Chapter PANICALE to PAPAYA of P by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

variation of the Passe of Camboja, the Pathí of Burma, but entering Burma from a new quarter, and with its identity thus disguised? (Cushing, in his Shan Dict. gives Pasi for Mahommedan. We do not find Panthé). There would be many analogies to such a course of things.

[“The name Panthay is a purely Burmese word, and has been adopted by us from them. The Shan word Pang-hse is identical, and gives us no help to the origin of the term. Among themselves and to the Chinese they are known as Hui-hui or Hui-tzu (Mahomedans).”—J. G. Scott, Gazetteer Upper Burma, I. i. 606.]


b. We find it stated in Lieut. Garnier’s narrative of his great expedition to Yunnan that there is a hybrid Chinese race occupying part of the plain of Tali-fu, who are called Pen-ti (see Garnier, Voy. d’Expl. i. 518). This name again, it has been suggested, may possibly have to do with Panthé. But we find that Pen-ti (‘root-soil’) is a generic expression used in various parts of S. China for ‘aborigines’; it could hardly then have been applied to the Mahommedans.

PANWELL, n.p. This town on the mainland opposite Bombay was in pre-railway times a usual landing- place on the way to Poona, and the English form of the name must have struck many besides ourselves. [Hamilton (Descr. ii. 151) says it stands on the river Pan, whence perhaps the name]. We do not know the correct form; but this one has substantially come down to us from the Portuguese: e.g.

1644.—“This Island of Caranja is quite near, almost frontier-place, to six cities of the Moors of the Kingdom of the Melique, viz. Carnallî, Drugo, Pene, Sabayo, Abitta, and Panoel.”—Bocarro, MS. f. 227.

1804.—“P.S. Tell Mrs. Waring that notwithstanding the debate at dinner, and her recommendation, we propose to go to Bombay, by Panwell, and in the balloon!”—Wellington, from “Candolla,” March 8.

PAPAYA, PAPAW, s. This word seems to be from America like the insipid, not to say nasty, fruit which it denotes (Carica papaya, L.). A quotation below indicates that it came by way of the Philippines and Malacca. [The Malay name, according to Mr. Skeat, is betik, which comes from the same Ar. form as pateca, though papaya and kapaya have been introduced by Europeans.] Though of little esteem, and though the tree’s peculiar quality of rendering fresh meat tender which is familiar in the W. Indies, is little known or taken advantage of, the tree is found in gardens and compounds all over India, as far north as Delhi. In the N.W. Provinces it is called by the native gardeners arand-kharbuza, ‘castor-oil-tree- melon,’ no doubt from the superficial resemblance of its foliage to that of the Palma Christi. According to Moodeen Sheriff it has a Perso-Arabic name ’anbah-i-Hindi; in Canarese it is called P’arangi-hannu or -mara (‘Frank or Portuguese fruit, tree’). The name papaya according to Oviedo as quoted by Littré (“Oviedo, t. 1. p. 333, Madrid, 1851,”—we cannot find it in Ramusio) was that used in Cuba, whilst the Carib name was ababai.² [Mr. J. Platt, referring to his article in 9th Ser. Notes & Queries, iv. 515, writes: “Malay papaya, like the Accra term kpakpa, is a European loan word. The evidence for Carib origin is, firstly, Oviedo’s Historia, 1535 (in the ed. of 1851, vol. i. 323): ‘Del arbol que en esta isla Española llaman papaya, y en la tierra firme los llaman los Españoles los higos del mastuerço, y en la provincia de Nicaragua llaman a tal arbol olocoton.’ Secondly, Breton, Dictionnaire Caraibe, has: ‘Ababai, papayer.’ Gilij, Saggio, 1782, iii. 146 (quoted in N. & Q., u.s.), says the Otamic word is pappai.”] Strange liberties are taken with the spelling. Mr. Robinson (below) calls it popeya; Sir L. Pelly (J.R.G.S. xxxv. 232), poppoi ( [Greek Text] w popoi!). Papaya is applied in the Philippines to Europeans who, by long residence, have fallen into native ways and ideas.

c. 1550.—“There is also a sort of fruit resembling figs, called by the natives Papaie … peculiar to this kingdom” (Peru).—Girol. Benzoni, 242.

1598.—“There is also a fruite that came out of the Spanish Indies, brought from beyond ye Philipinas or Lusons to Malacca, and frõ thence to India, it is called Papaios, and is very like a Mellon … and will not grow, but alwaies two together, that is male and female … and when they are diuided and set apart one from the other, then they yield no fruite at all. … This fruite at the first for the strangeness thereof was much esteemed, but now they account not of it.”—Linschoten,