Chapter ARSENAL to ASSEGAY of A by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

ARSENAL to ASSEGAY

ARSENAL, s. An old and ingenious etymology of this word is arx navalis. But it is really Arabic. Hyde derives it from tars-khanah, ‘domus terroris,’ contracted into tarsanah, the form (as he says) used at Constantinople (Syntagma Dissertt., i. 100). But it is really the Ar. dar-al-sina’a, ‘domus artificii,’ as the quotations from Mas’-udi clearly show. The old Ital. forms darsena, darsinale corroborate this, and the Sp. ataraçana, which is rendered in Ar. by Pedro de Alcala, quoted by Dozy, as dar a cinaa.— (See details in Dozy, Oosterlingen, 16-18.)

A.D. 943-4.—“At this day in the year of the Hijra 332, Rhodes (Rodas) is an arsenal (dar-sina’a) where the Greeks build their war-vessels.”— Mas’udi, ii. 423. And again “dar-sina’at al marakib,” ‘an arsenal of ships,’ iii. 67.

1573.—“In this city (Fez) there is a very great building which they call Daraçana, where the Christian captives used to labour at blacksmith’s work and other crafts under the superintendence and orders of renegade headmen … here they made cannon and powder, and wrought swords, cross- bows, and arquebusses.”— Marmol, Desc. General de Affrica, lib. iii. f. 92.

1672.—“On met au Tershana deux belles galères à l’eau.”— Antoine Galland, Journ., i. 30.

ART, EUROPEAN. We have heard much, and justly, of late years regarding the corruption of Indian art and artistic instinct by the employment of the artists in working for European patrons, and after European patterns. The copying of such patterns is no new thing, as we may see from this passage of the brightest of writers upon India whilst still under Asiatic government.

c. 1665.—“.… not that the Indians have not wit enough to make them successful in Arts, they doing very well (as to some of them) in many parts of India, and it being found that they have inclination enough for them, and that some of them make (even without a Master) very pretty workmanship and imitate so well our work of Europe, that the difference thereof will hardly be discerned.”— Bernier, E. T., 81-82 [ed. Constable, 254].

ARTICHOKE, s. The genealogy of this word appears to be somewhat as follows: The Ar. is al-harshuf (perhaps connected with harash, ‘rough-skinned’) or al-kharshuf; hence Sp. alcarchofa and It. carcioffo and arciocco, Fr. artichaut, Eng. artichoke. c. 1348.—“The Incense (benzoin) tree is small .… its branches are like those of a thistle or an artichoke (al-kharshaf).”— Ibn Batuta, iv. 240. Al-kharshaf in the published text. the spelling with h instead of kh is believed to be correct (see Dozy, s.v. Alcarchofa); [also see N.E.D. s.v. Artichoke].

ARYAN, adj. Skt. Arya, ‘noble.’ A term frequently used to include all the races (Indo-Persic, Greek, Roman, Celtic Sclavonic, &c.) which speak languages belonging to the same family as Sanskrit. Much vogue was given to the term by Pictet’s publication of Les Origines Indo-Européennes, ou les Aryas Primitifs (Paris, 1859), and this writer seems almost to claim the name in this sense as his own (see quotation below). But it was in use long before the date of his book. Our first quotation is from Ritter, and there it has hardly reached the full extent of application. Ritter seems to have derived the use in this passage from Lassen’s Pentapotamia. The word has in great measure superseded the older term Indo-Germanic, proposed by F. Schlegel at the beginning of the last century. The latter is, however, still sometimes used, and M. Hovelacque, especially, prefers it. We may observe here that the connection which evidently exists between the several languages classed together as Aryan cannot be regarded, as it was formerly, as warranting an assumption of identity of race in all the peoples who speak them.

It may be noted as curious that among the Javanese (a people so remote in blood from what we understand by Aryan), the word arya is commonly used as an honorary prefix to the names of men of rank; a survival of the ancient Hindu influence on the civilisation of the island.

The earliest use of Aryan in an ethnic sense is in the Inscription on the tomb of Darius, in which the king calls himself an Aryan, and of Aryan descent, whilst Ormuzd is in the Median version styled, ‘God of the Aryans’

B.C. c. 486.—“Adam Dáryavush Khsháyathiya vazarka….Pársa, Pársahiyá putra, Ariya, Ariya chitra.” i.e. “I (am) Darius, the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of all inhabited countries, the King of this great Earth far and near, the son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, an Arian, of Arian descent.”— In Rawlinson’s Herodotus, 3rd ed., iv. 250.

“These Medes were called anciently by all people Arians,