Chapter Introductory Remarks of Introductory Remarks by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

We proposed also, in our Glossary, to deal with a selection of those administrative terms, which are in such familiar and quotidian use as to form part of the common Anglo-Indian stock, and to trace all (so far as possible) to their true origin—a matter on which, in regard to many of the words, those who hourly use them are profoundly ignorant—and to follow them down by quotation from their earliest occurrence in literature.

A particular class of words are those indigenous terms which have been adopted in scientific nomenclature, botanical and zoological. On these Mr. Burnell remarks:—

“The first Indian botanical names were chiefly introduced by Garcia de Orta (Colloquios, printed at Goa in 1563), C. d’Acosta (Tractado, Burgos, 1578), and Rhede van Drakenstein (Hortus Malabaricus, Amsterdam, 1682). The Malay names were chiefly introduced by Rumphius (Herbarium Amboinense, completed before 1700, but not published till 1741). The Indian zoological terms were chiefly due to Dr. F. Buchanan, at the beginning of this century. Most of the N. Indian botanical words were introduced by Roxburgh.”

It has been already intimated that, as the work proceeded, its scope expanded somewhat, and its authors found it expedient to introduce and trace many words of Asiatic origin which have disappeared from colloquial use, or perhaps never entered it, but which occur in old writers on the East. We also judged that it would add to the interest of the work, were we to investigate and make out the pedigree of a variety of geographical names which are or have been in familiar use in books on the Indies; take as examples Bombay, Madras, Guardafui, Malabar, Moluccas, Zanzibar, Pegu, Sumatra, Quilon, Seychelles, Ceylon, Java, Ava, Japan, Doab, Punjab, &c., illustrating these, like every other class of word, by quotations given in chronological series.

Other divagations still from the original project will probably present themselves to those who turn over the pages of the work, in which we have been tempted to introduce sundry subjects which may seem hardly to come within the scope of such a glossary.

The words with which we have to do, taking the most extensive view of the field, are in fact organic remains deposited under the various currents of external influence that have washed the shores of India during twenty centuries and more. Rejecting that derivation of elephant⁶

which would connect it with the Ophir trade of Solomon, we find no existing Western term traceable to that episode of communication; but the Greek and Roman commerce of the later centuries has left its fossils on both sides, testifying to the intercourse that once subsisted. Agallochum, carbasus, camphor, sandal, musk, nard, pepper (pÎpÎri, from Skt. pippali, ‘long pepper’), ginger (ziggíbÎris, see under Ginger), lac, costus, opal, malabathrum or folium indicum, beryl, sugar (sak, from Skt. sarkara, Prak. sakkara), rice (óruza, but see s.v.), were products or names, introduced from India to the Greek and Roman world, to which may be added a few terms of a different character, such as BracmanÎs, SarmanÎs (sramanas, or Buddhist ascetics), zulasagalína kaì sasamína (logs of teak and shisham), the saggara (rafts) of the Periplus (see Jangar in GLOSS.); whilst dinara, dramma, perhaps kastira (‘tin,’ kassítÎros), kasturi (‘musk,’ kastórion, properly a different, though analogous animal product), and a very few more, have remained in Indian literature as testimony to the same intercourse.⁷

The trade and conquests of the Arabs both brought foreign words to India and picked up and carried westward, in form more or less corrupted, words of Indian origin, some of which have in one way or other become part of the heritage of all succeeding foreigners in the East. Among terms which are familiar items in the Anglo-Indian colloquial, but which had, in some shape or other, found their way at an early date into use on the shores of the Mediterranean, we may instance bazaar, cazee, hummaul, brinjaul, gingely, safflower, grab, maramut, dewaun (dogana, douane, &c.). Of others which are found in medieval literature, either West-Asiatic or European, and which still have a place in Anglo-Indian or English vocabulary, we may mention amber-gris, chank, junk, jogy, kincob, kedgeree, fanam, calay, bankshall, mudiliar, tindal, cranny.