63.

1765.—"... orders were accordingly issued ... that on the 1st January, 1766, the double batta should cease...."—Caraccioli's Clive, iv. 160.

1789.—"... batta, or as it is termed in England, bât and forage money, which is here, in the field, almost double the peace allowance."—Munro's Narrative, p. 97.

1799.—"He would rather live on half-pay, in a garrison that could boast of a fives court, than vegetate on full batta, where there was none."—Life of Sir T. Munro, i. 227.

The following shows Batty used for rice in Bombay:

[1813.—"Rice, or batty, is sown in June."—Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. i. 23.]

1829.—"To the Editor of the Bengal Hurkaru.—Sir,—Is it understood that the Wives and daughters of officers on half batta are included in the order to mourn for the Queen of Wirtemberg; or will half-mourning be considered sufficient for them?"—Letter in above, dated 15th April 1829.

1857.—"They have made me a K.C.B. I may confess to you that I would much rather have got a year's batta, because the latter would enable me to leave this country a year sooner."—Sir Hope Grant, in Incidents of the Sepoy War.

b.—

1554.—"And gold, if of 10 mates or 24 carats, is worth 10 cruzados the tael ... if of 9 mates, 9 cruzados; and according to whatever the mates may be it is valued; but moreover it has its batao, i.e. its shroffage (çarrafagem) or agio (caibo) varying with the season."—A. Nunes, 40.

1680.—"The payment or receipt of Batta or Vatum upon the exchange of Pollicat for Madras pagodas prohibited, both coines being of the same Matt and weight, upon pain of forfeiture of 24 pagodas for every offence together with the loss of the Batta."—Ft. St. Geo. Consn., Feb. 10. In Notes and Exts., p. 17.

1760.—"The Nabob receives his revenues in the siccas of the current year only ... and all siccas of a lower date being esteemed, like the coin of foreign provinces, only a merchandize, are bought and sold at a certain discount called batta, which rises and falls like the price of other goods in the market...."—Ft. Wm. Cons., June 30, in Long, 216.

1810.—"... he immediately tells master that the batta, i.e. the exchange, is altered."—Williamson, V. M. i. 203.

BATTAS, BATAKS, &c. n.p. [the latter, according to Mr. Skeat, being the standard Malay name]; a nation of Sumatra, noted especially for their singular cannibal institutions, combined with the possession of a written character of their own and some approach to literature.

c. 1430.—"In ejus insulae, quam dicunt Bathech, parte, anthropophagi habitant ... capita humana in thesauris habent, quae ex hostibus captis abscissa, esis carnibus recondunt, iisque utuntur pro nummis."—Conti, in Poggius, De Var. Fort. lib. iv.

c. 1539.—"This Embassador, that was Brother-in-law to the King of Battas ... brought him a rich Present of Wood of Aloes, Calambaa, and five quintals of Benjamon in flowers."—Cogan's Pinto, 15.

c. 1555.—"This Island of Sumatra is the first land wherein we know man's flesh to be eaten by certaine people which liue in the mountains, called Bacas (read Batas), who vse to gilde their teethe."—Galvano, Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc. 108.

1586.—"Nel regno del Dacin sono alcuni luoghi, ne' quali si ritrouano certe genti, che mangiano le creature humane, e tali genti, si chaimano Batacchi, e quando frà loro i padri, e le madri sono vechhi, si accordano i vicinati di mangiarli, e li mangiano."—G. Balbi, f. 130.

1613.—"In the woods of the interior dwelt Anthropophagi, eaters of human flesh ... and to the present day continues that abuse and evil custom among the Battas of Sumatra."—Godinho de Eredia, f. 23v.

[The fact that the Battas are cannibals has recently been confirmed by Dr. Volz and H. von Autenrieth (Geogr. Jour., June 1898, p. 672.]

BAWUSTYE, s. Corr. of bobstay in Lascar dialect (Roebuck).

BAY, The, n.p. In the language of the old Company and its servants in the 17th century, The Bay meant the Bay of Bengal, and their factories in that quarter.

1683.—"And the Councell of the Bay is as expressly distinguished from the Councell of Hugly, over which they have noe such power."—In Hedges, under Sept. 24. [Hak. Soc. i. 114.]

1747.—"We have therefore laden on her 1784 Bales ... which we sincerely wish may arrive safe with You, as We do that the Gentlemen at the Bay had according to our repeated Requests, furnished us with an earlier conveyance...."—Letter from Ft. St. David, 2nd May, to the Court (MS. in India Office).

BAYA, s. H. baiā [bayā], the Weaver-bird, as it is called in books of Nat. Hist., Ploceus baya, Blyth (Fam. Fringillidae). This clever little bird is not only in its natural state the builder of those remarkable pendant nests which are such striking objects, hanging from eaves or palm-branches; but it is also docile to a singular degree in domestication, and is often exhibited by itinerant natives as the performer of the most delightful tricks, as we have seen, and as is detailed in a paper of Mr Blyth's quoted by Jerdon. "The usual procedure is, when ladies are present, for the bird on a sign from its master to take a cardamom or sweatmeat in its bill, and deposit it between a lady's lips.... A miniature cannon is then brought, which the bird loads with coarse grains of powder one by one ... it next seizes and skilfully uses a small ramrod: and then takes a lighted match from its master, which it applies to the touch-hole." Another common performance is to scatter small beads on a sheet; the bird is provided with a needle and thread, and proceeds in the prettiest way to thread the beads successively. [The quotation from Abul Faẓl shows that these performances are as old as the time of Akbar and probably older still.]

[c. 1590.—"The baya is like a wild sparrow but yellow. It is extremely intelligent, obedient and docile. It will take small coins from the hand and bring them to its master, and will come to a call from a long distance. Its nests are so ingeniously constructed as to defy the rivalry of clever artificers."—Āīn (trans. Jarrett), iii. 122.]

1790.—"The young Hindu women of Banáras ... wear very thin plates of gold, called tíca's, slightly fixed by way of ornament between the eyebrows; and when they pass through the streets, it is not uncommon for the youthful libertines, who amuse themselves with training Bayā's, to give them a sign, which they understand, and to send them to pluck the pieces of gold from the foreheads of their mistresses."—Asiat. Researches, ii. 110.

[1813.—Forbes gives a similar account of the nests and tricks of the Baya.—Or. Mem., 2nd ed. i. 33.]

BAYADÈRE, s. A Hindu dancing-girl. The word is especially used by French writers, from whom it has been sometimes borrowed as if it were a genuine Indian word, particularly characteristic of the persons in question. The word is in fact only a Gallicized form of the Portuguese bailadeira, from bailar, to dance. Some 50 to 60 years ago there was a famous ballet called Le dieu et la bayadère, and under this title Punch made one of the most famous hits of his early days by presenting a cartoon of Lord Ellenborough as the Bayadère dancing before the idol of Somnāth; [also see DANCING-GIRL].

1513.—"There also came to the ground many dancing women (molheres bailadeiras) with their instruments of music, who make their living by that business, and these danced and sang all the time of the banquet...."—Correa, ii. 364.

1526.—"XLVII. The dancers and danceresses (bayladores e bayladeiras) who come to perform at a village shall first go and perform at the house of the principal man of the village" (Gancar, see GAUM).—Foral de usos costumes dos Gancares e Lavradores de esta Ilha de Goa, in Arch. Port. Or., fascic. 5, 132.

1598.—"The heathenish whore called Balliadera, who is a dancer."—Linschoten, 74; [Hak. Soc. i. 264].

1599.—"In hâc icone primum proponitur Inda Balliadera, id est saltatrix, quae in publicis ludis aliisque solennitatibus saltando spectaculum exhibet."—De Bry, Text to pl. xii. in vol. ii. (also see p. 90, and vol. vii. 26), etc.

[c. 1676.—"All the Baladines of Gombroon were present to dance in their own manner according to custom."—Tavernier, ed. Ball, ii. 335.]

1782.—"Surate est renommé par ses Bayadères, dont le véritable nom est Dévédassi: celui de Bayadères que nous leur donnons, vient du mot Balladeiras, qui signifie en Portugais Danseuses."—Sonnerat, i. 7.

1794.—"The name of Balliadere, we never heard applied to the dancing girls; or saw but in Raynal, and 'War in Asia, by an Officer of Colonel Baillie's Detachment;' it is a corrupt Portuguese word."—Moor's Narrative of Little's Detachment, 356.

1825.—"This was the first specimen I had seen of the southern Bayadère, who differ considerably from the nâch girls of northern India, being all in the service of different temples, for which they are purchased young."—Heber, ii. 180.

c. 1836.—"On one occasion a rumour reached London that a great success had been achieved in Paris by the performance of a set of Hindoo dancers, called Les Bayadères, who were supposed to be priestesses of a certain sect, and the London theatrical managers were at once on the qui vive to secure the new attraction.... My father had concluded the arrangement with the Bayadères before his brother managers arrived in Paris. Shortly afterwards, the Hindoo priestesses appeared at the Adelphi. They were utterly uninteresting, wholly unattractive. My father lost £2000 by the speculation; and in the family they were known as the 'Buy-em-dears' ever after."—Edmund Yates, Recollections, i. 29, 30 (1884).

BAYPARREE, BEOPARRY, s. H. bepārī, and byopārī (from Skt. vyāpārin); a trader, and especially a petty trader or dealer.

A friend long engaged in business in Calcutta (Mr J. F. Ogilvy, of Gillanders & Co.) communicates a letter from an intelligent Bengalee gentleman, illustrating the course of trade in country produce before it reaches the hands of the European shipper:

1878.—"... the enhanced rates ... do not practically benefit the producer in a marked, or even in a corresponding degree; for the lion's share goes into the pockets of certain intermediate classes, who are the growth of the above system of business.

"Following the course of trade as it flows into Calcutta, we find that between the cultivators and the exporter these are: 1st. The Bepparree, or petty trader; 2nd. The Aurut-dar; and 3rd. The Mahajun, interested in the Calcutta trade. As soon as the crops are cut, Bepparree appears upon the scene; he visits village after village, and goes from homestead to homestead, buying there, or at the village marts, from the ryots; he then takes his purchases to the Aurut-dar, who is stationed at a centre of trade, and to whom he is perhaps under advances, and from the Aurut-dar the Calcutta Mahajun obtains his supplies ... for eventual despatch to the capital. There is also a fourth class of dealers called Phoreas, who buy from the Mahajun and sell to the European exporter. Thus, between the cultivator and the shipper there are so many middlemen, whose participation in the trade involves a multiplication of profits, which goes a great way towards enhancing the price of commodities before they reach the shipper's hands."—Letter from Baboo Nobokissin Ghose. [Similar details for Northern India will be found in Hoey, Mon. Trade and Manufactures of Lucknow, 59 seqq.]

BAZAAR, s. H. &c. From P. bāzār, a permanent market or street of shops. The word has spread westward into Arabic, Turkish, and, in special senses, into European languages, and eastward into India, where it has generally been adopted into the vernaculars. The popular pronunciation is băzár. In S. India and Ceylon the word is used for a single shop or stall kept by a native. The word seems to have come to S. Europe very early. F. Balducci Pegolotti, in his Mercantile Handbook (c. 1340) gives Bazarra as a Genoese word for 'market-place' (Cathay, &c. ii. 286). The word is adopted into Malay as pāsār, [or in the poems pasara].

1474.—Ambrose Contarini writes of Kazan, that it is "walled like Como, and with bazars (bazzari) like it."—Ramusio, ii. f. 117.

1478.—Josafat Barbaro writes: "An Armenian Choza Mirech, a rich merchant in the bazar" (bazarro).—Ibid. f. 111v.

1563.—"... bazar, as much as to say the place where things are sold."—Garcia, f. 170.

1564.—A privilege by Don Sebastian of Portugal gives authority "to sell garden produce freely in the bazars (bazares), markets, and streets (of Goa) without necessity for consent or license from the farmers of the garden produce, or from any other person whatsoever."—Arch. Port. Or., fasc. 2, 157.

c. 1566.—"La Pescaria delle Perle ... si fa ogn' anno ... e su la costa all' in contro piantano vna villa di case, e bazarri di paglia."—Cesare de' Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 390.

1606.—"... the Christians of the Bazar."—Gouvea, 29.

1610.—"En la Ville de Cananor il y a vn beau marché tous les jours, qu'ils appellent Basare."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 325; [Hak. Soc. i. 448].

[1615.—"To buy pepper as cheap as we could in the busser."—Foster, Letters, iii. 114.]

[ " "He forbad all the bezar to sell us victuals or else...."—Ibid. iv. 80.]

[1623.—"They call it Bezari Kelan, that is the Great Merkat...."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 96. (P. Kalān, 'great').]

1638.—"We came into a Bussar, or very faire Market place."—W. Bruton, in Hakl. v. 50.

1666.—"Les Bazards ou Marchés sont dans une grande rue qui est au pié de la montagne."—Thevenot, v. 18.

1672.—"... Let us now pass the Pale to the Heathen Town (of Madras) only parted by a wide Parrade, which is used for a Buzzar or Mercate-place."—Fryer, 38.

[1826.—"The Kotwall went to the bazaar-master."—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, p. 156.]

1837.—"Lord, there is a honey bazar, repair thither."—Turnour's transl. of Mahawanso, 24.

1873.—"This, remarked my handsome Greek friend from Vienna, is the finest wife-bazaar in this part of Europe.... Go a little way east of this, say to Roumania, and you will find wife-bazaar completely undisguised, the ladies seated in their carriages, the youths filing by, and pausing before this or that beauty, to bargain with papa about the dower, under her very nose."—Fraser's Mag. N. S. vii. p. 617 (Vienna, by M. D. Conway).

