Chapter BUDGROOK to BUFFALO of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

BUDLEE, s. A substitute in public or domestic service. H. badli, ‘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’ash, from P. bad, ‘evil,’ and Ar. ma’ash, ‘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. badzat, ‘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 ( [Greek Text] boobaliz 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 Ain (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.—

“Ille tulit geminos facili cervice juvencos
Illi cessit atrox bubalus atque bison.”

Martial, De Spectaculis, xxiv.

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,