THE IBIS CHRESTOMATHY 473

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 1THE IBIS CHRESTOMATHYWords! Neel was of the view thatwords, no less than people, are endowedwith lives and destinies of theirown. Why then were there no astrologersto calculate their kismet andmake predictions about their fate? Thethought that he might be the one totake on this task probably came to himat about the time when he was firstbeginning to earn his livelihood as alinkister – that is to say, during hisyears in southern China. From then on,for years afterwards, he made it hisregular practice to jot down his divinationsof the fate of certain words. TheChrestomathy, then, is not so much akey to language as an astrological chart,crafted by a man who was obsessedwith the destiny of words. Not allwords were of equal interest, of course,and the Chrestomathy, let it be noted,deals only with a favoured few: it is devotedto a select number among themany migrants who have sailed fromeastern waters towards the chilly shoresof the En glish language. It is, in otherwords, a chart of the fortunes of ashipload of girmitiyas: this perhaps iswhy Neel named it after the Ibis.But let there be no mistake: theChrestomathy deals solely with wordsthat have a claim to naturalizationwithin the En glish language. Indeed theepiphany out of which it was born wasNeel’s discovery, in the late 1880s, that acomplete and authoritative lexicon ofthe En glish language was under prep -ara tion: this was, of course, the OxfordEnglish Dictionary (or the Oracle,as it is invariably referred to in theChrestomathy). Neel saw at once thatthe Oracle would provide him with anauthoritative almanac against which tojudge the accuracy of his predictions.Although he was already then an elderlyman, his excitement was such that heimmediately began to gather his paperstogether in prep ara tion for the Oracle’spublication. He was to be disappointed,for decades would pass before the OxfordEn glish Dictionary finally made itsappearance: all he ever saw of it was afew of the facsicules that appeared inthe interim. But the years of waitingwere by no means wasted: Neel spentthem in collating his notes with otherglossaries, lexicons and word-lists. Thestory goes that in the last years of hislife his reading consisted of nothingbut dictionaries. When his eyesight beganto fail, his grandchildren and greatgrandchildrenwere made to performthis ser vice for him (thus the familycoinage ‘to read the dicky’, defined byNeel as ‘a gubbrowing of last resort’).On his deathbed, or so family legendhas it, Neel told his children and grandchildrenthat so long as the knowledgeof his words was kept alive within thefamily, it would tie them to their past

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 2and thus to each other. Inevitably, hiswarnings were ignored and his paperswere locked away and forgotten; theywere not to be retrieved till some twentyyears later. The family was then in turmoil,with its many branches at oddswith each other, and its collective affairsheaded towards ruin. It was thenthat one of Neel’s granddaughters (thegrandmother of the present writer) rememberedhis words and dug out theold band-box that contained Neel’s jottings.Coincidentally, that was the veryyear the Oracle was finally published –1928 – and she was able to raise themoney, by joint family subscription, toacquire the entire set. Thus began theprocess of disinterring Neel’s horoscopesand checking them against the Oracle’spronouncements – and miraculously, nosooner did the work start than thingsbegan to turn around, so that the familywas able to come through the worldwideDepression of the 1930s with itsfortunes almost undiminished. Afterthat never again was the Chrestomathyallowed to suffer prolonged ne glect.By some strange miracle of hereditythere was always, in every decade, atleast one member of the family whohad the time and the interest to serveas wordy- wallah, thus keeping alivethis life- giving conversation with thefounder of the line.The Chrestomathy is a work thatcannot, in principle, ever be consideredfinished. One reason for this is thatnew and previously unknown wordchitsin Neel’s hand continue to turn upin places where he once resided. Theseunearthings have been regular enough,and frequent enough, to confound theidea of ever bringing the work to completion.But the Chrestomathy is also,in its very nature, a continuing dialogue,and the idea of bringing it to anend is one that evokes superstitioushorror in all of Neel’s descendants. Beit then clearly understood that it wasnot with any such intention that thiscompilation was assembled: it wasrather the gradual decay of Neel’s paperswhich gave birth to the proposalthat the Chrestomathy (or what therewas of it) be put into a form that mightadmit of wider circulation.It remains only to explain that sincethe Chrestomathy deals exclusively withthe English language, Neel included,with very few exceptions, only suchwords as had already found a place inan En glish dictionary, lexicon or wordlist.This is why its entries are almostalways preceded by either the symbol ofthe Oracle (a +) or the names of otherglossaries, dictionaries or lexicons; theseare, as it were, their credentials for admittanceto the vessel of migration thatwas the Chrestomathy. However, thepower to grant full citizenship rested,in Neel’s view, solely with the Oracle(thus his eagerness to scrutinize its rolls).Once a word had been admitted intothe Oracle’s cavern, it lost the names ofits sponsors and was marked foreverwith its certificate of residence: thesymbol +. ‘After the Oracle has spokenthe name of a word, the matter is settled;from then on the expression inquestion is no longer (or no longeronly) Bengali, Arabic, Chinese, Hind. ,Laskari or anything else – in its En glishWhether this abbreviation refers to a specificlanguage (Hindi?/Urdu?/Hindusthani?)or merely to all things Indian has long beena subject of controversy within the family.Suffice it to say that the matter can never besatisfactorily resolved since Neel only everused this contracted form.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 3incarnation, it is to be considered a newcoinage, with a new persona and a reneweddestiny.’These then are the simple conventionsthat Neel’s descendants haveadhered to, marking a + upon everygirmitiya that has found a place withinthe Oracle’s tablets. Who exactly madethese marks, and at what date, is nowimpossible to ascertain, so dense is theaccretion of markings and jottingsupon the margins of Neel’s notes. Previousattempts to untangle these notationscaused so much confusion thatthe present writer was instructedmerely to bring the markings up todate, and in such a fashion that any interestedparty would be able to verifythe findings in the most recent editionof the Oracle. This he has attemptedto do to the best of his ability, althoughmany errors have, no doubt, evaded hisscrutiny.When the mantle of wordy-majorwas placed upon the shoulders of thepresent writer, it came with a warn -ing from his el ders: his task, they said,was not to attempt to re-create theChrestomathy as Neel might have writtenit in his own lifetime; he wasmerely to provide a summary of a continuingexchange of words betweengenerations. It was with these instructionsin mind that he has laboured topreserve the timbre of Neel’s etymologicalreflections: in the pages that follow,whenever quotation marks are usedwithout attribution, Neel must be presumedto be the author of the passagein question.abihowa/ abhowa (*The Glossary ):‘Afiner word for “climate” was nevercoined,’ writes Neel, ‘joining as it doesthe wind and the water, in Persian,Arabic and Bengali. Were there to be,in matters of language, such a thing asa papal indulgence then I would surelyexpend mine in ensuring a place forthis fine coinage.’* * *Henry notes, from the Persian for“flowing water”.’+achar: ‘There are those who wouldgloss this as “pickle”,’ writes Neel, ‘althoughthat word is better applied tothe definition than the thing defined.’abrawan (*The Glossary): ‘The nameof this finest of muslins comes, as Siragil (*Roebuck ): ‘Many will raisetheir eyebrows when they learn thatthis was the lascar’s equivalent of theIt needs here to be explained that the wordGlossary, whenever it occurs in the Chrestomathy,is a reference to an authority that was,for Neel’s purposes, one of the few to be empoweredwith the right to award certificatesof migration into En glish: to wit, Sir HenryYule and A. C. Burnell’s Glossary of ColloquialAnglo-Indian Words and Phrases, andof Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical,Geographical and Discursive. Neel appears tohave acquired a copy of this famous dictionarywhen it first began to circulate among a privilegedfew, in the 1880s, before it came to beknown by the name Hobson-Jobson. Althoughhis personal copy has never been found,there can be no doubt that the frequent referencesto ‘Sir Henry’ in the Chrestomathy aredirected always towards Sir Henry Yule –just as ‘the Glossary,’ in his usage, standsalways for the dictionary for which thatgreat lexicographer was chiefly responsible.The name Roebuck, when it occurs in the

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 4En glish sailor’s “fore” or “for’ard”, justas peechil was his equivalent for “aft”.Why not, one might ask, agey andpeechhey, as would seem natural formost speakers of Hind.? Could it bethat these essential nautical terms wereborrowed from the languages of Cutchor Sind? Often have I asked but neverbeen satisfactorily answered. But tothis I can testify, in corroboration of thegood Lieutenant’s definition, that it isindisputably true that the Laskariterms are always agil and peechil,never agey-peechhey.’alliballie muslin (*The Glossary):‘There are those, including Sir Henry,who would consider this a muslin of finequality, but in the Raskhali wardrobe itwas always relegated to one of thelower shelves.’+almadia: An Arab riverboat of a sortthat was rarely seen in India: Neelwould have found it hard to account forits presence in the Oracle.alzbel (*Roebuck): ‘Thus does theever-musical Laskari tongue render thewatchman’s cry of “All’s well”: how wellI remember it...’arkati (*The Barney-Book ): ‘Thisword, widely used by seamen to mean‘ship’s pilot’, is said to be derived fromthe erstwhile princely state of Arcot,near Madras, the Nawab of which wasreputed to have in his employ all the pilotsin the Bay of Bengal. Scholars willno doubt cavil at Neel’s unquestioningac cep tance of Barrère and Leland’s derivation,but this entry is a good exampleof how, when forced to choose betweena colourful and a reliable etymology,Neel always picked the former.+atta/otta/otter: Such are the manyEn glish spellings for the common Indianword for ‘wheat flour’. The firstof these variants is the one anointedby the Oracle. But the last, which hadthe blessing of Barrère and Leland, wasthe one most favoured by Neel, andChrestomathy, is a reference always to Lt.Thomas Roebuck’s pioneering work of lexicography:An En glish and Hindostanee NavalDictionary of Technical Terms and Sea Phrasesand also the Various Words of CommandGiven in Working a Ship, &C. with ManySentences of Great Use at Sea; to which IsPrefixed a Short Grammar of the HindostaneeLanguage. First printed in Calcutta, this lexi -con was reprinted in London in 1813 by thebooksellers to the Hon. East India Company:Black, Parry & Co. of Leadenhall Street.Neel once described it as the most importantglossary of the nineteenth century – becauseas he put it, ‘in its lack, the age of sail wouldhave been becalmed in a kalmariya, withsahibs and lascars mouthing incomprehensiblenothings at each other.’ It is certainlytrue that this modest word-list was to havean influence that probably far exceeded Lt.Roebuck’s expectations. Seven decades afterits publication it was revised by the Rev.George Small, and reissued by W. H. Allen& Co. under the title: A Laskari Diction -ary or Anglo-Indian Vocabulary of NauticalTerms and Phrases in En glish and Hindu -stani (in 1882): this latter edition was availablewell into the twentieth century. TheLaskari Dictionary was Neel’s favourite lexiconand his use of it was so frequent that heappears to have developed a sense of personalfamiliarity with the author.The phrase Barney-Book, when it occurs inthe Chrestomathy, is always in reference toAlbert Barrère and Charles Leland’s Dictionaryof Slang, Jargon & Cant, which was yetanother of Neel’s girmit-granting authorities.He possessed a well-worn copy of the edition

