B (continued 4)

2. The Sunni Bohrās. These are very numerous in the Northern Concan and Guzerat. They are essentially peasants, sturdy, thrifty, and excellent cultivators, retaining much of Hindu habit; and are, though they have dropped caste distinctions, very exclusive and "denominational" (as the Bombay Gazetteer expresses it). Exceptionally, at Pattan, in Baroda State, there is a rich and thriving community of trading Bohrās of the Sunni section; they have no intercourse with their Shī'a namesakes.

The history of the Bohrās is still very obscure; nor does it seem ascertained whether the two sections were originally one. Some things indicate that the Shī'a Bohrās may be, in accordance with their tradition, in some considerable part of foreign descent, and that the Sunni Bohrās, who are unquestionably of Hindu descent, may have been native converts of the foreign immigrants, afterwards forcibly brought over to Sunnism by the Guzerat Sultans. But all this must be said with much reserve. The history is worthy of investigation.

The quotation from Ibn Batuta, which refers to Gandari on the Baroda river, south of Cambay, alludes most probably to the Bohrās, and may perhaps, though not necessarily, indicate an origin for the name different from either of those suggested.

c. 1343.—"When we arrived at Ḳandahār ... we received a visit from the principal Musulmans dwelling at his (the pagan King's) Capital, such as the Children of Khojah Bohrah, among whom was the Nākhoda Ibrahīm, who had 6 vessels belonging to him."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 58.

c. 1620.—Nurullah of Shuster, quoted by Colebrooke, speaks of this class as having been converted to Islam 300 years before. He says also: "Most of them subsist by commerce and mechanical trades; as is indicated by the name Bohrah, which signifies 'merchant' in the dialect of Gujerat."—In As. Res., vii. 338.

1673.—"... The rest (of the Mohammedans) are adopted under the name of the Province or Kingdom they are born in, as Mogul ... or Schisms they have made, as Bilhim, Jemottee, and the lowest of all is Borrah."—Fryer, 93.

c. 1780.—"Among the rest was the whole of the property of a certain Muhammad Mokrim, a man of the Bohra tribe, the Chief of all the merchants, and the owner of three or four merchant ships."—H. of Hydur Naik, 383.

1810.—"The Borahs are an inferior set of travelling merchants. The inside of a Borah's box is like that of an English country shop, spelling-books, prayer-books, lavender water, eau de luce, soap, tapes, scissors, knives, needles, and thread make but a small part of the variety."—Maria Graham, 33.

1825.—"The Boras (at Broach) in general are unpopular, and held in the same estimation for parsimony that the Jews are in England."—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 119; also see 72.

1853.—"I had the pleasure of baptizing Ismail Ibraim, the first Bohorá who, as far as we know, has yet embraced Christianity in India.... He appears thoroughly divorced from Muhammad, and from 'Ali the son-in-law of Muhammad, whom the Bohorás or Initiated, according to the meaning of the Arabic word, from which the name is derived, esteem as an improvement on his father-in-law, having a higher degree of inspiration, which has in good measure, as they imagine, manifested itself among his successors, recognised by the Bohoras and by the Ansariyah, Ismaeliyah, Drus, and Metawileh of Syria...."—Letter of Dr. John Wilson, in Life, p. 456.

1863.—"... India, between which and the north-east coast of Africa, a considerable trade is carried on, chiefly by Borah merchants of Guzerat and Cutch."—Badger, Introd. to Varthema, Hak. Soc. xlix.

BORNEO, n.p. This name, as applied to the great Island in its entirety, is taken from that of the capital town of the chief Malay State existing on it when it became known to Europeans, Bruné, Burné, Brunai, or Burnai, still existing and known as Brunei.

1516.—"In this island much camphor for eating is gathered, and the Indians value it highly.... This island is called Borney."—Barbosa, 203-4.

1521.—"The two ships departed thence, and running among many islands came on one which contained much cinnamon of the finest kind. And then again running among many islands they came to the Island of Borneo, where in the harbour they found many junks belonging to merchants from all the parts about Malacca, who make a great mart in that Borneo."—Correa, ii. 631.

1584.—"Camphora from Brimeo (misreading probably for Bruneo) neare to China."—Barret, in Hakl. ii. 412.

[1610.—"Bornelaya are with white and black quarls, like checkers, such as Polingknytsy are."—Danvers, Letters, i. 72.]

The cloth called Bornelaya perhaps took its name from this island.

[ " "There is brimstone, pepper, Bournesh camphor."—Danvers, Letters, i. 79.]

1614.—In Sainsbury, i. 313 [and in Foster, Letters, ii. 94], it is written Burnea.

1727.—"The great island of Bornew or Borneo, the largest except California in the known world."—A. Hamilton, ii. 44.

BORO-BODOR, or -BUDUR, n.p. The name of a great Buddhistic monument of Indian character in the district of Kadū in Java; one of the most remarkable in the world. It is a quasi-pyramidal structure occupying the summit of a hill, which apparently forms the core of the building. It is quadrangular in plan, the sides, however, broken by successive projections; each side of the basement, 406 feet. Including the basement, it rises in six successive terraces, four of them forming corridors, the sides of which are panelled with bas-reliefs, which Mr. Fergusson calculated would, if extended in a single line, cover three miles of ground. These represent scenes in the life of Sakya Muni, scenes from the Jātakas, or pre-existences of Sakya, and other series of Buddhistic groups. Above the corridors the structure becomes circular, rising in three shallower stages, bordered with small dagobas (72 in number), and a large dagoba crowns the whole. The 72 dagobas are hollow, built in a kind of stone lattice, and each contains, or has contained, within, a stone Buddha in the usual attitude. In niches of the corridors also are numerous Buddhas larger than life, and about 400 in number. Mr. Fergusson concludes from various data that this wonderful structure must date from A.D. 650 to 800.

This monument is not mentioned in Valentijn's great History of the Dutch Indies (1726), nor does its name ever seem to have reached Europe till Sir Stamford Raffles, the British Lieut.-Governor of Java, visited the district in January 1814. The structure was then covered with soil and vegetation, even with trees of considerable size. Raffles caused it to be cleared, and drawings and measurements to be made. His History of Java, and Crawfurd's Hist. of the Indian Archipelago, made it known to the world. The Dutch Government, in 1874, published a great collection of illustrative plates, with a descriptive text.

The meaning of the name by which this monument is known in the neighbourhood has been much debated. Raffles writes it Bóro Bódo [Hist. of Java, 2nd ed., ii. 30 seqq.]. [Crawfurd, Descr. Dict. (s.v.), says: "Boro is, in Javanese, the name of a kind of fish-trap, and budor may possibly be a corruption of the Sanscrit buda, 'old.'"] The most probable interpretation, and accepted by Friedrich and other scholars of weight, is that of 'Myriad Buddhas.' This would be in some analogy to another famous Buddhist monument in a neighbouring district, at Brambánan, which is called Chandi Sewu, or the "Thousand Temples," though the number has been really 238.

BOSH, s. and interj. This is alleged to be taken from the Turkish bosh, signifying "empty, vain, useless, void of sense, meaning or utility" (Redhouse's Dict.). But we have not been able to trace its history or first appearance in English. [According to the N.E.D. the word seems to have come into use about 1834 under the influence of Morier's novels, Ayesha, Hajji Baba, &c. For various speculations on its origin see 5 ser. N. & Q. iii. 114, 173, 257.

[1843.—"The people flatter the Envoy into the belief that the tumult is Bash (nothing)."—Lady Sale, Journal, 47.]

BOSMÁN, BOCHMÁN, s. Boatswain. Lascar's H. (Roebuck).

BOTICKEER, s. Port. botiqueiro. A shop or stall-keeper. (See BOUTIQUE.)

1567.—"Item, pareceo que ... os botiqueiros não tenhão as buticas apertas nos dias de festa, senão depois la messa da terça."—Decree 31 of Council of Goa, in Archiv. Port. Orient., fasc. 4.

1727.—"... he past all over, and was forced to relieve the poor Botickeers or Shopkeepers, who before could pay him Taxes."—A. Hamilton, i. 268.

BO TREE, s. The name given in Ceylon to the Pipal tree (see PEEPUL) as reverenced by the Buddhists; Singh. bo-gās. See in Emerson Tennent (Ceylon, ii. 632 seqq.), a chronological series of notices of the Bo-tree from B.C. 288 to A.D. 1739.

1675.—"Of their (the Veddas') worship there is little to tell, except that like the Cingaleze, they set round the high trees Bogas, which our people call Pagod-trees, with a stone base and put lamps upon it."—Ryklof Van Goens, in Valentijn (Ceylon), 209.

1681.—"I shall mention but one Tree more as famous and highly set by as any of the rest, if not more so, tho' it bear no fruit, the benefit consisting chiefly in the Holiness of it. This tree they call Bogahah; we the God-tree."—Knox, 18.

BOTTLE-TREE, s. Qu. Adansonia digitata, or 'baobab'? Its aspect is somewhat suggestive of the name, but we have not been able to ascertain. [It has also been suggested that it refers to the Babool, on which the Baya, often builds its nest. "These are formed in a very ingenious manner, by long grass woven together in the shape of a bottle." Forbes, Or. Mem., 2nd ed., i. 33.)]

1880.—"Look at this prisoner slumbering peacefully under the suggestive bottle-tree."—Ali Baba, 153.

[BOUND-HEDGE, s. A corruption of boundary-hedge, and applied in old military writers to the thick plantation of bamboo or prickly-pear which used to surround native forts.

1792.—"A Bound Hedge, formed of a wide belt of thorny plants (at Seringapatam)."—Wilks, Historical Sketches, iii. 217.]

BOUTIQUE, s. A common word in Ceylon and the Madras Presidency (to which it is now peculiar) for a small native shop or booth: Port. butica or boteca. From Bluteau (Suppt.) it would seem that the use of butica was peculiar to Portuguese India.

[1548.—Buticas. See quotation under SIND.]

1554.—"... nas quaes buticas ninguem pode vender senão os que se concertam com o Rendeiro."—Botelho, Tombo do Estado da India, 50.

c. 1561.—"The Malabars who sold in the botecas."—Correa, i. 2, 267.

1739.—"That there are many battecas built close under the Town-wall."—Remarks on Fortfns. of Fort St. George, in Wheeler, iii. 188.

1742.—In a grant of this date the word appears as Butteca.—Selections from Records of S. Arcot District, ii. 114.

1767.—"Mr. Russell, as Collector-General, begs leave to represent to the Board that of late years the Street by the river side ... has been greatly encroached upon by a number of golahs, little straw huts, and boutiques...."—In Long, 501.

1772.—"... a Boutique merchant having died the 12th inst., his widow was desirous of being burnt with his body."—Papers relating to E. I. Affairs, 1821, p. 268.

1780.—"You must know that Mrs. Henpeck ... is a great buyer of Bargains, so that she will often go out to the Europe Shops and the Boutiques, and lay out 5 or 600 Rupees in articles that we have not the least occasion for."—India Gazette, Dec. 9.

1782.—"For Sale at No. 18 of the range Botiques to the northward of Lyon's Buildings, where musters (q.v.) may be seen...." India Gazette, Oct. 12.

1834.—"The boutiques are ranged along both sides of the street."—Chitty, Ceylon Gazetteer, 172.

BOWLA, s. A portmanteau. H. bāolā, from Port. baul, and bahu, 'a trunk.'