BDELLIUM, s. This aromatic gum-resin has been identified with that of the Balsamodendron Mukul, Hooker, inhabiting the dry regions of Arabia and Western India; gugal of Western India, and moḳl in Arabic, called in P. bo-i-jahūdān (Jews' scent). What the Hebrew bdolah of the R. Phison was, which was rendered bdellium since the time of Josephus, remains very doubtful. Lassen has suggested musk as possible. But the argument is only this: that Dioscorides says some called bdellium μάδελκον; that μάδελκον perhaps represents Madālaka, and though there is no such Skt. word as madālaka, there might be madāraka, because there is madāra, which means some perfume, no one knows what! (Ind. Alterth. i. 292.) Dr. Royle says the Persian authors describe the Bdellium as being the product of the Doom palm (see Hindu Medicine, p. 90). But this we imagine is due to some ambiguity in the sense of moḳl. [See the authorities quoted in Encycl. Bibl. s.v. Bdellium which still leave the question in some doubt.]

c. A.D. 90.—"In exchange are exported from Barbarice (Indus Delta) costus, bdella...."—Periplus, ch. 39.

c. 1230.—"Bdallyūn. A Greek word which as some learned men think, means 'The Lion's Repose.' This plant is the same as moḳl."—Ebn El-Baithár, i. 125.

1612.—"Bdellium, the pund ... xxs."—Rates and Valuatiouns (Scotland), p. 298.

BEADALA, n.p. Formerly a port of some note for native craft on the Rāmnād coast (Madura district) of the Gulf of Manar, Vadaulay in the Atlas of India. The proper name seems to be Vēdālai, by which it is mentioned in Bishop Caldwell's Hist. of Tinnevelly (p. 235), [and which is derived from Tam. vedu, 'hunting,' and al, 'a banyan-tree' (Mad. Adm. Man. Gloss. p. 953)]. The place was famous in the Portuguese History of India for a victory gained there by Martin Affonso de Sousa (Capitão Mór do Mar) over a strong land and sea force of the Zamorin, commanded by a famous Mahommedan Captain, whom the Portuguese called Pate Marcar, and the Tuḥfat-al Mujāhidīn calls 'Ali Ibrahīm Markār, 15th February, 1538. Barros styles it "one of the best fought battles that ever came off in India." This occurred under the viceroyalty of Nuno da Cunha, not of Stephen da Gama, as the allusions in Camões seem to indicate. Captain Burton has too hastily identified Beadala with a place on the coast of Malabar, a fact which has perhaps been the cause of this article (see Lusiads, Commentary, p. 477).

1552.—"Martin Affonso, with this light fleet, on which he had not more than 400 soldiers, went round Cape Comorin, being aware that the enemy were at Beadalá...."—Barros, Dec. IV., liv. viii. cap. 13.

1562.—"The Governor, departing from Cochym, coasted as far as Cape Comoryn, doubled that Cape, and ran for Beadalá, which is a place adjoining the Shoals of Chilao [Chilaw]...."—Correa, iv. 324.

c. 1570.—"And about this time Alee Ibrahim Murkar, and his brother-in-law Kunjee-Alee-Murkar, sailed out with 22 grabs in the direction of Kaeel, and arriving off Bentalah, they landed, leaving their grabs at anchor.... But destruction overtook them at the arrival of the Franks, who came upon them in their galliots, attacking and capturing all their grabs.... Now this capture by the Franks took place in the latter part of the month of Shaban, in the year 944 [end of January, 1538]."—Tohfut-ul-Mujahideen, tr. by Rowlandson, 141.

1572.—

"E despois junto ao Cabo Comorim

Huma façanha faz esclarecida,

A frota principal do Samorim,

Que destruir o mundo não duvida,

Vencerá co o furor do ferro e fogo;

Em si verá Beadála o martio jogo."

Camões, x. 65.

By Burton (but whose misconception of the locality has here affected his translation):

"then well nigh reached the Cape 'clept Comorin,

another wreath of Fame by him is won;

the strongest squadron of the Samorim

who doubted not to see the world undone,

he shall destroy with rage of fire and steel:

Be'adálá's self his martial yoke shall feel."

1814.—"Vaidálai, a pretty populous village on the coast, situated 13 miles east of Mutupetta, inhabited chiefly by Musulmans and Shánárs, the former carrying on a wood trade."—Account of the Prov. of Ramnad, from Mackenzie Collections in J. R. As. Soc. iii. 170.

BEAR-TREE, BAIR, &c. s. H. ber, Mahr. bora, in Central Provinces bor, [Malay bedara or bidara China,] (Skt. badara and vadara) Zizyphus jujuba, Lam. This is one of the most widely diffused trees in India, and is found wild from the Punjab to Burma, in all which region it is probably native. It is cultivated from Queensland and China to Morocco and Guinea. "Sir H. Elliot identifies it with the lotus of the ancients, but although the large juicy product of the garden Zizyphus is by no means bad, yet, as Madden quaintly remarks, one might eat any quantity of it without risk of forgetting home and friends."—(Punjab Plants, 43.)

1563.—"O. The name in Canarese is bor, and in the Decan bér, and the Malays call them vidaras, and they are better than ours; yet not so good as those of Balagate ... which are very tasty."—Garcia De O., 33.]

[1609.—"Here is also great quantity of gum-lack to be had, but is of the tree called Ber, and is in grain like unto red mastic."—Danvers, Letters, i. 30.]

BEARER, s. The word has two meanings in Anglo-Indian colloquial: a. A palanquin-carrier; b. (In the Bengal Presidency) a domestic servant who has charge of his master's clothes, household furniture, and (often) of his ready money. The word in the latter meaning has been regarded as distinct in origin, and is stated by Wilson to be a corruption of the Bengali vehārā from Skt. vyavahāri, a domestic servant. There seems, however, to be no historical evidence for such an origin, e.g. in any habitual use of the term vehārā, whilst as a matter of fact the domestic bearer (or sirdār-bearer, as he is usually styled by his fellow-servants, often even when he has no one under him) was in Calcutta, in the penultimate generation when English gentlemen still kept palankins, usually just what this literally implies, viz. the head-man of a set of palankin-bearers. And throughout the Presidency the bearer, or valet, still, as a rule, belongs to the caste of Kahārs (see KUHAR), or palki-bearers. [See BOY.]

a.—

c. 1760.—"... The poles which ... are carried by six, but most commonly four bearers."—Grose, i. 153.

1768-71.—"Every house has likewise ... one or two sets of berras, or palankeen-bearers."—Stavorinus, i. 523.

1771.—"Le bout le plus court du Palanquin est en devant, et porté par deux Beras, que l'on nomme Boys à la Côte (c'est-à-dire Garçons, Serviteurs, en Anglois). Le long bout est par derrière et porte par trois Beras."—Anquetil du Perron, Desc. Prelim. p. xxiii. note.

1778.—"They came on foot, the town having neither horses nor palankin-bearers to carry them, and Colonel Coote received them at his headquarters...."—Orme, iii. 719.

1803.—"I was ... detained by the scarcity of bearers."—Lord Valentia, i. 372.

b.—

1782.—"... imposition ... that a gentleman should pay a rascal of a Sirdar Bearer monthly wages for 8 or 10 men ... out of whom he gives 4, or may perhaps indulge his master with 5, to carry his palankeen."—India Gazette, Sept. 2.

c. 1815.—"Henry and his Bearer."—(Title of a well-known book of Mrs. Sherwood's.)

1824.—"... I called to my sirdar-bearer who was lying on the floor, outside the bedroom."—Seely, Ellora, ch. i.

1831.—"... le grand maître de ma garde-robe, sirdar beehrah."—Jacquemont, Correspondance, i. 114.

1876.—"My bearer who was to go with us (Eva's ayah had struck at the last moment and stopped behind) had literally girt up his loins, and was loading a diminutive mule with a miscellaneous assortment of brass pots and blankets."—A True Reformer, ch. iv.

BEEBEE, s. H. from P. bībī, a lady. [In its contracted form bī, it is added as a title of distinction to the names of Musulman ladies.] On the principle of degradation of titles which is so general, this word in application to European ladies has been superseded by the hybrids Mem-Ṣāhib, or Madam-Ṣāhib, though it is often applied to European maid-servants or other Englishwomen of that rank of life. [It retains its dignity as the title of the Bībī of Cananore, known as Bībī Valiya, Malayāl., 'great lady,' who rules in that neighbourhood and exercises authority over three of the islands of the Laccadives, and is by race a Moplah Mohammedan.] The word also is sometimes applied to a prostitute. It is originally, it would seem, Oriental Turki. In Pavet de Courteille's Dict. we have "Bībī, dame, épouse légitime" (p. 181). In W. India the word is said to be pronounced bobo (see Burton's Sind). It is curious that among the Sákaláva of Madagascar the wives of chiefs are termed biby; but there seems hardly a possibility of this having come from Persia or India. [But for Indian influence on the island, see Encycl. Britt. 9th ed. xv. 174.] The word in Hova means 'animal.'—(Sibree's Madagascar, p. 253.)

[c. 1610.—"Nobles in blood ... call their wives Bybis."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 217.]

1611.—"... the title Bibi ... is in Persian the same as among us, sennora, or doña."—Teixeira, Relacion ... de Hormuz. 19.

c. 1786.—"The word Lowndika, which means the son of a slave-girl, was also continually on the tongue of the Nawaub, and if he was angry with any one he called him by this name; but it was also used as an endearing fond appellation to which was attached great favour, until one day, Ali Zumán Khan ... represented to him that the word was low, discreditable, and not fit for the use of men of knowledge and rank. The Nawaub smiled, and said, 'O friend, you and I are both the sons of slave women, and the two Husseins only (on whom be good wishes and Paradise!) are the sons of a Bibi."—Hist. of Hydur Naik, tr. by Miles, 486.

[1793.—"I, Beebee Bulea, the Princess of Cannanore and of the Laccadives Islands, &c., do acknowledge and give in writing that I will pay to the Government of the English East India Company the moiety of whatever is the produce of my country...."—Engagement in Logan, Malabar, iii. 181.]

BEECH-DE-MER, s. The old trade way of writing and pronouncing the name, bicho-de-mar (borrowed from the Portuguese) of the sea-slug or holothuria, so highly valued in China. [See menu of a dinner to which the Duke of Connaught was invited, in Ball, Things Chinese, 3rd ed. p. 247.] It is split, cleaned, dried, and then carried to the Straits for export to China, from the Maldives, the Gulf of Manar, and other parts of the Indian seas further east. The most complete account of the way in which this somewhat important article of commerce is prepared, will be found in the Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie, Jaarg. xvii. pt. i. See also SWALLOW and TRIPANG.

BEECHMÁN, also MEECHILMÁN, s. Sea-H. for 'midshipman.' (Roebuck).

BEEGAH, s. H. bīghā. The most common Hindu measure of land-area, and varying much in different parts of India, whilst in every part that has a bīghā there is also certain to be a pucka beegah and a kutcha beegah (vide CUTCHA and PUCKA), the latter being some fraction of the former. The beegah formerly adopted in the Revenue Survey of the N.W. Provinces, and in the Canal Department there, was one of 3025 sq. yards or ⅝ of an acre. This was apparently founded on Akbar's beegah, which contained 3600 sq. Ilāhi gaz, of about 33 inches each. [For which see Āīn, trans. Jarrett, ii. 62.] But it is now in official returns superseded by the English acre.

1763.—"I never seized a beega or beswa (1⁄20 bīghā) belonging to Calcutta, nor have I ever impressed your gomastahs." ... Nawāb Kāsim 'Ali, in Gleig's Mem. of Hastings, i. 129.

1823.—"A Begah has been computed at one-third of an acre, but its size differs in almost every province. The smallest Begah may perhaps be computed at one-third, and the largest at two-thirds of an acre."—Malcolm's Central India, ii. 15.

1877.—"The Resident was gratified at the low rate of assessment, which was on the general average eleven annas or 1s. 4½d. per beegah, that for the Nizam's country being upwards of four rupees."—Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life, ii. 5.

BEEGUM, BEGUM, &c. s. A Princess, a Mistress, a Lady of Rank; applied to Mahommedan ladies, and in the well-known case of the Beegum Sumroo to the professedly Christian (native) wife of a European. The word appears to be Or. Turki. bīgam, [which some connect with Skt. bhaga, 'lord,'] a feminine formation from Beg, 'chief, or lord,' like Khānum from Khān; hence P. begam. [Beg appears in the early travellers as Beage.]

[1614.—"Narranse saith he standeth bound before Beage for 4,800 and odd mamoodies."—Foster, Letters, ii. 282.]

[1505.—"Begum." See quotation under KHANUM.]

[1617.—"Their Company that offered to rob the Beagam's junck."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 454.]

1619.—"Behind the girl came another Begum, also an old woman, but lean and feeble, holding on to life with her teeth, as one might say."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 6.

1653.—"Begun, Reine, ou espouse du Schah."—De la Boullaye le Gouz, 127.

[1708.—"They are called for this reason 'Begom,' which means Free from Care or Solicitude" (as if P. be-gham, 'without care'!)—Catrou, H. of the Mogul Dynasty in India, E. T., 287.]

1787.—"Among the charges (against Hastings) there is but one engaged, two at most—the Begum's to Sheridan; the Rannee of Goheed (Gohud) to Sir James Erskine. So please your palate."—Ed. Burke to Sir G. Elliot. L. of Ld. Minto, i. 119.