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 5under his own roof, he would not allowthe use of any other. The memory ofthis was passed along in the family evenunto my own generation. Thus was Iable recently to confound a pretentiouspundit who was trying to persuade anunusually gullible audience that thephrase ‘kneading the otter’ was once aeuphemism of the same sort as ‘flayingthe ferret’ and ‘skinning the eel’.awari (*Roebuck): ‘This, says Lt. Roebuck,is the Laskari word for ship’swake. But as so often with the usages ofthe lascars, it has the oddly poetical connotationof being cast adrift upon thewaves.’ Legend has it that some membersof the family went to the movieAwara expecting a tale of shipwreck.+ayah: Neel was contemptuous of thosewho identified this word with Indiannursemaids and nurseries. In his homehe insisted on using its progenitors, theFrench ‘aide’ and the Portuguese ‘aia’.bachaw/ bachao: This word should byrights have meant ‘help!’ being a directborrowing of the common Hind. term.But Neel insisted that in En glish theword was only ever used ironically, asan expression of disbelief. For example:‘Puckrowed a six-foot cockup? Oh,bachaw!’backsee (*Roebuck): This was theLaskari substitute for the En glish‘aback’: ‘Another of the many words inpublished by the Ballantyne Press in 1889.His choice of shorthand for this work appearsto be a reference to Barrère and Leland’s tracingof barney to the gypsy word for ‘mob’ orthe Indian shipboard lexicon, where aPortuguese term was preferred over theEn glish.’+ baksheesh / buckshish / buxees, etc.:‘Curious indeed that for this token ofgenerosity Sir Henry was unable tofind any En glish equivalent (“tip” beingdismissed as slang) and could onlyprovide French, German and Italiansynonyms.’ Neel’s optimism about thefuture of this word was based on the factof its having few competitors in theEn glish language. He would have beensurprised to find that both baksheeshand its South China synonym cumshawhad been smiled upon by the Oracle.+balty/ balti: On this commonest ofIndian household objects – the bucket– Neel penned several lengthy chits.Already in his time the use of thesecontainers had become so widespreadthat the memory of their foreignprovenance (the word being a directborrowing of the Portuguese ‘balde’)had been lost. ‘This much is certain,that the balde, like so much else, wasintroduced into our lives by lascars. Yetthe object for which they used the termwas a “ship’s bucket”, a leather containerbearing no resemblance to themetal vessels that are now spoken of bythat name. But the balde could nothave become ubiquitous if it were notreplacing some older object that was alreadyin common use. What then wasthe name of the container that peopleused for their daily bath before the lascarsgave them their baldes? What did‘crowd’. This in turn, they adduced to be, inone of those wild leaps of speculation forwhich they were justly famous, a derivationfrom the Hind. bharna – ‘to fill’ or ‘increase’.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 6they use for the cleaning of floors, fordrawing water from wells, for wateringtheir gardens? What was the object,now forgotten, that once dischargedthese functions?’ Later, on his first tripto London, Neel went to visit a lascarboarding house in the East End. Hewrote afterwards: ‘Living twenty to aroom, in the vilest conditions, the poorbudmashes have no other expedientbut to cook their food in enormousbaldes. Being, like so many lascars,good-hearted, hospitable fellows theyinvited me to partake of their simplesupper and I did not hesitate to accept.The meal consisted of nothing morethan rooties served with a stew thathad long been bubbling in the balde:this was a gruel concocted fromchicken-bones and tomatoes, and wasserved in a single giant tapori. It boreno resemblance to anything I had evereaten in Hind. Yet it was not withoutsavour and I could not forbear to askwhere they had learnt to make it. Theyexplained that it was Portuguese shipboardfare, commonly spoken of asgalinha balde, which they proceededto translate as “balti chicken”. This didmuch, I must admit, to raise in myestimation the cuisine of Portugal.’History has vindicated Neel’s optimisticevaluation of this word’s future,but it remains true that he had in noway foreseen that the word’s citizenshipin the En glish language would be basedon its culinary prowess; nor would hehave imagined that on finding entranceinto the Oracle this humblest of Portugueseobjects would come to be definedas ‘a style of cooking influenced bythe cuisine of northern Pakistan’.balwar (*Roebuck): ‘Too close insound to its synonym, “barber”, to haveany realistic chance of survival.’bamba (*Roebuck): ‘Why would anyonecontinue to use this Portuguesederivedterm for an object whichalready has a simple and economicalname in En glish: “pump”?’banchoot / barnshoot / bahenchod /b’henchod etc (*The Glossary): In histreatment of this expression, Neel decisivelyparts company with his guru, SirHenry, who gives this cluster of wordsshort shrift, defining them merely as‘terms of abuse which we should hesitateto print if their odious meaningwere not obscure “to the general.” If itwere known to the En glishmen whosometimes use the words, we believethere are few who would not shrinkfrom such brutality’. But rare indeedwas the European who shrank frommouthing this word: such was its popularitythat Neel came to be convincedthat ‘it is one of the many delightfulcomposite terms that have been formedby the pairing of Hind. and En glish elements.To prove this we need only breakthe word into its constituent parts: thefirst syllable “ban”/ “barn” etc, is clearly acontraction of Hind. bahin, or sister.The second, variously spelled, is, in myopinion, a cognate of the En glishchute, with which it shares at least oneaspect of its variegated meaning. Likemany such words it derives, no doubt,from some ancient Indo-European root.It is curious to note that the word chuteno longer figures as a verb in En glish, asits cognates do in many Indian languages.But there is some evidence tosuggest that it was once so used in En -glish too: an example of this is the wordchowder, clearly derived from theHind. chodo/chodna etc. The word is saidto be still widely in use in America, beingemployed chiefly as a noun, to referto a kind of soup or pottage. Although I

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 7have not had the good fortune to partakeof this dish, I am told that it is producedby a great deal of grinding andpounding, which would certainly beconsonant with some aspects of the ancientmeaning that is still preserved inthe usage of this root in Hind.’+bandanna: The coolin status of thisword would have amazed Neel, whogave it little chance of survival. That‘bandanna’ has a place in the Oracle isnot, of course, a matter that admits ofany doubt – but it is true nonethelessthat this was not the fate that Neel hadforetold for it. His prediction was thatthe Hind. word bandhna would find itsway into the En glish language in itsarchaic seventeenth-century form, bandannoe.Yet it is true also that Neelnever doubted this word’s destiny, a beliefthat was founded in part in the resilienceand persistence of the ancientIndo-European root from which it isderived – a word that had already, in hislifetime, been Anglicized into bando/bundo (to tie or fasten). This beautifuland useful word is, alas, now onlyused as it pertains to embankments,although it was once widely used byspeakers of En glish, especially in itsimperative form: bando! (Neel evenmade a copy of the quote that SirHenry used in his note on this term:‘This and probably other Indian wordshave been naturalized in the docks onthe Thames frequented by Lascar crews.I have heard a London lighter-man,in the Victoria Docks, throw a ropeashore to another Londoner, callingout, “Bando!” [M.-Gen. Keatinge]).’Neel’s faith in bando/bundo was nodoubt influenced by the root’s uncommonfecundity, for he foresaw that itwould give birth to a whole brood of +anointed derivatives – bund (‘embankment’or ‘dyke’, the best known exampleof which is now in Shanghai, widelyconsidered to be the single most valuablepiece of land in the world); cummerbund(the fate of which Neel alsofailed to properly predict, for it neverdid replace ‘belt’ as he had thought itwould); and finally bundobast (literally‘tying up’ in the sense of ‘putting intoorder’ or ‘making arrangements’). Thepassing away of this last into the limboof the almost-dead Neel could neverhave foreseen and would have mournedmore, perhaps, than any other entryin the Chrestomathy. (Of this too hisanonymous descendant might well havewritten: ‘Why? Why? Why this meaninglessslaughter, this egregious waste,this endless logocide. Who will put anend to it? To whom can we appeal? Doesit not call upon every conscience to risein protest?’) For it is true certainly thatthis is a word, an idea, of which En glishis sadly in need. Nor did the contributionsof bando/bandh end there. Neelwas persuaded that band in the sense of‘head-band’ or ‘rubber-band’ was also achild of the Hind. term. This wouldmean that bando/bundo did indeedachieve the distinction of being raisedto the Peerage of the Verb, throughsuch usages as ‘to band together’.But to return to bandanna, Neel’sown use of this term never came intoconformity with its dictionary definition,for he continued, in his lifetime, toapply it to kerchiefs, handkerchiefs,gamchhas, and especially to the cummerbundsand head-cloths that lascarsand other working people commonlywore in order to restrain their hair andtheir kameezes. His descendants, aswas their custom, were even more con -ser va tive, and would vie among themselvesto find uses for the originaryforms. Well do I remember the responseof an el derly uncle, who, when invited

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 8to join a family expedition to a wellreputedcowboy movie, cried out: ‘Arre!You think I’d spend good money towatch a band of budmashes runningaround in dungris and bandhnas?’+bandar: Neel was totally mistakenin his forecast of how the commonHind. word for monkey would fare inEn glish. One of his pet theories wasthat migrant words must always becareful to stand apart from each other,in sound and appearance: uprootedhomonyms and synonyms, he felt, hadlittle chance of surviving in pairs – inevery couple, one would perish. In thisinstance the beastly sense of bandarwas, in his view, uncomfortably close insound to an unrelated nautical termof Persian derivation: bander/bunder(‘harbour’ or ‘port’). He was persuadedthat of the two it was this latter formthat would survive in En glish – partlybecause the use of bunder in the nauticalsense had a very long pedigree in thelanguage, going back to the seventeenthcentury, and partly because the root wasuncommonly fecund in En glish derivatives.It was these derivatives, he felt,that were most vulnerable to the pos -sibilities of confusion posed by the zoologicalsense of bandar. True enoughthat the frequently used term bander-/bunder-boat, (‘harbour-boat’) was inlittle danger of being mistaken for asimian conveyance, but there remainedanother word that might well be thecause of misunderstandings and confusion.This was the venerable sabander/shabander (‘master of the harbour’ or‘harbour-master’), a term which had solong a history as almost to be con -sidered Middle En glish, and was thuspossessed of a powerful claim to protectionfrom the sort of abuse thatmight result from compounds likeshah-bandar. As for the animal, therewas another word that would serve itjust as well, he felt, and this was wanderoo(from wanderu, the Sinhala cognateof Hind. bandar) which was alsoin wide circulation at the time, althoughit was generally used to meanlangur. It was on wanderoo that Neelpinned his hopes while predictingdoom for its synonym. Little did heknow that both bandar and its collective+log would be given indefiniteprolongations of life by a children’sbook, while the beautiful wanderoowould soon disappear into a pauper’sgrave. [See also gadda/gadha.]bando/ bundo (*The Glossary): Seebandanna.+bankshall: Neel would have beensaddened by the demise of this beautifulword, once much in use: ‘How wellI remember the great Bankshall of Calcutta,which served as the jetty for thedisembarkation of ship’s passengers,and where we would go of an eveningto gawk at all the griffins and new arrivals.It never occurred to us that thisedifice ought to have been, by its oraculardefinition, merely a “warehouse” or“shed”. Yet I do not doubt that SirHenry is right to derive it from theBengali bãkashala’. He would havebeen surprised to learn that a humblerkind of warehouse, the godown, hadsurvived in general usage, at the expenseof the now rare bankshall.+banyan/banian: ‘This is no mereword, but a clan, a sect, a caste – onethat has long been settled in the En -glish language. The clue to its understandinglies in the gloss provided by

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 9the Admiral : ‘The term is derivedfrom a religious sect in the East, who,believing in metempsychosis, eat of nocreature endowed with life. It derives,in other words, from the caste-name“Bania” or properly, “Vania”, the lastsyllable of which is sometimes nasalized.This caste, long associated with banking,commerce, money-lending and soon, was of course famously vegetarianand this was why the word served forcenturies as an essential part of the En -glish nautical vocabulary, being appliedto the one day of the week when sailorswere not served meat: banyan-day.’But all this being accepted, how didthis word come to assume its presentavatar, in which it represents the humbleand ubiquitous undergarment wornby the men of the Indian subconti -nent? Neel was of course in an exceptionallygood position to observe thismutation, which happened largelywithin his lifetime. His tracing of thegenealogy of this series of incarnationscounts among his most important contributionsto the etymologist’s art anddeserves to be quoted in full. ‘The wordbanyan’s journey to the wardrobe beganno doubt with the establishing ofits original sense in En glish, in which itserved merely to evoke an associationwith India (it was thus, I imagine, thatit came also to be attached to a tree thatbecame symbolic of the land – ourrevered ficus religiosa, now reincarnatedas the banyan-tree). It was because ofthis general association that it camealso to be applied to a certain kind ofIndian garment. It serves no purposeperhaps to ask what that garmentoriginally was. To anyone who has livedas long as I have, it is evident that thegarment in question is not so muchan article of clothing as an index ofHind.’s standing in the world. Thus, inthe seventeenth and eigh teenth centuries,when ours was still a land offabled riches and opulence, the wordbanyan/banian referred to a richlyembroidered dressing gown that fellalmost to the floor: it was modelledperhaps on the choga or the caftan/qaftan. [Here the present writer cannotrefrain from interjecting that althoughthis species of robe is extinctin India today, several noteworthyspecimens are on permanent display inthe Victoria and Albert Museum inLondon.] Even in my own childhoodthe word banyan referred always tothese sumptuous robes. But at thattime, of course, none but the most AnglicizedIndians used the word in thissense, the potential for harm being verygreat. Well do I remember the fate ofthe unfortunate Raja of Mukhpora,who had a habit of peppering his Bengaliwith En glish words. On a garment-buyingexpedition to the bazar,he was heard to boast, in the hearingof all, that he intended to have hisbanyans beaten and washed beforethey were locked away for the summer.This greatly alarmed the moneylenders,who lost no time in calling in theirdebts: the results were ruinous for thepoor Raja, who had to live out hisdays in an ashram in Brindavan, withnothing but a pair of saffron chogasin his wardrobe. Thus did he learnwhy it’s best not to get into a banyanfight.‘From that pinnacle of magnificence,The reference here is to Admiral W. H.Smyth’s Sailor’s Word-Book. Neel possessedseveral copies of the edition that was printedin London in 1876 by Blackie. He held thiswork in a respect that verged on reverenceand when the words ‘the Admiral’ appearin the Chrestomathy, reference is always toAdmiral Smyth and his famous lexicon.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 10this article of clothing has unfailinglykept pace with India’s fortunes: as theland’s inhabitants grew ever poorer andweaker under the British yoke, the garmentto which the word was appliedgrew ever meaner and more humble. Inits next incarnation therefore the banyanwas reborn as the standard article ofwear for the lowliest of workmen: thusdoes the Admiral describe it as “a sailor’scoloured tunic”. In this form, too, thegarment was still a stranger to India: itwas the lascar, undoubtedly, who wasresponsible for introducing it into hisnative land. It was he, too, who wasresponsible for snipping off the arms itpossessed in its European avatar. Inclothing, as in language and food, thelascar is thus revealed to be the pioneerin all things “Indian”. No morning passeswhen I do not think of this as I slip myhands through those familiar armholes;nor does the notion fail to bring to mynostrils a faint tang of the sea.’+banyan-/banian-day: See banyan.bargeer (*The Glossary): ‘It is my convictionthat this derivative of themarathi word for “soldier” made its wayinto The Glossary not through the battlefieldbut the nursery, being employed,as it was in Bengali, to strike terror intothe hearts of budzat butchas.’bas! (*Roebuck): The Lieutenantglosses this as the Laskari equivalent ofthe En glish ‘avast’, but Neel believed itto be a sibling rather than a synonym,both being derived, in his view, fromthe Arabic bass, ‘enough’.+ bawhawder / bahaudur / bahadur:‘This once sought-after Mughal title,meaning literally “brave”, took on a derisiveundertone in En glish. Sir Henryis right in noting that it came to “denotea haughty or pompous personage,exercising his brief authority with astrong sense of his own importance”.Curiously, no taint of the derisive attachedto this term where it would havebeen most apt – that is, in its applicationto the East India Company, whichwas known in Hind. as CompanyBawhawder’.+banyan-fight (*The Glossary): ‘Atongue-tempest’, as recorded by SirHenry, ‘that “never rises to blows orbloodshed” (Ocington, 1690)’.+banyan-tree: See banyan.+barbican: ‘A sewer- or water-pipe,’ asSir Henry correctly notes, ‘that leadsback to the Bab-Khana of Kanpur’.+bayadère: ‘Those who believe thatPortuguese was a language of the decksand had little to contribute to thebedroom would do well to note thatbayadère is not a French but ofPortuguese derivation (from bailadera –“dancing girl”).’ This was the euphemismthat BeeBees used to speak ofthe women their husbands referred toas buy-em-dears – a motley collectionof cunchunees, debbies, dashies,pootlies, rawnees, Rum-johnnies andnautch-girls. Curiously, the word “mistress”,which has a close Hind. cognate(by way of the Portuguese mestre) wasnever used in its English sense, it beingconsidered quite unusual for a man toshare his bed with his mistri’.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 11+BeeBee/bibi: ‘Why this word prevailedover its twin, begum, in beingapplied to the more eminent white wivesof Calcutta, remains unexplained. Inrecent times, it has fallen out of favourand is now applied ironically to Europeanwomen of low rank: this happenedbecause there came a time whenthe great BeeBees began to insist onbeing called ma’am-sahibs. Their employeesshortened the prefix to “mem-”(and occasionally, in the case of the mostbawhawder of the tribe, to “man-”)’.begaree (*Roebuck): ‘So, according toLt. Roebuck, were the lascars accustomedto speak of those of their numberwho had been shanghaiied orimpressed into ser vice. Could it be thatthe word is a curious crossing of theEn glish “beggar” and the Bengalibhikari (of the same meaning) and theHind. bekari, “unemployed”?’+begum: See BeeBee.beparee (*The Glossary): Neel believedthat this Hind. word for ‘trader’, likeseth, had found its way into En glish becausethe extraordinary proliferation ofthe meanings of banyan had renderedthe word unusable in its originary sense.beteechoot (*The Glossary): For theimport of this expression see banchoot/barnshoot, but bearing in mind that itsubstitutes betee, daughter, for bahin,sister. ‘Sir Henry illustrates his definitionof this term with some extremelyapt quotations, among them the following:“1638: L’on nous monstra à unedemy lieue de la ville un sepulchre, qu’ilsapellent Bety-chuit, c’est à dire la vergognede la fille decouverte” [Mandelsle,Paris, 1659].’bhandari (*Roebuck): ‘This is the namethat lascars use for cooks or storekeepers.I imagine that it may well be their wordfor “quartermaster” as well’. This sentenceis taken from the most unusual ofNeel’s notes – a set of jottings scribbledon the verso side of few playing cards.From the tiny handwriting, no lessthan the liberal splashes of seawater, itwould appear that these notes werecompiled in the course of a voyage onwhich paper was not easily obtained.Within the family these notes areknown as the Jack-Chits, after the firstof the cards to be found (a knave ofclubs). Generally speaking the chits areNeel’s earliest attempt to make sense ofthe shipboard dialect of the lascars: atthe time of their writing he does notappear to have known of the existenceof the Laskari Dictionary, but on acquiringa copy of Roebuck’s lexicon, heimmediately acknowledged the superiorityof that great lexicographer’s workand discontinued his own attempts todecode this dialect, which were undeniablyof an unscientific and anecdotalnature. The chits are not wholly withoutinterest, however; for example, thisexcerpt from the eight and nine ofspades: ‘To set sail is to find oneselffoundering not just in a new element,but also in an unknown ocean of words.When one listens to the speech ofsailors, no matter whether they bespeaking English or Hind. one is alwaysat sea: not for nothing is the Englishargot of sail known as a “sea-language”,for it has long slipped its mooringsfrom the English one learns in books.The same could be said of the ties thatbind the tongues of Hind. to the jargonof the lascars: why, just the other day,

