Chapter CEDED DISTRICTS to CELÉBES of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

CEDED DISTRICTS to CELÉBES

CEDED DISTRICTS, n.p.A name applied familiarly at the beginning of the last century to the ter ritory south of the Tungabhadra river, which was ceded to the Company by the Nizam in 1800, after the defeat and death of Tippoo Sultan. This territory embraced the present districts of Bellary, Cuddapah, and Karnúl, with the Palnad, which is now a subdivision of the Kistna District. The name perhaps became best known in England from Gleig’s Life of Sir Thomas Munro, that great man having administered these provinces for 7 years.

1873.—“We regret to announce the death of Lieut. -General Sir Hector Jones, G.C.B., at the advanced age of 86. The gallant officer now deceased belonged to the Madras Establishment of the E. I. Co.’s forces, and bore a distinguished part in many of the great achievements of that army, including the celebrated march into the Ceded Districts under the Collector of Canara, and the campaign against the Zemindar of Madura.”— The True Reformer, p. 7 (“wrot serkestick”).

CELÉBES, n.p. According to Crawfurd this name is unknown to the natives, not only of the great island itself, but of the Archipelago generally, and must have arisen from some Portuguese misunderstanding or corruption. There appears to be no general name for the island in the Malay language, unless Tanah Bugis, ‘the Land of the Bugis people’ [see BUGIS]. It seems sometimes to have been called the Isle of Macassar. In form Celebes is apparently a Portuguese plural, and several of their early writers speak of Celebes as a group of islands. Crawfurd makes a suggestion, but not very confidently, that Pulo salabih, ‘the islands over and above,’ might have been vaguely spoken of by the Malays, and understood by the Portuguese as a name. [Mr. Skeat doubts the correctness of this explanation : “The standard Malay form would be Pulau Salebih, which in some dialects might be Sa-lebis, and this may have been a variant of Si-Lebih, a man’s name, the si corresponding to the def. art. in the Germ. phrase ‘der Hans.’ Numerous Malay place-names are derived from those of people.”] 1516.—“Having passed these islands of Maluco…at a distance of 130 leagues, there are other islands to the west, from which sometimes there come white people, naked from the waist upwards.…These people eat human flesh, and if the King of Maluco has any person to execute, they beg for him to eat him, just as one would ask for a pig, and the islands from which they come are called Celebe.”—Barbosa, 202–3.

c. 1544.—“In this street (of Pegu) there were six and thirty thousand strangers of two and forty different Nations, namely…Papuaas, Selebres, Mindanaos…and many others whose names I know not.”—F. M. Pinto, in Cogan’s tr., p. 200.

1552.—“In the previous November (1529) arrived at Ternate D. Jorge de Castro who came from Malaca by way of Borneo in a junk…and going astray passed along the Isle of Macaçar…”—Barros, Dec. IV. i. 18.

„“The first thing that the Samarao did in this was to make Tristão de Taide believe that in the Isles of the Celebes, and of the Macaçares and in that of Mindinão there was much gold.”— Ibid. vi. 25.

1579.—“The 16 Day (December) wee had sight of the Iland Celebes or Silebis.”— Drake, World Encompassed (Hak. Soc.), p. 150.

1610.—“At the same time there were at Ternate certain ambassadors from the Isles of the Macaçás (which are to the west of those of Maluco—the nearest of them about 60 leagues)…These islands are many, and joined together, and appear in the sea-charts thrown into one very big island, extending, as the sailors say, North and South, and having near 100 leagues of compass. And this island imitates the shape of a big locust, the head of which (stretching to the south to 5 ½ degrees) is formed by the Cellebes (são os Cellebes), which have a King over them.… These islands are ruled by many Kings, differing in language, in laws, and customs.…”—Couto, Dec. V. vii. 2.