BEEJOO, s. Or 'Indian badger,' as it is sometimes called, H. bījū [bijjū], Mellivora indica, Jerdon, [Blanford, Mammalia, 176]. It is also often called in Upper India the Grave-digger, [gorkhodo] from a belief in its bad practices, probably unjust.

BEER, s. This liquor, imported from England, [and now largely made in the country], has been a favourite in India from an early date. Porter seems to have been common in the 18th century, judging from the advertisements in the Calcutta Gazette; and the Pale Ale made, it is presumed, expressly for the India market, appears in the earliest years of that publication. That expression has long been disused in India, and beer, simply, has represented the thing. Hodgson's at the beginning of this century, was the beer in almost universal use, replaced by Bass, and Allsopp, and of late years by a variety of other brands. [Hodgson's ale is immortalised in Bon Gualtier.]

1638.—"... the Captain ... was well provided with ... excellent good Sack, English Beer, French Wines, Arak, and other refreshments."—Mandelslo, E. T., p. 10.

1690.—(At Surat in the English Factory) "... Europe Wines and English Beer, because of their former acquaintance with our Palates, are most coveted and most desirable Liquors, and tho' sold at high Rates, are yet purchased and drunk with pleasure."—Ovington, 395.

1784.—"London Porter and Pale Ale, light and excellent ... 150 Sicca Rs. per hhd...."—In Seton-Karr, i. 39.

1810.—"Porter, pale-ale and table-beer of great strength, are often drank after meals."—Williamson, V. M. i. 122.

1814.—

"What are the luxuries they boast them here?

The lolling couch, the joys of bottled beer."

From 'The Cadet, a Poem in 6 parts, &c. by a late resident in the East.' This is a most lugubrious production, the author finding nothing to his taste in India. In this respect it reads something like a caricature of "Oakfield," without the noble character and sentiment of that book. As the Rev. Hobart Caunter, the author seems to have come to a less doleful view of things Indian, and for some years he wrote the letter-press of the "Oriental Annual."

BEER, COUNTRY. At present, at least in Upper India, this expression simply indicates ale made in India (see COUNTRY) as at Masūri, Kasauli, and Ootacamund Breweries. But it formerly was (and in Madras perhaps still is) applied to ginger-beer, or to a beverage described in some of the quotations below, which must have become obsolete early in the last century. A drink of this nature called Sugar-beer was the ordinary drink at Batavia in the 17th century, and to its use some travellers ascribed the prevalent unhealthiness. This is probably what is described by Jacob Bontius in the first quotation:

1631.—There is a recipe given for a beer of this kind, "not at all less good than Dutch beer.... Take a hooped cask of 30 amphorae (?), fill with pure river water; add 2lb. black Java sugar, 4oz. tamarinds, 3 lemons cut up, cork well and put in a cool place. After 14 hours it will boil as if on a fire," &c.—Hist. Nat. et Med. Indiae Orient., p. 8. We doubt the result anticipated.

1789.—"They use a pleasant kind of drink, called Country-beer, with their victuals; which is composed of toddy ... porter, and brown-sugar; is of a brisk nature, but when cooled with saltpetre and water, becomes a very refreshing draught."—Munro, Narrative, 42.

1810.—"A temporary beverage, suited to the very hot weather, and called Country-beer, is in rather general use, though water artificially cooled is commonly drunk during the repasts."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 122.

BEER-DRINKING. Up to about 1850, and a little later, an ordinary exchange of courtesies at an Anglo-Indian dinner-table in the provinces, especially a mess-table, was to ask a guest, perhaps many yards distant, to "drink beer" with you; in imitation of the English custom of drinking wine together, which became obsolete somewhat earlier. In Western India, when such an invitation was given at a mess-table, two tumblers, holding half a bottle each, were brought to the inviter, who carefully divided the bottle between the two, and then sent one to the guest whom he invited to drink with him.

1848.—"'He aint got distangy manners, dammy,' Bragg observed to his first mate; 'he wouldn't do at Government House, Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind to me ... and asking me at dinner to take beer with him before the Commander-in-Chief himself....'"—Vanity Fair, II. ch. xxii.

1853.—"First one officer, and then another, asked him to drink beer at mess, as a kind of tacit suspension of hostilities."—Oakfield, ii. 52.

BEETLEFAKEE, n.p. "In some old Voyages coins used at Mocha are so called. The word is Bait-ul-fākiha, the 'Fruit-market,' the name of a bazar there." So C. P. Brown. The place is in fact the Coffee-mart of which Hodeida is the port, from which it is about 30 m. distant inland, and 4 marches north of Mocha. And the name is really Bait-al-Faḳīh, 'The House of the Divine,' from the tomb of the Saint Aḥmad Ibn Mūsā, which was the nucleus of the place.—(See Ritter, xii. 872; see also BEETLE-FACKIE, Milburn, i. 96.)

1690.—"Coffee ... grows in abundance at Beetle-fuckee ... and other parts."—Ovington, 465.

1710.—"They daily bring down coffee from the mountains to Betelfaquy, which is not above 3 leagues off, where there is a market for it every day of the week."—(French) Voyage to Arabia the Happy, E. T., London, 1726, p. 99.

1770.—"The tree that produces the Coffee grows in the territory of Betel-faqui, a town belonging to Yemen."—Raynal (tr. 1777), i. 352.

BEGAR, BIGARRY, s. H. begārī, from P. begār, 'forced labour' [be 'without,' gār (for kār), 'one who works']; a person pressed to carry a load, or do other work really or professedly for public service. In some provinces begār is the forced labour, and bigārī the pressed man; whilst in Karnāta, begārī is the performance of the lowest village offices without money payment, but with remuneration in grain or land (Wilson). C. P. Brown says the word is Canarese; but the P. origin is hardly doubtful.

[1519.—"It happened that one day sixty bigairis went from the Comorin side towards the fort loaded with oyster-shells."—Castanheda, Bk. V. ch. 38.]

[1525.—"The inhabitants of the villages are bound to supply begarins who are workmen."—Archiv. Port. Orient. Fasc. V. p. 126.]

[1535.—"Telling him that they fought like heroes and worked (at building the fort) like bygairys."—Correa, iii. 625.]

1554.—"And to 4 begguaryns, who serve as water carriers to the Portuguese and others in the said intrenchment, 15 leals a day to each...."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 78.

1673.—"Gocurn, whither I took a Pilgrimage, with one other of the Factors, Four Peons, and Two Biggereens, or Porters only."—Fryer, 158.

1800.—"The bygarry system is not bearable: it must be abolished entirely."—Wellington, i. 244.

1815.—Aitchison's Indian Treaties, &c., contains under this year numerous sunnuds issued, in Nepāl War, to Hill Chiefs, stipulating for attendance when required with "begarees and sepoys."—ii. 339 seqq.

1882.—"The Malauna people were some time back ordered to make a practicable road, but they flatly refused to do anything of the kind, saying they had never done any begâr labour, and did not intend to do any."—(ref. wanting.)

BEHAR, n.p. H. Bihār. That province of the Mogul Empire which lay on the Ganges immediately above Bengal, was so called, and still retains the name and character of a province, under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and embracing the ten modern districts of Patna, Sāran, Gāya, Shāhābād, Tirhut, Champāran, the Santāl Parganas, Bhāgalpūr, Monghyr, and Purnīah. The name was taken from the old city of Bihār, and that derived its title from being the site of a famous Vihāra in Buddhist times. In the later days of Mahommedan rule the three provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa were under one Subadar, viz. the Nawāb, who resided latterly at Murshidābād.

[c. 1590.—"Sarkar of Behar; containing 46 Mahals...."—Āīn (tr. Jarrett), ii. 153.]

[1676.—"Translate of a letter from Shausteth Caukne (Shaista Khan) ... in answer to one from Wares Cawne, Great Chancellor of the Province of Bearra about the English."—In Birdwood, Rep. 80].

The following is the first example we have noted of the occurrence of the three famous names in combination:

1679.—"On perusal of several letters relating to the procuring of the Great Mogul's Phyrmaund for trade, custome free, in the Bay of Bengall, the Chief in Council at Hugly is ordered to procure the same, for the English to be Customs free in Bengal, Orixa and Bearra...."—Ft. St. Geo. Cons., 20th Feb. in Notes and Exts., Pt. ii. p. 7.

BEHUT, n.p. H. Behat. One of the names, and in fact the proper name, of the Punjab river which we now call Jelum (i.e. Jhīlam) from a town on its banks: the Hydaspes or Bidaspes of the ancients. Both Behat and the Greek name are corruptions, in different ways, of the Skt. name Vitastā. Sidi 'Alī (p. 200) calls it the river of Bahra. Bahra or Bhera was a district on the river, and the town and taḥsīl still remain, in Shahpur Dist. [It "is called by the natives of Kaśmīr, where it rises, the Bedasta, which is but a slightly-altered form of its Skt. name, the Vitastā, which means 'wide-spread.'"—McCrindle, Invasion of India, 93 seqq.]

BEIRAMEE, BYRAMEE, also BYRAMPAUT, s. P. bairam, bairamī. The name of a kind of cotton stuff which appears frequently during the flourishing period of the export of these from India; but the exact character of which we have been unable to ascertain. In earlier times, as appears from the first quotation, it was a very fine stuff. [From the quotation dated 1609 below, they appear to have resembled the fine linen known as "Holland" (for which see Draper's Dict. s.v.).]

c. 1343.—Ibn Batuta mentions, among presents sent by Sultan Mahommed Tughlak of Delhi to the great Kaan, "100 suits of raiment called bairamīyah, i.e. of a cotton stuff, which were of unequalled beauty, and were each worth 100 dīnārs [rupees]."—iv. 2.

[1498.—"20 pieces of white stuff, very fine, with gold embroidery which they call Beyramies."—Correa, Hak. Soc. 197.]

1510.—"Fifty ships are laden every year in this place (Bengala) with cotton and silk stuffs ... that is to say bairam."—Varthema, 212.

[1513.—"And captured two Chaul ships laden with beirames."—Albuquerque, Cartas, p. 166.]

1554.—"From this country come the muslins called Candaharians, and those of Daulatābād, Berūpātri, and Bairami."—Sidi 'Ali, in J.A.S.B., v. 460.

" "And for 6 beirames for 6 surplices, which are given annually ... which may be worth 7 pardaos."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 129.

[1609.—"A sort of cloth called Byramy resembling Holland cloths."—Danvers, Letters, i. 29.]

[1610.—"Bearams white will vent better than the black."—Ibid. i. 75].

1615.—"10 pec. byrams nill (see ANILE) of 51 Rs. per corg...."—Cocks's Diary, i. 4.

[1648.—"Beronis." Quotation from Van Twist, s.v. GINGHAM.]

[c. 1700.—"50 blew byrampants" (read byrampauts, H. pāt, 'a length of cloth').—In Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. ix. 29.]

1727.—"Some Surat Baftaes dyed blue, and some Berams dyed red, which are both coarse cotton cloth."—A. Hamilton, ii. 125.

1813.—"Byrams of sorts," among Surat piece-goods, in Milburn, i. 124.

BEITCUL, n.p. We do not know how this name should be properly written. The place occupies the isthmus connecting Carwar Head in Canara with the land, and lies close to the Harbour of Carwar, the inner part of which is Beitcul Cove.

1711.—"Ships may ride secure from the South West Monsoon at Batte Cove (qu. BATTECOLE?), and the River is navigable for the largest, after they have once got in."—Lockyer, 272.

1727.—"The Portugueze have an Island called Anjediva [see ANCHEDIVA] ... about two miles from Batcoal."—A. Hamilton, i. 277.

BELGAUM, n.p. A town and district of the Bombay Presidency, in the S. Mahratta country. The proper name is said to be Canarese Vennu-grāmā, 'Bamboo-Town.' [The name of a place of the same designation in the Vizagapatam district in Madras is said to be derived from Skt. bila-grāma, 'cave-village.'—Mad. Admin. Man. Gloss. s.v.] The name occurs in De Barros under the form "Cidade de Bilgan" (Dec. IV., liv. vii. cap. 5).

BENAMEE, adj. P.—H. be-nāmī, 'anonymous'; a term specially applied to documents of transfer or other contract in which the name entered as that of one of the chief parties (e.g. of a purchaser) is not that of the person really interested. Such transactions are for various reasons very common in India, especially in Bengal, and are not by any means necessarily fradulent, though they have often been so. ["There probably is no country in the world except India, where it would be necessary to write a chapter 'On the practice of putting property into a false name.'"—(Mayne, Hindu Law, 373).] In the Indian Penal Code (Act XLV. of 1860), sections 421-423, "on fraudulent deeds and dispositions of Property," appear to be especially directed against the dishonest use of this benamee system.

It is alleged by C. P. Brown on the authority of a statement in the Friend of India (without specific reference) that the proper term is banāmī, adopted from such a phrase as banāmī chiṭṭhī, 'a transferable note of hand,' such notes commencing, 'ba-nām-i-fulāna,' 'to the name or address of' (Abraham Newlands). This is conceivable, and probably true, but we have not the evidence, and it is opposed to all the authorities: and in any case the present form and interpretation of the term be-nāmī has become established.

1854.—"It is very much the habit in India to make purchases in the name of others, and from whatever causes the practice may have arisen, it has existed for a series of years: and these transactions are known as 'Benamee transactions'; they are noticed at least as early as the year 1778, in Mr. Justice Hyde's Notes."—Ld. Justice Knight Bruce, in Moore's Reports of Cases on Appeal before the P. C., vol. vi. p. 72.