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 12we heard the tindals of our ship racingabout on deck, shouting in the greatestagitation – hathee-soond! hatheesoond!That an “elephant’s trunk” hadbeen sighted at sea seemed miraculousto all present and we went hurryingup to bear witness to this extraordinaryvisitation – but only to be disappointed,for the excitement of our lascarfriends was occasioned by nothing moremiraculous than a distant column ofwater, raised by a whirlwind. Evidentlythis phenomenon, known in English asa “water-spout”, has in their eyes theappearance of an elephant’s trunk. Norwas this the only time that day that Iwas to be deceived by the fancifulnessof their usages. Later, while taking theair near the stern, I heard a lascar imploringanother to puckrow his nar. Iconfess I was startled: for although it isno uncommon thing to hear a lascarspeaking casually of the appendage ofmasculinity, it is unusual nonetheless tohear them referring to that organ insuch high Sanskritic language. Mysurprise must have caused me to betraymy presence, for they looked at me andbegan to laugh. Do you know whatwe are speaking of ? one of them saidto me. Placed on my mettle, I replied ina fashion that I thought would amplydemonstrate my ship-learning. Whyindeed I do know what you are speakingof, I said: it is the thing that isknown as a “jewel-block” in English.At this they laughed even harder andsaid no, a jewel-block was a dasturhanjain Laskari, while the thing theyhad been speaking of was a rudder-boltknown to the Angrez as a “pintle”. Iwas tempted to inform them that thegreat William Shakespeare himselfhad used that word – pintle – in exactlythe same sense as our Hind. nar. Onconsideration, however, I thought itbest to refrain from divulging this pieceof information. My shoke for thewords of the greatest of dramatists hadalready gained for me the reputation ofbeing an incorrigible “Spout-Billy”,and offensive as this sobriquet was,I could not help reflecting that to beknown as a “Billy-Soond” would beworse still’.+ bheesty / bheestie / beasty / bhishti:‘The mysteries of water-carrying, theinstrument of which trade was themussuck. In the south, according to SirHenry, the terms are tunny-catcher ortunnyketchi.’bichawna/ bichana (*The Glossary):‘Bedding or bed, from which bichawnadar,or “bed-maker”, an expressionthat must be used with some care becauseof the possibility of innuendo.’bichawnadar: See above.bilayuti (*The Glossary): ‘Strange thatwe should have become accustomed tousing a version of the Turkish/ Arabicwilayat to refer to En gland; evenstranger that the En glish should adaptit to their own use as blatty. In its bilayuteeform it was often attached, asSir Henry correctly notes, to foreignand exotic things (hence bilayatibainganfor “tomato”). Sir Henry washowever gravely in error on anothersuch compound, namely bilayuteepawnee.Although he correctly glossesthis as “soda-water”, he is wrong in hiscontention that the people of Hind.believed bilayutee-pawnee could confergreat strength to the human bodyby reason of its gaseous bubbles. As Iremember the matter, our wonder was

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 13occasioned not by the power of thebubbles as they were imbibed, but ratherby the explosive detonations with whichthey were expelled.’biscobra (*The Glossary): Neel tookissue with Sir Henry’s suggestion thatthis was the name of some kind of venomouslizard. ‘Here is another exampleof a beautiful marriage of the easternand western lexicons. The word “cobra”comes of course from a Portuguesecontraction of a Latin root meaning“serpent”. “Bis”, on the other hand, iscertainly a derivative of the Bengali wordfor poison, which has been absorbedinto En glish as bish, although with thesense of a “blunder” or “mistake”. It isimpossible that such a term could beapplied to a lizard, no matter howvengeful. In my opinion, it is noneother than an En glish colloquialism forthe hamadryad or King Cobra.’+bish: See above.b’longi/ blongi (*The Linkister ): ‘Frequentlymistaken as a contraction ofthe En glish “belong”, this word is actuallyan elegant and economical copula,doing duty for the verb “to be” in all itsmany forms. Imagine then the embarrassmentof the griffin who pointed tohis wife’s dog and said: “Gudda blongiwife-o massa.”’+bobachee: ‘As a barkentine is to acountry boat, a Kaptan to a Nacoda, avinthaleux to a dumbpoke, so in thekitchen is a bobachee to a consummer.Each a potentate in his own way, theyrule over a vast lashkar, consistingof spice-grinding masalchies, cabobgrillingcaleefas, and others whose titleshave mercifully lapsed from use.The bobachee, however, is the onlyculinary mystery to lend his name tothe kitchen.’bobachee-connah/ bawarchee-khana(*The Glossary): ‘On this latter term Iam at odds with every authority who hasgiven the matter any thought: whereasthey derive it from Hind. khana, “place”or “room”, it is my intuition that itcomes from the Bengali element kona/cona, meaning corner. This seems selfevidentto me, for if the meaning ofbobachee-connah were indeed “cookroom”,then surely the proper locu tionwould be “bobbachy-camra”. That thisvariant does sometimes occur, is to methe exception that proves the rule. Similarlygoozle-coonuh/goozul-khanaappears to me to be often wrongly renderedas “bathing-room”: when appliedto a place where a bathtub is kept, itmust surely mean “bathing-corner”.But so far as other connah/khanacompounds are concerned, I will concedethat it is often used in the sense ofroom: e.g. karkhana, jel-khana, babkhanaand the like.’‘The Linkister’, when it appears in theChrestomathy, is always in reference toCharles Leland and his Pidgin En glishSing-Song: Or Songs and Stories in theChina-En glish Dialect; with a Vocabulary.Charles Leland was, of course, one of themost prodigious lexicographers of the nineteenthcentury and he was another of Neel’sgirmit-granting authorities. But being himselfa master of the South China Pidgin,Neel appears to have disapproved, or disagreed,with it in some respects: hence thesomewhat disparaging name.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 14+bobbery/bobbery-bob: ‘This wordfor “commotion”, so much used insouthern China, was nothing but anadaptation of our common baap-rébaap.’The Oracle’s translation of thisas ‘oh my father!’ is surely a renditionrather of the equally common baap-ré,for the full expression would be rather:‘father oh father!’ An alternative derivation,from the Cantonese pa-pi – anoise – is, as the Barney-Book rightlyobserves, extremely doubtful.bolia/bauleah/baulia (*The Glossary):‘One of Bengal’s lighter river-craft, usuallyequipped with a small cabin.’bora (*The Glossary): ‘A large manyoaredboat, commonly used in Bengalfor the transportation of cargo.’bowla (*The Glossary): ‘These were,as I recall, portmanteaux or trunks,which were made to order by a few ofour most skilled moochies.’bowry/ bowly (*The Barney-Book):‘In Hind. this generally referred tostep-wells known as baolis. But afterits passage into En glish it often came tobe applied to pavilions that stood uponthe banks of waterways large and small.Every nullah and nuddee could boastof a few. It was sometimes used interchangeablywith chabutra/ chabutter.’boya (*Roebuck): ‘Laskari for “buoy”.’+buck: ‘A good example of the subtleshifts of meaning that occur whenwords leap between languages. For inHind. this expres sion conveys more asense of idle chatter than of the boastfulnessthat attaches to it in En glish(no doubt because of the purported demeanourof that animal for the name ofwhich it is a homonym). The extendedform buckwash (from Hind. bakwás –“prattle”, “idle talk” or “nonsense”) hasa sense similar to the cant expression“hogwash”.’budgrook (*The Glossary): ‘A Portuguesecoin of low denomination, thecirculation of which is said to be restrictedto Goa.’+budmash/badmash: ‘Like budzat andhurremzad a term which causes moregrief to lexicographers than to anyoneto whom it was ever addressed as a termof abuse. What purpose is served bybreaking it into its constituent Arabicand Persian elements when the wholeforms a neat equivalent of the En glish“rascal”?’ Neel was undoubtedly right tochoose budmash over the now defunctbudzat as fortune’s favourite.budzat/ badzat (*The Glossary): Seebudmash.+buggalow/bagala: ‘A species of Arabdhow that was once a common sight onthe Hooghly.’bulkat (*The Glossary): ‘As I recall,the name for a certain kind of largeboat from the Telegu country.’bullumteer (*The Glossary): ‘Anadaptation of the En glish “volunteer”,

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 15used generally for sepoys who servedoverseas.’buncus (*The Glossary): ‘Malay cherootsthat were greatly prized by some.’+bunder/bandar: See +bandar.bunow/bunnow/banao (*The Glossary):‘This is, as Sir Henry rightly observes,one of the rare Hind. verbs to beadapted into En glish. But even after ithad made the crossing it retainedsomething of its original sense, whichwas more “to build” than “to make” –for one could certainly never say, asabove, “bunow the crossing”.’+bunder-boat: See +bandar.+bundook/bunduk: This commonArabic-derived word was much dictionarizedeven in Neel’s day, usually beingglossed as ‘musket’ or ‘rifle’, and it is inthis form that it takes its place in theOracle. This belies Neel’s predictions,for this was another instance in whichhe accepted a questionable derivationfrom Barrère & Leland, who trace theArabic original back to the the Ger -man name for Venice, ‘Venedig’. Theimplication is that bundook was introducedinto Arabic by German mercenariesof the Venetian Republic, andwas first used in the sense of ‘crossbow’.Neel was mistaken in his belief that theword would revert to its original sense,except that it would come to be appliedto the fine chandeliers and other articlesof Venetian manufacture that werethen much in vogue among wealthyBengalis.+burkmundauze/barkandaz: ‘A termthat was useful mainly for its imprecision,for it could, when necessary, beapplied to any of that great paltan ofpaiks, piyadas, latheeals, kassidars,silahdars and other armed guards, retainersand sentries who once throngedour streets. The gatekeepers and watch -men whose duties kept them stationaryformed a slightly different kind ofpaltan, composed of chowkidars, durwaunsand the like.’+burra/bara: ‘I am convinced thatthis is another word that has enteredEnglish through a nautical route,burra/bara being the common Laskariterm for the tallest of a ship’s masts –the main.’ See also dol.Burrampooter (*The Glossary): ‘Thisis merely the anglice, blessedly shortlived,of “Brahmaputra”.’bungal (*Roebuck): ‘This word refersto the nautical “speaking-trumpet” –the instrument of amplification whichpermits ships at sea to communicate.Curiously, the usual Laskari pronunciationof it is byugal – which would seemto suggest that they discern in this objectsome mysterious kinship with thebugle’.+bustee/basti: ‘In my childhood weused this word only to mean “neighbourhood”or “settlement”, with nopejorative implication attached. TheEn glish derivative, on the other hand,was used to mean “Black Town” or“native area”, being applied only tothe areas where Bengalis lived. Strangeto think that it was in this deroga tory