BOWLY, BOWRY, s. H. bāolī, and bāorī, Mahr. bāvaḍi. C. P. Brown (Zillah Dict. s.v.) says it is the Telegu bāviḍi; bāvī and bāviḍi, = 'well.' This is doubtless the same word, but in all its forms it is probably connected with Skt. vavra, 'a hole, a well,' or with vāpi, 'an oblong reservoir, a pool or lake.' There is also in Singhalese væva, 'a lake or pond,' and in inscriptions vaviya. There is again Maldivian weu, 'a well,' which comes near the Guzerati forms mentioned below. A great and deep rectangular well (or tank dug down to the springs), furnished with a descent to the water by means of long flights of steps, and generally with landings and loggie where travellers may rest in the shade. This kind of structure, almost peculiar to Western and Central India, though occasionally met with in Northern India also, is a favourite object of private native munificence, and though chiefly beneath the level of the ground, is often made the subject of most effective architecture. Some of the finest specimens are in Guzerat, where other forms of the word appear to be wāo and wāīn. One of the most splendid of these structures is that at Asārwa in the suburbs of Ahmedabad, known as the Well of Dhāī (or 'the Nurse') Harīr, built in 1485 by a lady of the household of Sultan Mohammed Bigara (that famous 'Prince of Cambay' celebrated by Butler—see under CAMBAY), at a cost of 3 lakhs of rupees. There is an elaborate model of a great Guzerati bāolī in the Indian Museum at S. Kensington.

We have seen in the suburbs of Palermo a regular bāolī, excavated in the tufaceous rock that covers the plain. It was said to have been made at the expense of an ancestor of the present proprietor (Count Ranchibile) to employ people in a time of scarcity.

c. 1343.—"There was also a bāīn, a name by which the Indians designate a very spacious kind of well, revetted with stone, and provided with steps for descent to the water's brink. Some of these wells have in the middle and on each side pavilions of stone, with seats and benches. The Kings and chief men of the country rival each other in the construction of such reservoirs on roads that are not supplied with water."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 13.

1526.—"There was an empty space within the fort (of Agra) between Ibrahim's palace and the ramparts. I directed a large wâin to be constructed on it, ten gez by ten. In the language of Hindostân they denominate a large well having a staircase down it wâin."—Baber, Mem., 342.

1775.—"Near a village called Sevasee Contra I left the line of march to sketch a remarkable building ... on a near approach I discerned it to be a well of very superior workmanship, of that kind which the natives call Bhouree or Bhoulie."—Forbes, Or. Mem. ii. 102; [2nd ed. i. 387].

1808.—"'Who-so digs a well deserves the love of creatures and the grace of God,' but a Vavidee is said to value 10 Kooas (or wells) because the water is available to bipeds without the aid of a rope."—R. Drummond, Illustrations of Guzerattee, &c.

1825.—"These boolees are singular contrivances, and some of them extremely handsome and striking...."—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 37.

1856.—"The wāv (Sansk. wápeeká) is a large edifice of a picturesque and stately as well as peculiar character. Above the level of the ground a row of four or five open pavilions at regular distances from each other ... is alone visible.... The entrance to the wāv is by one of the end pavilions."—Forbes, Rās Mālā, i. 257; [reprint 1878, p. 197].

1876.—"To persons not familiar with the East such an architectural object as a bowlee may seem a strange perversion of ingenuity, but the grateful coolness of all subterranean apartments, especially when accompanied by water, and the quiet gloom of these recesses, fully compensate in the eyes of the Hindu for the more attractive magnificence of the ghâts. Consequently the descending flights of which we are now speaking, have often been more elaborate and expensive pieces of architecture than any of the buildings above-ground found in their vicinity."—Fergusson, Indian and Eastern Architecture, 486.

BOXWALLAH, s. Hybrid H. Bakas- (i.e. box) wālā. A native itinerant pedlar, or packman, as he would be called in Scotland by an analogous term. The Boxwālā sells cutlery, cheap nick-nacks, and small wares of all kinds, chiefly European. In former days he was a welcome visitor to small stations and solitary bungalows. The Borā of Bombay is often a boxwālā, and the boxwālā in that region is commonly called Borā. (See BORA.)

BOY, s.

a. A servant. In Southern India and in China a native personal servant is so termed, and is habitually summoned with the vocative 'Boy!' The same was formerly common in Jamaica and other W. I. Islands. Similar uses are familiar of puer (e.g. in the Vulgate Dixit Giezi puer Viri Dei. II Kings v. 20), Ar. walad, παιδάριον, garçon, knave (Germ. Knabe); and this same word is used for a camp-servant in Shakespeare, where Fluelen says: "Kill the Poys and the luggage! 'tis expressly against the laws of arms."—See also Grose's Mil. Antiquities, i. 183, and Latin quotation from Xavier under Conicopoly. The word, however, came to be especially used for 'Slave-boy,' and applied to slaves of any age. The Portuguese used moço in the same way. In 'Pigeon English' also 'servant' is Boy, whilst 'boy' in our ordinary sense is discriminated as 'smallo-boy!'

b. A Palankin-bearer. From the name of the caste, Telug. and Malayāl. bōyi, Tam. bōvi, &c. Wilson gives bhoi as H. and Mahr. also. The word is in use northward at least to the Nerbudda R. In the Konkan, people of this class are called Kahār bhūī (see Ind. Ant. ii. 154, iii. 77). P. Paolino is therefore in error, as he often is, when he says that the word boy as applied by the English and other Europeans to the coolies or facchini who carry the dooly, "has nothing to do with any Indian language." In the first and third quotations (under b), the use is more like a, but any connection with English at the dates seems impossible.

a.—

1609.—"I bought of them a Portugall Boy (which the Hollanders had given unto the King) ... hee cost mee fortie-five Dollers."—Keeling, in Purchas, i. 196.

" "My Boy Stephen Grovenor."—Hawkins, in Purchas, 211. See also 267, 296.

1681.—"We had a black boy my Father brought from Porto Nova to attend upon him, who seeing his Master to be a Prisoner in the hands of the People of his own Complexion, would not now obey his Command."—Knox, 124.

1696.—"Being informed where the Chief man of the Choultry lived, he (Dr. Brown) took his sword and pistol, and being followed by his boy with another pistol, and his horse keeper...."—In Wheeler, i. 300.

1784.—"Eloped. From his master's House at Moidapore, a few days since, A Malay Slave Boy."—In Seton-Karr, i. 45; see also pp. 120, 179.

1836.—"The real Indian ladies lie on a sofa, and if they drop their handkerchief, they just lower their voices and say Boy! in a very gentle tone."—Letters from Madras, 38.

1866.—"Yes, Sahib, I Christian Boy. Plenty poojah do. Sunday time never no work do."—Trevelyan, The Dawk Bungalow, p. 226.

Also used by the French in the East:

1872.—"Mon boy m'accompagnait pour me servir à l'occasion de guide et d'interprète."—Rev. des Deux Mondes, xcviii. 957.

1875.—"He was a faithful servant, or boy, as they are here called, about forty years of age."—Thomson's Malacca, 228.

1876.—"A Portuguese Boy ... from Bombay."—Blackwood's Mag., Nov., p. 578.

b.—

1554.—(At Goa) "also to a naique, with 6 peons (piães) and a mocadam with 6 torch-bearers (tochas), one umbrella boy (hum bóy do sombreiro), two washermen (mainatos), 6 water-carriers (bóys d'aguoa) all serving the governor ... in all 280 pardaos and 4 tangas annually, or 84,240 reis."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 57.

[1563.—"And there are men who carry this umbrella so dexterously to ward off the sun, that although their master trots on his horse, the sun does not touch any part of his body, and such men are called in India boi."—Barros, Dec. 3, Bk. x. ch. 9.]

1591.—A proclamation of the viceroy, Matthias d'Alboquerque, orders: "that no person, of what quality or condition soever, shall go in a palanquim without my express licence, save they be over 60 years of age, to be first proved before the Auditor-General of Police ... and those who contravene this shall pay a penalty of 200 cruzados, and persons of mean estate the half, the palanquys and their belongings to be forfeited, and the bois or mouços who carry such palanquys shall be condemned to his Majesty's galleys."—Archiv. Port. Orient., fasc. 3, 324.

1608-10.—"... faisans les graues et obseruans le Sossiego à l'Espagnole, ayans tousiours leur boay qui porte leur parasol, sans lequel ils n'osent sortir de logis, ou autrement on les estimeroit picaros et miserables."—Mocquet, Voyages, 305.

1610.—"... autres Gentils qui sont comme Crocheteurs et Porte-faix, qu'ils appellent Boye, c'est a dire Bœuf pour porter quelque pesãt faix que ce soit."—Pyrard de Laval, ii. 27; [Hak. Soc. ii. 44. On this Mr. Gray notes: "Pyrard's fanciful interpretation 'ox,' Port. boi, may be due either to himself or to some Portuguese friend who would have his joke. It is repeated by Boullaye-de-Gouz (p. 211), who finds a parallel indignity in the use of the term mulets by the French gentry towards their chair-men."]

1673.—"We might recite the Coolies ... and Palenkeen Boys; by the very Heathens esteemed a degenerate Offspring of the Holencores (see HALALCORE)."—Fryer, 34.

1720.—"Bois. In Portuguese India are those who carry the Andores (see ANDOR), and in Salsete there is a village of them which pays its dues from the fish which they sell, buying it from the fishermen of the shores."—Bluteau, Dict. s.v.

1755-60.—"... Palankin-boys."—Ives, 50.

1778.—"Boys de palanquim, Kàhàr."—Gramatica Indostana (Port.), Roma, 86.

1782.—"... un bambou arqué dans le milieu, qui tient au palanquin, et sur les bouts duquel se mettent 5 ou 6 porteurs qu'on appelle Boués."—Sonnerat, Voyage, i. 58.

1785.—"The boys with Colonel Lawrence's palankeen having straggled a little out of the line of march, were picked up by the Morattas."—Carraccioli, Life of Clive, i. 207.

1804.—"My palanquin boys will be laid on the road on Monday."—Wellington, iii. 553.

1809.—"My boys were in high spirits, laughing and singing through the whole night."—Ld. Valentia, i. 326.

1810.—"The palankeen-bearers are called Bhois, and are remarkable for strength and swiftness."—Maria Graham, 128.

BOYA, s. A buoy. Sea H. (Roebuck). [Mr. Skeat adds: "The Malay word is also boya or bai-rop, which latter I cannot trace."]

[BOYANORE, BAONOR, s. A corr. of the Malayāl. Vāllunavar, 'Ruler.'

[1887.—"Somewhere about 1694-95 ... the Kadattunād Raja, known to the early English as the Boyanore or Baonor of Badagara, was in semi-independent possession of Kaduttanād, that is, of the territory lying between the Mahé and Kōtta rivers."—Logan, Man. of Malabar, i. 345.]

BRAB, s. The Palmyra Tree (see PALMYRA) or Borassus flabelliformis. The Portuguese called this Palmeira brava ('wild' palm), whence the English corruption. The term is unknown in Bengal, where the tree is called 'fan-palm,' 'palmyra,' or by the H. name tāl or tār.

1623.—"The book is made after the fashion of this country, i.e. not of paper which is seldom or never used, but of palm leaves, viz. of the leaves of that which the Portuguese call palmum brama (sic), or wild palm."—P. della Valle, ii. 681; [Hak. Soc. ii. 291].

c. 1666.—"Tous les Malabares écrivent comme nous de gauche à droit sur les feuïlles des Palmeras Bravas."—Thevenot, v. 268.

1673.—"Another Tree called Brabb, bodied like the Cocoe, but the leaves grow round like a Peacock's Tail set upright."—Fryer, 76.

1759.—"Brabb, so called at Bombay: Palmira on the coast; and Tall at Bengal."—Ives, 458.

c. 1760.—"There are also here and there interspersed a few brab-trees, or rather wild palm-trees (the word brab being derived from Brabo, which in Portuguese signifies wild) ... the chief profit from that is the toddy."—Grose, i. 48.

[1808.—See quotation under BANDAREE.]

1809.—"The Palmyra ... here called the brab, furnishes the best leaves for thatching, and the dead ones serve for fuel."—Maria Graham, 5.

