Chapter NIGGER to NIPA of N by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

NIGGER to NIPA

NIGGER, s. It is an old brutality of the Englishman in India to apply this title to the natives, as we may see from Ives quoted below. The use originated, however, doubtless in following the old Portuguese use of negros for “the blacks” (q.v.), with no malice prepense, without any intended confusion between Africans and Asiatics.

1539.—See quot. from Pinto under COBRA DE CAPELLO, where negroes is used for natives of Sumatra.

1548.—“Moreover three blacks (negros) in this territory occupy lands worth 3000 or 4000 pardaos of rent ; they are related to one another, and are placed as guards in the outlying parts.”—S. Botelho, Cartas, 111.

1582.—“A nigroe of John Cambrayes, Pilot to Paulo de la Gama, was that day run away to the Moores.”—Castañeda, by N. L., f. 19.

[1608.—“The King and people niggers.”—Danvers, Letters, i. 10.]

1622.—Ed. Grant, purser of the Diamond, reports capture of vessels, including a junk “with some stoor of negers, which was devided bytwick the Duch and the English.”—Sainsbury, iii. p. 78.

c. 1755.—“You cannot affront them (the natives) more than to call them by the name of negroe, as they conceive it implies an idea of slavery.”—Ives, Voyage, p. 23.

c. 1757.—“Gli Gesuiti sono missionarii e parocchi de’ negri detti Malabar.”—Della Tomba, 3.

1760.—“The Dress of this Country is entirely linnen, save Hats and Shoes ; the latter are made of tanned Hides as in England…only that they are no thicker than coarse paper. These shoes are neatly made by Negroes, and sold for about 10d. a Pr. each of which will last two months with care.”—MS. Letter of James Rennell, Sept. 30.

1866.—“Now the political creed of the frequenters of dawk bungalows is too uniform…it consists in the following tenets…that Sir Mordaunt Wells is the greatest judge that ever sat on the English bench ; and that when you hit a nigger he dies on purpose to spite you.”—The Dawk Bungalow, p. 225.

NILGHERRY, NEILGHERRY, &c., n.p. The name of the Mountain Peninsula at the end of the Mysore table land (originally known as Malainadu, ‘Hill country’), which is the chief site of hill sanataria in the Madras Presidency. Skt. Nilagiri, ‘Blue Mountain.’ The name Nila or Niladri (synonymous with Nilagiri) belongs to one of the mythical or semimythical ranges of the Puranic Cosmography (see Vishnu Purana, in Wilson’s Works, by Hall, ii. 102, 111, &c.), and has been applied to several ranges of more assured locality, e.g. in Orissa as well as in S. India. The name seems to have been fancifully applied to the Ootacamund range about 1820, by some European. [The name was undoubtedly applied by natives to the range before the appearance of Europeans, as in the Kongu-desa Rajákal, quoted by Grigg (Nilagiri Man. 363), and the name appears in a letter of Col. Mackenzie of about 1816 (Ibid. 278). Mr. T. M. Horsfall writes : “The name is in common use among all classes of natives in S. India, but when it may have become specific I cannot say. Possibly the solution may be that the Nilgiris being the first large mountain range to become familiar to the English, that name was by them caught hold of, but not coined, and stuck to them by mere priority. It is on the face of it improbable that the Englishmen who early in the last century discovered these Hills, that is, explored and shot over them, would call them by a long Skt. name.”]

Probably the following quotation from Dampier refers to Orissa, as does that from Hedges:

“One of the English ships was called the Nellegree, the name taken from the Nellegree Hills in Bengal, as I have heard.”—Dampier, ii. 145.

1683.—“In y^e morning early I went up the Nilligree Hill, where I had a view of a most pleasant fruitfull valley.”—Hedges, Diary, March 2 ; [Hak. Soc. i. 67].

The following also refers to the Orissa Hills :

1752.—“Weavers of Balasore complain of the great scarcity of rice and provisions of all kinds occasioned by the devastations of the Mahrattas, who, 600 in number, after plundering Balasore, had gone to the Nelligree Hills.”—In Long, 42.

NIPA, s. Malay nipah.

a. The name of a stemless palm (Nipa fruticans, Thunb.), which abounds in estuaries from the Ganges delta eastwards, through Tenasserim and the Malay countries, to N. Australia, and the leaves of which afford the chief material used for thatch in the Archipelago. “In the Philippines,” says Crawfurd, “but not that I am aware of anywhere else, the sap of the Nipa…is used as a beverage, and for the manufacture of vinegar, and the distillation of spirits. On this account it yields a considerable part of the revenue of the Spanish Government” (Desc. Dict. p. 301). But this fact is almost enough to