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 16guise that it was passed back to Hind.and Bengali, and is now commonlyused in the sense of “slum”.’butcha/bacha (*The Barney Book): ‘Aword for “child” that will undoubtedlymigrate through the open windows ofthe nursery.’ Neel was wrong aboutthis.buy-em-dear: See bayadère.buzz: See shoke.+caftan/qaftan: See choga.caksen/coxen (*Roebuck): ‘It is puzzlingthat Roebuck lists this as theLaskari word for “coxswain”, since thepronunciation of it is indistinguishablefrom the English.’caleefa/khalifa (*The Glossary): Seebobbachy.+calico: ‘Some dictionaries award thisword a Malayali lineage, since this kindof cotton cloth was said to be a productof the Malabar coast. This is utterbuckwash, for the word calico selfevidentlycomes from “Calicut”, whichis a place name introduced by Europeans:were the word derived from thetown’s Malayalam name the cloth wouldbe known, surely, as “kozhikodo”.’calputtee (*Roebuck): ‘The Laskarifor “caulker”, this was a mystery whofound little employment on Indian vessels,which were generally rabbetedrather than caulked.’carcanna/karcanna (*The Glossary):Already in Neel’s lifetime this longpedigreedEnglish word (from Hind.kar-khana, ‘work-place’ or ‘work-shop’)was slowly yielding to the term ‘factory’– a lexical scandal in Neel’s ears, whichwere still accustomed to hearing thatword used to designate the residenceof a ‘factor’ or ‘agent’. But it was notfor nostalgic reasons alone that hemourned the passing of carcanna/karcanna: he foresaw that its wreckagewould also carry into oblivion many ofthose who had once worked in theseplaces of manufacture – for example thefactory-clerks known as carcoons. Itwas in mourning the fate of this wordthat the unknown wordy-wallah pennedhis comments on logocide.carcoon (*The Glossary and *TheBarney-Book): See above.chabee (*The Glossary): In an uncharacteristicdisplay of restraint, Neel refusedto enter into the controversy overwhether the Portuguese word for ‘key’had set sail for England from Portugalor Hind.+ chabutra / chabutter: See bowly /bowry.+ chaprasi / chuprassy: See dufter /daftar.+charpoy: As noted earlier (see bandar),Neel was of the opinion that words,

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 17unlike human beings, are less likely tosurvive the rigors of migration if theytravel as couples: in any pair of synonymsone is sure to perish. How,then, was he to account for the journeyof those eminently successful synonyms,charpoy and cot (both of which, un -beknownst to him, were to receive theOracle’s imprimatur)? Neel was clearlyannoyed by this anomaly – (‘Has Blattyno words for the comforts of the bed,that it must steal so wilfully from us?’) –but he did not fail to recognize thethreat that was posed to his pet theoryby these paired words. ‘English, no lessthan the languages of Hind., has manyreasons to be grateful to the lascars, andthe gift of the word cot (from Hind.khât) is not the least of them. There canbe little doubt that this word enteredthe English language through a nauticalroute: it is my conviction that khatwas the first Laskari word for “hammock”and that jhula/jhoola only cameinto use when the original was confiscatedby their malums (vide the Admiral’sdefinition of cot: “a woodenbed-frame, suspended from the beamsof a ship for the officers, betweendecks”). These cots were clearly morecomfortable than ordinary hammocks,for they were soon passed down to ships’infirmaries, for the benefit of the sickand the wounded. This, by extension, isthe sense in which the word was sweptinto the main current of the Englishlanguage, being adopted first as a namefor the swinging cribs of the nursery.We see thus that contrary to appearances,cot and charpoy are no moresynonyms than are “cradle” and “bedstead”.Nor indeed are they synonymseven in Hind., for I am convinced thatcharpai was originally applied to allfour-legged pieces of furniture (in theprecise sense of the Hind. char-pai,“four-legged”) in order to distinguishthem from such objects as had only threelegs (tin-pai or tipai – from which, asSir Henry rightly observes, descendedthose small tables known as teapoys inEnglish). The confusing term sea-poy,however, is merely a variant spelling ofsepoy and has nothing whatsoever todo with legs or seasickness. The ghostof this peculiar misconception is yet tobe laid, however, as is evident from astory I was recently told about a younglieutenant who came to be separatedfrom his troops while boarding a ship.It is said that after crying out in alarm –“I’ve lost my sea-poys!” – he was takenfurther aback at being handed a balty andsome smelling salts.’charter: ‘Although the Oracle makesno mention of it, I am convinced thatthis verb was often used in the samesense as the Hind. verb chatna, fromwhich English received the resplendentchutney, “good to lick” (not to be confusedwith chatty/chatta, which lascarswere accustomed to apply to earthenvessels). The cant term charterhouseis frequently applied to houses of illrepute.’chatty/chatta (*the Admiral, *Roebuck):See charter.+chawbuck/chábuk: ‘This word, somuch more expressive than “whip”, wasalmost as much a weapon as the objectit designated. That it should be amongthe few Hind. words that found a verbaluse in English is scarcely a matterof surprise, considering how often itfell from the sahibs’ lips. When soused, the proper form for the past participleis chawbuck’t. The derived formchawbuckswar, “whip-rider”, was con-

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 18sidered a great compliment amonghard-driving horsemen.’chawbuckswar (*The Glossary): Seeabove.+cheese: Neel was no visionary in predictingthe eventual incorporation ofthis derivative of Hind. chiz, ‘thing’,into the Oracle, for the use of it in suchsentences as ‘this cheroot is the realcheese’ was common enough in hisday. However, its role in such locutionsas ‘the Burra Cheese’ would undoubtedlyhave come as a surprise.chicken/chikan (*The Barney-Book):‘The closely-worked embroidery ofOudh; from which the cant expression“chicken-worked”, frequently used todescribe those who had perforce to livewith a bawhawder ma’am-sahib.’+chin-chin (*The Barney-Book):‘Greetings (from which chin-chinjoss:“worship”).’chin-chin-joss (*The Glossary): Seechin-chin.chingers (*The Barney-Book): ‘Cu -rious that Barrère & Leland imaginethis word to have entered the En -glish language through the gypsy dialect.It was quite commonly used inbobachee-connahs, for choolas hadalways to be lit with chingers (fromHind. chingare). I have even heard itused in the sentence “The chingersflew”.’Chin-kalan (*The Glossary): ‘Strangeas it seems today, this was indeed thename by which lascars were accustomedto speak of the port of Canton.’chints/chinti (*The Glossary, *TheBarney-Book): ‘This word for antsand insects was doomed by its resemblanceto the more common chintz(painted kozhikodoes)’.+chit/chitty: ‘A most curious word, fordespite the fact that it comes from theHind. chitthi, ‘letter,’ it was never appliedto any missive entrusted to thedawk. It had always to be delivered byhand, never by post, and preferably by achuprassy, never by a dawk-wallah orhurkaru.’chitchky (*The Glossary): Neel wasconvinced that this descendant of theBengali word chhechki had a brilliantfuture as a migrant, predicting that itwould even be ennobled as a verb, sinceEnglish had no equivalent term for thistechnique of cooking. Searching vainlyfor a palatable meal in the East End,he once wrote: ‘Why do none of theselascars ever think of setting up innsand hostelries where they can servechitckied cabbage with slivered whitingto Londoners? Would they notprofit from the great goll-maul thatwould thus be created?’ He would havebeen greatly saddened to see this elegantword replaced by the clumsy locution‘stir-fried’.+chittack: A measure of weight, equivalentto one ounce, seventeen pennyweights,twelve grains troy.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 19+chobdar: ‘To have one was a greatsign of prestige, since a mace-bearerwas a rare luxury. I still remember howthe poor Raja of Mukhpora, even whenfacing ruin, could not bear to let hischobdar go.’+choga (see banyan): Neel was pessimisticabout the future of this word,which he believed would be overwhelmedby its Turkish rival, caftan.+ chokey / choker / choakee / choky /chowki: ‘If an exchange of words be -tokens a joining of experience, thenit would appear that prisons are theprincipal hinge between the people ofHind. and Blatty. For if the Englishgave us their “jail” in its now ubiquitousforms, jel, jel-khana, jel-bot and the like,we for our part have been by no meansmiserly in our own gifts. Thus as earlyas the sixteenth century the Hind.chowki was already on its way acrossthe sea, eventually to effect its entryinto En glish as those very old wordschokey, choker, choky, and even sometimeschowki. The parent of these wordsis of course the Hind. chowk, whichrefers to a square or open place in thecentre of a village or town: this waswhere cells and other places of confinementwere customarily located, beingpresided over by a kotwal and policedby a paltan of darogas and chowkidars.But chokey appears to have gained ingrimness as it traveled, for its Hind.avatar is not the equal of its Englishequivalent in the conjuring of dread: afunction that devolves rather to qaidand qaidi – two words which startedtheir travels at almost the same time aschokey, and went on to gain admittanceunder such guises as quod, quoddie,and quodded, the last having thesense of “jailed”.’+chokra/chuckeroo: ‘Another instancein which Hind. and English usagessubtly diverge, for a chhokra in formerrefers to a youth, a lad, a stripling, whilechokra/chuckeroo points rather to arung in the ladder of employment,which, no matter whether in a household,a military encampment, or aship’s crew, was usually the lowest, andthus commonly (but by no means always)held by the young. In theRaskhali Rajbari it would have beenconsidered strange indeed to speak of amiddle-aged khidmatgar as a chhokra.But such an usage would not appearunusual in English. It is interestingin this regard to compare chokra/chuckeroo with its synonyms launder/launda, which were never used inmixed company, for reason perhaps, ofbaring a little too much of their manhood.’See also lascar.+choola/chula: ‘Another of thosewords in which the experience of migrationhas wrought a subtle shift ofpersonality. In sahiby bobacheeconnahsthe word usually referred toan oven, whereas in Hind. it was usedfor a stove with an open fire (fromwhich, the Laskari chuldan for “galley”).Often these stoves were portable,the combustibles being loaded into aclay or metal balde. It is this perhapsthat has misled some pundits intothinking that the Laskari dish, “galinhabalde,” or “balti chicken”, was namedafter a certain kind of stove. One doesnot need to have observed the preparationof this dish to know that this ispure buckwash, for if it were indeed

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 20thus named, then surely its namewould have been “choola chicken”.’choomer (*The Barney-Book): ‘InEnglish the use of the Hind. loan wordfor “kiss”, chumma, was used always inthe sense of “peck on the cheek”, andwas never applied to deeper amatoryexplorations. The misleading term “kissmiss”does not refer to the mystery ofthe choomer. As many a furtive classyhas discovered, the whispering of thisword in the city’s disreputable gullieswill lead not to a charterhouse, but toa handful of raisins.’+chop: ‘Another word of Hind. origin(from chhãp, “stamp” or “seal”) that haspassed fluently from the English argot ofIndia into the patois of southern China.It is not, however, related to +chopchop,“quick, quickly”, which is of Cantonesederivation (from k’wái-k’wái); it isthis latter form that yields the ugly vulgarismchopstick, none of the blame forwhich can be pinned on Hind.’+chop-chop: See above.+chopstick: See above.+chota/chhota/choota/: Scrawled uponthe back of the two of clubs in Neel’sJack-Chits are these words: ‘Chhota isto burra as peg is to mast: hence thecommon Laskari locution chota-peg, of -ten used synonymously with faltu-dol.’+chota-hazri: See above. ‘How Barrère& Leland have managed to come tothe conclusion that a chota-hazricorresponds to the “auroral mint julep orpre-prandial cocktail of Virginia” I willnever understand, for it usually consistsof nothing more than toast and tea.’chownee (*The Glossary): ‘A greatpity that this fine Hind. word for“military encampment” came to be replacedby the dull Anglo-Saxon “cantonment”.’+chuddar/chadar: ‘In no field ofmeaning has English relied more heavilyon migrants than in referring to theclothing of womens’ heads, shouldersand breasts. Yet, even having absorbedshawl, chuddar/chadar, and dooputty/dupatta,it still has no word forthat part of the sari that serves thesame function, for both ghungta andãchal remain strangers to the Oracle.The cumbly/kambal (“blanket”) canscarcely be offered as an alternative.’chuldan (*Roebuck): See choola/chula.chull (*The Barney-Book): ‘Barrère &Leland reveal their ignorance by givingthis the gloss of “make haste”, a meaningthat belongs more to the imperativejaw! Chull has much more the sense ofthe French allez or the Arabic yalla.One searches in vain for a good En -glish equivalent, “come on” being hardlyas expressive.’chup/choops (*The Barney-Book):‘Another word that has migratedthrough the nursery, being one of the