BRAHMIN, BRAHMAN, BRAMIN, s. In some parts of India called Bahman; Skt. Brāhmaṇa. This word now means a member of the priestly caste, but the original meaning and use were different. Haug, (Brahma und die Brahmanen, pp. 8-11) traces the word to the root brih, 'to increase,' and shows how it has come to have its present signification. The older English form is Brachman, which comes to us through the Greek and Latin authors.

c. B.C. 330.—"... τῶν ἐν Ταξίλοις σοφιστῶν ἰδεῖν δύο φησὶ, Βραχμᾶνας ἀμφοτέρους, τὸν μὲν πρεσβύτερον ἐξυρημένον, τὸν δὲ νεώτερον κομήτην, ἀμφοτέροις δ' ἀκολουθεῖν μαθητάς...."—Aristobulus, quoted in Strabo, xv. c. 61.

c. B.C. 300.—"Ἄλλην δὲ διαίρεσιν ποιεῖται περὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων δύο γενη φάσκων, ὥν τοὺς μὲν Βραχμᾶνας καλεῖ, τοὺς δὲ Γαρμάνας [Σαρμάνας?]"—From Megasthenes, in Strabo, xv. c. 59.

c. A.D. 150.—"But the evil stars have not forced the Brahmins to do evil and abominable things; nor have the good stars persuaded the rest of the (Indians) to abstain from evil things."—Bardesanes, in Cureton's Spicilegium, 18.

c. A.D. 500.—"Βραχμᾶνες; Ἰνδικὸν ἔθνος σοφώτατον οὓς καὶ βράχμας καλοῦσιν."—Stephanus Byzantinus.

1298.—Marco Polo writes (pl.) Abraiaman or Abraiamin, which seems to represent an incorrect Ar. plural (e.g. Abrāhamīn) picked up from Arab sailors; the correct Ar. plural is Barāhima.

1444.—Poggio taking down the reminiscences of Nicolo Conti writes Brammones.

1555.—"Among these is ther a people called Brachmanes, whiche (as Didimus their Kinge wrote unto Alexandre ...) live a pure and simple life, led with no likerous lustes of other mennes vanities."—W. Watreman, Fardle of Faciouns.

1572.—

1578.—Acosta has Bragmen.

1582.—"Castañeda, tr. by N. L.," has Bramane.

1630.—"The Bramanes ... Origen, cap. 13 & 15, affirmeth to bee descended from Abraham by Cheturah, who seated themselves in India, and that so they were called Abrahmanes."—Lord, Desc. of the Banian Rel., 71.

1676.—

1688.—"The public worship of the pagods was tolerated at Goa, and the sect of the Brachmans daily increased in power, because these Pagan priests had bribed the Portuguese officers."—Dryden, Life of Xavier.

1714.—"The Dervis at first made some scruple of violating his promise to the dying brachman."—The Spectator, No. 578.

BRAHMINY BULL, s. A bull devoted to Śiva and let loose; generally found frequenting Hindu bazars, and fattened by the run of the Bunyas' shops. The term is sometimes used more generally (Brahminy bull, -ox, or -cow) to denote the humped Indian ox as a species.

1872.—"He could stop a huge Bramini bull, when running in fury, by catching hold of its horns."—Govinda Samanta, i. 85.

[1889.—"Herbert Edwards made his mark as a writer of the Brahminee Bull Letters in the Delhi Gazette."—Calcutta Rev., app. xxii.]

BRAHMINY BUTTER, s. This seems to have been an old name for Ghee (q.v.). In MS. "Acct. Charges, Dieting, &c., at Fort St. David for Nov.-Jany., 1746-47," in India Office, we find:

BRAHMINY DUCK, s. The common Anglo-Indian name of the handsome bird Casarca rutila (Pallas), or 'Ruddy Shieldrake'; constantly seen on the sandy shores of the Gangetic rivers in single pairs, the pair almost always at some distance apart. The Hindi name is chakwā, and the chakwā-chakwī (male and female of the species) afford a commonplace comparison in Hindi literature for faithful lovers and spouses. "The Hindus have a legend that two lovers for their indiscretion were transformed into Brahminy Ducks, that they are condemned to pass the night apart from each other, on opposite banks of the river, and that all night long each, in its turn, asks its mate if it shall come across, but the question is always met by a negative—"Chakwa, shall I come?" "No, Chakwi." "Chakwi, shall I come?" "No, Chakwa."—(Jerdon.) The same author says the bird is occasionally killed in England.

BRAHMINY KITE, s. The Milvus Pondicerianus of Jerdon, Haliastur Indus, Boddaert. The name is given because the bird is regarded with some reverence by the Hindus as sacred to Vishnu. It is found throughout India.

c. 1328.—"There is also in this India a certain bird, big, like a Kite, having a white head and belly, but all red above, which boldly snatches fish out of the hands of fishermen and other people, and indeed [these birds] go on just like dogs."—Friar Jordanus, 36.

1673.—"... 'tis Sacrilege with them to kill a Cow or Calf; but highly piacular to shoot a Kite, dedicated to the Brachmins, for which Money will hardly pacify."—Fryer, 33.

[1813.—"We had a still bolder and more ravenous enemy in the hawks and brahminee kites."—Forbes, Or. Mem., 2nd ed., ii. 162.]

BRAHMO-SOMÁJ, s. The Bengali pronunciation of Skt. Brahma Samāja, 'assembly of Brahmists'; Brahma being the Supreme Being according to the Indian philosophic systems. The reform of Hinduism so called was begun by Ram Mohun Roy (Rāma Mohana Rāī) in 1830. Professor A. Weber has shown that it does not constitute an independent Indian movement, but is derived from European Theism. [Also see Monier-Williams, Brahmanism, 486.]

1876.—"The Brahmo Somaj, or Theistic Church of India, is an experiment hitherto unique in religious history."—Collet, Brahmo Year-book, 5.

BRANDUL, s. 'Backstay,' in Sea H. Port. brandal (Roebuck).

BRANDY COORTEE, -COATEE, s. Or sometimes simply Brandy. A corruption of bārānī, 'a cloak,' literally pluviale, from P. bārān, 'rain.' Bārānī-kurtī seems to be a kind of hybrid shaped by the English word coat, though kurtā and kurtī are true P. words for various forms of jacket or tunic.

[1754.—"Their women also being not less than 6000, were dressed with great coats (these are called baranni) of crimson cloth, after the manner of the men, and not to be distinguished at a distance; so that the whole made a very formidable appearance."—H. of Nadir Shah, in Hanway, 367.]

1788.—"Barrannee—a cloak to cover one from the rain."—Ind. Vocab. (Stockdale).

[The word Bārānī is now commonly used to describe those crops which are dependent on the annual rains, not on artificial irrigation.

[1900.—"The recent rain has improved the barani crops."—Pioneer Mail, 19th Feb.]

BRANDYPAWNEE, s. Brandy and water; a specimen of genuine Urdū, i.e. Camp jargon, which hardly needs interpretation. H. panī, 'water.' Williamson (1810) has brandy-shraub-pauny (V. M. ii. 123).

[1854.—"I'm sorry to see you gentlemen drinking brandy-pawnee," says he; "it plays the deuce with our young men in India."—Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. i.]

1866.—"The brandy pawnee of the East, and the 'sangaree' of the West Indies, are happily now almost things of the past, or exist in a very modified form."—Waring, Tropical Resident, 177.

BRASS, s. A brace. Sea dialect.—(Roebuck.)

[BRASS-KNOCKER, s. A term applied to a réchauffé or serving up again of yesterday's dinner or supper. It is said to be found in a novel by Winwood Reade called Liberty Hall, as a piece of Anglo-Indian slang; and it is supposed to be a corruption of bāsī khāna, H. 'stale food'; see 5 ser. N. & Q., 34, 77.]

BRATTY, s. A word, used only in the South, for cakes of dry cow-dung, used as fuel more or less all over India. It is Tam. varaṭṭi, [or virāṭṭi], 'dried dung.' Various terms are current elsewhere, but in Upper India the most common is uplā.—(Vide OOPLA).

BRAVA, n.p. A sea-port on the east coast of Africa, lat. 1° 7′ N., long. 44° 3′, properly Barāwa.

1516.—"... a town of the Moors, well walled, and built of good stone and whitewash, which is called Brava.... It is a place of trade, which has already been destroyed by the Portuguese, with great slaughter of the inhabitants...."—Barbosa, 15.

BRAZIL-WOOD, s. This name is now applied in trade to the dye-wood imported from Pernambuco, which is derived from certain species of Caesalpinia indigenous there. But it originally applied to a dye-wood of the same genus which was imported from India, and which is now known in trade as Sappan (q.v.). [It is the andam or baḳḳam of the Arabs (Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 49).] The history of the word is very curious. For when the name was applied to the newly discovered region in S. America, probably, as Barros alleges, because it produced a dye-wood similar in character to the brazil of the East, the trade-name gradually became appropriated to the S. American product, and was taken away from that of the E. Indies. See some further remarks in Marco Polo, 2nd ed., ii. 368-370 [and Encycl. Bibl. i. 120].

This is alluded to also by Camões (x. 140):

The medieval forms of brazil were many; in Italian it is generally verzi, verzino, or the like.

1330.—"And here they burn the brazil-wood (verzino) for fuel...."—Fr. Odoric, in Cathay, &c., p. 77.

1552.—"... when it came to the 3d of May, and Pedralvares was about to set sail, in order to give a name to the land thus newly discovered, he ordered a very great Cross to be hoisted at the top of a tree, after mass had been said at the foot of the tree, and it had been set up with the solemn benediction of the priests, and then he gave the country the name of Sancta Cruz.... But as it was through the symbol of the Cross that the Devil lost his dominion over us ... as soon as the red wood called Brazil began to arrive from that country, he wrought that that name should abide in the mouth of the people, and that the name of Holy Cross should be lost, as if the name of a wood for colouring cloth were of more moment than that wood which imbues all the sacraments with the tincture of salvation, which is the Blood of Jesus Christ."—Barros, I. v. 2.

1554.—"The baar (Bahar) of Brazil contains 20 faraçolas (see FRAZALA), weighing it in a coir rope, and there is no picotaa (see PICOTA)"—A. Nunes, 18.

1641.—"We went to see the Rasp-house where the lusty knaves are compelled to labour, and the rasping of Brazill and Logwood is very hard labour."—Evelyn's Diary, August [19].

BREECH-CANDY, n.p. A locality on the shore of Bombay Island to the north of Malabar Hill. The true name, as Dr. Murray Mitchell tells me, is believed to be Burj-khāḍī, 'the Tower of the Creek.'

BRIDGEMÁN, s. Anglo-Sepoy H. brijmān, denoting a military prisoner, of which word it is a quaint corruption.

BRINJARRY, s. Also BINJARREE, BUNJARREE, and so on. But the first form has become classical from its constant occurrence in the Indian Despatches of Sir A. Wellesley. The word is properly H. banjārā, and Wilson derives it from Skt. baṇij, 'trade,' kāra, 'doer.' It is possible that the form brinjārā may have been suggested by a supposed connection with the Pers. birinj, 'rice.' (It is alleged in the Dict. of Words used in the E. Indies, 2nd ed., 1805, to be derived from brinj, 'rice,' and ara, 'bring'!) The Brinjarries of the Deccan are dealers in grain and salt, who move about, in numerous parties with cattle, carrying their goods to different markets, and who in the days of the Deccan wars were the great resource of the commissariat, as they followed the armies with supplies for sale. They talk a kind of Mahratta or Hindi patois. Most classes of Banjārās in the west appear to have a tradition of having first come to the Deccan with Moghul camps as commissariat carriers. In a pamphlet called Some Account of the Bunjarrah Class, by N. R. Cumberlege, District Sup. of Police, Basein, Berar (Bombay, 1882; [North Indian N. & Q. iv. 163 seqq.]), the author attempts to distinguish between brinjarees as 'grain-carriers,' and bunjarrahs, from bunjār, 'waste land' (meaning banjar or bānjaṛ). But this seems fanciful. In the N.-W. Provinces the name is also in use, and is applied to a numerous tribe spread along the skirt of the Himālaya from Hardwār to Gorakhpur, some of whom are settled, whilst the rest move about with their cattle, sometimes transporting goods for hire, and sometimes carrying grain, salt, lime, forest produce, or other merchandise for sale. [See Crooke, Tribes and Castes, i. 149 seqq.] Vanjārās, as they are called about Bombay, used to come down from Rajputāna and Central India, with large droves of cattle, laden with grain, &c., taking back with them salt for the most part. These were not mere carriers, but the actual dealers, paying ready money, and they were orderly in conduct.

c. 1505.—"As scarcity was felt in his camp (Sultan Sikandar Lodi's) in consequence of the non-arrival of the Banjáras, he despatched 'Azam Humáyun for the purpose of bringing in supplies."—Ni'amat Ullah, in Elliot, v. 100 (written c. 1612).

