Chapter BURREL to BUXEE of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

(e.g.) being used for the future indicative, and the preterite indicative being formed by ‘done’; thus I telling = ‘I will tell’; I done tell = ‘I have told’; done come = ‘actually arrived.’ Peculiar meanings are also attached to words; thus family = ‘wife.’ The oddest characteristic about this jargon is (or was) that masters used it in speaking to their servants as well as servants to their masters.

BUXEE, s. A military paymaster; H. bakhshi. This is a word of complex and curious history.

In origin it is believed to be the Mongol or Turki corruption of the Skt. bhikshu, ‘a beggar,’ and thence a Buddhist or religious mendicant or member of the ascetic order, bound by his discipline to obtain his daily food by begging.¹ Bakshi was the wo rd commonly applied by the Tartars of the host of Chingiz and his successors, and after them by the Persian writers of the Mongol era, to the regular Buddhist clergy; and thus the word appears under various forms in the works of medieval European writers from whom examples are quoted below. Many of the class came to Persia and the west with Hulaku and with Batu Khan; and as the writers in the Tartar camps were probably found chiefly among the bakshis, the word underwent exactly the same transfer of meaning as our clerk, and came to signify a literatus, scribe or secretary. Thus in the Latino-Perso-Turkish vocabulary, which belonged to Petrarch and is preserved at Venice, the word scriba is rendered in Comanian, i.e. the then Turkish of the Crimea, as Bacsi. The change of meaning did not stop here.

Abu’l-Fazl in his account of Kashmir (in the Ain, [ed. Jarrett, iii. 212]) recalls the fact that bakhshi was the title given by the learned among Persian and Arabic writers to the Buddhist priests whom the Tibetans styled lamas. But in the time of Baber, say circa 1500, among the Mongols the word had come to mean surgeon; a change analogous again, in some measure, to our colloquial use of doctor. The modern Mongols, according to Pallas, use the word in the sense of ‘Teacher,’ and apply it to the most venerable or learned priest of a community. Among the Kirghiz Kazzaks, who profess Mahommedanism, it has come to bear the character which Marco Polo more or less associates with it, and means a mere conjurer or medicine-man; whilst in Western Turkestan it signifies a ‘Bard’ or ‘Minstrel.’ [Vambéry in his Sketches of Central Asia (p. 81) speaks of a Bakhshi as a troubadour.]

By a further transfer of meaning, of which all the steps are not clear, in another direction, under the Mohammedan Emperors of India the word bakhshi was applied to an officer high in military administration, whose office is sometimes rendered ‘Master of the Horse’ (of horse, it is to be remembered, the whole substance of the army consisted), but whose duties sometimes, if not habitually, embraced those of Paymaster- General, as well as, in a manner, of Commander-in-Chief, or Chief of the Staff. [Mr. Irvine, who gives a detailed account of the Bakhshi under the latter Moguls (J. R. A. Soc., July 1896, p. 539 seqq.), prefers to call him Adjutant-General.] More properly perhaps this was the position of the Mir Bakhshi, who had other bakhshis under him. Bakhshis in military command continued in the armies of the Mahrattas, of Hyder Ali, and of other native powers. But both the Persian spelling and the modern connection of the title with pay indicate a probability that some confusion of association had arisen between the old Tartar title and the P. bakhsh, ‘portion,’ bakhshidan, ‘to give,’ bakhshish, ‘payment.’ In the early days of the Council of Fort William we find the title Buxee applied to a European Civil officer, through whom payments were made (see Long and Seton-Karr, passim). This is obsolete, but the word is still in the Anglo-Indian Army the recognised designation of a Paymaster.

This is the best known existing use of the word. But under some Native Governments it is still the designation of a high officer of state. And according to the Calcutta Glossary it has been used in the N.W.P. for ‘a collector of a house tax’ (?) and the like; in Bengal for ‘a superintendent of peons’; in Mysore for ‘a treasurer,’ &c. [In the N.W.P. the Bakhshi, popularly known to natives as ‘Bakhshi Tikkas,’ ‘Tax Bakhshi,’ is the person in charge of one of the minor towns which are not under a Municipal Board, but are managed by a Panch, or body of assessors, who raise the income needed for watch and ward and conservancy by means of a graduated house assessment.]. See an interesting note on this word in Quatremère, H. des Mongols, 184 seqq.; also see Marco Polo, Bk. i. ch. 61, note.

1298.—“There is another marvel performed by those Bacsi, of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments.…”— Marco Polo, Bk. I. ch. 61.

c. 1300.—“Although there are many Bakhshis, Chinese, Indian and others, those of Tibet are most esteemed.”—Rashiduddin, quoted by D’Ohsson, ii. 370.

c. 1300.—“Et sciendum, quod Tartar quosdam homines super omnes de mundo honorant: boxitas, scilicet quosdam pontifices ydolorum.”—Ricoldus de Montecrucis, in Peregrinatores, IV. p. 117.

c. 1308.—“ [Greek Text] Tauta gar Koutzimpaxiz epanhkvn proz basilea diebebaion prvtoz detvn ieromagvn, tounoma