1746.—"As the Nabob's behaviour when Madras was attacked by De la Bourdonnais, had caused the English to suspect his assurances of assistance, they had 2,000 Peons in the defence of Cuddalore...."—Orme, i. 81.
c. 1760.—"Peon. One who waits about the house to run on messages; and he commonly carries under his arm a sword, or in his sash a krese, and in his hand a ratan, to keep the rest of the servants in subjection. He also walks before your palanquin, carries [chits] (q.v.) or notes, and is your bodyguard."—Ives, 50.
1763.—"Europeans distinguish these undisciplined troops by the general name of Peons."—Orme, ed. 1803, i. 80.
1772.—Hadley, writing in Bengal, spells the word pune; but this is evidently phonetic.
c. 1785.—"... Peons, a name for the infantry of the Deckan."—Carraccioli's Life of Clive, iv. 563.
1780-90.—"I sent off annually from Sylhet from 150 to 200 (elephants) divided into 4 distinct flocks.... They were put under charge of the common peon. These people were often absent 18 months. On one occasion my servant Manoo ... after a twelve-months' absence returned ... in appearance most miserable; he unfolded his girdle, and produced a scrap of paper of small dimensions, which proved to be a banker's bill amounting to 3 or 4,000 pounds,—his own pay was 30 shillings a month.... When I left India Manoo was still absent on one of these excursions, but he delivered to my agents as faithful an account of the produce as he would have done to myself...."—Hon. R. Lindsay, in Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 77.
1842.—"... he was put under arrest for striking, and throwing into the Indus, an inoffensive Peon, who gave him no provocation, but who was obeying the orders he received from Captain ——. The Major General has heard it said that the supremacy of the British over the native must be maintained in India, and he entirely concurs in that opinion, but it must be maintained by justice."—Gen. Orders, &c., of Sir Ch. Napier, p. 72.
1873.—"Pandurang is by turns a servant to a shopkeeper, a peon, or orderly, a groom to an English officer ... and eventually a pleader before an English Judge in a populous city."—Saturday Review, May 31, p. 728.
PEPPER, s. The original of this word, Skt. pippali, means not the ordinary pepper of commerce ('black pepper') but long pepper, and the Sanskrit name is still so applied in Bengal, where one of the long-pepper plants, which have been classed sometimes in a different genus (Chavica) from the black pepper, was at one time much cultivated. There is still indeed a considerable export of long pepper from Calcutta; and a kindred species grows in the Archipelago. Long pepper is mentioned by Pliny, as well as white and black pepper; the three varieties still known in trade, though with the kind of error that has persisted on such subjects till quite recently, he misapprehends their relation. The proportion of their ancient prices will be found in a quotation below.
The name must have been transferred by foreign traders to black pepper, the staple of export, at an early date, as will be seen from the quotations. Pippalimūla, the root of long pepper, still a stimulant medicine in the native pharmacopoeia, is probably the πεπέρεως ῥίζα of the ancients (Royle, p. 86).