1516.—"The Moors and Gentiles of the cities and towns throughout the country come to set up their shops and cloths at Cheul ... they bring these in great caravans of domestic oxen, with packs, like donkeys, and on the top of these long white sacks placed crosswise, in which they bring their goods; and one man drives 30 or 40 beasts before him."—Barbosa, 71.

1563.—"... This King of Dely took the Balagat from certain very powerful gentoos, whose tribe are those whom we now call Venezaras, and from others dwelling in the country, who are called Colles; and all these, Colles, and Venezaras, and Reisbutos, live by theft and robbery to this day."—Garcia De O., f. 34.

c. 1632.—"The very first step which Mohabut Khan [Khān Khānān] took in the Deccan, was to present the Bunjaras of Hindostan with elephants, horses, and cloths; and he collected (by these conciliatory measures) so many of them that he had one chief Bunjara at Agrah, another in Goojrat, and another above the Ghats, and established the advanced price of 10 sers per rupee (in his camp) to enable him to buy it cheaper."—MS. Life of Mohabut Khan (Khan Khanan), in Briggs's paper quoted below, 183.

1638.—"Il y a dans le Royaume de Cuncam vn certain peuple qu'ils appellent Venesars, qui achettent le bled et le ris ... pour le reuendre dans l'Indosthan ... ou ils vont auec des Caffilas ou Caravances de cinq ou six, et quelque fois de neuf ou dix mille bestes de somme...."—Mandelslo, 245.

1793.—"Whilst the army halted on the 23rd, accounts were received from Captain Read ... that his convoy of brinjarries had been attacked by a body of horse."—Dirom, 2.

1800.—"The Binjarries I look upon in the light of servants of the public, of whose grain I have a right to regulate the sale ... always taking care that they have a proportionate advantage."—A. Wellesley, in Life of Sir T. Munro, i. 264.

" "The Brinjarries drop in by degrees."—Wellington, i. 175.

1810.—"Immediately facing us a troop of Brinjarees had taken up their residence for the night. These people travel from one end of India to the other, carrying salt, grain, assafœtida, almost as necessary to an army as salt."—Maria Graham, 61.

1813.—"We met there a number of Vanjarrahs, or merchants, with large droves of oxen, laden with valuable articles from the interior country, to commute for salt on the sea-coast."—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 206; [2nd ed. i. 118; also see ii. 276 seqq.].

" "As the Deccan is devoid of a single navigable river, and has no roads that admit of wheel-carriages, the whole of this extensive intercourse is carried on by laden bullocks, the property of that class of people known as Bunjaras."—Acc. of Origin, Hist., and Manners of ... Bunjaras, by Capt. John Briggs, in Tr. Lit. Soc. Bo. i. 61.

1825.—"We passed a number of Brinjarrees who were carrying salt.... They ... had all bows ... arrows, sword and shield.... Even the children had, many of them, bows and arrows suited to their strength, and I saw one young woman equipped in the same manner."—Heber, ii. 94.

1877.—"They were brinjarries, or carriers of grain, and were quietly encamped at a village about 24 miles off; trading most unsuspiciously in grain and salt."—Meadows Taylor, Life, ii. 17.

BRINJAUL, s. The name of a vegetable called in the W. Indies the Egg-plant, and more commonly known to the English in Bengal under that of bangun (prop. baingan). It is the Solanum Melongena, L., very commonly cultivated on the shores of the Mediterranean as well as in India and the East generally. Though not known in a wild state under this form, there is no reasonable doubt that S. Melongena is a derivative of the common Indian S. insanum, L. The word in the form brinjaul is from the Portuguese, as we shall see. But probably there is no word of the kind which has undergone such extraordinary variety of modifications, whilst retaining the same meaning, as this. The Skt. is bhaṇṭākī, H. bhāṇṭā, baigan, baingan, P. badingān, badilgān, Ar. badinjān, Span. alberengena, berengena, Port. beringela, bringiela, bringella, Low Latin melangolus, merangolus, Ital. melangola, melanzana, mela insana, &c. (see P. della Valle, below), French aubergine (from alberengena), melongène, merangène, and provincially belingène, albergaine, albergine, albergame. (See Marcel Devic, p. 46.) Littré, we may remark, explains (dormitante Homero?) aubergine as 'espèce de morelle,' giving the etym. as "diminutif de auberge" (in the sense of a kind of peach). Melongena is no real Latin word, but a factitious rendering of melanzana, or, as Marcel Devic says, "Latin du botaniste." It looks as if the Skt. word were the original of all. The H. baingan again seems to have been modified from the P. badingān, [or, as Platts asserts, direct from the Skt. vanga, vangana, 'the plant of Bengal,'] and baingan also through the Ar. to have been the parent of the Span. berengena, and so of all the other European names except the English 'egg-plant.' The Ital. mela insana is the most curious of these corruptions, framed by the usual effort after meaning, and connecting itself with the somewhat indigestible reputation of the vegetable as it is eaten in Italy, which is a fact. When cholera is abroad it is considered (e.g. in Sicily) to be an act of folly to eat the melanzana. There is, however, behind this, some notion (exemplified in the quotation from Lane's Mod. Egypt. below) connecting the badinjān with madness. [Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 417.] And it would seem that the old Arab medical writers give it a bad character as an article of diet. Thus Avicenna says the badinjān generates melancholy and obstructions. To the N. O. Solanaceae many poisonous plants belong.

The word has been carried, with the vegetable, to the Archipelago, probably by the Portuguese, for the Malays call it berinjalā. [On this Mr. Skeat writes: "The Malay form brinjal, from the Port., not berinjalā, is given by Clifford and Swettenham, but it cannot be established as a Malay word, being almost certainly the Eng. brinjaul done into Malay. It finds no place in Klinkert, and the native Malay word, which is the only word used in pure Peninsular Malay, is terong or trong. The form berinjalā, I believe, must have come from the Islands if it really exists."]

1554.—(At Goa). "And the excise from garden stuff under which are comprised these things, viz.: Radishes, beetroot, garlick, onions green and dry, green tamarinds, lettuces, conbalinguas, ginger, oranges, dill, coriander, mint, cabbage, salted mangoes, brinjelas, lemons, gourds, citrons, cucumbers, which articles none may sell in retail except the Rendeiro of this excise, or some one who has got permission from him...."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 49.

c. 1580.—"Trifolium quoque virens comedunt Arabes, mentham Judaei crudam, ... mala insana...."—Prosper Alpinus, i. 65.

1611.—"We had a market there kept upon the Strand of diuers sorts of prouisions, towit ... Pallingenies, cucumbers...."—N. Dounton, in Purchas, i. 298.

1616.—"It seems to me to be one of those fruits which are called in good Tuscan petronciani, but which by the Lombards are called melanzane, and by the vulgar at Rome marignani; and if my memory does not deceive me, by the Neapolitans in their patois molegnane."—P. della Valle, i. 197.

1673.—"The Garden ... planted with Potatoes, Yawms, Berenjaws, both hot plants...."—Fryer, 104.

1738.—"Then follow during the rest of the summer, calabashas ... bedin-janas, and tomatas."—Shaw's Travels, 2nd ed. 1757, p. 141.

c. 1740.—"This man (Balaji Rao), who had become absolute in Hindostan as well as in Decan, was fond of bread made of Badjrah ... he lived on raw Bringelas, on unripe mangoes, and on raw red pepper."—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 229.

1782.—Sonnerat writes Béringédes.—i. 186.

1783.—Forrest spells brinjalles (V. to Mergui, 40); and (1810) Williamson biringal (V. M. i. 133). Forbes (1813), bringal and berenjal (Or. Mem. i. 32) [in 2nd ed. i. 22, bungal,] ii. 50; [in 2nd ed. i. 348].

1810.—"I saw last night at least two acres covered with brinjaal, a species of Solanum."—Maria Graham, 24.

1826.—"A plate of poached eggs, fried in sugar and butter; a dish of badenjâns, slit in the middle and boiled in grease."—Hajji Baba, ed. 1835, p. 150.

1835.—"The neighbours unanimously declared that the husband was mad.... One exclaimed: 'There is no strength nor power but in God! God restore thee!' Another said: 'How sad! He was really a worthy man.' A third remarked: 'Badingâns are very abundant just now.'"—Lane, Mod. Egyptians, ed. 1860, 299.

1860.—"Amongst other triumphs of the native cuisine were some singular, but by no means inelegant chefs d'œuvre, brinjals boiled and stuffed with savoury meats, but exhibiting ripe and undressed fruit growing on the same branch."—Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 161. This dish is mentioned in the Sanskrit Cookery Book, which passes as by King Nala. It is managed by wrapping part of the fruit in wet cloths whilst the rest is being cooked.

BROACH, n.p. Bharōch, an ancient and still surviving city of Guzerat, on the River Nerbudda. The original forms of the name are Bhṛigu-kachchha, and Bhāru-Kachchha, which last form appears in the Sunnar Cave Inscription No. ix., and this was written with fair correctness by the Greeks as Βαρυγάζα and Βαργόση. "Illiterate Guzerattees would in attempting to articulate Bhreeghoo-Kshetra (sic), lose the half in coalescence, and call it Barigache."—Drummond, Illus. of Guzerattee, &c.

c. B.C. 20.—"And then laughing, and stript naked, anointed and with his loin-cloth on, he leaped upon the pyre. And this inscription was set upon his tomb: Zarmanochēgas the Indian from Bargósē having rendered himself immortal after the hereditary custom of the Indians lieth here."—Nicolaus Damascenus, in Strabo, xv. 72. [Lassen takes the name Zarmanochēgas to represent the Skt. Śrámanácharya, teacher of the Śrámanas, from which it would appear that he was a Buddhist priest.]

c. A.D. 80.—"On the right, at the very mouth of the gulf, there is a long and narrow strip of shoal.... And if one succeeds in getting into the gulf, still it is hard to hit the mouth of the river leading to Barygaza, owing to the land being so low ... and when found it is difficult to enter, owing to the shoals of the river near the mouth. On this account there are at the entrances fishermen employed by the King ... to meet ships as far off as Syrastrene, and by these they are piloted up to Barygaza."—Periplus, sect. 43. It is very interesting to compare Horsburgh with this ancient account. "From the sands of Swallow to Broach a continued bank extends along the shore, which at Broach river projects out about 5 miles.... The tide flows here ... velocity 6 knots ... rising nearly 30 feet.... On the north side of the river, a great way up, the town of Broach is situated; vessels of considerable burden may proceed to this place, as the channels are deep in many places, but too intricate to be navigated without a pilot."—India Directory (in loco).

c. 718.—Barús is mentioned as one of the places against which Arab attacks were directed.—See Elliot, i. 441.

c. 1300.—"... a river which lies between the Sarsut and Ganges ... has a south-westerly course till it falls into the sea near Bahrúch."—Al-Birūni, in Elliot, i. 49.

A.D. 1321.—"After their blessed martyrdom, which occurred on the Thursday before Palm Sunday, in Thana of India, I baptised about 90 persons in a certain city called Parocco, 10 days' journey distant therefrom...."—Friar Jordanus, in Cathay, &c., 226.

1552.—"A great and rich ship said to belong to Meleque Gupij, Lord of Baroche."—Barros, II. vi. 2.

1555.—"Sultan Ahmed on his part marched upon Barūj."—Sidī 'Ali, 85.

