1878.—"During the greater portion of the year extra working gangs of scavengers were kept for the sole purpose of going from Parcherry to Parcherry and cleaning them."—Report of Madras Municipality, p. 24.
c. 1880.—"Experience obtained in Madras some years ago with reconstructed parcherries, and their effect on health, might be imitated possibly with advantage in Calcutta."—Report by Army Sanitary Commission.
PATCHOULI, PATCH-LEAF, also PUTCH and PUTCHA-LEAF, s. In Beng. pachapāt; Deccani Hind. pacholī. The latter are trade names of the dried leaves of a labiate plant allied to mint (Pogostemon patchouly, Pelletier). It is supposed to be a cultivated variety of Pogostemon Heyneanus, Bentham, a native of the Deccan. It is grown in native gardens throughout India, Ceylon, and the Malay Islands, and the dried flowering spikes and leaves of the plant, which are used, are sold in every bazar in Hindustan. The pacha-pāt is used as an ingredient in tobacco for smoking, as hair-scent by women, and especially for stuffing mattresses and laying among clothes as we use lavender. In a fluid form patchouli was introduced into England in 1844, and soon became very fashionable as a perfume.
The origin of the word is a difficulty. The name is alleged in Drury, and in Forbes Watson's Nomenclature to be Bengāli. Littré says the word patchouli is patchey-elley, 'feuille de patchey'; in what language we know not; perhaps it is from Tamil pachcha, 'green,' and êlâ, êlam, an aromatic perfume for the hair. [The Madras Gloss. gives Tamil paççilai, paççai, 'green,' ilai, 'leaf.']
1673.—"Note, that if the following Goods from Acheen hold out the following Rates, the Factor employed is no further responsible.
* * * * *
Patch Leaf, 1 Bahar Maunds 7 20 sear."—Fryer, 209.
PATECA, s. This word is used by the Portuguese in India for a water-melon (Citrullus vulgaris, Schrader; Cucurbita Citrullus, L.). It is from the Ar. al-baṭṭikh or al-biṭṭīkh. F. Johnson gives this 'a melon, musk-melon. A pumpkin; a cucurbitaceous plant.' We presume that this is not merely the too common dictionary looseness, for the chaos of cucurbitaceous nomenclature, both vulgar and scientific, is universal (see A. De Candolle, Origine des Plantes cultivées). In Lane's Modern Egyptians (ed. 1837, i. 200) the word butteekh is rendered explicitly 'water-melon.' We have also in Spanish albadeca, which is given by Dozy and Eng. as 'espèce de melon'; and we have French pastèque, which we believe always means a water-melon. De Candolle seems to have no doubt that the water-melon was cultivated in ancient Egypt, and believes it to have been introduced into the Graeco-Roman world about the beginning of our era; whilst Hehn carries it to Persia from India, 'whether at the time of the Arabian or of the Mongol domination, (and then) to Greece, through the medium of the Turks, and to Russia, through that of the Tartar States of Astrakan and Kazan.'
The name pateca, looking to the existence of the same word in Spanish, we should have supposed to have been Portuguese long before the Portuguese establishment in India; yet the whole of what is said by Garcia de Orta is inconsistent with this. In his Colloquio XXXVI. the gist of the dialogue is that his visitor from Europe, Ruano, tells how he had seen what seemed a most beautiful melon, and how Garcia's housekeeper recommended it, but on trying it, it tasted only of mud instead of melon! Garcia then tells him that at Diu, and in the Bālaghāt, &c., he would find excellent melons with the flavour of the melons of Portugal but "those others which the Portuguese here in India call patecas are quite another thing—huge round or oval fruits, with black seeds—not sweet (doce) like the Portugal melons, but bland (suave), most juicy and cooling, excellent in bilious fevers, and congestions of the liver and kidneys, &c." Both name and thing are represented as novelties to Ruano. Garcia tells him also that the Arabs and Persians call it batiec indi, i.e. melon of India (F. Johnson gives 'biṭṭīkh-i-hindī, the citrul'; whilst in Persian hinduwāna is also a word for water-melon) but that the real Indian country name was (calangari Mahr. kālingaṛ, [perhaps that known in the N.W.P. as kalindā, 'a water-melon']). Ruano then refers to the budiecas of Castille of which he had heard, and queries if these were not the same as these Indian patecas, but Garcia says they are quite different. All this is curious as implying that the water-melon was strange to the Portuguese at that time (1563; see Colloquios, f. 141v. seqq.).
[A friend who has Burnell's copy of Garcia De Orta tells me that he finds a note in the writing of the former on bateca: "i.e. the Arabic term. As this is used all over India, water-melons must have been imported by the Mahommedans." I believe it to be a mistake that the word is in use all over India. I do not think the word is ever used in Upper India, nor is it (in that sense) in either Shakespear or Fallon. [Platts gives: A. biṭṭīkh, s.m. The melon (kharbūza); the water-melon, Cucurbita citrullus.] The most common word in the N.W.P. for a water-melon is Pers. tarbūz, whilst the musk-melon is Pers. kharbūza. And these words are so rendered from the Āīn respectively by Blochmann (see his E.T. i. 66, "melons ... water-melons," and the original i. 67, "kharbuza ... tarbuz"). But with the usual chaos already alluded to, we find both these words interpreted in F. Johnson as "water-melon." And according to Hehn the latter is called in the Slav tongues arbuz and in Mod. Greek καρπούσια, the first as well as the last probably from the Turkish ḳārpūz, which has the same meaning, for this hard ḳ is constantly dropt in modern pronunciation.—H. Y.]