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 21few exhortations to silence that can beconsidered polite.’chupow/chupao (*The Glossary):‘Despite its present currency, this emigrantis unlikely to find a permanentseat in the House of Verbs, since itserves no function that is not alreadydischarged by the English “to hide”.’chute/choot: ‘This word’s popularity islargely due to the one notable advantagethat it possesses over other more specificanatomical terms: to wit, that it canbe applied to all human beings, irrespectiveof gender, in the full confidencethat the subject will be in possession ofa few such. This is possibly why it enjoyssuch widespread use, both in Hind.and English, the difference being thatin English it is rarely used in the absenceof some other paired element(ban-/betee- etc.). One exception is thecant term chutier, which is used ab u -sively to imply an exces sive endowmentin regard to this aspect of the anatomy.’See also banchoot/barnshoot etc.cobbily-mash (*The Glossary): ‘Thiswas, of course, not a mash at all, but apreparation of dried fish (being a corrup -tion of the Bengali term shutki-maach.)’+cockup: This was of course one ofmany words that perished in the abattoirof Victorian prudery. Being uncommonlyfond of the fish to whichit referred, lates calcarifer (bhetki/beckty), Neel refused to recognize thatthis term was greatly endangered: hecertainly bears some of the responsibilityfor its extinction.+compound/kampung: There was forlong a feeling within the family thatthis word ought not to be included inthe Chrestomathy, since the fact of itshaving gained entry into the Oraclein both its forms would provide a convincingrefutation of Neel’s pet theory(according to which, words could nevermigrate in pairs – see bandar). Theseanxieties were set at rest when a wordywallahpointed out that these words areneither hom onyms nor synonyms: theyare merely variant spellings of the sameword.conker/kunkur (*The Glossary): ‘Thisword has nothing whatever to do withwater- or horse-chestnuts. It is a corruptionof the Hind. kankar, “gravel”,and is used in the same sense.’+consumah/consummer/khansama:See bobachee.+coolin/kulin: ‘In no way to be confusedwith “coolie”, this was the wordused to refer to the highest rung of certaincastes.’ A contracted form has recentlygained some currency in classycircles: “cool”.’cot: See charpoy.cotia (*The Glossary): A vessel fromthe Kerala coast that was only rarely tobe sighted on the Hooghly.cow-chilo (*The Linkister): ‘Often haveI heard this item of the South Chinapatois being used to disparage the Chi-

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 22nese and their regard for women. Yet theexpression is merely a badly matchedpairing of words, the first being a corruptionof the Cantonese kai.’cranny/karani (*The Glossary): Seecarcanna.+cumbly/kambal: See chuddar.+cumra/kamra/camera (*The Glossary,*Roebuck): Neel gave the creditfor the introduction of this item of Portuguesenautical usage (camara), intothe languages of Hind., English included.In its original nautical sense, itwas used of course to mean ‘cabin’, butby virtue of conveniently expressing theidea of partitioned space, it has revertedto the sense of its Latin avatar,in which it meant ‘room’ or ‘chamber’.‘The curious use of gol-kamra (literally“round-room”) to mean “drawingroom”is unlikely to survive.’that the lascar enjoys the few momentsof leisure that fall to his lot.’+cushy/khush/khushi: ‘In Laskari thiswas the equivalent of the English nauticalusage “cheerily”. To the lascar,then, goes the credit for inventing theEnglish meaning of this word, whichwas carried onshore by sailors.’dabusa (*Roebuck): ‘Roebuck aversthat any cabin may be so designated,but it is a truism that every vessel is aworld unto itself, with its own tonguesand dialects – and on the Ibis this termwas applied, always and exclusively, tothe “tween-deck”, which should properlyhave been the “beech-ka-tootuk”.’+dacoit: ‘This word’, writes Neel, ‘althoughuniversally known, is frequentlymisused, for the term applies,by law, only to miscreants who belongto a gang of at least five persons.’+cumshaw: See baksheesh.cunchunee/kanchani (*The Glossary):See bayadère.cursy/coorsy/kursi (*The Barney-Book, *Roebuck, *The Glossary):From the Jack-Chits. ‘This Laskariword is not derived from the commonHind. word for “chair” (kursi) as manysuppose: it is, in my opinion, a corruptionof the English nautical term“cross-trees”, for it too refers to theperch that is formed by the junction ofa yard and a mast. But the resemblanceis not accidental, for it is in this seatdadu (*The Barney-Book): ‘Strangethat this English gypsy word for fathershould be the same as the Bengalifor “grandfather”; no less strange thatthe Eng. gypsy for mother, dai/dye,should be the same as the commonHind./Urdu for midwife.’+daftar/dufter: This was another wordwhich had already, in Neel’s lifetime,yielded to an ungainly rival, ‘office’.This too carried down with it a lashkarof fine English words that were usedfor its staff: the clerks known as crannies,the mootsuddies who labouredover the accounts, the shroffs who wereresponsible for money-changing, the

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 23khazana-dars who watched over theirtreasuries, the hurkarus and peons whodelivered messages, and of course, theinnumerable moonshies, dubashes anddruggermen who laboured over thetranslation of every document. It wasthe passing of the last three, all concernedwith the work of translation,that most troubled Neel; those were thewords he would cite when Englishmenboasted to him of the absorptive powerof their language: ‘Beware, my friends:your tongues were flexible when youwere still supplicants at the world’skhazanas. Now that you have thewhole world in a stranglehold, yourtongues are hardening, growing stiffer.Do you ever count the words you loseevery year? Beware! Victory is but thevanguard of decay and decline.’dai/dye (*The Barney-Book): Seedadu.+dak/dawk: Neel believed that thisword would eventually yield to theEnglish ‘post’ even in India, but he wasconvinced also that it would find itsway into the Oracle, not on its ownsteam, but because of its innumerablecompounds – dawk-bungalow, dawkdubba(‘post-box’) etc.+dam/daam (*The Glossary): ‘Sad indeedthat India’s currency took its namefrom rupya (Skt. “silver”) rather thanthe more accurate Hind. dam, “price”. Iwell remember a time when an adhelahwas half, a paulah a quarter and adamri an eighth of a dam. A tragedyindeed that the word, like the coin, wasdriven to beggary by a counterfeit – inthis instance, by the misinterpreting ofthe Duke of Wellington’s comment ofdismissal (“I don’t give a dam”). Whatthe Duke had meant to say, of course,was something in the order of “I don’tcare a tu’penny” (dam), but instead hebears the guilt of having put into circulationthe damnable “damn”. At this removewe can only speculate on howdifferent the fate of the word wouldhave been had he said, instead, “I don’tgive a damri.”’ On the margins of thisnote an anonymous descendant hasscribbled: ‘At least Uncle Jeetu wouldn’thave ruined the last scene of Gone Withthe Wind by shouting at Rhett Butler:“A dam is what you don’t give, youidiot – not a ‘damn’ . . .”’+daroga: See chokey.dashy (*The Barney-Book): Seebayadère. ‘This word is said to be derivedfrom devadasi (temple dancer),hence the frequent pairing debbies anddashies.’+dastoor/dastur: Because Neel alwaysgave precedence to nautical usages heassumed that this word would comeinto the Oracle because of the Laskariusage, in which it was the equivalent of‘stu’nsail/studdingsail’ (see also dol). Heallowed, as a long shot, that its homonym,which designated a Parsi religiousfunctionary, might also stand a goodchance of inclusion. He was wrong onboth counts: the Oracle unaccountablyhas chosen to gloss it as ‘custom’ or ‘commission’,from which usage it derivesdastoori, destoory etc. These last Neelruled out, because their meaning was soclose to bucksheesh.+dawk: See chit.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 24+dekko, dikk, deck, dekho: Neel tookbitter exception to all attempts to attributethis word to English Gypsyslang, insisting that it was a direct andrecent borrowing of the Hind. dekho,‘to see’.+devi, debi, debbie: ‘In English usage,the Hind. word for “goddess” acquireda wholly different connotation (forwhich see bayadère). The Laskari devi,on the other hand, was a corruption ofthe English “davit”.’+dhobi: ‘The mystery of laundering.’digh (*Roebuck): Neel was firmly ofthe opinion that this Laskari equivalentof the nautical sense of the word‘point’, as in ‘points of sailing’ or ‘headingsin relation to the wind’, came fromthe Bengali word for ‘direction’.+dinghy: From time to time, Neelwould inscribe a question mark againstwords which had been rewarded, in hisview, beyond their just desserts. Neel’sinterrogation of dinghy was scoredwith an especially heavy hand, for of allthe Bengali words for river-craft thisone seemed to him the least likely to beraised to coolinhood, the dingi beingthe meanest of boats.doasta: ‘This is one spiritous liquorabout which the good Admiral Smythis right; he describes it as: “An inferiorspirit often drugged or doctored forunwary sailors in the pestiferous densof filthy Calcutta and other sea-ports inIndia”.’dol (*Roebuck): Several of Neel’s Jack-Chits are devoted to the lascars’ wordsfor the architecture of a sailing vessel.‘Dol is what they call a mast, and forsail they use a borrowing from theEnglish serh (though I have sometimesheard them employ the good Bengaliword pâl ). To these are attached manyother terms, of greater specificity: thustrikat (often mispronounced “tirkat”)is “fore-” when attached to either dolor serh; bara is “main-”; kilmi is“mizzen-”, and sabar is t’gallant. A jurymast goes by the apt name phaltu-dol.As for the other sails: a sawai is a staysail;a gavi is a topsail; a tabar is a royal;a gabar is a sky-scraper; a dastur isa stu’nsail; and a spanker is a drawal.By combining these elements they areable to point to the most insignificantscraps of canvas – in their speech, thefore-t’gallant-stu’nsail is the trikatsabar-dastur,and they have no needeven to attach the word serh for theirintention to be perfectly understood.The most curious words are reserved,however, for the tangle of tackle thatprojects agil from the vessel’s head: thejib, for example, is a jíb, which malumsimagine merely to be a Laskari mis -pronunciation of the En glish word, littleknowing that it means “tongue” inHind.; their word for fly ing jib, fulanajíb,might be similarly mistaken bythose who did not know that it mightalso mean “anything’s tongue”; butmost curious of all is the word for thevery tip of this spar, which is called theshaitan-jíb. Could it be because towork there is indeed to feel the terrorof sitting upon the Devil’s tongue?’+doll/dal: Neel would have been glad,I think, to learn that the Oracularform for this commonest of Indian

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 25foods is dal, rather than either doll (notto be confused with pootly) or themysterious dhal, which is of course theHind./Bengali word for ‘shield’. In oneof his jottings he speculates that it isoften thus spelled in English because itrefers to a popular battlefield dish,‘lentils cooked in a shield.’+doolally/doolally-tap: ‘An illnessonce greatly prevalent among sahibsand mems, being the English equivalentof the Malay “amok”. It derived itsname from Deolali, where there was awell-known asylum. I believe it to havebeen one of the side-effects of laudanum,which would account for itspresent desuetude.’+dosooti/dosootie (*The Glossary):Literally ‘two yarn’, coarse cotton cloth;‘I was astonished to learn from Mr Reidthat in America Dosootie is consideredthe highest quality of shirt fabric.’druggerman (*The Glossary): ‘Likemoonshies, dubashes and linkisters, amystery of language – an interpreterwhose title derives from the Arabic-Persian tarjuman.’+dubba/dubber: This word owes itspresence in the Chrestomathy to lascars,who made the Hind. word for‘box’ or ‘container’ a common article ofnautical usage.dubbah/dubber (*The Admiral): Neeltook exception to the Admiral’s defi -nition of this term: ‘a coarse leathernvessel for holding liquids in India.’ ‘Almostnever in Hind. is this commonterm for container applied to a receptaclethat holds liquids. Such a usage isclearly exceptional, even among thosewho occasionally apply it to certain objectsthat are necessary for the properconduct of stool-pijjin.’ See also dawk.+duffadar/dafadar: One of those manyranks of lower officialdom that foundan afterlife in the Oracle. ‘The magnitudeof the part these men once playedin our lives can be easily judged bylooking at any kalkatiya migrant’s certificateof emigration, on the back ofwhich is almost always noted the nameof the duffadar who was responsiblefor the recruitment (and usually in thescribbled Bengali script of some harriedcranny).’dumbcow/dumcao (*The Glossary):‘The popularity of this word and itssteady advance towards the Peerage ofthe Verb is due no doubt to its bilingualexpressiveness, a dumbcowing beinga harangue intended to cow – or betterstill gubbrow – its victim into dumbness.’+dumbpoke: Kitchens which served‘casseroles’ never failed to ignite Neel’sire, for he believed that word to be aninsufferable piece of pretension, especiallywhen the dumbpoke was at handand ready to use. The recent resurrectionof the Hind. original dumpukht would inno wise have consoled him, since it isnow used in a strictly Hind. sense.+dungaree/dungri: ‘What dinghy wasto boats, the Hind. dungri was to cloth