"The presumption of the Hindoo law, in a joint undivided family, is that the whole property of the family is joint estate ... where a purchase of real estate is made by a Hindoo in the name of one of his sons, the presumption of the Hindoo law is in favour of its being a benamee purchase, and the burthen of proof lies on the party in whose name it was purchased, to prove that he was solely entitled."—Note by the Editor of above Vol., p. 53.

1861.—"The decree Sale law is also one chief cause of that nuisance, the benamee system.... It is a peculiar contrivance for getting the benefits and credit of property, and avoiding its charges and liabilities. It consists in one man holding land, nominally for himself, but really in secret trust for another, and by ringing the changes between the two ... relieving the land from being attached for any liability personal to the proprietor."—W. Money, Java, ii. 261.

1862.—"Two ingredients are necessary to make up the offence in this section (§ 423 of Penal Code). First a fraudulent intention, and secondly a false statement as to the consideration. The mere fact that an assignment has been taken in the name of a person not really interested, will not be sufficient. Such ... known in Bengal as benamee transactions ... have nothing necessarily fraudulent."—J. D. Mayne's Comm. on the Penal Code, Madras, 1862, p. 257.

BENARES, n.p. The famous and holy city on the Ganges. H. Banāras from Skt. Vārānasī. The popular Pundit etymology is from the names of the streams Varaṇā (mod. Barnā) and Āsī, the former a river of some size on the north and east of the city, the latter a rivulet now embraced within its area; [or from the mythical founder, Rājā Bānār]. This origin is very questionable. The name, as that of a city, has been (according to Dr. F. Hall) familiar to Sanscrit literature since B.C. 120. The Buddhist legends would carry it much further back, the name being in them very familiar.

[c. 250 A.D.—"... and the Errenysis from the Mathai, an Indian tribe, unite with the Ganges."—Aelian, Indika, iv.]

c. 637.—"The Kingdom of P'o-lo-nis-se (Vârânaçî Bénarès) is 4000 li in compass. On the west the capital adjoins the Ganges...."—Hiouen Thsang, in Pèl. Boudd. ii. 354.

c. 1020.—"If you go from Bárí on the banks of the Ganges, in an easterly direction, you come to Ajodh, at the distance of 25 parasangs; thence to the great Benares (Bānāras) about 20."—Al-Birūnī, in Elliot, i. 56.

1665.—"Banarou is a large City, and handsomely built; the most part of the Houses being either of Brick or Stone ... but the inconveniency is that the Streets are very narrow."—Tavernier, E. T., ii. 52; [ed. Ball, i. 118. He also uses the forms Benarez and Banarous, Ibid. ii. 182, 225].

BENCOOLEN, n.p. A settlement on the West Coast of Sumatra, which long pertained to England, viz. from 1685 to 1824, when it was given over to Holland in exchange for Malacca, by the Treaty of London. The name is a corruption of Malay Bangkaulu, and it appears as Mangkoulou or Wénkouléou in Pauthier's Chinese geographical quotations, of which the date is not given (Marc. Pol., p. 566, note). The English factory at Bencoolen was from 1714 called Fort Marlborough.

1501.—"Bencolu" is mentioned among the ports of the East Indies by Amerigo Vespucci in his letter quoted under BACANORE.

1690.—"We ... were forced to bear away to Bencouli, another English Factory on the same Coast.... It was two days before I went ashoar, and then I was importuned by the Governour to stay there, to be Gunner of the Fort."—Dampier, i. 512.

1727.—"Bencolon is an English colony, but the European inhabitants not very numerous."—A. Hamilton, ii. 114.

1788.—"It is nearly an equal absurdity, though upon a smaller scale, to have an establishment that costs nearly 40,000l. at Bencoolen, to facilitate the purchase of one cargo of pepper."—Cornwallis, i. 390.

BENDAMEER, n.p. Pers. Bandamīr. A popular name, at least among foreigners, of the River Kur (Araxes) near Shiraz. Properly speaking, the word is the name of a dam constructed across the river by the Amīr Fanā Khusruh, otherwise called Aded-ud-daulah, a prince of the Buweih family (A.D. 965), which was thence known in later days as the Band-i-Amīr, "The Prince's Dam." The work is mentioned in the Geog. Dict. of Yāḳūt (c. 1220) under the name of Sikru Fannā-Khusrah Khurrah and Kirdu Fannā Khusrah (see Barb. Meynard, Dict. de la Perse, 313, 480). Fryer repeats a rigmarole that he heard about the miraculous formation of the dam or bridge by Band Haimero (!) a prophet, "wherefore both the Bridge and the Plain, as well as the River, by Boterus is corruptly called Bindamire" (Fryer, 258).

c. 1475.—"And from thense, a daies iorney, ye come to a great bridge vpon the Byndamyr, which is a notable great ryver. This bridge they said Salomon caused to be made."—Barbaro (Old E. T.), Hak. Soc. 80.

1621.—"... having to pass the Kur by a longer way across another bridge called Bend' Emir, which is as much as to say the Tie (ligatura), or in other words the Bridge, of the Emir, which is two leagues distant from Chehil minar ... and which is so called after a certain Emir Hamza the Dilemite who built it.... Fra Filippo Ferrari, in his Geographical Epitome, attributes the name of Bendemir to the river, but he is wrong, for Bendemir is the name of the bridge and not of the river."—P. della Valle, ii. 264.

1686.—"Il est bon d'observer, vue le commun Peuple appelle le Bend-Emir en cet endroit ab pulneu, c'est à dire le Fleuve du Pont Neuf; qu'on ne l'appelle par son nom de Bend-Emir que proche de la Digue, qui lui a fait donner ce nom."—Chardin (ed. 1711), ix. 45.

1809.—"We proceeded three miles further, and crossing the River Bend-emir, entered the real plain of Merdasht."—Morier (First Journey), 124. See also (1811) 2nd Journey, pp. 73-74, where there is a view of the Band-Amir.

1813.—"The river Bund Emeer, by some ancient Geographers called the Cyrus, takes its present name from a dyke (in Persian a bund) erected by the celebrated Ameer Azad-a-Doulah Delemi."—Macdonald Kinneir, Geog. Mem. of the Persian Empire, 59.

1817.—

"There's a bower of roses by Bendameer's stream,

And the nightingale sings round it all the day long."—Lalla Rookh.

1850.—"The water (of Lake Neyriz) ... is almost entirely derived from the Kur (known to us as the Bund Amir River)...."—Abbott, in J.R.G.S., xxv. 73.

1878.—We do not know whether the Band-i-Amīr is identical with the quasi-synonymous Pul-i-Khān by which Col. Macgregor crossed the Kur on his way from Shiraz to Yezd. See his Khorassan, i. 45.

BENDÁRA, s. A term used in the Malay countries as a title of one of the higher ministers of state—Malay bandahāra, Jav. bendårå, 'Lord.' The word enters into the numerous series of purely honorary Javanese titles, and the etiquette in regard to it is very complicated. (See Tijdschr. v. Nederl. Indie, year viii. No. 12, 253 seqq.). It would seem that the title is properly bānḍārā, 'a treasurer,' and taken from the Skt. bhāṇḍārin, 'a steward or treasurer.' Haex in his Malay-Latin Dict. gives Banḍàri, 'Oeconomus, quaestor, expenditor.' [Mr. Skeat writes that Clifford derives it from Benda-hara-an, 'a treasury,' which he again derives from Malay benda, 'a thing,' without explaining hara, while Wilkinson with more probability classes it as Skt.]

1509.—"Whilst Sequeira was consulting with his people over this matter, the King sent his Bendhara or Treasure-Master on board."—Valentijn, v. 322.

1539.—"There the Bandara (Bendara) of Malaca, (who is as it were Chief Justicer among the Mahometans), (o supremo no mando, na honra e ne justica dos mouros) was present in person by the express commandment of Pedro de Faria for to entertain him."—Pinto (orig. cap. xiv.), in Cogan, p. 17.

1552.—"And as the Bendara was by nature a traitor and a tyrant, the counsel they gave him seemed good to him."—Castanheda, ii. 359, also iii. 433.

1561.—"Então manson ... que dizer que matára o seu bandara polo mao conselho que lhe deve."—Correa, Lendas, ii. 225.

[1610.—An official at the Maldives is called Rana-bandery Tacourou, which Mr. Gray interprets—Singh. ran, 'gold,' bandhara, 'treasury,' ṭhakkura, Skt., 'an idol.'—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 58.]

1613.—"This administration (of Malacca) is provided for a three years' space with a governor ... and with royal officers of revenue and justice, and with the native Bendara in charge of the government of the lower class of subjects and foreigners."—Godinho de Eredia, 6v.

1631.—"There were in Malaca five principal officers of dignity ... the second is Bendará, he is the superintendent of the executive (veador da fazenda) and governs the Kingdom: sometimes the Bendará holds both offices, that of Puduca raja and of Bendará."—D'Alboquerque, Commentaries (orig.), 358-359.

1634.—

"O principal sogeito no governo

De Mahomet, e privanca, era o Bendára,

Magistrado supremo."

Malaca Conquistada, iii. 6.

1726.—"Bandares or Adassing are those who are at the Court as Dukes, Counts, or even Princes of the Royal House."—Valentijn (Ceylon), Names of Officers, &c., 8.

1810.—"After the Raja had amused himself with their speaking, and was tired of it ... the bintara with the green eyes (for it is the custom that the eldest bintara should have green shades before his eyes, that he may not be dazzled by the greatness of the Raja, and forget his duty) brought the books and packets, and delivered them to the bintara with the black baju, from whose hands the Raja received them, one by one, in order to present them to the youths."—A Malay's account of a visit to Govt. House, Calcutta, transl. by Dr. Leyden in Maria Graham, p. 202.

1883.—"In most of the States the reigning prince has regular officers under him, chief among whom ... the Bandahara or treasurer, who is the first minister...."—Miss Bird, The Golden Chersonese, 26.

BENDY, BINDY, s.: also BANDICOY (q.v.), the form in S. India; H. bhinḍī, [bhenḍī], Dakh. bhenḍī, Mahr. bhenḍā; also in H. rāmturἀī; the fruit of the plant Abelmoschus esculentus, also Hibiscus esc. It is called in Arab. bāmiyah (Lane, Mod. Egypt, ed. 1837, i. 199: [5th ed. i. 184: Burton, Ar. Nights, xi. 57]), whence the modern Greek μπάμια. In Italy the vegetable is called corni de' Greci. The Latin name Abelmoschus is from the Ar. ḥabb-ul-mushk, 'grain of musk' (Dozy).

1810.—"The bendy, called in the West Indies okree, is a pretty plant resembling a hollyhock; the fruit is about the length and thickness of one's finger ... when boiled it is soft and mucilaginous."—Maria Graham, 24.

1813.—"The banda (Hibiscus esculentus) is a nutritious oriental vegetable."—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 32; [2nd ed. i. 22].

1880.—"I recollect the West Indian Ookroo ... being some years ago recommended for introduction in India. The seed was largely advertised, and sold at about 8s. the ounce to eager horticulturists, who ... found that it came up nothing other than the familiar bendy, the seed of which sells at Bombay for 1d. the ounce. Yet ... ookroo seed continued to be advertised and sold at 8s. the ounce...."—Note by Sir G. Birdwood.

BENDY-TREE, s. This, according to Sir G. Birdwood, is the Thespesia populnea, Lam. [Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. iv. 45 seqq.], and gives a name to the 'Bendy Bazar' in Bombay. (See PORTIA.)

BENGAL, n.p. The region of the Ganges Delta and the districts immediately above it; but often in English use with a wide application to the whole territory garrisoned by the Bengal army. This name does not appear, so far as we have been able to learn, in any Mahommedan or Western writing before the latter part of the 13th century. In the earlier part of that century the Mahommedan writers generally call the province Lakhnaotī, after the chief city, but we have also the old form Bang, from the indigenous Vaṅga. Already, however, in the 11th century we have it as Vaṅgālam on the Inscription of the great Tanjore Pagoda. This is the oldest occurrence that we can cite.

The alleged City of Bengala of the Portuguese which has greatly perplexed geographers, probably originated with the Arab custom of giving an important foreign city or seaport the name of the country in which it lay (compare the city of Solmandala, under COROMANDEL). It long kept a place in maps. The last occurrence that we know of is in a chart of 1743, in Dalrymple's Collection, which identifies it with Chittagong, and it may be considered certain that Chittagong was the place intended by the older writers (see Varthema and Ovington). The former, as regards his visiting Banghella, deals in fiction—a thing clear from internal evidence, and expressly alleged, by the judicious Garcia de Orta: "As to what you say of Ludovico Vartomano, I have spoken, both here and in Portugal, with men who knew him here in India, and they told me that he went about here in the garb of a Moor, and then reverted to us, doing penance for his sins; and that the man never went further than Calecut and Cochin."—Colloquios, f. 30.

c. 1250.—"Muhammad Bakhtiyár ... returned to Behár. Great fear of him prevailed in the minds of the infidels of the territories of Lakhnauti, Behar, Bang, and Kámrúp."—Tabakát-i-Násiri, in Elliot, ii. 307.

