Page:Hobson-Jobson a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive.djvu/24

XX INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. service, owing to its having long had a place in the nomenclature of the Ordnance department. It is Tamil, manvětti, ‘earth-cutter.’ Of some very familiar words the origin remains either dubious, or matter only for conjecture. Examples are hackery (which arose apparently in Bombay), florican, topaz.

As to Hindustani words adopted into the Anglo-Indian colloquial the subject is almost too wide and loose for much remark. The habit of introducing these in English conversation and writing seems to prevail more largely in the Bengal Presidency than in any other, and especially more than in Madras, where the variety of different vernaculars in use has tended to make their acquisition by the English less universal than is in the north that of Hindustani, which is so much easier to learn, and also to make the use in former days of Portuguese, and now of English, by natives in contact with foreigners, and of French about the French settlements, very much more common than it is elsewhere. It is this bad habit of interlarding English with Hindustani phrases which has so often excited the just wrath of high English officials, not accustomed to it from their youth, and which (e.g.) drew forth in orders the humorous indignation of Sir Charles Napier.

One peculiarity in this use we may notice, which doubtless exemplifies some obscure linguistic law. Hindustani verbs which are thus used are habitually adopted into the quasi-English by converting the imperative into an infinitive. Thus to bunow, to lugow, to foozilow, to puckarow, to dumbcow, to sumjow, and so on, almost ad libitum, are formed as we have indicated.

It is curious to note that several of our most common adoptions are due to what may be most especially called the Oordoo (Urdū) or ‘Camp’ language, being terms which the hosts of Chinghiz brought from the steppes of North Eastern Asia — e.g. “The old Bukshee is an awful bahadur, but he keeps a first-rate bobachee.” That is a sentence which might easily have passed without remark at an Anglo-Indian mess-table thirty years ago — perhaps might be heard still. Each of the outlandish terms embraced in it came from the depths of Mongolia in the thirteenth century. Chick (in the sense of a cane-blind), daroga, oordoo itself, are other examples.

With the gradual assumption of administration after the middle of last century, we adopted into partial colloquial use an immense number of terms, very many of them Persian or Arabic, belonging to technicalities of revenue and other departments, and largely borrowed from our Mahommedan predecessors. Malay has contributed some of our most familiar expressions, owing partly to the ceaseless rovings among the Eastern coasts of the Portuguese, through whom a part of these reached us, and partly doubtless to the fact that our early dealings and the sites of our early factories lay much more on the shores of the Eastern Archipelago than on those of Continental India. Paddy, godown, compound, bankshall, rattan, durian, a-muck, prow, and cadjan, junk, crease, are some of these. It is true that several of them may be traced eventually to Indian originals, but it seems not the less certain that we got them through the Malay, just as we got words already indicated through the Portuguese.

We used to have a very few words in French form, such as boutique and mort-de-chien. But these two are really distortions of Portuguese words.

A few words from China have settled on the Indian shores and been adopted by Anglo-India, but most of them are, I think, names of fruits or