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 26– a coarse cotton fabric unworthy ofsurvival, far less coolin-dom.’and less offensively, be translated as“unfamiliar spirit”.’+dupatta / dooputty: See chuddar /chadar.durwauza-bund (*The Glossary):‘These were the words which khidmutgarswould use to turn away unwantedvisitors: in a BeeBee’s mind theuse of the Hind. for “closed door” wasmore acceptable than an outright lie.The Oracle is sure to welcome it, forthe sheer cunning of its reasoning.’+durzee: ‘The mystery of tailoring.’Faghfúr of Maha Chin (*The Glossary):‘Such was the Laskari phrase forthe “Emperor of China”, and if you askedto whom it referred, they would tell you,almost always, that the personage inquestion was the Raja of Chin-kalan,which was but their name for Canton.’faltu- or phaltu-dol (*Roebuck): ‘Thisis, strictly speaking, the Laskari termfor “jury-mast”, and it is in that sensethat it often finds employment in shipboardgirlery, being understood to referto a foreshortened, unreliable ordeficient organ of increase.’faltu/phaltu-tanni (*Roebuck): Seeturnee.+fanqui: ‘The anglice of fan-kwei,which the *The Linkister defines as“foreign devil”. The term may easily,+foozle/foozilow: ‘Almost certainlyfrom the Hind. phuslana, “to make afool of ”, which is said to have been furthertransformed in America to foozleand even comfoozle.’+free: Neel was much in love with thisword and would have been glad toknow that the Oracle had fully acknowledgedit to be a derivation fromthe common Sanskrit and Hind. rootpriya (‘dear’ or ‘beloved’). ‘As for thetruth of “freedom” it will remain for -ever elusive until such time as it iswrested free of English; not till thenwill the fuller meaning of priya be restoredto it.’fulana-jíb (*Roebuck): Flying-jib.See dol.fuleeta-pup (*The Glossary): ‘A consummer’smishearing of “fritter-puff ”that found its way into the lexiconagainst all odds.’gabar (*Roebuck): Skyscraper or skysail.See dol.gadda / gudda / gadha / gudder (*TheGlossary): ‘Why is it that when thesahib borrows a Hind. zoological term,it is only for the purposes of abuse? It is,of course, impossible to deny that gadhais often used in Hind. to mean “fool”, butit is true also that the ass is the familiar ofthe Lord of Mysteries, Vishwakarma.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 27Ooloo/ullu, similarly, may well sometimesbe used to mean “fool”, but whocan forget that the owl is also the familiarof the goddess Lakshmi? As for bandar,it has none of the abusive implicationsof its English usage, being employedrather as a term of affection or endearment,in the sense of “mischievous”.’discharging as many functions as canbe said to exist in such a place: hewrites accounts, he dumbcows, he gubbrows,he serves as a druggermanwhen needed. All that can be said ofhim with any certainty is that the titlecould not come to him until he hadgained the Burra Sahib’s ear.’galee / girley / gali (*The Glossary):‘Oaths, obscenities; from which girlery,the equivalent of the Bengali gali-gola –pertaining to abuse’.+ganta/ghanta: ‘Bell, from whichHind. “hour”. But to “ring your ganta”is considered girlery.’gavi (*Roebuck): Topsail. See dol.ghungta: See dooputty/dupatta.girlery: See galee.girmitiya: ‘The genius of the Bhojpurilanguage,’ writes Neel, ‘derives thismemorable term from the root girmit,which is a corruption of Eng. “agreement”[or indenture]’.+godown: See backshall.gol-cumra (*The Glossary): See cumra.+gomusta/gomushta: ‘For this mysteryof the daftar there can be nosimple definition, for he is to be seengoolmaul/gollmaul (*The Glossary):Neel took issue with Sir Henry’s defi -nition of this word as ‘mix-up’: ‘It ispatently evident that this word wasonce merely Hind. slang for “zero” (literally“circular thing”). In this sense itreferred originally to a conundrum orpuzzle. It was only by extension that itcame to mean “mix-up”, but of lateit has been so overburdened by thisconnotation that it is now generallyused to signify an uproar, or a greatfuss.’goozle-coonuh/goozul-khana (*TheGlossary): See bobachee.gordower (*The Glossary): ‘A type ofBengal boat as ugly as its name.’grag (*Roebuck): Grog, from whichthe term by which taverns were affectionatelyknown: grag-ghars.griblee (*Roebuck): Graplin, der. Eng.+griffin/griff: See pucka.gubber (*The Glossary): ‘That thisbandooki coin bore a resemblance

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 28to the Hind. for “cow-dung” gave itmany added uses in the dufter, forthe cranny could not be dumbcowedfor saying to a Burra Sahib: “Sir, mayyour pockets be weighed down withgubbers.”’gubbrow/ghabrao (*The Glossary):See dumbcow.+gup: ‘Talk, gossip; but never in En -glish, gup-shup, which is so much thebetter expression.’+halalcor/halalcore: ‘In English this,like harry-maid and muttranee, wasone of many titles for the mysteries oftoiletry.’harry-maid (*The Glossary): See halalcore.hathee-soond (*Roebuck): Seebhandari.hazree/hazri (*Roebuck): Muster(‘from which’, adds Neel, ‘we havechotee hazree, which wakes the sahibin time for the daily mustering’).hoga (*The Barney-Book): ‘This wordis a fine illustration of the changes thatoccur when an expression crosses fromHind. to English. The Hind. originalho-ga is usually employed to mean“will happen” or “will do”. In English,on the other hand, the word is almostalways used in conjunction with a negativeparticiple, to imply strong disapproval.Thus was a notoriously starchyBeeBee heard to exclaim, on findingher husband in the arms of a Rumjohnny:“Not in my bichawna dear;just won’t hoga.” ’+hong: ‘In southern China this wordwas applied indifferently, in English,to a certain kind of trading esta blish -ment, a company of merchants, a setof buildings, and even to cer tain boatskept by merchants: hong-boat’.+hookum: ‘The Laskari word for“command”.’hubes!/habes! (*Roebuck): This wasthe Laskari equivalent of the En -glish nautical hookum, ‘heave’, andNeel was so struck by Roebuck’snotes on this term that he copiedthem down verbatim: ‘[When issu -ing this command] sometimes a littleabuse is necessary; as for instance“Habes sálá!” “Bahin chod habes!” or“Habes harámzuda”!’+hurkaru/harcara: See dufter/daftarand chit/chitty.hurremzad/huramzuda/harámzádaetc. (*The Glossary): See badmash.istoop/istup (*Roebuck): ‘I can still feelit between my fingers, that vile oakum,endlessly picking, picking, picking...’From the Portuguese estopa.+jadoo/jadu: Magic, conjuring (‘where -from the common usage, jadoo-gharfor Freemason’s Lodge’).

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 29jalebi/jellybee: See laddu.+jammah/jama: ‘The only reason whythis word may fail to achieve the sameeminence as the compound, pyjama(literally “leg-clothing”) is that it is toogeneral, being applied to all clothing.’See also kameez.+jasoos: Neel was intrigued by theEnglish spellings of words related tothis common Hind. term for ‘spy’ –jasoosy (spying) and jasooses (spies).jaw/jao (*The Barney-Book): Seechull.jawaub (*The Glossary, *The BarneyBook): ‘This borrowing of the Hind.for “answer” was never a persuasive migrant,its function in English beinglimited to a single sense, which Barrère& Leland describe thus: “If a gentlemanproposes to a lady and is refusedhe is said to have been juwaubed.”’+jemadar: ‘In my youth, as I remem -ber, this word designated the secondhighestrank for a sepoy, followingupon subedar/soubadar. But of latethe usage has changed somewhat, andis often applied to bhistis, and also tosome of the mysteries of toiletry.’+jildi/jeldy/jaldi: The Oracle’s recognitionof this word appears to havebeen a cause of much jubilation, for oneof my predecessors has noted the definitionin full: ‘Haste, as in phrases onthe jildi, in a hurry, and to do or movea jildi’.jillmill (*The Glossary): ‘Bandookishutterwork’.+joss: ‘It was in Macao that I learnt thecorrect etymology of this term, whichderives not from a Cantonese root, as Ihad imagined, but from the PortugueseDios. Hence its use in all matters pertainingto worship: joss-stick, josshouse,joss-candle, and of coursejoss-pijjin, meaning “religion” (fromwhich derives the usuage joss-pijjinmanto mean “priest”).’kalmariya (*Roebuck): ‘A sail-emptyingcalm, the word being derived, or soRoebuck tells us, from the Portuguesecalmaria.’+kameez/kameeze: This word’s entryinto the caverns of the Oracle wouldhave amazed Neel, who believed that itwas doomed to a pauper’s grave. ‘Myreasoning rests on two pillars, the first ofwhich is that the tunics that are knownby this name could just as well bedesignated by a near-synonym, kurta.There are those who point out that akameeze is a longer and more elaborategarment – but should it not thenbe described by the more euphoniousterm angarkha? The scond reason whythe word kameeze is unlikely to surviveis because of the grave challengeposed by its near cognate, the Englishchemise. There are those who will object,no doubt, that kameeze derivesfrom the Arabic qamís, while the En -glish chemise (like the Portuguesecamiz) is descended from the Latincamisia. No credence can be accordedto this argument, however, for the goodreason that the Arabic qamís may itselfbe descended from the Latin. In any

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 30event there can be no doubt thatkameez and chemise are close kin;nor can it be doubted that the latteris so rapidly usurping the territory ofthe former that the phrase “pyjamachemise”may soon come to replace thename of the ensemble that is nowknown as the sulwaur-kameeze. Sucha change is wholly to be welcomed:might not the notoriously pugnaciousAfghan, for instance, undergo a beneficialchange of temperament if he couldbe persuaded to abandon his pricklykameez in favour of the cooler andmore flattering chemise?’karibat: The discovery of this word in*The Barney-Book gave Neel thegreatest pleasure for it had become, bythe last years of his life, so obscuredwith disuse as almost to be archaic. It isclear from his notes that he remembereda time when this word, whichjoins the Tamil kari with the Bengalibhat ‘rice’, was commonly used in En -glish, to mean ‘an Indian meal’. In thatsense it stood not just for ‘curry-rice’ assome might think, but was rather anEnglish equivalent of such phrases as‘have you had your rice?’ the meaningof which can best be expressed as ‘haveyou eaten?’ Although unable to recallwith absolute certainty, he had a vaguememory of even having heard peoplesay, in this sense: ‘have you karibatted?’+kassidar/khasadar: See burkundaz.ket (*Roebuck): Cat o’nine tails (butNeel notes that he often heard this mostdreaded of chawbucks referred to as akoordum, which usage Roebuck corroborates,adding that it derives from thePortuguese cordão).+khalasi/classy: Although usuallyspelled as classy, this Bengali word for‘boatman’ was generally used in aderogatory sense, to mean ‘a low kindof person’. Neel would have been astonishedto learn of its entry into thechambers of the Oracle.+khidmutgar/kitmutgar/kistmutgar/kistmatgar etc.: ‘The variety of En glishspellings for this word is truly astonishingand had led to many misconceptions.Among the many specu lations aboutits origins the most febrile are thosethat attach to the variant kismat+gar.Some have suggested that the termoriginally re ferred to astrologers, a greatnumber of whom were once employedby every household. It was even suggestedto me once that the propermeaning of the word is “one who followshis master’s kismat” (“Surely, sir,”I could not help retorting, “such a personwould be a budkismatgar?”). In factthe term is the literal equivalent ofthe English servant in the sense of“provider of service”.’khubber/kubber/khabar (*The Glossary):‘Only the naïve would take thisword to mean “news” in the sense signifiedby that term in English. For if thatwere so then its derivate, kubberdaur/khabardar,would mean “bearerof news” instead of “beware!”’+khud: ‘Once, in an argument, a selfstyledpundit cited this word as an instanceof a loanword that remainedunchanged in meaning after travelingbetween languages. “But if that wereso,” I said, “then surely khud in Hind.would possess the same connotationsas the En glish ‘chasm’ or ‘gap’, would it

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 31not?” “Why so it does,” he said. “Sothen tell me, sir,” I asked, “how oftenhave you heard anyone say in Hind.that there lay a great khud betweenthem and their fellow men?”’+khus-khus: See tatty.khwancha (*Roebuck): See tapori.kilmi (*Roebuck): ‘mizzen-’; see dol.+laddu: There has been much familialdissension over whether Neels’ expec -tations for this word were fulfilled.He imagined that it would find itsway into the Oracle in its Laskarisense, in which it referred to the top(or cap) of the mast. But instead, thisword, like jalebi/jellybee, has beenanointed only in its incarnation as asweetmeat. Yet it is a fact that thesweetmeat, like the cap of the mast,took its name from the roundedness ofits shape, hence Neel’s intuition was notwholly at fault.+kismet/kismat: ‘Great reams ofbuckwash have been written aboutthe superstitious implications of thisword. In fact it derives from the Arabicroot q-s-m, “to divide” or “apportion”, soit means nothing more than “portion”or “lot”.’+kotwal: See chokey.kubberdaur/khabardar: See khubber.kurta: See kameez.kussab (*Roebuck): See lascar.kuzzana/cuzzaner (*The Glossary):Neel felt that the administrative use ofthis word, to refer to district treasuries,was unduly restrictive. ‘Why, as SirHenry has shown, En glish travelerswere using this word as early as 1683,hence that famous passage of HedgesDiary, in which he reports a demandfor eight thousand Rupees to be paidinto “ye King’s Cuzzana”.’lall-shraub / loll-shrub / lál-sharáb(*The Glossary, *The Barney-Book):‘This phrase was so commonly used thatto say ‘red wine’ was considered pretentious’.See also sharab/xarave etc.+langooty/langoot/langot: ‘Well wasit said of this most abbreviated versionof the dhoti that it substituted a“pocket-handkerchief for a fig-leaf ”.’lantea (*The Glossary): ‘Curious thatthe Oracle overlooked this commonChinese boat while anointing the rarerMalay lanchara.’larkin: ‘What a mademoiselle is to amadame, so was a larkin to a BeeBee,being nothing other than the corruptionof Hind. larki, “girl”.’larn-pijjin: See pijjin.lás/purwan-ka-lás (*Roebuck): ‘A lazyshortening’, Neel notes, ‘for the Portugueseword for yardarm: laiz.’