1298.—"Bangala is a Province towards the south, which up to the year 1290 ... had not yet been conquered...." (&c.).—Marco Polo, Bk. ii. ch. 55.

c. 1300.—"... then to Bijalár (but better reading Bangālā), which from of old is subject to Delhi...."—Rashīduddīn, in Elliot, i. 72.

c. 1345.—"... we were at sea 43 days and then arrived in the country of Banjāla, which is a vast region abounding in rice. I have seen no country in the world where provisions are cheaper than in this; but it is muggy, and those who come from Khorāsān call it 'a hell full of good things.'"—Ibn Batuta, iv. 211. (But the Emperor Aurungzebe is alleged to have "emphatically styled it the Paradise of Nations."—Note in Stavorinus, i. 291.)

c. 1350.—

"Shukr shikan shawand hama ṭūṭiān-i-Hind

Zīn ḳand-i-Pārsī kih ba Bangāla mi rawad."

Hāfiz.

i.e.,

"Sugar nibbling are all the parrots of Ind

From this Persian candy that travels to Bengal"

(viz. his own poems).

1498.—"Bemgala: in this Kingdom are many Moors, and few Christians, and the King is a Moor ... in this land are many cotton cloths, and silk cloths, and much silver; it is 40 days with a fair wind from Calicut."—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 2nd ed. p. 110.

1506.—"A Banzelo, el suo Re è Moro, e li se fa el forzo de' panni de gotton...."—Leonardo do Ca' Masser, 28.

1510.—"We took the route towards the city of Banghella ... one of the best that I had hitherto seen."—Varthema, 210.

1516.—"... the Kingdom of Bengala, in which there are many towns.... Those of the interior are inhabited by Gentiles subject to the King of Bengala, who is a Moor; and the seaports are inhabited by Moors and Gentiles, amongst whom there is much trade and much shipping to many parts, because this sea is a gulf ... and at its inner extremity there is a very great city inhabited by Moors, which is called Bengala, with a very good harbour."—Barbosa, 178-9.

c. 1590.—"Bungaleh originally was called Bung; it derived the additional al from that being the name given to the mounds of earth which the ancient Rajahs caused to be raised in the low lands, at the foot of the hills."—Ayeen Akbery, tr. Gladwin, ii. 4 (ed. 1800); [tr. Jarrett, ii. 120].

1690.—"Arracan ... is bounded on the North-West by the Kingdom of Bengala, some Authors making Chatigam to be its first Frontier City; but Teixeira, and generally the Portuguese Writers, reckon that as a City of Bengala; and not only so, but place the City of Bengala it self ... more South than Chatigam. Tho' I confess a late French Geographer has put Bengala into his Catalogue of imaginary Cities...."—Ovington, 554.

BENGAL, s. This was also the designation of a kind of piece-goods exported from that country to England, in the 17th century. But long before, among the Moors of Spain, a fine muslin seems to have been known as al-bangala, surviving in Spanish albengala. (See Dozy and Eng. s.v. [What were called "Bengal Stripes" were striped ginghams brought first from Bengal and first made in Great Britain at Paisley. (Draper's Dict. s.v.). So a particular kind of silk was known as "Bengal wound," because it was "rolled in the rude and artless manner immemorially practised by the natives of that country." (Milburn, in Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. 3, 185.) See N.E.D. for examples of the use of the word as late as Lord Macaulay.]

1696.—"Tis granted that Bengals and stain'd Callicoes, and other East India Goods, do hinder the Consumption of Norwich stuffs...."—Davenant, An Essay on the East India Trade, 31.

BENGALA, s. This is or was also applied in Portuguese to a sort of cane carried in the army by sergeants, &c. (Bluteau).

BENGALEE, n.p. A native of Bengal [Baboo]. In the following early occurrence in Portuguese, Bengala is used:

1552.—"In the defence of the bridge died three of the King's captains and Tuam Bandam, to whose charge it was committed, a Bengali (Bengala) by nation, and a man sagacious and crafty in stratagems rather than a soldier (cavalheiro)."—Barros, II., vi. iii.

[1610.—"Bangasalys." See quotation from Teixeira under BANKSHALL.]

A note to the Seir Mutaqherin quotes a Hindustani proverb: Bangālī jangālī, Kashmīrī bepīrī, i.e. 'The Bengalee is ever an entangler, the Cashmeeree without religion.'

[In modern Anglo-Indian parlance the title is often applied in provinces other than Bengal to officers from N. India. The following from Madras is a curious early instance of the same use of the word:—

[1699.—"Two Bengalles here of Council."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. cclxvii.]

BENIGHTED, THE, adj. An epithet applied by the denizens of the other Presidencies, in facetious disparagement to Madras. At Madras itself "all Carnatic fashion" is an habitual expression among older English-speaking natives, which appears to convey a similar idea. (See MADRAS, MULL.)

1860.—"... to ye Londe of St Thomé. It ys ane darke Londe, & ther dwellen ye Cimmerians whereof speketh Homerus Poeta in hys Odysseia & to thys Daye thei clepen Tenebrosi, or Ye Benyhted Folke."—Fragments of Sir J. Maundevile, from a MS. lately discovered.

BENJAMIN, BENZOIN, &c., s. A kind of incense, derived from the resin of the Styrax benzoin, Dryander, in Sumatra, and from an undetermined species in Siam. It got from the Arab traders the name lubān-Jāwī, i.e. 'Java Frankincense,' corrupted in the Middle Ages into such forms as we give. The first syllable of the Arabic term was doubtless taken as an article—lo bengioi, whence bengioi, benzoin, and so forth. This etymology is given correctly by De Orta, and by Valentijn, and suggested by Barbosa in the quotation below. Spanish forms are benjui, menjui; Modern Port. beijoim, beijuim; Ital. belzuino, &c. The terms Jāwā, Jāwī were applied by the Arabs to the Malay countries generally (especially Sumatra) and their products. (See Marco Polo, ii. 266; [Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 96] and the first quotation here.)

c. 1350.—"After a voyage of 25 days we arrived at the Island of Jāwa (here Sumatra) which gives its name to the Jāwī incense (al-lubān al-Jāwī)."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 228.

1461.—"Have these things that I have written to thee next thy heart, and God grant that we may be always at peace. The presents (herewith): Benzoi, rotoli 30. Legno Aloë, rotoli 20. Due paja di tapeti...."—Letter from the Soldan of Egypt to the Doge Pasquale Malipiero, in the Lives of the Doges, Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, xxii. col. 1170.

1498.—"Xarnauz ... is from Calecut 50 days' sail with a fair wind (see SARNAU) ... in this land there is much beijoim, which costs iii cruzados the farazalla, and much aloee which costs xxv cruzados the farazalla" (see FRAZALA).—Roteiro da Viagem de V. da Gama, 109-110.

1516.—"Benjuy, each farazola lx, and the very good lxx fanams."—Barbosa (Tariff of Prices at Calicut), 222.

" "Benjuy, which is a resin of trees which the Moors call luban javi."—Ibid. 188.

1539.—"Cinco quintais de beijoim de boninas."—Pinto, cap. xiii.

1563.—"And all these species of benjuy the inhabitants of the country call cominham, but the Moors call them louan jaoy, i.e. 'incense of Java' ... for the Arabs call incense louan."—Garcia, f. 29v.

1584.—"Belzuinum mandolalo from Sian and Baros. Belzuinum, burned, from Bonnia" (Borneo?).—Barret, in Hakl. ii. 413.

1612.—"Beniamin, the pund iiii li."—Rates and Valuatioun of Merchandize (Scotland), pub. by the Treasury, Edin. 1867, p. 298.

BENUA, n.p. This word, Malay banuwa, [in standard Malay, according to Mr. Skeat, benuwa or benua], properly means 'land, country,' and the Malays use orang-banuwa in the sense of aborigines, applying it to the wilder tribes of the Malay Peninsula. Hence "Benuas" has been used by Europeans as a proper name of those tribes.—See Crawfurd, Dict. Ind. Arch. sub voce.

1613.—"The natives of the interior of Viontana (Ujong-tana, q.v.) are properly those Banuas, black anthropophagi, and hairy, like satyrs."—Godinho de Eredia, 20.

BERBERYN, BARBERYN, n.p. Otherwise called Beruwala, a small port with an anchorage for ships and a considerable coasting trade, in Ceylon, about 35 m. south of Columbo.

c. 1350.—"Thus, led by the Divine mercy, on the morrow of the Invention of the Holy Cross, we found ourselves brought safely into port in a harbour of Seyllan, called Pervilis, over against Paradise."—Marignolli, in Cathay, ii. 357.

c. 1618.—"At the same time Barreto made an attack on Berbelim, killing the Moorish modeliar [Modelliar] and all his kinsfolk."—Bocarro, Decada, 713.

1780.—"Barbarien Island."—Dunn, New Directory, 5th ed. 77.

1836.—"Berberyn Island.... There is said to be an anchorage north of it, in 6 or 7 fathoms, and a small bay further in ... where small craft may anchor."—Horsburgh, 5th ed. 551.

[1859.—Tennent in his map (Ceylon, 3rd ed.) gives Barberyn, Barbery, Barberry.]

BERIBERI, s. An acute disease, obscure in its nature and pathology, generally but not always presenting dropsical symptoms, as well as paralytic weakness and numbness of the lower extremities, with oppressed breathing. In cases where debility, oppression, anxiety and dyspnœa are extremely severe, the patient sometimes dies in 6 to 30 hours. Though recent reports seem to refer to this disease as almost confined to natives, it is on record that in 1795, in Trincomalee, 200 Europeans died of it.

The word has been alleged to be Singhalese beri [the Mad. Admin. Man. Gloss. s.v. gives baribari], 'debility.' This kind of reduplication is really a common Singhalese practice. It is also sometimes alleged to be a W. Indian Negro term; and other worthless guesses have been made at its origin. The Singhalese origin is on the whole most probable [and is accepted by the N.E.D.]. In the quotations from Bontius and Bluteau, the disease described seems to be that formerly known as Barbiers. Some authorities have considered these diseases as quite distinct, but Sir Joseph Fayrer, who has paid attention to beriberi and written upon it (see The Practitioner, January 1877), regards Barbiers as "the dry form of beri-beri," and Dr. Lodewijks, quoted below, says briefly that "the Barbiers of some French writers is incontestably the same disease." (On this it is necessary to remark that the use of the term Barbiers is by no means confined to French writers, as a glance at the quotations under that word will show). The disease prevails endemically in Ceylon, and in Peninsular India in the coast-tracts, and up to 40 or 60 m. inland; also in Burma and the Malay region, including all the islands, at least so far as New Guinea, and also Japan, where it is known as kakké: [see Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 3rd ed. p. 238 seqq.]. It is very prevalent in certain Madras Jails. The name has become somewhat old-fashioned, but it has recurred of late years, especially in hospital reports from Madras and Burma. It is frequently epidemic, and some of the Dutch physicians regard it as infectious. See a pamphlet, Beri-Beri door J. A. Lodewijks, ondofficier van Gezondheit bij het Ned. Indische Leger, Harderwijk, 1882. In this pamphlet it is stated that in 1879 the total number of beri-beri patients in the military hospitals of Netherlands-India, amounted to 9873, and the deaths among these to 1682. In the great military hospitals at Achin there died of beri-beri between 1st November 1879, and 1st April 1880, 574 persons, of whom the great majority were dwangarbeiders, i.e. 'forced labourers.' These statistics show the extraordinary prevalence and fatality of the disease in the Archipelago. Dutch literature on the subject is considerable.

Sir George Birdwood tells us that during the Persian Expedition of 1857 he witnessed beri-beri of extraordinary virulence, especially among the East African stokers on board the steamers. The sufferers became dropsically distended to a vast extent, and died in a few hours.

In the second quotation scurvy is evidently meant. This seems much allied by causes to beriberi though different in character.

[1568.—"Our people sickened of a disease called berbere, the belly and legs swell, and in a few days they die, as there died many, ten or twelve a day."—Couto, viii. ch. 25.]

c. 1610.—"Ce ne fut pas tout, car i'eus encor ceste fascheuse maladie de louende que les Portugais appellent autrement berber et les Hollandais scurbut."—Mocquet, 221.

1613.—"And under the orders of the said General André Furtado de Mendoça, the discoverer departed to the court of Goa, being ill with the malady of the berebere, in order to get himself treated."—Godinho de Eredia, f. 58.

1631.—"... Constat frequenti illorum usu, praesertim liquoris saguier dicti, non solum diarrhaeas ... sed et paralysin Beriberi dictam hinc natam esse."—Jac. Bontii, Dial. iv. See also Lib. ii. cap. iii., and Lib. iii. p. 40.

1659.—"There is also another sickness which prevails in Banda and Ceylon, and is called Barberi; it does not vex the natives so much as foreigners."—Sarr, 37.

1682.—"The Indian and Portuguese women draw from the green flowers and cloves, by means of firing with a still, a water or spirit of marvellous sweet smell ... especially is it good against a certain kind of paralysis called Berebery."—Nieuhof, Zee en Lant-Reize, ii. 33.

1685.—"The Portuguese in the Island suffer from another sickness which the natives call béri-béri."—Ribeiro, f. 55.

1720.—"Berebere (termo da India). Huma Paralysia bastarde, ou entorpecemento, com que fica o corpo como tolhido."—Bluteau, Dict. s.v.

1809.—"A complaint, as far as I have learnt, peculiar to the island (Ceylon), the berri-berri; it is in fact a dropsy that frequently destroys in a few days."—Ld. Valentia, i. 318.

1835.—(On the Maldives) "... the crew of the vessels during the survey ... suffered mostly from two diseases; the Beri-beri which attacked the Indians only, and generally proved fatal."—Young and Christopher, in Tr. Ro. Geog. Soc., vol. i.