[1615.—"It would be necessary to give credit unto two or three Guzzaratts for some cloth to make a voyage to Burrouse."—Foster, Letters, iv. 94.]

1617.—"We gave our host ... a peece of backar baroche to his children to make them 2 coates."—Cocks's Diary, i. 330. [Backar here seems to represent a port connected with Broach, called in the Āīn (ii. 243) Bhankora or Bhakor; Bayley gives Bhakorah as a village on the frontier of Gujerat.]

1623.—"Before the hour of complines ... we arrived at the city of Barochi, or Behrug as they call it in Persian, under the walls of which, on the south side, flows a river called Nerbedà."—P. della Valle, ii. 529; [Hak. Soc. i. 60].

1648.—In Van Twist (p. 11), it is written Broichia.

[1676.—"From Surat to Baroche, 22 coss."—Tavernier, ed. Ball, i. 66.]

1756.—"Bandar of Bhrōch."—(Bird's tr. of) Mirat-i-Ahmadi, 115.

1803.—"I have the honour to enclose ... papers which contain a detailed account of the ... capture of Baroach."—Wellington, ii. 289.

BUCK, v. To prate, to chatter, to talk much and egotistically. H. baknā. [A buck-stick is a chatterer.]

1880.—"And then ... he bucks with a quiet stubborn determination that would fill an American editor, or an Under Secretary of State with despair. He belongs to the 12-foot-tiger school, so perhaps he can't help it."—Ali Baba, 164.

BUCKAUL, s. Ar. H. baḳḳāl, 'a shopkeeper;' a bunya (q.v. under BANYAN). In Ar. it means rather a 'second-hand' dealer.

[c. 1590.—"There is one cast of the Vaiśyas called Banik, more commonly termed Baniya (grain-merchant). The Persians name them bakkál...."—Āīn, tr. Jarrett, iii. 118.]

1800.—"... a buccal of this place told me he would let me have 500 bags to-morrow."—Wellington, i. 196.

1826.—"Should I find our neighbour the Baqual ... at whose shop I used to spend in sweetmeats all the copper money that I could purloin from my father."—Hajji Baba, ed. 1835, 295.

BUCKSHAW, s. We have not been able to identify the fish so called, or the true form of the name. Perhaps it is only H. bachchā, Mahr. bachchā (P. bacha, Skt. vatsa), 'the young of any creature.' But the Konkani Dict. gives 'boussa—peixe pequeno de qualquer sorte,' 'little fish of any kind.' This is perhaps the real word; but it also may represent bachcha. The practice of manuring the coco-palms with putrid fish is still rife, as residents of the Government House at Parell never forget. The fish in use is refuse bummelo (q.v.). [The word is really the H. bachhuā, a well-known edible fish which abounds in the Ganges and other N. Indian rivers. It is either the Pseudoutropius garua, or P. murius of Day, Fish. Ind., nos. 474 or 471; Fau. Br. Ind. i. 141, 137.]

1673.—"... Cocoe Nuts, for Oyl, which latter they dunging with (Bubsho) Fish, the Land-Breezes brought a poysonous Smell on board Ship."—Fryer, 55. [Also see Wheeler, Early Rec., 40.]

1727.—"The Air is somewhat unhealthful, which is chiefly imputed to their dunging their Cocoa-nut trees with Buckshoe, a sort of small Fishes which their Sea abounds in."—A. Hamilton, i. 181.

c. 1760.—"... manure for the coconut-tree ... consisting of the small fry of fish, and called by the country name of Buckshaw."—Grose, i. 31.

[1883.—"Mahsīr, rohū and batchwa are found in the river Jumna."—Gazetteer of Delhi District, 21.]

BUCKSHAW, s. This is also used in Cocks's Diary (i. 63, 99) for some kind of Indian piece-goods, we know not what. [The word is not found in modern lists of piece-goods. It is perhaps a corruption of Pers. buḳchah, 'a bundle,' used specially of clothes. Tavernier (see below) uses the word in its ordinary sense.]

[1614.—"Percalla, Boxshaes."—Foster, Letters, ii. 88.

[1615.—"80 pieces Boxsha gingams"; "Per Puxshaws, double piece, at 9 mas."—Ibid. iii. 156; iv. 50.

[1665.—"I went to lie down, my bouchha being all the time in the same place, half under the head of my bed and half outside."—Tavernier, ed. Ball, ii. 166.]

BUCKSHEESH, BUXEES, s. P. through P.—H. bakhshish. Buonamano, Trinkgeld, pourboire; we don't seem to have in England any exact equivalent for the word, though the thing is so general; 'something for (the driver)' is a poor expression; tip is accurate, but is slang; gratuity is official or dictionary English.

[1625.—"Bacsheese (as they say in the Arabicke tongue) that is gratis freely."—Purchas, ii. 1340 [N.E.D.].

1759.—"To Presents:—

Cost of Entertainment to Jugget Set. In Long, 190.

c. 1760.—"... Buxie money."—Ives, 51.

1810.—"... each mile will cost full one rupee (i.e. 2s. 6d.), besides various little disbursements by way of buxees, or presents, to every set of bearers."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 235.

1823.—"These Christmas-boxes are said to be an ancient custom here, and I could almost fancy that our name of box for this particular kind of present ... is a corruption of buckshish, a gift or gratuity, in Turkish, Persian, and Hindoostanee."—Heber, i. 45.

1853.—"The relieved bearers opened the shutters, thrust in their torch, and their black heads, and most unceremoniously demanded buxees."—W. Arnold, Oakfield, i. 239.

BUCKYNE, s. H. bakāyan, the tree Melia sempervivens, Roxb. (N. O. Meliaceae). It has a considerable resemblance to the nīm tree (see NEEM); and in Bengali is called mahā-nīm, which is also the Skt. name, mahā-nimba. It is sometimes erroneously called Persian Lilac.

BUDDHA, BUDDHISM, BUDDHIST. These words are often written with a quite erroneous assumption of precision Bhudda, &c. All that we shall do here is to collect some of the earlier mentions of Buddha and the religion called by his name.

c. 200.—"Εἰσὶ δὲ τῶν Ἰνδῶν οἱ τοῖς Βούττα πειθόμενοι παραγγέλμασιν· ὃν δι' ὑπερβολὴν σεμνότητος εἰς θεὸν τετιμήκασι."—Clemens Alexandrinus, Strōmatōn, Liber I. (Oxford ed., 1715, i. 359).

c. 240.—"Wisdom and deeds have always from time to time been brought to mankind by the messengers of God. So in one age they have been brought to mankind by the messenger called Buddha to India, in another by Zarâdusht to Persia, in another by Jesus to the West. Thereupon this revelation has come down, this prophecy in this last age, through me, Mânî, the messenger of the God of truth to Babylonia."—The Book of Mānī, called Shābūrkān, quoted by Albirūnī, in his Chronology, tr. by Sachau, p. 190.

c. 400.—"Apud Gymnosophistas Indiae quasi per manus hujus opinionis auctoritas traditur, quod Buddam principem dogmatis eorum, e latere suo virgo generaret. Nec hoc mirum de barbaris, quum Minervam quoque de capite Jovis, et Liberum patrem de femore ejus procreatos, docta finxit Graecia."—St. Jerome, Adv. Jovinianum, Lib. i. ed. Vallarsii, ii. 309.

c. 440.—"... Τηνικαῦτα γαρ τὸ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τοῦ παρ' Ἕλλησι φιλοσόφου δόγμα, διὰ τοῦ Μανιχαίου χριστιανισμὸν ὑπεκρίνατο ... τούτου δὲ τοῦ Σκυθιανοῦ μαθητὴς γίνεται Βούδδας, πρότερον Τερέβινθος καλούμενος ... κ. τ. λ." (see the same matter from Georgius Cedrenus below).—Socratis, Hist. Eccles. Lib. I. cap. 22.

c. 840.—"An certè Bragmanorum sequemur opinionem, ut quemadmodum illi sectae suae auctorem Bubdam, per virginis latus narrant exortum, ita nos Christum fuisse praedicemus? Vel magis sic nascitur Dei sapientia de virginis cerebro, quomodo Minerva de Jovis vertice, tamquam Liber Pater de femore? Ut Christicolam de virginis partu non solennis natura, vel auctoritas sacrae lectionis, sed superstitio Gentilis, et commenta perdoceant fabulosa."—Ratramni Corbeiensis L. de Nativitate Xti., cap. iii. in L. D'Achery, Spicilegium, tom. i. p. 54, Paris, 1723.

c. 870.—"The Indians give in general the name of budd to anything connected with their worship, or which forms the object of their veneration. So, an idol is called budd."—Biládurí, in Elliot, i. 123.

c. 904.—"Budāsaf was the founder of the Sabaean Religion ... he preached to mankind renunciation (of this world) and the intimate contemplation of the superior worlds.... There was to be read on the gate of the Naobihar^[44] at Balkh an inscription in the Persian tongue of which this is the interpretation: 'The words of Budāsaf: In the courts of kings three things are needed, Sense, Patience, Wealth.' Below had been written in Arabic: 'Budāsaf lies. If a free man possesses any of the three, he will flee from the courts of Kings.'"—Mas'ūdī, iv. 45 and 49.

1000.—"... pseudo-prophets came forward, the number and history of whom it would be impossible to detail.... The first mentioned is Bûdhâsaf, who came forward in India."—Albirûnî, Chronology, by Sachau, p. 186. This name given to Buddha is specially interesting as showing a step nearer the true Bodhisattva, the origin of the name Ἰωάσαφ, under which Buddha became a Saint of the Church, and as elucidating Prof. Max Müller's ingenious suggestion of that origin (see Chips, &c., iv. 184; see also Academy, Sept. 1, 1883, p. 146).

c. 1030.—"A stone was found there in the temple of the great Budda on which an inscription ... purporting that the temple had been founded 50,000 years ago...."—Al 'Utbi, in Elliot, ii. 39.

c. 1060.—"This madman then, Manēs (also called Scythianus) was by race a Brachman, and he had for his teacher Budas, formerly called Terebinthus, who having been brought up by Scythianus in the learning of the Greeks became a follower of the sect of Empedocles (who said there were two first principles opposed to one another), and when he entered Persia declared that he had been born of a virgin, and had been brought up among the hills ... and this Budas (alias Terebinthus) did perish, crushed by an unclean spirit."—Georg. Cedrenus, Hist. Comp., Bonn ed., 455 (old ed. i. 259). This wonderful jumble, mainly copied, as we see, from Socrates (supra), seems to bring Buddha and Manes together. "Many of the ideas of Manicheism were but fragments of Buddhism."—E. B. Cowell, in Smith's Dict. of Christ. Biog.

c. 1190.—"Very grieved was Sārang Deva. Constantly he performed the worship of the Arihant; the Buddhist religion he adopted; he wore no sword."—The Poem of Chand Bardai, paraphr. by Beames, in Ind. Ant. i. 271.

1610.—"... This Prince is called in the histories of him by many names: his proper name was Dramá Rajo; but that by which he has been known since they have held him for a saint is the Budao, which is as much as to say 'Sage' ... and to this name the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb Pagodas."—Couto, Dec. V., liv. vi. cap. 2.

[1615.—"The image of Dibottes, with the hudge collosso or bras imadg (or rather idoll) in it."—Cocks's Diary, i. 200.]

c. 1666.—"There is indeed another, a seventh Sect, which is called Bauté, whence do proceed 12 other different sects; but this is not so common as the others, the Votaries of it being hated and despised as a company of irreligious and atheistical people, nor do they live like the rest."—Bernier, E. T., ii. 107; [ed. Constable, 336].

1685.—"Above all these they have one to whom they pay much veneration, whom they call Bodu; his figure is that of a man."—Ribeiro, f. 40b.

1728.—"Before Gautama Budhum there have been known 26 Budhums—viz.:...."—Valentijn, v. (Ceylon) 369.

