Chapter SOUDAGUR to SOY of S by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

SOUDAGUR to SOY

[SOUDAGUR, s. P.—H. saudagar, Pers. sauda, ‘goods for sale’; a merchant, trader; now very often applied to those who sell European goods in civil stations and cantonments.

[1608.—“… and kill the merchants (sodagares mercadores).”—Livras das Moncoes, i. 183.

[c. 1809.—“The term Soudagur, which implies merely a principal merchant, is here (Behar) usually given to those who keep what the English of India call Europe shops; that is, shops where all sorts of goods imported from Europe, and chiefly consumed by Europeans, are retailed.”—Buchanan, Eastern India, i. 375.

[c. 1817.—“This sahib was a very rich man, a Soudagur. …”—Mrs. Sherwood, Last Days of Boosy, 84.]

SOURSOP, s.

a. The fruit Anona muricata, L., a variety of the Custard apple. This kind is not well known on the Bengal side of India, but it is completely naturalised at Bombay. The terms soursop and sweetsop are, we believe, West Indian.

b. In a note to the passage quoted below, Grainger identifies the soursop with the suirsack of the Dutch. But in this, at least as regards use in the East Indies, there is some mistake. The latter term, in old Dutch writers on the East, seems always to apply to the Common Jack fruit, the ‘sourjack,’ in fact, as distinguished from the superior kinds, especially the champada of the Malay Archipelago.

a.—

1764.—

“… a neighbouring hill
Which Nature to the Soursop had resigned.”

Grainger, Bk. 2.

b.—

1659.—“There is another kind of tree (in Ceylon) which they call Sursack … which has leaves like a laurel, and bears its fruit, not like other trees on twigs from the branches, but on the trunk itself. …” &c.—Saar, ed. 1672, p. 84.

1661.—Walter Schulz says that the famous fruit Jaka was called by the Netherlanders in the Indies Soorsack.—p. 236.

1675.—“The whole is planted for the most part with coco-palms, mangoes, and suursacks.”—Ryklof van Goens, in Valentijn, Ceylon, 223.

1768–71.—“The Sursak-tree has a fruit of a similar kind with the durioon (durian), but it is not accompanied by such a fetid smell.”—Stavorinus, E.T. i. 236.

1778.—“The one which yields smaller fruit, without seed, I found at Columbo, Gale, and several other places. The name by which it is properly known here is the Maldivian Sour Sack, and its use here is less universal than that of the other sort, which … weighs 30 or 40 lbs.”—Thunberg, E.T. iv. 255.

[1833.—“Of the eatable fruited kinds above referred to, the most remarkable are the sweetsop, sour sop, and cherimoyer. …”—Penny Cycl. ii. 54.]

SOWAR, SUWAR, s. Pers. sawar, ‘a horseman.’ A native cavalry soldier; a mounted orderly. In the Greek provinces in Turkey, the word is familiar in the form [Greek Text] soubariV, pl. [Greek Text] soubarideV, for a mounted gendarme. [The regulations for suwars in the Mogul armies are given by B lochmann, Ain, i. 244 seq.]

1824–5.—“… The sowars who accompanied him.”—Heber, Orig. i. 404.

1827.—“Hartley had therefore no resource save to keep his eye steadily fixed on the lighted match of the sowar … who rode before him.”—Sir W. Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter, ch. xiii.

[1830.—“… Meerza, an Asswar well known on the Collector’s establishment.”—Or. Sport. Mag. reprint 1873, i. 390.]

SOWAR, SHOOTER-, s. Hind. from Pers. shutur-sawar, the rider of a dromedary or swift camel. Such riders are attached to the establishment of the Viceroy on the march, and of other high officials in Upper India. The word sowar is quite misused by the Great Duke in the passage below, for a camel-driver, a sense it never has. The word written, or intended, may however have been surwaun (q.v.)

[1815.—“As we approached the camp his oont-surwars (camel-riders) went ahead of us.”—Journal, Marquess of Hastings, i. 337.]

1834.—“I … found a fresh horse at Sufter Jung’s tomb, and at the Kutub (cootub) a couple of riding camels and an attendant Shutur Suwar.”—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 129.

[1837.—“There are twenty Shooter Suwars (I have not an idea how I ought to spell those words), but they are native soldiers mounted on swift camels, very much trapped, and two of them always ride before our carriage.”—Miss Eden, Up the Country, i. 31.]

1840.—“Sent a Shuta Sarwar (camel driver) off with an express to Simla.”—Osborne, Court and Camp of Runj. Singh, 179.

1842.—“At Peshawur, it appears by