Chapter Introductory Remarks of Introductory Remarks by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

An example of this is boy, in its application to a native servant. To this application have contributed both the old English use of boy (analogous to that of puer, garçon, Knabe) for a camp-servant, or for a slave, and the Hindi-Marathi bhoi, the name of a caste which has furnished palanquin and umbrella- bearers to many generations of Europeans in India. The habitual use of the word by the Portuguese, for many years before any English influence had touched the shores of India (e.g. bóy de sombrero, bóy d’aguoa, bóy de palanquy), shows that the earliest source was the Indian one.

Cooly, in its application to a carrier of burdens, or performer of inferior labour, is another example. The most probable origin of this is from a nomen gentile, that of the Kolis, a hill-people of Guzerat and the Western Ghats (compare the origin of slave). But the matter is perplexed by other facts which it is difficult to connect with this. Thus, in S. India, there is a Tamil word kuli, in common use, signifying ‘daily hire or wages,’ which H. H. Wilson regards as the true origin of the word which we call cooly. Again, both in Oriental and Osmali Turkish, kol is a word for a slave, and in the latter also there is kuleh, ‘a male slave, a bondsman.’ Khol is, in Tibetan also, a word for a slave or servant.

Tank, for a reservoir of water, we are apt to derive without hesitation, from stagnum, whence Sp. estanc, old Fr. estang, old Eng. and Lowland Scotch stank, Port. tanque, till we find that the word is regarded by the Portuguese themselves as Indian, and that there is excellent testimony to the existence of tanka in Guzerat and Rajputana as an indigenous word, and with a plausible Sanskrit etymology.

Veranda has been confidently derived by some etymologists (among others by M. Defréméry, a distinguished scholar) from the Pers. baramada, ‘a projection,’ a balcony; an etymology which is indeed hardly a possible one, but has been treated by Mr. Beames (who was evidently unacquainted with the facts that do make it hardly possible) with inappropriate derison, he giving as the unquestionable original a Sanskrit word baranda, ‘a portico.’ On this Burnell has observed that the word does not belong to the older Sanskrit, but is only found in comparatively modern works. Be that as it may, it need not be doubted that the word veranda, as used in England and France, was imported from India, i.e. from the usage of Europeans in India; but it is still more certain that either in the same sense, or in one closely allied, the word existed, quite independent of either Sanskrit or Persian, in Portuguese and Spanish, and the manner in which it occurs in the very earliest narrative of the Portuguese adventure to India (Roteiro do Viagem de Vasco da Gama, written by one of the expedition of 1497), confirmed by the Hispano-Arabic vocabulary of Pedro de Alcalà, printed in 1505, preclude the possibility of its having been adopted by the Portuguese from intercourse with India.

Mangrove, John Crawfurd tells us, has been adopted from the Malay manggi-manggi, applied to trees of the genus Rhizophora. But we learn from Oviedo, writing early in the sixteenth century, that the name mangle was applied by the natives of the Spanish Main to trees of the same, or a kindred genus, on the coast of S. America, which same mangle is undoubtedly the parent of the French manglier, and not improbably therefore of the English form mangrove.¹⁵

The words bearer, mate, cotwal, partake of this kind of dual or doubtful ancestry, as may be seen by reference to them in the Glossary.

Before concluding, a word should be said as to the orthography used in the Glossary.

My intention has been to give the headings of the articles under the most usual of the popular, or, if you will, vulgar quasi-English spellings, whilst the Oriental words, from which the headings are derived or corrupted, are set forth under precise transliteration, the system of which is given in a following “Nota Bene.” When using the words and names in the course of discursive elucidation, I fear I have not been consistent in sticking either always to the popular or always to the scientific spelling, and I can the better understand why a German critic of a book of mine, once upon a time, remarked upon the etwas schwankende yulische Orthographie. Indeed it is difficult, it never will for me be possible, in a book for popular use, to adhere to one system in this matter without the assumption of an ill-fitting and repulsive pedantry. Even in regard to Indian proper names, in which I once advocated adhesion, with a small number of