1753.—"Edrisi nous instruit de cette circonstance, en disant que le Balahar est adorateur de Bodda. Les Brahmènes du Malabar disent que c'est le nom que Vishtnu a pris dans une de ses apparitions, et on connoît Vishtnu pour une des trois principales divinités Indiennes. Suivant St. Jerôme et St. Clément d'Alexandrie, Budda ou Butta est le legislateur des Gymno-Sophistes de l'Inde. La secte des Shamans ou Samanéens, qui est demeurée la dominante dans tous les royaumes d'au delà du Gange, a fait de Budda en cette qualité son objet d'adoration. C'est la première des divinités Chingulaises ou de Ceilan, selon Ribeiro. Samano-Codom (see GAUTAMA), la grande idole des Siamois, est par eux appelé Putti."—D'Anville, Éclaircissemens, 75. What knowledge and apprehension, on a subject then so obscure, is shown by this great Geographer! Compare the pretentious ignorance of the flashy Abbé Raynal in the quotations under 1770.

1770.—"Among the deities of the second order, particular honours are paid to Buddou, who descended upon earth to take upon himself the office of mediator between God and mankind."—Raynal (tr. 1777), i. 91.

"The Budzoists are another sect of Japan, of which Budzo was the founder.... The spirit of Budzoism is dreadful. It breathes nothing but penitence, excessive fear, and cruel severity."—Ibid. i. 138. Raynal in the two preceding passages shows that he was not aware that the religions alluded to in Ceylon and in Japan were the same.

1779.—"Il y avoit alors dans ces parties de l'Inde, et principalement à la Côte de Coromandel et à Ceylan, un Culte dont on ignore absolument les Dogmes; le Dieu Baouth, dont on ne connoit aujourd'hui, dans l'Inde que le Nom et l'objet de ce Culte; mais il est tout-à-fait aboli, si ce n'est, qu'il se trouve encore quelques familles d'Indiens séparées et méprisées des autres Castes, qui sont restées fidèles à Baouth, et qui ne reconnoissent pas la religion des Brames."—Voyage de M. Gentil, quoted by W. Chambers, in As. Res. i. 170.

1801.—"It is generally known that the religion of Bouddhou is the religion of the people of Ceylon, but no one is acquainted with its forms and precepts. I shall here relate what I have heard upon the subject."—M. Joinville, in As. Res. vii. 399.

1806.—"... The head is covered with the cone that ever adorns the head of the Chinese deity Fo, who has been often supposed to be the same as Boudah."—Salt, Caves of Salsette, in Tr. Lit. Soc. Bo. i. 50.

1810.—"Among the Bhuddists there are no distinct castes."—Maria Graham, 89.

It is remarkable how many poems on the subject of Buddha have appeared of late years. We have noted:

1. Buddha, Epische Dichtung in Zwanzig Gesängen, i.e. an Epic Poem in 20 cantos (in ottava rima). Von Joseph Vittor Widmann, Bern. 1869.

2. The Story of Gautama Buddha and his Creed: An Epic by Richard Phillips, Longmans, 1871. This is also printed in octaves, but each octave consists of 4 heroic couplets.

3. Vasadavatta, a Buddhist Idyll; by Dean Plumtre. Republished in Things New and Old, 1884. The subject is the story of the Courtesan of Mathura ("Vāsavadattā and Upagupta"), which is given in Burnouf's Introd. a l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien, 146-148; a touching story, even in its original crude form.

It opens:

The Skt. Dict. gives indeed as an alternative Mathūra, but Mathŭra is the usual name, whence Anglo-Ind. Muttra.

4. The brilliant Poem of Sir Edwin Arnold, called The Light of Asia, or the Great Renunciation, being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India, and Founder of Buddhism, as told in verse by an Indian Buddhist, 1879.

BUDGE-BUDGE, n.p. A village on the Hooghly R., 15 m. below Calcutta, where stood a fort which was captured by Clive when advancing on Calcutta to recapture it, in December, 1756. The Imperial Gazetteer gives the true name as Baj-baj, [but Hamilton writes Bhuja-bhuj].

1756.—"On the 29th December, at six o'clock in the morning, the admiral having landed the Company's troops the evening before at Mayapour, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Clive, cannonaded Bougee Bougee Fort, which was strong and built of mud, and had a wet ditch round it."—Ives, 99.

1757.—The Author of Memoir of the Revolution in Bengal calls it Busbudgia; (1763), Luke Scrafton Budge Boodjee.

BUDGEROW, s. A lumbering keelless barge, formerly much used by Europeans travelling on the Gangetic rivers. Two-thirds of the length aft was occupied by cabins with Venetian windows. Wilson gives the word as H. and B. bajrā; Shakespear gives H. bajrā and bajra, with an improbable suggestion of derivation from bajar, 'hard or heavy.' Among Blochmann's extracts from Mahommedan accounts of the conquest of Assam we find, in a detail of Mīr Jumla's fleet in his expedition of 1662, mention of 4 bajras (J. As. Soc. Ben. xli. pt. i. 73). The same extracts contain mention of war-sloops called bach'haris (pp. 57, 75, 81), but these last must be different. Bajra may possibly have been applied in the sense of 'thunder-bolt.' This may seem unsuited to the modern budgerow, but is not more so than the title of 'lightning-darter' is to the modern Burkundauze (q.v.)! We remember how Joinville says of the approach of the great galley of the Count of Jaffa:—"Sembloit que foudre cheist des ciex." It is however perhaps more probable that bajrā may have been a variation of baglā. And this is especially suggested by the existence of the Portuguese form pajeres, and of the Ar. form bagara (see under BUGGALOW). Mr. Edye, Master Shipwright of the Naval Yard in Trincomalee, in a paper on the Native Craft of India and Ceylon, speaks of the Baggala or Budgerow, as if he had been accustomed to hear the words used indiscriminately. (See J. R. A. S., vol. i. p. 12). [There is a drawing of a modern Budgerow in Grant, Rural Life, p. 5.]

c. 1570.—"Their barkes be light and armed with oares, like to Foistes ... and they call these barkes Bazaras and Patuas" (in Bengal).—Cæsar Frederick, E. T. in Hakl. ii. 358.

1662.—(Blochmann's Ext. as above).

1705.—"... des Bazaras qui sont de grands bateaux."—Luillier, 52.

1723.—"Le lendemain nous passâmes sur les Bazaras de la compagnie de France."—Lett. Edif. xiii. 269.

1727.—"... in the evening to recreate themselves in Chaises or Palankins; ... or by water in their Budgeroes, which is a convenient Boat."—A. Hamilton, ii. 12.

1737.—"Charges, Budgrows ... Rs. 281. 6. 3."—MS. Account from Ft. William, in India Office.

1780.—"A gentleman's Bugerow was drove ashore near Chaun-paul Gaut...."—Hicky's Bengal Gazette, May 13th.

1781.—"The boats used by the natives for travelling, and also by the Europeans, are the budgerows, which both sail and row."—Hodges, 39.

1783.—"... his boat, which, though in Kashmire (it) was thought magnificent, would not have been disgraced in the station of a Kitchen-tender to a Bengal budgero."—G. Forster, Journey, ii. 10.

1784.—"I shall not be at liberty to enter my budgerow till the end of July, and must be again at Calcutta on the 22nd of October."—Sir W. Jones, in Mem. ii. 38.

1785.—"Mr. Hastings went aboard his Budgerow, and proceeded down the river, as soon as the tide served, to embark for Europe on the Berrington."—In Seton-Karr, i. 86.

1794.—"By order of the Governor-General in Council ... will be sold the Hon'ble Company's Budgerow, named the Sonamookhee^[45] ... the Budgerow lays in the nullah opposite to Chitpore."—Ibid. ii. 114.

1830.—

BUDGROOK, s. Port. bazarucco. A coin of low denomination, and of varying value and metal (copper, tin, lead, and tutenague), formerly current at Goa and elsewhere on the Western Coast, as well as at some other places on the Indian seas. It was also adopted from the Portuguese in the earliest English coinage at Bombay. In the earliest Goa coinage, that of Albuquerque (1510), the leal or bazarucco was equal to 2 reis, of which reis there went 420 to the gold cruzado (Gerson da Cunha). The name appears to have been a native one in use in Goa at the time of the conquest, but its etymology is uncertain. In Van Noort's Voyage (1648) the word is derived from bāzār, and said to mean 'market-money' (perhaps bāzār-rūka, the last word being used for a copper coin in Canarese). [This view is accepted by Gray in his notes on Pyrard (Hak. Soc. ii. 68), and by Burnell (Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 143). The Madras. Admin. Man. Gloss. (s.v.) gives the Can. form as bajāra-rokkha, 'market-money.'] C. P. Brown (MS. notes) makes the word = baḍaga-rūka, which he says would in Canarese be 'base-penny,' and he ingeniously quotes Shakspeare's "beggarly denier," and Horace's "vilem assem." This is adopted in substance by Mr. E. Thomas, who points out that rukā or rukkā is in Mahratti (see Molesworth, s.v.) one-twelfth of an anna. But the words of Khāfi Khān below suggest that the word may be a corruption of the P. buzurg, 'big,' and according to Wilson, budrūkh (s.v.) is used in Mahratti as a dialectic corruption of buzūrg. This derivation may be partially corroborated by the fact that at Mocha there is, or was formerly, a coin (which had become a money of account only, 80 to the dollar) called kabīr, i.e. 'big' (see Ovington, 463, and Milburn, i. 98). If we could attach any value to Pyrard's spelling—bousuruques—this would be in favour of the same etymology; as is also the form besorg given by Mandelslo. [For a full examination of the value of the budgrook based on the most recent authorities, see Whiteway, Rise of the Port. Power, p. 68.]

1554.—Bazarucos at Maluco (Moluccas) 50 = 1 tanga, at 60 reis to the tanga, 5 tangas = 1 pardao. "Os quaes bazarucos se faz comta de 200 caixas" (i.e. to the tanga).—A. Nunes, 41.

[1584.—Basaruchies, Barret, in Hakl. See SHROFF.]

1598.—"They pay two Basarukes, which is as much as a Hollander's Doit.... It is molten money of badde Tinne."—Linschoten, 52, 69; [Hak. Soc. i. 180, 242].

1609.—"Le plus bas argent, sont Basarucos ... et sont fait de mauvais Estain."—Houtmann, in Navigation des Hollandois, i. 53v.

c. 1610.—"Il y en a de plusieurs sortes. La premiere est appellée Bousuruques, dont il en faut 75 pour une Tangue. Il y a d'autre Bousuruques vieilles, dont il en faut 105 pour le Tangue.... Il y a de cette monnoye qui est de fer; et d'autre de callin, metal de Chine" (see CALAY).—Pyrard, ii. 39; see also 21; [Hak. Soc. ii. 33, 68].

1611.—"Or a Viceroy coins false money; for so I may call it, as the people lose by it. For copper is worth 40 xerafims (see XERAFINE) the hundred weight, but they coin the basaruccos at the rate of 60 and 70. The Moors on the other hand, keeping a keen eye on our affairs, and seeing what a huge profit there is, coin there on the mainland a great quantity of basarucos, and gradually smuggle them into Goa, making a pitful of gold."—Couto, Dialogo do Soldado Pratico, 138.

1638.—"They have (at Gombroon) a certain Copper Coin which they call Besorg, whereof 6 make a Peys, and 10 Peys make a Chay (Shāhī) which is worth about 5d. English."—V. and Tr. of J. A. Mandelslo into the E. Indies, E. T. 1669, p. 8.

1672.—"Their coins (at Tanor in Malabar) ... of Copper, a Buserook, 20 of which make a Fanam."—Fryer, 53. [He also spells the word Basrook. See quotation under REAS.]

1677.—"Rupees, Pices and Budgrooks."—Letters Patent of Charles II. in Charters of the E. I. Co., p. 111.

