Chapter BOBACHEE CONNAH to BOMBAY of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

BOCHA, s. H. bocha. A kind of chair-palankin formerly in use in Bengal, but now quite forgotten.

1810.—“Ladies are usually conveyed about Calcutta … in a kind of palanquin called a bochah … being a compound of our sedan chair with the body of a chariot.… I should have observed that most of the gentlemen residing at Calcutta ride in bochahs.”—Williamson, V. M. i. 322.

BOGUE, n.p. This name is applied by seamen to the narrows at the mouth of the Canton River, and is a corruption of Boca. (See BOCCA TIGRIS.)

BOLIAH, BAULEAH, s. Beng. baulia. A kind of light accommodation boat with a cabin, in use on the Bengal rivers. We do not find the word in any of the dictionaries. Ives, in the middle of the 18th century, describes it as a boat very long, but so narrow that only one man could sit in the breadth, though it carried a multitude of rowers. This is not the character of the boat so called now. [Buchanan Hamilton, writing about 1820, says: “The bhauliya is intended for the same purpose, [conveyance of passengers], and is about the same size as the Pansi (see PAUNCHWAY). It is sharp at both ends, rises at the ends less than the Pansi, and its tilt is placed in the middle, the rowers standing both before and behind the place of accommodation of passengers. On the Kosi, the Bhauliya is a large fishing-boat, carrying six or seven men.” (Eastern India, iii. 345.) Grant (Rural Life, p. 5) gives a drawing and description of the modern boat.]

1757.—“To get two bolias, a Goordore, and 87 dandies from the Nazir.”—Ives, 157.

1810.—“On one side the picturesque boats of the natives, with their floating huts; on the other the bolios and pleasure- boats of the English.”—Maria Graham, 142.

1811.—“The extreme lightness of its construction gave it incredible .… speed. An example is cited of a Governor General who in his Bawaleea performed in 8 days the voyage from Lucknow to Calcutta, a distance of 400 marine leagues.”—Solvyns, iii. The drawing represents a very light skiff, with only a small kiosque at the stern.

1824.—“We found two Bholiahs, or large row-boats, with convenient cabins.…”— Heber, i. 26.

1834.—“Rivers’s attention had been attracted by seeing a large beauliah in the act of swinging to the tide.”—The Baboo, i. 14.

BOLTA, s. A turn of a rope; sea H. from Port. volta (Roebuck).

BOMBASA, n.p. The Island of Mombasa, off the E. African Coast, is so called in some old works. Bombasi is used in Persia for a negro slave; see quotation.

1516.—“… another island, in which there is a city of the Moors called Bombaza, very large and beautiful.”—Barbosa, 11. See also Colonial Papers under 1609, i. 188.

1883.—“… the Bombassi, or coal-black negro of the interior, being of much less price, and usually only used as a cook.”— Wills, Modern Persia, 326.

BOMBAY, n.p. It has been alleged, often and positively (as in the quotations below from Fryer and Grose), that this name is an English corruption from the Portuguese Bombahia, ‘good bay.’ The grammar of the alleged etymon is bad, and the history is no better; for the name can be traced long before the Portuguese occupation, long before the arrival of the Portuguese in India. C. 1430, we find the islands of Mahim and Mumba-Devi, which united form the existing island of Bombay, held, along with Salsette, by a Hindu Rai, who was tributary to the Mohammedan King of Guzerat. (See Ras Mala, ii. 350); [ed. 1878, p. 270]. The same form reappears (1516) in Barbosa’s Tana-Mayambu (p. 68), in the Estado da India under 1525, and (1563) in Garcia de Orta, who writes both Mombaim and Bombaim. The latter author, mentioning the excellence of the areca produced there, speaks of himself having had a grant of the island from the King of Portugal (see below). It is customarily called Bombaim on the earliest English Rupee coinage. (See under RUPEE.) The shrine of the goddess Mumba-Devi from whom the name is supposed to have been taken, stood on the Esplanade till the middle of the 17th century, when it was removed to its present site in the middle of what is now the most frequented part of the native town.

1507.—“Sultan Mahommed Bigarrah of Guzerat having carried an army against Chaiwal, in the year of the Hijra 913, in order to destroy the Europeans, he effected his designs against the towns of Bassai