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 32+lascar: ‘Almost to a man the lascarswill say that their name comes from thePersian lashkar, meaning “militia” or“member of a militia”, and thus be extension“mercenary” or “hired hand”.That there is some connection betweenthese words is beyond question, but Iam convinced that the strictly nauticalusage of the term is a purely Europeanintroduction, dating back perhaps tothe Portuguese. In Hind., of course, theterm is applied to foot-soldiers, notsailors, and almost always denotes aplurality (so that it would be absurd tosay in Bengali, as one well might inEnglish, “a lashkar of lascars”). Eventoday a lascar will rarely use this termto describe himself, preferring insteadsuch words as jahazi or khalasi (theanglice of which is the curious classy);or else he will use a title of rank,whereby the seniormost is a serang,followed by tindal and seacunny. Nordoes this exhaust all the gradations oflascar ranks, for there are others suchas kussab and topas, whose functionsare somewhat obscure (although thelatter seem usually to serve as ship’ssweeper). It is not perhaps surprisingthat there is no special Laskari wordfor the lowest in the ladder of rank -ings: as with the English “ship’s boy”,this unfortunate worthy is so oftenmocked, taunted and kicked that he ismore butt than boy, and to speak thename of his rank is almost offensive(and the terms by which he is generallyknown do indeed serve as somethingof an insult: launda and chhokra – theanglice of which are launder andchuckeroo). Thus it happens that a lascar’smost frequent use of the termlascar corresponds more closely to itsHind. or Persian usage than to theEnglish, for he generally employs it asa collective noun, to mean “crew”(lashkar). The strangest part of the curiousodyssey of the word lascar is thatit has now re-entered some Hind. languages(notably Bengali), in which itis used in the European sense, to mean“sailor”! I am persuaded, however,that where this is the case, the word isa recent intruder, introduced throughthe nautical dialects of Portuguese orEnglish.’+lashkar (*Roebuck): See above.latteal/lathial (*The Glossary): Seeburkmundauze.+lattee/lathee: ‘There are those whoclaim that this is merely a “stick”. Tothem I say: Well, why do you not trythe sound of fiddle-lattees and see howwell it serves? The word is actually apart-synonym for “baton”, since it isapplied only to that incarnation of thestick in which it is both an instrumentof chastisement and a symbol of imperialauthority. By this token, it is theEnglishman’s version of Hind. danda,which derives of course from dand,meaning “rule” or “authority”.’ ElsewhereNeel notes that a lathi was neverto be mistaken for the kind of walkingstick that went by the name of penanglawyer,‘with which’, as the Admiral soaptly remarks, ‘the administration ofjustice was wont to be settled at PuloPenang’.launder/launda: See lascar.+linkister: Neel would have taken issuewith the Oracle’s derivation of thisword as a corruption of ‘linguister’. Hebelieved it to be, rather, a colloquial

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 33extension of the word ‘link’ – onethat came to be applied to translatorsbecause it so perfectly fitted theirfunction.loocher (*The Glossary): ‘The easewith which this derivative of the Hind.luchha has come into English has muchto do with its resemblance to its synonym“lecher”: but this too is the reasonwhy it will, in all probability, soonlapse from use.’loondboond/lundbund (*Roebuck):This cognate of launder was the curiousLaskari word for ‘dismasted’. Speculatingon its origins, Roebuck writes,‘perhaps from nunga moonunga, starknaked,’ which in turn prompted Neelto observe: ‘How plain the En glish andhow vivid the Laskari, which should betranslated, surely, as “dismembered”?Could it be that Roebuck knew neitherof lunds nor bunds, and nor, possibly,of their relation to each other?’+loot: ‘I am persuaded that this isanother word that English owes toLaskari, for this derivative of the Hind.lút probably first found employment onthe Company Bawhawder’s ships whenapplied to captured French vessels (inthe sense of “prize” or “plunder”).’+lorcha: ‘Whether this is a ship of Portuguesemake or a Chinese copy of anEuropean design is a vexed issue; sufficeit to say that these vessels are oftenseen off the coast of southern China.’luckerbaug (*The Glossary): ‘Overthis English word, speakers of Hind.and Bengali have been known to cometo blows, the former contending that itderives from their lakkarbagga, “hyena”,and the latter claiming it to be a corruptionof nekrebagh, “wolf ”. The matteris impossible to decide for I haveheard it being applied to both thesecreatures, and the jackal to boot.’lugow/lagao (*The Glossary): ‘A fineexample of a humble word which, having“entered through the hawse-holes”,as the saying goes, has now ascended tothe Peerage of the Verb. In its correctLaskari usage, it is the exact nauticalcounterpart of “to bind” or “to fasten”.Given the English lexicon’s generalenthusiasm for terms related to bind -ing, tying, beating, pulling and so on,there would seem to be nothing remarkableabout its steady rise throughthe ranks. Its passage into civilian usemight well have been occasioned by thephrase “lugowing a line” (i.e., “fasteninghawse”, “binding a rope” etc.). Thisexpression has gained such widespreadcurrency that it may well be the ancestorof the verb “to lug”.’+maistry/mistri/mystery: Few wordsaroused Neel’s passions as much asthese. A recent discovery among hisnotes is the draft of a letter to a wellknownCalcutta newspaper.‘Dear Sir: As one of the foremostEnglish journals in the Indian subcontinent,you are rightly regarded assomething of an oracle on the subjectof that language. It is therefore withthe greatest regret that we have notedof late, a creeping misuse of the wordmistri on your pages. More than oncehas it been suggested that this is a Hindusthaneeword that refers indifferentlyto plumbers, fitters, masons and repair-

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 34men. Now the truth is, sir, that theword mistri along with its variants,maistry and mystery, are, after balti,the commonest Portuguese-derivedwords in the languages of India (by wayof mestre). Like balti they may wellhave travelled by a nautical route, forthe original meaning of maistry wassimilar to its English cognate “master”(both being derived from the Latinmagister), and was probably first used inthe sense of “ship’s master”. It is in asimilar sense that the term maistry isstill employed, being applied mainly tooverseers, and preserving fully the connotationsof authority that are implicitin its English cousin “master”. It is interestingto note that in India as in Europe,the connotations of this fecundterm have developed along parallelpaths. Thus, just as the French maîtreand Italian maestro imply also the masteryof a trade or craft, so similiarly is theword mistri applied in Hindu sthaneeto artisans and master-craftsmen: it isin this latter form that it is now appliedto repairmen, workmen and the like.On this subject, sir, might it also besuggested that you would do well toadopt the variant spelling mystery,which possesses the great advantage ofmaking evident the word’s direct connubiumwith the Latin ministerium(from which we get such usages as “TheMystery Plays”, so-called because theywere produced by workmen who practiseda mistery, or ministerium)? Wouldthis not also deepen our sense of awewhen we refer to the “Fash ioner of AllThings” as the “Divine Mystery”?’This letter was never posted, but inkeeping with his tenets, Neel alwaysused the variant mystery.+mali/malley/mauly/molley/mallee:‘The mysteries of the garden.’+malum: ‘Some dictionaries persist inmisspelling this word as malem eventhough its correct form has been a partof the English language since the seventeenthcentury. This Laskari wordfor “ship’s officer” or “mate” is, ofcourse, derived from the Arabicmu’allim, “knowledgeable”.’+mandir: See sammy-house.masalchie (*The Glossary): Seebobachee.maski: ‘In no way is this curiousexpression connected with “musk” or“masks”. In the zubben of the SouthChina Coast, it figures rather as somethingthat would be described in Hind.as a takiya-kalám – that is to say, an expressionthat is used not for its meaning(of which it possesses none) butmerely out of habit, so that it becomes,through constant repetition, as familiarand as unremarkable as a pillow ortuckier.’+mochi/moochy: ‘The mysteryleather.’+mootsuddy/mutsaddi: See dufter.+munshi/moonshee: See dufter.ofmura (*Roebuck): ‘For a long time, Ihad no idea what the lascars meantwhen they spoke of the “jamna mura”and the “dawa mura”. Only later was I tolearn that this was their word for “tack”,a rare borrowing from the Italian.’

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 35+mussuck: ‘Strange indeed is thisname for the leather water-bag carriedby bhistis, for it is but the Arabic forpuckrow.’muttranee (*The Glossary): See halalcore.+nainsook/nayansukh: ‘“Pleasing tothe eye” was the name of this fine clothin Hind. The same cannot be said,however, of the English corruption ofour word.’nuddee (*the Admiral): ‘This was asmuch a river as a nullah is a ditch,so why one should be universallyused and the other not is beyond myreckoning.’+nullah: See above.+pani/pawnee/parny: Neel hotly disputedthe notion that the Hind. wordfor water had entered the Englishlanguage through its use in such compoundsas brandy-pawnee and blattypawnee.This was another instancein which he gave full credence to Barrère& Leland’s derivation of it fromthe gypsy word for water. See alsobilayuti.+parcheesi/parcheezi: Neel was outragedto find that the familiar pastimeof his childhood, pachcheesi, was beingpackaged and sold as Ludo, Parcheesietc. ‘Would that we could copyrightand patent all things of value in ourpatrimony, before they are claimed andstolen by these greed-mongers, whothink nothing of making our childrenpay for the innocent diversions thathave been handed, even to the poorestof them, as a free bequest from thepast.’ No shop-bought version of thisgame was ever allowed to cross histhreshold, and he made sure that hischildren played it as he had, on a squareof embroidered cloth, with the brightestof Seychelles cowries.ooloo/ullu: See gadda/gadha/gudder.peechil (*Roebuck): See agil.oolta-poolta / oolter-poolter (*TheGlossary): ‘While it is by no meansincorrect to gloss this expression ashaving the sense of “upside down”, itought to be noted that in Laskari itwas applied to a vessel that had beentipped over on her beam ends.’paik (*The Glossary): See burkundaz.+penang-lawyer: See lathi.phaltu-tanni: See turnee.+pijjin/pidgin: ‘Numerous indeed arethe speculations on the origins of thismuch-used expression, for people areloathe to accept that it is merely a wayof pronouncing that commonest ofEnglish words: “business”. But such indeedis the case, which is why a noviceor griffin is commonly spoken of as alearn- or larn-pijjin. I have recentlybeen informed of another interestingcompound, stool-pijjin, which is used,

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 36I believe, to describe the business ofanswering Nature’s call.’poggle/porgly/poggly (*The Glossary,*The Barney-Book): On thisword Neel quotes with disapprovalBarrère & Leland’s borrowing of SirHenry’s observations: ‘A madman, anidiot, a dolt. [From] Hindu págal ... Afriend used . . . to adduce a macaronicadage which we fear the non-Indianwill fail to appreciate: “Pogal et pecuniajaldi separantur”, i.e., a fool and hismoney are soon parted.’ To this Neeladds: ‘If such were indeed the casethen none would be more deserving ofpauperdom than these pundits, for apoggle may be out of his mind, but heis no fool.’+pollock-saug / palong-shák (*TheGlossary): ‘Sir Henry has never beenso wrong as in his gloss of this mostglorious of greens: “A poor vegetable,called also ‘country spinach’”.’pootly/putli (*The Glossary): ‘SirHenry, ever the innocent, glossespootly-nautch as if it were mere Hind.for “doll-” or “puppet-dance”! But onecan scarcely doubt that he knew fullwell what the words meant in English(for which see bayadère).’+pucka/pucca: Neel believed that theEnglish meaning of this word came notfrom the Hind. ‘ripe’, as was often said,but rather the alternative denotation –‘cooked’, or ‘baked’ – in which sense itwas applied to ‘baked’ or ‘burnt’ bricks.‘A pucka sahib is thus the hardest andmost brickish of his kind. Curiouslythe locution “kutcha sahib” is neverused, the word griffin serving as itsequivalent.’puckrow / puckerow / pakrao (*TheGlossary): ‘It is easy to be misled intothinking that this is merely the Hind.for “hold” or “grasp” and was borrowedas such by the English soldier. Butthe word was quite commonly usedalso to mean “grapple”. When usedby pootlies and dashties in this senseits implications were by no means soldierly.’+pultan/paltan: ‘An interesting instanceof a word which, after havingbeen borrowed by Hind. (for its militaryapplication “platoon”) is reabsorbedinto English with the slightlyaltered sense of “multitude”.’+punch: ‘Strange indeed that the beverageof this name has lost all memoryof its parent: Hind. panj (“five”). In mytime we scorned this mixture as an unpalatableeconomy.’+pundit: Neel was not persuaded ofthe validity of the usual etymology ofthis word, whereby it is held to derivefrom a common Hind. term for‘learned man’ or ‘scholar’. ‘A hint asto its true origin is to be seen in theeighteenth-century French spelling ofit, pandect. Does this not clearly indicatethat the word is a compound of“pan” + “edict” – meaning “one whopronounces on all matters”? Surely thisis a closer approximation of its somewhatsatirical En glish connotationsthan our respectful Hind. pundit?’

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 37+punkah-wallah/-wala: ‘The mysteryof the fan.’purwan (*Roebuck): Yard (spar fromwhich sail is set); here Neel has underlinedcarefully his tutor’s footnote:‘Purwan, I think, is compounded ofPur, a wing, or feather, and Wan, aship, which last word is much usedby the lascars from Durat (properlySoorut) etc., so that Purwan, theyards of the ship, might also be translatedas the wings upon which the shipflies’.+pyjama/pajama: ‘There must surelybe some significance to the fact thatthe Hind. for leg (pao) has received amuch warmer welcome into the En -glish language than the word for head(sir). While variants of pao figure inmany compounds, including char+poy,tea+poy, and py+jama, sir has to itscredit only turban (sirbandh) and seersucker(sirsukh).’+quod/qaid: See chokey.+rankin/rinkin (*The Barney-Book):‘A fine piece of English gypsy-slang,from our own rangin – colourful.’+rawnee/rani: ‘Although this Hind.word did indeed mean “queen”, in En -glish usage it had another connotation,for which see bayadère.’+roti/rooty/rootie: ‘It is my suspicionthat the Oracle will absorb this as theHind. roti, but it could just as well, asthe Barneymen rightly observe, makeits travels in the latter two forms, takenfrom the Bengali – these are, afterall, the words that English soldierscommonly use in describing the breadthat is served in their chownees.’ Itis no mystery that the English soldierdoes not trouble to distinguish be -tween leavened and unleavened breadsince the latter is a quantity unknownto his tongue: thus, what a rootie is tohim would be to a sepoy a pao-roti.I am told that it is not merely the presenceof yeast, but also of this prefix,pao, that prevents many sepoys fromeating En glish bread: they believe thatyeasted dough is kneaded with thefeet (pao) and is therefore unclean. Ifonly it were to be explained to themthat the pao of pao-roti is merely aHind. adaptation of pão, the Portuguesefor bread! Imagine, if on some arduousmarch a starving soldier were to denyhimself succour due to a grievous misconception:a simple word of explanationwould spare him his cries ofbachaw! bachaw! This, if anything, is aperfect illustration of why etymology isessential to man’s survival.’+ruffugar / ruffoogar / rafugar (*TheGlossary): ‘In philological circles acautionary tale is told of a griffinwho, having been set upon by a scruffybudmash, berated his assailant withthe cry: “Unhand me, vile ruffoogar!”The speaker was mistaken in believingthis to be Hind. for “ruffian”, for aruffoogar is merely a clothes-repairer.’Rum-Johnny (*The Barney-Book):‘Taken from Hind. Ramjani, this wordhad a wholly different connotation inEnglish, for which see bayadère.’