1711.—"The Budgerooks (at Muskat) are mixt Mettle, rather like Iron than anything else, have a Cross on one side, and were coin'd by the Portuguese. Thirty of them make a silver Mamooda, of about Eight Pence Value."—Lockyer, 211.

c. 1720-30.—"They (the Portuguese) also use bits of copper which they call buzurg, and four of these buzurgs pass for a fulús."—Khāfī Khān, in Elliot, v. 345.

c. 1760.—"At Goa the sceraphim is worth 240 Portugal reas, or about 16d. sterling; 2 reas make a basaraco, 15 basaracos a vintin, 42 vintins a tanga, 4 tangas a paru, 2½ parues a pagoda of gold."—Grose, i. 282.

1838.—"Only eight or ten loads (of coffee) were imported this year, including two loads of 'Kopes' (see COPECK), the copper currency of Russia, known in this country by the name of Bughrukcha. They are converted to the same uses as copper."—Report from Kabul, by A. Burnes; in Punjab Trade Report, App. p. iii.

This may possibly contain some indication of the true form of this obscure word, but I have derived no light from it myself. The budgrook was apparently current at Muscat down to the beginning of last century (see Milburn, i. 116).

BUDLEE, s. A substitute in public or domestic service. H. badlī, 'exchange; a person taken in exchange; a locum tenens'; from Ar. badal, 'he changed.' (See MUDDLE.)

BUDMÁSH, s. One following evil courses; Fr. mauvais sujet; It. malandrino. Properly bad-ma'āsh, from P. bad, 'evil,' and Ar. ma'āsh, 'means of livelihood.'

1844.—"... the reputation which John Lawrence acquired ... by the masterly manœuvring of a body of police with whom he descended on a nest of gamblers and cut-throats, 'budmashes' of every description, and took them all prisoners."—Bosworth Smith's Life of Ld. Lawrence, i. 178.

1866.—"The truth of the matter is that I was foolish enough to pay these budmashes beforehand, and they have thrown me over."—The Dawk Bungalow, by G. O. Trevelyan, in Fraser, p. 385.

BUDZAT, s. H. from P. badzāt, 'evil race,' a low fellow, 'a bad lot,' a blackguard.

1866.—"Cholmondeley. Why the shaitan didn't you come before, you lazy old budzart?"—The Dawk Bungalow, p. 215.

BUFFALO, s. This is of course originally from the Latin bubalus, which we have in older English forms, buffle and buff and bugle, through the French. The present form probably came from India, as it seems to be the Port. bufalo. The proper meaning of bubalus, according to Pliny, was not an animal of the ox-kind (βοόβαλις was a kind of African antelope); but in Martial, as quoted, it would seem to bear the vulgar sense, rejected by Pliny.

At an early period of our connection with India the name of buffalo appears to have been given erroneously to the common Indian ox, whence came the still surviving misnomer of London shops, 'buffalo humps.' (See also the quotation from Ovington.) The buffalo has no hump. Buffalo tongues are another matter, and an old luxury, as the third quotation shows. The ox having appropriated the name of the buffalo, the true Indian domestic buffalo was differentiated as the 'water buffalo,' a phrase still maintained by the British soldier in India. This has probably misled Mr. Blochmann, who uses the term 'water buffalo,' in his excellent English version of the Āīn (e.g. i. 219). We find the same phrase in Barkley's Five Years in Bulgaria, 1876: "Besides their bullocks every well-to-do Turk had a drove of water-buffaloes" (32). Also in Collingwood's Rambles of a Naturalist (1868), p. 43, and in Miss Bird's Golden Chersonese (1883), 60, 274. [The unscientific use of the word as applied to the American Bison is as old as the end of the 18th century (see N.E.D.).]

The domestic buffalo is apparently derived from the wild buffalo (Bubalus arni, Jerd.; Bos bubalus, Blanf.), whose favourite habitat is in the swampy sites of the Sunderbunds and Eastern Bengal, but whose haunts extend north-eastward to the head of the Assam valley, in the Terai west to Oudh, and south nearly to the Godavery; not beyond this in the Peninsula, though the animal is found in the north and north-east of Ceylon.

The domestic buffalo exists not only in India but in Java, Sumatra, and Manilla, in Mazanderan, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Adherbijan, Egypt, Turkey, and Italy. It does not seem to be known how or when it was introduced into Italy.—(See Hehn.) [According to the Encycl. Britt. (9th ed. iv. 442), it was introduced into Greece and Italy towards the close of the 6th century.]

c. A.D. 70.—"Howbeit that country bringeth forth certain kinds of goodly great wild bœufes: to wit the Bisontes, mained with a collar, like Lions; and the Vri [Urus], a mightie strong beast, and a swift, which the ignorant people call Buffles (bubalos), whereas indeed the Buffle is bred in Affrica, and carieth some resemblance of a calfe rather, or a Stag."—Pliny, by Ph. Hollande, i. 199-200.

c. A.D. 90.—

c. 1580.—"Veneti mercatores linguas Bubalorum, tanquam mensis optimas, sale conditas, in magna copia Venetias mittunt."—Prosperi Alpini, Hist. Nat. Aegypti, P. I. p. 228.

1585.—"Here be many Tigers, wild Bufs, and great store of wilde Foule...."—R. Fitch, in Hakl. ii. 389.

"Here are many wilde buffes and Elephants."—Ibid. 394.

"The King (Akbar) hath ... as they doe credibly report, 1000 Elephants, 30,000 horses, 1400 tame deere, 800 concubines; such store of ounces, tigers, Buffles, cocks and Haukes, that it is very strange to see."—Ibid. 386.

1589.—"They doo plough and till their ground with kine, bufalos, and bulles."—Mendoza's China, tr. by Parkes, ii. 56.

[c. 1590.—Two methods of snaring the buffalo are described in Āīn, Blochmann, tr. i. 293.]

1598.—"There is also an infinite number of wild buffs that go wandering about the desarts."—Pigafetta, E. T. in Harleian Coll. of Voyages, ii. 546.

[1623.—"The inhabitants (of Malabar) keep Cows, or buffalls."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 207.]

1630.—"As to Kine and Buffaloes ... they besmeare the floores of their houses with their dung, and thinke the ground sanctified by such pollution."—Lord, Discoverie of the Banian Religion, 60-61.

1644.—"We tooke coach to Livorno, thro' the Great Duke's new Parke, full of huge corke-trees; the underwood all myrtills, amongst which were many buffalos feeding, a kind of wild ox, short nos'd, horns reversed."—Evelyn, Oct. 21.

1666.—"... it produces Elephants in great number, oxen and buffaloes" (bufaros).—Faria y Souza, i. 189.

1689.—"... both of this kind (of Oxen), and the Buffaloes, are remarkable for a big piece of Flesh that rises above Six Inches high between their Shoulders, which is the choicest and delicatest piece of Meat upon them, especially put into a dish of Palau."—Ovington, 254.

1808.—"... the Buffala milk, and curd, and butter simply churned and clarified, is in common use among these Indians, whilst the dainties of the Cow Dairy is prescribed to valetudinarians, as Hectics, and preferred by vicicous (sic) appetites, or impotents alone, as that of the caprine and assine is at home."—Drummond, Illus. of Guzerattee, &c.

1810.—

1878.—"I had in my possession a head of a cow buffalo that measures 13 feet 8 inches in circumference, and 6 feet 6 inches between the tips—the largest buffalo head in the world."—Pollok, Sport in Br. Burmah, &c., i. 107.

BUGGALOW, s. Mahr. baglā, bagalā. A name commonly given on the W. coast of India to Arab vessels of the old native form. It is also in common use in the Red Sea (bakalā) for the larger native vessels, all built of teak from India. It seems to be a corruption of the Span. and Port. bajel, baxel, baixel, baxella, from the Lat. vascellum (see Diez, Etym. Wörterb. i. 439, s.v.). Cobarruvias (1611) gives in his Sp. Dict. "Baxel, quasi vasel" as a generic name for a vessel of any kind going on the sea, and quotes St. Isidore, who identifies it with phaselus, and from whom we transcribe the passage below. It remains doubtful whether this word was introduced into the East by the Portuguese, or had at an earlier date passed into Arabic marine use. The latter is most probable. In Correa (c. 1561) this word occurs in the form pajer, pl. pajeres (j and x being interchangeable in Sp. and Port. See Lendas, i. 2, pp. 592, 619, &c.). In Pinto we have another form. Among the models in the Fisheries Exhibition (1883), there was "A Zaroogat or Bagarah from Aden." [On the other hand Burton (Ar. Nights, i. 119) derives the word from the Ar. baghlah, 'a she-mule.' Also see BUDGEROW.]

c. 636.—"Phaselus est navigium quod nos corrupte baselum dicimus. De quo Virgilius: Pictisque phaselis."—Isodorus Hispalensis, Originum et Etymol. lib. xix.

c. 1539.—"Partida a nao pera Goa, Fernão de Morais ... seguio sua viage na volta do porto de Dabul, onde chegou ao outro dia as nove horas, e tomando nelle hũ paguel de Malavares, carregado de algodao e de pimenta, poz logo a tormento o Capitano e o piloto delle, os quaes confessarão...."—Pinto, ch. viii.

1842.—"As store and horse boats for that service, Capt. Oliver, I find, would prefer the large class of native buggalas, by which so much of the trade of this coast with Scinde, Cutch ... is carried on."—Sir G. Arthur, in Ind. Admin. of Lord Ellenborough, 222.

[1900.—"His tiny baggala, which mounted ten tiny guns, is now employed in trade."—Bent, Southern Arabia, 8.]

BUGGY, s. In India this is a (two-wheeled) gig with a hood, like the gentleman's cab that was in vogue in London about 1830-40, before broughams came in. Latham puts a (?) after the word, and the earliest examples that he gives are from the second quarter of this century (from Praed and I. D'Israeli). Though we trace the word much further back, we have not discovered its birthplace or etymology. The word, though used in England, has never been very common there; it is better known both in Ireland and in America. Littré gives boghei as French also. The American buggy is defined by Noah Webster as "a light, one-horse, four-wheel vehicle, usually with one seat, and with or without a calash-top." Cuthbert Bede shows (N. & Q. 5 ser. v. p. 445) that the adjective 'buggy' is used in the Eastern Midlands for 'conceited.' This suggests a possible origin. "When the Hunterian spelling-controversy raged in India, a learned Member of Council is said to have stated that he approved the change until —— —— began to spell buggy as bagī. Then he gave it up."—(M.-G. Keatinge.) I have recently seen this spelling in print. [The N.E.D. leaves the etymology unsettled, merely saying that it has been connected with bogie and bug. The earliest quotation given is that of 1773 below.]

1773.—"Thursday 3d (June). At the sessions at Hicks's Hall two boys were indicted for driving a post-coach and four against a single horse-chaise, throwing out the driver of it, and breaking the chaise to pieces. Justice Welch, the Chairman, took notice of the frequency of the brutish custom among the post drivers, and their insensibility in making it a matter of sport, ludicrously denominating mischief of this kind 'Running down the Buggies.'—The prisoners were sentenced to be confined in Newgate for 12 months."—Gentleman's Magazine, xliii. 297.

1780.—

" "... go twice round the Race-Course as hard as we can set legs to ground, but we are beat hollow by Bob Crochet's Horses driven by Miss Fanny Hardheart, who in her career oversets Tim Capias the Attorney in his Buggy...."—In India Gazette, Dec. 23rd.

1782.—"Wanted, an excellent Buggy Horse about 15 Hands high, that will trot 15 miles an hour."—India Gazette, Sept. 14.

1784.—"For sale at Mr. Mann's, Rada Bazar. A Phaeton, a four-spring'd Buggy, and a two-spring'd ditto...."—Calcutta Gazette, in Seton-Karr, i. 41.

1793.—"For sale. A good Buggy and Horse...."—Bombay Courier, Jan. 20th.

1824.—"... the Archdeacon's buggy and horse had every appearance of issuing from the back-gate of a college in Cambridge on Sunday morning."—Heber, i. 192 (ed. 1844).

