Chapter CORPORAL FORBES to COSPETIR of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

CORPORAL FORBES to COSPETIR

CORPORAL FORBES, s. A soldier’s grimly jesting name for Cholera Morbus.

1829.—“We are all pretty well, only the regiment is sickly, and a great quantity are in hospital with the Corporal Forbes, which carries them away before they have time to die, or say who comes there.”—In Shipp’s Memoirs, ii. 218.

CORRAL, s. An enclosure as used in Ceylon for the capture of wild elephants, corresponding to the Keddah of Bengal. The word is Sp. corral, ‘a court,’ &c., Port. curral. ‘a cattle-pen, a paddock.’ The Americans have the same word, direct from the Spanish, in common use for a cattle-pen; and they have formed a verb ‘to corral,’ i.e. to enclose in a pen, to pen. The word kraal applied to native camps and villages at the Cape of Good Hope appears to be the same word introduced there by the Dutch. The word corral is explained by Bluteau: “A receptacle for any kind of cattle, with railings round it and no roof, in which respect it differs from Corte, which is a building with a roof.” Also he states that the word is used especially in churches for septum nobilium feminarum, a pen for ladies. c. 1270.—“When morning came, and I rose and had heard mass, I proclaimed a council to be held in the open space (corral) between my house and that of Montaragon.”—Chron. of James of Aragon, tr. by Foster, i. 65.

1404.—“And this mosque and these chapels were very rich, and very finely wrought with gold and azure, and enamelled tiles (azulejos); and within there was a great corral, with trees and tanks of water.”—Clavijo, § cv. Comp. Markham, 123.

1672.—“About Mature they catch the Elephants with Coraals” (Coralen, but sing. Coraal).—Baldaeus, Ceylon, 168.

1860.—In Emerson Tennent’s Ceylon, Bk. VIII. ch. iv. the corral is fully described.

1880.—“A few hundred pounds expended in houses, and the erection of coralls in the neighbourhood of a permanent stream will form a basis of operations.” (In Colorado.)—Fortnightly Rev., Jan., 125.

CORUNDUM, s. This is described by Dana under the species Sapphire, as including the grey and darker coloured opaque crystallised specimens. The word appears to be Indian. Shakespear gives Hind. kurand, Dakh. kurund. Littré attributes the origin to Skt. kuruvinda, which Williams gives as the name of several plants, but also as ‘a ruby.’ In Telugu we have kuruvindam, and in Tamil kurundam for the substance in present question; the last is probably the direct origin of the term.

c. 1666.—“Cet emeri blanc se trouve par pierres dans un lieu particulier du Roiaume, et s’apelle Corind en langue Telengui.”—Thevenot, v. 297.

COSMIN, n.p. This name is given by many travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries to a port on the western side of the Irawadi Delta, which must have been near Bassein, if not identical with it. Till quite recently this was all that could be said on the subject, but Prof. Forchhammer of Rangoon has now identified the name as a corruption of the classical name formerly borne by Bassein, viz. Kusima or Kusumanagara, a city founded about the beginning of the 5th century. Kusimamandala was the western province of the Delta Kingdom which we know as Pegu. The Burmese corrupted the name of Kusuma into Kusmein and Kothein, and Alompra after his conquest of Pegu in the middle of the 18th century, changed it to Bathein. So the facts are stated substantially by Forchhammer (see Notes on Early Hist. and Geog. of Br. Burma, No. 2, p. 12); though familiar and constant use of the word Persaim, which appears to be a form of Bassein, in the English writings of 1750–60, published by Dalrymple (Or. Repertory, passim), seems hardly consistent with this statement of the origin of Bassein. [Col. Temple (Ind. Ant. xxii. 19 seqq.; J. R. A. S. 1893, p. 885) disputes the above explanation. According to him the account of the change of name by Alompra is false history; the change from initial p to k is not isolated, and the word Bassein itself does not date beyond 1780.] The last publication in which Cosmin appears is the “Draught of the River Irrawaddy or Irabatty,” made in 1796, by Ensign T. Wood of the Bengal Engineers, which accompanies Symes’s Account (London, 1800). This shows both Cosmin, and Persaim or Bassein, some 30 or 40 miles apart. But the former was probably taken from an older chart, and from no actual knowledge.

c. 1165.—“Two ships arrived at the harbour Kusuma in Aramana, and took in battle and laid waste country from the port Sapattota, over which Kurttipurapam was governor.”—J.A.S. Bengal, vol. xli. pt. i. p. 198.

1516.—“Anrique Leme set sail right well equipped, with 60 Portuguese. And pursuing his voyage he captured a junk belonging to Pegu merchants, which he carried off towards Martaban, in