1837.—"Empyreumatic oil called oleum nigrum, from the seeds of Celastrus nutans (Malkungnee) described in Mr. Malcolmson's able prize Essay on the Hist. and Treatment of Beriberi ... the most efficacious remedy in that intractable complaint."—Royle on Hindu Medicine, 46.

1880.—"A malady much dreaded by the Japanese, called Kakké.... It excites a most singular dread. It is considered to be the same disease as that which, under the name of Beriberi, makes such havoc at times on crowded jails and barracks."—Miss Bird's Japan, i. 288.

1882.—"Berbá, a disease which consists in great swelling of the abdomen."—Blumentritt, Vocabular, s.v.

1885.—"Dr. Wallace Taylor, of Osaka, Japan, reports important discoveries respecting the origin of the disease known as beri-beri. He has traced it to a microscopic spore largely developed in rice. He has finally detected the same organism in the earth of certain alluvial and damp localities."—St. James's Gazette, Aug. 9th.

Also see Report on Prison Admin. in Br. Burma, for 1878, p. 26.

BERYL, s. This word is perhaps a very ancient importation from India to the West, it having been supposed that its origin was the Skt. vaidūrya, Prak. velūriya, whence [Malay baiduri and biduri], P. billaur, and Greek βήρυλλος. Bochart points out the probable identity of the two last words by the transposition of l and r. Another transposition appears to have given Ptolemy his Ὀρούδια ὄρη (for the Western Ghats), representing probably the native Vaidūrya mountains. In Ezekiel xxvii. 13, the Sept. has Βηρύλλιον, where the Hebrew now has tarshīsh, [another word with probably the same meaning being shohsm (see Professor Ridgeway in Encycl. Bibl. s.v. Beryl)]. Professor Max Müller has treated of the possible relation between vaidūrya and vidāla, 'a cat,' and in connection with this observes that "we should, at all events, have learnt the useful lesson that the chapter of accidents is sometimes larger than we suppose."—(India, What can it Teach us?" p. 267). This is a lesson which many articles in our book suggest; and in dealing with the same words, it may be indicated that the resemblance between the Greek αἴλουρος, bilaur, a common H. word for a cat, and the P. billaur, 'beryl,' are at least additional illustrations of the remark quoted.

c. A.D. 70.—"Beryls ... from India they come as from their native place, for seldom are they to be found elsewhere.... Those are best accounted of which carrie a sea-water greene."—Pliny, Bk. XXXVII. cap. 20 (in P. Holland, ii. 613).

c. 150.—"Πυννάτα ἐν ᾗ βήρυλλος."—Ptolemy, l. vii.

BETEL, s. The leaf of the Piper betel, L., chewed with the dried areca-nut (which is thence improperly called betel-nut, a mistake as old as Fryer—1673,—see p. 40), chunam, etc., by the natives of India and the Indo-Chinese countries. The word is Malayāl. veṭṭila, i.e. veru + ila = 'simple or mere leaf,' and comes to us through the Port. betre and betle. Pawn (q.v.) is the term more generally used by modern Anglo-Indians. In former times the betel-leaf was in S. India the subject of a monopoly of the E. I. Co.

1298.—"All the people of this city (Cael) as well as of the rest of India, have a custom of perpetually keeping in the mouth a certain leaf called Tembul ... the lords and gentlefolks and the King have these leaves prepared with camphor and other aromatic spices, and also mixt with quicklime...."—Marco Polo, ii. 358. See also Abdurrazzāk, in India in XV. Cent., p. 32.

1498.—In Vasco da Gama's Roteiro, p. 59, the word used is atombor, i.e. al-tambūl (Arab.) from the Skt. tāmbūla. See also Acosta, p. 139. [See TEMBOOL.]

1510.—"This betel resembles the leaves of the sour orange, and they are constantly eating it."—Varthema, p. 144.

1516.—"We call this betel Indian leaf."—Barbosa, 73.

[1521.—"Bettre (or vettele)." See under ARECA.]

1552.—"... at one side of the bed ... stood a man ... who held in his hand a gold plate with leaves of betelle...."—De Barros, Dec. I. liv. iv. cap. viii.

1563.—"We call it betre, because the first land known by the Portuguese was Malabar, and it comes to my remembrance that in Portugal they used to speak of their coming not to India, but to Calecut ... insomuch that in all the names that occur, which are not Portuguese, are Malabar, like betre."—Garcia, f. 37g.

1582.—The transl. of Castañeda by N. L. has betele (f. 35), and also vitele (f. 44).

1585.—A King's letter grants the revenue from betel (betre) to the bishop and clergy of Goa.—In Arch. Port. Or., fasc. 3, p. 38.

1615.—"He sent for Coco-Nuts to give the Company, himselfe chewing Bittle and lime of Oyster-shels, with a Kernell of Nut called Arracca, like an Akorne, it bites in the mouth, accords rheume, cooles the head, strengthens the teeth, & is all their Phisicke."—Sir T. Roe, in Purchas, i. 537; [with some trifling variations in Foster's ed. (Hak. Soc.) i. 19].

1623.—"Celebratur in universo oriente radix quaedam vocata Betel, quam Indi et reliqui in ore habere et mandere consueverunt, atque ex eâ mansione mire recreantur, et ad labores tolerandos, et ad languores discutiendos ... videtur autem esse ex narcoticis, quia magnopere denigrat dentes."—Bacon, Historia Vitae et Mortis, ed. Amst. 1673, p. 97.

1672.—"They pass the greater part of the day in indolence, occupied only with talk, and chewing Betel and Areca, by which means their lips and teeth are always stained."—P. di Vincenzo Maria, 232.

1677.—The Court of the E. I. Co. in a letter to Ft. St. George, Dec. 12, disapprove of allowing "Valentine Nurse 20 Rupees a month for diet, 7 Rs. for house-rent, 2 for a cook, 1 for Beetle, and 2 for a Porter, which is a most extravagant rate, which we shall not allow him or any other."—Notes and Exts., No. i. p. 21.

1727.—"I presented the Officer that waited on me to the Sea-side (at Calicut) with 5 zequeens for a feast of bettle to him and his companions."—A. Hamilton, i. 306.

BETTEELA, BEATELLE, &c., s. The name of a kind of muslin constantly mentioned in old trading-lists and narratives. This seems to be a Sp. and Port. word beatilla or beatilha, for 'a veil,' derived, according to Cobarruvias, from "certain beatas, who invented or used the like." Beata is a religieuse. ["The Betilla is a certain kind of white E. I. chintz made at Masulipatam, and known under the name of Organdi."—Mad. Admin. Man. Gloss. p. 233.]

[1566.—"A score Byatilhas, which were worth 200 pardaos."—Correa, iii. 479.]

1572.—

"Vestida huma camisa preciosa

Trazida de delgada beatilha,

Que o corpo crystallino deixa ver-se;

Que tanto bem não he para esconder-se."

Camões, vi. 21.

1598.—"... this linnen is of divers sorts, and is called Serampuras, Cassas, Comsas, Beattillias, Satopassas, and a thousand such names."—Linschoten, 28; [Hak. Soc. i. 95; and cf. i. 56].

1685.—"To servants, 3 pieces beteelaes."—In Wheeler, i. 149.

1727.—"Before Aurangzeb conquered Visiapore, this country (Sundah) produced the finest Betteelas or Muslins in India."—A. Hamilton, i. 264.

[1788.—"There are various kinds of muslins brought from the East Indies, chiefly from Bengal: Betelles, &c."—Chambers' Cycl., quoted in 3 ser. Notes & Q. iv. 88.]

BEWAURIS, adj. P.—H. be-wāris, 'without heir.' Unclaimed, without heir or owner.

BEYPOOR, n.p. Properly Veppūr, or Bēppūr, [derived from Malayāl. veppu, 'deposit,' ur, 'village,' a place formed by the receding of the sea, which has been turned into the Skt. form Vāyupura, 'the town of the Wind-god']. The terminal town of the Madras Railway on the Malabar coast. It stands north of the river; whilst the railway station is on the S. of the river—(see CHALIA). Tippoo Sahib tried to make a great port of Beypoor, and to call it Sultanpatnam. [It is one of the many places which have been suggested as the site of Ophir (Logan, Malabar, i. 246), and is probably the Belliporto of Tavernier, "where there was a fort which the Dutch had made with palms" (ed. Ball, i. 235).]

1572.—

"Chamará o Samorim mais gente nova;

Virão Reis de Bipur, e de Tanor...."

Camões, x. 14.

1727.—"About two Leagues to the Southward of Calecut, is a fine River called Baypore, capable to receive ships of 3 or 400 Tuns."—A. Hamilton, i. 322.

BEZOAR, s. This word belongs, not to the A.-Indian colloquial, but to the language of old oriental trade and materia medica. The word is a corruption of the P. name of the thing, pādzahr, 'pellens venenum,' or pāzahr. The first form is given by Meninski as the etymology of the word, and this is accepted by Littré [and the N.E.D.]. The quotations of Littré from Ambrose Paré show that the word was used generically for 'an antidote,' and in this sense it is used habitually by Avicenna. No doubt the term came to us, with so many others, from Arab medical writers, so much studied in the Middle Ages, and this accounts for the b, as Arabic has no p, and writes bāzahr. But its usual application was, and is, limited to certain hard concretions found in the bodies of animals, to which antidotal virtues were ascribed, and especially to one obtained from the stomach of a wild goat in the Persian province of Lar. Of this animal and the bezoar an account is given in Kaempfer's Amoenitates Exoticae, pp. 398 seqq. The Bezoar was sometimes called Snake-Stone, and erroneously supposed to be found in the head of a snake. It may have been called so really because, as Ibn Baithar states, such a stone was laid upon the bite of a venomous creature (and was believed) to extract the poison. Moodeen Sheriff, in his Suppt. to the Indian Pharmacopœia, says there are various bezoars in use (in native mat. med.), distinguished according to the animal producing them, as a goat-, camel-, fish-, and snake-bezoar; the last quite distinct from Snake-Stone (q.v.).

[A false Bezoar stone gave occasion for the establishment of one of the great distinctions in our Common Law, viz. between actions founded upon contract, and those founded upon wrongs: Chandelor v. Lopus was decided in 1604 (reported in 2. Croke, and in Smith's Leading Cases). The head-note runs—"The defendant sold to the plaintiff a stone, which he affirmed to be a Bezoar stone, but which proved not to be so. No action lies against him, unless he either knew that it was not a Bezoar stone, or warranted it to be a Bezoar stone" (quoted by Gray, Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ii. 484).]

1516.—Barbosa writes pajar.

[1528.—"Near this city (Lara) in a small mountain are bred some animals of the size of a buck, in whose stomach grows a stone they call bazar."—Tenreiro, ch. iii. p. 14.]

[1554.—Castanheda (I. ch. 46) calls the animal whence bezoar comes bagoldaf, which he considers an Indian word.]

c. 1580.—"... adeo ut ex solis Bezahar nonnulla vasa conflata viderim, maxime apud eos qui a venenis sibi cavere student."—Prosper Alpinus, Pt. i. p. 56.

1599.—"Body o' me, a shrewd mischance. Why, had you no unicorn's horn, nor bezoar's stone about you, ha?"—B. Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, Act v. sc. 4.

[ " "Bezar sive bazar"; see quotation under MACE.]

1605.—The King of Bantam sends K. James I. "two beasar stones."—Sainsbury, i. 143.

1610.—"The Persian calls it, par excellence, Pazahar, which is as much as to say 'antidote' or more strictly 'remedy of poison or venom,' from Zahar, which is the general name of any poison, and pá, 'remedy'; and as the Arabic lacks the letter p, they replace it by b, or f, and so they say, instead of Pázahar, Bázahar, and we with a little additional corruption Bezar."—P. Teixeira, Relaciones, &c., p. 157.

1613.—"... elks, and great snakes, and apes of bazar stone, and every kind of game birds."—Godinho de Eredia, 10v.

1617.—"... late at night I drunke a little bezas stone, which gave me much paine most parte of night, as though 100 Wormes had byn knawing at my hart; yet it gave me ease afterward."—Cocks's Diary, i. 301; [in i. 154 he speaks of "beza stone"].

1634.—Bontius claims the etymology just quoted from Teixeira, erroneously, as his own.—Lib. iv. p. 47.

1673.—"The Persians then call this stone Pazahar, being a compound of Pa and Zahar, the first of which is against, and the other is Poyson."—Fryer, 238.

" "The Monkey Bezoars which are long, are the best...."—Ibid. 212.

1711.—"In this animal (Hog-deer of Sumatra, apparently a sort of chevrotain or Tragulus) is found the bitter Bezoar, called Pedra di Porco Siacca, valued at ten times its Weight in Gold."—Lockyer, 49.

1826.—"What is spikenard? what is mumiai? what is pahzer? compared even to a twinkle of a royal eye-lash?"—Hajji Baba, ed. 1835, p. 148.

BHAT, s. H. &c. bhāṭ (Skt. bhàṭṭa, a title of respect, probably connected with bhàrtṛi, 'a supporter or master'), a man of a tribe of mixed descent, whose members are professed genealogists and poets; a bard. These men in Rājputāna and Guzerat had also extraordinary privileges as the guarantors of travellers, whom they accompanied, against attack and robbery. See an account of them in Forbes's Rās Mālā, I. ix. &c., reprint 558 seqq.; [for Bengal, Risley, Tribes & Castes, i. 101 seqq.; for the N.W.P., Crooke, Tribes & Castes, ii. 20 seqq.

