Chapter BALOON to BAMBOO of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

from the crackling and explosions when they burn”]. Marsden inserts it in his dictionary as good Malay. Crawfurd says it is certainly used on the west coast of Sumatra as a native word, but that it is elsewhere unknown to the Malay languages. The usual Malay word is buluh. He thinks it more likely to have found its way into English from Sumatra than from Canara. But there is evidence enough of its familiarity among the Portuguese before the end of the 16th century to indicate the probability that we adopted the word, like so many others, through them. We believe that the correct Canarese word is banwu. In the 16th century the form in the Concan appears to have been mambu, or at least it was so represented by the Portuguese. Rumphius seems to suggest a quaint onomatopoeia: “vehementissimos edunt ictus et sonitus, quum incendio comburuntur, quando notum ejus nomen Bambu, Bambu, facile exauditur.”—(Herb. Amb. iv. 17.) [Mr. Skeat writes: “Although buluh is the standard Malay, and bambu apparently introduced, I think bambu is the form used in the low Javanese vernacular, which is quite a different language from high Javanese. Even in low Javanese, however, it may be a borrowed word. It looks curiously like a trade corruption of the common Malay word samambu, which means the well-known ‘Malacca cane,’ both the bamboo and the Malacca cane being articles of export. Klinkert says that the samambu is a kind of rattan, which was used as a walkingstick, and which was called the Malacca cane by the English. This Malacca cane and the rattan ‘bamboo cane’ referred to by Sir H. Yule must surely be identical. The fuller Malay name is actually rotan samambu, which is given as the equivalent of Calamus Scipionum, Lour. by Mr. Ridley in his Plant List (J.R.A.S., July 1897).]

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

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

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

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

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

Again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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