Chapter TINCALL to TOBACCO of T by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

TIYAN, n.p. Malayal. Tiyan, or Tivan, pl. Tiyar or Tiavar. The name of what may be called the third caste (in rank) of Malabar. The word signifies ‘islander,’ [from Mal. tivu, Skt. dvipa, ‘an island’]; and the people are supposed to have come from Ceylon (see TIER CUTTY).

1510.—“The third class of Pagans are called Tiva, who are artizans.”—Varthema, 142.

1516.—“The cleanest of these low and rustic people are called Tuias (read Tivas), who are great labourers, and their chief business is to look after the palm-trees, and gather their fruit, and carry everything…for hire, because there are no draught cattle in the country.”—Barbosa, Lisbon ed. 335.

[1800.—“All Tirs can eat together, and intermarry. The proper duty of the cast is to extract the juice from palm-trees, to boil it down to Jagory (Jaggery), and to distil it into spirituous liquors; but they are also very diligent as cultivators, porters, and cutters of firewood.”—Buchanan, Mysore, ii. 415; and see Logan, Malabar, i. 110, 142.]

TOBACCO, s. On this subject we are not prepared to furnish any elaborate article, but merely to bring together a few quotations touching on the introduction of tobacco into India and the East, or otherwise of interest.

[? c. 1550.—“…Abu Kir would carry the cloth to the market-street and sell it, and with its price buy meat and vegetables and tobacco.…”—Burton, Arab. Nights, vii. 210. The only mention in the Nights and the insertion of some scribe.]

„ “It has happened to me several times, that going through the provinces of Guatemala and Nicaragua I have entered the house of an Indian who had taken this herb, which in the Mexican language is called tobacco, and immediately perceived the sharp fetid smell of this truly diabolical and stinking smoke, I was obliged to go away in haste, and seek some other place.”—Girolamo Benzoni, Hak. Soc. p. 81. [The word tabaco is from the language of Hayti, and meant, first, the pipe, secondly, the plant, thirdly, the sleep which followed its use (Mr. J. Platt, 9 ser. N. & Q. viii. 322).]

1585.—“Et hi” (viz. Ralph Lane and the first settlers in Virginia) “reduces Indicam illam plantam quam Tabaccam vocant et Nicotiam, qua contra cruditates ab Indis edocti, usi erant, in Angliam primi, quod suam, intulerunt. Ex illo sane tempore usu coepit esse creberrimo, et magno pretio, dum quam plurimi graveolentem illius fumum, alii lascivientes, alii valetudini consulentes, per tubulum testaceum inexplebili aviditate passim hauriunt, et mox e naribus efflant; adeo ut tabernae Tabaccanae non minus quam cervisiariae et vinariae passim per oppida habeantur. Ut Anglorum corpora (quod salse ille dixit) qui hac plantâ tantopere delectantur in Barbarorum naturam degenerasse videantur; quum iisdem quibus Barbari delectentur et sanari se posse credant.”—Gul. Camdeni, Annal. Rerum Anglicanum…regn. Elizabetha, ed. 1717, ii. 449.

1592.—

“Into the woods thence forth in haste shee went
To seeke for hearbes that mote him remedy;
For shee of herbes had great intendiment,
Taught of the Nymphe which from her infancy
Her nourced had in true Nobility:
This whether yt divine Tobacco were,
Or Panachaea, or Polygony,
Shee fownd, and brought it to her patient deare
Who al this while lay bleding out his hart-blood neare.”

The Faerie Queen, III. v. 32.

1597.—“His Lordship” (E. of Essex at Villafranca) “made no answer, but called for tobacco, seeming to give but small credit to this alarm; and so on horseback, with these noblemen and gentlemen on foot beside him, took tobacco, whilst I was telling his Lordship of the men I had sent forth, and the order I had given them. Within some quarter of an hour, we might hear a good round volley of shot betwixt the 30 men I had sent to the chapel, and the enemy, which made his Lordship cast his pipe from him, and listen to the shooting.”—Commentaries of Sir Francis Vere, p. 62.

1598.—“Cob. Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them they say will never scape it; he voided a bushel of soot yesterday upward and downward…its little better than rats-bane or rosaker.”—Every Man in his Humour, iii. 2.

1604.—“Oct. 19. Demise to Tho. Lane and Ph. Bold of the new Impost of 6s. 8d., and the old Custom of 2d. per pound on tobacco.”—Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I., p. 159.

1604 or 1605.—“In Bijápúr I had found some tobacco. Never having seen the like in India, I brought