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 38+rye/rai (*The Barney-Book): Neelwas right in predicting that this commonHind. word for ‘gentleman’ wouldappear in the Oracle in its Englishgypsyvariant rye, rather than in theusual Indian form.sabar (*Roebuck): topgallant or t’gallant;see dol.+sahib: This word was a source of bafflementto Neel: ‘How did it happenthat the Arabic for “friend” became,in Hind. and English, a word meaning“master”?’ The question was answeredby a grandson who had visited theSoviet Union; on the margins of Neel’snote he scribbled: ‘“Sahib” was to theRaj what “comrade” is to Communists –a mask for mastery.’ See also Beebee.+salwar/shalwar/shulwaur: See kameez.+sammy (*The Barney-Book): ‘Theanglice of Hind. swami, from whichsammy-house to mean “mandir”:whether this is preferable to “pagoda” isa matter of debate.’sammy-house: See above.sawai (*Roebuck): staysail; see dol.+seacunny/seaconny: On this word,meaning ‘helmsman’, Neel penned anote that covers the verso of the four ofhearts: ‘It is not uncommon to hear itsaid that the term seacunny/seaconnyis derived from an old English wordmeaning “rabbit” – to wit: “cony” or“coney” (sea-cunny thus being interpretedto mean “sea-rabbit”). Bewareanyone who tells you this, for he is havinga quiet laugh at your expense: heprobably knows full well that “coney”has a secret, but far more common, use(as when a London buy-em-dear saysto a prospective customer, “No money,no coney”). This is why the more puckama’amsahibs will not allow the wordseacunny to pass their lips, preferringto use the absurd expression sea-bunny.(“Well then, madam,” I was oncetempted to say, “if we are thus to describea helmsman, should we not alsospeak of the Great Sea-bunny in theSky?”) If only one could find the wordsto explain to these ladies that no rabbitneed fear the conning of seacunnies:the term is utterly harmless and derivesmerely from the Arabic sukkán, meaning“rudder”, from which we get sukkániand thus seacunny.’ See also lascar.+seersucker: Neel objected vehementlyto the notion that the name of this cottonmaterial was derived (as the Oraclewas later to contend) from the Persianshir-o-shakkar, or ‘milk and sugar’. ‘Bywhat stretch of the imagination couldanyone imagine that a sweet, milkysyrup would be pleasant to wear on theskin?’ Instead, following Sir Henry, hederived the word from sir-sukh, ‘joyof/to the head’, on the analogy of turban(which he thought to be derivedfrom Hind. sir-bandh – ‘head-band’).He took the view that the terms wereaptly paired since the latter was sometimesmade of the former. As supplementalevidence he cited a maximwhich he claimed to be commonamong lascars: sirbandh me sirsukh – ‘aturban is happiness for the head’.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 39+sepoy/seapoy: ‘ The variant spelling,sea-poy, has caused much confusionover the ages (see charpoy). One illinformedwordy-pundit has even espousedthe theory that this term is amispronunciation of “sea-boy” and wasthus originally a synonym for lascar.This is, of course, an elementary misunderstandingand could be easily correctedif the English spelling of sepoywere to be altered to sepohy. Thiswould have the dual advantage of advertisingthis word’s descent from thePersian/Turkish sipáhi, while also makingevident its kinship to the Frenchspahi, which refers similarly to a certainkind of colonial mercenary.’+serang: See lascar.domain – puckrow, bundo, lagow,chawbuck etc. – only one has risen tothe rank of a true grandee of theUpper House; only one has claimed adukedom for itself. This is, strangelyenough, that humblest of termschãpo/chãpna, in its corrupted form,shampoo. The reason for this, surely, isthat the notion of chãpo-ing embodiessome of the more pleasureable aspectsof grappling, grasping and so on – thatis to say of kneading, pressing, touching,massaging. Those who would seekto reduce this word to the rank ofnoun would do well to note that itwill not meekly relinquish its activeform, clinging to its animate energieseven when forced into the LowerHouse (a case in point being theFrench le shampooing).’serh (*Roebuck): See dol.+seth: See beparee. Neel was aware ofthe raging controversy that surroundsthe question of whether the term seth isrelated to such words as chetty, chettiarand shetty. But lacking any expertise inthe languages of southern India, he wasunable to reach any conclusion on thesubject.+shabash/shahbash: ‘“Bravo!” to SirHenry.’+shampoo: ‘Is it not a commentary onthe relationship of England and Indiathat most of the Hind. candidates forthe Peerage of the English Verb pertainto grappling, grasping, binding, tyingand whipping? Yet, of all the pretenderswho have had their start in this+shamshoo/samschoo: ‘The Admiral,who seems never to have tasted anyshrob not made in Europe, describedthis Chinese wine as “fiery, fetid andvery injurious to European health”. Butthis was true only of the varieties soldon Hog Lane; elsewhere there weremany very fine bottlings, no less preciousthan the finest French sharaabs.’+shikar: See below.+shikaree: ‘The mystery of the hunt(shikar)’.shoe-goose (*The Barney-Book):‘Not being a bird at all, but rather akind of cat [in fact a lynx], this word isunlikely to enter the annals of ornithology.’In the margins, a note: ‘From Persiansyagosh’.

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 40shoke/shauq (*The Glossary): ‘In itsEnglish incarnation this Arabic wordcame to mean “whim”, “hobby” or“penchant”. In Hind. the existence ofa shoke is often indicated by the ad -dition of the suffix báz (sometimesAnglicized to buzz). The proper En -glish translation of Hind. addá-bázis therefore buck-buzz. (The termlaunder- or laund’ry-buzz is a cantexception and does not always refer tothe whims of dhobis). When misused,this particle can cause some curiousmisunderstandings. Thus, for instance,a self-styled pundit was once heardto speculate that buzz when addedto bawhawder was a reference to awell-known shoke of Alexander theGreat’s (sometimes described as histaste for youthful bawhawdery). Sowedded was the pundit to this view,that I was hard put to persuade himthat he had got the matter completelyoolter-poolter: Buzz Bawhawder wasa medieval king of Malwa, famousfor his shoke for the beautiful Rawnee,Roopmuttee. As for the matter hewas speaking of, the correct zubbenexpression is of course udlee-budlee.’+shrob/shrab/shrub/sorbet/sorbetto/sherbert/syrup/sirop/xarave/sharaab:Neel loved to collect derivatives of theArabic root for ‘drink’, sh-r-b.this, adding that these coins were issuedin 1793.+silahdar/silladar: ‘This word, lit.“arms-bearer”, was one of many appliedto mercenaries and soldiers of fortune’.See burkandaz.silboot (*The Glossary): ‘Like sirdrar,which is but the Hind. corruption ofthe undergarment known as a “shortdrawer”, this word for “slipper” has reenteredEnglish usage in an alteredform.’silmagoor: From the Jack-Chits:‘Could this be a lascar’s way of saying“sail-maker”?’ A marginal note, writtenlong afterwards, confirms his guesswith a triumphant‘!’: ‘Roebuck leavesno doubt of it.’sirdrar (*The Glossary): See silboot.soor (*The Barney-Book): ‘Pig, hencesoor-ka-butcha, son of a pig’.tabar (*Roebuck): ‘Royal’ as applied toa ship’s rigging; see dol.+shroff: ‘The mystery of moneychanging’,from which shroffage,which the Oracle defines as a commissioncharged for shroffing, or the examiningof coin.+tael: ‘Another name for a Chineseliang or ounce,’ but a note in themargins specifies: ‘According to theOracle, this weight equals 1 1 ⁄3 oz.avoirdupois.’+sicca rupee: ‘In my childhood, as I remember,this was already an antiquekind of coinage.’ The Oracle confirms+talipot: Neel was mistaken in thinkingthis to be the English word for‘toddy-palm’. The Oracle pronounces

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 41it to be a ‘South Indian fan palm,Corypha umbraculifera.’taliyamar (*Roebuck): Neel mistookthis word to mean ‘bow-wave’ but wasglad to be corrected: ‘Roebuck explainsthat this is the Laskari for “cut-water”,derived from the Portuguese talhamar.I remember having always heard theword spoken by lascars who were lookingdown from the bowsprit. Hencemy error: I mistook the effect for theobject.’‘To further complicate matters, thosewho were responsible for the maintenanceof these screens were known, incertain households, as tattygars. Unfortunateindeed was the kismet ofthe khidmatgars who were thus designated,and it was no easy matter to fillthese positions. It was because of suchmisunderstandings, perhaps, that thisword is gradually yielding to its Hind.synonym khus-khus.’+teapoy: See charpoy.tamancha: ‘Roebuck confirms that thiswas, as I remember, the common Las -kari word for a lesser firearm.’tapori: From the Jack-Chits: ‘This wasthe lascar’s word for the wooden bowlout of which he ate – the equivalent ofthe English seaman’s “kid”. These weremade of the plainest hollowed wood,and were bought in great numbersfrom bumboats. Apart from this therewas also the metal khwancha – a largetray on which they ate together.’+tatty (*The Glossary): ‘Such was theterm for a screen made of khus-khusgrass. Although the word is perfectlyrespectable, being derived from thetamil vettiveru (from which vetiver),its resemblance to a common Hind.word for a certain bodily producttended to create misunderstandings. Astory is told of a formidable BeeBeewho issued a peremptory hookum to atimid chuckeroo: “Boy! Drop a tatty!Jildee!” The unfortunate lad was gubbrowedhalf out of his wits and compliedwith such celerity that theBeeBee was put utterly to rout.teek (*The Barney-Book): ‘Accordingto the Barneymen, the Hind. thik becamein its English avatar “exact, close,precise.”’+tical: A silver coin equal to a rupee.tickytaw boys/tickytock boys (*TheGlossary): ‘These ghastly attempts atonomatopoeia were once the terms ofreference for players of the tabla.’+tiff, to: ‘Ironic indeed that Indiashould be the last refuge of this fineNorth Country English word, meaningto take refreshments (from which tiffin,lunch etc)’.tiffin: See above.+tindal: See lascar.+topas/topass: Neel would have beenastonished by the Oracle’s gloss ofthis word: ‘A person of mixed Black

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 42and Portuguese descent; often appliedto a soldier, or a ship’s scavenger orbath-attendant, who is of this class.’See lascar.trikat (*Roebuck): See dol.turnee (*Roebuck): ‘This (as also tarniand tanni), were the lascars’ abbre -viations of the word “attorney”, andit was applied always to Englishsupercargoes. Phaltu-tanni, how ever,was their word for the Flemish horse, avery curious element of a ship’s tackle.’tuckiah / tuckier (*The Glossary):‘Sir Henry claims that this commonHind. word for “pillow” or “bolster”is often used in the same sense asashram. I am baffled by this, I mustconfess.’+ tumasher / tamasha / tomashaw /tomascia: Being a contrarian, Neelhad a particular fondness for theseventeenth-century English usage ofthis word, in which it was spelledtomashaw or even tomascia, and hadthe sense of ‘spectacle’ or ‘show’, beingsometimes thus applied also to rituals.He deplored the gradual debasementof the word, whereby it ‘can nowscarcely be told apart from a petty gollmaul.’udlee-budlee: See shoke.upper-roger (*The Glossary, *TheBarney-Book): ‘A corruption of Skt.yuva-raja, “young king”, says Sir Henry,to which the Barneymen add, apro -pos nothing, that the Nawab Siraj-uddowlahwas similarly known to Britishwordy-wallahs as Sir Roger Dowler.’+vakeel: Lawyer, pleader. ‘One of theoldest mysteries of the courtroom, reputedto be a denizen of the Englishlanguage since the early seventeenthcentury.’+vetiver: See tatty.tumlet (*The Glossary): ‘Is it possiblethat this Hind. corruption of “tumbler”will reenter the English language and,like the notorious cuckoo, eject its parentfrom its nest? Would that it couldbe so!’tuncaw (*The Glossary): ‘The mysteryof English turned this Hind. for “salary”,tankha, into an almost derogatory term,used mainly for servant’s wages.’+turban: See seersucker.+wanderoo: See bandar. In the marginsof this a nameless relative haswritten: ‘In the jungles of English, onlya little less antique than vakeel, datingback to the 1680s, according to Oracle.’woolock (*The Glossary): ‘Boats ofthis name were often to be seen on theHooghly, but I recall neither size norany details of their construction.’wordy-wallah (*The Glossary): Thisphrase, from Hind. vardi-wala, was

Copyright 2008 © Amitav Ghosh 43used in English to mean ‘wearer ofa uniform’. Those especially giftedin this regard were known as wordymajors(or woordy-majors). Neel’susage of these terms bore no resemblanceto their proper definition.my dictionaries. But I know I haveheard it often used, and if it does notexist, it should, for no other expressioncould so accurately describe the subjectof the Chrestomathy.’zubben/zubán: ‘Of this word,’ writesNeel, ‘I can find no evidence in any of