[1615.—"The King says that at her arrival he will send them their house and pagarr upon rafts to them."—Foster, Letters, iii. 151.]
b. (pagār). This word is in general use in the Bombay domestic dialect for wages, Mahr. pagār. It is obviously the Port. verb pagar, 'to pay,' used as a substantive.
[1875.—"... the heavy-browed sultana of some Gangetic station, whose stern look palpably interrogates the amount of your monthly paggar."—Wilson, Abode of Snow, 46.]
PAGODA, s. This obscure and remarkable word is used in three different senses.
a. An idol temple; and also specifically, in China, a particular form of religious edifice, of which the famous "Porcelain tower" of Nanking, now destroyed, may be recalled as typical. In the 17th century we find the word sometimes misapplied to places of Mahommedan worship, as by Faria-y-Sousa, who speaks of the "Pagoda of Mecca."
b. An idol.
c. A coin long current in S. India. The coins so called were both gold and silver, but generally gold. The gold pagoda was the varāha or hūn of the natives (see [HOON]); the former name (fr. Skt. for 'boar') being taken from the Boar avatār of Vishnu, which was figured on a variety of ancient coins of the South; and the latter signifying 'gold,' no doubt identical with sonā, and an instance of the exchange of h and s. (See also [PARDAO].)
Accounts at Madras down to 1818 were kept in pagodas, fanams, and kās (see [CASH]); 8 kās = 1 fanam, 42 fanams = 1 pagoda. In the year named the rupee was made the standard coin.[[195]] The pagoda was then reckoned as equivalent to 3½ rupees.
In the suggestions of etymologies for this word, the first and most prominent meaning alone has almost always been regarded, and doubtless justly; for the other uses are deduceable from it. Such suggestions have been many.
Thus Chinese origins have been propounded in more than one form; e.g. Pao-t'ah, 'precious pile,' and Poh-kuh-t'ah ('white-bones-pile').[[196]] Anything can be made out of Chinese monosyllables in the way of etymology; though no doubt it is curious that the first at least of these phrases is actually applied by the Chinese to the polygonal towers which in China foreigners specially call pagodas. Whether it be possible that this phrase may have been in any measure formed in imitation of pagoda, so constantly in the mouth of foreigners, we cannot say (though it would not be a solitary example of such borrowing—see [NEELAM]); but we can say with confidence that it is impossible pagoda should have been taken from the Chinese. The quotations from Corsali and Barbosa set that suggestion at rest.