[1554.—"Bats," see quotation under RAJPUT.]

c. 1555.—"Among the infidel Bānyāns in this country (Guzerat) there is a class of literati known as Bāts. These undertake to be guides to traders and other travellers ... when the caravans are waylaid on the road by Rāshbūts, i.e. Indian horsemen, coming to pillage them, the Bāt takes out his dagger, points it at his own breast, and says: 'I have become surety! If aught befals the caravan I must kill myself!' On these words the Rāshbūts let the caravan pass unharmed."—Sidi 'Ali, 95.

[1623.—"Those who perform the office of Priests, whom they call Boti."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 80.]

1775.—"The Hindoo rajahs and Mahratta chieftains have generally a Bhaut in the family, who attends them on public occasions ... sounds their praise, and proclaims their titles in hyperbolical and figurative language ... many of them have another mode of living; they offer themselves as security to the different governments for payment of their revenue, and the good behaviour of the Zemindars, patels, and public farmers; they also become guarantees for treaties between native princes, and the performance of bonds by individuals."—Forbes, Or. Mem. ii. 89; [2nd ed. i. 377; also see ii. 258]. See TRAGA.

1810.—"India, like the nations of Europe, had its minstrels and poets, concerning whom there is the following tradition: At the marriage of Siva and Parvatty, the immortals having exhausted all the amusements then known, wished for something new, when Siva, wiping the drops of sweat from his brow, shook them to earth, upon which the Bawts, or Bards, immediately sprang up."—Maria Graham, 169.

1828.—"A 'Bhat' or Bard came to ask a gratuity."—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 53.

BHEEL, n.p. Skt. Bhilla; H. Bhīl. The name of a race inhabiting the hills and forests of the Vindhya, Malwa, and of the N.-Western Deccan, and believed to have been the aborigines of Rājputāna; some have supposed them to be the Φυλλῖται of Ptolemy. They are closely allied to the Coolies (q.v.) of Guzerat, and are believed to belong to the Kolarian division of Indian aborigines. But no distinct Bhīl language survives.

1785.—"A most infernal yell suddenly issued from the deep ravines. Our guides informed us that this was the noise always made by the Bheels previous to an attack."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iii. 480.

1825.—"All the Bheels whom we saw to-day were small, slender men, less broad-shouldered ... and with faces less Celtic than the Puharees of the Rajmahal.... Two of them had rude swords and shields, the remainder had all bows and arrows."—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 75.

BHEEL, s. A word used in Bengal—bhīl: a marsh or lagoon; same as Jeel (q.v.)

[1860.—"The natives distinguish a lake so formed by a change in a river's course from one of usual origin or shape by calling the former a bowr—whilst the latter is termed a Bheel."—Grant, Rural Life in Bengal, 35.]

1879.—"Below Shouy-doung there used to be a big bheel, wherein I have shot a few duck, teal, and snipe."—Pollok, Sport in B. Burmah, i. 26.

BHEESTY, s. The universal word in the Anglo-Indian households of N. India for the domestic (corresponding to the saḳḳā of Egypt) who supplies the family with water, carrying it in a mussuck, (q.v.), or goatskin, slung on his back. The word is P. bihishtī, a person of bihisht or paradise, though the application appears to be peculiar to Hindustan. We have not been able to trace the history of this term, which does not apparently occur in the Āīn, even in the curious account of the way in which water was cooled and supplied in the Court of Akbar (Blochmann, tr. i. 55 seqq.), or in the old travellers, and is not given in Meninski's lexicon. Vullers gives it only as from Shakespear's Hindustani Dict. [The trade must be of ancient origin in India, as the leather bag is mentioned in the Veda and Manu (Wilson, Rig Veda, ii. 28; Institutes, ii. 79.) Hence Col. Temple (Ind. Ant., xi. 117) suggests that the word is Indian, and connects it with the Skt. vish, 'to sprinkle.'] It is one of the fine titles which Indian servants rejoice to bestow on one another, like Mehtar, Khalīfa, &c. The title in this case has some justification. No class of men (as all Anglo-Indians will agree) is so diligent, so faithful, so unobtrusive, and uncomplaining as that of the bihishtīs. And often in battle they have shown their courage and fidelity in supplying water to the wounded in face of much personal danger.

[c. 1660.—"Even the menials and carriers of water belonging to that nation (the Pathāns) are high-spirited and war-like."—Bernier, ed. Constable, 207.]

1773.—"Bheestee, Waterman" (etc.)—Fergusson, Dict. of the Hindostan Language, &c.

1781.—"I have the happiness to inform you of the fall of Bijah Gurh on the 9th inst. with the loss of only 1 sepoy, 1 beasty, and a cossy (? Cossid) killed...."—Letter in India Gazette of Nov. 24th.

1782.—(Table of Wages in Calcutta),

Consummah 10 Rs.

Kistmutdar 6 "

Beasty 5 "

India Gazette, Oct. 12.

Five Rupees continued to be the standard wage of a bihishtī for full 80 years after the date given.

1810.—"... If he carries the water himself in the skin of a goat, prepared for that purpose, he then receives the designation of Bheesty."—Williamson, V.M. i. 229.

1829.—"Dressing in a hurry, find the drunken bheesty ... has mistaken your boot for the goglet in which you carry your water on the line of march."—Camp Miseries, in John Shipp, ii. 149. N.B.—We never knew a drunken bheesty.

1878.—"Here comes a seal carrying a porpoise on its back. No! it is only our friend the bheesty."—In my Indian Garden, 79.

[1898.

"Of all them black-faced crew,

The finest man I knew

Was our regimental bhisti, Ganga Din."

R. Kipling, Barrack-room Ballads, p. 23.]

BHIKTY, s. The usual Calcutta name for the fish Lates calcarifer. See COCKUP.

[BHOOSA, s. H. Mahr. bhus, bhusa; the husks and straw of various kinds of corn, beaten up into chaff by the feet of the oxen on the threshing-floor; used as the common food of cattle all over India.

[1829.—"Every commune is surrounded with a circumvallation of thorns ... and the stacks of bhoos, or 'chaff,' which are placed at intervals, give it the appearance of a respectable fortification. These bhoos stacks are erected to provide provender for the cattle in scanty rainy seasons."—Tod, Annals, Calcutta reprint, i. 737.]

[BHOOT, s. H. &c., bhūt, bhūta, Skt. bhūta, 'formed, existent,' the common term for the multitudinous ghosts and demons of various kinds by whom the Indian peasant is so constantly beset.]

[1623.—"All confessing that it was Buto, i.e. the Devil."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 341.]

[1826.—"The sepoys started up, and cried 'B,hooh, b,hooh, arry arry.' This cry of 'a ghost' reached the ears of the officer, who bid his men fire into the tree, and that would bring him down, if there."—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, i. 107.]

BHOUNSLA, n.p. Properly Bhoslah or Bhonslah, the surname of Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta empire. It was also the surname of Parsoji and Raghuji, the founders of the Mahratta dynasty of Berar, though not of the same family as Sivaji.

1673.—"Seva Gi, derived from an Ancient Line of Rajahs, of the Cast of the Bounceloes, a Warlike and Active Offspring."—Fryer, 171.

c. 1730.—"At this time two parganas, named Púna and Súpa, became the jagír of Sáhú Bhoslah. Sívají became the manager.... He was distinguished in his tribe for courage and intelligence; and for craft and trickery he was reckoned a sharp son of the devil."—Khāfī Khān, in Elliot, vii. 257.

1780.—"It was at first a particular tribe governed by the family of Bhosselah, which has since lost the sovereignty."—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 214.

1782.—"... le Bonzolo, les Marates, et les Mogols."—Sonnerat, i. 60.

BHYACHARRA, s. H. bhayāchārā. This is a term applied to settlements made with the village as a community, the several claims and liabilities being regulated by established customs, or special traditional rights. Wilson interprets it as "fraternal establishments." [This hardly explains the tenure, at least as found in the N.W.P., and it would be difficult to do so without much detail. In its perhaps most common form each man's holding is the measure of his interest in the estate, irrespective of the share to which he may be entitled by ancestral right.]

BICHÁNA, s. Bedding of any kind. H. bichhānā.

1689.—"The Heat of the Day is spent in Rest and Sleeping ... sometimes upon Cotts, and sometimes upon Bechanahs, which are thick Quilts."—Ovington, 313.

BIDREE, BIDRY, s. H. Bidrī; the name applied to a kind of ornamental metal-work, made in the Deccan, and deriving its name from the city of Bīdar (or Bedar), which was the chief place of manufacture. The work was, amongst natives, chiefly applied to hooka-bells, rose-water bottles and the like. The term has acquired vogue in England of late amongst amateurs of "art manufacture." The ground of the work is pewter alloyed with one-fourth copper: this is inlaid (or damascened) with patterns in silver; and then the pewter ground is blackened. A short description of the manufacture is given by Dr. G. Smith in the Madras Lit. Soc. Journ., N.S. i. 81-84; [by Sir G. Birdwood, Indust. Arts, 163 seqq.; Journ. Ind. Art, i. 41 seqq.] The ware was first descrbed by B. Heyne in 1813.

BILABUNDY, s. H. bilabandī. An account of the revenue settlement of a district, specifying the name of each mahal (estate), the farmer of it, and the amount of the rent (Wilson). In the N.W.P. it usually means an arrangement for securing the payment of revenue (Elliot). C. P. Brown says, quoting Raikes (p. 109), that the word is bila-bandī, 'hole-stopping,' viz. stopping those vents through which the coin of the proprietor might ooze out. This, however, looks very like a 'striving after meaning,' and Wilson's suggestion that it is a corruption of behrī-bandī, from behrī, 'a share,' 'a quota,' is probably right.

[1858.—"This transfer of responsibility, from the landholder to his tenants, is called 'Jumog Lagána,' or transfer of jumma. The assembly of the tenants, for the purpose of such adjustment, is called zunjeer bundee, or linking together. The adjustment thus made is called the bilabundee."—Sleeman, Journey through Oudh, i. 208.]

BILAYUT, BILLAÏT, &c. n.p. Europe. The word is properly Ar. Wilāyat, 'a kingdom, a province,' variously used with specific denotation, as the Afghans term their own country often by this name; and in India again it has come to be employed for distant Europe. In Sicily Il Regno is used for the interior of the island, as we use Mofussil in India. Wilāyat is the usual form in Bombay.

BILAYUTEE PAWNEE, BILÁTEE PANEE. The adject. bilāyatī or wilāyatī is applied specifically to a variety of exotic articles, e.g. bilāyatī baingan (see BRINJAUL), to the tomato, and most especially bilāyatī pānī, 'European water,' the usual name for soda-water in Anglo-India.

1885.—"'But look at us English,' I urged, 'we are ordered thousands of miles away from home, and we go without a murmur.' 'It is true, Khudawund,' said Gunga Pursad, 'but you sahebs drink English-water (soda-water), and the strength of it enables you to bear up under all fatigues and sorrows.' His idea (adds Mr. Knighton) was that the effervescing force of the soda-water, and the strength of it which drove out the cork so violently, gave strength to the drinker of it."—Times of India Mail, Aug. 11, 1885.

BILDÁR, s. H. from P. beldār, 'a spade-wielder,' an excavator or digging labourer. Term usual in the Public Works Department of Upper India for men employed in that way.

1847.—

"Ye Lyme is alle oute! Ye Masouns lounge aboute!

Ye Beldars have alle strucke, and are smoaking atte their Eese!

Ye Brickes are alle done! Ye Kyne are Skynne and Bone,

And ye Threasurour has bolted with xii thousand Rupeese!"

Ye Dreme of an Executive Engineere.

BILOOCH, BELOOCH. n.p. The name (Balūch or Bilūch) applied to the race inhabiting the regions west of the Lower Indus, and S.E. of Persia, called from them Bilūchistān; they were dominant in Sind till the English conquest in 1843. [Prof. Max Müller (Lectures, i. 97, note) identified the name with Skt. mlechcha, used in the sense of the Greek βάρβαρος for a despised foreigner.]

A.D. 643.—"In the year 32 H. 'Abdulla bin 'A'mar bin Rabi' invaded Kirmán and took the capital Kuwáshír, so that the aid of 'the men of Kúj and Balúj' was solicited in vain by the Kirmánis."—In Elliot, i. 417.

c. 1200.—"He gave with him from Kandahār and Lār, mighty Balochis, servants ... with nobles of many castes, horses, elephants, men, carriages, charioteers, and chariots."—The Poem of Chand Bardāi, in Ind. Ant. i. 272.

c. 1211.—"In the desert of Khabis there was a body ... of Buluchís who robbed on the highway.... These people came out and carried off all the presents and rarities in his possession."—'Utbi, in Elliot, ii. 193.

1556.—"We proceeded to Gwādir, a trading town. The people here are called Balŭj; their prince was Malik Jalaluddīn, son of Malik Dīnār."—Sidi 'Ali, p. 73.

[c. 1590.—"This tract is inhabited by an important Baloch tribe called Kalmani."—Āīn, trans. Jarret, ii. 337.]

1613.—The Boloches are of Mahomet's Religion. They deale much in Camels, most of them robbers...."—N. Whittington, in Purchas, i. 485.

1648.—"Among the Machumatists next to the Pattans are the Blotias of great strength" [? Wilāyatī].—Van Twist, 58.

1727.—"They were lodged in a Caravanseray, when the Ballowches came with about 300 to attack them; but they had a brave warm Reception, and left four Score of their Number dead on the Spot, without the loss of one Dutch Man."—A. Hamilton, i. 107.