[1837.—"The vehicles of the place (Monghir), amounting to four Buggies (that is a foolish term for a cabriolet, but as it is the only vehicle in use in India, and as buggy is the only name for said vehicle, I give it up), ... were assembled for our use."—Miss Eden, Up the Country, i. 14.]

c. 1838.—"But substitute for him an average ordinary, uninteresting Minister; obese, dumpy ... with a second-rate wife—dusty, deliquescent—... or let him be seen in one of those Shem-Ham-and-Japhet buggies, made on Mount Ararat soon after the subsidence of the waters...."—Sydney Smith, 3rd Letter to Archdeacon Singleton.

1848.—"'Joseph wants me to see if his—his buggy is at the door.'

"'What is a buggy, papa?'

"'It is a one-horse palanquin,' said the old gentleman, who was a wag in his way."—Vanity Fair, ch. iii.

1872.—"He drove his charger in his old buggy."—A True Reformer, ch. i.

1878.—"I don't like your new Bombay buggy. With much practice I have learned to get into it, I am hanged if I can ever get out."—Overland Times of India, 4th Feb.

1879.—"Driven by that hunger for news which impels special correspondents, he had actually ventured to drive in a 'spider,' apparently a kind of buggy, from the Tugela to Ginglihovo."—Spectator, May 24th.

BUGIS, n.p. Name given by the Malays to the dominant race of the island of Celébes, originating in the S.-Western limb of the island; the people calling themselves Wugi. But the name used to be applied in the Archipelago to native soldiers in European service, raised in any of the islands. Compare the analogous use of Telinga (q.v.) formerly in India.

[1615.—"All these in the kingdom of Macassar ... besides Bugies, Mander and Tollova."—Foster, Letters, iii. 152.]

1656.—"Thereupon the Hollanders resolv'd to unite their forces with the Bouquises, that were in rebellion against their Soveraign."—Tavernier, E. T. ii. 192.

1688.—"These Buggasses are a sort of warlike trading Malayans and mercenary soldiers of India. I know not well whence they come, unless from Macassar in the Isle of Celebes."—Dampier, ii. 108.

[1697.—"... with the help of Buggesses...."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. cxvii.]

1758.—"The Dutch were commanded by Colonel Roussely, a French soldier of fortune. They consisted of nearly 700 Europeans, and as many buggoses, besides country troops."—Narr. of Dutch attempt in Hoogly, in Malcolm's Clive, ii. 87.

1783.—"Buggesses, inhabitants of Celebes."—Forrest, Voyage to Mergui, p. 59.

1783.—"The word Buggess has become among Europeans consonant to soldier, in the east of India, as Sepoy is in the West."—Ibid. 78.

1811.—"We had fallen in with a fleet of nine Buggese prows, when we went out towards Pulo Mancap."—Lord Minto in India, 279.

1878.—"The Bugis are evidently a distinct race from the Malays, and come originally from the southern part of the Island of Celebes."—McNair, Perak, 130.

BULBUL, s. The word bulbul is originally Persian (no doubt intended to imitate the bird's note), and applied to a bird which does duty with Persian poets for the nightingale. Whatever the Persian bulbul may be correctly, the application of the name to certain species in India "has led to many misconceptions about their powers of voice and song," says Jerdon. These species belong to the family Brachipodidae, or short-legged thrushes, and the true bulbuls to the sub-family Pycnonotinae, e.g. genera Hypsipetes, Hemixos, Alcurus, Criniger, Ixos, Kelaartia, Rubigula, Brachipodius, Otocompsa, Pycnonotus (P. pygaeus, common Bengal Bulbul; P. haemorhous, common Madras Bulbul). Another sub-family, Phyllornithinae, contains various species which Jerdon calls green Bulbuls.

[A lady having asked the late Lord Robertson, a Judge of the Court of Session, "What sort of animal is the bull-bull?" he replied, "I suppose, Ma'am, it must be the mate of the coo-coo."—3rd ser., N. & Q. v. 81.]

1784.—"We are literally lulled to sleep by Persian nightingales, and cease to wonder that the Bulbul, with a thousand tales, makes such a figure in Persian poetry."—Sir W. Jones, in Memoirs, &c., ii. 37.

1813.—"The bulbul or Persian nightingale.... I never heard one that possessed the charming variety of the English nightingale ... whether the Indian bulbul and that of Iran entirely correspond I have some doubts."—Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, i. 50; [2nd ed. i. 34].

1848.—"'It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot,' he said, laughing, 'and with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must belong to the Bulbul faction.'"—Vanity Fair, ii. ch. xxvii.

BULGAR, BOLGAR, s. P. bulghār. The general Asiatic name for what we call 'Russia leather,' from the fact that the region of manufacture and export was originally Bolghār on the Volga, a kingdom which stood for many centuries, and gave place to Kazan in the beginning of the 15th century. The word was usual also among Anglo-Indians till the beginning of last century, and is still in native Hindustani use. A native (mythical) account of the manufacture is given in Baden-Powell's Punjab Handbook, 1872, and this fanciful etymology: "as the scent is derived from soaking in the pits (ghār), the leather is called Balghār" (p. 124).

1298.—"He bestows on each of those 12,000 Barons ... likewise a pair of boots of Borgal, curiously wrought with silver thread."—Marco Polo, 2nd ed. i. 381. See also the note on this passage.

c. 1333.—"I wore on my feet boots (or stockings) of wool; over these a pair of linen lined, and over all a thin pair of Borghāli, i.e. of horse-leather lined with wolf skin."—Ibn Batuta, ii. 445.

[1614.—"Of your Bullgaryan hides there are brought hither some 150."—Foster, Letters, iii. 67.]

1623.—Offer of Sheriff Freeman and Mr. Coxe to furnish the Company with "Bulgary red hides."—Court Minutes, in Sainsbury, iii. 184.

1624.—"Purefy and Hayward, Factors at Ispahan to the E. I. Co., have bartered morse-teeth and 'bulgars' for carpets."—Ibid. p. 268.

1673.—"They carry also Bulgar-Hides, which they form into Tanks to bathe themselves."—Fryer, 398.

c. 1680.—"Putting on a certain dress made of Bulgar-leather, stuffed with cotton."—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 387.

1759.—Among expenses on account of the Nabob of Bengal's visit to Calcutta we find:

"To 50 pair of Bulger Hides at 13 per pair, Rs. 702 : 0 : 0."—Long, 193.

1786.—Among "a very capital and choice assortment of Europe goods" we find "Bulgar Hides."—Cal. Gazette, June 8, in Seton-Karr, i. 177.

1811.—"Most of us furnished at least one of our servants with a kind of bottle, holding nearly three quarts, made of bulghár ... or Russia-leather."—W. Ousely's Travels, i. 247.

In Tibetan the word is bulhari.

BULKUT, s. A large decked ferry-boat; from Telug. balla, a board. (C. P. Brown).

BULLUMTEER, s. Anglo-Sepoy dialect for 'Volunteer.' This distinctive title was applied to certain regiments of the old Bengal Army, whose terms of enlistment embraced service beyond sea; and in the days of that army various ludicrous stories were current in connection with the name.

BUMBA, s. H. bamba, from Port. bomba, 'a pump.' Haex (1631) gives: "Bomba, organum pneumaticum quo aqua hauritur," as a Malay word. This is incorrect, of course, as to the origin of the word, but it shows its early adoption into an Eastern language. The word is applied at Ahmedabad to the water-towers, but this is modern; [and so is the general application of the word in N. India to a canal distributary].

1572.—

By Burton:

BUMMELO, s. A small fish, abounding on all the coasts of India and the Archipelago; Harpodon nehereus of Buch. Hamilton; the specific name being taken from the Bengali name nehare. The fish is a great delicacy when fresh caught and fried. When dried it becomes the famous Bombay Duck (see DUCKS, BOMBAY), which is now imported into England.

The origin of either name is obscure. Molesworth gives the word as Mahratti with the spelling bombīl, or bombīla (p. 595 a). Bummelo occurs in the Supp. (1727) to Bluteau's Dict. in the Portuguese form bambulim, as "the name of a very savoury fish in India." The same word bambulim is also explained to mean 'humas pregas na saya a moda,' 'certain plaits in the fashionable ruff,' but we know not if there is any connection between the two. The form Bombay Duck has an analogy to Digby Chicks which are sold in the London shops, also a kind of dried fish, pilchards we believe, and the name may have originated in imitation of this or some similar English name. [The Digby Chick is said to be a small herring cured in a peculiar manner at Digby, in Lincolnshire: but the Americans derive them from Digby in Nova Scotia; see 8 ser. N. & Q. vii. 247.]

In an old chart of Chittagong River (by B. Plaisted, 1764, published by A. Dalrymple, 1785) we find a point called Bumbello Point.

1673.—"Up the Bay a Mile lies Massigoung, a great Fishing-Town, peculiarly notable for a Fish called Bumbelow, the Sustenance of the Poorer sort."—Fryer, 67.

1785.—"My friend General Campbell, Governor of Madras, tells me that they make Speldings in the East Indies, particularly at Bombay, where they call them Bumbaloes."—Note by Boswell in his Tour to the Hebrides, under August 18th, 1773.

1810.—"The bumbelo is like a large sand-eel; it is dried in the sun, and is usually eaten at breakfast with kedgeree."—Maria Graham, 25.

1813.—Forbes has bumbalo; Or. Mem., i. 53; [2nd ed., i. 36].

1877.—"Bummalow or Bobil, the dried fish still called 'Bombay Duck.'"—Burton, Sind Revisited, i. 68.

BUNCUS, BUNCO, s. An old word for cheroot. Apparently from the Malay bungkus, 'a wrapper, bundle, thing wrapped.'

1711.—"Tobacco ... for want of Pipes they smoke in Buncos, as on the Coromándel Coast. A Bunco is a little Tobacco wrapt up in the Leaf of a Tree, about the Bigness of one's little Finger, they light one End, and draw the Smoke thro' the other ... these are curiously made up, and sold 20 or 30 in a bundle."—Lockyer, 61.

1726.—"After a meal, and on other occasions it is one of their greatest delights, both men and women, old and young, to eat Pinang (areca), and to smoke tobacco, which the women do with a Bongkos, or dry leaf rolled up, and the men with a Gorregorri (a little can or flower pot) whereby they both manage to pass most of their time."—Valentijn, v. Chorom., 55. [Gorregorri is Malay guri-guri, 'a small earthenware pot, also used for holding provisions' (Klinkert).]

" (In the retinue of Grandees in Java):

"One with a coconut shell mounted in gold or silver to hold their tobacco or bongkooses (i.e. tobacco in rolled leaves)."—Valentijn, iv. 61.

c. 1760.—"The tobacco leaf, simply rolled up, in about a finger's length, which they call a buncus, and is, I fancy, of the same make as what the West Indians term a segar; and of this the Gentoos chiefly make use."—Grose, i. 146.

BUND, s. Any artificial embankment, a dam, dyke, or causeway. H. band. The root is both Skt. (bandh) and P., but the common word, used as it is without aspirate, seems to have come from the latter. The word is common in Persia (e.g. see BENDAMEER). It is also naturalised in the Anglo-Chinese ports. It is there applied especially to the embanked quay along the shore of the settlements. In Hong Kong alone this is called (not bund, but) praia (Port. 'shore' [see PRAYA]), probably adopted from Macao.

1810.—"The great bund or dyke."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 279.

1860.—"The natives have a tradition that the destruction of the bund was effected by a foreign enemy."—Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 504.

1875.—"... it is pleasant to see the Chinese ... being propelled along the bund in their hand carts."—Thomson's Malacca, &c., 408.

1876.—"... so I took a stroll on Tien-Tsin bund."—Gill, River of Golden Sand, i. 28.

BUNDER, s. P. bandar, a landing-place or quay; a seaport; a harbour; (and sometimes also a custom-house). The old Ital. scala, mod. scalo, is the nearest equivalent in most of the senses that occurs to us. We have (c. 1565) the Mīr-bandar, or Port Master, in Sind (Elliot, i. 277) [cf. Shabunder]. The Portuguese often wrote the word bandel. Bunder is in S. India the popular native name of Masulipatam, or Machli-bandar.