Chapter Introductory Remarks of Introductory Remarks by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

The conquests and long occupation of the Portuguese, who by the year 1540 had established themselves in all the chief ports of India and the East, have, as might have been expected, bequeathed a large number of expressions to the European nations who have followed, and in great part superseded them. We find instances of missionaries and others at an early date who had acquired a knowledge of Indian languages, but these were exceptional.⁸

The natives in contact with the Portuguese learned a bastard variety of the language of the latter, which became the lingua franca of intercourse, not only between European and native, but occasionally between Europeans of different nationalities. This Indo-Portuguese dialect continued so serve such purposes down to a late period in the last century, and has in some localities survived down nearly to our own day.⁹ The number of people in India claiming to be of Portuguese descent was, in the 17th century, very large. Bernier, about 1660, says:—

“For he (Sultan Shuja’, Aurangzeb’s brother) much courted all those Portugal Fathers, Missionaries, that are in that Province.… And they were indeed capable to serve him, it being certain that in the kingdom of Bengale there are to be found not less than eight or nine thousand families of Franguis, Portugals, and these either Natives or Mesticks.” (Bernier, E.T. of 1684, p. 27.)

A. Hamilton, whose experience belonged chiefly to the end of the same century, though his book was not published till 1727, states:—

“Along the Sea-coasts the Portuguese have left a Vestige of their Language, tho’ much corrupted, yet it is the Language that most Europeans learn first to qualify them for a general Converse with one another, as well as with the different inhabitants of India.” (Preface, p. xii.)

Lockyer, who published 16 years before Hamilton, also says:—

“This they (the Portugueze) may justly boast, they have established a kind of Lingua Franca in all the Sea Ports in India, of great use to other Europeans, who would find it difficult in many places to be well understood without it.” (An Account of the Trade in India, 1711, p. 286.)

The early Lutheran Missionaries in the South, who went out for the S.P.C.K., all seem to have begun by learning Portuguese, and in their diaries speak of preaching occasionally in Portuguese.¹⁰

The foundation of this lingua franca was the Portuguese of the beginning of the 16th century; but it must have soon degenerated, for by the beginning of the last century it had lost nearly all trace of inflexion.¹¹

It may from these remarks be easily understood how a large number of our Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, even if eventually traceable to native sources (and especially to Mahratti, or Dravidian originals) have come to us through a Portuguese medium, and often bear traces of having passed through that alembic. Not a few of these are familiar all over India, but the number current in the South is larger still. Some other Portuguese words also, though they can hardly be said to be recognized elements in the Anglo- Indian colloquial, have been introduced either into Hindustani generally, or into that shade of it which is in use among natives in habitual contact with Europeans. Of words which are essentially Portuguese, among Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, persistent or obsolete, we may quote goglet, gram, plantain, muster, caste, peon, padre, mistry or maistry, almyra, aya, cobra, mosquito, pomfret, cameez, palmyra, still in general use; picotta, rolong, pial, fogass, margosa, preserved in the South; batel, brab, foras, oart, vellard in Bombay; joss, compradore, linguist in the ports of China; and among more or less obsolete terms, Moor, for a Mahommedan, still surviving under the modified form Moorman, in Madras and Ceylon; Gentoo, still partially kept up, I believe, at Madras in application to the Telugu language, mustees, castees, bandeja (‘a tray’), Kittysol (‘an umbrella,’ and this survived ten years ago in the Calcutta customs tariff), cuspadore (‘a spittoon’), and covid (‘a cubit or ell’). Words of native origin which bear the mark of having come to us through the Portuguese may be illustrated by such as palanquin, mandarin, mangelin (a small weight for pearls, &c.) monsoon, typhoon, mango, mangosteen, jack-fruit, batta, curry, chop, congee, coir, cutch, catamaran, cassanar, nabob, avadavat, betel, areca, benzoin, corge, copra.¹²

A few examples of Hindustani words borrowed from the Portuguese are chabi (‘a key’), baola (‘a portmanteau’), bálti (‘a bucket’), martol (‘a hammer’), tauliya (‘a towel,’ Port. toalha), sabun (‘soap’), basan (‘plate’