Chapter INAUM to INDIA of I by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

marvels, not having been there. …”—Friar Jordanus, page 41.

India Minor, in Clavijo, looks as if it were applied to Afghanistan:

1404.—“And this same Thursday that the said Ambassadors arrived at this great River (the Oxus) they crossed to the other side. And the same day … came in the evening to a great city which is called Tenmit (Termedh), and this used to belong to India Minor, but now belongs to the empire of Samarkand, having been conquered by Tamurbec.”—Clavijo, § ciii. (Markham, 119).


Indies. c. 1601.—“He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indiaes.”—Twelfth Night, Act iii. sc. 2.

1653.—“I was thirteen times captive and seventeen times sold in the Indies.”—Trans. of Pinto, by H. Cogan, page 1.

1826.—“… Like a French lady of my acquaintance, who had so general a notion of the East, that upon taking leave of her, she enjoined me to get acquainted with a friend of hers, living as she said quelque part dans les Indes, and whom, to my astonishment, I found residing at the Cape of Good Hope.”—Hajji Baba, Introd. Epistle, edition 1835, page ix.

India of the Portuguese.

c. 1567.—“Di qui (Coilan) a Cao Comeri si fanno settanta due miglia, e qui si finisse la costa dell’ India.”—Ces. Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 390.

1598.—“At the ende of the countrey of Cambaia beginneth India and the lands of Decam and Cuncam … from the island called Das Vaguas (read Vaquas) … which is the righte coast that in all the East Countries is called India. … Now you must vnderstande that this coast of India beginneth at Daman, or the Island Das Vaguas, and stretched South and by East, to the Cape of Comorin, where it endeth.”— Linschoten, ch. ix.-x.; [Hak. Soc. i. 62. See also under ABADA].

c. 1610.—“Il y a grand nombre des Portugais qui demeurent ès ports du cette coste de Bengale … ils n’osoient retourner en l’Inde, pour quelques fautes qu’ils y ont commis.”—Pyrard de Laval, i. 239; [Hak. Soc. i. 334].

1615.—“Sociorum literis, qui Mogoris Regiam incolunt auditum est in India de celeberrimo Regno illo quod Saraceni Cataium vocant.”—Trigautius, De Christianâ Expeditione apud Sinas, page 544.

1644.—(Speaking of the Daman district above Bombay.—“The fruits are nearly all the same as those that you get in India, and especially many Mangas and Cassaras (?), which are like chestnuts.”—Bocarro, MS.

It is remarkable to find the term used, in a similar restricted sense, by the Court of the E.I.C. in writing to Fort St. George. They certainly mean some part of the west coast.

1670.—They desire that dungarees may be supplied thence if possible, as “they were not procurable on the Coast of India, by reason of the disturbances of Sevajee.”— Notes and Exts., Pt. i. 2.

1673.—“The Portugals … might have subdued India by this time, had not we fallen out with them, and given them the

first Blow at Ormuz … they have added some Christians to those formerly converted by St. Thomas, but it is a loud Report to say all India.”—Fryer, 137.

1881.—In a correspondence with Sir R. Morier, we observe the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs calls their Goa Viceroy “The Governor General of India.”


India of the Dutch. 1876.—The Dorian “is common throughout all India.”—Filet, Plant-Kunding Woordenboek, 196.

Indies applied to America.

1563.—“And please to tell me … which is better, this (Radix Chinae) or the guiacão of our Indies as we call them. …”—Garcia, f. 177.

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