1813.—Milburn calls them Bloaches (Or. Com. i. 145).

1844.—"Officers must not shoot Peacocks: if they do the Belooches will shoot officers—at least so they have threatened, and M.-G. Napier has not the slightest doubt but that they will keep their word. There are no wild peacocks in Scinde,—they are all private property and sacred birds, and no man has any right whatever to shoot them."—Gen. Orders by Sir C. Napier.

BINKY-NABOB, s. This title occurs in documents regarding Hyder and Tippoo, e.g. in Gen. Stewart's desp. of 8th March 1799: "Mohammed Rezza, the Binky Nabob." [Also see Wilks, Mysoor, Madras reprint, ii. 346.] It is properly benkī-nawāb, from Canarese benkī, 'fire,' and means the Commandant of the Artillery.

BIRD OF PARADISE. The name given to various beautiful birds of the family Paradiseidae, of which many species are now known, inhabiting N. Guinea and the smaller islands adjoining it. The largest species was called by Linnæus Paradisaea apoda, in allusion to the fable that these birds had no feet (the dried skins brought for sale to the Moluccas having usually none attached to them). The name Manucode which Buffon adopted for these birds occurs in the form Manucodiata in some of the following quotations. It is a corruption of the Javanese name Manuk-devata, 'the Bird of the Gods,' which our popular term renders with sufficient accuracy. [The Siamese word for 'bird,' according to Mr. Skeat, is nok, perhaps from manok.]

c. 1430.—"In majori Java avis præcipua reperitur sine pedibus, instar palumbi, pluma levi, cauda oblonga, semper in arboribus quiescens: caro non editur, pellis et cauda habentur pretiosiores, quibus pro ornamento capitis utuntur."—N. Conti, in Poggius de Varietate Fortunae, lib. iv.

1552.—"The Kings of the said (Moluccas) began only a few years ago to believe in the immortality of souls, taught by no other argument than this, that they had seen a most beautiful little bird, which never alighted on the ground or on any other terrestrial object, but which they had sometimes seen to come from the sky, that is to say, when it was dead and fell to the ground. And the Machometan traders who traffic in those islands assured them that this little bird was a native of Paradise, and that Paradise was the place where the souls of the dead are; and on this account the princes attached themselves to the sect of the Machometans, because it promised them many marvellous things regarding this place of souls. This little bird they called by the name of Manucodiata...."—Letter of Maximilian of Transylvania, Sec. to the Emp. Charles V., in Ramusio, i. f. 351v; see also f. 352.

c. 1524.—"He also (the K. of Bachian) gave us for the King of Spain two most beautiful dead birds. These birds are as large as thrushes; they have small heads, long beaks, legs slender like a writing pen, and a span in length; they have no wings, but instead of them long feathers of different colours, like plumes; their tail is like that of the thrush. All the feathers, except those of the wings (?), are of a dark colour; they never fly except when the wind blows. They told us that these birds come from the terrestrial Paradise, and they call them 'bolon dinata,' [burung-dewata, same as Javanese Manuk-dewata, supra] that is, divine birds."—Pigafetta, Hak. Soc. 143.

1598.—"... in these Ilands (Moluccas) onlie is found the bird, which the Portingales call Passaros de Sol, that is Foule of the Sunne, the Italians call it Manu codiatas, and the Latinists Paradiseas, by us called Paradice birdes, for ye beauty of their feathers which passe al other birds: these birds are never seene alive, but being dead they are found vpon the Iland; they flie, as it is said, alwaies into the Sunne, and keepe themselues continually in the ayre ... for they haue neither feet nor wings, but onely head and bodie, and the most part tayle...."—Linschoten, 35; [Hak. Soc. i. 118].

1572.—

"Olha cá pelos mares do Oriente

As infinitas ilhas espalhadas

Aqui as aureas aves, que não decem

Nunca á terra, e só mortas aparecem."

Camões, x. 132.

Englished by Burton:

"Here see o'er oriental seas bespread

infinite island-groups and alwhere strewed

here dwell the golden fowls, whose home is air,

and never earthward save in death may fare."

1645.—"... the male and female Manucodiatae, the male having a hollow in the back, in which 'tis reported the female both layes and hatches her eggs."—Evelyn's Diary, 4th Feb.

1674.—

"The strangest long-wing'd hawk that flies,

That like a Bird of Paradise,

Or herald's martlet, has no legs...."

Hudibras, Pt. ii. cant. 3.

1591.—"As for the story of the Manucodiata or Bird of Paradise, which in the former Age was generally received and accepted for true, even by the Learned, it is now discovered to be a fable, and rejected and exploded by all men" (i.e. that it has no feet).—Ray, Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, ed. 1692, Pt. ii. 147.

1705.—"The Birds of Paradice are about the bigness of a Pidgeon. They are of varying Colours, and are never found or seen alive; neither is it known from whence they come...."—Funnel, in Dampier's Voyages, iii. 266-7.

1868.—"When seen in this attitude, the Bird of Paradise really deserves its name, and must be ranked as one of the most beautiful and wonderful of living things."—Wallace, Malay Archip., 7th ed., 464.

BIRDS' NESTS. The famous edible nests, formed with mucus, by certain swiftlets, Collocalia nidifica, and C. linchi. Both have long been known on the eastern coasts of the B. of Bengal, in the Malay Islands [and, according to Mr. Skeat in the islands of the Inland Sea (Tale Sap) at Singora]. The former is also now known to visit Darjeeling, the Assam Hills, the Western Ghats, &c., and to breed on the islets off Malabar and the Concan.

BISCOBRA, s. H. biskhoprā or biskhaprā. The name popularly applied to a large lizard alleged, and commonly believed, to be mortally venomous. It is very doubtful whether there is any real lizard to which this name applies, and it may be taken as certain that there is none in India with the qualities attributed. It is probable that the name does carry to many the terrific character which the ingenious author of Tribes on My Frontier alleges. But the name has nothing to do with either bis in the sense of 'twice,' or cobra in that of 'snake.' The first element is no doubt bish, (q.v.) 'poison,' and the second is probably khoprā, 'a shell or skull.' [See J. L. Kipling, Beast and Man in India (p. 317), who gives the scientific name as varanus dracaena, and says that the name biscobra is sometimes applied to the lizard generally known as the ghoṛpad, for which see GUANA.]

1883.—"But of all the things on earth that bite or sting, the palm belongs to the biscobra, a creature whose very name seems to indicate that it is twice as bad as the cobra. Though known by the terror of its name to natives and Europeans alike, it has never been described in the Proceedings of any learned Society, nor has it yet received a scientific name.... The awful deadliness of its bite admits of no question, being supported by countless authentic instances.... The points on which evidence is required are—first, whether there is any such animal; second, whether, if it does exist, it is a snake with legs, or a lizard without them."—Tribes on my Frontier, p. 205.

BISH, BIKH, &c., n. H. from Skt. visha, 'poison.' The word has several specific applications, as (a) to the poison of various species of aconite, particularly Aconitum ferox, otherwise more specifically called in Skt. vatsanābha, 'calf's navel,' corrupted into bachnābh or bachnāg, &c. But it is also applied (b) in the Himālaya to the effect of the rarefied atmosphere at great heights on the body, an effect which there and over Central Asia is attributed to poisonous emanations from the soil, or from plants; a doctrine somewhat naïvely accepted by Huc in his famous narrative. The Central Asiatic (Turki) expression for this is Esh, 'smell.'

a.—

1554.—"Entre les singularités que le consul de Florentins me monstra, me feist gouster vne racine que les Arabes nomment Bisch: laquelle me causa si grande chaleur en la bouche, qui me dura deux iours, qu'il me sembloit y auoir du feu.... Elle est bien petite comme vn petit naueau: les autres (auteurs?) l'ont nommée Napellus...."—Pierre Belon, Observations, &c., f. 97.

b.—

1624.—Antonio Andrada in his journey across the Himālaya, speaking of the sufferings of travellers from the poisonous emanations.—See Ritter, Asien., iii. 444.

1661-2.—"Est autem Langur mons omnium altissimus, ita ut in summitate ejus viatores vix respirare ob aëris subtilitatim queant: neque is ob virulentas nonnullarum herbarum exhalationes aestivo tempore, sine manifesto vitae periculo transire possit."—PP. Dorville and Grueber, in Kircher, China Illustrata, 65. It is curious to see these intelligent Jesuits recognise the true cause, but accept the fancy of their guides as an additional one!

(?) "La partie supérieure de cette montagne est remplie d'exhalaisons pestilentielles."—Chinese Itinerary to Hlassa, in Klaproth, Magasin Asiatique, ii. 112.

1812.—"Here begins the Esh—this is a Turkish word signifying Smell ... it implies something the odour of which induces indisposition; far from hence the breathing of horse and man, and especially of the former, becomes affected."—Mir Izzet Ullah, in J. R. As. Soc. i. 283.

1815.—"Many of the coolies, and several of the Mewattee and Ghoorkha sepoys and chuprasees now lagged, and every one complained of the bīs or poisoned wind. I now suspected that the supposed poison was nothing more than the effect of the rarefaction of the atmosphere from our great elevation."—Fraser, Journal of a Tour, &c., 1820, p. 442.

1819.—"The difficulty of breathing which at an earlier date Andrada, and more recently Moorcroft had experienced in this region, was confirmed by Webb; the Butias themselves felt it, and call it bis ki huwa, i.e. poisonous air; even horses and yaks ... suffer from it."—Webb's Narrative, quoted in Ritter, Asien., ii. 532, 649.

1845.—"Nous arrivâmes à neuf heures au pied du Bourhan-Bota. La caravane s'arrêta un instant ... on se montrait avec anxiété un gaz subtil et léger, qu'on nommait vapeur pestilentielle, et tout le monde paraissait abattu et découragé.... Bientot les chevaux se refusent à porter leurs cavaliers, et chacun avance à pied et à petits pas ... tous les visages blémissent, on sent le cœur s'affadir, et les jambes ne pouvent plus fonctionner.... Une partie de la troupe, par mesure de prudence s'arrêta ... le reste par prudence aussi épuisa tous les efforts pour arriver jusqu'au bout, et ne pas mourir asphyxié au milieu de cet air chargé d'acide carbonique," &c.,—Huc et Gabet, ii. 211: [E. T., ii. 114].

[BISMILLAH, intj., lit. "In the name of God"; a pious ejaculation used by Mahommedans at the commencement of any undertaking. The ordinary form runs—Bi-'smi 'llāhi 'r-raḥmāni 'r-raḥīm, i.e. "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," is of Jewish origin, and is used at the commencement of meals, putting on new clothes, beginning any new work, &c. In the second form, used at the time of going into battle or slaughtering animals, the allusion to the attribute of mercy is omitted.

[1535.—"As they were killed after the Portuguese manner without the bysmela, which they did not say over them."—Correa, iii. 746.]

BISNAGAR, BISNAGA, BEEJANUGGER, n.p. These and other forms stand for the name of the ancient city which was the capital of the most important Hindu kingdom that existed in the peninsula of India, during the later Middle Ages, ruled by the Rāya dynasty. The place is now known as Humpy (Hampī), and is entirely in ruins. [The modern name is corrupted from Pampa, that of the river near which it stood. (Rice, Mysore, ii. 487.)] It stands on the S. of the Tungabhadra R., 36 m. to the N.W. of Bellary. The name is a corruption of Vijayanagara (City of Victory), or Vidyanagara (City of learning), [the latter and earlier name being changed into the former (Rice, Ibid. i. 342, note).] Others believe that the latter name was applied only since the place, in the 13th century, became the seat of a great revival of Hinduism, under the famous Sayana Mādhava, who wrote commentaries on the Vedas, and much besides. Both the city and the kingdom were commonly called by the early Portuguese Narsinga (q.v.), from Narasimha (c. 1490-1508), who was king at the time of their first arrival. [Rice gives his dates as 1488-1508.]

c. 1420.—"Profectus hinc est procul a mari milliaribus trecentis, ad civitatem ingentem, nomine Bizenegaliam, ambitu milliarum sexaginta, circa praeruptos montes sitam."—Conti, in Poggius de Var. Fortunae, iv.

1442.—"... the chances of a maritime voyage had led Abd-er-razzak, the author of this work, to the city of Bidjanagar. He saw a place extremely large and thickly peopled, and a King possessing greatness and sovereignty to the highest degree, whose dominion extends from the frontier of Serendib to the extremity of the county of Kalbergah—from the frontiers of Bengal to the environs of Malabar."—Abdurrazzāk, in India in XV. Cent., 22.

c. 1470.—"The Hindu sultan Kadam is a very powerful prince. He possesses a numerous army, and resides on a mountain at Bichenegher."—Athan. Nikitin, in India in XV. Cent., 29.

1516.—"45 leagues from these mountains inland, there is a very great city, which is called Bijanagher...."—Barbosa, 85.

1611.—"Le Roy de Bisnagar, qu'on appelle aussi quelquefois le Roy de Narzinga, est puissant."—Wytfliet, H. des Indes, ii. 64.

BISON, s. The popular name, among Southern Anglo-Indian sportsmen, of the great wild-ox called in Bengal gaur and gaviāl (Gavaeus gaurus, Jerdon); [Bos gaurus, Blanford]. It inhabits sparsely all the large forests of India, from near Cape Comorin to the foot of the Himālayas (at least in their Eastern portion), and from Malabar to Tenasserim.

1881.—"Once an unfortunate native superintendent or mistari [Maistry] was pounded to death by a savage and solitary bison."—Saty. Review, Sept. 10, p. 335.