Other terms again are corruptions, more or less violent, of Oriental words and phrases which have put on an English mask. Such are maund, fool's rack, bearer, cot, boy, belly-band, Penang-lawyer, buckshaw, goddess (in the Malay region, representing Malay gādīs, 'a maiden'), compound, college-pheasant, chopper, summer-head,[[16]] eagle-wood, jackass-copal, bobbery, Upper Roger (used in a correspondence given by Dalrymple, for Yuva Raja, the 'Young King,' or Caesar, of Indo-Chinese monarchies), Isle-o'-Bats (for Allahābād or Ilahābāz as the natives often call it), hobson-jobson (see Preface), St. John's. The last proper name has at least three applications. There is "St. John's" in Guzerat, viz. Sanjān, the landing-place of the Parsee immigration in the 8th century; there is another "St. John's" which is a corruption of Shang-Chuang, the name of that island off the southern coast of China whence the pure and ardent spirit of Francis Xavier fled to a better world: there is the group of "St. John's Islands" near Singapore, the chief of which is properly Pulo-Sikajang.
Yet again we have hybrids and corruptions of English fully accepted and adopted as Hindustani by the natives with whom we have to do, such as simkin, port-shrāb, brandy-pānī, apīl, rasīd, tumlet (a tumbler), gilās ('glass,' for drinking vessels of sorts), rail-ghārī, lumber-dār, jail-khāna, bottle-khāna, buggy-khāna, 'et omne quod exit in' khāna, including gymkhāna, a very modern concoction (q.v.), and many more.
Taking our subject as a whole, however considerable the philological interest attaching to it, there is no disputing the truth of a remark with which Burnell's fragments of intended introduction concludes, and the application of which goes beyond the limit of those words which can be considered to have 'accrued as additions to the English language': "Considering the long intercourse with India, it is noteworthy that the additions which have thus accrued to the English language are, from the intellectual standpoint, of no intrinsic value. Nearly all the borrowed words refer to material facts, or to peculiar customs and stages of society, and, though a few of them furnish allusions to the penny-a-liner, they do not represent new ideas."
It is singular how often, in tracing to their origin words that come within the field of our research, we light upon an absolute dilemma, or bifurcation, i.e. on two or more sources of almost equal probability, and in themselves entirely diverse. In such cases it may be that, though the use of the word originated from one of the sources, the existence of the other has invigorated that use, and contributed to its eventual diffusion.
An example of this is boy, in its application to a native servant. To this application have contributed both the old English use of boy (analogous to that of puer, garçon, Knabe) for a camp-servant, or for a slave, and the Hindī-Marāṭhī bhoi, the name of a caste which has furnished palanquin and umbrella-bearers to many generations of Europeans in India. The habitual use of the word by the Portuguese, for many years before any English influence had touched the shores of India (e.g. bóy de sombrero, bóy d'aguoa, bóy de palanquy), shows that the earliest source was the Indian one.
Cooly, in its application to a carrier of burdens, or performer of inferior labour, is another example. The most probable origin of this is from a nomen gentile, that of the Kolīs, a hill-people of Guzerat and the Western Ghats (compare the origin of slave). But the matter is perplexed by other facts which it is difficult to connect with this. Thus, in S. India, there is a Tamil word kūli, in common use, signifying 'daily hire or wages,' which H. H. Wilson regards as the true origin of the word which we call cooly. Again, both in Oriental and Osmali Turkish, kol is a word for a slave, and in the latter also there is kūleh, 'a male slave, a bondsman.' Khol is, in Tibetan also, a word for a slave or servant.
Tank, for a reservoir of water, we are apt to derive without hesitation, from stagnum, whence Sp. estanc, old Fr. estang, old Eng. and Lowland Scotch stank, Port. tanque, till we find that the word is regarded by the Portuguese themselves as Indian, and that there is excellent testimony to the existence of tānkā in Guzerat and Rajputana as an indigenous word, and with a plausible Sanskrit etymology.
Veranda has been confidently derived by some etymologists (among others by M. Defréméry, a distinguished scholar) from the Pers. barāmada, 'a projection,' a balcony; an etymology which is indeed hardly a possible one, but has been treated by Mr. Beames (who was evidently unacquainted with the facts that do make it hardly possible) with inappropriate derison, he giving as the unquestionable original a Sanskrit word baraṇḍa, 'a portico.' On this Burnell has observed that the word does not belong to the older Sanskrit, but is only found in comparatively modern works. Be that as it may, it need not be doubted that the word veranda, as used in England and France, was imported from India, i.e. from the usage of Europeans in India; but it is still more certain that either in the same sense, or in one closely allied, the word existed, quite independent of either Sanskrit or Persian, in Portuguese and Spanish, and the manner in which it occurs in the very earliest narrative of the Portuguese adventure to India (Roteiro do Viagem de Vasco da Gama, written by one of the expedition of 1497), confirmed by the Hispano-Arabic vocabulary of Pedro de Alcalà, printed in 1505, preclude the possibility of its having been adopted by the Portuguese from intercourse with India.
Mangrove, John Crawfurd tells us, has been adopted from the Malay manggi-manggi, applied to trees of the genus Rhizophora. But we learn from Oviedo, writing early in the sixteenth century, that the name mangle was applied by the natives of the Spanish Main to trees of the same, or a kindred genus, on the coast of S. America, which same mangle is undoubtedly the parent of the French manglier, and not improbably therefore of the English form mangrove.[[17]]
The words bearer, mate, cotwal, partake of this kind of dual or doubtful ancestry, as may be seen by reference to them in the Glossary.