[1602.—"... some fine pinthadoes."—Birdwood, First Letter Book, 34.]
1602-5.—"... about their loynes a fine Pintadoe."—Scot's Discourse of Iava, in Purchas, i. 164.
1606.—"Heare the Generall deliuered a Letter from the KINGS MAIESTIE of ENGLAND, with a fayre standing Cuppe, and a cover double gilt, with divers of the choicest Pintadoes, which hee kindly accepted of."—Middleton's Voyage, E. 3.
[1610.—"Pintadoes of divers sorts will sell.... The names are Sarassa, Berumpury, large Chaudes, Selematt Cambaita, Selematt white and black, Cheat Betime and divers others."—Danvers, Letters, i. 75.
c. 1630.—"Also they stain Linnen cloth, which we call pantadoes."—Sir T. Herbert, ed. 1677, p. 304.]
1665.—"To Woodcott ... where was a roome hung with Pintado, full of figures greate and small, prettily representing sundry trades and occupations of the Indians."—Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 30.
c. 1759.—"The chintz and other fine painted goods, will, if the market is not overstocked, find immediate vent, and sell for 100 p. cent."—Letter from Pegu, in Dalrymple, Or. Rep. i. 120.
b. A name (not Anglo-Indian) for the Guinea-fowl. This may have been given from the resemblance of the speckled feathers to a chintz. But in fact pinta in Portuguese is 'a spot,' or fleck, so that probably it only means speckled. This is the explanation of Bluteau. [The word is more commonly applied to the cape Pigeon. See Mr. Gray's note on Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 21, who quotes from Fryer, p. 12.]
PISACHEE, Skt. piśāchī, a she-demon, m. piśācha. In S. India some of the demons worshipped by the ancient tribes are so called. The spirits of the dead, and particularly of those who have met with violent deaths, are especially so entitled. They are called in Tamil pey. Sir Walter Elliot considers that the Piśāchīs were (as in the case of Rākshasas) a branch of the aboriginal inhabitants. In a note he says: 'The Piśāchī dialect appears to have been a distinct Dravidian dialect, still to be recognised in the speech of the Paraiya, who cannot pronounce distinctly some of the pure Tamil letters.' There is, however, in the Hindu drama a Piśāchā bhāshā, a gibberish or corruption of Sanskrit, introduced. [This at the present day has been applied to English.] The term piśāchī is also applied to the small circular storms commonly by Europeans called [devils] (q.v.). We do not know where Archdeacon Hare (see below) found the Piśāchī to be a white demon.
1610.—"The fifth (mode of Hindu marriage) is the Pisácha-viváha, when the lover, without obtaining the sanction of the girl's parents, takes her home by means of talismans, incantations, and such like magical practices, and then marries her. Pisách, in Sanskrit, is the name of a demon, which takes whatever person it fixes on, and as the above marriage takes place after the same manner, it has been called by this name."—The Dabistán, ii. 72; [See Manu, iii. 34].